I was able to look up some of your sources rebutting the Howarth paper and they are certainly thought-provoking, but they don’t make fracking look very good. Also, a few clarifications need to be made.

The Sierra Club in the United States had a long history of promoting natural gas and was therefore embarrassed by a report showing that it was as bad as coal. I remember reading their objections, which had a lot to do with criticizing coal mining for things other than greenhouse gas emissions, and worries that Howarth’s paper might be a green light for more mountaintop removal. The Sierra Club even financed the study done by Carnegie Mellon that you refer to. There are now revelations that the Sierra Club took $25 million from the natural gas industry between 2007-2010.

In Canada, the Sierra Club endorses and promotes Mr. Howarth’s work:

http://www.meetup.com/Excursions-Sierra-Club-Quebec-Montreal-Excursions/events/48201042/

I haven’t been able to find any reference to critiques from the EIA or the University of Maryland. So, criticizing Mr. Howarth so far are the industry-funded, natural gas-promoting Sierra Club and a paper they commissioned, as well as the critique from Cornell, which is far more serious, and which I’ll address below. I should note though, that the Cornell critique was not available at the time of our last interaction.

On the other hand, it’s clearly not true as you state that “The Howarth paper… has been universally panned and debunked by mainstream science”. On the contrary, it appears to be frequently cited by very reputable scientists.

Going over your specific objections, I should note that while Howarth’s original paper did not look at fugitive emissions from coal, his subsequent paper did.

On the other hand, it was this second paper which used the 20 year time horizon rather than the 100 year time horizon. Rather, it used both, and you’re not right when you say it contradicts the IPCC. The IPCC has both as well, though they often go with the 100 year time horizon when summarizing. Howarth is not the first scientist to suggest that there should be a greater focus on the 20-year time horizon.

In terms of the venting debate, it’s my understanding that the industry agrees that less than 15% of the gas is flared or otherwise burned. So it’s an important omission, but not big enough to completely alter the general thrust of Howarth’s analysis.

Your complaint that Howarth didn’t talk about other pollutants that come from coal I will not address. His paper wasn’t about evaluating the two fuels overall, it was about comparing GHG emissions only. Comparing other things would require a difficult value judgement.

The other complaint that’s brought up in both the Carnegie-Mellon paper and by the Cornell team is that natural gas power plants are more energy efficient than coal plants, so if you look strictly at power generation, the profile for natural gas looks better.

There are two reasons why Howarth’s choice in this respect may be considered reasonable, even if extreme. First, that if we’re serious about coal elimination through fuel switching, then we need to consider thermal uses of coal as well, like Howarth did. Secondly, the efficiency of natural gas is no better than coal when you move to the more efficient district energy systems, which would be the only sensible way to proceed.

Howarth has published a rebuttal to the Cornell critique of his paper. It points out, among other things, that seven independent assessments of fugitive emissions have been performed since his paper was written and while his paper is on the high end of the estimates, the estimates of his critics are absurdly too low:

http://216.250.243.12/HowarthIngraffeaarticleFINAL1.pdf

It’s clear that Howarth is pushing the limits of how we evaluate emissions from fracking. And I’ll agree that honest men may come to different conclusions. But it’s also clear to me that his critics are pushing the limits of interpretation in the opposite direction.

There are multiple papers and organizations expressing concern about the GHG impacts of fracking, whether or not it’s quite as bad as coal. For example, here’s a paper that indicates that if BC pursues fracking, then it will fail to meet its emissions targets:

http://aeoliswind.ca/_warehouse/M.Jaccard-ShaleGas.pdf

Keep in mind that the IEA has pointed out that if we continue building infrastructure to burn fossil fuels of any kind, we will close up all the emissions space within a couple of years. The smarter way to approach coal elimination is not with something that could, if you squint, maybe reduce the emissions by half, but rather to focus on ways to virtually eliminate emissions by going to entirely non-emitting renewable sources.

After almost 20 years, Dr. Paul Connett is recognized as the top international authority on fluoridation.
Read the truth produced in the best scientific information on fluoridation at his site (www.fluoridealert.org).

