We told you so. Willis Eschenbach pointed out weeks ago how pointless and futile the McKibben driven 350.org protests about the XL pipeline were, because they did nothing to alter the fact that the oil would still be used, somewhere. See The Only Choice Is Where It Gets Burned
I mentioned in an essay Friday that:
Dr. Christy ended his essay with the title of this post saying “Don’t demonize energy, because without energy, life is brutal and short”….I thought those were good words to consider, especially since we have activist maniacs like weepy Bill McKibben out to demonize energy on a daily basis. McKibben and his followers, not possessing the intelligence to fully understand what they are doing, think “they won“.
Bottom line: that tar sands oil is going to be burned somewhere, in other countries willing to buy it. Stopping a pipeline has no effect on Canada’s export of the oil, only on American jobs, but McKibben and his 350.org is cluelessly ecstatic over this.
Looks like we were right, only one day later, Canada looks to sell the tar sands oil to China. From Energy Daily:
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Sunday that he was looking at exporting more oil to China after the United States delayed a decision on a controversial pipeline.
The conservative Canadian leader, taking part in a summit in Hawaii hosted by Obama said the pipeline decision had produced “extremely negative reactions” and that he discussed oil exports with Chinese President Hu Jintao.
“This does underscore the necessity of Canada making sure that we are able to access Asian markets for our energy products,” Harper told reporters. “I indicated that yesterday (Saturday) to President Hu of China.”
Full story at Energy Daily.
McKibben’s goal of stopping the XL pipeline did nothing but hurt the United States and will have zero a net positive* effect on CO2 emissions from it. He’s not even a useful idiot.
*Update: Commenter Mark W points out that: Actually, this move will increase CO2 production, as it will take more energy to move that oil all the way to China
He’s right.
So, can we finally acknowledge that poorly targeted environmental activism does nothing but prevent you from finding a job?
The government should sue/charge the 355 org with the amount that was lost for jobs. Simple.
Everything else is anti-American. ( and I’m not even American)
As a Canadian, I can’t understand why we had to ship our crude to the U.S. for processing. I thought economics says that it is more profitable to ship finished goods. What makes this even stranger is that Alberia, the source of the oil, is mostly (I exagerate, but not much) inhabited by Alberticans (American oil workers) and most of the companies involved in crude extraction are American or multinational, so the profit from oil extraction leaves the country anyway. Therefore, this crude export was all about creating American jobs. Alberian crude was going to go to Texas to create U.S. jobs in refining. Maybe if we sell to China, the laws of economics will apply and we will be allowed to sell semi-finished commodity to them. It would be against the Canadian national psyche to sell a fully finished product.
The inevitable reaction to gross economic stupidity is to find an alternative. Emigrate, or find a new market and that’s just what is happening here. The only loser here is the USA – tens of thousands of jobs gone and loss of economic security – how stupid can you get?
I guess this is further evidence of the peaking and start of the ultimate decline of the USA, when dubious, economically disastrous, arguments win the day and vacillating presidents do the wrong thing hoping to win a few more votes.
I suppose the 20-50,000 who will not have a job because of this are supposed to feel warm and fuzzy about their sacrifice at the altar of the false God of Green,
Winston Churchill used to say:”You can always rely on the Americans to do the right thing – eventually!” In this case, I fear it will be too late.
But he got what HE wanted, and seeing how his fantasy includes holding the Green moral High Ground, He is self-assured that his victory is pure. Hugh Pepper, please, don’t rush to Bill’s defence again…the man is indefensible.
I am sick and tired of radical environmentalists running our government. If they want to turn their own clock back 200 years, it’s okay with me. But don’t force the rest of us to follow along. There is plenty of places they could go to live like “mountain men”, so why don’t they just do it? Oh, I forgot, they couldn’t live without their cell phones, televisons, computers, air conditioning, electric lights, refrigerators, stoves, and automobiles.
Actually, this move will increase CO2 production, as it will take more energy to move that oil all the way to China.
When Israel hits Iran and the Strait of Hormuz gets closed and when Chavez pegs off in the next few months leaving a potential civil war in Venezuela in its wake and oil is at $200+ a barrel and gasoline is $10 a gallon (if you can find it) in the US, methinks that the average US citizen will not be amused.
Actually worse than nothing consdiering all the CO2 emitted getting the oil to China who will certainly burn it with fewer precautions than the US has in place.
Why do these morons want to destroy their own country?
BC Bill….if you think that the economics of refining the product in Alberta (or Canada for that matter) wasn’t considered you haven’t been paying attention. It is not economical to do so….you need many pipelines to move highly volatile refined products to their market. The capital outlay is enormous, the margins are small.
Furthermore, Shell had proposed to build a multi-billion dollar refinery to refine oilsands oil in Sarnia but abandoned the project in 2008 due to economics and heavy pushback by environmentalists and first nations.
Don’t underestimate the power of Tides Foundation, Suzuki et al to put the coastal pipeline into an overly burdensome “environmental” review
It’s going to be burned somewhere, and likely it will be burned dirtier, somewhere with fewer environmental regulations. You win this time “environmentalists.”
