Climate: LNG in B.C. vs Alberta tarsands

[Foxsea]

Climate attacks and smears
Because they lack the crucial evidence, they rely on attacks and smears.

Just facts:
The largest, most-consistent money fueling the climate denial movement are a number of well-funded conservative foundations built with so-called "dark money," or concealed donations, according to an analysis released Friday afternoon.

The study, by Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert Brulle, is the first academic effort to probe the organizational underpinnings and funding behind the climate denial movement.

It found that the amount of money flowing through third-party, pass-through foundations like DonorsTrust and Donors Capital, whose funding cannot be traced, has risen dramatically over the past five years.

In all, 140 foundations funneled $558 million to almost 100 climate denial organizations from 2003 to 2010.

Meanwhile the traceable cash flow from more traditional sources, such as Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, has disappeared.

The study was published Friday in the journal Climatic Change.

"The climate change countermovement has had a real political and ecological impact on the failure of the world to act on global warming," Brulle said in a statement. "Like a play on Broadway, the countermovement has stars in the spotlight – often prominent contrarian scientists or conservative politicians – but behind the stars is an organizational structure of directors, script writers and producers."

"If you want to understand what's driving this movement, you have to look at what's going on behind the scenes."

Consistent funders
To uncover that, Brulle developed a list of 118 influential climate denial organizations in the United States. He then coded data on philanthropic funding for each organization, combining information from the Foundation Center, a database of global philanthropy, with financial data submitted by organizations to the Internal Revenue Service.

According to Brulle, the largest and most consistent funders where a number of conservative foundations promoting "ultra-free-market ideas" in many realms, among them the Searle Freedom Trust, the John Williams Pope Foundation, the Howard Charitable Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation.

Another key finding: From 2003 to 2007, Koch Affiliated Foundations and the ExxonMobil Foundation were "heavily involved" in funding climate change denial efforts. But Exxon hasn't made a publically traceable contribution since 2008, and Koch's efforts dramatically declined, Brulle said.

Coinciding with a decline in traceable funding, Brulle found a dramatic rise in the cash flowing to denial organizations from DonorsTrust, a donor-directed foundation whose funders cannot be traced. This one foundation, the assessment found, now accounts for 25 percent of all traceable foundation funding used by organizations promoting the systematic denial of climate change.

Jeffrey Zysik, chief financial officer for DonorsTrust, said in an email that neither DonorsTrust nor Donors Capital Fund "take positions with respect to any issue advocated by its grantees."

"As with all donor-advised fund programs, grant recommendations are received from account holders," he said. "DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund ensure that recommended grantees are IRS-approved public charities and also require that the grantee charities do not rely on significant amounts of revenue from government sources. DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund do not otherwise drive the selection of grantees, nor conduct in-depth analyses of projects or grantees unless an account holder specifically requests that service."

Matter of democracy
In the end, Brulle concluded public records identify only a fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars supporting climate denial efforts. Some 75 percent of the income of those organizations, he said, comes via unidentifiable sources.

And for Brulle, that's a matter of democracy. "Without a free flow of accurate information, democratic politics and government accountability become impossible," he said. "Money amplifies certain voices above others and, in effect, gives them a megaphone in the public square."

Powerful funders, he added, are supporting the campaign to deny scientific findings about global warming and raise doubts about the "roots and remedies" of a threat on which the science is clear.
-Scientific American 2013

 

[Foxsea]

Follow the money...

Our climate work is funded mainly out of family savings, with some help from donations by readers of Joanne’s blog.

There are no conflicts of interest to declare. In particular we have no investments in fossil fuels, shorts on renewables, or any investments in the energy sector. There are no government grants or salaries to declare. (Unlike many supporters of the carbon dioxide theory we are not funded by its prime beneficiary, Big-Government.) We have received modest donations, occasional speaking fees, and fees for writing articles, but no other income from climate activities.

