North America's future as the New Middle East?

Mildred Lake mine site and plant near Fort McMurray, Alberta. / Wikipedia

The climate problem has moved from the abstract to the very real in the last 18 months. 

Instead of charts and graphs about what will happen someday, we've got real-time video: first Russia burning, then Texas and Arizona on fire.  First Pakistan suffered a deluge, then Queensland, Australia, went underwater, and this spring and summer, it's the Midwest that's flooding at historic levels.

The year 2010 saw the lowest volume of Arctic ice since scientists started to measure, more rainfall on land than any year in recorded history, and the lowest barometric pressure ever registered in the continental United States.  Measured on a planetary scale, 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest year in history.  Jeff Masters, probably the world's most widely read meteorologist, calculated that the year featured the most extreme weather since at least 1816, when a giant volcano blew its top.

Since we're the volcano now, and likely to keep blowing, here's his prognosis: "The ever-increasing amounts of heat-trapping gases humans are emitting into the air put tremendous pressure on the climate system to shift to a new, radically different, warmer state, and the extreme weather of 2010-2011 suggests that the transition is already well underway."

There's another shift, too, and that's in the response from climate-change activists. For the first two decades of the global-warming era, the suggested solutions to the problem had been as abstract as the science that went with it: complicated schemes like the Kyoto Protocol, or the cap-and-trade agreement that died in Congress in 2010.  These were attempts to solve the problem of climate change via complicated backstage maneuvers and manipulations of prices or regulations.  They failed in large part because the fossil-fuel industry managed, at every turn, to dilute or defang them.

Clearly the current Congress is in no mood for real regulation, so -- for the moment anyway -- the complicated planning is being replaced by a simpler rallying cry. When it comes to coal, oil, and natural gas, the new mantra of activists is simple, straightforward, and hard to defang: Keep it in the ground!

Two weeks ago, for instance, a few veteran environmentalists, myself included, issued a call for protest against Canada's plans to massively expand oil imports from the tar sands regions of Alberta.  We set up a new website, tarsandsaction.org, and judging from the early response, it could result in the largest civil disobedience actions in the climate-change movement's history on this continent, as hundreds, possibly thousands, of concerned activists converge on the White House in August. They'll risk arrest to demand something simple and concrete from President Obama: that he refuse to grant a license for Keystone XL, a new pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico that would vastly increase the flow of tar sands oil through the U.S., ensuring that the exploitation of Alberta's tar sands will only increase.

Forget the abstract and consider the down-and-dirty instead. You can undoubtedly guess some of the reasons for opposition to such a pipeline.  It's wrecking native lands in Canada, and potential spills from that pipeline could pollute some of the most important ranchlands and aquifers in America. (Last week's Yellowstone River spill was seen by many as a sign of what to expect.)

There's an even bigger reason to oppose the pipeline, one that should be on the minds of even those of us who live thousands of miles away: Alberta's tar sands are the continent's biggest carbon bomb.  Indeed, they're the second largest pool of carbon on planet Earth, following only Saudi Arabia's slowly dwindling oilfields.

If you could burn all the oil in those tar sands, you'd run the atmosphere's concentration of carbon dioxide from its current 390 parts per million (enough to cause the climate havoc we're currently seeing) to nearly 600 parts per million, which would mean if not hell, then at least a world with a similar temperature. It won't happen overnight, thank God, but according to the planet's most important climatologist, James Hansen, burning even a substantial portion of that oil would mean it was "essentially game over" for the climate of this planet.

Halting that pipeline wouldn't solve all tar sands problems.  The Canadians will keep trying to get it out to market, but it would definitely ensure that more of that oil will stay in the ground longer and that, at least, would be a start.  Even better, the politics of it are simple. For once, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives can't get in the way.  The president alone decides if the pipeline is "in the national interest." There are, however, already worrisome signs within the Obama administration.  Just this week, based on a State Department cable released by WikiLeaks, Neela Banerjee of the Los Angeles Times reported that, in 2009, the State Department's "energy envoy" was already instructing Alberta's fossil-fuel barons in how to improve their "oil sands messaging," including "increasing visibility and accessibility of more positive news stories." This is the government version of Murdochian-style enviro-hacking, and it leads many to think that the new pipeline is already a done deal. 

