Buying Coal Time, Burns Ours

2. Because if coal's "demise" is anything like Big Tobacco's, the industry didn't shut down after lawmakers' cracked down some.

— Saskboy (@saskboy) August 26, 2016

Man bites dog:#Coal industry executive in secret meeting tells allies to stop denying #climatechange.https://t.co/fpiO0EfDBd

— Tim Ream (@ourcarbon) August 26, 2016

Zimmerman seized on Reavey’s “poor/no science” line when reading the document.

“It’s maybe not an explicit denial, but it’s certainly an implicit denial,” Zimmerman said. “He’s still trying to undermine the science.”

Kert Davies, founder of the Climate Investigations Center and a former Greenpeace campaigner, read Reavey’s presentation, too.

“What he’s saying is ‘Coal, you can survive, look at tobacco,’” Davies said. “It’s a guy coming from tobacco sort of trying to teach coal,” he added. “Instructing them to go heavy on the clean coal, it buys you credibility, it buys you time.”

We cannot afford coal burning on an industrial scale anymore. If people light up at home, that could still pose a problem to our civilization’s survival.

Yet we put Ministers in charge of “Advanced Education”, like Eyre, who deny that there is even a problem with pollution.

#PremierPipeline: Good Work Premier Brad Wall

“People are advised not to consume fish caught in the river, and to avoid water activities that may result in river water being ingested,” said a news release put out Tuesday morning.

– six days later.

“Good work Premier Brad Wall. No loss of life like at Lac Megantic oil tanker rail disaster. Naturally occurring biological decontamination will help clean up this oil spill in no time!” – Tim

Yes, this is the sort of deranged partisanship that makes Canada’s most popular Premier able to slither out of responsibility for an oil spill that has poisoned the major drinking water source for Saskatchewan’s 3rd largest city and other cities and towns and farms and beyond.

Great Blue Heron?
Naw, it’s just a Big Red Herring, apparently. That damn bird might cost the province future pipelines, and isn’t that the real tragedy here?

“The company responsible, Husky Energy, has been very cooperative and as soon as they were aware of the incident they notified us,” Kotyk said [Friday].

“In an email, Husky communications official Mel Duval confirmed with CBC that the report submitted to government was incorrect.

Husky now says “at approximately 8 p.m. [Wednesday] the pipeline monitoring system indicated pressure anomalies as several segments of the pipeline system were being returned to service. This is common during startup operations.””

The deputy minister for the Ministry of Economy, which regulates pipelines, said Husky has an emergency response plan in place, filed with the government.

But Laurie Pushor doesn’t know if it was followed.

Good work Premier Brad Wall. Bravo. Encore? We have a SOUTH Saskatchewan River too awaiting your next slick triumph.

#PremierPipeline’s Slick Advice in Wake of Husky Oil Spill: Don’t Turn to Trains

Yah, who cares about contaminated water supplies for Sask citizens, as long as the oil industry is okay. https://t.co/RPoe5incfR #skpoli

— Larry Hubich (@LHubich) July 23, 2016

@MeridianBooster here is what #PremierPipeline is talking about since yesterday – sports. pic.twitter.com/fhvqhHLcb3

— Saskboy (@saskboy) July 23, 2016

But one of the big issues for Brad Wall, a major proponent for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, was the Husky Energy oil spill into the North Saskatchewan River at Maidstone Thursday morning.
Wall says he hopes this spill does not make it harder to sell new energy infrastructure. He points out that if it isn’t moved by pipeline it will be moved by rail and he says rail is more susceptible to spills, combined with the greenhouse gas emissions given off by the trains themselves.

Wall says the first priority in regards to the Husky Energy spill is to get it cleaned up but pointed out that while pipelines remain imperfect in terms of a conveyance for oil, they’re still the safest way to move oil and it is 4.5 times more likely to have an oil spill on a rail car than a pipeline.

So, how about those train emissions, eh? Building a pipeline is done with fairy dust and unicorn labour, I guess?

ADDED: I hope this disaster doesn’t lead to a bigger disaster that takes the form of harming the sale of my most cherished oil distribution technologies I campaigned on expanding.

Husky Energy oil spill threatens drinking water in Saskatchewan https://t.co/oL2XyMW5rg

— Lori Johb (@ljohb) July 25, 2016

Now, about those pipeline emissions…

Husky Energy says between 200,000 and 250,000 litres of crude oil and other material leaked into the North Saskatchewan River Thursday morning near Maidstone. Efforts are being made by Husky to contain the spill through the use of booms across the river

The boom has gone bust. #SaskaBoom

In a telephone conference with reporters, officials from the province of Saskatchewan said they had built five booms to contain the spill and were working with Husky and the federal government on a cleanup plan.

