What Could Bring the Tar Sands to Heel and Cost Canadians a Gazillion Dollars

A Saudi prince once quipped, "the Stone Age didn't end because they ran out of stones."   His point was that the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil.  He is right.   There are a number of factors that will render oil energy unviable well before it's exhausted.

When I finally quit smoking several years back it was the result of several factors - cost, inconvenience, the way I was feeling, knowledge of what probably lay ahead if I didn't.   All of these factors came together to create the incentive powerful enough to overcome the power of my addiction.   Something similar lies in store for fossil fuels, including oil.

One of these factors being scrutinized now is climate change and the probable effect of an international agreement to limit warming to 2C.   Over the past year the numbers have been tossed around and it has become plain that, if we are to limit GHG emissions to meet that target, we'll be able to use not more than roughly 20% of known fossil fuel reserves.   That's it - 20 per cent.

A key factor in skyrocketing oil prices is the perceived shortage of supply.   But if we're coming into a world that recognizes we have to leave most of that stuff in the ground those prices become wildly unrealistic.   That's why, about ten days ago, a group of prominent Brits from the investment, science and political ranks, wrote to warn the governor of the Bank of England of the risks of a "carbon bubble" similar to the housing bubble that wreaked such destruction in the US economy.   The group went so far as to declare energy assets "sub prime."

If these assessments are right, what does that mean for Canada's Tar Sands, at once the world's filthiest and most costly oil assets?  The Tar Sands have always been world price-vulnerable.   They need today's hefty oil prices to be marginally profitable.   Their profitability is also dependent on substantial government subsidies and deferred obligations such as environmental remediation.

If world markets go cold on oil, come to see it as an investment with significant risks, perhaps even sub-prime, that's really, really bad news for the Athabasca Tar Sands.   Our governments' bargaining position with Big Oil, weak as it now is, would probably collapse.  Our chances of extracting a meaningful return on our subsidies and enforcing Big Oil's wobbly promises for site remediation could also be undermined.

But, of course, we have Steve Harper driving this so there's nothing to worry about, right?  Wrong.   If there's one thing Steve has shown himself incapable of it's seeing the train barreling down the tracks before it hits us.   Here are just two examples.

When the world fell into economic meltdown in 2008, Steve didn't  see it coming.  He even absolved himself of his failure by claiming no one saw it coming.   What nonsense.   Plenty of very knowledgeable people saw it coming and sounded the alarm.  Steve just didn't want to hear their warnings.

Then there's Steve's own Davos meltdown over old age pensions at home.   "Major transformations" are coming, he warned a gaggle of world leaders who won't be impacted by his plans.   This begs the question of why Steve was so horribly incompetent when it came to his 2008 mega-stimulus budget?  He squandered tens of billions of dollars of borrowed money on giveaways that will have paltry long-term impacts.  He had to borrow that money and leave working Canadians saddled with the debt because he had earlier defunded the federal treasury that was well stocked with 'rainy day' funds when he took over.   But, instead of investing that stimulus money on projects that will deliver returns to the taxpayers for decades to come, he just threw it away so we could put new decks on our cottages.

How do we expect a guy who so consistently gets it wrong, who can't look up long enough to see what's so obviously coming, who is incapable of devising effective solutions to great problems of any sort, how do we expect Steve to protect Canadian interests against a potential "carbon bubble"?

As though we needed another reason for a change of management in Canada.

About that "Secret Agenda"

L'il Steve Harper has spent the past six or more years assuring Canadians at every opportunity that he really doesn't harbour any "secret agenda."

Then he goes all the way to Switzerland, drops his pants, and announces that he's got "major transformations" in store for his small folk at home.

An effective Opposition would be clubbing Harper over his tightly quaffed head on this like a Newfie on a Harp seal.   So, where exactly are they?

Just Too Dumb to Be an Atheist

There I've said it.   I'm just too damned dumb to accept atheism.   And, the way I see it, so are you even if you won't admit it... yet.  It's the whole faith thing that stops me in my tracks.   What is faith but a willingness to accept as true something that you cannot prove and otherwise wouldn't believe?  It's a suspension of the common sense skepticism that we invoke every day to see us safely through a limitless variety of situations great and small. I know that's a crude definition but it works for my purposes.