We can thank our Waffler-in-Chief for this . Is there any hope left for this country ?
Will no one rid us of these turbulent climate priests?
(I mean get them out of our government and universities. Please don’t start threatening the lives of Climate Criers. Were not 10-10 after all)
Canada has backed away from Kyoto as has Japan and China and the USA were never signatories.
Obama, in service to hi reelection campaign needs the support of the extreme left since he is at 40% approval in the polls. So he shortsightedly and suicidally chose to disable the pipeline.
I feel sorry for my American friends. However you have only yourselves to blame for this one. Obama is YOUR president and he is blocking the oil pipeline from you.
Canada will sell the oil to the available markets, China being one of many and USA will have to receive the oil via tanker of some other method that gives you no advantage. He handed a beating stick to the republicans, and the leftists are never really satisfied anyway.
saith MarkW upon November 14, 2011 at 10:04 am
As likely the US will still get a good bit of the oil, just at higher prices (to reflect the extra energy(oil) expended in shipping it less efficiently), thus causing each gallon delivered to a customer to release even more pollution than it otherwise would. This is how you win as an environmentalist, I guess.
There is no guarantee that Canada will be able to build a pipeline to B. C to ship anything anywhere. According to the timeline (http://www.northerngateway.ca/public-review/timeline) on the Enbridge site pipeline operation isn’t scheduled until mid-2016. The regulatory approval process will be completed in late 2012. First Nation groups are opposed so who knows.
It’s my understanding that existing capacity will initially be used to ship oil sands product to the U.S. so the only thing I see being lost in the short-term are jobs.
Also, anyone who thinks the planet is going to run out of oil anytime soon hasn’t been paying attention to shale oil, etc.
But you forgot that those who stopped it will be SAVED!!!! Hallelujah!!!!! Bless mother Giai, may she forgive us all!!!
The older classification system has been replaced supposedly because of misuse of the terms defining the !Q ranges of the categories. This is how it goes:
IQ Range Classification
70-80 Borderline deficiency
50-69 Moron
20-49 Imbecile
below 20 Idiot
Please do not mis-categorize BIll’s usefulness.
BC Bill says:
November 14, 2011 at 9:59 am
What makes this even stranger is that Alberia, the source of the oil, is mostly (I exagerate, but not much) inhabited by Alberticans (American oil workers) and most of the companies involved in crude extraction are American or multinational, so the profit from oil extraction leaves the country anyway.
But not much…? How about a whole lot? In the Alberta oil patch, [oil sands] extraction is populated by Newfoundlanders; Fort McMurray sounds like St. Johns. For the conventional resource, the largest drilling contractors are Canadian, and the oil (refined or not) is Canadian. In all my travels around the upstream end of the patch, I rarely hear an American accent. The profit going SOB (South of Border) is based on a fraction of the dollar price of the oil to any SOB company. Refineries aren’t that profitable any more. Necessary, but not profitable. I do suggest checking one’s premises!
McKibben and his fellow travelers simply use warmlogic, which has nothing to do with what is real, but is based on their fantasy that oil is bad because the process of burning it produces evil, planet-destroying C02. Their “thought” process then goes: oil is bad, and therefore, anything which makes it easier to both procur and process that oil is immoral, even if that particular way in fact produces the least amount of C02, being the most efficient. If something is inherently immoral, then the argument that “someone else will just do it if we don’t” doesn’t fly.
Thus we have this “victory” of the carbonistas over evil oil. In Water (melon) World, it is a very real victory.
McKibben, enemy of both the 99% and the climate. How very ironic.
The radical environmentalist are not just about getting rid of fossil fuels. The word is that they want to replace fossils fuels with clean, renewable energy. Some estimates suggest that solar will be cheaper than coal in the next five years, its price is coming down so fast! Of course, there are times when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing, so forms of energy storage will need to be developed. However, by just delaying the pipeline for a few years, it is indeed possible that the pipeline will be come uneconomical, especially considering the enviromental costs of tar sand oil. And then we will need to retrain all of those petroleum engineers and coal miners to work on solar energy. That will be a difficult transition.
Maybe Greenpeace can build a sail powered tanker to help out the Chinese, who I bet will refine the syncude to Canada and U.S. EPA standards.
Of course, all of Greenpeace Vessel burn fossil fuels (although the Rainbow warrier can sail on the wind too). Maybe their helicopter only burns biofuels.
The economical reason for not building refineries in Canada is not about costing more to move the finished product. It is because refineries are expensive (and maybe impossible to build in our new green climate) and it is was cheaper to just move oil to a refineries that already exists but are under-utilized. Plus there is no 5 years of permitting and law suits to use existing refineries. They are talking about 7 billion for the pipeline, that might not even build a single refinery, let alone enough to process all the oil. I’m in Saskatchewan and I would love to see refineries being built up here, but I’m realistic about the chances and economics of it.