Oil Spills Create Jobs

I’m severely disappointed in the lack of vision that conservatives have regarding our economy. Faced with information that burning a lot of fossil fuel is not able to be sustained without Catastrophic, Repulsive, Atmospheric Pollution (CRAP), their response tends toward ignoring evidence of damage to their environment in favour of delaying the predictable economic train wreck that would occur if fuel production were to halt in the span of months or a year.

Jobs are being created to create the doomsday device known as the KXL pipeline. Jobs will be required to [partially] clean up the many spills it will create. Doctors will be needed to treat the cancers created by the soil and water contamination, and the burning of the fuel.

@Rhino_Bob @votelau the long term goal *is* to wind down oil production as much as possible. Cleaner forms of energy are better for life.—
John Klein (@JohnKleinRegina) March 31, 2013

@JohnKleinRegina @Rhino_Bob @votelau
Sorry, NO viable solution to end use of fossil fuels (cars, plastics, power prod, etc) = pipe dream.—
Chad (@Chad4Mayor) March 31, 2013

Yet when asked if they’d like to wind down fossil fuel production in favour of renewable sources, they answer “No!” because they can’t envision it ever being an equivalent and essential source of power. When you ask them if they believe in higher education, most will say they do, choosing (at that time) to instead embrace the idea that short term expense and investment can lead to longer term gain through a change in skills and information. There are plenty of conservatives at schools of business.

So, why rush into upgrading ‘ethical’ oil infrastructure, instead of renewable energy manufacturing and design?

Group says latest oil spill is a preview of Keystone's "nightmare scenario" huff.to/10jaGJI—
HuffPost Canada (@HuffPostCanada) April 01, 2013

And seriously, if the tar sand oil companies can’t stave off repeated spills in the months leading up to an approval of KXL pipeline, how can anyone believe they’ll suddenly stop leaking oil all over the place once there is less pressure to behave because they’ll have the pipe built?

Wall’s Leaky Logic

Brad Wall went to Washington in order to pitch the Keystone XL pipeline project. In doing so, he made some really absurd claims, that CTV failed to juxtapose against the scientifically accurate situation that Wall mischaracterized. Joe Oliver of the Conservatives has also been making totally absurd claims about Canada’s environmental track record under his government’s [lack of] leadership.

“Saskatchewan’s environmental record is not good.” – Global TV news clip from 2009.

It’s totally irresponsible journalism by the Canadian Press to allow the Premier to make the opposite claim without also clarifying his remarks, or offering the comments from someone with a factual response to his fiction.

Here’s the economic case, here’s the energy security and oh, by the way, we care about the environment and here’s what we’re doing with respect to the environmental piece of this.”
“We need to indicate that we’re serious about the environment, because we are,”{… delusional or two faced, I must add.}

This was a horrendously unbalanced CP article. Experts can refute the “Conservative” premier’s claims that Sask. can care about climate change while pushing the carbon-budget-obliterating KXL pipeline project.

Wall’s claim is analogous to a captain saying that he’s serious about keeping a ship afloat by plugging a hole in starboard side, while boring a bigger hole in the port side. It doesn’t matter if water intake is reduced in one side, if the ship’s still getting flooded.

The premier added he’s confident Keystone will soon be approved, particularly following the U.S. State Department’s draft environmental assessment of the pipeline that was dismissive of many of the environmental movement’s concerns about it.

That State Dept. report was actually written by a KXL friendly contractor, we soon later learned. Hard to believe Wall didn’t know the integrity of the report is in doubt. What is not in doubt among scientists is the potential carbon from the tar sands, when burned, will far surpass the carbon budget our climate could possibly withstand for a less than 2 degree change in our climate’s temperature.

Oiled Up

There’s a suspicious situation uncovered at the UofR, by CBC. IPAC, the CO(2) CCS project was audited, and there were apparent conflicts of interest in how some of the money was spent. The report stopped short of saying there was crime, but implied there was the possibility of it.

Only last week I saw a CCTV ad for IPAC-CO2 appear out of nowhere, and I was unfamiliar with the logo they used until I spelled it out and realized it must be for the CCS project. This is the “heart of the Saskatchewan Party’s plan to tackle climate change”, according to Geoff Leo of CBC.

CVI is an IT provider, but they were getting over half of the budget. “There was no set of deliverables.”

One apparent conflict of interest, was Malcolm Wilson for a time being on the board of CVI. He reportedly returned shares so as to not profit from the work.

