Haha…

Did these idiots not get the talking point memo? We Canadians are cleaning up Gods Oil Spill.Only a planet hating self flagelating moron would Not want us to clean up this massive mess.

I’m sorry, I tried but it’s just too tempting. They deserve to be mocked to the fullest extent possible.

I don’t often click on a huffpo link, but this one was worth it. 🙂

Another succes for Canadian PM Stephen Harper

I swear the person getting cuffed is James Hansen… In a dress.

Are you all completely mad? Or perhaps none of you have children? Otherwise, why would you be suggesting that these people should not be protesting? They are trying to prevent uncontrolled climate change from going forward by suggesting that continuing to develop ways to burn fossil fuels is insane. Get a grip, read NASA Chief Scientist James Hansen’s book ‘Storms of my grandchildren,’ and be informed before you talk this rubbish.
[ryanm: Code Pink no longer serves a purpose when a Democrat inhabits the White House…]

thousands of activists! claims the Puffingtonhost.
I counted 47.

Maria says:
August 21, 2011 at 5:00 pm
Are you all completely mad? Or
Convinced that climate change is entirely natural. 😉

“Maria says:
August 21, 2011 at 5:00 pm
Are you all completely mad? Or perhaps none of you have children? Otherwise, why would you be suggesting that these people should not be protesting? They are trying to prevent uncontrolled climate change from going forward by suggesting that continuing to develop ways to burn fossil fuels is insane. Get a grip, read NASA Chief Scientist James Hansen’s book ‘Storms of my grandchildren,’ and be informed before you talk this rubbish.”
You forgot the “sarc/off”

Boys and girls Maria has pulled your leg clean off and beat you over the head with it.
Storms of my grandchildren, how obamaoesque!

Maria, thanks for the laugh…………………………….

I just wish Bam would let us all in on the secret technology that allows his twin Darth Vader buses (and the accompanying 40-vehicle entourage trailing them) to run on leprechaun sweat and pixie dust instead of evil, evil oil. Then we wouldn’t need derricks or pipelines or cracking columns, and we could all dance naked around the non-carbon-emitting bonfire drinking cruelty-free wheatgrass juice and singing kumbaya.

“Maria says:
August 21, 2011 at 5:00 pm
Are you all completely mad? Or perhaps none of you have children? Otherwise, why would you be suggesting that these people should not be protesting? They are trying to prevent uncontrolled climate change from going forward by suggesting that continuing to develop ways to burn fossil fuels is insane. Get a grip, read NASA Chief Scientist James Hansen’s book ‘Storms of my grandchildren,’ and be informed before you talk this rubbish.”
ROFLMAO! But you forgot the /sarc tag

These people are so deluded there is simply no hope in trying to educate them. Spending the weekend in jail won’t help. Fining them the cost of policing them won’t help,

Quite sad to see the nasty comments from the bigots here. So we agree that man-made climate change is a myth. Why does that mean that land stripping (which will includes “eminent domain” stripping of privately-owned land) should be blindly supported? Sure, some fuel sources are okay, but some are not. Do we want oil wells and oil spills in national parks? I don’t think so. Anthony, I am disappointed that you posted this and seem to want people to make obnoxious bigoted comments about these earnest people They may have the wrong end of the stick, but demeaning them is not the correct way to respond. And I thought that free-speech, the right to protest without violence and the right not to be jailed arbitrarily were core values of the enlightened educated peoples of the world. Apparently not.

1) Curiousgeorge is correct. 2) Canada is the largest exporter of energy to the U.S. 3) The largest investors in Canada’s oil sands are U.S. based energy companies. 4) North America is laced with many thousands of miles ( or kilometers ) of oil and gas pipelines that operate with safety and efficiency records that would be the envy of any airline. 5) China will be more than happy to import any and all oil that Canada can provide. 6) These protesters are funny!

Thank goodness Jim Jones is dead. Judging by the looks on their faces, if he were to walk by with a pitcher of Kool-Aid, everyone of them would have taken a drink.

Ultimately, these protesters against Canadian oil would prefer that we buy our oil from some of the most wretched regimes in history like, Sudan, Iran, Venezuela, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia. Complete fools, all of them.

Actually this is a pretty lame protest. They didn’t even chain themselves together.

Besides that, these people are running a con game. Ostensibly they protest a pipeline from Canada, but their true agenda is to stop the oil fracking process from eventually being used in Utah and Colorado.
Hidden agendas don’t speak well of people pretending to care about the future.

CO2HOG™ says:
August 21, 2011 at 4:26 pm
Haha…
================
Drat. That was the first thing that came to my mind…
@Surfer Dave. Over 20% of US oil comes from Canada. Almost half of Canadian oil is from oil sands. So go ahead and stop using Canadian oil. And if these people believe in their cause, 48 hrs won’t slow them down. By the way they aren’t protesters, they are activists. That is why they were stunned to find out that protesting is more than a parking ticket. And people who blog sarcastic comments aren’t automatically bigots. They are merely exercising their right to free speech.

Doubftul the jail food is organic… they’ll probably sue!

On a side note
While I disagree with some of the supporters of the protest who are on this thread, it’s still good to see them here. WUWT provides a wonderful medium for debates and opinions on both sides, and still allows a civil, rational debate. Keep up the great work, Anthony and mods!
RC doesn’t know what it’s missing 😀

Interesting to see the level of the debate going on here.
I get that:
– at the moment, the majority of the developed world lives an oil-dependent lifestyle;
– my own lifestyle is completely dependent on oil/other fossil fuels;
– it’s scary to imagine that how we live now is not something that can be sustained in perpetuity;
– it’s hard to make the connection between how one lives and the consequences of our lifestyle.
However, I can only look at what the global political and business community have now agreed are the facts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Accord:
– the climate change we are seeing right now is faster than any in the known history of Earth – in terms of speed of change over a period of time – that this is anthropogenic is clear from the scientific consensus that has been reached;
– if the climate continues to warm we are now sure that we will see: significant sea level rise; species loss; increasingly violent storms and of increasing number; drought in some areas (we are already seeing climate effects in a number of countries) and floods in others – as a result food and water scarcity; increased risks from consolidating diseases such as malaria; and other impacts to varied to list;
– that the physical impacts of climate change wil have serious social impacts and that these may be far-reaching and frightening; and,
– we do not have enough resources of any kind to support the human population (~7bn) that we now have or the anticipated 9bn by 2050.
From thinking and reading about what’s going on, and also by feeling some responsibility to the children growing up today and those that are not yet born, I can only conclude that we need to radically rethink our lives and how our world works. I would rather not see mass war, death, and horror. I would rather we try to find a new way forward that doesn’t involve causing more destruction of our own habitat than what has already taken place.
It seems strange to me that one would not want to think these things through and instead just say ‘I’m happy with my status quo – to hell with my children and grandchildren and the world they will live in.’ The NASA scientist, James Hansen, is resolutely non-partisan – so I don’t think you can attribute his thoughts to Obama who, to my knowledge, is a lawyer by training rather than a climate scientist.
The US military have declared climate change to be a ‘serious national security threat’ http://www.cna.org/sites/default/files/news/FlipBooks/Climate%20Change%20web/flipviewerxpress.html and companies such as GM, GE, Alcan, Alcoa and BP have established the US Climate Action Partnership calling for ‘strong’ federal action to combat climate change http://www.us-cap.org/.
What I would love to know from this blog community is just who has to say that we need to sort things out around fossil fuel dependency and climate change for you to believe it and use your minds to help come up with a solution?

