Carbon tariffs in China

Countries such as Canada and the United States may start imposing a "carbon tariff" on goods from China and other developing countries which have become the biggest contributors to global greenhouse-gas emissions, CIBC World Markets said Thursday.

The investment bank's report says China, India and other developing economies have expanded so massively they have surpassed the established industrialized world in belching out carbon dioxide pollution blamed for climate change.

"And once surpassed, the gap is growing rapidly," wrote economists Jeff Rubin and Benjamin Tal.

"Already, non-OECD emissions are a massive 2,500 million metric tonnes more than the OECD – a gap that is now equal to almost 20 per cent of the latter's total emissions."

With advanced countries enacting carbon taxes, carbon trading systems and other measures to lower emissions, Rubin and Tal believe the growing pollution from poor countries will provoke penalties against their exports.

Many in the West assumed that since industrialized nations were primarily responsible for the historical build-up of greenhouse gases in the world, they should bear the brunt of efforts to cut back, a view that underpinned the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, which exempted developing countries.

But the CIBCWM economists see a shift in sentiment.

"As the OECD countries begin to impose greater economic sacrifices on their own economies as part of decarbonization efforts, tolerance for the carbon practices of its trading partners, or more precisely the lack thereof, will diminish dramatically," they write.

"Already Europe, which is well ahead of North America in terms of domestic carbon pricing, is talking about a carbon tariff that it can apply to imports from countries that don't play by the same carbon rules."

They add that the concept is likely to gain currency in the U.S. and Canada.

The report fingers China as the world's top greenhouse-gas polluter, surpassing the U.S. and pulling away.

Since the beginning of the decade, it says, China's emissions have increased about 120 per cent and are greater than Canada, India, Spain and Japan combined.

A key reason is China's reliance on heavily polluting coal. As a result, Chinese emissions per unit of energy are double those of Canada, the report says.

Ice shelf in the Arctic collapses

A chunk of Antarctic ice about the size of Manhattan suddenly collapsed, putting an even greater portion of glacial ice at risk, scientists said today.

Satellite images show the runaway disintegration of a 414-square-kilometre chunk in western Antarctica, which started Feb. 28. It was the edge of the Wilkins ice shelf and has been there for hundreds, maybe 1,500 years.

This is the result of global warming, said British Antarctic Survey scientist David Vaughan.

Because scientists noticed satellite images within hours, they diverted satellite cameras and even flew an airplane over the ongoing collapse for rare pictures and video.

"It's an event we don't get to see very often," said Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. "The cracks fill with water and slice off and topple... That gets to be a runaway situation."

While icebergs naturally break away from the mainland, collapses like this are unusual but are happening more frequently in recent decades, Vaughan said. The collapse is similar to what happens to hardened glass when it is smashed with a hammer, he said.

The rest of the Wilkins ice shelf, which is about twice the size of Prince Edward Island, is holding on by a narrow beam of thin ice. Scientists worry that it too may collapse. Larger, more dramatic ice collapses occurred in 2002 and 1995.

Vaughan had predicted the Wilkins shelf would collapse about 15 years from now. The part that recently gave way makes up about four per cent of the overall shelf, but it is an important part that can trigger further collapse.

There is still a chance the rest of the ice shelf will survive until next year because this is the end of the Antarctic summer and colder weather is setting in, Vaughan said.

Scientists said they are not concerned about a rise in sea level from the latest event, but say it is a sign of worsening global warming.

Such occurrences are "more indicative of a tipping point or trigger in the climate system," said Sarah Das, a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

"These are things that are not re-forming," Das said. "So once they're gone, they're gone."

Climate in Antarctica is complicated and more isolated from the rest of the world.

Much of the continent is not warming and some parts are even cooling, Vaughan said. However, the western peninsula, which includes the Wilkins ice shelf, juts out into the ocean and is warming. This is the part of the continent where scientists are most concern about ice-melt triggering sea level rise.

Wal-Mart opens energy efficient store

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will open its latest generation of energy-efficient test stores this week with a Las Vegas Supercenter that uses new cooling technology to cut overall energy use by up to 45 per cent.

The Las Vegas store opening Wednesday builds on advances in earlier pilot stores that reduced energy use in areas including lighting, refrigeration and water flow.

The previous pilot stores in the Midwest cut energy use up to 25 per cent compared to a typical Supercenter built in 2005, the year Wal-Mart launched a broad environmental program to reduce energy use and packaging waste and to sell more sustainable products.

Wal-Mart said the new Las Vegas store adds to those savings with a new cooling system based on water evaporation for total energy savings of between 35 per cent and 45 per cent.

Wal-Mart has said it is the biggest private user of electricity in the world and has huge potential to cut back on greenhouse gases from fossil fuels burned to create electricity. It aims to use technologies proven in the pilot stores to develop a prototype in 2009 for all new Supercenters that will be between 25 per cent and 30 per cent more energy efficient.