The Sask Party Minister for CIC, Donna Harpauer said “it’s a conflict of interest”. Wilson, through his lawyer told CBC that when the facts are all in, there was no conflict of interest. A Mr. Fitzpatrick, in the audio interview, said there was “no impropriety”.

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Side note: I’ve appeared in a Global TV report years ago with both Wilson, and Brad Wall.

Shell, along with the provincial and federal governments gave the UofR millions of dollars years ago to pursue Carbon Capture & Storage at their test facility at Estevan. I’ve toured it; they were using North Dakota’s CO2 gas, instead of gas from the coal plant the test site is built beside. To that point, in ~2008, no gas from power SK production had been stored. I assume that remains the case.

Why would Shell, which has little to do with coal power, invest millions into this R&D? CCS has the ‘side effect’ of forcing exhausted oil fields into extended opportunities of production. In short, put the gas down, and oil comes out. We then burn that oil without using CCS, further limiting the net benefits of CCS.

There are presently 0 “clean coal” plants in production in the world.

The U of R, despite saying they are a “clean energy” research facility, presently has 0 solar panels in production, and 1 VAT windmill in research & production.

NOT a “threat to national security”

The Conservative government is out of control. The Guardian UK newspaper confirms what environmentalists have already suspected (since the Conservatives have openly accused them previously): This Conservative government regards environmentalists as a threat to national security. It’s offensive, absurd, and an extreme step into authoritarian police-state behaviour.

-(UofR image, to keep this blog post from appearing boring.)

“We’re aware of this” said Greenpeace Canada’s executive director Bruce Cox, who met the head of the RCMP last year. “We’re an outspoken voice for non-violence and this was made clear to the RCMP,” Cox said.

He said there was real anger among Canadians about the degradation of the natural environment by oil, gas and other extractive industries and governments working for those industries and not in the public interest. Security forces should see Greenpeace as a “plus”, a non-violent outlet for this anger, he argued. “It is governments and fossil fuel industry who are the extremists, threatening the prosperity of future generations.”

Has there been a report of Greenpeace violence lately? Ever? How about the RCMP, how’s their record for violence lately? Rape. Taser death. Etc.

The reason the Conservatives view environmentalists as a threat to national security, is because Harper thinks he is the nation, and his secure grasp on power is threatened by peaceful protests that spread the truth about his support of environmental and economic collapse for the crude gain of his wealthy backers.

In a Canadian Senate committee on national security and defence meeting Monday Feb 11 Richard Fadden, the director of CSIS said they are more worried about domestic terrorism, acknowledging that the vast majority of its spying is done within Canada. Fadden said they are “following a number of cases where we think people might be inclined to acts of terrorism”.

I’m someone who was once under investigation by CSIS, in order to get a job I had a while ago. It was like an advanced CRCheck, except by our national spies instead of local police. I don’t say this in jest, and my family and friends will confirm it if you ask them. I was (obviously) deemed no threat to Canadian national security, because I’m a loyal Canadian, and a peaceful person. I am also an environmentalist. I am not a terrorist. I care deeply about our country and its people. I have no good way to tell if I’m presently under targeted state observation, but assume I am. This does not make me paranoid, it makes me aware of my surroundings and news reports, and does not significantly change how I go about my life.

If CSIS, the RCMP, and the Cons had announced that since they were aware of “a number of cases” where Christians they were monitoring had been threatening violence, they’d since begun monitoring all Christian groups as possible threats to national security, can you imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth then? How is that different from monitoring all environmental groups because some violent people happen to support protecting natural ecosystems (and apparently not people)?

The Conservatives are literally making you pay for spies and police to monitor grandmothers and children who attend peaceful gatherings, in order to eliminate them as potential threats to Canada. That’s pretty messed up, and it describes what has been going on. Are you going to put stopping it at a lower priority than other things you care about next time you vote?

#ForwardOnClimate Support in Regina: Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline

Stephen McDavid interviewed by CBC/SRC about climate change action:

Stephen explains that the pipeline is a line in the sand. Using it, is crossing that line. I’ll explain why there is a line, further on in this post.

I was also interviewed. The CBC reporter was pleased to learn from me (off camera) that there is a car share co-op in Regina.

I know some people don’t see the big deal with the Keystone XL pipeline, thinking it’s just another way that people can make money. It’s more like a doomsday device, than economic stimulus. Taking into account the truth that burning all of the bitumen in the Alberta tar sands will create enough carbon dioxide to push climate change past +2 degrees Celsius, a pipe intended to be used for that purpose will be seen as a crime against humanity by most people within a few short generations of now. Already, some people understand it to be that.