What Surfer Dave seems to miss is that the “Tar Sands” are naturally occurring and massive areas of toxic sludge that are hostile if not outright lethal to plants and animals. Extracting the bitumen and rehabilitating the area actually provides enormous new stands of flora that are quickly being inhabited by critters of all sorts. The land is then left to go bonkers, teaming with life of all kinds! This is, as JRR stated above, a gigantic oil clean up operation! Imagine that — protesting the removal of massive amounts of toxic oil sludge and establishing millions of acres of wild, verdant wilderness. Sounds insane.

What kind of mental r-tard would be against us NOT using middle-east oil???
Oh, the same one that buys the Gore/Hansen/Mann/Jones drivel….

Bruce says:
August 21, 2011 at 7:01 pm
Canada is the #1 supplier of oil to the USA. Saudi Arabia is #2.
Sorry Bruce,
You’re wrong on both counts. The USA is the #1 supplier of oil in the USA. Canada is a distant 2nd. Mexico is #3. Saudi Arabia doesn’t supply America except in the sense that they modify the world commodity price.

Wait…did she really say that James Hanson is non-partisan? Really?

Maria says:
August 21, 2011 at 7:33 pm
Maria, Thanks! For so long I have been under the impression that Hansen was a third rate scientist, at best, who found new life as a propagandist for Al Gore’s global warming scam. We know that he has done everything in his power to rejigger the historical temperature numbers so that he can use them to support his claim that today is warmer than the decade of the 1930s. We know this because he published his rejiggering, though not his methods.

Maria says:
August 21, 2011 at 5:00 pm
 “read NASA Chief Scientist James Hansen’s book ‘Storms of my grandchildren,’ and be informed”
Hansen’s lack of writing skill was at least acknowledged by Hansen in the book, endlessly.  This made for a poor read which was slow going and difficult to finish.  This aged and boring tome is an unfortunate combination of climate catastophy science primer and political novis memoir.  Emotionally charged and endless hyperbole.
Not informing, convincing or current, Maria. 
You are correct about one thing, although you express the thought poorly if at all. The fools being arrested are certainly Hansen’s believers in the church of CAGW.
Round ’em up! 
Cheers,
Big Dave 

About 10 paragraphs down in the Guardian piece, the results of the very
s t r a n g e Penn State investigation into Mike Mann’s role in
“hide the decline” as a spin-off of Climategate are discussed. Somehow this
investigation has been transmorgified into a complete exorneration of
NASA/GISS’s Jim Hanson.
?????
If this is true, then it’s news to many folks who thought they were paying
attention to what Penn State said and did.
If not true, then the accuracy of anything related to Hanson in the press
coverage of the “tar” babies lacks credibility.

Maria says:
August 21, 2011 at 7:33 pm
Maria,
1. People who are skeptical of global warming claims are also concerned about their grandchildren’s future.
2. Not every scientist offers an impersonal examination of fact and experimental evidence. In fact I offer that it is a rarity.
3. Hansen violates your “impersonal examination” by becoming political, whether or not he does so in his grandchildren’s interest.
4. When these activists are arrested who pays their traffic ticket? Who puts them on the bus in the first place? Are the people organizing these protests political or just concerned citizens?
Steve

papertiger says:
August 21, 2011 at 7:23 pm
Bruce says:
August 21, 2011 at 7:01 pm
Canada is the #1 supplier of oil to the USA. Saudi Arabia is #2.
Sorry Bruce,
You’re wrong on both counts. The USA is the #1 supplier of oil in the USA. Canada is a distant 2nd. Mexico is #3. Saudi Arabia doesn’t supply America except in the sense that they modify the world commodity price.
====================================
Papertiger,
I think Bruce meant #1 exporter to the USA. The USA imports over 40% of its oil.
I can’t format tables but below is the list of imported crude into the US for 2011, 2010.
Canada is #1, Saudi Arabia #2-#3, Mexico #3-#2.
Why did you think Saudi Arabia wasn’t an exporter to the US?
BTW the US imports oil from some very nice countries /sarc.
I wonder if the protesters are aware of which countries export oil to the US?
Steve
ftp://ftp.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html
Country May-11 Apr-11 YTD 2011 May-10 YTD 2010
CANADA 2,006 2,079 2,114 1,997 1,928
SAUDI ARABIA 1,197 1,089 1,122 1,093 1,068
MEXICO 1,154 973 1,108 1,290 1,130
VENEZUELA 895 902 917 1,011 918
NIGERIA 808 856 886 1,004 981
COLOMBIA 414 462 348 295 306
IRAQ 407 519 403 394 483
ANGOLA 356 277 308 423 408
RUSSIA 339 288 228 358 250
ALGERIA 263 207 253 352 313
BRAZIL 260 210 211 312 276
KUWAIT 200 78 142 219 201
ECUADOR 134 142 166 160 190
CONGO (BRAZZAVILLE) 59 86 54 89 90
NORWAY 58 88 54 78 39

Maria
I felt compelled to respond to some of your comments.
First, I’d like to say that, not that I’m accusing, but from the way your posts are made, you almost seem to be reading off a script. ( Or even copying and pasting.)
You claim that because of Global Warming, there will be increased species loss.
Well, if we’re going to figure that out, we must first do an equation:
N ( Number of species ) times the amount of species ( A ), going extinct within a set time period. ( Let’s say over a 1000 year period.)
Then, you take another 1000 year period, ( preferably one with the same set of perameters, except for CO2 levels, because you are trying to prove that it is the CO2 levels that are driving the distinction,) and measure N times A with that period as well.
Well, there is already a large flaw in the equation.
WE DON’T KNOW HOW MANY SPECIES THERE ARE.
Estimates run from 1 million to 100 million different types of species. That’s a huge difference, and, as such, makes it impossible to estimate the rate of extinction.
Let me put it this way: If you didn’t know how much money you had in your wallet, and then you were robbed, how come you calculate how much money was taken from you? You can’t because you don’t know how much you had in the first place.

What I would love to know from this blog community is just who has to say that we need to sort things out around fossil fuel dependency and climate change for you to believe it
I dunno. If Jesus Christ were to come down from on high, or maybe Mohammad from the mountain.
Some people I guess Buddha would do it for them to believe. But that’s not science is it.
For me, Jesus, Mohammad, or Buddha better be packing iron clad, cross referenced, immutable climate data & proxies that I can check. And they better make some accurate predictions of what the weather will be like over the next 3 or 4 years – since they’re God and all.
That last bit I wouldn’t expect from Hansen.

Rational Debate:
Not a bad idea, but consider this: The oil gets piped to a refinery, say, in Sunburst, Montana. Now it gets refined into gasoline, diesel, asphalt, on and on. Now you have the problem of transporting volatile refined products the rest of the way, instead of [relatively] less-hazardous crude. The refineries should logically be near the point of consumption to minimize transport of volatiles. The latter scenario is unlikely, because along with the consumers comes a NIMBY clause, or busloads of McKibben clones. So, the compromise is, put the refineries where they always have been…easier from a regulatory point of view, and less tolerant of endless eco-protesting.
Bottom line: If the pipeline gets nixed, the Oil Sands product will go to somewhere else. The Carbon Bomb will not be defused, as is the fanciful rhetoric of those wishing it so.