An outside engineering and efficiency expert said Wal-Mart's advances in saving energy, including the new Las Vegas store, are leading the field for big-box retailers.

"This is not just a baby step. This is a big step," said Terry Townsend, past president of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers.

Townsend said Wal-Mart's pilot stores are important because they show other retailers how to use available technology to improve energy efficiency. Wal-Mart says it is sharing its lessons with retail industry groups.

The latest store is built specifically for the arid climate of Western states, where water evaporates faster than in the more-humid East.

It uses rooftop cooling towers to chill water that then runs in conduits under the floor of the store. The radiant cooling from the floor replaces traditional electricity-powered air conditioning.

The store also incorporates innovations from the previous pilot stores that include recycling heat from refrigerators and combining low-power LED lights in freezer cases with sensors that turn off those lights when no customers are around.

The future looks worse according to environmental study

Fed up with unpredictable winter storms cancelling air flights, closing highways and dumping enormous amounts of precipitation, like Saturday?

Too bad. 100 of Canada's top scientists say get used to it.

In a major forthcoming report on Canada's changing climate, scientists warn of everything from increased severe storm activity in Atlantic Canada to hotter summers and poorer air quality in urban Ontario.

British Columbia may face retreating glaciers and snow loss on its mountains, causing potential water shortages. The Prairie provinces will continue to struggle with drought, impacting agriculture rurally and potentially causing water rationing in urban areas.

The 500-page report is the work of 145 leading Canadian scientists. They've examined the current and future risks climate change presents coast to coast and what they have to say isn't comforting.

But it's not necessary to wait for the future to experience intense storms. A taste of that can be had this weekend as yet another major system moves in from the Gulf of Mexico.

This one will dump up to 50 centimetres of snow over Ontario and Quebec and bring winds of up to 70 kilometres an hour, as it churns over Central Canada through Saturday and into Sunday. The same system will drop 40 to 70 millimetres of precipitation along the Nova Scotia side of the Bay of Fundy and send rain and freezing rain into New Brunswick.

And, yes, as travellers head to the airports for March break, it's very likely some flights will be cancelled and traffic will be snarled once again.

Perhaps one of the people least surprised by the wicked weekend weather, is Norm Catto, a geographer at Memorial University in Newfoundland and one of the climate report's lead authors.

On Friday, he said the intensity of weather events is increasing.

When hurricane Juan swept through Atlantic Canada in 2003 the storm surge didn't coincide with high tide. But next time it could and the level of the water could be 40 to 50 centimetres higher.

"Are we ready for that?" Catto asked. "That's the sort of question we're trying to ask here and get people to consider."

Quentin Chiotti, a senior scientist with Pollution Probe in Toronto and another study author, echoed Catto's concern. In Ontario, for example, intense dumps of precipitation could lead to floods of the sort Toronto and Peterborough endured in 2005.

Chiotti said such floods illustrated that much of the region's critical infrastructure was based on standards developed following hurricane Hazel in 1954 and is in need of updating.

Like many of the scientists, Chiotti warned that the weather will become increasingly unpredictable. "When you put more heat into the atmosphere, you're going to start getting more wacky weather, and that's going to be more variable from season to season and year to year."

Catto said Northern Canada faces permafrost erosion, retreating coastlines and problems with maintaining the ice roads that provide vital transportation links in winter.

On the Prairies, drought could potentially affect the power supply. Problems with water reservoirs could leave utilities without sufficiently high levels of water to generate the amount of power required

"Each of the regions does have its own challenges," Catto said.

Suren Kulshreshtha, a professor in the University of Saskatchewan's bioresource policy department and another report author, agrees. "I think the only things these models are telling us is there will be a likely increase in the events of extremes."

People in Ontario and much of Quebec know all about "extremes" as they cope with the sixth major snow storm of the season Saturday.

The storm, which originated in the U.S. South and gathered power as it moved north, was expected to dump between 30 and 50 centimetres of snow on parts of each province.

As much as 30 cm of snow was expected in Toronto, up to 40 cm in Ottawa and maybe even more -mixed with ice pellets -was anticipated to cover the streets of Montreal.

A little more than 171 cm of snow already has been recorded this winter at Toronto's Pearson International Airport.

The highest recorded snowfall for a Toronto winter was the 207 cm, which fell in 1938. 220 cm are expected in Toronto this year, a new record.

The worst winter recorded in the nation's capital of Ottawa was that of 1970-71, when 444.1 cm of snow fell, only about 83 cm more than already has fallen so far this winter.

Environment Canada says usually at this time of the year, temperatures begin to rise to an average in the 1 C to 4 C range in Ontario, but the forecast for mid-March likely would be filled with temperatures in the -3 C range for many parts of the region.

In Montreal, the city was drifting depressingly close to matching or even breaking the record of 383 centimetres of snowfall set in 1971. So far this season, the city has recorded 316 centimetres as of Thursday.