Still, the president can say no.  If he does, then no pipeline -- and in the words of Alberta's oil minister, his province will be "landlocked in bitumen" (the basic substance from which tar-sands oil is extracted). Even energy-hungry China, eager as it is for new sources of fossil fuels, may not be able to save him, since native tribes are doing a remarkable job of blocking another proposed pipeline to the Canadian Pacific.  Oil, oil everywhere, and nary a drop to sell. (Unfortunately that's not quite true, but at least there won't be a big new straw in this milkshake.)

An Obama thumbs-down on the pipeline could change the economics of the tar sands in striking ways. "Unless we get increased [market] access, like with Keystone XL, we're going to be stuck," said Ralph Glass, an economist and vice-president at AJM Petroleum Consultants in Calgary.

Faced with that prospect, Canada's oilmen are growing desperate. Earlier this month, in a classic sleight of hand, they announced plans for a giant "carbon capture and sequestration" scheme at the tar sands. That's because when it comes to global warming, tar sands oil is even worse than, say, Saudi oil because it's a tarry muck, not a liquid, and so you have to burn a lot of natural gas to make it flow in the first place.

Now, the oil industry is proposing to capture some of the extra carbon from that cooking process and store it underground.  This is an untested method, and the accounting scheme Alberta has adopted for it may actually increase the province's emmissions.  Even if it turns out to work perfectly and captures the carbon from that natural gas that would have escaped into the atmosphere, the oil they're proposing to ship south for use in our gas tanks would still be exactly as bad for the atmosphere as Saudi crude. In other words, in the long run it would still be "essentially game over" for the climate.

The Saudis, of course, built their oil empire long before we knew that there was anything wrong with burning oil. The Canadians -- with American help, if Obama obliges the oil lobby -- are building theirs in the teeth of the greatest threat the world has ever faced. We can't unbuild those Saudi Arabian fields, though happily their supplies are starting to slowly dwindle. What we can still do, though, is prevent North America from becoming the next Middle East.

So there will be a battle, and there will be nothing complicated or abstract about it.  It will be based on one question: Does that carbon stay in the earth, or does it pour into the atmosphere?  Given the trillions of dollars at stake it will be a hard fight, and there's no guarantee of victory. But at least there's no fog here, no maze of technicalities.

The last climate bill, the one the Senate punted on, was thousands of pages long. This time there's a single sheet of paper, which Obama signs... or not.

Bio: Bill McKibben is Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College, founder of 350.org, and a TomDispatch regular. His most recent book, just out in paperback, is Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

[1stlttightwad]

I guess someone forgot about Climate Gate lamenting that their scientists could not prove global warming, ahem, it's now Climate change to try and deflect the false science brought forth by them. Hey, where did ole Al Gore disappear to? Looks like his rants about global warming lost credibility and cost him a lot of speaking engagement dollars. Climate change, now that's something we can all agree on. Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, gosh.....they're right.

[1stlttightwad]

Bottom line. Ice ages come and go. The earth changes on its axis affecting sunlight reaching the earth causing warming or cooling. Volcanoes erupt and darken the sky while belching copius amounts of CO2. If we stopped ALL of OUR CO2 emissions the rest of the world would continue doing their own thing. The end result would be for our nation to grind to a halt while the other countries chug merrily along pumping out CO2. For we humans to conceitidly think that the world revolves around us and that WE control the environment is like the flea on the elephants back biting him and asking, does it hurt yet.

[sawolf]

I remember in the 70's the theorists claiming we were headed for an ice age.The current theories are based on models employing mathematics that really can't model the chaos of atmospheric phenomena. Until there are models that do so and accepted this all appears to be guess work. Although if wrong please correct me , CFD is not my area of expertise ,but I would appreciate a learning experience.

[-Skirt-]

Prohb, (pro hydrocarbon ban??)

You truly believe humans are to blame for the current oscillation of our planet's climate via CO2. You also believe you have empirical data supporting your hypothesis.

OK... I will agree with everything you propose for the sake of debate.

Now... How do we deal with it without injuring the economy of the USA? The USA is a major source of man-made CO2 emissions, with a caveat that the USA is reducing its emissions. Other countries are increasing emissions.

Emerging economies are far more responsible for the acceleration of man-made CO2.

How do you propose we address this? It's a "global issue" and we are one country with 5% of the planets population. How responsible are the citizens of the USA for over all climate change?