As with others here, I live in Alberta. As with a LARGE percentage of Albertans, I work in an industry that is indirectly connected to the oil industry. I have friends who work everywhere from in the Oilsands doing grunt work all the way up to executives in what you’d call Oil Companies. I’ve done contract work directly for Oil Companies. I own shares of Oil Companies.
And here’s the thing. The Oil industry employs millions, directly and indirectly. Take that up to an even higher percentage if you want to include everything that Oil provides for: the auto industry, virtually anything made of plastic, auto repair, road paving, auto parts, buses, trains, aircraft industry, almost our ENTIRE CIVILIZATION is based on petroleum products.
Now, it would be grand to replace what we pump, dig, frac or squeeze out of the ground with something else. But before you can go “protesting” something that you clearly have no idea about, you first need to understand that THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE. Find us one. Really, we’ll listen. Wind, solar, and anything currently classed as “alternative” is, simply, inadequate. Period. Prove me wrong… I challenge you. Because you can’t.
Now, we hear about hydrogen for cars. Great! But… where does the POWER come from that can give us liquid hydrogen? It takes an immense amount of power to separate hydrogen from water, so unless you’re going to start building nuclear plants all over to do that, that’s another alternative gone.
Ethanol? Other biofuels? We can’t afford to take away food production to barely power 5% of our energy needs. Maybe we in affluent first world countries can, but at the expense of starving the third world that depends on us for food. Nope, not an alternative.
The big complaint about “dirty oil” is that a large amount of energy, typically natural gas, is used to extract the crude from the sands. And that’s a valid complaint (technically, they take the slurry of sludge and boil the oil out of it, leaving relatively clean sand behind). But the fact is, since the 70s when they were first playing with recovery of the sands the techniques have gotten incredibly more sophisticated and efficient. There will continue to be improvements in the process.
To all the Maria’s out there, it’s very nice that you believe in something, but I’m sorry that whoever taught you about this planet was an idiot. Really, I am sorry about that. Because while they are teaching you to worry and stress about your future, ruined by the indiscriminate burning of dirty, nasty stuff out of the ground, they also neglected to tell you that the alternative is a short, brutal life, filled with disease and hunger. Only 100 years ago that was a pretty common way of living. Just 5 generations. Look how far we’ve come with a cheap, easily available source of energy.
The alternatives might as well be unicorn farts and rainbows. Wind and solar are utterly hopeless endeavors, which you would know if you actually researched them. We saw the same flim-flammery in the 70s, often by the same people. They’ve had decades to work on it and “perfect” it. It can’t be done. And don’t forget to research “unintended consequences” while you’re diligently confirming what I’m telling you. Bird destruction, the utter horrors of people forced to live around windmills, the incredible concrete and clearcutting stories from building the ugly towers. The lunacy of trying to keep acres of solar panels clean and weed-free. Is that a job you want? Solar panel windmill cleaner?
Protesting Oilsands development is like voting to cut off your legs. Someone might be able to talk you into it, but actually going ahead and doing it is nothing short of stupid.

“And people who blog sarcastic comments aren’t automatically bigots. They are merely exercising their right to free speech.”
Yup, even idiots and bigots can feel proud of being idiots and bigots. Nothing clever in demeaning these people.
Gosh, the level of the “sarcasm” (that tag is being used to cover the inherent unkind attitude of the writers) is like being in a high school yard at lunch. Petty, trivial, it lowers you all to the level of school children.
I understood these shales oils were taken by excavating vast swathes of land, not tiny pin-pick oil wells. Even if fossil fuels have minimal impact on the atmosphere when burnt, the terra-forming from the harvesting of shale oils and the short- to medium-term degradation from spills and leaks from “ordinary” wells can be significant. What happened in the Gulf of Mexico, or are you all okay with coastlines ruined? And do we not all agree that “peak oil” has been reached? Surely these methods of harvesting fossil fuel should be avoided and we should be trying to develop other energy sources with long lives, eg thorium-cycle nukes, ever more efficient solar, tidal, hydro, geothermal, etc?

Ted Dooley says: August 21, 2011 at 6:39 pm
[Doubftul the jail food is organic… they’ll probably sue!]
The food will of course be organic (a carbon compound).
But if you meant Organic (a marketing compound), then they can bring in some Organic bean sprouts, grown with LED lighting using windmill electricity, not irradiated, pesticide free, from Germany; I hear people have been dying to try them.

Re: Maria @ 6:45 p.m.
Wow. Okay, let’s take our post one sentence at a time, shall we?
– it doesn’t matter what “the global political and business community” have agreed. This is a scientific topic and thus must be addressed via the scientific method, i.e., observation, hypothesis, experiment and synthesis
– Wikipedia is not a scientific source
– observed data (not model outputs) demonstrate that:
1. the average global temperature appears to have risen by about 1 degree centigrade over the past century and a half. It has not risen over the past 13 years
2. there is no significant change in the rate of sea level increase (i.e. no acceleration, which is what “change in the rate” means) in the instrumental record
3. neither the number nor the intensity of storms is increasing; the accumulated cyclone index is in fact declining
4. droughts and floods are not new; nor are the scarcity of food and potable water
5. malaria is endemic throughout the world and has historically been a problem in places like Washington, D.C. and Siberia; malarial risks are mitigated through medication and mosquito control, which requires money and stable governments
6. the “physical impacts of climate change” may frighten you but the do not frighten me; as a resident of Ottawa my climate changes by roughly 80 degrees centigrade twice a year. Two months ago it was 40 degrees outside, and in three months it will be -40. I have survived this transition, and all of its physical impacts, 45 times thanks to modern technology, principally fossil fuels.
7. your Malthusian argument about our inability to “support the human population” is the same one that Ehrlich made 40 years ago when he predicted mass starvation before 2000. Oops.
8. we have experienced “mass war, horror and death” within living memory and they had nothing to do with climate change – they were caused by the Soviet-imposed political famines, Nazi atrocities, Communist China’s disastrous “great leap forward” and “cultural revolution”, and jihadist terrorism.
9. bleating “WON’T ANYONE THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN” like you and your hero Hansen have done is a transparently ludicrous attempt to seize the moral high ground. It is not a scientific argument. If you’re concerned about your children and grandchildren, then I suggest you petition the US government to fix the business environment in the US, stay away from green pipe dreams, and stop racking up debt like sailors on a drunken rampage in Singapore. The “physical impacts” of the obliteration of the US economy over the next 10 years will far outweigh those modelled as an alleged consequence of “climate change” over the next 100.
10. That the US military has declared climate change a “threat” simply demonstrates that (a) they work for Barack Obama, and (b) they don’t know what the word “threat” means. Without intention formed by a human agency, “climate change” cannot be anything other than a condition of the military operating environment. However, nothing that is projected to happen as an alleged result of “climate change” will impact US military operations over any realistic planning period. As for “climate wars”, as an historian I can assure you that there has never been one. Until there has been at least one, we have no data to indicate whether there may be others.
11. Your final comment demonstrates why you simply don’t get it. You ask “just who has to say that we need to sort things out around fossil fuel dependency and climate change for you to believe it”? I answer, anyone – so long as they support their arguments with data. Those of you who are “true believers” simply want a “smart guy” to tell them what the truth is. This is a plea for argumentum ad verecundiam – an argument from authority. You want the climate pope to issue an encyclical to get everything on track. But there are no popes in science. All it would take to convince me would be a single experiment demonstrating that, as the IPCC argues, human-produced carbon dioxide is the key driver of global temperature. Scientists – real ones, that is – aren’t looking for a burning bush. All it would take to convince us is data.
But like the rest of the true believers, you’re not interested in data. So you’d probably be happier on a different website, like Romm’s place, where they’re not interested in data either.

