Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Dear Alison, You Can Shove Your Tar Up Your Ass As Far As I'm Concerned, Just Keep It Out of BC

Alberta's premier, Alison Redford, complains that public policy is shaping Canada's energy future.  Well Alison, so what?  What's so damned toxic special about Alberta bitumen that it should be exempt from public policy?

Now that the Keystone XL pipeline proposal is temporarily delayed, Alison is foaming at the mouth for the Northern Gateway pipeline to carry her province's shit across British Columbia's mountain ranges and into our fjord for tanker shipment to Asia.   She knows without a troublesome pipeline through some stranger's backyard she's stuck with a load of useless crap.  And trust me, Alison, when it comes to Alberta and British Columbia, we're strangers.  We know you'll go the "stranger" route when something goes wrong in the treacherous waters around Kitimat and a load of that toxic sludge contaminates those pristine waters and coastline.

We know it's not oil you're selling, Alison.  We know it's the pitch our natives once used to seal the bottom of their canoes.  We also know the stuff you run through those pipelines is heavily laced with abrasives, corrosive chemicals, toxins, even carcinogens.  We know the stuff literally 'eats' pipelines.  We know that pipelines and seismically active regions are a bad mix.  We know that oil tankers have no business navigating the waters around Kitimat.   We know that nobody - not the Feds, not Enbridge, not the government of Alberta - is going to maintain the extensive, fully-manned emergency ships and equipment that'll be needed immediately if there's a tanker wreck in those waters.  We know that Alberta is getting all the money and we'll be taking all the risks.  We know Alberta bullshit when we get a whiff of your breath.

There's a basketful of very good reasons the Americans don't want that pipeline, Alison.   And British Columbia has all those reasons and a great many more for saying "no" to the Northern Gateway.  There's going to be war.

4 comments:

liberal supporter said...

Bickering with Hunter about this back in February:

Our way or the highway eh, you silly separatist?

The northern coast of BC is much more treacherous than the south around Vancouver or Juan de Fuca strait. Much more dangerous than the east coast too. Look at the current forecast, for example. Gale warnings are common in the north.

But good luck trying to change the channel from "let's keep the tankers away from the north coast" to "let's not have any oil at all". Do you still think anyone falls for that kind of misrepresentation?

liberal supporter said...

--then after her snotty response:
You know LS, reading what you write just gives me a really slimy feeling. My nose turns up and I can smell rotten eggs.
That is the smell of your whole premise collapsing after I refuted it.


It's the typical deceit that Liberal use to blame everybody but themselves for their miserable lives. Why are all Liberals angry, unhappy people that have to attack everyone who does not agree with them?
Perhaps you should cut and paste the "liberals are evil" rant when you have something to actually react to. But thank you for agreeing with my points, you would have argued against them otherwise, instead of going ad hominem.

Juan de Fuca? Rough, rough waters, always. Isn't that how the massive tankers come in now?
Why not ask your husband, who you say came from PEI, about navigation, underwater hazards, reefs, the wind tunnel effect of nearby shores, and such boring things before you claim that Juan de Fuca is just as dangerous as threading your way through the Queen Charlottes on the way to Kitimat? But if you checked your facts, well, you wouldn't be hunter now would you?

How do those Alaskan tankers get to Seattle?
They travel through the Pacific Ocean, 60 to 100 MILES west of the Queen Charlottes. The water is kind of deep out there, nothing to run aground on once they get out of Prince William Sound. You do know that Prince William Sound is where the Exxon Valdez ran aground, don't you? There are reefs and other hazards there, which you can easily hit in a vessel that requires a full MILE to stop.

I guess you think it's better to have a pipeline through a community of over a million people than a pipeline through wilderness country.
Makes little difference. I know you'd love to change the channel to be about pipelines, but it isn't about pipelines themselves. But since there is no plan to put a pipeline to China, the pipeline ends someplace, and the crude from that pipeline gets loaded into a very large crude carrier (tanker ship). So ending it where the tanker is less likely to run aground when getting out into the ocean is better. As Monster points out, pipelines are monitored and leaks are quickly detected and fixed. It's probably better near civilization than in wilderness, since it is likely a leak will be noticed much more quickly and thereby fixed faster and the product loss reduced.

My bet is that the lefties didn't even know that pipelines even existed in Vancouver.
I did. There's a refinery there for one thing. I'm sure there are people who you would like to quote as being the "lefty" position, such as maryt's hilarious example of the person who didn't realize meat at Safeway comes from ranches. But I don't blame you, it's too much work to deal with someone like me who demolishes your sillier arguments.


Now they have to change their outcry to the "northern" coast.
It always been about the "northern" coast, specifically the area around the Queen Charlotte Islands. The "tanker exclusion zone" has been all about the northern coast, at least according to the Canadian Coastguard. Notice the date on that article is in 1998.

Get real. Stop being idiots.
Took the words right out of my mouth.

The Mound of Sound said...

The proposed Kitimat supertanker port is just around a spit from where the BC ferry Queen of the North now rests in 600 feet of water.

Any tanker mishap - fire, engine failure, loss of steering, human error, the lot - could easily send a cargo of this sludge into those waters and transform them into a near permanent environmental disaster.

Those greaseballs never want to get into a discussion of how their sludge differs from ordinary crude oil. They don't want to talk about how it's full of heavy metals, toxins, carcinogens, acids and abrasives. Crude oil usually dissipates in sea water. This crap won't.

They won't spring for the super expensive emergency equipment and crews this hazardous stuff requires because that would devour their profits and render their venture unprofitable. Instead let's just cut out those costs and leave BC's northern coast at horrible risk and hope for the best but prepared to cut and run if the worst develops.

These Athabasca Albortions need one upside the head, Harper included.

The Mound of Sound said...

Hi LS. Sorry but I missed your CCG link the first time around. Their "tanker exclusion zone" notice is really compelling. Yet Alberta and the Harper Cons have so little regard for British Columbia they're happy to ignore their own experts' common sense warnings.