Alberta premier must not support the climate scare when promoting her province’s hydrocarbon fuel resources in Washington DC this week
By Tom Harris
Introducing the International Climate Science Coalition video, “Alberta government feeding the fire that threatens to destroy Canada’s main source of wealth”.
History is replete with tragic examples of those who collaborated with the enemy or sought to appease political correctness and wishful thinking for their own short term benefit. Nowhere is this more evident than in today’s climate change debate. Politicians from across the political spectrum, fossil fuel companies and academics who should know better, not only bow to the climate scare, but actively support it. They even use the unscientific, misnomer-riddled language of their opponents.
The situation is especially alarming in oil-rich Alberta, Canada. There, a supposedly conservative government feeds the fire that threatens to destroy the province’s, and indeed the country’s, main source of wealth, their vast hydrocarbon resources. In an attempt to please the Obama administration so as to secure approval for the Keystone XL pipeline project, and to keep climate campaigners and Canada’s mostly left wing media at bay, Alberta Premier Alison Redford has completely capitulated to climate alarmism.
Her approach is doomed to failure. After all, the primary threat to Keystone XL is the feared impact of oil sands expansion on global climate, and XL will certainly facilitate oil sands expansion.
If approved, the pipeline will pump 830,000 barrels of crude oil every day from Alberta’s oil sands, the world’s third-largest proven reserves, to refineries in Texas. That is over 4% of U.S. daily oil consumption and about 20% of all U.S. imports from the Middle East and Venezuela combined. Besides enhancing America’s energy security, thousands of jobs and billions of dollars are at stake in both countries. Significant tax revenue will flow to provincial, state and federal governments and industry and ordinary citizens alike will see enormous benefits.
But oil sands processing produces more carbon dioxide (CO2), the gas of most concern in the climate debate, than does the refining of conventional crude oil. So activists have drawn a line in the sand with Keystone XL. Even though the oil sands contribute only just over 1/10th of 1% of humanity’s total CO2 emissions, anything that helps the oil sands grow must be stopped, they say. XL is symbolic of our dependence on fossil fuels, an addiction that campaigners believe is destroying the climate.
If science supported the hypothesis that CO2 emissions are causing climatic Armageddon, then anti-Keystone protesters would have a point. To the degree possible, we should then be looking for less CO2-intensive energy sources and trying to ramp down, not up, projects such as the oil sands. Rejecting Keystone XL would then be a cogent symbol that President Barack Obama is serious about tacking global warming, a legacy he would dearly love to be remembered for.
But the science is too immature to know how much influence our CO2 emissions have on climate.
Computerized climate models clearly do not work—even the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admits there has been no overall warming for the past 17 years, something the models failed to predict. Applied mathematics professor Christopher Essex of the University of Western Ontario emphasizes that “the big policy questions are beyond the best models we can currently make. Climate is far from a simple solved scientific problem.”
The geologic record does not support dangerous CO2-driven planetary warming either. “CO2 has played no role in the dramatic climate change of the ice ages, or at any other time over the past 500 million years”, said University of Ottawa Earth Sciences Professor Ian D. Clark. “Only in unverified computer models cited by the IPCC does CO2 drive climate change.”
It is not surprising that the Alberta government dare not contest the scientific foundation of the climate scare. Perhaps they even believe Al Gore when he says that the science is settled. But it makes no sense for Redford and her cabinet to accept, let alone promote alarm. While they do not have the training to know which side of the science is right, they must know that ending our use of fossil fuels entirely, the ultimate aim of climate activists, would cripple the province’s economy, and eventually that of Canada and the United States.
Redford meets with lawmakers in Washington DC this coming week to lobby for the Keystone XL pipeline project and the oil sands. By more carefully crafting her message, and not simply caving in to political correctness, Redford can boost these important projects effectively without helping her strongest opponents.
The 14 minute video just release by ICSC lays out how to do this.
The public can judge for themselves whether Alberta’s premier continues to support the main argument of Keystone XL opponents. Her Tuesday afternoon presentation to the Washington DC-based Brookings Institute, strong proponents of the climate scare themselves, may be heard in line in real time at http://www.brookings.edu/events/2013/04/09-alberta-energy-redford.