We are accused of being variously funded by Big-Oil, Big-Energy, Big-Coal, Gina Rinehart, Ron Manners, the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (AMEC), or the Galileo Movement. We have never received any money from any of these sources.

—it’s just because they want to shut us up and discredit us???
© Science Speak 2014

Follow the money: see image revealing funding sources for the deniers:
http://cdn.phys.org/newman/gfx/news/hires/2013/uyfvgytd.png
View attachment 14980
The trusts and foundations identified are affiliated with Big Oil, Big Energy, Big Coal and Big Mining - trusts are a ruse to disguise the sources of the funding for climate change deniers - "dark money."

Jimmy Carter has criticised the Koch brothers for distorting the climate change debate through multi-million dollar donations to sceptic organisations.

Speaking in Paris , the former US president said that there was an “unpleasantly successful” campaign to undermine the science on global warming.

This is backed by the donations of the country’s wealthiest, he said, including the fossil fuel magnate Koch brothers, whose net worth was recently valued at over US$ 100billion.

“The Koch brothers are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into every political campaign to support candidates that will support their position,” said Carter.

The Koch brothers donated over US$ 67million to think-tanks and organisations working on anti-climate agendas between 1997 and 2011.

This included $55,000 to the Heartland Institute and $5,760,781 to the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, through which they persuaded over 400 politicians to pledge to resist climate change legislation.

Legal challenges

A recent decision by the US Supreme Court to remove caps on the amount of money that individuals can funnel to political candidates and parties means that such activities are now “uncontrollable”, said Carter.

He said that the Court’s 2 April ruling, which removed a US$ 46,200 cap on the overall donations an individual may make to candidates, was “unfortunate”.

The decision followed from another 2010 ruling to remove the cap on electoral spending by corporations. In both cases, the cap was removed on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment’s right to free speech.

Carter said that the Supreme Court’s rulings had resulted in some “very successful” campaigns to undermine the science of climate change, and that the vast amount of money available had enabled vested interests to influence both politicians and the general public.
- See more at: http://www.rtcc.org/2014/04/23/cart...-funding-climate-denial/#sthash.O1HUZmwX.dpuf

 

[OldBlackDog]

For the first time, the numbers from government documents have been compiled in one place. It’s time to start talking of “Monopolistic Science”. It’s time to expose the lie that those who claim “to save the planet” are the underdogs. And it’s time to get serious about auditing science, especially when it comes to pronouncements that are used to justify giant government programs and massive movements of money. Who audits the IPCC?

 

[OldBlackDog]

The US government has provided over $79 billion since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, foreign aid, and tax breaks.
Despite the billions: “audits” of the science are left to unpaid volunteers. A dedicated but largely uncoordinated grassroots movement of scientists has sprung up around the globe to test the integrity of the theory and compete with a well funded highly organized climate monopoly. They have exposed major errors.
Carbon trading worldwide reached $126 billion in 2008. Banks are calling for more carbon-trading. And experts are predicting the carbon market will reach $2 – $10 trillion making carbon the largest single commodity traded.
Meanwhile in a distracting sideshow, Exxon-Mobil Corp is repeatedly attacked for paying a grand total of $23 million to skeptics—less than a thousandth of what the US government has put in, and less than one five-thousandth of the value of carbon trading in just the single year of 2008.
The large expenditure in search of a connection between carbon and climate creates enormous momentum and a powerful set of vested interests. By pouring so much money into one theory, have we inadvertently created a self-fulfilling prophesy instead of an unbiased investigation?

 

[OldBlackDog]

The revealed truth is that of the sixteen choices given to people regarding what they think are the important issues in their lives, climate change is dead last. Not only that, but in every sub-category, by age, by sex, by education, by country grouping, it’s right down at the bottom of the list. NOBODY thinks it’s important.

