Eviscerating The Bitumen Bullshit

Give Jason Kenney, his predecessor, Rachel Notley, and our prime minister, Justin Trudeau, their due. When it comes to bitumen and bullshit they'll lay it on just as thick as they can every chance they get.

The Tyee's petro-scribe, Alberta's own Andrew Nikiforuk, systematically debunks every popular lie these characters like to spread about Trudeau's damned pipeline and bitumen's dismal future.

To most coastal British Columbians there's a real malice that emanates from the petro-state's campaign of deceit whether that's from Alberta, Saskatchewan or Ottawa.

I urge you to follow the link and read it in its entirety. For now, here are a few teasers:

According to some of the more ridiculous claims, environmentalists are to blame for bitumen price discounts, Vancouverites are being punished for their orca-loving ways with high gasoline prices, and climate change really doesn’t matter. 

Their politicians don’t dare admit the reality — that combined overproduction of bitumen and U.S. tight oil brought down the global price of oil with a thundering crash in 2014. In the world we inhabit now, oil business as usual has died.

The plot to thwart bitumen sales to China.

The facts are these: Over decades the U.S. has built more than half of the world’s heavy oil refining capacity in the Midwest and Gulf Coast for a variety of reasons. 

Asia owns but 23 per cent of global capacity to refine heavy oil. It’s not willing to pay more for bitumen than the U.S., because it costs more to ship it there.

Alberta’s low royalty policy encouraged the industry to strip and ship diluted bitumen instead of adding value by building more upgrading facilities and complex refineries. 

The province’s dependence on U.S. markets and pipelines is a direct product of what was billed in 2006 as Alberta’s “give-it-away” strategy. 

Obstruction of Trans-Mountain has left BC with a fuel shortage entirely of its own making.

Most of the gasoline consumed in B.C., the nation’s fourth largest market for refined fuels, is made by four Alberta refineries and moved along the existing 65-year-old Trans Mountain pipeline. Less than 10 per cent of the province’s gasoline comes from refineries in Washington State. 

(An historical note: when the Trans Mountain pipeline was built in the 1950s, Vancouver supported four refineries, but as the line exported more oil to U.S. refineries, local refining died off in the 1990s with the exception of Parkland, formerly Chevron, in Burnaby.) 

The Vancouver market has no ready access to refined products brought by sea, so it is a price taker. Economist Robyn Allan calculates that neither taxes, nor scarcity of supply, fully explain why the region has some of Canada’s highest gasoline prices. 

A study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives suggests Alberta refineries have been price gouging Vancouver consumers since 2010, because they can do so due to lack of local competition.

...To date, high prices have had a predictable effect: B.C.’s per capita consumption of refined petroleum goods is 11 per cent below the national average.

Bitumen is the "beating heart" of the Canadian economy.

That’s a big laugh. 

Despite 47 per cent growth in Canada’s oil and gas production since 2000 — largely from the tar sands — royalty payments to government have declined 59 per cent, notes respected energy analyst David Hughes. 

So, too, has the industry’s proportional contribution to GDP.
According to data from Natural Resources Canada, taxes paid by the oil and gas industry since 2006 have dropped from $12 billion to $6 billion*.

It's "Ethical Oil."

There is light oil and heavy oil, but no refinery has ever begged for ethical oil. 

That’s because it doesn’t exist. If Alberta has done such a “moral” job of regulating its resources, what happened to its rainy day fund? 

And if the industry has behaved so ethically, why will Alberta and Canadian taxpayers likely be on the hook for cleaning up and decommissioning $260-billion worth of abandoned wells, pipelines and gas plants?

How ethical is it to allow an industry to set aside funds of $1.6 billion to cover hundreds of billions of dollars in liabilities? 

New research says that “carbon dioxide emission intensities for oil sands facilities are 13 to 123 per cent larger than those estimated using publically available data.”

Is that an ethical development?

Let's do the math. A quarter trillion dollars of unfunded remediation costs versus six billion dollars a year* in royalties to the Alberta treasury. Imagine finding a bar that lets you run a tab for 43-years. That's 43-years worth of royalties.

