Climate: LNG in B.C. vs Alberta tarsands

[agentaqua]

AA How do you feel about the price drop?

Pros and cons - as would be expected, 3x5. Pro - pay lees at the pump as individuals, and (hopefully) less in the grocery store (as an example) for transportation. Cons - Less $ in government coffers. Obviously and specifically for the operations in the tar-sands - the $/bbl affects the profitability of those operations - and at a certain point - they no longer make sense. You know this better than I do.

 

[OldBlackDog]

And your point is?
Your science as you quoted it is the oceans " MAY " rise 0.12 inches or the height of 2 pennies a year.

What, you disagree with your information? Really!

i

The climate denial team and how they roll

Ezra Levant ordered to pay $80,000 in libel suit; judge cites ‘reckless disregard for the truth’


An Ontario Superior Court judge has delivered a stinging rebuke of Ezra Levant, declaring as part of an $80,000 libel judgment that the Sun Media personality displayed “reckless disregard for the truth” and “took little or no responsibility for the accuracy” of certain statements he published on his personal blog.
Finding that Levant acted with malice in his coverage of a 2008 British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, Justice Wendy Matheson said “he did little or no fact-checking regarding the posts complained of, either before or after their publication. Nor did he accurately report what was taking place at the hearing. And, with one exception, when he learned that he got his facts wrong, he made no corrections.”

In finding for plaintiff Khurrum Awan, who was at the time an Osgoode Hall law student, the judge also rejected a defence, put forward by Levant’s lawyers, that their client’s reputation as an “outspoken provocateur and troublemaker” would preclude most reasonable people from taking his defamatory statements literally.

Mr. Levant has 15 days to remove the defamatory posts from his blog, ezralevant.con. At the time of their publication in 2008 and 2009, he was an independent commentator.
He says he will appeal the ruling (available here).

The case stems from complaints made by Awan and three fellow students over a 2006 Maclean’s magazine cover story, “The future belongs to Islam,” written by Mark Steyn. In 2007, the group of students, who believed the article portrayed Muslims unfairly, met with Maclean’s staff to ask the magazine to publish an article that offered a different view of their religion. They also requested Maclean’s make a donation to a charity working in race relations. Editor Ken Whyte refused, noting the magazine had already published numerous letters responding to the article.
Later, the students escalated their efforts, writing to Rogers Publishing, owner of Maclean’s, for redress. When that was rebuffed they took their complaints to the Ontario Human Rights Commission, while the Canadian Islamic Congress took up their cause with complaints to Canadian and B.C. human rights bodies.
Levant has frequently attacked human rights commissions as “kangaroo courts” that should be abolished.
In his coverage, Levant drew direct connections between Awan and the CIC’s controversial founder Mohamed Elmasry, who has said in media interviews that every Israeli adult is a legitimate "target.”

In a series of blog posts, headlined “Khurrun Awan is a serial liar,” and then, “Awan the liar, part 2,” “Awan the liar, part 3,” and so on, Levant charged that Awan lied repeatedly to the tribunal about demands he and his fellow students made to Maclean’s. Citing the request for a charitable donation, Levant charged that the group of students “tried to shake down” Maclean’s.
At trial, Mr. Levant’s lawyers argued his statements were fair comment. The judge accepted that defence for some of the blog posts, but rejected it for others.
“At trial, the defendant took little or no responsibility for the accuracy of the words complained of, routinely attempting to minimize or mischaracterize his own errors,” she wrote. “I find that the defendant’s dominant motive in these blog posts was ill will, and that his repeated failure to take even basic steps to check his facts showed a reckless disregard for the truth.”
She added: “It is also significant that the defendant is himself a lawyer. For most of the blogs at issue, he was purporting to report on a legal proceeding … [He] ought to have been aware of the serious ramifications of his words on the reputation of this law student. Yet, at trial, he repeatedly tried to minimize his mistakes and his lack of diligence.”

Awan said at trial that he believes Levant’s blog posts have made it difficult for him to find employment as a lawyer in Toronto. After articling in Toronto, he secured a job in Regina, where is currently working as a lawyer.
In a statement e-mailed to The Globe, Levant called the result “a shocking case of libel chill that should concern any Canadian who is worried about radical Islam, and the right to call out anti-Semitism in the public square.
“If this judgment stands, anyone who dares to challenge members of Muslim extremist groups on the basis of their affiliation with such groups is at risk of costly lawsuits – and all the member of the anti-Semitic group needs to do is to deny that they share the beliefs of their organizations that they work hard to promote, or claim they had no clue their anti-Semitic group was anti-Semitic.
He added: “It is a national gag order, which has the effect of silencing and punishing critics of anti-Semitism.”
Levant has set up a fundraising website to help pay his legal bills, which he estimates will be at least $30,000.