Now, people are always saying how the US is some kind of outlier in this regard, because polls in the US always put climate change down at the bottom, whereas polls in Europe generally rate it somewhat higher. But this is a global poll, with people chiming in from all over the planet. The top fifteen countries, in order of the number of people voting, were Mexico, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Philippines, Thailand, Cameroon, United States, Ghana, Rwanda, Brazil, Jordan, and Morocco ...so this appears to be truly representative of the world, which is mostly non-industrialized nations.

So the next time someone tries to claim that climate change is “the most important challenge facing the world”....point them to the website of the study, and gently inform them that the rest of the world doesn’t buy that kind of alarmist hogwash for one minute. People are not as stupid as their leaders think, folks know what’s important and what’s trivial in their lives, and trying to control.

 

[Foxsea]

.
The large expenditure in search of a connection between carbon and climate creates enormous momentum and a powerful set of vested interests. By pouring so much money into one theory, have we inadvertently created a self-fulfilling prophesy instead of an unbiased investigation?

What is a fossil fuel subsidy?

A fossil fuel subsidy is any government action that lowers the cost of fossil fuel energy production, raises the price received by energy producers or lowers the price paid by energy consumers. There are a lot of activities under this simple definition—tax breaks and giveaways, but also loans at favorable rates, price controls, purchase requirements and a whole lot of other things.

How much money does the U.S. government provide to support the oil, gas and coal industries?

In the United States, credible estimates of annual fossil fuel subsidies range from $10 billion to $52 billion annually yet these don’t even include costs borne by taxpayers related to the climate, local environmental, and health impacts of the fossil fuel industry.


While Canada slashes budgets for research, education and public broadcasting, there is one part of our economy that enjoys remarkable support from the Canadian taxpayer: the energy sector.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that energy subsidies in Canada top an incredible $34 billion each year in direct support to producers and uncollected tax on externalized costs.

These figures are found in the appendix of a major report released last year estimating global energy subsidies at almost $2 trillion. The report estimated that eliminating the subsidies would reduce global carbon emissions by 13 per cent. The stunning statistics specific to this country remain almost completely unreported in Canadian media.

 

[OldBlackDog]

UN climate change talks have been saved from the brink of collapse by a “weak” agreement that could let countries dodge setting clear targets to cut their emissions.

Negotiations in the Peruvian capital Lima dragged on to the early hours of Sunday morning – a day and a half after their scheduled close - amid deep disagreements between rich and poor nations over the steps they should take to tackle global warming.

The divisions had threatened to derail the talks altogether but eventually resulted in a “bare minimum” deal, thrashed out by delegates who had barely slept in three days, that left many key disputes unresolved.

The Lima deal is intended to make countries issue national pledges next year outlining the action they will take to cut their carbon emissions. The pledges are then supposed to form the basis of a binding deal at talks in Paris next year to avert dangerous levels of global warming.

Rich nations including the USA and EU members had pushed for all countries to be bound by strict rules to ensure that their pledges gave clear and measurable data – akin to the UK’s Climate Change Act.

But after objections from developing nations the eventual text was watered down so the rules are voluntary. “It’s totally up to you now whether you provide that information or not,” Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists said. “It’s the bare minimum we needed to come out of here with; it’s not what we hoped for.”

Samantha Smith, of environmental group WWF, said the rules had gone from "weak to weaker to weakest".

Ed Davey, the energy and climate change secretary, insisted he was “completely relaxed” about the watered down rules, claiming that countries would have to provide the information anyway due to “political pressure”. He denied that the UK would be left going green further and faster than its neighbours, arguing some other European nations had already gone further.

But even if detailed pledges are forthcoming Mr Davey acknowledged they would fall well short of the level necessary to avert dangerous levels of global warming, of 2C above pre-industrial levels.

There would be “a gap between what the world is offering and what the science says we need to do,” he said.

Experts warned that the scale of divisions laid bare at Lima did not bode well for the chances of securing a strong and binding global deal in Paris.