Myth: Every day Canada loses 30 to 40 million dollars from a shortage of pipeline capacity. That's a lie, one of Junior's favourites.

To illustrate the grandiosity of the claim, just consider the finances of Suncor, one of Canada’s largest bitumen miners. If the industry were losing so much money every day, you’d expect Suncor to be bleeding, too.

But that’s not what its financial statements say.

In fact, Suncor has been recording tidy profits for years, because it mines, upgrades and refines bitumen into a variety of refined products.

The company also hedges against oil price volatility and heavy oil discounts. Even with mandated provincial cuts in production, the company produced396,000 barrels of bitumen in the first quarter of 2019, with net earnings of $1.4 billion compared to $789 million in 2018. 

Husky and Imperial Oil, the province’s other big producers, also reported healthy returns this year.

...So don’t try bullying British Columbians with fictional losses produced by fictional pipelines. 

Alberta’s three major bitumen producers make money regardless of pipeline politics, because they do everything Alberta failed to do: they hedge, add value and refine.

US-funded environmentalists are waging a campaign to block Canada's access to Asian markets. They're out to sabotage our economy.

No conspiracy existed. The campaign largely focused on bitumen’s distinct character. Such crude has higher energy costs and an extreme carbon footprint compared to conventional oils. 

Alberta’s remains one of the world’s dirtiest oils, with emissions 102 to 204 per cent higher than average U.S. refinery crude on a well-to-tank basis that includes all the emissions from mining, upgrading and refining.

That’s why Alberta’s oil was targeted. Period.

And given that oil sands production has increased 376 per cent since 2000, and overall oil and gas production has grown by 47 per cent in Canada, “the alleged foreign funded attack” has been damn ineffective, notes analyst Hughes.

Here on the coast we know these truths. We see the malicious lies, and they are malicious, spun by Ottawa and the oil provinces for what they are, an attack on us and on our coast.  The threats make their malice even more intolerable.

Young People, Climate Change, Quebec

Have our atrophied old school political parties misjudged the issue of climate change? I think so. The worst part is that they haven't merely shot themselves in the foot. They were pointing that gun considerably higher.

This isn't about Paul Manly and the Green's by-election win yesterday in Nanaimo-Ladysmith. It's about much more than that, a generational thing that may cost the old school parties dearly in years to come. It's about students. Quebec students. It's about climate change. And, sure, it's about generational justice.

A Quebec high school French exam question that asked students about adapting to climate change has drawn a torrent of online criticism, as teens used memes and videos to denounce what they see as government inaction on climate issues. 

The question on last week’s ministry exam for Grade 11 students asked: “Can we adapt to climate change?” 

It quickly drew the ire of students like 17-year-old Francis Claude, who feels the way the question was phrased suggests the government has accepted climate change. 

“It’s like they want to abandon the fight against climate change, and just make do and adapt,” said Claude, whose Facebook group dedicated to the exam has exploded to almost 37,000 members in recent days. 

Claude said the members of his generation are committed to fighting environmental destruction, not adapting to it.

What's expedient to the old-before-their-time pols like Justin and Chuckles is seen much differently by our young people. It's their future being compromised by a gaggle of political hacks. It's the whole Greta Thunberg thing.

Trudeau is selling out their generation. They're not addled, unlike Liberal supporters who think a carbon tax at this horrible moment is meaningful, some great green step forward. These young people, they're clued in. They pay attention because, in many ways, we're deciding their fate twenty, thirty, forty years down the road and we're making those calls based on our interests, not theirs.

Trudeau is bad. Scheer will, if he gets the chance, be far worse. Scheer will do the nihilistic bidding of his posse - Kenney, Moe, Pallister and Ford and all the boys in Big Oil's boardrooms.

But "lousy" versus "even worse" isn't much of a choice, is it. And if those people are relieving themselves on your future maybe you just want rid of the lot.

We get the same warnings the kids get. We see the same stories in the papers, on TV. Only they don't mean as much to us, the "not just yet" generations. To the kids those reports and all those studies have a decidedly dystopian tinge while it's all "don't worry, be happy" from their elders, the Higher Purpose Persons like Justin and Andy and even Jagmeet.