To me, atheism is itself a quasi-faith.   The belief that there is no greater moral power than man himself is a bit over-reaching.   It is a conclusion that is founded on man's own intellect which is probably quite feeble and flawed.  It's a conclusion that cannot be reached until we know everything that is inside us and outside us.   Do we have any real idea of what a God would look like, how we can discern the presence or absence of a God?

Just look at how precious little we actually know.   Quantum physics suggests there are no fewer than eleven dimensions.   Mankind's entire experience is based on just four dimensions, one of which we don't even understand.   We have the left/right dimension, the up/down dimension, the forward/backward dimension and we have something that may or may not actually even exist, time.

Time may not exist?  Absolutely.  Years ago I heard this perfectly explained by a senior US Navy officer who commanded the atomic clock at the US Naval Observatory.   Every day he went to work with an awareness that we don't understand time, we can't even prove it exists.

All of our faiths, atheism included, are formed out of this four-dimensional awareness.   Any other  dimension could instantly shatter the wobbly foundations of our strains of faith.   And who is to say that our dimensional realities - four, seven, nine or eleven - would be constant throughout our universe or anything that lies beyond?

It is no wonder we cling to so many "revealed" religions, each founded on one or several supposed human-deity interfaces from the ancient past.   All it takes is for some guy to convince his people that he just had a quiet word with their Maker who told the guy to pass along thus and so.  It either gets traction or it doesn't.   If it gets traction, there you go - scripture.   And then you can hand that down, century by century, unless your religion gets overtaken by another faith or your faithful get trashed by conquerors who set up their Gods instead.   But the longer you keep it going the more certain adherents are to believe it's true.

Revealed religions are, in my opinion, hooey.   That's why there are so many of them each convinced that all others are hooey.  See, no matter what revealed religion you embrace, you already agree with me about each and every other revealed religion.   That speaks volumes.

But this is about atheism which, for many, seems to be the default option when revealed religion is rejected.   Why?   Because you say so.  Really?  Because you with your pointy little head, you who understands so little, you who has never looked high and low or far and wide, you can't see God so he can't exist.   And we're supposed to put aside our skepticism because of that?

So where does that leave me?   I think I'm going to go with Einstein and accept that, somewhere on a scale between possibly and probably, there exists a superior being that we can perceive as Godlike.  I'm going to accept this is evident in the vast mysteriousness of the universe and in human consciousness, compassion and reason.   I guess that is a loose sort of Deism.  Maybe that's just where you wind up when you're too dumb to be an atheist. 

Capitalism No Longer Fits

"Capitalism, in its current form, no longer fits the world around us."  What a curious thing for the founder and chairman of the Davos World Economic Forum, professor Klaus Schwab to declare.  "A global transformation is urgently needed and it must start with reinstating a global sense of social responsibility," he added.

"Growing inequities within and between countries and rising unemployment are no longer sustainable ... We must rethink our traditional notions of economic growth and global competitiveness, not only by focusing on growth rates and market penetration, but also, equally — if not more importantly — by assessing the quality of economic growth."

"How sustainable is it and at what cost to the environment? How are the gains distributed? What has become of the family and community fabric, as well as of our culture and heritage? The time has come to embrace a much more holistic, inclusive and qualitative approach to economic development."

Into this burst of overdue enlightenment plods Canada's own mildewed cardboard leader, Steve Harper, to deliver an unlikely keynote speech laced with economic Calvinism.   Steve is widely expected to scold the Euros and preach fundamentalist capitalism as the cure for what ails everyone else.

Why is it that, no matter the venue, Steve must be such an embarrassment to his country and the Canadian people?  His followers say Steve always considers himself the smartest man in the room but that only begs the question of what perverse notion of "smart" must this out-of-touch demagogue hold?

Like Obama, the Davos chairman is zeroing in on the malignancy of inequality.   Professor Schwab speaks of sustainability and the environment, community, socially responsible capitalism.   These are notions utterly alien to Steve Harper, beyond the realm of his constipated intellect.

The good thing is that broadbased movements like Occupy, shifting public attitudes and an awareness at the altitudes inhabited by people like Professor Schwab and Barack Obama, suggest that we're on the brink of social change that, at this point, probably can't be stopped.   The bad thing is that there remain plenty of Steve Harpers with atrophied and myopic thinking that will have to be swept out of the way before the floor is clean enough to move on.  These obstacles to progress are invested in their fundamentalism and they won't go until they're forced out.  And we owe just that to them.