Jonathan Grant, sustainability and climate change director at PwC, said the “trench warfare” mentality between different factions seen in Lima could result in the talks “falling off the cliff in Paris”.

A long list of fundamental issues remain to be resolved over the next year, including the legal status of any Paris deal and demands from poor countries for more cash from rich nations to help them to help poorer nations cut emissions and cope with the effects of global warming.

Rich countries have previously promised a vague goal of “mobilising” $100bn of “climate finance” a year for poor nations by 2020 but the concepts are ill-defined, leading to wrangling as poor countries say their wealthier neighbours have not done enough.

“The biggest thing that is really, really unresolved is the money,” said Michael Jacobs, visiting professor at the LSE’s Grantham climate research institute.

“The developed countries have got to find some way of showing they can provide the $100bn they promised, and at least some financial contribution post-2020. This is hard: this is a core demand of the developing countries but the hardest things for the developed countries, both because they don’t feel they have got so much money but also because it’s hard to budget ahead.”

Mr Davey admitted that the talks in Paris were likely to be "even more difficult than Lima" but said he remained confident of a deal. “I’m very excited by the prospects for a deal next year. It will be tough but for the first time, I think ever, the world can contemplate a global deal applicable to all.”

 

[OldBlackDog]

http://judithcurry.com/2014/12/15/will-a-return-of-rising-temperatures-validate-the-climate-models/


Biosketch. Donald Morton has a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from Princeton, and served as the Director General of the Herzberg Institute for Astrophysics of the National Research Council of Canada. His web page with cv and list of publications is found here [link]. During more than 60 years, his research has followed a variety of topics including spectroscopic binaries, stellar structure, mass transfer in binaries, stellar atmospheres, the interstellar medium, UV spectra from space, QSO spectra, instrumentation for space and ground-based telescopes, observatory management, and the compilation of atomic and molecular data. Now as a researcher emeritus his current interests are theoretical atomic physics, solar physics and astronomical contributions to climate change.

 

[GLG]

One wonders at the morals of people

I see you have been a busy beaver while I have been gone. These post's of yours have been a topic of decisions over beers the last couple of days. Most wonder why I even bother with you any more. Let's just say.... I have my reasons. Now for one of your latest nonsense posts...... Morals... is this what your team thinks? That my side has no morals..... May i point out what my morals are.... A proverb sum's it up....

Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parent, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. Ancient Indian Proverb

Here is what I think sums your team:

We have not inherited the earth from our ancestors, we are stealing it from our children.....

I see you didn't bother to research the flooding in Courtenay or perhaps you did and did not like the results you found. Due let us know which one.

 

[OldBlackDog]

China’s CO2 Emissions To Double By 2030
Posted on December 15, 2014 by stevengoddard
President Obama made an illegal “historic deal” which allows China to increase their CO2 emissions until 2030. At that time, their CO2 emissions will be double their current value, and more than five times higher than the US.

 

[OldBlackDog]

Artic Summers ICE - FREE by 2013.

 

[OldBlackDog]

Greenland Breaks Record For One Day Ice Mass Gain
Posted on December 14, 2014
The Greenland ice sheet has gained record amounts of ice this season (300 billion tons) with a record one day accumulation of 12 billion tons in mid-September.

 

[OldBlackDog]

IVO VEGTER: LIMA MAY SPELL THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE CLIMATE MOVEMENT

The agreement reached deep in overtime at the recent Lima climate conference was pitched as having saved the summit from disaster. But if every country agrees, you can be sure whatever they agree on is watery gruel. As the questions mount over the validity of climate models, the utility of global warming mitigation policies, and the cost of renewable energy, Lima may spell the beginning of the end of the climate change movement.

Every year, almost ten thousand professional vacationeers gather in some exotic holiday location, like Cancún, Buenos Aires, Bali, Durban or, most recently,Lima, Peru. They do so at the expense of the taxpayers and the people who donate their hard-earned income to supposedly worthy environmental lobby groups like Greenpeace, the Worldwatch Institute, 350.org, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the National Resources Defense Council, and the Sierra Club.