When has the right to protest (even if you think they are wrong) fallen out of favour in your country? Isn’t it the so called “land of the free”? What happened to “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”?

I support the rights of these folk to peacefully protest at whatever shakes their shingles. Jailing them sends society back many years.

Maria says:
August 21, 2011 at 6:45 pm

What I would love to know from this blog community is just who has to say that we need to sort things out around fossil fuel dependency and climate change for you to believe it and use your minds to help come up with a solution?

Ooh! Ooh!, I know!, Pick me, pick me!
F A C T S
NB: Model output is merely a product of the input parameters and the model settings. It needs to be backed up with actual empirical data over time (in this case) to have any validity whatsoever. So far, no facts whatsoever have demonstrated that CO2 will do anything other than mildly warm the air. This will also likely be beneficial, as it has been the last two times the climate did this all by itself (without our help). The enrichment of plants is yet another benefit.
When there is proof that any of the doom-laden scenarios is even likely, then we can talk about what we should do about it.
As for dependency on fossils fuel, as it gets rarer and harder to find, it will get more expensive. When that happens, and not before, the market will naturally find cheaper alternatives, most likely nuclear, although there may be all sorts of new options by then.

As a Canadian, I woulld prefer the oil was refined in Canada

Hi all,
It is getting late here in New Zealand, and I have looked back at my own first post and I guess I should have tried to be more polite. Or at least less blunt. I am, however, disappointed by the abuse and grandstanding. The blog post itself is written to elicit certain responses and written, obviously, for an audience of ‘believers.’ But I read it and have a different point of view.
I think we need to have these debates openly and I will continue to engage with whoever wants to talk about it. I can’t think of anything worse than only talking about issues with people I know agree with me. I read anything and everything I can to try to get an idea of what is going on in my world. I’ve got an undergrad degree in Physics and have worked in public policy in Europe and now in New Zealand for around ten years.
I can’t respond to everything now – I need to sleep! – But on few specific points:
1. A 3,000 mile long pipeline makes for a pretty sweet terrorist target.
2. Tar sands are, until dug out, mostly located under forests. They are not just gaping oil pits that we need to clean up.
3. When the (huge areas) of forest and top soil (it seems to vary between 15 and 50 feet) are removed to get to the tar sands, extravagant amounts of water and energy are needed to turn the bitumen in the sands into something fluid enough to be pumped out. The waste water is left behind in large ponds. The land around is contaminated. This is not a playground for local wildlife.
4. On population growth, global population (not just the population in the area where you might live) is growing faster than ever before. Though the population is expected to stablise at 9-10bn people by the end of this century, that’s still too many people for the Earth to sustain. At least it is if you think that everyone should have enough food to eat, water to drink etc. Here’s what the World Bank says http://www.worldbank.org/depweb/english/beyond/beyondco/beg_03.pdf
Goodnight.

Doug in Seattle nailed it: “These people are so deluded there is simply no hope in trying to educate them. ”
That’s exactly what informed people think of the WUWT crowd. (And still, I have hope!)
Why are we like enemies? What a tribal world: he has a beard so he’s in the other clan…
I’m a nice guy, you know. We could be friends. I’m actually pretty pro-free-market and all that. I like sports cars! I like the taste of meat! Don’t think that ‘our side’ consists only of hippies who drink goat yoghurt and go to meditation retreats the whole time. Don’t think that all the sientsts are unscrupulous misanthropes who are only after grant money. Seriously, do think scientists earn more money than […]?
I hope you can admit that you reject the mainstream scientific opinion about climate based on tribal grounds. Based on politics and ideology. It’s about your world view.
It really is.
I’m totally serious. I really know what I’m saying. I’m one of the most skeptical persons on the planet. I’ve thought about this a lot and I doubt about my own opinion every day.
When you take a close, objective look at the science of climate change, you’ll see where the truth lies.
What the policy response should be, is a different matter.
Yes, there are communists who dream of a back-to-nature society. Those are the ones that scared. But there are also lots of people who share your values, who just happened to stumble upon some irrefutable facts.
I mean, seriously. The post about Norwegian climate scientists predicting cooling in the 70’s. Is that a cherry-pick, yes or no? -Yes, I know that the ‘other side’ also does some cherry-picking from time to time.
There actually was a literature review of all peer-reviewed papers from the 70’s that came to the conclusion that the majority of papers predicted warming back then. There was still a debate, back then.
I could go on and on like this.
Pick out logical fallacies – on both sides, yes!
But how are we supposed to have a debate when you guys are like: “you’re wrong because you have dumbo ears.”
So, please, do some introspection. Anthony, it’s ok, you know. People can be wrong. I know you can see things that are wrong, for example when you let Joe Bastardi post about the laws of thermodynamics. You know it’s not true. How does a greenhouse work? Because the plants are generating massive amounts of heat? Hell no! You know it’s not true.

Maria says:
August 22, 2011 at 3:52 am

…
4. On population growth, global population (not just the population in the area where you might live) is growing faster than ever before. Though the population is expected to stablise at 9-10bn people by the end of this century, that’s still too many people for the Earth to sustain. At least it is if you think that everyone should have enough food to eat, water to drink etc. Here’s what the World Bank says http://www.worldbank.org/depweb/english/beyond/beyondco/beg_03.pdf

Just one questioin Maria: Does the World Bank adhere to the findings of the IPCC? If yes, then scrub your “that’s still too many people for the Earth to sustain” comment. If not, then you have a valid point.
(You don’t have a valid point.)

Maria says:
August 22, 2011 at 3:52 am
Hi all,
…………..
I think we need to have these debates openly and I will continue to engage with whoever wants to talk about it. I can’t think of anything worse than only talking about issues with people I know agree with me. I read anything and everything I can to try to get an idea of what is going on in my world. I’ve got an undergrad degree in Physics and have worked in public policy in Europe and now in New Zealand for around ten years.
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Outstanding! And welcome! While it may not be obvious, your presence is very much welcomed by many here. As you note, “I can’t think of anything worse than only talking about issues with people I know agree with me.” I, too, get bored to tears when stuck in an echo chamber. But that’s why I pop by here fairly frequently. When we’ve no alarmist to argue with, we’ll argue amongst ourselves about tangential issues! Its very engaging. Seeing that you’re new to this site, I’d encourage you to peruse the archives here. The article presented doesn’t lend to a heady discussion, but that isn’t the norm. While there were opportunities to delve more into the underlying socioeconomic issues raised, sometimes its better just to enjoy a laugh at someone else’ expense. As to your friend Dr. Hansen, he’s not someone I’d bother quoting if you truly believe we should be looking for solutions. Dr. Hansen claims alarm about an imagined problem but offers nothing in the form of a solution, rather, he believes the problems can be fixed with a tax. He openly receives graft and then has the U.S. tax payer subsidize his electric bill….. well…. go here, http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/hansen-was-right-in-part-for-once Be sure to click on the links provided to see for yourself.
As to your education and work experience, you may at times feel out of your depth…… no worries, we’ll explain if asked. Again, welcome!