Why shouldn't they get pissed off? Their needs, the real life and death stuff, isn't reflected in our decisions. Trudeau's pipeline is a repudiation of their lives twenty, thirty, forty years from now when we'll be enjoying a restful dirt nap as they curse our memory.

This is possibly, even probably, the decisive election year. After this year the door will close on a lot of opportunities to implement urgent initiatives. How many of these rubbish parties will present credible plans to slash Canada's greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030 and then to decarbonize our society and our economy by 2050? After the phenomenal disappointment of Justin Trudeau how are young people to trust them?

They're going to have to sacrifice. We're already seeing to that. But it's compromising their future that we support, not sacrificing today to give them a fair shake, a less degraded future, that we'll endorse.

“What’s the point of studying for a future we’re not going to have?” said Claude, who attends Mont-Ste-Anne School in Beaupre, 40 kilometres northeast of Quebec City. 

Claude said he started the Facebook group so students could exchange study tips and share jokes and memes about the exam process. But it has now morphed into a sort of environmental forum, where students direct their anger at the government and its perceived inaction.

Good luck to those kids. They'll need it. We'll see they need every scrap of luck they can muster.

BRITAIN WINS! Parliament Declares Climate National Emergency

From CNN:

Lawmakers in the UK Parliament have declared "an environment and climate emergency," making it the first country in the world to do so, according to the opposition Labour Party. 

The motion was called by Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. 

WE DID IT! Thanks to pressure from the Labour Party, the UK just became the first country to declare an environment and #climateemergency. Now it's time for real action to tackle climate change. Share this. pic.twitter.com/hOheWxQQHf—  

The Labour Party (@UKLabour) May 1, 2019

I realize I've flogged this story pretty relentlessly lately but I only did that because it's so important for life on Earth, all life on Earth.

What we need to do now, here in Canada, is turn on the petro-pimps, the fossil fuelers and their political handmaidens and tell them they have no place in Canada's future. They won't switch their allegiance back to the people of Canada and our future until they fear us again. As Jeremy Corbyn put it this morning, "we have no time to waste."

And what did we accomplish on the climate emergency front today? Why, it was Bill Morneau boasting about how our fracked gas/LNG venture shows that Canada can still deliver on big, carbon-energy projects. And then Justin went groveling to Jason Kenney.

Ottawa is vowing to exempt certain non-mining projects that use steam to extract crude from deep under the earth — known as in-situ projects — as long as Alberta Premier Jason Kenney maintains a hard cap on emissions from his province's oil sector.

Is that a prime minister you can respect?

May Day. M'aidez. Mayday.

p.s. yes, I know, Scotland and Wales previously declared a climate change state of emergency.

Pipelines Are a Lousy Bet

From National Public Radio, NPR:

A new report by an energy watchdog group says companies are betting over a trillion dollars in risky gas pipeline projects. 

Global Energy Monitor says these projects are hugely expensive - so the payback is over decades. Climate scientists say we need to stop burning fossil fuels completely by 2050. 

That means the pipelines could become stranded assets for the companies. 

Enbridge Energy is engaging in a particularly risky expansion, according to Ted Nace, co-author of the report. He says Enbridge, the world's third largest pipeline company, has a heavy debt load. 

That could leave the company at risk of needing government bailouts if global demand for natural gas stays stagnant, or falls. 

Nace says investors are already turning away from fossil fuel projects over concerns about climate change.

Ford Says Ontario Has Done Enough.

At least there's something Doug Ford can thank his Liberal predecessor for - cutting Ontario's greenhouse gas emissions. He's positively boastful about that, to the point where he's shining an unwanted light on his anti-climate tax comrades, Kenney and Moe.

Doug Ford's government in Ontario is now insisting the province should not be expected to do more than its "fair share" to meet Canada's national commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
But Ford's definition of "fair" might present a significant challenge to the rest of the country — particularly Ford's conservative allies in Alberta and Saskatchewan. 

Under Kathleen Wynne's Liberal government, Ontario was committed to reducing its emissions by 37 per cent below 1990 levels by 2030. While tearing down large portions of that government's climate agenda, Ford's Progressive Conservatives settled on a less-ambitious target: a cut of 30 per cent below 2005 by 2030.

