Category: Canada

Anything related to Canada or Canadians

Cold, glass, and condensation

Users of cameras and eyeglasses will be familiar with the phenomenon of fogging, which occurs when one goes from a cold and dry place into a warm one. This occurs because air can hold about 7% more water per unit of volume for each ˚C of additional temperature. That means that air in warm places is naturally more laden with water than that in cold ones. When the water-laden air hits cool glass, it condenses into a fog that confounds the bespecktacled and shutterbugs.

The other night, I witnessed a special elaboration of this phenomenon unique to conditions including (a) a very cold and dry night (b) a fairly large volume of glass and (c) an instant transition to a warm and relatively humid coffee shop.

The normal fogging occurred, but it would not dissipate after several minutes of waiting. It was then that I noticed that the glass on which the fog had formed was cold enough to freeze it – leaving a thin sheet of ice of the lens. The remedy was a few minutes of huffing to melt the ice, followed by a few more waiting for evaporation.

I am a bit surprised not to have experienced this working with cameras in Finland or Estonia. Like getting mild frostbite walking home from a party, it seems to be an Ottawa experience.

Canada’s new 90% target for non-GHG emitting electricity

Note: In light of a perceptive comment, I have made some revisions to the post below. In all cases, the old text is struck out.

In yesterday’s Speech from the Throne, the government pledged to increase the share of Canada’s electricity generated from non-emitting sources to 90% by 2020. Looking into the math behind this objective reveals just how ambitious it is. The following numbers are all somewhat approximate, but their precision is not important for revealing the underlying dynamic.

In order to have 90% non-emitting power, you need to have ten nine times more capacity in non-emitting sources like hydroelectricity, nuclear, and renewables than you have in emitting capacity like coal and natural gas plants. Right now, Canada has somewhere around 110 gigawatts (GW) of total installed electrical capacity: 70% of which is non-emitting. Using the following basic equation, we can work out how much non-emitting energy we need in order to reach the 90% objective, based on different scenarios for what happens to the emitting capacity:

0.90 = (gigawatts non-emitting) / (gigawatts non-emitting + gigawatts emitting)

In every case, you have ten nine times more non-emitting (clean) capacity than emitting (dirty) capacity. Therefore, getting to the 90% target while retaining all 33 GW of Canada’s dirty capacity means bumping our clean capacity from 77 GW to 330 297 GW – an increase of 253 220 GW.

To put that in perspective, 253 220 gigawatts is 230% of Canada’s current total electrical generating capacity. 253 220 gigawatts is more than thirty-seven thirty-two times the capacity of the Grand Coulee Dam and is equivalent to more than fourty thirty-five times the output of the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station. 253 220 gigawatts is more than eleven nine times the generating capacity of the Three Gorges Dam.

Things get worse if you expand Canada’s dirty electricity generating capacity. If we were foolish enough to double it, we would need 583 517 GW of new clean energy to achieve the 90% target. Cutting the dirty capacity by 50% from today’s level means we would need to build another 88 71.5 GW of clean capacity. If we cut the dirty capacity by 75%, we would be able to reach the 90% target with no new clean capacity built.

The reasons for all this are intuitive enough. It is like a lever where the arm on one side of the fulcrum is ten nine times longer than the other. If you want to balance out the weight on the long arm (equivalent to the dirty capacity), you need to add an awful lot of weight to the short arm (equivalent to clean capacity).

Of course, all this is rather misleading when considered in the abstract. It’s not as though doubling our dirty capacity would be just fine if we also built 583 517 GW of new dams, wind farms, and nuclear stations. What is important in the end is the total quantity of Canadian emissions: an outcome only partially influenced by the balance between zero-emission and high-emission electricity capacity. The fact that the 90% figure is unaffected by replacing coal plants with superior gas plants also demonstrates how problematic it is as a metric.

The final possibility to mention here is that of carbon capture and storage (CCS). If it proves effective and economical, applying it to existing dirty facilities would be equivalent to switching them into the clean column. Realistically, CCS will probably only ever capture 80-90% of the emissions from any facility it is coupled with. Applying that imperfect technology to a coal-fired behemoth like the Nanticoke Generating Station wouldn’t shift it from the dirty column to the completely clean one, but it would represent a useful chunk of real reduction in the quantity of climate-altering greenhouse gasses Canada is emitting into the atmosphere.

[Update: 8:11pm] For those interested in the numbers on this, please have a look at this post on Tyler Hamilton’s blog and the discussion below it.