The stated intention, besides partying, sightseeing and random acts of archaeological vandalism, is to get the 195 participating countries to agree to sharply reduce carbon dioxide emissions, in the hope that this will limit climate warming by 2100 to less than 2°C.

The conference had to be extended in order to reach a deal, and the agreement that was ultimately reached glossed over the long-standing disputes that had pitched the rich world against their developing counterparts. The Lima Call for Climate Action essentially says, “We’ll try. Maybe.”

Under the agreement, every country gets to set its own voluntary carbon emission targets, between nothing and a lot. If they don’t meet those targets, they’ll be “named and shamed”. Judging by the casual way in which Canada withdrew from the binding Kyoto Protocol in 2011, missing some voluntary targets should not present insurmountable political obstacles.

The skeptical Global Warming Policy Forum welcomed the deal. Its director, Dr Benny Peiser, said: “The Lima agreement is another acknowledgement of international reality. … In contrast to the Kyoto Protocol, the Lima deal opens the way for a new climate agreement in 2015 [in gay Paris] which will remove legal obligations for governments to cap or reduce CO2 emissions. A voluntary agreement would also remove the mad rush into unrealistic decarbonisation policies that are both economically and politically unsustainable.”

The lack of meaningful targets reflects a new era in which global warming simply does not make it high on the world’s priority list. Countries, especially in the developing world, attach far more importance to matters such as poverty alleviation, developing industrial infrastructure, combating the toll taken by preventable diseases and malnutrition, creating employment, and improving the quality of life of their poor population.

This agreement leaves countries free to individually address problems such as pollution caused by rapid growth in fossil-fuelled electricity generation, without committing them to compulsory, expensive and risky green energy projects.

There is important context for the new lack of urgency in global climate talks. One factor is the realisation that not even cheap oil is running out. Ten years ago, nobody would have believed that the US would be the world’s biggest oil producer by today, yet it is. Ten years ago, nobody would have believed that we’d ever see sub-$60 oil again, and yet, here we are.

The OPEC nations intend to keep the oil price low, hurting other competing producers like Nigeria and Venezuela, but also putting the squeeze on American shale oil and gas, and Canadian oil sands. Cheap oil also dramatically weakens the investment case for renewables, which make economic sense only if oil remains expensive.

However this power struggle plays out, and however bad the news is for shale or green developers, an oil price war is great news for energy consumers. It is especially good for poor countries that cannot afford expensive energy on which to build an industrial base. Even rich countriesare being urged to exploit cheap energy to invest in their infrastructure. [...]

The global warming bandwagon will trundle on for years, fuelled by vested interests in green technology and global climate change funding, not to mention the desire to protect scientific and bureaucratic reputations. However, the Lima conference demonstrates that the world is no longer trundling quietly along.

As a threat to prosperity and poverty alleviation, climate change catastrophism looks even more toothless now than the pitiful Lima “deal”.

 

[GLG]

Greenland Breaks Record For One Day Ice Mass Gain
Posted on December 14, 2014
The Greenland ice sheet has gained record amounts of ice this season (300 billion tons) with a record one day accumulation of 12 billion tons in mid-September.

I see your still looking at "stevesgonads.con" for your Arctic science. Old steve there has a way of speaking "science" that your team thinks is correct..... He even gives you charts with facts and figures that seem to indicate things are fine in the Arctic and Greenland. Wonder where he get his info that he likes to misrepresent...... I know, from here....
http://polarportal.dk/en/home/
Perhaps you should let the real scientists explain what is going on up there and quit looking at "stevesgonads.con". For an udate on the 2014 season read this...
http://polarportal.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/PolarPortal/season_report_2014/PolarPortal2014-EN.pdf

Or would that be asking too much from you.....