That new provincial target matches the national target. It's also (conveniently enough) within reach already. As the Ford government now loudly notes, Ontario's emissions have declined by 22 per cent below 2005 levels. 

"Today's report confirms Ontario has decreased emissions by 22 per cent since 2005, while the rest of Canada's input continues to increase," Rod Phillips, Ontario's environment minister, said last week when the federal government released the latest inventory of Canada's emissions. "Families in Ontario have already paid a significant cost for these efforts, yet the federal government continues to ask us to pay more than our fair share."

But what is the real picture? It's pretty grim. A recent report from the University of Western Ontario's Ivey School of Business shows Canada's greenhouse gas emissions by province, both overall and per capita.

Ford says Ontario has done enough and it's now up to the "rest of Canada" to do their share.

Here are some of the findings from the summary to the Ivey report:

• Canada’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions currently represent about 1.6 percent of the global total. Canada is among the top 10 global emitters and one of the largest developed world per capita emitter of GHGs. 

• Canadian federal governments have committed to reduce annual GHG emissions from the current level of 726 megatonnes (Mt) to 622 Mt in 2020 and 525 Mt in 2030. • Within Canada, GHG emissions vary widely across provinces ranging from 267 Mt in Alberta to 1.8 Mt in PEI in 2013. 

• In per capita terms, Saskatchewan and Alberta are among the developed world’s largest emitters at 68 and 67 tonnes respectively.* Per capita emissions in BC, Ontario, and Quebec are in the 10-14 tonne range, comparable to best performers in Western Europe. 

• For provinces with announced GHG emission targets, the level of ambition varies widely. Alberta plans to increase emissions towards 2020, and then return to today’s levels by 2030, while Ontario Quebec and Manitoba plan to reduce emissions by 56, 27 and 8 Mt respectively. 

• Even if all provincial targets were fully achieved, Canada would still need to reduce GHG emissions by an additional 45 Mt in 2020 and 55 Mt in 2030 to meet its international commitments.

* The Ivey analysis was before the federal government's report this week showing that the Tar Sanders massively understated their GHG emissions from bitumen extraction.

So, since Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia have the lowest, per capital emissions, "comparable the best performers in Western Europe," while Saskatchewan and Alberta, by contrast, are off the chart even using their dodgy numbers, Ford must be referring to his comrades in arms, Kenney and Moe. They're the dirty buggers, the climate wreckers, and they should be easy pickings for Justin Trudeau. Wait, I'm sorry, when it comes to bitumen Trudeau is in their canoe.

No matter how much they shuck and jive, the petro-provinces and the petro-state simply cannot get past this:

According to the latest statistics, Canada emits about 1.6 percent of the world’s GHG emissions.  Despite this relatively low share, Canada is among the top 10 global emitters on an absolute basis, and stands firmly in the top 3 for emissions per capita. By way of comparison, Canada’s population makes up about 0.5 percent of the world total so that our emissions’ share is about 3 times our population share.

Trudeau acolytes at this point tend to drag out SFU economist Mark Jaccard's recent comment that, thanks to the Dauphin, Canada is the climate change envy of the world. It's not. We are among the top 10 overall global emitters even though we're just half a per cent of the world by population and, yes, we are "firmly in the top 3 for emissions per capita." That might make us the envy of Saudi Arabia or Venezuela but the rest of the world, really?

Those Ever So Tarry Sands

You know your country has descended into a petro-state by the arguments it invokes to excuse itself. The classic Tory line that's now the Liberal line is that, gee shucks, Canada is such a minor player that even if we stopped flogging bitumen it wouldn't really change much. Even Environment Canada is beating that dead horse.

Much like the unfunded quarter trillion dollar clean up cost for Athabasca's tailing ponds, the enormity of Tar Sands emissions is never really addressed. Maybe a little bit, but so what, not that bad... Out of sight/out of mind.

Pollution from fossil fuels in Canada continues to grow by staggering amounts, with the oilsands sector alone responsible for more carbon pollution than all of B.C. or Quebec in 2017, says the federal government in its latest climate change report to the United Nations. 