1 – They’re Oil Sands, not Tar.
2 – 20% is close enough to the surface to be mined. The other 80% is drilled (in Situ)
3 – The land is reclaimed and may end up in even better shape that the original condition.
4 – The Oil Sands represent between 5 and 6.5% of Canada’s Greenhouse gas emissions.
5 – That equates to…get this….. Point One per cent of Global GHG’s
6 – More and more water is recycled. in 2009 the Oil Sands used Point Five per cent of the average total river flows. (3.4% of the lowest weekly winter flow)
7 – I would prefer that most of the oil be refined in Alberta.
http://www.capp.ca/getdoc.aspx?DocId=191904&DT=NTV

Surfer Dave says:
August 22, 2011 at 12:08 am
“…………..
Gosh, the level of the “sarcasm” (that tag is being used to cover the inherent unkind attitude of the writers) is like being in a high school yard at lunch. Petty, trivial, it lowers you all to the level of school children.
I understood these shales oils were taken by excavating vast swathes of land, not tiny pin-pick oil wells. Even if fossil fuels have minimal impact on the atmosphere when burnt, the terra-forming from the harvesting of shale oils and the short- to medium-term degradation from spills and leaks from “ordinary” wells can be significant. What happened in the Gulf of Mexico, or are you all okay with coastlines ruined? And do we not all agree that “peak oil” has been reached? Surely these methods of harvesting fossil fuel should be avoided and we should be trying to develop other energy sources with long lives, eg thorium-cycle nukes, ever more efficient solar, tidal, hydro, geothermal, etc?”
============================================================
lol, Surfer, there is no amount of sarcasm we can heap upon those people that could ever come close to what we’ve endured as skeptics. So, don’t begrudge us of a bit of fun at their expense. Comes around, goes around.
I’m wondering what you think is being torn up? This is sandy dirt saturated with oil! Have you visited the gulf lately? One of the best things about that spill, is that it became known that nature leaks more oil into the ocean than any spill we’ve ever had….combined! A better question would be why were they forced to go so far out to sea in deep water? And no, we haven’t reached “peak oil”. Texas continues to increase its oil production. As does any other place that is allowed or desired. OPEC nations intentionally throttle production to keep pricing. As far as alternatives, yes, they need developed. But, that doesn’t take care of the here and now, though, does it? This is something that just boggles my mind. How is it that otherwise intelligent people don’t understand the need for fuels and energy today? Dave, the reality is we need oil in our current socioeconomic condition. And it isn’t going to change in the near future. Are you wondering why the world is in economic upheaval? Look no further than your mirror. Any modern nation’s economic activity can be measured by fuel and energy use. To throttle either is to throttle that nations economy. I’ll repeat and embolden so it can soak in. Any modern nation’s economic activity can be measured by fuel and energy use. To throttle either is to throttle that nations economy. This is why the western world can’t raise itself out of the economic doldrums we’re experiencing today. Show me a nation that isn’t touched by this obsession over CO2 and enough resources for growth and I’ll show you an advancing economy. History shows us that all conditions of humanity improve with prosperity. Conversely, poverty kills, poverty is the cause of crime, disease, wars, morbidity, and early mortality. Ecologically, there isn’t anything worse than a poverty stricken nation. Go visit a third world nation or squalor infested slum for proof of my last assertion, or any of my other ones.
We need more energy use, not less. We need more fuel use, not less. Everyday that passes without the western world acknowledging this reality is another day of damning countless people to a shortened life of hardship.

AllenC
Are you sure about that statistic… that would mean that if you went to virtually an wind mill you’d see a new dead animal there everyday. (50000/84 = 595 dead animals per wind mill per year).
I very much doubt that…

I’ve got an undergrad degree in Physics and have worked in public policy in Europe and now in New Zealand for around ten years.
Well that explains much . Then one has also to add that you seem to be new to the climate issue in general and to this web site in particular .
So for your education – many posters here are scientists with a PhD degree as well as active and retired engineers with extensive experience in energy matters .
Many of the posters have been interested in climate science and/or did active research in this field for more than 10 years . This is for instance the case for A.Watts to just give an example .
So to stop you making waste our time , I would like to make a short list of things that we ALREADY know , so please avoid beating those dead horses over and over .
1) Hansen is an unhinged political activist . His real scientific work is too far in the past and his predictions were all proven wrong . Nobody trusts Hansen today and even the green activists take distance from his radicality .
2) We know that there has been no variation in the frequency of storms , hurricanes etc in the last century despite a “global warming” . Most scientific papers show that there is no reason to expect a correlation with temperature . (Reminder : Hansen and Al Gore are not relevant scientists , see 1)
3) The climate has been changing for billions of years ; sometimes at an impressively high speed and will do so for the next 5 billions of years . Better get used to it and teach your children to get used to it too . Despite your wishful thinking , a “stable climate” that would happen to be the climate of 1975 (fill in your own year if you don’t like the 70ies) doesn’t exist and will never exist .
4) We are actually in an interglacial . That means we are just getting out of the last glaciation what happens cyclically . Expect for the next thousands of years “global warming” . Whether you like it or not , this will happen . Temperature will get MUCH warmer , sea levels will rise and polar ice will melt . Get used to it . When it will turn around and begin the cooling towards the next glaciation THEN our great great … children will REALLY have ground to worry . In the meantime we might have accelerated this warming a very little bit . But be very sure that it will slow down again once we have burned all carbon we could . The nature is a carbon SINK – left to its own devices it tends to remove all CO2 from the atmosphere what is of course an unpleasant threat for all life on this planet.
5) Spare us the whining and arrogant “Think of your children” meme . Your children are not more important than ours and I certainly don’t want that my children have to live in an economy destroyed by lunatic environmentalists and their pathological doom&gloom prophecies . You are perfectly free to live in a cave , wear “bio” clothes , drive a bicycle (will be fun to see how you manage with 80 years) and eat grass (of course strictly without fertilizers , pesticides etc). But you are absolutely NOT free to impose on anybody to share your middle age preferences . You will learn that most skeptics are people who just want to be left alone and don’t take kindly to all these deranged activist preachings .

AllenC
Ok just read that report that says 6.99 birds were killed in a 6 month period per turbine adn there’s 86 turbines. That makes 1200 birds a year, slightly less of an alarmist number don’t you think?