Even if the USA reduced its emissions to that of wild life, the rest of the world will continue to belch CO2.

What can the USA do about reducing man-made CO2 emissions WITHOUT injuring our economy?

These are valid questions...

[prohb]

For jmail (and other interested in the climate change debate). Here are some more recent general articles from just ONE of my sources covering a range of climate change topics. Many have references to more technical sources. With these and the ones I mentioned in a previous post, it should be a start for you.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2011-05-16-Report-puts-climate-change-deniers-in-hot-seat_n.htm
http://www.grist.org/climate-skeptics/2011-05-17-usa-today-climate-science-deniers-are-now-like-birthers
http://www.grist.org/article/2011-05-23-great-places-reorienting-progressive-politics-21st-century
http://www.grist.org/list/2011-05-19-a-violent-climate-is-the-new-normal-say-scientists
http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-06-30-climate-models-are-creating-a-false-sense-of-security
http://www.grist.org/list/2011-06-30-critical-list-texas-drought-is-officially-a-natural-disaster-cli
http://www.grist.org/list/2011-06-28-u.s.-politicians-campaign-of-terro-intimidate-cliamte-scientists
http://www.grist.org/list/2011-06-30-how-much-hotter-has-your-state-gotten
http://www.care2.com/causes/glaciers-melted-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions-rose-in-2010.html
http://www.care2.com/causes/climate-change-denial-research-funded-by-big-oil.html
http://www.care2.com/causes/scientists-predict-extreme-heat-will-be-the-norm-in-20-years.html
http://www.care2.com/causes/why-global-warming-spells-disaster-for-ad-lie-penguins-video.html
http://www.grist.org/list/2011-04-20-how-much-could-climate-change-cost-your-state
http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-04-26-why-ive-avoided-commenting-on-nisbets-climate-shift-report
http://www.grist.org/list/2011-05-02-climate-change-could-lead-to-more-tornadoes-say-nasa-scientists
http://www.grist.org/climate-policy/2011-05-02-dr-grists-four-part-prescription-for-managing-climate-change
http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-05-11-climate-crisis-fueling-mississippi-rivers-historic-floods
http://www.grist.org/list/2011-05-31-new-data-show-how-warming-leads-to-wider-variation-in-global-wea
http://www.grist.org/list/2011-05-31-record-carbon-emissions-show-world-has-not-been-listening-to-a-t
http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-05-27-global-warming-could-give-you-brain-fungus-video
http://www.grist.org/list/2011-06-09-could-climate-change-denialism-tank-the-u.s.-economy
http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-06-11-the-most-powerful-climate-video-youll-see-all-week
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-06-14-science-connects-global-warming-arizona-wildfires-the-media
http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-06-14-noaa-the-new-normal-is-hot
http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-06-16-a-few-brave-conservatives-speak-up-for-climate-sanity
http://www.grist.org/list/2011-06-16-how-oil-and-gas-companies-that-deny-climate-change-are-adapting-
http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-06-16-if-sun-goes-into-hibernation-it-wont-stop-global-warming
http://www.grist.org/list/2011-06-21-sea-level-rose-faster-in-past-century-than-during-previous-2000-
http://www.grist.org/cleantech/2011-06-28-google-sasy-delaying-clean-energy-cost-us-trillions
http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-07-07-its-getting-really-hot-in-here
http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-07-08-scary-maps-of-the-new-climate-normal
http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-02-23-linking-big-weather-to-global-warming
http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-02-17-yes-we-caused-snowpocalypse-says-new-study
http://www.grist.org/climate-policy/2011-02-16-inaction-on-climate-change-is-risky-business
http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-02-08-costs-of-inaction-the-price-of-ice
http://www.grist.org/article/2011-02-02-costs-of-inaction-the-economics-of-high-end-warming

[-Skirt-]

you can hide lies in piles of crappola. Not saying you are, but this is a common strategy for defending a tenuous position... baffle 'em with mountains of B-S.

How about a high level, lucid argument? we'll go from there...