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/just...i-pipeline-protesters-342?utm_source=vicefbca
Justice Minister Admits New Bill Could Criminalize Canada’s Anti-Pipeline Protesters

 

[agentaqua]

http://commonsensecanadian.ca/REPOR...nas-import-foreign-workers-build-lng-project/
Petronas would import foreign workers to build LNG project

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/bl...-has-deep-pockets-and-close-ties-oil-industry

New "concerned citizens group" has deep pockets and close ties to oil industry
Emma Pullman Apr 6th, 2013

Last week, a new ad promoting oil pipelines appeared ahead of my favourite new song on YouTube. It featured a pair of actors having a simulated ‘real-life’ conversation about the paradox between protecting the environment and future economic growth. After the female actor asks, “But can’t we have both?” the man responds, “but if we let pipelines and tankers into our environment, what safeguards to we have?”

A third, smiling actor steps onto the scene, and says in a reassuring voice: “Let’s look at the facts.” She proceeds to set the environment-versus-economy debate to rest with a series of stats about double-hulled tankers and the "99.9 per cent safety record" of pipelines.

The ad is part of a campaign by British Columbians for International Prosperity, a new concerned citizen’s group that calls itself “an independent group of concerned citizens looking to promote practical resource development, international trade expansion, manufacturing development, and other initiatives bringing prosperity to British Columbia, Canada, and our Global partners”.

But a closer look reveals the group's deep connections to the oil sands industry, according to research that ran in today's Globe and Mail.

A domain search for the website registered on December 20, 2012, shows that the website is registered to Bruce Lounds of “West Coasters for International Prosperity Association”.

Lounds is a management consultant based in Vancouver. He works at Connex Solutions, Inc.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Lounds' specialties include Project Evaluations, Regulatory Affairs, Heavy Oil and Tar Sands Sector, Project Management, Economics, Business Unit Management.

His role at Connex solutions, where he has been since 1998, is “Management Consulting in Heavy Oil / Tar Sands Sector”.

Prior to Connex, Lounds worked at ConoccoPhillips from 1996-1998 as the Surmount Project Manager. Surmount was ConoccoPhillips’ first pilot project for in situ, a term to describe bitumen extraction from oil sands. The project was a 50-50 joint venture with Total E&P Canada.From 1970-1996, he worked with BP in various roles: Human Resources Benefits and Compensation Analyst (1970-81), Petroleum Engineer (1981-84), Engineering Supervisor (1984-88), Chief Engineer (1988), Engineering Manager (1988-1992), General Manager (1992-1996) .In 1992, Lounds was the President of the Canadian Heavy Oil Association (CHOA).

In addition to this work, Lounds has appeared before the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board as a representative for Japan Canada oil sands Limited. Later, he appeared again before the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board on behalf of Gulf Canada. And from at least 1994-1995, Lounds was the manager for heavy oil at Amoco.

Even though Lounds claims that he's "not a front for the oil industry" and that BC4IP hasn't received any backing from Enbridge or Kinder Morgan, the fact that he won't identify any of the group’s other leaders, members or its media campaign spending, raises some big questions.

Cleaning up the oil industry's image

The last two weeks have been bad ones for the oil industry's public image. A 2,200-barrel Alberta spill last Monday was followed just two days later by a spill in Minnesota. A broken pipe at Suncor Energy Inc. contaminated the Athabasca River in Alberta the very next day. Then on Friday, a residential Arkansas community was dumped with 10,000 barrels of crude, forcing 22 homes to be evacuated. Then, a Canadian Pacific freight train derailed in northwestern Ontario and one of the 22 cars affected is leaking crude oil. And CP was off by an order of magnitude about the impacts from that spill. A Shell pipeline later burst in Texas, dumping over 30,000 gallons into nearby waterways.

So in a crisis week, groups like British Columbians For International Prosperity fight back with PR. The group alleges that, “[t]here are many organizations who oppose development under any circumstances. Their voices have overshadowed important considerations in improving the standard of living in British Columbia and across the globe”.

