From Tom Nelson: Keystone pipeline passes environmental review: It’s the [CO2-induced] end of the world as the Sierra Club knows it, and I feel fine
The State Department released a draft environmental impact assessment of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline Friday afternoon, suggesting the project would have little impact on climate change.
Live Blogging the Keystone XL Environmental Assessment Release | DeSmogBlog
Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune just released the following reaction in a press release just sent out:
“The Sierra Club is outraged by the State Department’s deeply flawed analysis today and what can only be interpreted as lip service to one of the greatest threats to our children’s future: climate disruption…”
From Junkscience:
Read the full Keystone EIS
It’s is driving the enviros crazy this afternoon.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Let’s see: They will extract the oily sand, process the mixture, store/transfer the oil, and return the clean sand to the earth. This is a catastrophe!
but what has the P.O. (sorry, president Obama) have to say about this?
That oil is going to get used no matter what.
Won’t there actually be less of an environmental impact if the pipeline is built and the oil is refined and the products primarily used in the US, with our tight emissions standards,
As opposed to shipping the oil off to China where they’ll use it according to their “emissions standards”?
Indeed, Alvin, the oil sands operations are cleaning up one of the world’s biggest oil spills. The stuff has been oozing into the Athabaska River for millenia before even the indians immigrated to the area.
If the State Department says it, it must be true. (I”m not being facetious here.) If for no other reason than you know they wouldn’t want to say such a thing. The State Department has always been a domain of liberals, even when Republicans were nominally in control.
This is extraordinary news.
But don’t assume Obama will buy into it. Not after that SotU speech.
This is going to be fun to watch go down. The enviro crusaders, zealots and imbibers are piling it up, building a hill to defend and likely die on. Obama desperately needs to throw these voting allies under his bus now that he no longer needs them because five years of his disasterous economic policies need to be turned around fast, fast, fast if he wants to leave a real legacy instead of a crater where the US economy used to be.
Let the sinning and spinning begin.
I am cautiously optimistic it has this EIS, but interventionists lawsuits even after construction is well advanced can derail it.
Be vigilant.
John
Don’t know why Bill gets all sad and weepy over the oil sands. He should be crying tears of joy as when you think about it the oil sands extraction is the Mother of all enviromental cleanups….of all time…..evah 🙂
@Alvin
Yep.
They are cleaning up a gigantic natural oil spill and that is bad for the environment.
They are the post-modern environMENTALists .
Cognitive dissonance in motion.
See it goes like this: Global Warning, Climate Change, Weather Weirding, Climate disruption and then finally Global Cooling. See Global Warming causes Global Warming. Idiots!
The alarmists hope the general public will forget that it WAS called Global Warming.
But we will NEVER let them forget “Global Warming.”
If Bill McKiben is against this, I’m completely for it.
I’m glad Bernie Sanders has identified the greatest benefit to the biosphere–CO2!
And if Michael Brune thinks this is a “deeply flawed analysis”, he’s flawed in his analysis–or would anybody say he’s got a vested interested in his opposition?
I would.
Three cheers for CO2!
Opps lol, See Global Warming causes Global Warming. Idiots! “Cooling.” See confusion rains, and that is the general idea.
This bit of news was buried way down on my Google News page.
I guess their “neutral” aggregator algorithm didn’t find it that newsworthy. At least not as newsworthy as a PBS piece entitled “Is Obama’s Climate Change Policy Doomed to Fail? Maybe Not.”
Correct me if I am wrong here but the only section of this pipeline that needs to be approved by the US Federal Government is the 1 mm wide section that crosses the 49th. All the States that it goes through have now given the go ahead. So build the pipeline to the border from each side and use duct tape on the crossing…….You are welcome 😉
Can someone please tell me why the Sierra club has a tax free status. Last year I did a little research & found that they have over 750 million dollars in assets. That was for 2009 & I’m sure it’s probably closer to a billion now. Then there’s probably a lot of money also hidden away. I also thought to be tax free you could not be involved in politics? What a joke. Wouldn’t you like to see those book’s audited?
“Without access to major U.S. export terminals from Keystone XL and other routes, tar sands production will be substantially slowed.””
So says the National Wildlife fella. “Slowed”, does not mean stopped.
The “line in the sand” is symbolic, not real. North Dakota is railcaring 53% of its 803,000 bopd already, but expects/hopes to have another 200,000 bopd on top of that in two years, and 400,000 more within 7. Even if those numbers are aggressive, within the next few years another 250,000 bopd will probably be producing and needing a market. This oil, not just the Canadian sourced (owned by Exxon-Mobil et al) is being moved one way or another to refineries, whether on the Gulf Coast or in New England. And if in New England, the lack of adequate capacity may mean that a lot is then transshipped down the American coastline to Texas.
Railroads are expensive on an operating basis, but since they exist already, cheap on a new capital project basis. Still, the price differential and the long-term amortization of a pipeline makes economic sense to have the pipeline, period, and so the sooner the better: you don’t want to pay for two system, in effect, if you first pay a railroad premium and discount, and then pay for a pipeline transport fee but no discount.
For some reason 650,000 or more bopd by train through the populated areas of the northern United States, and likely along the New England coastline,does not disturb the eco-green: perhaps they WANT an oil disaster in their own backyard.
Strong, Hansen and others have waxed about the need for a real disaster to motivate the American people. Is this what the WWF and the Sierra Club and McKibben, Suzuki and Gore and all the others really want, an environmental disaster that they can use to decarbonize/deindustrialize all those parts of society that do not serve their personal interests (since they are not giving up their SUVs, their air travel or their fancy houses by the sea)?
I wouldn’t be surprised: their words are out there already. Maybe this is just part of the set-up.
Canada PM Harper’s “China strategy” made the State Dept’s decision moot. One way or the other, the oil from the tar sands was going to be used, so the net impact was zero.
I see that the State Dept made exactly the same observation that I have made for more than a year : oil is a valuable commodity and it’s going to market regardless of whether there’
a Keystone pipeline or not. Now exactly why is this simple fact so hard for these Nobel prize winners to grasp?
If you go outside tonight and if it is very still, and very clear and cold, and if you listen very carefully … don’t make a sound … you should be able to hear the soft “pop, pop, pop” of the heads exploding all across the land.
The logic that gives them their out is this: Even if you kill the pipeline, the oilsands will still be developed. In other words, killing the pipeline will provide no environmental benefit.
Obama’s logic will be that killing the pipeline will not help the environment and will cost American jobs. Approving the pipeline will cost him some political support but there will be a net benefit to him politically. He can say, with a straight face, that he has not betrayed his base.
Yea, I saw Van Jones whinning on CNN…we all just don’t understand how bad this is…this is end of the world stuff you know…
Save the planet…..
…send it to China
WTF says:
March 1, 2013 at 4:13 pm
=======
ROTFLMAO……good one
Albertans (mostly Newfs,heh) are cleanig up the biggest oil spill known.And the enviro-whackos are upset? Oh wait. By doing this,cheap fuel,food,and power may be provided to millions of African’s, saving gigatonnes of lives.But then these are just little black people across a pond,right? If ever there was a case for a crimes against humanity charge,the cAGW eco-cultists are front and centre.
That is great news, jobs in America and I would be s
giving my gas $$ to Canadians then the the over sea nations.