ExRo promises more efficient wind turbines

A new type of generator for wind turbines promises to increase the range of wind speeds across which they generate electricity efficiently. The system, developed by ExRo Technologies of Vancouver, uses stacks of copper coils that can be activated and deactivated individually. That means the generator is capable of deriving small amounts of power from slow winds and larger amounts from faster winds. Crucially, the system also allows that to occur without the use of any moving parts: decreasing the cost and increasing the reliability.

For now, the company has only tested a laboratory-scale prototype. They are now aiming to scale up the technology for use in large multi-megawatt wind turbines. In some cases, it may even be economically efficient to install the new generators in existing wind turbines.

One reason for which the technology looks promising is that it could decrease the variance in power output from wind farms, decreasing the need to balance times of low output using energy storage or alternative forms of generation.

PickupPal and unhappy bus companies

Is a web-based service that helps those with spare seats hook up with those willing to pay for rides “facilitating the operation of an illegal transportation service?” The Ontario Highway Transport Board has decided that it is, in a case brought against PickupPal by unhappy operators of bus lines.

While I can see how liability issues arise in relation to safety, it doesn’t seem appropriate for the board to fine and try to shut down this service. As someone who travels frequently by Greyhound, I know that bus service in Canada could stand some competition-driven improvement. This sort of decentralized commerce seems like a pretty good way to reduce the environmental impacts of inter-city travel. After all, having a passenger or two travelling along with you does more for your passenger-kilometres per tonne of carbon dioxide emitted than buying a more efficient vehicle probably would.

While I can see the reason for the bus companies’ grievance – after all, they need to pay a fair bit to comply with commercial transport laws – on balance their complaint seems anti-competitive and likely to be environmentally harmful.

Climate change and forest management

Forest management is an area where climate-related challenges are considerable, particularly insofar as they relate to other ongoing developments. A case in point is forest fires. At one point, the ecological view was that fire suppression was beneficial for forest ecosystems. Now, it seems that the tide of opinion has shifted to the belief that fires have an important role to play in regulating forests. For instance, they are important for the propagation of giant redwoods (Sequoiadendron giganteum). Fires both clear the underbrush of plants that compete with the redwoods and cause redwood cones to open and release seeds. Also, the suppression of fires in British Columbia has increased the proportion of aged pine trees, which are more vulnerable than young ones to mountain pine beetle.

At the same time as fires are being recognized as an important natural element in forest life, we know that climate change is causing more and worse fires in North America, and will continue to do so. Should we step back from fire management, in the hope that fires will bolster biodiversity and resilience, or should we be more active in suppressing fires, so as to partially balance-out the warming effect of our emissions?

This touches upon a related question for conservation lands: namely, how should we respond to shifting biomes in parks? If a northern park like the Wapusk National Park in Manitoba seems likely to transition from taiga and tundra to boreal forest, should those charged with protecting it try to resist that change? The same question arises in relation to parks like Prince Albert National Park in Saskatchewan, where a transition from boreal forest to savannah and woodlands seems likely. It is entirely possible that nothing meaningful can be done to slow or stop the transition, but the possibility of doing so raises the question of what it means to protect nature in an era where no corner of it is unaffected by human activities.

One thing that we should certainly consider is doing a lot less monoculture planting. Regardless of whether the threat in question is weather, pests, or disease, a forest that contains a mixture of plant and animal species will be more resilient than one containing only a few. Hopefully, that is one of the major lessons that will be drawn from the ongoing mountain pine beetle outbreak in B.C.

The coming auto bailout

North America’s auto manufacturers seem to be next on the list for a big government bailout. As with other bailouts of private sector firms, there are legitimate worries about the public at large bearing the cost of losses, while gains had accrued to private individuals. In the case of the auto industry, there is the further risk that a bailout will permit North American firms to continue with their existing mode of operations, which had clearly failed before the credit crunch made the situation acute.

That being said, a case can be made that a bailout is the least problematic option. It can also be pragmatically recognized that governments are likely to provide the cash, rather than allow one of more of the firms to fall into bankruptcy.

Perhaps the best way this situation can be turned somewhat positive is to mandate tougher efficiency standards for vehicles, as partial public recompense for the funds. The biggest gains can be made in improving the least fuel efficient vehicles. According to calculations posted on Gristmill, improving the fuel efficiency of dire vehicles like the Hummer H3 (15 mpg), Yukon Denali (14 mpg), and Chevy Trailblazer (13 mpg) is a more promising initial strategy than trying to push the efficiency of cars like Honda Civics (29 mpg) upward.