The newest edition of Canada’s National Inventory Report, covering data up to two years ago, shows that the oil and gas sector was responsible for 195 million tonnes, or megatonnes (Mt) of greenhouse gas emissions in 2017, up eight Mt from 2016.

The oilsands, a region in Alberta and Saskatchewan that constitute almost all of Canada’s 173 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, generated 81 Mt of pollution in 2017, making up 41 per cent of the sector’s emissions. 

That is larger than all the pollution generated by the entire economies of British Columbia that year, at 62 Mt, or Quebec's at 78 Mt. It is also larger than emissions reductions that have been seen in other parts of the country.

How Trudeau screwed the pooch.

The NDP government of Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, which was defeated in Tuesday night's provincial election, had promised to set an absolute cap of 100 Mt of carbon pollution from the oilsands. Premier-designate Jason Kenney's United Conservative Party is expected to undo Notley's climate policies, including her cap on oilsands pollution. 

But the sector, which has represented about two per cent of Canada's economy according to federal government estimates, was responsible for 400,000 direct and indirect jobs in Alberta in 2016. It has historically opposed proposals to introduce tough national climate change policies.

The last thing Canada should be doing is building pipelines.

"Increases in emissions from the tarsands are undoing all the progress being made in other sectors," said Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada, in a statement. 

"If we are serious about protecting communities from climate-fueled floods, wildfires and other extreme weather, the last thing Canada should be doing is building new pipelines to expand oil production and exports. Either we act like this truly is a crisis that threatens our health and survival, or we sleepwalk towards disaster. It's as simple as that and our politicians are currently choosing the second option."

So, What in Hell Does Justin Do Now?

This is another fine mess he's created. He tried to help Rachel as much as he could but she's out, bumped off by the bete noire of Western conservatism, Jason Kenney.

The new premier is a truly shrewd bugger who knows to strike when an opponent is vulnerable and, today, "vulnerable" is Justin Trudeau's job description.

Trudeau owns a pipeline, a very costly pipeline, and, no matter what he does with it, the Liberals will have no reward in Alberta.  Jason Kenney is out to whip the Liberals like the proverbial red-headed stepchild. How tightly has Trudeau tied his own hands?

There are seats the Liberals can lose in the west - in British Columbia, Kenney's other target. It's hard to imagine coastal British Columbians warming to a prime minister seen as in league with that conservative thug from the other side of the Rockies.

What a screw up and, yes, I am referring to Justin Trudeau.  He dug this hole. It's his to climb out of if he still can.

What We're Up Against - The Gang That Would See Canada in Ruins.

It's the cast of "The Gang of Thugs" premiering this fall.

A Glimpse at the Risks We Must Bear for Your Pathetic "National Unity."

Two things: the Deepwater Horizon disaster involved conventional, crude oil. They were not dealing with tar-like sludge laced with toxins, acids, heavy metals and carcinogens. Secondly, it was a fairly easy site for oil spill response crews and vessels to get at. No mad currents, no huge swells, no tides, no rocky projections and inaccessible coastlines.

For all that, it was a catastrophe. That much should have been obvious as soon as they used military-grade transport aircraft, C-130 Hercules, to spray an even more lethal chemical, Corexit, not to disperse the oil or render it harmless, but to sink it out of sight.

Oil spills, even conventional crude oil spills, are catastrophic. More than a quarter century later the Exxon Valdez oil still confounds clean up crews in Prince William Sound, Alaska. It's on the shoreline, it's in the water. It's now expected to claim one of the two resident Orca pods in that area. That's a quarter century plus.

What about the Deepwater Horizon? It is now allowing researchers to chronicle how even a conventional oil spill can savage the marine ecology - for ever.

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster may have had a lasting impact upon even the smallest organisms in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists have found – amid warnings that the oceans around America are also under fresh assault as a result of environmental policies under Donald Trump. 

Lingering oil residues have altered the basic building blocks of life in the ocean by reducing biodiversity in sites closest to the spill, which occurred when a BP drilling rig exploded in April 2010, killing 11 workers and spewing about 4m barrels of oil into the Gulf.