Maria
As another Kiwi I am wondering what you are smoking.
World population is growing but the rate of growth is slowing and will continue to do so.
The rate of population growth will slow faster and population growth will halt earlier if we ensure all Countries can enjoy a first-world standard of living. This is a complex issue invovling development, education, finance, law, government etc. This goal will not be served by reducing consumption of fossil fuels. An increased use of fossil fuels is necessary.
The length of the pipeline is entirely irrelevant. There are so many terrorist targets already that I find it hard to imagine why you think this one would be in any way interesting to a self-respecting terrorist. And being Kiwis it is hardly any of business anyway.
The mining and petroleum industries are pretty well-behaved most of the time these days. Yes there are some risks. But oil spills are expensive and the companies work hard to prevent them ever occuring. These industries are far more responsible now than you give them credit for. You should be embarrassed by your little rant.
By the way water is a reuseable resource. It can be recycled. Thats what miners do these days. SO although a mining or industrial process may need lots of water, often the same water is used hundreds of times over. Perhaps you should wake up and smell the Roses for once. The world is not going to hell in a hand basket. The environment is improving in almost all modern westernised countries, though naturally we should all remain vigilent (esp re the Dairy industry in NZ). The primary enviromental worry at present is that we are exporting environmental damage to pooer parts of the world by over-regulating ourselves in the developed world. This largely unintended leftist agenda needs to be turned around.

Maria,
May I, an aging and mostly polite Brit, apologise should any of the other comments on yours have caused you offence. Yes, commenters here do often tend to levity, as they do in almost any community of like-minded folk, but mostly the butts of the worst of them are regular “trolls” who simply post some fragment of the AGW Testament and disappear, unlike yourself. I hope you call by again and read this.
FWIW, I’ll mention also that I have spent more decades than I want to think about reading every scientific mag and paper I could find, just for the raw pleasure of finding stuff out. Also, I’ve spent most of those decades as one or another flavour of technician or engineer – one of those weird geniuses who can make almost anything work because we understand the processes behind it. The real world has a way of completely disregarding your personal preferences as to how it “should” work!
Truly, though, there’s nothing in your comments so far which hasn’t been torn to bits here more times than Anthony has had hot dinners. “NASA Chief Scientist James Hansen” is merely one among many megaphones who clamour for us all to believe the outputs from their “climate models” rather than the actual, physical evidence – and, to be blunt, the folk here have seen rather too much of the real thing to give those “models” any credence at all.
Think for a moment. If there’s one thing which shines forth in this debate, it is that nobody, Hansen included, could give you an even halfway complete list of what factors influence Earth’s weather systems. If you can’t even list the influences then how can you possibly claim to have modelled them? You can’t. Indeed, spend awhile paging back through WUWT (an excellent and time-consuming way of achieving climate information overload, IMO!), and you will find the revelation that most of these models simply assume (a) that CO2 is the main driver of the planet’s climate system (it’s not) and (b) everything – CO2, temperature, you name it – will just increase forever in straight lines (no way – climate, like everything in Nature, is the result of cyclical processes).
You believe that “the climate change we are seeing right now is faster than any in the known history of Earth”? … but it’s not. You doubt that? I can only recommend that you read through “A Chronological Listing of Early Weather Events” – okay, not a “peer reviewed paper”, but a collection of actual historical records of conditions which will make a chill run down your spine and make you profoundly glad that you weren’t there to live through – or die in – them. The present day is nothing to write home about in comparison.
You say “if the climate continues to warm” … don’t worry, it won’t. It’ll just go on following its multiple cycles:
Roman Climate Optimum (ca. 0 AD) warm,
Dark Ages (ca 550 AD) cold,
Mediaeval Climate Optimum (ca 1100 AD) warm,
Little Ice Age (ca 1600 AD) cold,
Present Climate Optimum (now!) warm
… or,
1880 – 1910 (cooling),
1910 – 1940 (warming),
1940 – 1970 (cooling),
1970 – 2000 (warming),
2000 – 2030 (cooling)
… never mind the granddaddy of them all, the ice age cycle. That, when the Earth next decides to flip into its cold state, will cause social disruption far beyond anything a bit of life-giving warmth could. Why worry about “the warmest (whatever) since records began, when the records began in the cold conditions prevailing in the Little Ice Age?
If there’s anything I, or most of the others here, really fear, it’s the dark political manipulation which is behind all this climate alarmism, and much else besides. There are mentions of that too in previous WUWT posts and comments, and far, far more hard evidence of it than there is – or could be – of “manmade, unprecedented climatic disruption”.
No, Maria, we may be a bit offhand here sometimes, but I promise you we care very deeply about handing a working world to our descendants. Of course the human race needs to clean up its act – particularly “homo economicus”, the vile jellies behind the political plans. All that needs saying on that front is, “Shell, Nigeria” – just the pictures wil make you weep. Of course we need to work out ways of providing ourselves and our descendants with cleaner energy – but not because of some fairy story about CO2 being “pollution” which “is destroying the environment”, and not by stupidly closing down the best civilisation we’ve got. Again, it’s all here (somewhere) on WUWT. For a start, check out thorium reactors – astonishingly clean, cheap, safe nuclear energy which is so benevolent that it can even eat the dangerously radioactive wastes from uranium reactors. We want to hand down a world where science aims at an accurate assessment of reality, not one where people are bamboozled into believing whatever tosh is the political flavour of the day.
(Sigh) Another long diatribe. Like Mark Twain, I never can find the time to write a short one … but truly, please, take us seriously. Should anyone actually produce hard evidence in favour of the CO2 conjecture, I think you’d find that most WUWTers, at least, will accept it, even if it does shatter our previous convictions. Hell, I’m only here because I went looking for the evidence and found absolutely nothing that didn’t come out of a monstrously simplified “model” – I’ve already had my convictions shattered once. It would have been so much easier just to “keep taking the Kool-Aid” (what is that stuff? – we don’t have it in the UK AFAIK) – but in all honesty I simply can’t.
Read, Maria – endlessly. Mark. Learn. Inwardly digest. The more you do, the more you realise that, like Socrates, “all that we know is that we know nothing”. And do please forgive us – though we’re still a darn sight kinder to “dissenting” views than some (ahem) “Real” Climate sites I could mention.
Best wishes,
Steve

Some European says:
August 22, 2011 at 4:29 am

…
I’m totally serious. I really know what I’m saying. I’m one of the most skeptical persons on the planet. I’ve thought about this a lot and I doubt about my own opinion every day.
When you take a close, objective look at the science of climate change, you’ll see where the truth lies.

Oh puuuhhhlleeaasseeee…. Enlighten us. Outline what you know, not just a statement that you know it.
Because when I “take a close, objective look at the science of climate change” as you suggest, I see a bunch of people like Hansen and Gore and Mann and Jones… all psuedo scientists, ideologues, or grant chasers than don’t dare debate or show their data. When their papers are challenged, they want to sue or obfuscate or throw temper tantrums or go picket some power plant that provides them electricity.
That’s what I see. And that’s what a majority of people are now seeing also. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/08/22/al_gore_goes_on_a_tirade_111039.html

According to a Harris poll in July, only 44 percent of us now believe carbon dioxide emissions are warming the Earth, down from 51 percent in 2009 and 71 percent in 2007.

It really doesn’t look good for the pseudoscientists I call “climsci”.
But continue with your expose` of “scienct of climate change” because the more you sound off, the lower go the poll numbers of people who belive that carbon dioxide emissions are warming the Earth. You’re killing your own cause.

