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.

Bank of Canada Warns: Beware of Carbon Dumpster Fires

Bad tidings for the Petro-Pols of Parliament Hill.  The Bank of Canada warns of looming carbon-asset "fire sales" that could destabilize our economy.

The shift to a low-carbon economy is "underway" and sectors like oil and gas, as well as the banks that loan money to them, are exposed to risks from climate change that could spill over into destabilizing "fire sales," the Bank of Canada said Thursday. 

The central bank listed climate change as one of six vulnerabilities in the Canadian financial system in a report released May 16. The report, called the Financial System Review, marks the first time the Bank of Canada has explored the issue in depth as part of its examination of risks to the nation's financial stability.

Excellent timing, Liberals. We're stuck with a $4.5 billion time-expired bitumen pipeline that'll need another $7 to $9 billion in expansion costs to deliver high carbon, high cost, low value bitumen to "tidewater."

The Bank of Canada's acknowledgement of climate-related risk in Thursday's report is significant, given that it's the institution that promotes economic and financial welfare in the country, including through setting the key interest rate and influencing the money supply.'

Oh dear, it sounds like someone panicked and let some slick Texans get the better of us. Hmmm.  I'll bet it's high-fives all round in the Lone Star state these days.

What Yesterday Meant to Me

Since that first time I heard Greta Thunberg, I sensed that something wonderful might be about to happen.

Eventually she inspired a resistance. The school children's revolt and then Extinction Rebellion - children and adults saying there no longer could be, nor would be, tolerance of the status quo.

As altruistic Britons were refusing to move, they were arrested, charged and taken into custody - for what is genuinely trying, in a most modest way, to save humanity by changing minds.

And it worked.

With more than two-thirds of the population now realizing that the UK was in a climate change emergency, Jeremy Corbyn took that as his cue to table a motion calling on Parliament to declare a state of national climate emergency that easily passed in the House of Commons bolstering similar declarations from Wales and
Scotland.

As Westminster was declaring a national emergency, across the Atlantic, Canada's finance minister, Morneau, was beating his chest over fracked gas, LNG, as proof of Canada's ability to deliver on big carbon-energy projects. The prime minister, meanwhile, was begging Alberta premier, Jason Kenney, to save emissions caps by promising to just look the other way on bitumen extraction.

Brits take pride in their "stiff upper lip" image, the "Stay Calm and Carry On" national mantra. The people of the UK aren't afraid to look over their shoulder and spot what's coming and, when they did, they demanded action.  Canadians, apparently, aren't made of such stuff. All we have to hear are empty threats such as "this will hurt the economy" and we're in full rout. It seems we don't care if this cherished economy or that small fraction represented by fossil fuels has led us to a cliff edge. We're not stopping.

We don't care. Not enough of us anyway. Sure, we're worried about climate change but not enough to insist that real measures be taken to at least give us a chance at a soft crash landing. Ah, the kids'll figure out something. They'll have to with the future we're bequeathing to them.

Maybe we can still change but the clock is quickly running out and our governments aren't courageous enough to declare climate change a national emergency even though Canada is vulnerable. We have the longest coastline of any nation, from sea to sea to sea. Our vast forests are being ravaged by heat waves, unreliable snowcap and summer precipitation, mass infestation by pine beetles and other pests that are now moving steadily out of the West toward the Atlantic. The Arctic ice and snow that once kept our tundra and permafrost stable is disappearing, giving rise to the release of potentially massive quantities of methane and CO2. To the south, "once a century" floods are now becoming once every few years, our "new normal." Science now shows that the prairie petro-provinces are looking at a future as parched wasteland. Mega drought imperils our domestic food security. Our essential infrastructure is in decay and in no shape to withstand the severe climate that is even now setting in. Even our fisheries are being changed as native species migrate in search of colder waters. Wildfire smoke now perfumes the skies of the West, forcing ordinary Canadians to shelter indoors at what used to be the very best time to be outdoors.

But no, we don't have a climate change national emergency and, if we do, we're too cowardly to deal with it.  We won't change, not in time. When we go to the polls this October look for 70 per cent, perhaps more, of the vote to go for the very worst petro-state parties, the Liberals or the Conservatives.

Yesterday was a bittersweet moment, one eagerly awaited. I'm proud of the British people for forcing their politicians' hands. I wish we were made of that same stuff.

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.

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."

This Is What Gives Them Away

A lot of stupid people in Canada have come to think of Athabasca bitumen as "oil." That is the single most important victory the petro-state has achieved.

It's not oil. It may be turned into oil at a distant refinery, probably in the States  but we're told even in Asia, at some time, somewhere. Until it leaves that distant refinery it's something quite different from  any conventional oil.