Researchers took sediment samples in 2014 from shipwrecks scattered up to 150km (93 miles) from the spill site to study how microbial communities on the wrecks have changed. On two shipwrecks close to the source of the outpouring of oil – a German U-Boat and a wooden 19th-century sailing vessel – scientists saw a visible oil residue. 

“At the sites closest to the spill, biodiversity was flattened,” said Leila Hamdan, a microbial ecologist at the University of Southern Mississippi and lead author of the study. “There were fewer types of microbes. This is a cold, dark environment and anything you put down there will be longer lasting than oil on a beach in Florida.

The BP oil disaster fouled more than 1,300 miles of coastline, caking seabirds and killing sea creatures and other wildlife, leading to huge financial losses for the tourism and fishing industries. But Hamdan said the oil’s impact on microbes, each measuring just a fraction of a millimeter, could prove even more significant given their foundational role at the base of the ocean food chain.

“We rely heavily on the ocean and we could be looking at potential effects to the food supply down the road,” she said. “Deep sea microbes regulate carbon in the atmosphere and recycle nutrients. I’m concerned there will be larger consequences from this sort of event.”

The marine ecology begins at the sea bed. Ocean food chains begin with the smallest creatures on the sea bed that are eaten by the next biggest creature in a process aptly described as a "food chain" in which the top predators are usually found toward the surface.

As the smallest creatures are eaten, the contamination they have absorbed into their bodies or cells passes on to their immediate predators in a process called "bio-concentration." That contamination keeps concentrating at each successive link in the food chain, straight up to the top. It attacks everything, every species, along the way. It's a direct path from microbe to orca or the great whales.

Maybe you believe prime minister Trudeau's most outrageous and deliberate lie - that there's some magical oil spill response that will keep British Columbia's coastline and our productive marine environment safe from a bitumen spill. Where is this world class oil spill package? Given that oil spills, on average, take 50 years to clean up, "world class" is a euphemism for catastrophe. And, besides, why did his own EnviroMin, Dame Cathy herself, authorize the use of Corexit in BC waters?

Trudeau assures us that his government has "done the science" on these environmental hazards. That's a lie. His very own Environment Canada says the science hasn't been done. Canada's pre-eminent scientific body, the Royal Society of Canada, says the science hasn't been done. They both put the lie to every dodgy and maliciously false claim this prime minister makes. He's simply not to be trusted, especially by the very people his petro-greed most imperils, coastal British Columbians.

Now, of course, Trudeau has even more incentive, 4.5 billion of them (and that's just for starters), to lie and obscure, confound and confuse. He's bought himself a goddamned pipeline, the J. Trudeau Memorial Pipeline, 65-years old and prone to leaking like those middle age women dancing around in those TV ads. He likes that pipeline so much he paid a sketchy outfit from Texas more than six times its actual value. There's a guy who's not looking to give any straight answers on environmental questions.

Even the former Bank of Canada governor, David Dodge, says some British Columbians protesting the pipeline will have to be killed before urging the Trudeau government to find the courage to take those lives.

"we have to be willing to enforce the law once it’s there … It’s going to take some fortitude to stand up.”

No, Dave. What will take fortitude is to take those bullets and fall down.

Justin Trudeau, his entire cabinet and all the horses they rode in on; Rachel Notley, the outgoing premier of Alberta; Jason Kenney, the incoming premier of Alberta; some stooge from Saskatchewan named Moe; that former governor of the Bank of Canada; those Kinder Morgan bandits who fleeced the Dauphin and the entire roster of the Calgary Petroleum Club, they're all - oh what's that word?

Which brings to mind an article in Vox by  Stanford psychology professor, Robert Sutton, who has now defined the term, "asshole" -

There are a lot of academic definitions, but here’s how I define it: An asshole is someone who leaves us feeling demeaned, de-energized, disrespected, and/or oppressed. In other words, someone who makes you feel like dirt. 

Christy Goldfuss, former environmental advisor to Barack Obama, now with the Center for American Progress, summed it up in a way that should resonate with the people of British Columbia, our First Nations and our provincial government:

“In the absence of a president [prime minister] who is willing to lead, it is now more important than ever that coastal governors [premier Horgan], tribal leaders, state legislatures the [B.C. legislature] and local communities take up the mantle of leadership and work together to defend and restore the health of [Canada's] oceans."