[prohb]

Skirt - I have been debating this issue for 20 years now. This is only the tip of the iceberg (which is melting -haha) of the files of articles I have. I think CBS would not allow me to put them all on THE POST. I am a science teacher - the scientific method and looking at all possible variables is the way I solve problems. I approach any article with that in mind. Also, before I take a position, I obtain numerous sources on the topic. With the complexity of the internet there is almost unlimited information but a lot less real wisdom so you have to be careful. I encourage everyone to look at this issue with the eyes of a scientist (and an economists can do it too!): Start with a Question, State your Hypothesis, Develop A Procedure To Test It, Do the test (or observation), Collect Data, Analyze The Data, Conclusion and Summary WHETHER YOUR HYPOTHESIS IS RIGHT OR NOT. The preponderance of evidence I've seen, the workshops, courses, research, and symposiums I have attended, all have led me to the irrevocable conclusion that climate change is real and that we are the primary cause. I wish it were different, but unfortunately it's not.
And Skirt, check my first long post on this (not the ones I mention all the sources) to discuss.

[-Skirt-]

by Americabeforecorporations July 17, 2011 7:07 AM EDT
""Even "IF" climate change isn't real, as the Baggers, Birthers and Buffoons whine, what harm can be done by limiting pollution?????""
____________________
This is a common argument... I'd like to address it.

Limiting pollution is good. period.

But the implication by referring to, ""the Baggers, Birthers and Buffoons"", is that conservatives love pollution and green house gases.

This implication is fallacious.

True conservatives ARE environmentalists... more so than libs. e.g. Ted Nugent.

The problem is that today's utopianist, softheaded, nanny state loving, short sighted, small minded, liberal, is that they don't consider the economic ramifications of their ideals.

They want the USA to take the lead in reducing green house gases. The USA in only 5% of the global population. And emerging economies will NOT suffer the encumbrances that environmentally sensitive policies bestow upon their emergence.

The global economy will NOT follow the lead of the USA, forcing ginormous restraints upon energy producers, therefore destroying our energy companies... which are hated anyway.

So... Limiting pollution is good. period.

At the expense of the USA and her economy? NOT.

Don't be a softhead...

[prohb]

Time for a little humor here. You all have to see this ad from 1962 from (at that time) Humble Oil:

http://books.google.com/books?id=k00EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA86-IA3&dq=glacier%20humble&pg=PA86-IA2#v=twopage&q=glacier%20humble&f=true

[prohb]

I guess it really isn't, is it?

[-Skirt-]

pure irony... that is freakin' hilarious!

[prohb]

By the way - I am not Bill McKibben.

[prohb]

Well I had to sleep. But heerrrreee weeee go.
Sorry CBS, I feel your fear and pain. But you're wrong. Most of your points were refuted way back in 2006 and things haven't changed. Rather than refute your points one by one I'll give you just a few of the sources that will do so. I have used them in countless debates with previous nay-sayers (it's going on 20 years now), some, believe it or not have emailed me afterward to say they have changed their mind on the subject. Hopefully you have the courage to read them. I must warn you, being a science and physics person myself many of the sites are science oriented, especially the older ones, so they may be a little boring. Most talk about CO2 and I have also included an article explaining consensus. They also have links to other sources. Ask me for more if you want:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ - carbon dioxide analysis center
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/epica_domec/edc-co2.txt
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/06/how-much-of-the-recent-cosub2sub-increase-is-due-to-human-activities/
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/2003Q4/211/articles_required/Lorius90_ice-core.pdf
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.summary?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=oreskes&searchid=1103210845409_5389&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0&fdate=10/1/1995&tdate=12/31/2004
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/fig2-22.htm
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/11/650000-years-of-greenhouse-gas-concentrations/
https://www.ipcc.unibe.ch/publications/wg1-ar4/faq/wg1_faq-2.1.html
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/epica_domec/edc-co2.txt
https://www.ipcc.unibe.ch/publications/wg1-ar4/faq/wg1_faq-6.2.html
http://amper.ped.muni.cz/gw/articles/html.format/orb_forc.html
https://www.ipcc.unibe.ch/publications/wg1-ar4/faq/wg1_faq-9.2.html

[jdbynum3]

"the problem had been as abstract as the science that went with it"
What a joke...Al Gore's "science". Climbing down from his jet, telling us we need to live in caves.
The climate is changing but it's just stupid to be so naive to think that we are powerful enough to change the weather. Mother nature has been doing this for eons and will continue to change for more to come. Jeeze!! Wake up to the bull manure these fools are feeding you.