I got into a twitter discussion with Andrew Leach, who writes thoughtfully about energy policy and economics at his blog and occasionally for the globe and mail. The topic of discussion was a number put up by Bill McKibben of 350.org stating the following:
By some calculations, the tar sands contain the equivalent of about 200 parts per million CO2
Now this was a throwaway line in an article warning us that the Obama administration was not doing anything to stop runaway carbon emissions from coal and petroleum. But Prof. Leach made the point that this was a bit dishonest because at the current (and future) rate of oil extraction, it would take over 1500 years, and was ridiculous. But let’s look at the calculation itself. 200 ppm seems like an outrageously large number. After all, the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is 393 ppm. Is Bill McKibben actually saying that the taroilsands (I can’t pick on tar vs. oil, and I will campaign for taroil) can contribute half of what’s currently in the atmosphere? That can’t possibly be true. I mean, it is a huge project and all, but still, only 6.5% of Canada’s emissions in 2009.
But, if you follow the mathematics:
- 1.75 trillion barrels of bitumen in place , as opposed to the 10% of that deemed recoverable in 2006 assuming 2006 prices and current technology.
- One Barrel is approximately 0.5-0.7 metric tons CO2 if you take into account both the production and the combustion. Note that there is a lot of uncertainty in this estimate because most of the data come from the Canadian and Albertan governments, and from the producers themselves, very interested parties. Let’s use the 0.7 for an upper end.
- 2.13 GT Carbon emitted adds 1 ppm of CO2 to the atmosphere.
This gets us to approximately about 160 ppm. Note that the 0.7 MT of CO2 uses a number for land use that takes into account the current devastation of the boreal forest and peat bog. If all the oil needs to get out of the taroil sands, the land use number would explode and likely account for the remaining 40 ppm. Anyway, a rough calculation puts the 200 ppm number in context.
But it is an unrealistic number, because taroilsands extraction is very energy and water intensive, time consuming, and promises to remain that way. Barring some magic technology that makes cheap energy possible, in which case, we’d just use that and avoid all the mess, we won’t ever get to that number.
To summarize, 200 ppm is a reasonably accurate mathematical calculation that is wildly out of context. Sounds familiar?
The larger point is that advocates of all stripes, politicians, lobbyists, chambers of commerce, industry interest groups, corporations, and organizations pushing against them use numbers to make things sound scary and big. People who rail against government spending routinely talk about Canada’s deficit being in the billions of dollars, but when we look at it as a deficit/GDP ratio, the numbers are under control, and there’s no need to panic. In advocacy, it’s great to find a number that makes a fantastic point, somehow to bring a message home. I am sure you remember this one in the wake of the BP oil mega spill. Businesses do this all the time as well, with much greater success. I’m sure you’ve heard this trope about small businesses being the engine of job creation based on just the gross number of jobs they create. Yes, but they’re also the engine of job destruction because they go under a lot, but we don’t see that often.
As someone who has all their training as a scientist, and who does not like numeric misleading, being an activist/advocate is tricky. You work with people who are (rightly in many instances) trying to fight bad policy, and bad outcomes. The taroilsands are terrible, especially given that we’re cooking the planet and we’re deliberately spending billions of dollars investing in them. Regardless of whether they’re going to be responsible for 20 ppm, or 200 ppm, the trajectory of investing in an especially inefficient fossil fuel extraction when we should be phasing out all fossil fuel use is the big egregious wrong here. You are also trying to influence a public that finds it very hard to put numbers in context. No one will ever see a billion dollars, there’s no perceived difference between a million barrels and a trillion barrels, it’s all big numbers! So, the temptation is to use big numbers to scare people. I can understand how that happens, but I can’t bring myself to necessarily be okay with it. I will tolerate it, I guess, because the corporations, governments who produce the raw data underlying these numbers know what they mean, but distort them continuously to serve their agenda, and the media, some of whom are number literate abet this misleading. So some push back is necessary, but I will roll my eyes when it happens.
Although there seems to be such a great deal of debate over this issue of BPA safety, this issue is not so fuzzy. Every independent body that has reviewed all of the research on BPA has come to the same conclusion, BPA is safe as a food contact material. Why would this be the case when all you hear is so many bad effect associated with BPA? These independent agencies give studies a score on relevancy to human health. So when you see in the press that BPA is associated with certain effects, that makes for great press, but what you may also miss, because it is not printed, is that most of these effects were seen in animals that are not like humans, with dosing methods not like human oral exposure (often subcutaneous injections, not sure how many humans inject BPA into their bloodstream), and at levels far above what humans are exposed. Now to top it off you need to also know that this issue has become the new item for many environmental groups. They want to push their agenda on this issue. It is also important to remember that not every environmental group is the same. A good example of this is the Environmental Working Group, they recently published a report on BPA in canned foods (which by the way shows that every sample was at least 10x below the lowest regulated amount). But what is the EWG’s true motivation? Well, as their main funding on this issue comes from trial lawyers I think we now see what their real agenda is. As was highlighted several months ago by the woman who dies from drinking too much water for a radio show contest, every chemical is dangerous when taken in high enough doses. Does this mean we should ban the use of water?
I know it may be hard to believe, but it may just be that the FDA, European Food Safety Authority, and the Japanese Ministry of Health are right on this one. BPA is safe as a food contact material. But that is just not convenient for the trial lawyers!!
So, I am to believe that a cabal of environmental groups and trial lawyers have hatched a conspiracy to destroy this poor chemical and the manufacturers that make it?? Please!!
I don’t think BPA is near a point where it warrants a complete ban. However, the research into BPA is very interesting to me because it highlights the flaws in our model of setting exposure levels. We test in animals at high doses and look for acute effects. We apply a safety factor and call that the acceptable dose. With BPA, scientists are finding that at very low, ambient exposure levels, there are very subtle hormonal effects that result in significant endocrine disruption over generations. This research points to the fact that the dose-response relationships for BPA are likely non-linear. That is, a response at a low level cannot be extrapolated from a dose at a high level. What’s worse, the mechanism of response seems to be different, and more powerful at low levels rather than high levels.
Your comment about water is an obvious strawman and not worth responding to.
Am I to understand that you think it is impossible for the trial lawyers to have taken on this issue to milk it for everything it is worth. Look what they did with asbestos. They ran so many companies bankrupt by signing up anyone who ever stepped foot into a plant that may have had some asbestos in it that there is little money left to pay people who are really injured, oh but they are all rich.
The research on BPA is very interesting, but why does every “independent” government body who reviews the full research, not that which is spun by groups like EWG, do they come to the same conclusion. A good example is recently hatched idea that BPA causes obesity, well if that were true would not every other study on BPA where the 1st thing you do is weigh the animal have found that. But obesity is another hot topic so why not attach that claim to BPA too, even if there is no data to support it. Usually that is a sign that science is lost and other agendas have taken over when they start throwing the kitchen sink at it (like obesity).