The Disneyfication of America

It's much easier to understand the bizarre antics of our cousins to the south when you realize they're not on the same page as the rest of the world.  In fact, they're not even on the same book.   The thing is, it's not funny.   It's potentially quite dangerous - to them and to everyone else.

Retired US Army colonel turned free thinker, professor Andrew J. Bacevich writes, in this month's Harper's magazine, about the dangerous "Disneyfication" of the way Americans have come to understand their country and the world.

"The ;Disneyfication' of World War II...  finds its counterpart in the Disneyfication of the Cold War, reduced in popular imagination and the halls of Congress to Ronald Reagan's demanding 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!'   The Soviet leader meekly complied, and freedom erupted across Europe.   Facts that complicate this story... ultimately get filed under the heading of Things That Don't Really Matter.   The Ike Americans like even today is the one who kept the Soviets at bay while presiding  over eight years of peace and prosperity.   The other Ike - the one who unleashed the CIA on Iran and Guatemala, refused to let the Vietnamese exercise their right to self-determination in 1956, and ignored the plight of Hungarians who, taking seriously Washington's rhetoric of liberation,rose up to throw off the yoke of Soviet power remains far less well known...

Self-serving mendacities - that the attacks of September 11, 2001, reprising those of December 7, 1949, 'came out of nowhere' to strike an innocent nation - don't enhance the safety and well being of the American people.  To further indulge old illusions of the United States presiding over and directing the course of history will not only impede the ability of Americans to understand the world and themselves but may well pose a positive danger to both.  ...Only by jettisoning the American Century and the illusions to which it gives rise will the self-knowledge and self-understanding that Americans urgently require become a possibility.   Whether Americans will grasp the opportunity that beckons is another matter."

Yet so many Americans remain in thrall to their fantasies.  It's the capacity for delusion that fuels the successes of outrageous charlatans like Newt Gingrich.   Conditioning a people to embrace a powerfully manipulated and skewed perception of themselves and everyone else has been the stock in trade of every tyrant from Adolf Hitler on down.   It is the precursor to villanies.

What Did Steve Harper Just Say?

The Grand Dissembler, Steve Harper, picks his words carefully.  That's why it's often worthwhile to pay close attention to what comes out of his mouth.   Take his remarks to a conference of First Nations chiefs in which he promised not to scrap the Indian Act:

"After 136 years, that tree [the Indian Act] has deep roots. Blowing up the stump would just leave a big hole."

Just what is Harper on about?   In one breath he's talking about a grand old tree.   In the next he's focusing on bad ways to get rid of the stump.  Is that Harperspeak for "hold on to your hats 'cause I'm coming for you with a chain saw but don't you worry I won't blow up the stump"?

Wow.  White man speaks with forked tongue.

F-35 Update

F-35 Killer?

With Europe hovering on the brink of meltdown, with pipelines to stop, with the Republican presidential clown car careening through the Deep South, it's easy to lose sight of the F-35 controversy.

Fortunately there are some, like the Ottawa Citizen's David Pugliese, who keep an eye on the difficult childbirth of Lockheed's mega-costly bomb truck.   Pugliese writes that the aircraft is making some progress in development but may be running into trouble in cash-strapped Europe.  Italy may drop out all together and Denmark is now conducting a competitive fly-off to find the best bank for its buck.

What struck me as particularly interesting was a Pugliese piece yesterday on the unveiling of an updated version of an old Russian fighter, the Su-35S-3.   The Russkies say they've given it state of the art electronic systems, coated it with radar absorbing materials and tidied up all the exterior garbage that is a radar give-away.   But the important part is an obscure reference to the aircraft's new radar system.

"The special features of the aircraft include a new avionics suite based on digital information control system integrating onboard systems, a new phased antenna array radar with a long aerial target detection range and with an increased number of simultaneously tracked and engaged targets (30 aerial targets tracked and 8 targets engaged plus the tracking of 4 and engagement of 2 ground targets), and new enhanced vectored thrust engines."

The "long aerial" reference seems to indicate the new/old Russian fighter will be equipped with L-band radar as well as the X-band radar standard in modern fighter nose cones.   L-band radar requires a long array or aerial which the Russians have decided to mount in the leading edge of their fighter's wings.   So what?   The stealth technology of the F-35 is designed to defeat X-band radars but is reported to be ineffective against L-band radar.