This strategy is likely to be politically problematic. For one thing, it impinges on the flawed notion that people have a right to drive whatever they want and can afford. For another, the production of highly inefficient, high-margin vehicles is concentrated in North America. Nonetheless, if this is to be a one-off rehabilitation, rather than a temporary reprieve from systemic problems, the North American auto industry needs to shed much of its past philosophy and approach. It is remarkable that no automobile assembled in North America meets China’s fuel-efficiency standard. Along with the structural financial problems in the industry, that is a situation that will need to change.

Failures in fish identification

Making an ethical decision about what kind of seafood to eat is very challenging. Considerations include environmental sustainability, the problems with different forms of fishing gear, and the maintenance of ecosystems and viable fish stocks. As this Vancouver Sun article points out, actually making good choices may be impossible for consumers in many cases because they are being lied to about what sort of fish they are buying.

In some cases, the guidelines for what you can call a fish are so loose as to be almost meaningless. In other cases, people simply lie. According to a study cited in the article, DNA tests of 91 seafood samples purchased in Toronto and New York revealed that 23 (25%) were mislabelled. In other cases, fish from depleted waters are labelled as originating in fisheries that are being more sustainably managed.

All this poses a big problem to the school of thought that suggests that educating consumers to make their own ethical choices is the best way forward. Even for those willing to put in the effort to investigate the state of various fisheries, as well as willing to pay more in time and money to find ethical fish, the failure to properly label products may make their efforts fruitless or counterproductive.

As with many other problems in food integrity, the solution may be a shorter chain from source to consumer, coupled with more stringent regulations and enforcement.

The article, along with several others in its series, was linked and discussed on Jennifer Jacquet’s blog.

Celebrating soldiers, celebrating peace

The problematic nature of Remembrance Day has been covered twice here already, in 2006 and 2007. My question for today is this: would it be better to have two separate holidays, one of which is unambiguously pacifist and committed to recognizing the horrible character of war, and another in which the sacrifices of veterans are marked?

The first occasion would mostly be about civilians, since theirs is the primary experience of contemporary war. The second would still need to address difficult questions about why sacrifices on one side were more noble than those on the other, as well as what kind of conduct we should consider acceptable or laudable in war.

Spying on North American weather

Most weather systems in the Atlantic move from west to east. As a result, the Allies had a tactical advantage during the Second World War. Their weather stations in North America provided information that was useful for making plans in the Atlantic and European theatres of war.

The Germans made a creative effort to alter that balance by secretly planting a weather station in Labrador. The automated station was transported by U-boat and installed under cover of fog. Unfortunately for the Germans, the station only operated for a few days and the U-boat sent to repair it got sunk.

You can see the weather station on display at the Canadian War Museum, which is free on Thursday evenings.

The oil sands in the Obama era

With the election of Barack Obama, Canadian politicians seem to be taking the initiative in raising the issue of future climate change policy in North America. The situation is a complicated one, particularly given tensions between climate change mitigation objectives and aspirations for energy security. A further complication arises because of overlapping jurisdictions. US states, Canadian provinces, and regional initiatives are all working on climate change mitigation. To some extent, this federal government-to-government bid seems designed to supplant that. Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon has expressed the hope that a Canada-US deal could “provide uniformity and supplant the patchwork of plans that are being implemented in various states and provinces.” While uniformly good policies would certainly be a step forward, there is the distinct danger that more innovative and committed jurisdictions will be forced down towards mediocrity, and that time will be wasted as reorganization occurs.

In the end, the oil sands are both a huge financial temptation and a hugely sensitive regional issue. How they end up being treated will have a lot to do with the extent to which national governments are willing to consider overall societal welfare, as opposed to the more volatile interests of specific groups, as well as the degree to which either government is willing to bear political risks in order to achieve their existing mitigation targets. I don’t think it can be realistically argued that current oil sands policy is anything other than selfish and reckless. That is on account of both the near-term ecological damage arising from oil sands extraction and refining, as well as the long-term climatic threats associated with using such dirty fuels.

One element of the Globe and Mail reporting is rather misleading. It says that “the oil sands are comparable to conventional sources of oil, if the companies implement so-called carbon-capture-and-storage technology.” It is a bit laughable to say that two things are comparable, provided an entirely untested technology is instantly deployed in a widespread fashion. Particularly given the falling price of oil, the possibility that oil sands extraction with carbon capture and storage has the potential to be a low-carbon and economically attractive source of energy seems very dubious.