Scottish Sceptic,
You say that we’d all be a lot happier with a lower GDP, less consumption and more time to “spend with our children,” without realising the contradiction.
It is the fact that GDP is higher today that has given us: hospitals, life saving drugs and hip replacements for the elderly; dry, warm homes built to a standard of comfort unimaginable a century ago; free education for all children up to age 18 and free university education in your home Scottland; a vast array of cheap and nutritous food that was unheard of 50 years ago; a global telecommunications network that allows us to keep in touch with our friends and loved ones; freedom from back breaking physical toil; afforable leisure of all kinds; and most notable, the higher productivity gives us more leisure time to spend more time with our children.
In truth, we would not be happier with a lower GDP – quite the contrary.

Andrew30
But if you meant Organic (a marketing compound), then they can bring in some Organic bean sprouts, grown with LED lighting using windmill electricity, not irradiated, pesticide free, from Germany; I hear people have been dying to try them.
Gosh darnit! Ifen that thar global warmin don’t git yer the bean sprouts will.

Maria says:
August 22, 2011 at 3:52 am
1. A 3,000 mile long pipeline makes for a pretty sweet terrorist target.
So do the several hundred thousand miles of pipeline already constructed and operating quietly for some time. Please don’t give Wiebo Ludwig any more ideas (google him). The thing about pipelines is that they are monitored constantly, and, if ruptured, generally shut themselvs down, minimizing the impact. Impact is what terrorists want, and if it amounts to a big ho-hum, they will look elesewhere. A crude pipeline is kinda ho-hum.
2. Tar sands are, until dug out, mostly located under forests. They are not just gaping oil pits that we need to clean up.
Stunted, taiga-like areas. No, we don’t need to clean them up, but we might as well make use of it. I do like your rhetoric, though: “gaping oil pits” sounds so awful by comparison to “naturally contaminated subsoil”. And there are numerous bogs and kettle lakes in the region that are basically “naturally polluted”. I won’t bore you with the origins of the Athabaska Oil Sands, but there is a huge amount of oil just lying around there, leaking into the environment. What a poster child for the environmental kaffe klatsch.

Toto says:
August 22, 2011 at 11:11 am
“I think Hansen is sincere in his concern but he ignores far bigger and more likely non-climate risks to the future of his grandchildren.”
I think Hansen is a front for Soros who invests in CCS.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/39480

Sorry if this was covered already – I only read the first 1/2 of the comments. The protests in Nebraska are mainly about the location of the pipeline. It goes directly over the Ogallala Aquifer which is one of the largest fresh water stores in the United States. It provides ground water for multiple states extending down to Texas. The problem with the location is that it goes directly over areas where the ground water is closest to the surface. We have not had any independent studies done showing what would happen if a spill were to occur over these areas, but I don’t think it takes a climate scientist to be at least a little worried about it. One geologist from a local university did an estimate that was doom and gloom, but I would like a little more of a full scale study before I would say go for it. I am all for the pipeline, just build it in areas that would give the most protection from a spill. Sorry if I don’t care about TransCanada’s bottom line.

Maria says:
August 21, 2011 at 6:45 pm
Young lady, (obviously you are too caring to be very young, but to me almost everybody is young), I regret to say that you have been ‘brainwashed’ by the propagandists. If you start to think for yourself and read this blog, among others, on a regular basis, I think that you will quickly have your worries soothed.
“at the moment, the majority of the developed world lives an oil-dependent lifestyle;”
Not the majority, but every last one of us. Durban will be in the climate news later this year. It has a guessed at one million people within twenty kilometres of the city centre living in tin and card board shacks. Even those poor souls depend upon fossil fuels, one way or another, to survive.
‘my own lifestyle is completely dependent on oil/other fossil fuels;’
The only way out of that, for you and the rest of us, is for the discovery to be made of a means of capturing energy from some new source requiring a very low energy input. It will come but it might be a long wait. Windmills and solar panels won’t do – the input is too great and the product is lamentable.
‘- it’s scary to imagine that how we live now is not something that can be sustained in perpetuity;’
Perpetuity is a very long time indeed. The resources are extremely large, particularly as regards coal deposits that have not yet been exploited. When my great grandchildren have great grandchildren of their own, the latter will not need to worry too much about the resources, and by that time we may have our new energy source.
‘it’s hard to make the connection between how one lives and the consequences of our lifestyle.’
It pains me that those who complain the loudest don’t see any need to lead by example. That is particularly true of the politicians of all ilks.
‘However, I can only look at what the global political and business community have now agreed are the facts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Accord:’
Facts are facts, not what some large group of people agree between themselves to be so. If it is facts that you are after then in my experience Wikipedia is not a great place to go. Copenhagen was a disaster- for those who promote the manmade global warming fallacy.
the climate change we are seeing right now is faster than any in the known history of Earth – in terms of speed of change over a period of time – that this is anthropogenic is clear from the scientific consensus that has been reached;
– if the climate continues to warm we are now sure that we will see: significant sea level rise; species loss; increasingly violent storms and of increasing number; drought in some areas (we are already seeing climate effects in a number of countries) and floods in others – as a result food and water scarcity; increased risks from consolidating diseases such as malaria; and other impacts to varied to list;
– that the physical impacts of climate change wil have serious social impacts and that these may be far-reaching and frightening; and,
– we do not have enough resources of any kind to support the human population (~7bn) that we now have or the anticipated 9bn by 2050.’
We are seeing no abnormal climate change. Those who cannot correctly interpret what is going on right now should not be believed when they talk of “the history of the earth”. We are not seeing consequential sea level rise; we are not seeing increasingly violent storms, nor an increase in their number; there have always been droughts in some areas; floods have happened since Noah, and the victims are predominantly those who have built on ground where a sane man would not put up a garden shed; in Africa at least, from the Limpopo northwards for a couple of thousand miles, malaria is mainly spread by vehicle – residents of low lying rural areas travelling to town by bus and taking mosquitoes with them – and the problem is greater than it would be if the U.S. had not banned DDT back in the ‘sixties and many well meaning countries in Africa followed suit; resources are ample to feed a much larger population provided that they don’t all insist in living in a metropolis.
From thinking and reading about what’s going on, and also by feeling some responsibility to the children growing up today and those that are not yet born, I can only conclude that we need to radically rethink our lives and how our world works. I would rather not see mass war, death, and horror. I would rather we try to find a new way forward that doesn’t involve causing more destruction of our own habitat than what has already taken place.’
Do some regular reading on this website and I think that you will soon gain the re-assurance that you seek.
‘It seems strange to me that one would not want to think these things through and instead just say ‘I’m happy with my status quo – to hell with my children and grandchildren and the world they will live in.’
I have never heard anyone say that.
‘The NASA scientist, James Hansen, is resolutely non-partisan – so I don’t think you can attribute his thoughts to Obama who, to my knowledge, is a lawyer by training rather than a climate scientist.’
James Hansen is a fraud. Period.
‘The US military have declared climate change to be a ‘serious national security threat’
With the greatest of respect to the U.S. Army, they have been deluged with the same propaganda that you have been subject to.
‘http://www.cna.org/sites/default/files/news/FlipBooks/Climate%20Change%20web/flipviewerxpress.htmland companies such as GM, GE, Alcan, Alcoa and BP have established the US Climate Action Partnership calling for ‘strong’ federal action to combat climate change http://www.us-cap.org/.’
They are in it for the money – pure and simple. Wherever there is a subsidy the vultures gather.
‘What I would love to know from this blog community is just who has to say that we need to sort things out around fossil fuel dependency and climate change for you to believe it and use your minds to help come up with a solution?’
The sole problem is the propaganda which results in tens of thousands of people making a handsome living out of a fallacy arising from a scam. The junk science on which the scam depends is falling apart and before too long the perpetrators will have to dream up a new Ponzi scheme. Until then you and I should rest easy