________________________
Tom Harris is Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition, and an advisor to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
As an Alberta resident and oil patch worker, I’m dismayed at what Redford has done. There are two things, though, I get out of this:
Canada, not just Alberta, has no say in anything relative to the United States. The States is like Rome, Canada is like Britain in the year 100. We do as we are told, or God help us. So if Obama wants a stupid carbon tax and emissions target of rediculous amounts in order to “allow” us the American-made pipeline to take American-owned oil to American-owned and -staffed refineries in the American South, then we have both tax and emissions control.
I can only imagine Redford on her knee kissing Obama’s ring.
The second thing is that Redford came out of a meeting with a (minor) official explaining Obama’s decision, rubbing her hands and nodding vigourously, thinking of all the lucre flowing into her tax department. Grinning like the drug dealer whom the mafia say WILL take their heroin, and by the way the expectation is that he will double his income in the process.
King Richard becomes Queen Allison, driving the tax collectors into the streets to empty the pockets of the peasants. The choice was a reborn Richard vs a reborn Boetica, she of the Britons. The latter didn’t fare too well.
I am with you DaveG. When someone spends their entire career as a bureacrat with ties to the monstrousity of the UN, it is impossible to make decisions to benefit Joe Six pack. They never had a real job and become career politicians with an agenda supported by acedemia. It’s sad to see. The public is at threat to each leader with these characteristics. We are in trouble in Alberta and globally because of marxism. The general public doesn’t see it because of the leftist happy talk media pushes the same agenda. History shows it will not end happily because the passions of man have never changed.
I thought Canada had built a terminus for loading the oil onto Chinese tankers.
Related articles
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/04/04/carbon-taxes-pain-for-no-benefit/
http://www.torontosun.com/2013/04/05/damn-yankees–how-dare-they-support-the-keystone-xl-pipeline
At the end of the day… Is there not a “notwithstanding” clause in the Canadian “Charter of Rights” which allows the federal government to override the provinces in, what it deems, “the national interest”?
Clipe
The notwithstanding clause is so the provinces and the federal government can overide the constitution, usually after a supreme court ruling, in areas of their jurisdictions. In Canada the provinces have jurisdiction over natural resources. The federal government only has jurisdiction over natural resources where issues cross provincial or international borders or on federal land or as it pertains to navigatable waters. That being said the notwithstanding clause is toxic politically in Canada and has only been used once since 1982 and that is Quebec ‘protecting’ language rights.
Wamron says:
April 7, 2013 at 12:59 pm
I thought Canada had built a terminus for loading the oil onto Chinese tankers.
Are you thinking of gas maybe?
http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/plans+Kitimat+turn+doom+town+boom+town+says+mayor/7816270/story.html
If you think Alberta is wrong headed, just wait till the NDP takes the wheel here in BC.
Then we’ll see real economic carnage!
WTF says:
April 7, 2013 at 1:40 pm
Clipe
The notwithstanding clause is so the provinces and the federal government can overide the constitution, usually after a supreme court ruling, in areas of their jurisdictions. In Canada the provinces have jurisdiction over natural resources. The federal government only has jurisdiction over natural resources where issues cross provincial or international borders or on federal land or as it pertains to navigatable waters. That being said the notwithstanding clause is toxic politically in Canada and has only been used once since 1982 and that is Quebec ‘protecting’ language rights.
Toxic as it may be, it gives the federal government veto power over areas of provincial jurisdiction, (in the national interest) or not?
jones, above, posted a link to a James Burke program. Now, I used to watch almost everything I could from him. Arguably, he was the most influential presenter in my youth, the guy who actually got me thinking about connections and how our society came to be what it is, the importance of scientific discovery and understanding.
Sadly, I see him online now promoting the IPCC position. It does make me sad. I guess I thought that someone who taught me skepticism and thinking outside the box would understand the importance of skepticism and thinking outside of consensus. I guess I was wrong.
The problem is several pointed out here is the Redford government is just that, a “Red” left wing party.
As far as co2 capture goes? Alberta is spending over 1 billion of tax payers’ dollars.
The BIG HUGE untold story is we already have a carbon price levied in Alberta. The problem is they NOW need a big sink hole and carbon capture so the GOVERNMENT can purchase those credits and allow the previous government cronies on the trading board to TRADE that CO2.
So as far as Alberta and the current government?
They are AHEAD of Obama in promoting and spending taxpayers money on co2 trading.
So it not that the REDford government is entertaining carbon trading and capture, but in fact are one of the largest supporters of this idea.