Presumably, they are referring to the environmental groups, academics and politicians across the globe this week who are looking at oil sands pipelines under the microscope and wondering if it’s such a good idea after all.

BC4IP’s failure to disclose its close connections to the oil industry is as insincere as its promise to “address the downsides of development in an honest and forthright manner”.

So the next time those ads appear on YouTube, take a moment to recognize the hypocrisy of this so-called concerned citizens' group.

 

[agentaqua]

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-solar-power-could-slay-the-fossil-fuel-empire-by-2030
How Solar Power Could Slay the Fossil Fuel Empire by 2030

 

[agentaqua]

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2014/12/1...eadlines&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=151214

Expert Engineers Deem Trans Mountain Too Dangerous
One in 10 chance of Burrard Inlet disaster, riskier than Northern Gateway, says letter to NEB.
By Mitchell Anderson, Today, TheTyee.ca

Tanker_Burrard_Inlet
A tanker passing through the Second Narrows in Burrard Inlet. Roberts Bank is a safer choice, say Concerned Professional Engineers.

Is it safe?

That is the critical question regarding the proposed seven-fold increase in tanker traffic through Vancouver's harbour if the National Energy Board approves Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline project.

A group of B.C.-based engineers finds the current plans decidedly unsafe and just told the NEB so in no uncertain terms.

They echo a much earlier report commissioned by the federal government that unequivocally warned against such a plan.

Start, then, with the Concerned Professional Engineers (CPE), a group of senior local experts with decades of experience in marine transportation, naval architecture and risk mitigation. Last month they submitted a letter to the NEB regarding Kinder Morgan's proposal that states the proposed project ''presents a high risk to the environment and to structures located along these routes.'' They have not yet received a reply to their concerns, which include:

''Based on Trans Mountain's own experts' estimations…there is a 10 per cent probability that a spill of 8.25 million litres or more will occur in a 50 year operating period, even with all the proposed mitigation strategies. This is considerably greater than the mitigated spill risk of nine per cent for a 5.0 million litres spill estimated for the Northern Gateway project out of Kitimat.''



Potential public health nightmare

To put this risk in perspective, 8.25 million litres of diluted bitumen is more than twice the size of the disastrous spill in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 2010. Costing over $1 billion, this was the one of the most expensive clean up operations in U.S. history because a large proportion of the bitumen sank in the Kalamazoo River, rendering conventional recovery equipment essentially useless.

A spill twice the size of what happened in Kalamazoo happening here in Vancouver would be a public health emergency because the volatile solvents that make up more than 30 per cent of diluted bitumen would off-gas toxic fumes into the confined airshed of the Lower Mainland -- home to more than two million people. In Kalamazoo, officials issued a voluntary evacuation order within a mile of the spill because 60 per cent of local residents were complaining of headaches, nausea, vomiting and dizziness due to high levels of carcinogenic chemicals such as benzene.

Insurance unrealistically low

The engineering experts with the CPE also feel the insurance coverage available from the shipping industry is woefully inadequate to deal with the one-in-10 chance scenario based on Kinder Morgan's own numbers.

''We believe that the funds available according to the latest estimates of the federal government are $1.3 billion, which would fall vastly short of cleaning up and compensation for 8.5 million litre (or greater) spill… In our view, Kinder Morgan should require that all vessels that come to pick up product should have unlimited liability insurance. If this were the case, the insurance company would do a realistic assessment of the risks and would increase the premiums. These premiums would then be added to the cost of the barrel of oil and we would see a more realistic cost of the price of oil.''

And who would be on the hook for any additional cleanup costs? Very likely local citizens in what aspires to be the world's greenest city.

Riskiest of 27 ports

The CPE are not the first to question the wisdom of shipping oil through Burrard Inlet. A report by the federal government in 1978 ranked the comparative safety of 27 potential ports on the B.C. coast that could be used to ship oil. The route being used by Kinder Morgan in Port Moody was ranked dead last in every category considered, including navigational risks to tanker traffic and the potential impacts of spills on the local economy, communities and ecosystems.