“the climate change we are seeing right now is faster than any in the known history of Earth”
Bzzzzt! (a) Records go back only 100 years or so for most places (more for a very few). (b) The vast majority of places on this earth have no climate/temperature records for any length of time before satellite records. (c) Satellite records go back what – 20 or 30 years? (Others more knowledgable than I am please jump in with better numbers.)
Bottom line is we have only anecdotal evidence for climate history for most of the time humans have lived on this earth (sorry, I don’t believe you can extrapolate the climate history of an entire region from the rings of one old tree).
What we DO have now is better and more records from more places. To our detriment, something that was a local event 50 years ago is now considered international news in the quest to fill the 24-hour “news” maw on a bazillion channels.
But thanks for playing, Maria.

What to say? It seems mentioning Hansen (who you seem to be convinced is a political activist, despite his repeated statements that he has voted at various points in his life for Democrat, Republican and independent candidates) was red rag to a bull for this forum. You believe me to be ‘brainwashed,’ a ‘bot,’ a ‘troll bot,’ preaching’ and lacking in evidence. The majority of you (some exceptions), in turn, have been patronising, ‘funny,’ lacking in evidence and convinced of the righteousness of your point of view. Some of the ‘facts’ that have been quoted for my benefit are seriously questionable. I will continue to look at my world and search for truths and realities. To the commentor that quoted Socrates famous quote – it’s funny as I was thinking that last night as I fell asleep. You have given me things to think about, and I hope you may also re-examine your own thinking and knowledge for gaps and other possibilities. Good luck. Maria.

Disappointing to see the overt political tone here on an issue that should be apolitical, and no less disappointing to read the personal attacks and snark in the comment section.
With that being said, don’t jump into the lion’s den and cry when bitten. A compelling argument will find ears; but talking points and a cheap martyrdom benefits nobody.

To the ‘lions’ out there… I’m thinking you’re a little more like the moose that chased me when I was canoeing the Allagash a few years ago… not so scary because of moose issues with swimming. So no crying on my part as yet. And martyrdom?! Come on. You can do better than harping on as if I’ve set myself up as a martyr. I haven’t. This is just boring, failsafe (for this community) rhetoric. From this thread, it’s pretty clear that it’s not me that has ‘cherished beliefs’ that I’ll stick too regardless. Up your game!

Now I’m laughing! ‘Polite’?! I’m quite polite mostly and this has been far from that! You know, I was tired out yesterday but today I am super alive and I can honestly say that – apart from my very first post written quickly after reading the first comments on this thread – I haven’t been the one doing the ‘screaming rant’ing. There hasn’t been too much scientific evidence on this thread – I should be able to go back through and address the specific points that were raised this weekend. It seems that many here expect to bully me into assuming a cloak (manufactured by them) of lunatic, quasi-religious, global warming activism so they can stand back and feel assured that they are reasonable, pragmatic and intelligent in their assumed positions. Moose can run at a frightening speed but can’t swim too fast. So, in deep enough water – the Allagash is a real river not a ‘wilderness fantasy’ (who has those?!) – I felt pretty safe at a paddle. Different situation entirely at another part of the river where the water was far more shallow and we came across a moose stood in the middle of the channel.

if they built a pipeline to the west coast then the tankers that haul oil from the alaskan pipeline could stop at vancouver and pick up a load to take it to southern california thus short hauling the alaskan pipeline.
C

by the way maria:
it apears as though you don’t know much about moose either. if one is chasing you you have to really irritate it so that it runs not trots. moose can trot about twice as fast as they can run as anyone that lives in moose country can tell you so getting one to run gives you a better chance of escape.
C

Bruce Cobb says: They are breaking the law, and they know it.
What law have they broken?
Bruce Cobb says: That way lies the road to fascism.
My grandparents have seen what fascism is and you know nothing about it. Enjoy your right ot be a moron.

rd:
who said anything about pumping it to texas, we’d burn it in southern california. thats where almost all of the alaskan oil goes anyway.
we have one, out of several, tanker berths in the long beach harbor that the Exxon Valdez (under another name) calls at to discharge about every 16 days, that particular berth off loads that vessel in about 18 hours. within two hours they have another tanker of like size in and pumping. whoever does the scheduling is really good at it as the tanker people figure that a lost hour is worth about $10,000 these days.
C

we only import about 15 %. the rest is home grown. around bakersfield, seal beach, huntington beach, and santa barbara.
go to the oil drum.com for good stuff.
c

rd:
you are a bit off when you speak of continous flow.
fluid flowing through a pipe or reasonable facsimile looses velocity because of friction against the pipe walls. this is expressed in total loss of flow in GPM for a given distance. (usually per foot) when it goes through a fittiing (like a valve, close 90 degree elbow…) it also looses flow. this is expressed as the equivilent loss in straight pipe. ( a 90 degree globe valve has a value of about ~2.5) ……..
the upshot of this is that they have to have pumping stations every so often (maybe 150 mile intervals) depending on a lot of things like viscosity, temperature, change in elevation, sediment in the line…..
yes if you pump fluid up a mountain 5000 feet and let it come back down on the other side you will get a return, but about 80% is considered to be really good.
by the way most of the pumping stations (especially for natural gas) burn the product they pump through the line in their prime movers.
C

ok i have an old keyboard that loses g every once in a while so maybe it picks up and o occasionaly.
maybe i should have said that flow slows down.
what happens is that the more friction that occours the higher the load on the pump (in the case of a centrifical pump) until flow stops. if the resistance becomes so great that the flow stalls then the pump unloads and actually runs at about 105% rpm and about 110% pressure with a lower amount of power drawn.
c

pk;
get a new kb; they’re a glut on the market. You can probably get a near-new trade-in from a computer shop for $5.

@ Rocky Road
“Because when I “take a close, objective look at the science of climate change” as you suggest, I see a bunch of people like Hansen and Gore and Mann and Jones… all psuedo scientists, ideologues, or grant chasers than don’t dare debate or show their data. When their papers are challenged, they want to sue or obfuscate or throw temper tantrums or go picket some power plant that provides them electricity.”
For one.
When you take a close objective look at science, you should see science, not people.
This seems like the very definition of an argumentum ad hominem.
Other than that, you seem unable to distinguish between a politician (Gore) and actual scientists.
If you think the scientists in this list don’t show their data or refuse debate, you’re unaware of the scientific method. These people have spent their whole career sharing data and engaging in debate – with other experts.
And about scientists picketing power plants, of course you mean Hansen. Name one other climate scientists who has ever done such a thing. I think that tells you a lot about their desire to stick to the science and not take any public position about policy.
It’s unfortunate that you associate science with ideology, fraud and harassment. Maybe, what you see depends on the glasses you’re wearing…