If you roll Al Gore, Obama, the IPCC and Hansen into one ball, you would get something like a UN laywer.
Guess what? Redford managed a judicial training and legal reform project for the Ministry of Justice and the Supreme People’s Court in Vietnam. So she is as RED as they come.
So we basically have the IPCC group of people running the government in Alberta.
So we are talking about a leader in Alberta’s that is WORSE than Obama, WORSE than Al Gore and the IPCC, and they have earmarked 1+ billion dollars for this co2 capture.
The current project of a WHOPPING 800+ million dollars being spent on pumping co2 into a hole is beyond amazing stupid.
Why does this continue? Very simple:
We don’t have any major paper or magazine that dares to point out the carbon trading schemes that are moving full speed ahead in Alberta. And the press knows to simply NOT cover this issue since Albertans would react.
Without the co2 sink hole, then the Alberta cannot fund all their carbon credit programs to dole out billions at the taxpayers’ expense.
Alberta government commits to carbon trading (read = co2 sinkhole).
http://www.solutionsstarthere.ca/
The Alberta government is running record deficits, they are proposing a local provincial sales tax, and are spending over a BILLION dollars on carbon capture to enable carbon trading schemes in Alberta.
So basically right now a bunch of UN cronies are running Alberta and carbon schemes are a leading policy of the Alberta government.
Super Turtle
CodeTech-James Burke has been of this mindset for decades. <y metaphor of the Axemakers Mind actually comes from reading his book The Axemakers Gift where he bemoans the rational mind because of it ability to manipulate nature. Therefore we need ed that creates instinctual, emotional minds. Note that his co-author Robert Ornstein has co-written books with Paul Ehrlich on same general theme. The need for New Minds incapable of creating transformative technology.
Told you ed reform and CAGW were deeply related. Everywhere. It's just not generally appreciated.
For all the number crunchers in the crowd, see if you can reproduce this. McIntyre, hope u are available to rip at this one and post your results.
http://environment.gov.ab.ca/info/library/6151.pdf
For the sake of all tax payer in Canada can someone please try reproduce the above analysis. It would be a vital first step to holding off a forced public carbon tax in Alberta once it is proven to be scientifically invalid. It appears to me the results will be extremely hard to replicate.
Allison Redfraud supports anything that may have potential for more graft and pork trough use of taxpayers money. She may support a Carbon Tax but she would equally support government run training programs to teach pigs to fly if she thought the people would be foolish enough to accept that. After 40 years of PC party rule, Alberta’s Health Care system is the most costly in all of Canada but surprisingly it is also the leader in the worst service in all of Canada. The PC party approach is simple: pay bureaucrats ever more in bonuses, expenses, junkets and periodic house cleaning golden handshakes in order to try to have as many pigs at the trough as possible whilst pretending to try to find a solution to the problems that were, in the first place, mostly created by PC bureaucrats (over their 40 year tenure). The height of the hypocrisy is that the PC party are on record as having some paid government committees that NEVER actually meet. (Perhaps there is so much pork to slosh around that sometimes there simply isn’t enough time to actually meet!)
Carbon Tax has nothing to do with science and everything to do with pork.
I see my fellow Albertans have already commented on Redford. Let it be said, she is a full on UN – Hack Lawyer that drinks the CAGW coolaid. Obama isn’t forcing anything down her throat.
Bill says:
Albertans who voted from Allison were fooled into thinking that the Conservative party would never select a left lib UN lawyer to lead the party of Lougheed and Klein. But it happened and now Albertans can see her for exactly what she stands for. Now we have to deal with the debt, the weak and ineffective policy, the strategic long term mistakes and the eventual higher taxes. The sooner she can be removed from the office of Premier, the better.
The environmental liabilities that result from the various steps in oil sands extraction and refining process include:
Destruction of the boreal forest eco-system
Damage to the Athabasca watershed
Heavy consumption of natural gas
Creation of toxic tailings ponds
Increased release of greenhouse gases
http://www.raventrust.com/beaverlakecree/thetarsandscatastrophe.html
An example of “Canada’s mostly left wing media”.
To try for some balance i include a citation celebrating the prosperity of jobs and the billions of implied dollars. Damn, for a job i would open-pit mine Eden.
http://www.fortmcmurraytoday.com/2013/04/07/oilsands-employment-to-balloon-report