The authors of this study state, ''Major tanker terminals at Port Moody, Britannia Beach, Roberts Bank and Cherry Point pose the highest relative risk… Should any one of these sites be contemplated for future development or increased production capability, it must be opposed on the grounds of high relative environmental marine risk.''

Thirty-six years later, the risks of this route are arguably only worse given increased ship traffic in Vancouver harbour and local population growth. The main concern for the members of the CPE are the dangers of tanker transits that have to thread under three bridges in Burrard Inlet during a short high-slack tidal window. Their submission to the NEB states:

''We…believe that there has not been a proper analysis of the potential for a collision of a fully loaded or an empty Aframax-type tanker with either the First or the Second Narrows bridges, particularly with the present Second Narrows railway bridge... What forces would be exerted on the bridges' structures or foundations and what would be the expected damage to these bridges? Also, would the forces exerted by the vessel in striking the foundations of the bridge be sufficient to damage or rip a double-hulled vessel, resulting in a release of its oil cargo?''

Why is KM stuck on Burrard Inlet?

The CPE also ask in their letter to the NEB why Kinder Morgan is choosing to use the existing pipeline terminus in Burnaby when it would be safer from an engineering point of view to extend the pipeline to the deep-water port at Roberts Bank. This would allow for much larger ships and one-third the number of tanker transits.

Brian Gunn of the CPE, with decades of personal experience in building port facilities, speculates that Kinder Morgan may be seeking to avoid the expense of building a new marine terminal and pipeline route, which Kinder Morgan estimates would cost $1.2 billion more than their current proposal.

Local groups in the Tsawwassen area are also strongly opposed to further expansion of Roberts Bank due to impacts on critical eelgrass and migratory salmon habitat.

But there is another, perhaps more compelling, reason that Kinder Morgan is choosing the perilous route through Vancouver's inner habour. In 2005, Kinder Morgan purchased the existing pipeline to Burrard Inlet, which had been originally built in the 1950's. While they still have to undergo an environmental assessment to add an additional pipeline, the NEB process will be much less rigorous because little or no new land will be taken for the pipeline corridor.

Enbridge had to walk across hot coals compared to the relatively mild review that Kinder Morgan is undergoing. As a new project, Enbridge is facing years of legal challenges from First Nations opposed to the Northern Gateway project, which as a result may never get built. The TransMountain project is much more insulated from such legal challenges -- as long as Kinder Morgan uses the existing pipeline right of way.

They would have good reason to be concerned about First Nation opposition. Last month, 12 First Nations whose territories will be affected by the project, co-signed a letter condemning the NEB process as unconstitutional. Grand Chief Stewart Phillip was arrested on Burnaby Mountain to protest the project.

Proposing an alternate pipeline route through the densely populated Lower Mainland and the traditional territories of several First Nations opposed to the project would open a legal can of worms Kinder Morgan might prefer to stay closed.

Is it safe?

The tanker route through Burrard Inlet seems safer only for Kinder Morgan, and according to reports from the federal government and local engineering experts, much more dangerous for the rest of us

 

[GLG]

Artic Summers ICE - FREE by 2013.

Another argument that is total nonsense......
Does it matter if we see an Arctic summer ice free in 2013 or 2023 or 2033 or even 2100? The whole point is we will see an Arctic summer that is ice free. And that has not occurred for 2.6 million years...... Makes your argument seem more then a little silly now doesn't it......

The emergence of modern sea ice in the Arctic Ocean
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Th...Ocean_999.html

"We have not seen an ice free period in the Arctic Ocean for 2,6 million years. However, we may see it in our lifetime." says marine geologist Jochen Knies. In an international collaborative project, Knies has studied the historic emergence of the ice in the Arctic Ocean. The results are published in Nature Communications.