Pertinent Links:
http://www.keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/clientsite/keystonexl.nsf?Openhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_risks_of_the_Keystone_XL_pipelinehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Pipeline
So the GOP in the House attached a sped up process for this project that is apparently "shovel ready" and would allegedly create 20,000 jobs. It would link the tar sands of Canada with the oil refineries of Texas. The big issue seems to be the risk of benzine contamination to the Ogallala aquifer (a rapidly shrinking and insanely important batch of water lurking under the breadbasket).
Now, I'm not an environmentalist by any means but I'm also not an idiot. Conservation is important to me, I'm incredibly concerned about climate change, and I want nothing better than to get the fuck off oil. Having said that, Canada's going to go through with this project with or without us.
The pipeline is supposed to cost the taxpayer nothing while increasing trade with our friendly friends in the Great White North. There's already one pipeline running along a similar track to Illinois from Alberta.
One thing I will say, and I think we can all agree on this one, is that this never should have been tacked onto the Payroll Tax Cut and Employment Insurance bill.
I'm still researching so I don't have an opinion one way or the other, but since it's creating such a cock up in Congress I figured we could have a chat about it.
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Now folk in the U.S. get to learn about Syncrude & Suncore's little God complexes, and marvel at the way their word seems to make the stars come and go.
I'm leery of this project after reading more about it. All it takes is one little earthquake and somebody's poisoned the waterhole.
But a part of me wants to be pragmatic. We as a nation aren't kicking the oil habit soon, and Canada is politically more palatable than Saudi Arabia. We need that oil, even as we hopefully ween ourselves off of it.
I'm open to suggestions for something other than a pipeline, but I don't think any parties have com forth with something better?
It's taken quite some grassroots effort to push this far even. At first all the politicians acted like the only people who opposed were cooky environmentalists and suddenly we have the governor saying it might not be a good idea.
I'm disappointed by both the Republicans trying to attach this to the payroll tax cut and the Obama administration for deciding to put this off until after elections. Bunch of damn politics around things that have some serious real world consequences.
Well, thanks to a dumbass with a bulldozer, we just had an oil spill in Nebraska on another pipeline. If people were smart they would bring that up as many times as possible. I don't think people realize the importance of the Ogallala Aquifer a lot of the time, though.
pleasepaypreacher.net
My thoughts are that I don't want this thing anywhere near Ogallala and that I'd much rather us get the oil than anyone else, especially if it'll mean we need to rely on those maniacs in Saudi Arabia less.
*Fingers crossed for Hydrogen Fuel cells and better mass transit sooner rather than later*
Has Iowa started producing hydrogen instead of corn all of a sudden?
The very sad thing is that if a strong renewable alternative technology comes around it's quite likely to come about in China where they're dumping a bunch of money into it. So, that will sure help our trade balance.
pleasepaypreacher.net
LALALALA I can't hear you over the sound of my fingers in my ears!
But yeah, you're probably right. Fuckin' corn, man. Fuckin' corn.
I just want to say that I hate this way of framing the issue, and given how often I see it, I think the media intentionally does it this way.
'Oh, it's an important issue for this special interest group, who wants to protect the climate...'
Fuck you, Mr. Irresponsible reporter. 'The climate' doesn't need protecting - people and animals need protecting, and we're endangering them by deciding that the atmosphere is just another one of those things we can get away with playing fast and loose with.
Do you want the planet to be a desert in about 100-150 years, or do you want the fucking money?
That's the question to be posed.
The only thing I can honestly think of is that the company will try to get their foot in the door in Nebraska with the pipeline, and since they now have the land, why not start going after the right to start pumping water out of the aquifer?
I'm not trying to say there's a conspiracy theory or anything, but their insistence on trying to go over the most juicy parts of the damn thing makes me raise an eyebrow. They could have just built the thing around Nebraska completely if they really wanted it that badly.
Of course they won't route it down the eastern side of the state because it'd make the majority of the population become immediately aware of it. The farther out from Lincoln and Omaha it is, the lower profile they can keep.
Um I really think you misunderstood that quote. It's from realclimate, which, you know, their whole mission is to try and stop climate change, so I don't their trivializing their issue. I think they're trying to inspire hope, and make sure people keep on fighting even if the pipeline gets built (because lets face it, it will).
Al Franken and a friend gave a fairly good defense of Climate Change Science! (TM) in the Senate yesterday. Sad no one was there to hear it.
Frankly, I have a bigger issue with the climate change "debate" (I don't think it's a real debate when one side uses reason and science and the other side just goes "nu-uh cars is cool): Why does it fucking matter what's causing the climate to change so rapidly? Less pollution=good all around. Less oil use=less giving a shit about third world countries and the nutjags who run them.