Good News for the Environment = Bad Tidings for Prime Minister Pipeline

If it's as good as they say it is - and, with these "breakthroughs" that's always a very big "if" -  the fossil energy industry could be kaput. Sorry, Justin. Sorry, Rachel. Sorry, Jason. Sorry, Andrew. Sorry, Big Oil. WooHoo, British Columbia.

An article in Financial Post claims a BC company has come up with a breakthrough technology to capture and transform atmospheric carbon, carbon dioxide, into fuel for cars, trucks and jets.

In an article published Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal Joule, Carbon Engineering outlines what it calls direct air capture in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere through a chemical process, then combined with hydrogen and oxygen to create fuel.

“If these aren’t renewable fuels, what are?” said David Keith, professor of applied physics at Harvard University, lead author of the paper and principal in Carbon Engineering.

At least seven companies worldwide are working on the idea. Swiss-based Climeworks has already built a commercial-scale plant. 

It costs Climeworks about US$600 a tonne to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Carbon Engineering says it can do the job for between US$94 and US$232 a tonne because it uses technology and components that are well understood and commercially available.

Winning the cost war.

Carbon Engineering’s fuel costs about 25 per cent more than gasoline made from oil. Oldham said work is being done to reduce that. 

Because the plant currently uses some natural gas, by the time the fuel it produces has been burned it has released a half-tonne of carbon dioxide for every tonne removed from the air. That gives it a carbon footprint 70 per cent lower than a fossil fuel, he said. 

That footprint would shrink further if the plant were all-electric. And if it ran on wind- or solar-generated electricity, the fuel would be almost carbon neutral.

Playing into BC's hand.

“What you need is a way to make a fuel in a place where you’ve got really cheap low-carbon power, and that will power the airplane. That’s the core idea here.” 

Putting a price on carbon has been crucial to Carbon Engineering’s development, said Oldham. 

“We would not be in business if carbon pricing did not exist.”

If the key is to find really cheap, low-carbon power for the extraction/processing operation that means solar, wind, hydro-electric and/or thermal-electric. British Columbia has vast untapped supplies of thermal-energy. It's what you get in mountainous terrain. And, as for hydro-electricity, we've also got that in abundance. That's also what you get from mountainous terrain along the west coast of any continent.

So, let's say this Carbon Engineering outfit is legit and they manage to produce renewable, i.e. "clean" hydrocarbon transport fuels at or below current fossil fuel prices, there goes the market for the sort of fossil fuels we're dependent upon today. Places that can produce the least costly, low-carbon power for recycling atmospheric carbon will have energy independence from the fossil fuel industry.

The logical extension of this is that nations that don't have an abundance of fossil fuel reserves but have the ability to produce renewable energy at competitive cost would be able to harvest atmospheric carbon to produce their own transport fuels. That would throw a huge wrench into OPEC and its parasite producers such as Canada.

Carry that one step further and you come to the Athabasca Tar Sands and Trudeau's Trans Mountain pipeline, both essentially DOA. If Carbon Engineering's technology pans out, Canada's days as a petro-state are finished -except for the aftermath.

Wouldn't that be ironic if a British Columbia company brought down the very jurisdictions that have been pressuring, even threatening, the province to bow to the petro-state?

Jason Kenney Shows His True Colours

And they're the colours of a serial liar.  Methinks he's over his head as minister of defence but maybe he's just practising for the job he really wants.

We've been told by Kenney and his aide of Russian fighters buzzing a Canadian frigate in the Black Sea.  Worse yet, according to Kenney a pair of Russian warships confronted HMCS Fredericton.

A high-speed, low-altitude pass over  a warship by a less than friendly warplane is an act of aggression.  Not necessarily illegal but provocative nonetheless.  For domestic consumption it can evoke the tank barrel to tank barrel confrontations we saw when the Berlin Wall was erected.  It's another beat of the war drum.