 

[OldBlackDog]

In case you cannot find your quote!

http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html

There is strong evidence that global sea level is now rising at an increased rate and will continue to rise during this century.
While studies show that sea levels changed little from AD 0 until 1900, sea levels began to climb in the 20th century.
The two major causes of global sea-level rise are thermal expansion caused by the warming of the oceans (since water expands as it warms) and the loss of land-based ice (such as glaciers and polar ice caps) due to increased melting.
Records and research show that sea level has been steadily rising at a rate of0.04 to 0.1 inches per year since 1900.
This rate may be increasing. Since 1992, new methods of satellite altimetry (the measurement of elevation or altitude) indicate a rate of rise of 0.12 inches per year.
This is a significantly larger rate than the sea-level rise averaged over the last several thousand years.

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/2014/11/29/2014-11-29-3/

Polar Bears on Thin Ice
Saturday, November 29, 2014 | Categories:
A. Derocher
courtesy A. Derocher
Listen: http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/2014/11/29/2014-11-29-3/#
Download: http://cbc.ca/quirks/media/2014-2015/qq-2014-11-29_03.mp3

We have known for many years that declining sea ice is having a negative impact on polar bears. Without ice cover, the bear's ability to hunt seals is restricted. But a couple of new studies by Dr. Andrew Derocher, a Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and his colleagues, have shown that the problem, over the past few years in one particular area, is much worse than they thought, and could become critical across the entire Arctic by the end of this century. In the southern Beaufort Sea region, the population fell from about 1500 to 900 bears over ten years, from 2000-2010. The second study showed that by 2100, polar bears across the Arctic may have to endure 2-to-5 ice-free months, if the current warming trend continues.

Related Links
Beaufort Sea paper in Ecological Applications http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/14-1129.1
CBC News article on Beaufort Sea bears http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north...ars-decline-in-health-numbers-study-1.2838193
U.S. Geological Survey release on Beaufort Sea paper http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=4055&from=rss#.VHeRbzHF-2p
Arctic Overview paper in PLoS One http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0113746
Toronto Star article http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2...ase_trajectory_because_of_climate_change.html
Washington Post article http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...-still-a-pretty-good-icon-for-global-warming/

 

[OldBlackDog]

You need to read this. It says a lot.



https://nofrakkingconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/tol_written_testimony_may2014.pdf

 

[OldBlackDog]

Taken from the report noted above.
Thought you might like to note that Richarx Tol stated this in the report.
I know how much a number of you have difficulty with things not acceptable to you. Global warming not happening for 17 + years seemed to be one.

It is an honour and pleasure to be here. My name is Richard Tol. I am a professor of economics at the University of Sussex and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. I am a research fellow at the Tinbergen Institute and CESifo. I am ranked among the Top 100 economists in the world by IDEAS/RePEc1 and among the 25 most cited climate researchers according to Google Scholar2.



The IPCC releases a major report every six years or so. That is not frequent enough to keep abreast of a fast-moving literature.
When preparations started for the Fifth Assessment Report, the world hadn’t warmed for 13 years. That is a bit odd, if the climate models are correct, but does not warrant a lot of attention. By the time the report was finished, it hadn’t warmed for 17 years. That is decidedly odd28, but hard to accommodate in a near-final draft that has been through three rounds of review. After the report was finalized, but before it was published, a number of papers appeared with hypotheses about the pause in warming.29 The Fifth Assessment

 

[OldBlackDog]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repo...-will-bounce-back-eventually/article21835650/

Pros and cons - as would be expected, 3x5. Pro - pay lees at the pump as individuals, and (hopefully) less in the grocery store (as an example) for transportation. Cons - Less $ in government coffers. Obviously and specifically for the operations in the tar-sands - the $/bbl affects the profitability of those operations - and at a certain point - they no longer make sense. You know this better than I do.

 

[OldBlackDog]

New paper finds strong evidence the Sun has controlled climate over the past 11,000 years, not CO2
A paper published today in Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics finds a "strong and stable correlation" between the millennial variations in sunspots and the temperature in Antarctica over the past 11,000 years. In stark contrast, the authors find no strong or stable correlation between temperature and CO2 over that same period.