To meet a halfway reasonable carbon budget in our atmosphere, there’s no good use for the Keystone XL pipeline. To have to shut it down, and clean it up later in order to correct the error today in building it, is a huge folly that Obama can stop.

It’s widely accepted by people that our daily lives cause pollution, and it’s a sort of price we pay for progress. More people need to question what sort of progress we’re striving for as a species. It’s not like we’re trying to stop 7-Eleven from selling drinks that cause diabetes and obesity and kills a few thousand humans indirectly; we’re trying to stop investment in a technology whose use is known to cause so much pollution as to create catastrophic changes to our atmosphere, and will hasten the extinction of countless species and displacement of countless people. It’s a very, very big deal, and that the Harper government in Ottawa sees fit to label peaceful protesters as “adversaries”, “enemies of the state”, and “terrorists”, is in itself terrifying.

Here are the numbers behind why we must not burn all of the fossil fuel we are technologically capable of extracting with today’s technology.

More Power Blows

There are recent solar electricity records set in Germany, and Spain has recently seen a huge increase in wind power production. Meanwhile, SaskPower has solar power research from 13 years ago on its website, claims solar isn’t viable in the northern hemisphere, and is eyeing up more coal fired generation. The U of R has 0 solar panels in productive research (or otherwise), while my parents have 15 solar panels in productive research for the Sask. Research Council. Canada, and Saskatchewan are lagging behind, we’re becoming the technological 3rd World of G8 nations.

Here’s what a Brit thinks about their country, which apparently is ahead of Canada:

The Spanish average output is 60% higher than our highest ever peak output. That’s embarrassing.

“German wind energy industry association BWE said it expects developers to add between 3GW and 3.5GW of capacity this year”

Again, comparing to your figures of UK installed capacity of 7.77GW – Germany might install 45% of our entire wind capacity in 2013 alone.

It’s about time we became serious as a country and stopped dithering.

The UK is dithering? Oh, my. What are Saskatchewan “leaders” thinking? Are they even living on this planet? When those of us who are, attempt to talk to them about it, they’re more likely to arrest people than listen, apparently.

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Here’s what the UK grid looks like right now.

SaskPower: At Least 13 Years Out of Touch

I’m sorry Canada, and the world. I’ve tried to convince my province’s public utility that there are huge benefits from dialing down the reliance on coal burned electricity, but they won’t listen. They haven’t even removed or updated a shockingly out-dated “Solar” page on their website that lists information that became obsolete a decade ago. There are such great advances in research, and cost expectations of renewable power, I can’t easily accept that the business people at the utility company are so daft. (They don’t even recognize that Spain’s in the northern hemisphere, so I shouldn’t be so surprised.)

I hope others join me in asking for the tangible results the “clean energy research chair” has brought the UofR thus far, as the province’s leading clean energy research facility. Ask the UofR how many windmills, and how many solar panels it has in research or in production. The answer presently is 1 windmill and 0 solar panels. There are farmers in Saskatchewan with more of each. Is the SaskParty government funding our universities so they can get into this very important area of research? Not really.

I’m hoping another recent letter to my MLA will help prod them along, but unless more people start to put some pressure on the utility company to modernize, I don’t think we’re going to be able to collectively do our part to limit Saskatchewan’s gross impact on air pollution and climate change. I’m really very sorry for not being more effective at such a crucial point in human history.

Passion

Why is there such passionate debate over climate change? It’s not like many global problems tend to inflame heated debate all too often at a local level, but climate change is different because it’s such an old and unresolved serious problem. When acid rain was destroying forests, swifter action was taken to reduce the damage. Climate change, caused by global warming greenhouse gases from burned hydrocarbons, is not as small a problem as the still massively destructive acid rain. Perhaps the industries affected by acid rain legislation learned in the interim how to resist the changes that made them pay more to pollute.

Climate change is a well supported scientific fact, yet there are many people who remain skeptical to an unreasonable extent. It’s healthy to be skeptical of all facts, to a point, as curiosity leads to further discovery. It’s unhelpful to be perpetually skeptical after reasonable efforts to test alternate theories have been exhausted, or if the test poses too dire a risk. Imagine if you were skeptical of the scientific understanding of gravity. You theorize that on Tuesdays after a full Moon, you have a chance of surviving a fall from a 15 story building. That’s an unreasonably dangerous (and foolish) risk if you test that theory.

