File under “why bother”.

Bloomberg: Canada Requiring Oil-Sands Projects to Store Carbon
The Canadian government today announced a plan to limit the carbon emissions from the booming oil sands development in Alberta. How? By requiring any new oil sands development projects after 2012 to sequester their carbon. That means another four full years of wholesale carbon emitting, followed by a weak-kneed law that already presents obvious loopholes (my first thought: what exactly constitutes a “new project”?) The oil sands industry is the largest carbon emitter in Canada, itself one of the worst carbon-emitting countries in the world. It is embarrassing that amid so much wealth there is so little interest in offsetting the damage the extraction causes.

Even worse than you might think

MSNBC: CO2 output must cease altogether, studies warn
As weary as you may be about all the “global warming” news, truth is the problem is actually much more daunting than most believe: to seriously stop climate change, we need to stop nearly all CO2 emissions in coming decades.  A few piddling cuts here and there — driving a smaller car, adding some ethanol to gasoline, turning off a light when not in the room — will not save us.  If anything, they will only create a false impression of “doing something” and end up worsening the problem. These studies are more in line with many other more blunt climate assessments such as George Monbiot’s excellent book Heat.

Rising temperatures, rising tensions

AFP:  Climate Change a new factor in global tensions
With both the oil shortage and climate change crises worsening before our eyes, there are plenty of new reasons on the table for international war and conflict.   This is one reason why the smugness of some countries — Canada included — is greatly misguided.  Some cynics say Canada will have a net benefit from a warmer climate, and I suspect that our slow response to the problem is at least partially due to this attitude.  Warmer winters, more agriculture, what’s not to like, right?  The problem is, Canada does not exist in a vaccuum, and even friends can rapidly turn to enemies in a desperate situation.  Clearly the time to resolve climate change issues peacefully and sensibly is rapidly running out.

Denial: not just a (shrinking) river in Egypt

WSJ: Heating up the Global Warming Debate, If There Still Is One
Like heads of a hideous hydra, every time you think the climate skeptics have finally given up their game they come back more desperately than ever.  This week it’s a “global warming is not a crisis” conference in New York, where the various shills for oil and industry have gathered together to denounce climate change as a fraud, roast Al Gore (because if you don’t like the message, blame the messenger, right?) and generally dredge up those same old long debunked pseudo-arguments to spread doubt about climate change.  Thanks, guys, for making a very difficult task even harder.