The authors correlated reconstructed CO2 levels, sunspots, and temperatures from ice-core data from Vostok Antarctica and find
"We find that the variations of SSN [sunspot number] and T [temperature] have some common periodicities, such as the 208 year (yr), 521 yr, and ~1000 yr cycles. The correlations between SSN and T are strong for some intermittent periodicities. However, the wavelet analysis demonstrates that the relative phase relations between them usually do not hold stable except for the millennium-cycle component. The millennial variation of SSN leads that of T by 30–40 years, and the anti-phase relation between them keeps stable nearly over the whole 11,000 years of the past. As a contrast, the correlations between CO2 and T are neither strong nor stable."
Thus, the well known ~1000 year climate cycle responsible for the Holocene Climate Optimum 6000 to 4000 years ago, the Egyptian warm period ~4000 years ago, the Minoan warm period ~3000 years ago, the Roman warm period ~2000 years ago, the Medieval warm period ~1000 years ago, and the current warm period at present all roughly fall in this same 1000 year sequence of increased solar activity associated with warm periods.


More,


http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.ca/2014/11/new-paper-finds-strong-evidence-sun-has.html

 

[triplenickel]

Pros and cons - as would be expected, 3x5. Pro - pay lees at the pump as individuals, and (hopefully) less in the grocery store (as an example) for transportation. Cons - Less $ in government coffers. Obviously and specifically for the operations in the tar-sands - the $/bbl affects the profitability of those operations - and at a certain point - they no longer make sense. You know this better than I do.

I wonder if the pros will really be positive? Sleems pretty negative overall to me. Lower prices will lead to increased consumption, not just at the pump but in other areas like you say which will mean more vehicles both heavy and light on the road and more emissions all around. It will likely widen the gap with already uneconomic alternative energies, put a major halt on the national economy and drive the dollar down further. There's different theories on what it will do to interest rates but it's fairly clear what it will do to the cost of imported goods as the dollar drops. It could get pretty ugly, hopefully the producers will maintain base production and keep some things flowing to shore us up. Any bets on how long until there's a new terrorist group in Saudi arabia we need to get out of power through a regime change?

 

[triplenickel]

As entertaining as all of this back and forth is its nothing but fluff and something to be politicized and divisive. It's all irrelevant until we address the biggest issue facing the planet which is 7+ billion people and counting. No matter where co2 ends up in 50-100 years we'll have more people than this planet can support.

 

[GLG]

Falling oil price skewers Stephen Harper’s economic plan: Walkom

The PM’s economic strategy relies on an oil price high enough to cover the cost of extracting bitumen from the tar sands.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/...ers_stephen_harpers_economic_plan_walkom.html

By: Thomas Walkom National Affairs, Published on Fri Nov 28 2014

Oops. There go the tarsands.

The dramatic slide in oil prices has underscored the fragility of Stephen Harper’s entire resource-based approach to the economy.

For this government, Alberta’s oilsands were the key to Canada’s economic future.

Alberta heavy oil would be sold to the world at premium prices. Spin-offs would provide jobs for Canadians across the country.

It was a coherent vision. But it rested on one thin reed: an oil price high enough to cover the cost of extracting bitumen from the tarsands.

Now, with oil prices expected to remain low for the indefinite future, the entire project looks increasingly iffy.

That became glaringly obvious in the stock markets late this week as investors bailed out of energy companies.

The reasons for the oil price collapse are varied. China’s energy-reliant economy is slowing down. New shale oil production from the U.S. is creating a glut. The cartel known as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has been unwilling or unable to enforce high prices.

If prices follow their historical pattern, they won’t stay down forever. But no one knows whether this slide will last a few weeks, two years or a decade.

Which is the trouble with commodity prices in general and oil prices in particular: They are volatile and unpredictable.

Sensible countries try to lessen their dependence on volatile commodities. Canada, whose economy has been dominated by resource exports since the 16th century, spent much effort over the years trying to do break free from this dependence — usually by encouraging secondary manufacturing.

The aim was to diversify the economy so that offsetting forces were created. A fall in oil prices, for instance, might hurt Alberta’s petroleum sector. But the consequent cheap energy would aid Ontario manufacturers and the country could keep on an even keel.

For years, this was the unstated theory behind what was in effect a crude form of industrial strategy.

Much of the time, it more or less worked.

But to the Harper Conservatives, this kind of industrial strategy is anathema. It brings up images of grey bureaucrats in even greyer suits telling business what to do.

For the Harper Conservatives, the market is king. And if the market wants oil, then Canada will provide.