Why are people passionate over their unfounded and risky theory that climate change is not a threat to civilization or themselves? There are many reasons, but to list a few:

• Job depends on fossil fuel industry, and they see a threat to their income if the required economic and lifestyle changes to reduce pollution are adopted by the masses.
• Religious belief depends on undermining scientific understanding of the world.
• People or media they respect experience one of the two pressures mentioned above, or another misleading influence.
• Some people on the Internet, known as trolls, will take ridiculous positions simply to irritate and provoke other people to respond to them.
• Feeling can supersede thought, so once someone feels a certain way about a subject, it is very difficult for rational discussion to change a mind which would otherwise respond to new data.

You have to wonder why people would oppose the understanding of a theory that predicts catastrophe if we continue on the Industrial Revolution’s course, unchanged. Isn’t humankind’s strength its ability to adapt to changing situations and new information? Isn’t it better to use advance information, rather than wait for disaster to befall some of our peers (or ourselves) before learning to take another route? The answer must lie in psychology and sociology.

It’s become fashionable for people to oppose (or present) climate change information in a passionate, emotionally charged manner, because the debate is not winnable through the presentation of facts alone. Too many people have a poor understanding of climate change, and are proud of the position they’ve taken. To step back and examine the facts would mean emotional discomfort which people tend to avoid if a situation does not appear to require immediate action to resolve it. Since climate change is a multi-decade building crisis, ‘immediate action’ rarely describes how people respond to the problem either individually, or as a nation (or globe).

What can be done to change the negative reaction skeptics and climate change deniers have toward this problem? I’m not sure scientists can out-reason the passionately misinformed, or environmentalists can outspend the misinformation machine that is well funded by the richest corporations and CEOs in the world. It’s a battle to win hearts and minds, and hearts need to be won quickly before mislead minds can start joining those working for solutions to our pollution problems.

How do we win hearts though, and convince people theirs won’t break by setting our society on a search for an economic system that can give them comfortable lives that don’t rely quite so much on hydrocarbon energy? Building systems that people can buy into, and pollute much less with, is one obvious approach. Do we have enough time? I don’t care, I’m still going to try.

Everytime you hear "job-killing carbon tax" repeat after me "climate-killing carbon nonsense." #QP #cdnpoli #climate—
Elizabeth May MP (@ElizabethMay) November 01, 2012

Sandy Wind Blows

The largest hurricane recorded is underway, and it’s hitting the US and Canada. Is it because of climate change? The short answer is, yes. If you’re asking that question because you’re wondering if climate change is real, the answer is, yes it is real and we have to make a better effort to reduce greenhouse gas pollution immediately.

Wind blowing people over will become a lot more common if we don’t convince our politicians to collectively act where individuals cannot. Centuries ago, it used to be that the punishment for ignoring reality was your own obscurity and demise. With a socialized state, industrial revolution, and global economy, the consequences of teeming masses of people willing to ignore reality results in economic and ecological collapse. Good luck getting Harper’s government to care while they are busy making money, and stripping power from the people.

ADDED:

Science is not a topic suitable only to a limited number of people. It’s essential that our political leaders, and our people understand it enough to make long term decisions that don’t jeopardize our health and safety. Presently, the debate is too charged with rhetoric paid for by people who have no interest in science, but have found a willing audience who gladly take hold of the escape that denial offers. You only need to read the people raving about socialist plots in my own blog’s comment sections to find people so deranged and out of touch with the reality that can literally blow them over and flood their city.

Clean Coal?

Romney said during the first debate there is an “Economy Tax”, and the US “can continue to burn clean coal”. Neither exists. The former was his attempt to coin a phrase, and the latter is a (very dangerous) lie.

“Clean coal” is a phrase paid for by the dirty coal lobby to mean Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology. It’s not in production, and after nearly a decade of research, it does not show signs of coming online any time soon if ever. The energy that must go into scrubbing the exhaust from coal burning may be too detrimental to the entire electrical generation process. If the CO(2) is removed, there may be no suitable way to store it safely underground without risking deadly leaks to the surface. Romney is apparently clueless, or willing to lie about the use of so called “Clean coal” which cannot very well continue to burn (because not a pound is burning in a commercial application today, or even tomorrow).

It’s not a coincidence that CCS is used in oilfield rejuvenation.

Don’t think that this rebuke of Romney’s honesty is an endorsement of Obama. He’s got major issues too.