Except it's not true.  After Kenney and his minion spread the story, Canada's defence department wouldn't comment.  I wonder why?  Instead they told reporters to contact NATO.  It turned out that the Russians didn't buzz any Canadian warship.   The Russians did overfly the Canadian ship but at altitude. As for the menacing confrontation by Russian ships, NATO said there were some Russian ships that could be seen far out on the horizon but they never approached the NATO task force.

My guess is that Jason Kenney is merely demonstrating that he has the lying skills necessary to be the natural successor to the Prince of Darkness himself, especially if old Beelzebub has to bail quickly during the Duffy trial.

Screw Oversight! In HarperLand, We Watch YOU, You Don't Watch Us.

What's the point in having domestic spying if it means you're going to be, oh I don't know, "accountable?"

Canada's Closet Clausewitz, def min Jason Kenney, says there'll be no additional oversight of national security operatives after the Harper government rams through bill C-51.

Defence Minister Jason Kenney, who has functioned as the government’s lead spokesman for the legislation in recent days, rebuffed an appeal for more independent supervision of national-security agencies – one that came in the form of letter published in The Globe and Mail and signed by former prime ministers, ex–Supreme Court justices and others.

Mr. Kenney noted the letter’s key signatories, Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin, Joe Clark and John Turner, did not change the oversight of Canada’s spy agency, which is currently supervised by the Security Intelligence Review Committee, while they were in power.

“We have the same system that has worked well in Canada for over 25 years,” the Defence Minister told CTV. “I would point out those four former prime ministers all had exactly the same system of an independent oversight committee for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.”

Yes, Jason, they had the same system only they didn't have the same domestic spying powers because C-51 is the Orwellian hellspawn of your government. You created it, not Chretien, Martin, Clark or Turner.  Those wimps didn't think Canada should be a police state.  What were they thinking?

Now all eyes should turn to Justin.  Will Trudeau the Lesser grow a pair and oppose this terrible law or, just like Ignatieff, will he bow on bended knee to Harper?

Who Will Lead the Tories into the 2015 Election?

If there was just one thing that Tories learned from Monday's by-elections it was that they're up against a resurgent Liberal challenge with Justin Trudeau at the helm.  They probably didn't need the by-elections to tell them that, by contrast, their own leader is becoming increasingly unpopular if not outright toxic to Tory fortunes.

Stephen Harper has said he intends to lead the Conservatives into the 2015 election but that decision might not be his to take any longer.

The party establishment isn't going to want a wounded leader going up against a popular, energized Liberal contender.  There are rumours of two, possibly three, latter day Dalton Camps already operating in the wings.

At this stage it's hard to imagine too many Tories willing to risk all by rallying to the side of Stephen Harper.  He's just not the sort of guy who makes a lot of friends.   He doesn't earn loyalty.  If anything he's a nasty little shit.

What happens next depends on whether Harper has not only taken himself down but has taken down the Reform wing with him.   The conditions might be ripe for a PC reformation.

There's not a lot of depth from the Tory front bench to answer the call for a new leader.  MacKay might have aspirations but he's something of a spent force and then there's the little matter of how he sold out the PCs.   Jason Kenney?  Possibly, but I think he has a "no wife, no babies" problem with the social conservative base.  He's also a westerner.  And, besides, Kenney- MacKay et al have  all logged years of  loyal service to the Grand Corrupter, the Prince of Darkness, Beelzebub himself.   With an election less than two years away and a party in need of rehab, Tories might well be looking for a new, fresh face.

Did I mention Jim Prentice?  No?  Well he's said to be weighing his options.  Although he's a Calgarian, he has lengthy Progressive Conservative credentials.   He was generally seen as moderate (at least compared to some of his colleagues), sophisticated (not a faith-based mouth breather) and he's been out of Harper's cabal long enough for the taint to wash off.

There's another name that's surfaced on the rumour circuit.   Now brace yourself.   How 'bout Jean Charest?   Some Tories think Charest could be a viable contender in a race to replace Stephen Harper.  Charest stepped in before when the party was in extremis.  He's affable, fairly well known and liked across Canada, and he's from Quebec.   Those are attributes the Tories could use in a leader right now.

Who knows, maybe Harper will find some way to hang on.   Maybe the Tories will answer the Liberals' prayers and go into the 2015 election behind this prime minister.