I mean, I guess knowing the cause (which we do) helps us think of ways to try to combat/reverse/slow it? Also, off topic slightly, but fuck Brazil for lessening the restrictions on Amazon land clearing. What part of lungs of the Earth do they not understand?
I imagine it's just a more direct, therefore cheaper, route to the gulf coast?
And yes, of course the pipeline will be built (see: a bunch of idiot monkeys trying to manage a planet).
I think it fits the media's narrative of both sides being equal instead of one side being full of flat earthing morons.
I don't know where you get bothsides with this particular bullshit. This is an example of what republicans have been doing from 2008 onward. Its been primarily a republican tactic to make a democrat bill untennable by adding something horrible to something good.
pleasepaypreacher.net
what would you say instead? "Protect the Earth" and "Save the Planet" conjures up images of hippies. "Protect the atmospheric carbon-content" is way too scientific for most people to understand.
'Prevent a catastrophe'.
But let's try to bring it back to the pipeline. Climate change isn't the issue here, really (other than oil and the tar sands), it's the thought that the massive Ogallala aquifer (which is shrinking rapidly anyway thanks to a bunch of idiots who built cities in the middle of deserts and thousands of miles from the sea) being poisoned. Say good by the the nation's bread basket. Hope you like birth defects and South American beef.
Besides, light crude oil isn't dangerous anyway. To prove it, I'm going to hire a body double to drink a glass full of the shit in front of cameras and a live audience; if he doesn't drop dead on the spot, that's proof positive that it's a harmless substance.
Later it turned out he'd paid a look-alike to do the actual drinking.
Go figure.
Jesus Christ that's monumentally stupid on the look-alike's part.
Or that there was a medical team on hand with a stomach pump set and a couple gallons of activated charcoal.
To be perfectly fair, it probably wasn't that dangerous to drink: drilling fluid is mostly water, so a glass full of it won't contain any large amount of the harmful stuff. The disingenuous part of the 'demo', of course, is that it's not just one fucking glass of fluid that is ever used for a frac.
Wait what?
Even if its not the coal-gas fracking liquid (which is straight up toxic), isn't that basically equivalent to drinking a glass of sand?
Oh, no - the sand is added to the fluid later.
Wow, Halliburton really isn't trying to hide the newspeak and doublethink are they?
EDIT: On a related note, having someone drink the as-produced fluid is straight up lying about the problem anyway. It's not the fluid that goes in that's a problem, it's the amount of crap which leeches back out into it (and subsequently into aquifiers and waterways that's full of heavy metals that's a problem).
Not to mention bio-availability issues - tons of stuff you can probably survive a single big-dose of, but low-level long term exposure is disasterous.
Reminds of how the guy who came up with adding lead to gasoline (Thomas Midgley) doused his hands in lead gasoline and huffed it to "prove" it was safe.
BTW, Thomas Midgley was also the genius behind CFCs.
Regardless of whether this pipeline is built, the entire tar sands will be shot up into the atmosphere. Its not like it isn't going to be mined and then burned. It will happen. All of it.
This is my view of fossil fuel usage in general around the globe. It may be admirable to be motivated to avoid this, but in the end society will simply keep using fossil fuels, more and more, indefinitely until it is no longer physically possible. Climate ramifications be damned.
This might be a "hopeless" viewpoint. I consider it realist. It is not going to be avoided.
You are absolutely correct. If I am not mistaken, a lot of toxicologists (and especially environmental toxicologists) are much less concerned with the ld50 of substances these days, and more concerned with long term exposure.
Also that linked website for "CleanStim" is so horrible.
I know I just implied that ld50 is kind of bullshit, but when only three of your ingredients are labeled as "not hazardous" on their MSDS, I don't think you can really call your product "Clean" anything.
This quote is so delicious
It is like when people on Fox news a few weeks ago called pepper spray "a food product".
And they had to give a nice little dig at the government there- "It all comes from food, but mean 'ol government says we have to label it as 'hazardous'."
It is also so very vague- when they say it has an Enzyme in it...what enzyme? Enzymes are a whole class of molecules! Which "inorganic acid" did they use?
Shit they might as well have just put "molecular acid" on there for all the help this fucking page is.
Anyway as to this Keystone Oil thing- it is a terrible idea, fullstop. We really need to start heavily investing in alternate fuel technologies at this point. Our current strategies are beginning to just look ridiculous.
"We are very quickly running out of oil! Should we work on developing new technologies to power ourselves? Fuck that, lets just build more pipes!"
I more or less agree, but with a caveat: our current practices, I think, may prove to be so destructive and cannibalistic that the machinery finally fails the whole enterprise before it can devastate the species. That is, we may actually end up being so stupid and conceited that we actually manage to cave-in our whole society before it can finish it's grim job.
Is that really much better?