The oil plume had passed the village of Maymont, more than 100 km (62 miles) downstream from where the spill started, said Wes Kotyk, executive director of environment protection with the province.

““We’re asking our residents to conserve water by not watering their lawns,” Ms. Abe said.”

October is coming with freezing nights.

Ferris said the city of Prince Albert, farther along the river, was building a temporary pipeline (hose) of up to 30 km (19 miles) to draw water from another river.

“It won’t work in winter in Saskatchewan, I can guarantee you that,” he said.

Leader Post: Publishing Anti-Facts

In response to Herb Pinder’s July 16th op-ed “Climate change alarmists ignore nature’s role”, I wonder if the Leader-Post has decided to publish conspiracy theories as reasonable opinions. I think many have heard of “young earth creationists” who contend the Earth is only 6000 years old, but it’s news to me there are people such as Mr. Pinder who purport to have discovered it’s “almost six billion”, or 1.5 Billion years older than scientists determined in 1956. It seems Mr. Pinder’s opinion “cries out for historical and factual context” he claimed to provide to Mr. Prebble’s opinion piece.

There’s a fascinating episode of Cosmos with Neil Degrasse Tyson, called “The Clean Room”. It’s about the scientist Clair Patterson who used lead-lead dating to determine the true age of the Earth, and inadvertently discovered that everyone was being poisoned by leaded gasoline. He spent the rest of his life fighting to change what the fossil fuel industry once insisted was of no consequence to our health.

I think that story provides valuable context when discussing Mr. Pinder’s error riddled op-ed he wrote in support of continued fossil fuel pollution.

leaderpost. com /opinion/letters/fossil-fuel-fan-short-on-facts

The Leader Post published a response also from Michael E. Mann.

Leader Post Sees Coal Future As Reality

The Leader Post published my letter, and a couple weeks later Murray Mandryk cites the same inexplicable 30-40 years canard. He also makes the same conclusion as Johnstone, which is to not cut our losses on the project.

“Even some strident environmental groups recognize clean coal technology”
Can anyone name even one?

“replacement of dirty coal with clean energy (wind, hydro and solar) comes at a substantial cost we cannot instantly bear.”
Wind Water Solar 100% conversion costs less than #climatechange and other air pollution costs on society, actually.

“The simple reality is, as Wall has repeatedly noted, 40 per cent of world’s electrical needs still come from coal-powered generation. And this will remain the reality for the next three or four decades.”
Why do Leader Post columnists insist on pushing this false “reality”, which it’s actually a prediction about power sources that we must make incorrect if we’re to avoid damaging climate change? The reality remains that if all built coal plants continue to operate until their constructed Ends of Life, we’ll end life as we know it on Earth. The International Energy Agency has calculated this about coal plants, at least 6 years ago when their calculations gave us a deadline of 2015 to stop building new coal plants to avoid 2 degrees of warming.

@MMandryk @tammyrobert @ProfSmithSTM because right now your position sounds an awful lot like this Murray: https://t.co/Ty5Y0E5mhh

— Noah Evanchuk (@noahevanchuk) June 21, 2016

If Earth Was A Restaurant From The 1990s

One of the big problems with climate change, is even if Europe and Asia manage to create low carbon infrastructure and societies, it’s like a non-smoking section of a restaurant. Remember those? Saskatchewan banned smoking in restaurants by about 2005, so we got out of the habit of asking, “Non-smoking table for two, please.”

We need a non-smoking section, only for climate change. Deniers get the part that floods, & burns.
“Non-smoking continent for 4 Billion please.”

Except as with a non-smoking section in restaurants, the symbolic barrier doesn’t actually work, & everyone ends up dying from pollution. C’est la vie. Or rather, c’est la mort. (I don’t actually speak French.)

Take Your Mind Off Things

Sometimes The Beaverton really understands me.

This morning on CBC Morning Edition, Sheila Coles had Mark Jacobson as a guest. He’s a Stanford professor who I mentioned in my letter to the editor a couple weeks ago. Anyway, I learned a lot of great points about transitioning to a Wind, Water, Solar (WWS) electrical system for Canada. It was a report basically making the point I brought up last week here about Brad Wall. The contrast between the informative and interesting interviews CBC provides compared to the hit music of other stations, is really stark.

New blog on why SK needs to talk about the #LeapManifesto, not allow @PremierBradWall to stifle conversation #skpoli https://t.co/ZPzHtTTypl

— Justin Fisher (@_JustinFisher_) June 8, 2016

In effect, "If we don’t transition, we’re costing Canada 130,000 extra jobs" @mzjacobson #skpoli

— Climate Justice SK (@CJSaskatoon) June 16, 2016