You will see a petition signed by over 4000 professionals, including hundreds of dentists, hundreds of doctors, and other medical researchers calling on governments everywhere to stop fluoridation.

There are also many large scientific studies there to show that drinking fluoridated water has no positive effect on cavity reduction and to show that it causes cancer, thyroid damage, broken hips from brittle bones, lowered IQ, kidney disease and other health problems.

i am going to include the Green’s economic views in my upcoming peer review submission that will be evaluated by Canadian business leaders.

sm

I live in the firm belief that when all facts are presented, two rational people, such as Adriana and Martin, will ultimately find themselves on common ground.

I too live in Nova Scotia, so like Kate I am simply wishing you all the best Adriana in this by-election.

What’s that all about?

I live in Nova Scotia so I can’t vote in this by-election but I have sent a donation and I do wish you, Adriana, all the best.

Election day is 2012 March 19. Again, polls will be open 8am to 8pm.

Polling locations can be found at http://elections.ca and providing your postal code.

But you can vote right now. Until the advance polls, you can vote at the returning office in the basement of Holy Name Church, north side of Danforth just east of Pape. The big white church with the bell tower. With proof of identity and proof of residence, you can vote weekdays 9am to 9pm, Saturday 9am to 6pm and Sunday noon to 4pm.

You can also vote by mail if you register in time. All the information you need is at http://elections.ca or by calling toll-free 1-866-281-5087.

I could rebut a number of points in your last post but I will address your references to the Howarth study from Cornell because this perfectly encapsulates my concerns stated above. The Howarth paper (reliance on shale gas is worse for the environment than coal) has been universally panned and debunked by mainstream science since it came out last year – you have to know this. The findings were refuted by the likes of the Sierra Club, the EIA, the University of Maryland, Carnegie Mellon University and perhaps most importantly from Cornell University itself (Cathles et al). You can find their latest paper here:

http://www.geo.cornell.edu/eas/PeoplePlaces/Faculty/cathles/Natural%20Gas/Response%20to%20Howarth%27s%20Reply%20Distributed%20Feb%2030,%202012.pdf

The numerous errors and omissions this and others papers point out are embarrassing. Among them, Howarth overstates the impact of Methane on warming (contradicts the IPCC), ignores methane emissions from coal production entirely, attributes all reserve loss to venting while ignoring flaring and on-site power generation, I could go on… And this paper doesn’t even broach the issues of nitrous oxide, sulphur dioxide, mercury, lead, heavy metals and radiation emissions that would be greatly reduced or eliminated entirely by replacing coal power with gas!

I draw this to your attention not just because you challenged me to show a refutation of Howarth’s work but to try and bring some reality back to a very important discussion. My point from the get-go is that there are too many people in the Green movement who are willing to suspend their criticality and common sense in order to find the one voice that will reaffirm a rigid, idealistic view. But even worse, to do so destroys the credibility of the majority who want to deal in facts, win elections and have a seat at the table in order to create compromise, consensus and above all progress.

Yes, absolutely. I agree that proportional representation is a crucial element in reforming Canadian democracy.

Please see my thoughts the best way to move forward on proportional representation and also on the corrosive incentives of first-past-the-post.

And here is a fuller discussion on the main Green Party site.

Adriana

I always consider all ideas, and welcome your input. As Climate Change critic for the Green Party of Canada, though, I spend a lot of time talking to economists and climate scientists about what would work and the effects of our proposed policies, so I have considered the impact of many ideas already.

While it is true that more wealth generally means more carbon emissions, the context of the tax rebate is higher energy prices, which discourage use. What’s more, when the policy is implemented it would be made clear that businesses and the wealthiest Canadians have a built-in incentive to reduce their emissions quickly as well as the means to do so. So lower income Canadians must be given the means to make their own investments to keep up.

There are two reasons for the government not to use the money from a carbon tax. The first is that it will be targeted as a hated tax grab. If the money is redistributed, most people benefit and appreciate the policy overall. If the government needs extra money to support low-carbon options, there is no reason why the money should come from a carbon tax. It can come from taxes on new vehicles or pollutants, for example. And in the context of higher energy prices, the public demand for spending on transit and retrofits will be high enough to support any required tax increases.