It seems the Russians are announcing they're about to churn out a fleet of low-cost F-35 killers.   If they can detect and track the F-35 they've leveled the playing field years before we even get the damned things in Canadian hangars.   Without stealth it's mano a mano, hand to hand combat, and with its already identified speed, agility, payload and range deficiencies, that could just make the F-35 dead meat.

Think about it.   This is America's biggest defence project ever - ever.   Lockheed Martin's future hinges on the success of the F-35.  That's Lockheed Martin as in America's pre-eminent defence contractor.   Render the F-35 obsolete before customers are safely in the corral and you've just struck a bodyblow to America's defence industry - all for the cost of churning out a fleet of budget, high-performance stealth killers.

It's our own damned fault and that of today's mediocre military leadership.  We're gambling everything on a brittle technology and sacrificing every other quality that makes a great aircraft in the process.   That's an enormous Achilles' Heel and we'd be fools not to expect our potential adversaries to exploit that insane vulnerability.

The Integrity of Science

I have a friend who is an ardent defender of the Athabasca Tar Sands.  We get into friendly arguments by e-mail that can go for several days at a time.

The most recent topic has been the safety problems surrounding the TransCanada and Enbridge proposals to ship bitumen thousands of miles through pipelines.  Bitumen is laced with abrasive, grit-like particles and corrosives, acids, that "eat" pipelines.   In reply to these claims, my friend sent me a link to a press release from Alberta Innovates debunking the myths of dangerous bitumen.

Alberta Innovates said it, "sought an independent fact-based analysis to address the pipeline safety issues."   It then commissioned a "corrosion specialist" to conduct the analysis.   And who did they pick?   Why Dr. Jeremy Beens, P.Eng., of - wait for it - Alberta Innovates - Technology Futures. 

Can you hear the conversation now?  "I know just the fellow to do this study - down the hall, on the right, two doors this side of the lunchroom."

But, remember folks, scientists are all liars except when they work for Alberta Innovates.   Those guys always give us "independent, fact-based analysis."

Did Keystone Kill Off the Northern Gateway Pipeline?

According to Andrew Nikiforuk, the Keystone  XL pipeline may have only sustained a flesh wound but it was a killer blow to the Northern Gateway pipeline.

The best analysis of all things related to the Athabasca Tar Sands is plainly that of Andrew Nikiforuk.   Formerly an author and freelancer, Nikiforuk now writes for The Tyee (www.thetyee.ca).  In the latest Tyee Nikiforuk canvasses the setback sustained by Obama's rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline proposal.

Keystone, Nikiforuk writes, may not be dead but it has ensured the Northern Gateway is going nowhere.

"In the end, water concerns legitimately and fairly killed the irresponsible route over the Ogallala aquifer just as water concerns have already killed the Gateway project.

"...TransCanada says it will apply again in 2013 with a different pipeline route. For oil-sand developers, Keystone XL still remains Plan A to get bitumen to foreign markets. It's not as cheap as moving bitumen to the Canada's West Coast but it comes with fewer risks.

"Most senior executives in the oil patch quietly admit that Enbridge Gateway project (Plan B) will never be built. The local opposition against this desperate pro-China folly is much stronger and just as committed as that against Keystone XL.

"In fact, the path closed long ago due to ineptness and hubris as well as a ruthless disregard for the power of salmon, whales and First Nations.

"It's deader than Keystone."

I so hope Nikiforuk has this one right.   His article is well worth a read.   One by one it debunks a lot of myths about these pipelines and exposes how reckless Harper is about properly managing Canadian resources for the benefit of Canadians.

I'm not as confident as Nikiforuk that Big Oil or Harper will give up on Northern Gateway that easily.   Harper is a bully and his instincts will compel him to try to run roughshod over legitimate opposition to push this through, consequences be damned.

Carney Drops a Bombshell

Kudos to Bank of Canada governor, Mark Carney, for coming right out and warning that the crippled U.S. economy is unlikely to ever fully recover.

“It’s going to take a number of years before they get back to the U.S. that we used to know — in fact, they are not, in our opinion, ultimately going to get back to the U.S. that we used to know,” he said.
 
Carney pointed to China as a market with great potential and as a place where Canada is currently under-represented, but cautioned it would take time to enhance trade between the two countries.
 
