Climate: LNG in B.C. vs Alberta tarsands

[agentaqua]

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...-fossil-fuels-climate-change?CMP=share_btn_fb

Heirs to Rockefeller oil fortune divest from fossil fuels over climate change
Heirs to Standard Oil fortune join campaign that will withdraw a total of $50bn from fossil fuels, including from tar sands funds
US will not commit to climate change aid for poor nations

Peter O’Neill, head of the Rockefeller family and great-great-grandson of John D Rockefeller, along with Neva Rockefeller Goodwin (second from the right_, great-granddaughter of of John D. Rockefeller, and Stephen B Heintz, president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters
Suzanne Goldenberg in New York
@suzyji
Monday 22 September 2014 17.19 BST

The heirs to the fabled Rockefeller oil fortune withdrew their funds from fossil fuel investments on Monday, lending a symbolic boost to a $50bn divestment campaign ahead of a United Nations summit on climate change.

The former vice-president, Al Gore, will present the divestment commitments to world leaders, making the case that investments in oil and coal have an uncertain future.

With Monday’s announcement, more than 800 global investors – including foundations such as the Rockefeller Brothers, religious groups, healthcare organisations, cities and universities – have pledged to withdraw a total of $50bn from fossil fuel investments over the next five years.

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund controls about $860m in assets, said Beth Dorsey, the chief executive of the Wallace Global Fund and the Divest-Invest movement, which has led the divestment campaign. About 7% are invested in fossil fuels.

But the Rockefellers’ decision to cut their ties with oil lends the divestment campaign huge symbolic importance because of their family history. The divestment move also helps bring a campaign launched by scrappy activists on college campuses into the financial mainstream.

But for oil, there may not have been a Rockefeller fortune. John and William Rockefeller were the co-founders of the Standard Oil Company, which at the time operated the world’s biggest refineries, and overtime spawned Exxon, Amoco and Chevron.

Now, after a year of deliberations, the descendants of those original Rockefellers had decided the time had come to move away from oil.

“John D Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil, moved America out of whale oil and into petroleum,” Stephen Heintz, president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, said in a statement. “We are quite convinced that if he were alive today, as an astute businessman looking out to the future, he would be moving out of fossil fuels and investing in clean, renewable energy.”

In addition to the Rockefellers, the World Council of Churches, which represents some 590 million people in 150 countries – also pulled its investments from fossil fuels on Monday. The move represented a turning point for a movement which began by demanding that universities purge their financial holdings of ties to the fossil fuel industry.

About 30 cities have also chosen to divest, including Santa Monica and Seattle.

“When you have the Rockefellers and the World Council of Churches and institutions with global reach coming together and divesting, then this movement which began just three short years ago has really reached a significant turning point,” Dorsey said.

In that time, supporters such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu have framed divestment from fossil fuels as a moral imperative – like the anti-apartheid movement of a generation ago.

“Climate change is the human rights challenge of our time. We can no longer continue feeding our addiction to fossil fuels as if there is no tomorrow, for there will be no tomorrow,” Tutu said in a video address.

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund over the years has been a big supporter of environmental causes, including to campaign groups opposed to fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline, which made for an awkward fit at times with its continued investment in oil and gas. The family plans to first divest from tar sands commitments.

A number of universities have also started to cut their ties with fossil fuel – with Stanford University dropping coal holdings from its $18bn endowment.

But divestment remains a hard sell. The University of California system said last week it would continue to hold on to fossil fuels. Harvard University has also resisted pressure from faculty and students to divest – although Yale has said it will look into whether renewable energy offers a better bet in the long run.

“In the last great divestment campaign, Harvard said no before it said yes. I think it’s just a matter of time,” Dorsey said. “Unlike with the anti-apartheid movement, this is not just an ethical issue. There is a powerful financial reason as well.”

 

[Aces]

193 pages

Anyone changed their minds yet?

 

[agentaqua]

...How the Climate System Works (for Dummies)...

How about "Denial for Dummies", OBD?? Maybe all the climate change deniers need an intervention: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/interventions-breaking-through-denial-and-fear.html

Intervention principles
There are ten general principles that influence the decision to intervene and that guide the intervention process. These are:

Your behavior is causing significant damage in your life.
Denial is preventing you from fully appreciating the damage the addiction is doing to you and your life.
You're unlikely to seek help on your own.
The people involved with you can change the environment by changing the enabling system — making it more likely that you will seek help.
The sense of genuine concern and understanding conveyed by the interventionist is one of the most important factors in influencing you to seek help.
Anger and punitive measures have no place in interventions, because they increase your defenses, making it less likely you'll seek help.
The consequences for not going into treatment should not be designed to punish but rather to protect your health and well being.
You require an initial period of intensive treatment such as a 28-day residential program or an intensive outpatient program to address your denial.
The intervention may be useful even if you aren't likely to go to treatment.
The intervention isn't a confrontation. Rather, it is a well-organized expression of genuine concern for you, given a chronic and serious addiction problem.