The other reason why a carbon tax should not be used for government services is that it’s a big tax and the distribution would be unequal. If you live across the street from where you work, you don’t get much benefit from transit investments, but you still pay a higher tax on home heating, while your neighbour gets a break from the subsidy for public transit that gets him to work way out in Mississauga, even though he has the higher energy lifestyle. Also, it is almost guaranteed that the wealthy would benefit more from subsidies to home retrofits, subsidies for more efficient vehicles, subsidies for renewable energy and other bells and whistles that have been proposed. The priority has to be making sure that the single mom dependent on income support and living in a small subsidized apartment where she doesn’t pay the heating bill can still be better off after all the added costs for her food, clothing and transport, so that she can figure out how to lower her costs. She can’t benefit from any of the programmes you suggest, so you’d be taking money from her to pay some rich dude to insulate his mansion. That would be wrong.

The administration costs should be minimized since there is virtually no accounting required. The money is simply added and then divided by the number of Canadians.

There must be a misunderstanding about corporate taxes. I never meant to suggest that Canada could impose our preferred corporate tax rate on other countries. What I am saying is that we know what the tax rates in other countries are. Making sure that ours is the lower than all of them is not beneficial to us and just promotes a race to the bottom which benefits no one. In fact, it can actually hurt Canada, especially in the context where our economy is so closely integrated with the United States. Here’s how:

United States citizens and corporations pay taxes on global income, but they do not have to pay for the income in countries where they already pay a higher tax. If Canada has a lower tax than the United States, however, then all the money that would have been paid in Canada had the tax been equal will instead go to the United States. So our government collects less money and the United States collect more. Why would we do that? It’s shooting ourselves in the foot.

A number of studies done in the last few years showed that Canada had a competitive advantage over most developed countries because our universal health care and excellent education system reduced illness-related time losses, reduced employer costs and guaranteed a skilled labour force.

No business is going to say no to lower taxes. Neither are people.
But as long as the tax rate is competitive, the business will not suffer relative to the competition.

Hope this helps, Adriana

We concluded that it would be a problem to implement your carbon tax while at the same time increasing most families wealth as it would have the opposite of the desired effect because families would have more, not less, disposable income and would therefore be more likely to consume more energy as this is typical of growing wealth. Also, the policy suffers from tax recycling. This means the government collects tax from people for one thing (carbon) and then pays exactly the same money back to them in the form of a credit. The problem is millions of dollars are lost in the administration because you have to pay a lot of people to collect the tax and then pay it back to the same people they taxed. Our idea is to implement a tax to discourage carbon use and then use the proceeds to fund the increase of mass transit for urban areas and energy efficiencies and retrofits for rural areas. This discourages energy use and increases the cost of living but it also helps people afford alternatives that will save them money brought by the carbon tax. Our motto is “There has to be pain to get an environmental gain.”

On corporate taxes, we found that the Green Party ideas were really off track with economic theory and business practice. First Canada doesn’t have any control over other countries business taxes, we can only control our own destiny. Second, taxes are only one consideration for business costs. Canada has a competitive advantage for tax costs but is disadvantaged in terms of labour costs, logistics, environmental costs etc. – low business taxes level the playing field or give an advantage against many other developed and developing economies. Third, low business taxes are a magnet for foreign investment which has the multiplier effect through higher total taxes for income, sales and capital taxes. CEO’s might not fold a profitable business if business taxes go up like you said but if they cant pass on the cost increase to customers they are more likely to invest outside of Canada or move certain parts of the manufacturing process. We asked three CEOs from three different businesses about what higher corporate taxes would do to them: grocery = increase prices, manufacturing = increase prices or move offshore, mining = reduce investment in Canada, increase investment overseas. In all of these situations everyday people either see their costs of living go up or they lose jobs. Our solution for business taxes is to make sure Canada always has one of the most competitive tax rates in the world and then get increased overall taxes from income and consumption taxes that comes from a strong economy and higher investment.
I hope the Green party will consider our sustainable tax ideas!

SM