“It’s going to take multiple visits, multiple initiatives. Not, obviously, from the public sector alone, but clearly a focus from the private sector,” Carney said. “That is absolutely essential for developing our future and it’s a key element of our medium-term growth.”

Reagan and his contemporaries, Mulroney and Thatcher, set America's demise in motion with their delusional free trade notions.  Reagan's apostles continued his work, gutting America's manufacturing base and, with it, displacing its once vibrant and robust middle class that manufacturing once anchored and nourished to make way for what became casino capitalism.

Yet a permanently degraded economy is but one wound America has suffered.  There are others.   These include the greatest levels of inequality in the developed world, class warfare, the strangling of social and economic mobility, and the evolution of the United States as the first true warfare state in modern history.   All of these open wounds will continue to sap American strength.   In America, as in Canada, the ability of the government to intervene to set these troubles right seems to have been lost.   Now it will be up to the American people to compel change.

Can Someone Explain This to Me?

At the heart of much of the opposition to the Athabasca Tar Sands is that it exports dangerous contaminants that put entire ecosystems at risk.  We export a semi-refined product bearing significant quantities of abrasives, corrosives, heavy metals and other toxins.   We export this product to places where it is refined into synthetic crude.  In other words, we export dangerous contaminants to distant places where they are removed.

Obama tossed out the Keystone XL pipeline proposal because of serious environmental risks it posed to Nebraska.   If the stuff is too dangerous for wide open Nebraska how could it possibly be safe to pump it across BC's mountainous and seismically active north?

What I don't understand and what nobody seems willing to discuss is why doesn't Harper want that product refined on site in Alberta?  Why don't we remove the contaminants right there and simply export a clean synthetic crude product?

I suppose one reason this doesn't fly is because of the surplus refining capacity these days in Texas.   The same outfits that are extracting the bitumen are the outfits that own this refining capacity.  They want to keep the whole thing "in house" and building new refineries in Alberta while their Texas operations sit idle isn't in their interest.   But what about China?

If we must export oil to China, why should that not be refined in Alberta before it's exported?   Why should coastal BC be exposed to a toxic, carcinogenic and virtually irreparable bitumen spill?   Isn't an ordinary, refined oil spill risk bad enough?

There's an answer to this somewhere.  My guess is that the profit margins for the Tar Sands are already so minimal that incorporating the cost of complete refining into the price would sheer Alberta's and Ottawa's royalty revenues to the bone.  Imagine the state of affairs that would result if Athabasca carbon emissions were properly priced, if Tar Sand operators were required to pay world price for the vast quantities of water they consume for nothing, if their operations weren't bolstered by tax write offs and subsidies, if they had to fund up front a programme for contamination clean up and site remediation.   All you would hear is a whooshing sound of Big Oil beating a quick retreat from Athabasca.  And that's just sad.

The South Shall Rise Again

Newt Gingrich swept back to prominence in the Republican ranks by a convincing win in South Carolina.   Gingrich has been openly race-baiting and it seems the good folks of America's south like what they hear.   Bill Moyers tells Bill Maher that the radical fringe now dominates the Republican party.



One scary feature of the radical Right is its utter rejection of science. They see the world not as it is but as they want to see it. They want the EPA defunded. Rick Perry even wanted it scrapped entirely. Can you think of any one that sort of thing appeals to in Canada?

Can the world really afford to be dominated by crazy people who happily ignore science and reality?   Can America survive this degree of institutional derangement?    The Republicans are doing what many crazy people do, they're destroying themselves and, in the process, their country.

Britain - Difficult Dry Days Ahead

It's the 21st century's double-whammy - population growth coupled with global warming - and even soggy old Britain isn't immune.

Britain's Environment Agency has released a study on what lies in stores for rivers in England and Wales by 2050.   It warns that some rivers could see summer river levels drop as much as 80%, transformed into "puddles of warm, stagnant mud."

The Guardian article cites a government White Paper, "Water for Life", that explores a wide range of possible actions, including some such as desalination plants and re-cycling of effluent water that would have seemed unimaginable for Britain only a decade ago.

The UN calculates that the absolute minimum daily requirement for clean, freshwater for drinking, cooking and hygiene is 20-litres per person.   Britain's average consumption now stands at 160-litres per person per day.   The government hopes to get that down to 130-litres per day.   To give you an idea of what that means, in 2004 Canadian daily per capita freshwater consumption (residential) was 329 litres.   Now imagine your water consumption cut by two-thirds.