Manufacturing? Phooey. If the Chinese can manufacture toasters or ketchup more cheaply, better to buy from them, using the money derived from selling high-priced resources.

That was the theory. In the real world of politics, compromises had to be made.

Harper did join with U.S President Barack Obama to bail out General Motors and Chrysler. Ottawa continues to lure auto company investment with grants.

But at the same time, the Conservative government has signed free trade deals with South Korea and the European Union that, among other things, penalize Canadian auto manufacturers.

And while it likes to announce programs to encourage new kinds of manufacturing, it has little interest in following through.

As Toronto MP Peggy Nash points out, Ottawa — with much fanfare — announced a $200 million fund in 2013 to boost innovative manufacturing. But 18 months later, it has not approved a single project.

In fact, Harper has his own unspoken industrial policy. It can be summed up in a word: pipelines.

The Conservatives have used federal government power to override or repeal any kind of environmental regulation that might interfere with the export of oil, by pipeline, from the tarsands.

Harper wants pipelines from Alberta to reach the Pacific coast, the Gulf of Mexico and New Brunswick — all to transport oil that, if prices continue their slump, will be uneconomic to ship.

The fall in oil prices does, on its own, create some countervailing offsets. Low oil prices mean a low Canadian dollar; a low dollar benefits Canadian manufacturers exporting to the U.S.

But for this low dollar to work effectively there must be enough Canadian manufacturers willing to take advantage of it.

Thanks in part to globalization and in part to the actions of this particular government, there aren’t.

Instead, we are back in the resource trap. It’s as if we never left.

Thomas Walkom's column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

 

[triplenickel]

Not a huge fan of the man but he can only do so much with the cards dealt. The day Canadians are willing to work for Chinese wages or pay the premium for Canadian made goods the alternatives suggested in that article will likely work, until then here we sit. Right, wrong or otherwise we live in a capitalist society and as consumers drive the ship. Corporate welfare in the mfg sector in the east has been a failure, see the auto industry and Pratt Whitney for examples.

On a seperate note as a person fascinated by human behaviour I wonder if the Burnaby Mountain protests would be going on if KM was proposing a 100k bbl/day to 300k increase instead of the current tripling? No one sqwaked about the 300 that's been flowing for years. The mayor certainly had no issue with the revenue it created. Is he just politicizing the issue for his own agenda? Also the same people concerned/protesting ghg emissions will no doubt be burning more fuel and consuming more with lower prices, no doubt in my mind.

 

[agentaqua]

As entertaining as all of this back and forth is its nothing but fluff and something to be politicized and divisive. It's all irrelevant until we address the biggest issue facing the planet which is 7+ billion people and counting. No matter where co2 ends up in 50-100 years we'll have more people than this planet can support.

Absolutely a huge looming issue that most governments wish to avoid tackling. China tried it with limited success. Consumerism/capitalism absolutely depends upon expansion. It can't go on forever.

 

[triplenickel]

Absolutely a huge looming issue that most governments wish to avoid tackling. China tried it with limited success. Consumerism/capitalism absolutely depends upon expansion. It can't go on forever.

Oh man talk about political suicide! Gonna have to get creative on the food front. Listened to a cool segment on cbc this morning about a farm in Ontario raising crickets for human consumption as protein flour and roasted whole for eating as is. They say 2 lbs of food to get back 1 lb of edible crickets compared to 3 or 4 for chicken and like 6 for beef. Can't remember the exact numbers but it was significant. Got some honey mustard, some BBQ, and some morrocan coming to try! Can't wait to put cricket croutons on a salad for company.

 

[GLG]

Taken from the report noted above.
Thought you might like to note that Richarx Tol stated this in the report.
I know how much a number of you have difficulty with things not acceptable to you. Global warming not happening for 17 + years seemed to be one.

It is an honour and pleasure to be here. My name is Richard Tol. I am a professor of economics at the University of Sussex and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. I am a research fellow at the Tinbergen Institute and CESifo. I am ranked among the Top 100 economists in the world by IDEAS/RePEc1 and among the 25 most cited climate researchers according to Google Scholar2.



The IPCC releases a major report every six years or so. That is not frequent enough to keep abreast of a fast-moving literature.
When preparations started for the Fifth Assessment Report, the world hadn’t warmed for 13 years. That is a bit odd, if the climate models are correct, but does not warrant a lot of attention. By the time the report was finished, it hadn’t warmed for 17 years. That is decidedly odd28, but hard to accommodate in a near-final draft that has been through three rounds of review. After the report was finalized, but before it was published, a number of papers appeared with hypotheses about the pause in warming.29 The Fifth Assessment

That's odd..... What paw's are you referring to? The one on the right in red or the one on the left in blue. Do you understand what the colours mean? Do you think that all is well on the temperature of the globe? Do you not see a pattern that we should be concerned with?