 

[agentaqua]

193 pages Anyone changed their minds yet?

Doubt it. I have seen some interesting stuff posted here though - maybe not 193 pages worth...

 

[GLG]

OBD .... I'm putting this day on my calender......
You posted some real science.
Read it and read it again, research what this all means.
If you can't do that then just use this as the take away

“Anything that changes the balance between energy input and energy output of the Earth has the potential to change its temperature.” January 23rd, 2015 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2015/01/how-the-climate-system-works-for-dummies/#comments

Hint.... If you read the comments on the website disregard the post by Planetary_Physics, he clearly does not know what he is talking about. He may use 50 cent words but they are not worth 2 cents.

 

[GLG]

193 pages

Anyone changed their minds yet?

LOL....
I think there is some life left in this dead horse yet...
by the by change your profile to display max post per page that way you only see 49 pages....

 

[OldBlackDog]

The real vote!
Jim Inhofe flips the script on Democratic climate-change-is-a-hoax vote

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) (Photo by Andrew Harnik for The Washington Post)
This post has been updated.

The United States Senate voted Wednesday to agree that climate change "is real and not a hoax." That was it, the full extent of the amendment to the Senate's slow-moving Keystone XL pipeline bill. Final tally: 98 to 1.

This was one of two traps set up by Democrats to get their opponents on the record as disputing the authenticity of human-caused global warming, a phenomenon nearly universally accepted by the scientific community. But it didn't go as expected.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) co-sponsored the amendment with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who introduced it. Inhofe can claim credit as a primary inspiration for the amendment, having literally written a book called, "The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future." But Inhofe joined Whitehouse and urged its passage.

He was up to something. On Twitter, beforehand:

When offered the chance to speak on the amendment, Inhofe -- did we detect a twinkle in his eye? -- explained his unexpected argument. The climate changes all the time, he said, citing both scientific and "Biblical evidence." There was a hoax: the idea that man was responsible. Such a position was "arrogant," in his formulation, the idea that people could affect the mechanisms that controlled the globe. With that distinction drawn -- the climate changes, and that change isn't a hoax, even if the role of humans is -- the vote was held. Only Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) voted 'no.'

It was a nifty, if insincere, bit of politics. There's no question that a vote against a flat statement that climate change is real could have been problematic for candidates down the road -- especially for those various Republican senators quietly preparing for the big election in 2016. With Inhofe's re-framing the question, the Democrats, trying to engineer a gotcha moment, ended up empty-handed on the vote, with neither the satisfaction of nailing down opposition to scientific consensus and without a point of leverage for future discussions of addressing the warming planet.

Update: Two later votes on amendments linking humans to climate change were rejected. One was introduced by Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), who ended up voting against it. A vote to end a filibuster on that amendment failed 59 to 40. Another, from Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), said that humans were "significantly responsible" for climate change. It failed to achieve cloture as well, 50-49, after Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) argued that it placed too much emphasis on human causes. Several Republicans supported it.

How will these votes come to bear on future elections? In every case, senators can say they supported the idea that climate change is real, which would blunt their votes on the other amendments. Well, in almost every case: Mississippi's Wicker can't say that, but it seems unlikely to hurt him.

[h=1]Senate votes that climate change is real[/h]
The Senate on Wednesday voted 98-1 in favor of a an amendment stating that "climate change is real and is not a hoax."
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/230316-senate-votes-98-1-that-climate-change-is-real

The provision offered by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) to put Republicans on record about climate change ahead of the 2016 election passed with near unanimous support, with only Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the chairman of the campaign committee for Senate Republicans, voting "no."
In a surprise, one of the Senate's staunchest climate change skeptics, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), voted in favor of the amendment. But he made clear he doesn't believe humans are the primary driver of climate change.

The amendment will now be attached to legislation that would approve the $8 billion Keystone XL oil pipeline — a project that environmentalists vigorously oppose.

Yup just caught up to the science from 1995.... LOL

 

[OldBlackDog]

Look, they got agenda right.

 

[OldBlackDog]

How about "Denial for Dummies", OBD?? Maybe all the climate change deniers need an intervention: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/interventions-breaking-through-denial-and-fear.html

Intervention principles
There are ten general principles that influence the decision to intervene and that guide the intervention process. These are:

Your behavior is causing significant damage in your life.
Denial is preventing you from fully appreciating the damage the addiction is doing to you and your life.
You're unlikely to seek help on your own.
The people involved with you can change the environment by changing the enabling system — making it more likely that you will seek help.
The sense of genuine concern and understanding conveyed by the interventionist is one of the most important factors in influencing you to seek help.
Anger and punitive measures have no place in interventions, because they increase your defenses, making it less likely you'll seek help.
The consequences for not going into treatment should not be designed to punish but rather to protect your health and well being.
You require an initial period of intensive treatment such as a 28-day residential program or an intensive outpatient program to address your denial.
The intervention may be useful even if you aren't likely to go to treatment.
The intervention isn't a confrontation. Rather, it is a well-organized expression of genuine concern for you, given a chronic and serious addiction problem.

I see you fit right in here.

 

[GLG]

Here is one for you OBD and your crack team of "i'm not a scientists"

[KPsJBNKEql0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPsJBNKEql0

 

[GLG]

Nature has a way of telling OBD he is full of nonsense. Typical isn't it.
OBD why don't you tell the members here why this is happening?

[FDRnH48LvhQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDRnH48LvhQ

 

[GLG]

OBD can you explain this?
[cjuGCJJUGsg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjuGCJJUGsg

 

[agentaqua]

It's apparent to me, OBD - and possibly to the rest of the readership - that you really don't want to debate anything. I'm guessing it is because of rather large possibility that you might be proved wrong. That's really unfortunate - as the body of knowledge - and science - moves along by much open debate - and where it exists - logic. Religion, and theology on the other hand - only require blind belief and a good propaganda machine. Throw-in a good dose of fear - and you have your converts. It's too bad that the climate deniers have been able to - in their world - move the debate from science to religion. That is again unfortunate - given that we all occupy the same spaceship together - a fact never seemly acknowledged by the rich white guys pushing this sh*t. Nero apparently fiddled while Rome burned. That fiddle has devolved into Inhofe playing the Koch Brothers tunes. Dance to that tune if you want to OBD. New religions are always looking for new converts. Don't expect others not to notice that tune is playing, though.

 

[GLG]

[KkBqYiuE5fk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkBqYiuE5fk#t=143

Published on Dec 9, 2014
When the GOP takes control of the U.S. Senate, Oklahoma's James Inhofe— a global warming denier—becomes chair of the Environment Committee.

With 24/7 reporting, TIME puts the global news of the day into context—shaping the conversation and illuminating the common ground in its own distinct style. Analytical and insightful, lively and engaging, TIME tells the larger story about the world we live in.
Check in daily to watch the latest videos from TIME’S acclaimed writers, producers and editors.

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/e...xas-fracking-sites-alarms-residents-1.2927220
'Earthquake swarm' near Texas fracking sites alarms residents
Seismologist acknowledges cluster of earthquakes is unusual

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.onearth.org/earthwire/climate-change-on-instagram
Thanks to Instagram, photographers are showing us what climate change looks like across the globe.

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...other-delay-for-bc-pipelines/article22514587/
Falling oil prices pose another delay for B.C. pipelines
MIKE HAGER
VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail
Published Sunday, Jan. 18 2015, 9:19 PM EST
Last updated Sunday, Jan. 18 2015, 10:14 PM EST

Federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver has maintained that “the strategic need is still there” for both the Northern Gateway and Trans Mountain pipelines to go through the

Werner Antweiler, an energy economics professor at the University of B.C.’s Sauder School of Business, said the gap of “almost $30” a barrel that existed a few years ago between “hugely underpriced” North American oil and the global supply meant manufacturers urgently wanted the two B.C. pipelines as a way to get oil sands bitumen to Asian markets. Now, that gap has “evaporated” and doesn’t look set to return, he added.

“This was the big calculation a few years ago [that] ‘we need to have these pipelines because there is this big gap and now we’re losing all these arbitrage benefits,’” Mr. Antweiler said. “[Now] it’s not quite as compelling, getting to the foreign markets, as maybe getting to some of the closer markets [within North America].”

That means TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline proposal is likely the closest to getting built, as it would send western oil east to be refined or exported, Mr. Antweiler said.

Peter Tertzakian, chief energy economist with Calgary’s ARC Financial Corp., said an ongoing price war means there is a potential for the cost of oil to remain low for several months. If that continues over the course of the year, he said companies could end up investing less in oil sands expansion, meaning less oil available for pipelines built in the future.