 

[GLG]

New paper finds strong evidence the Sun has controlled climate over the past 11,000 years, not CO2
A paper published today in Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics finds a "strong and stable correlation" between the millennial variations in sunspots and the temperature in Antarctica over the past 11,000 years. In stark contrast, the authors find no strong or stable correlation between temperature and CO2 over that same period.

The authors correlated reconstructed CO2 levels, sunspots, and temperatures from ice-core data from Vostok Antarctica and find
"We find that the variations of SSN [sunspot number] and T [temperature] have some common periodicities, such as the 208 year (yr), 521 yr, and ~1000 yr cycles. The correlations between SSN and T are strong for some intermittent periodicities. However, the wavelet analysis demonstrates that the relative phase relations between them usually do not hold stable except for the millennium-cycle component. The millennial variation of SSN leads that of T by 30–40 years, and the anti-phase relation between them keeps stable nearly over the whole 11,000 years of the past. As a contrast, the correlations between CO2 and T are neither strong nor stable."
Thus, the well known ~1000 year climate cycle responsible for the Holocene Climate Optimum 6000 to 4000 years ago, the Egyptian warm period ~4000 years ago, the Minoan warm period ~3000 years ago, the Roman warm period ~2000 years ago, the Medieval warm period ~1000 years ago, and the current warm period at present all roughly fall in this same 1000 year sequence of increased solar activity associated with warm periods.


More,


http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.ca/2014/11/new-paper-finds-strong-evidence-sun-has.html

Typical stuff coming out from the denial side where they leave out a sentence to try to slant a science paper to their way of thinking. Why is that? Perhaps because they don't have two pennies to rub together in a logical argument.....
Here is the sentence they left out....

These results indicate that solar activity might have potential influences on the long-term change of Vostok's local climate during the past 11,000 years before modern industry.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682614002685

OBD you should check things like this as it makes you look bad when the truth comes out.
I would like to read the paper but it's behind a paywall. But I do find it troubling that you may now think that your side has the answer to global warming and the 40 year lag on sunspot activity. I suspect that your side will now ask the world to wait 40 years to see if your theory is correct......

[_Sf_UIQYc20]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Sf_UIQYc20#t=283

 

[GLG]

In case you cannot find your quote!

http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html

There is strong evidence that global sea level is now rising at an increased rate and will continue to rise during this century.
While studies show that sea levels changed little from AD 0 until 1900, sea levels began to climb in the 20th century.
The two major causes of global sea-level rise are thermal expansion caused by the warming of the oceans (since water expands as it warms) and the loss of land-based ice (such as glaciers and polar ice caps) due to increased melting.
Records and research show that sea level has been steadily rising at a rate of0.04 to 0.1 inches per year since 1900.
This rate may be increasing. Since 1992, new methods of satellite altimetry (the measurement of elevation or altitude) indicate a rate of rise of 0.12 inches per year.
This is a significantly larger rate than the sea-level rise averaged over the last several thousand years.

Perhaps you could tell us what the math adds up to for the global sea level in 100 years. Give us the math with your side and give us the math on my side. Let's see what you got..... You claim to know more then me so time to put up.

 

[OldBlackDog]

So, you are saying that you are smarter than this author?
You are arguing with this person?

That's odd..... What paw's are you referring to? The one on the right in red or the one on the left in blue. Do you understand what the colours mean? Do you think that all is well on the temperature of the globe? Do you not see a pattern that we should be concerned with?

 

[OldBlackDog]

Get rid of the words "may be ".

Perhaps you could tell us what the math adds up to for the global sea level in 100 years. Give us the math with your side and give us the math on my side. Let's see what you got..... You claim to know more then me so time to put up.

 

[agentaqua]

Oh man talk about political suicide! Gonna have to get creative on the food front. Listened to a cool segment on cbc this morning about a farm in Ontario raising crickets for human consumption as protein flour and roasted whole for eating as is. They say 2 lbs of food to get back 1 lb of edible crickets compared to 3 or 4 for chicken and like 6 for beef. Can't remember the exact numbers but it was significant. Got some honey mustard, some BBQ, and some morrocan coming to try! Can't wait to put cricket croutons on a salad for company.

I'd try it. Everyone seems to love Dungeness. They are also arthropods. Maybe crickets are tastier?