“If we had these pipelines today then the industry would be in a lot better shape, because they would be selling and competing in the world market without having to go through the United States,” Mr. Tertzakian said.

However, Mark Jaccard, an energy economist at Simon Fraser University and climate activist, said companies plan such projects on a much longer timeline, even if price crashes shock the public, the media and sometimes politicians.

“What you should look at are fundamentals: What is the cost of production; how much supply is potentially out there; how fast would it come online; what’s the rate of economic growth?” Mr. Jaccard said. “So there are a whole bunch of uncertainty factors and I don’t think we have certainty that the price of oil will stay low for a long time.”

The National Energy Board is now reviewing Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain proposal, which is still economically viable and slated to go into operation in 2018 if approved, according to senior business development director Norm Rinne.

“The Trans Mountain Expansion Project has binding, long-term contracts with 13 customers in the Canadian oil producing and marketing business,” Mr. Rinne said in an e-mailed statement. “Fluctuations in North American and world oil prices are normal, expected and factored into the considerations by our customers when signing-on for the project.”

Ivan Giesbrecht, head spokesman for the Northern Gateway project, said the company still plans to begin construction of the $7.9-billion project in 2016, with the pipeline transporting up to 525,000 barrels a day of oil sands-derived crude to a new supertanker port at Kitimat by late 2019.

“We believe that accessing international energy markets is as important as ever for Canada,” Mr. Giesbrecht said in an e-mail. “Getting the best possible return for our resources is important – even with the current fluctuations in market prices.

In the meantime, the company says it is working to meet the National Energy Board’s 209 conditions for the project, as well as preparing for a number of legal challenges, the majority of which have been filed by First Nations in the Federal Court of Appeal. One of these challenges will be heard by the B.C. Supreme Court, but the Federal Court of Appeal has consolidated all the other applications into one proceeding, according to Mr. Giesbrecht.

“The Federal Court of Appeal has established a schedule for these applications, which will likely result in these matters being heard by the end of this year, with a decision by approximately the first quarter of 2016,” Mr. Giesbrecht wrote in the e-mail.

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/e...ellowstone-river-contaminates-drinking-water/

Posted by R.A. Becker on Fri, 23 Jan 2015
Massive Oil Spill in Yellowstone River Contaminates Drinking Water

A ruptured oil pipeline leaked up to 40,000 gallons of crude into the Yellowstone River in Montana last Saturday, contaminating the drinking water for the nearby town of Glendive.

Saturday’s spill adds to a history of pipeline malfunctions—in 2011, the Exxon Silvertip Pipeline spilled 63,000 gallons of oil into the Yellowstone River two and a half hours outside of Yellowstone National Park. This newest disaster comes less than two weeks after the Senate voted 63–32 to advance the bill that would approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which would cross over 1,700 bodies of water in addition to the now oil-slicked Yellowstone River.

CROP bridger-pipeline-river-overview-1-19-2015
Crude oil poured from a ruptured pipeline into the icy Yellowstone River in Montana.

Here’s Zahra Hirji, reporting for InsideClimate News:

While state and local officials won’t say how long they expect the cleanup to last, Glendive Mayor Jerry Jimison predicts it will be a while.

Jimison said the river’s ice can linger until as late as mid-March. Until all the ice is gone, he said, “I don’t think [the response team] is going to have much success in cleaning up.”

The town of Glendive began detecting the contaminant benzene in its drinking water on Monday, two days after the spill. According to Elizabeth Douglass, also reporting for Inside Climate News, the pipeline has had a history of trouble, including weak welds made in the 1950s. The segment under the river had been replaced in the 1960s or 1970s, Douglass reports, but Bridger Pipeline, which owns the pipeline, doesn’t know how or with what type of pipe it was replaced.

Montana’s government website urges residents “not to use the water for culinary purposes.” The EPA has confirmed Jimison’s assessment of the cleanup process, stating that identifying and collecting the oil “has been challenging due to extensive ice cover in the river at and below the spill location.”

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Ki...lans+secret/10740211/story.html#ixzz3PlGi4wi3

Kinder Morgan wins battle to keep emergency plans secret

B.C. had called for full disclosure of Trans Mountain pipeline spill preparedness

Kinder Morgan wins battle to keep emergency plans secret

The tank farm on Burnaby Mountain at the terminus of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline.

Photograph by: John Preissl , Special to The Sun

VANCOUVER -- The full details of Kinder Morgan’s emergency management plans for the Trans Mountain pipeline will remain secret.

The National Energy Board (NEB) has rejected a demand from the B.C. government for Kinder Morgan to fully disclose the plans.

The province had argued they needed to see the entire plan to determine if the company could adequately respond to a spill for its proposed $6.5-billion expansion of the pipeline.

The expansion project will twin the pipeline and triple capacity to open access to new Asian markets for bitumen from the Alberta oilsands.

Several municipalities and regional districts — including Vancouver, Burnaby and Abbotsford — supported the province’s demand. It was also supported by First Nations in B.C. and Washington State and environmental and community groups.

Municipalities have also cited concerns about railways not releasing information about their dangerous goods routes because it prevents citizens from knowing whether oil and other petroleum products are passing by their homes.

The B.C. government had noted that the emergency plan information they sought was available for the section of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline in Washington State, through the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

But Kinder Morgan successfully argued that more than 70 sections of its plan should be held back because of personal, commercial and security reasons.

The company noted that since its pipelines are part of Canada’s critical infrastructure “it is not appropriate to file security sensitive information about facility operations and countermeasures.”

The 30 sections of the plan held back for security reasons included: remote emergency shutdowns and staffing for the Westbridge Marine Terminal, valve locations on the Trans Mountain pipeline and evacuation zone maps for its terminals and tank farms.

In its ruling posted Friday, the NEB noted Kinder Morgan had provided “somewhat limited justification” for holding back elements of its emergency plan, but ruled that “sufficient information has been filed.”

The NEB also noted the existing emergency plans would be modified for the new twinned line, which would require consultation with “affected and potentially affected parties.”

B.C. Ministry of Environment officials said Sunday that Kinder Morgan has committed to consult with the province on its emergency management plan for the expanded pipeline.

NDP environment critic Spencer Chandra Herbert said the ruling bolsters the case for the province pulling out of the NEB-led review process and holding its own environmental assessment.

Herbert said he doesn’t see how Kinder Morgan can argue it shouldn’t have to reveal its emergency plans for the existing line. “It doesn’t breed confidence,” he said.

In a written statement, Kinder Morgan official Michael Davies said the emergency plan is a series of detailed documents intended for first responders, local agencies and authorities involved in responding to an emergency and is not designed for public consumption.

He said while a summary has been available for many months, the company is committed to “further communication on how pipeline communities are prepared to respond to an emergency.”

The B.C. Liberal government has adopted an ambivalent stance to pipelines that propose to carry crude from Alberta to the coast for export to Asia.Under Premier Christy Clark, the province has said export oil pipeline projects must meet five conditions, which include a world-leading spill preparedness and cleanup system.

In 2013, Clark’s government formally rejected Enbridge’s $7.9-billion Northern Gateway Project, saying the NEB had not properly addressed its environmental concerns.

One of the province’s concerns was that Enbridge had presented little evidence on how it would respond to a spill.

But the province is also part of a working group with Alberta on how to get oil to the coast for export to Asia.

In presenting its concerns to the NEB on the Kinder Morgan pipeline, the province said history has shown the possibility of a spill originating from Trans Mountain’s facilities is very real. “The potential for devastating effects on the environment, human health, and local economies is irrefutable,” said the province.

There have been several spills on the Trans Mountain pipeline in the past decade, including a 2007 spill that released about 1,500 barrels of oil in the midst of Burnaby houses. About 440 barrels flowed into the Burrard Inlet.

ghoekstra@vancouversun.com

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Ki...lans+secret/10740211/story.html#ixzz3PnfOwDLQ

 

[OldBlackDog]

It's apparent to me, OBD - and possibly to the rest of the readership - that you really don't want to debate anything. I'm guessing it is because of rather large possibility that you might be proved wrong. That's really unfortunate - as the body of knowledge - and science - moves along by much open debate - and where it exists - logic. Religion, and theology on the other hand - only require blind belief and a good propaganda machine. Throw-in a good dose of fear - and you have your converts. It's too bad that the climate deniers have been able to - in their world - move the debate from science to religion. That is again unfortunate - given that we all occupy the same spaceship together - a fact never seemly acknowledged by the rich white guys pushing this sh*t. Nero apparently fiddled while Rome burned. That fiddle has devolved into Inhofe playing the Koch Brothers tunes. Dance to that tune if you want to OBD. New religions are always looking for new converts. Don't expect others not to notice that tune is playing, though.

Just using the same stuff on you that you like to use. Sure has become easier now as more people are catching on.
I am debating, you just do not like my way of doing it as it does not fit with what you want.
There are no rules here as you guys have shown. You have shown that you do not use peer reviewed stuff. You use newspapers that work for you. You use scientists that work for you.Yet you do not like it when i do.
This cartoon explains your side perfectly.