"They" - the federal and provincial governments, our bitumen-friendly media, and the Oil Patch - are lying to us about this stuff, filling your mind with images of something that is not. Whether it comes out of Justin Trudeau's mouth or Andrew Scheer's mouth or Jason Kenney's mouth, they're feeding you carefully contrived horse shit and, by the look of things, you've got a taste for it now.

They don't want you to trouble your precious minds with what they're really doing. They don't want you dwelling on what's really in the crap they're squeezing through their pipelines.

They don't want you dwelling on the ultra-high carbon, granulated coal in their crud - petcoke. Out of sight/out of mind. That stuff gets refined out. Then it gets sold wherever no one is too fussy about burning it. It's a lot worse, pound for pound, than brown or thermal coal, the real garbage stuff.

They'll howl like cut cats at the first mention of the lethal toxins embedded in  unrefined dilbit.

The heavy metals, rated as priority pollutants by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, include mercury, arsenic, beryllium, copper, cadmium, thallium, lead, nickel, zinc and silver. All are toxic. Arsenic is a known human carcinogen; cadmium can severely destroy the kidneys and other organs; and thallium is so poisonous that it pops up in Agatha Christie mysteries as a murder weapon.

That stuff threatens environmental catastrophe wherever a dilbit pipeline runs. It threatens British Columbia's pristine coastal ecology with every wallowing supertanker that navigates our waters.

They know that a dilbit spill in BC waters is virtually beyond clean up. They know that the diluent quickly evaporates out leaving the dense bitumen to sink to the bottom, hundreds of feet down, where it can never be cleaned up and will destroy the marine food chain for many decades, perhaps forever.



They know how pernicious and devastating this crud is. That's why Trudeau's environment minister, Dame Cathy McKenna, has approved the use of Corexit as an "oil dispersent." It's nothing of the sort. It's an outrageous lie whether it comes out of Cathy's mouth or Justin's.  Corexit doesn't disperse oil, even ordinary conventional crude oil. It sinks spilled oil to the bottom. Out of sight/out of mind. It was used in Price William Sound for the Exxon Valdez. It was used in the Gulf of Mexico for the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. It has one purpose - to make the problem go away for those who can turn their backs on what they've done.

Crews are regularly sickened by Corexit. Most of the crews that worked the Exxon Valdez spill fell seriously ill.  Just read the warning label from Nalco, the producer of Corexit.

Corexit is for use on spills on land. Nalco's clean up directions make that obvious.

"Do not contaminate surface water." As if.

There is no justification whatsoever for exposing my province, my land, my coast to this environmental disaster in waiting. All these things - the toxins, the petcoke, the acids and abrasives - could easily be refined out in Alberta, in Athabasca.

The thing is. If they were responsible - Alberta or the feds - and showed just a little respect for British Columbia and demanded that it be refined on site, it would expose how worthless this high-carbon/high-cost/low-value garbage fossil fuel really is.

Despite all this these bastards threaten us. They jail us and give us criminal records.  It's ironic that we should be going to jail, not them. It's pretty rich to hear Liberals whine that, if we don't vote for their boy, we're electing Andrew Scheer. What a laugh.

Trudeau's Dodgy Ten Billion Dollar Bet

Justin Trudeau bet the farm on bitumen when he bought the Trans Mountain pipeline. Cutting a treasury cheque for $4.5 billion to the former owner, Kinder Morgan, and facing another $7 billion to complete the pipeline expansion, the Trans Mountain is a 40-60 year proposition for breaking even.

Visions of sugarplums were dancing through Trudeau and Morneau's heads as they decided to grossly overpay for an aging pipeline the boys from Texas were ready to write off and shut down. It seems the Liberals contracted Oil Fever from their predecessor who famously imagined Canada as an "energy superpower."

Only it's looking as though Trudeau and his finance minister made a bad bet. Meanwhile Rachel and Jason are also doubling down.

Getting Alberta’s economy running on all its fossil-fuel-powered cylinders is at the heart of the province’s election campaign.
But some of Canada’s top energy thinkers — as well as international experts — warn there’s no pedal any premier can stomp to make that engine rev like it used to.

“No policy of any Alberta government can change things,” said Mark Jaccard, an energy economist at B.C.’s Simon Fraser University, who has advised governments on climate policy and helps write reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The University of Manitoba’s Vaclav Smil, one of Canada’s most widely quoted energy analysts, said any move to renewable energy will take decades, not years. The transition, however, may be felt sooner. 

“All energy transitions are slow,” he said. “Oil will be with us for decades to come — but not necessarily with high annual growth rates.”
The world has changed, said Andrew Grant of the London-based research group Carbon Tracker.

Solar and wind power provide three per cent of global energy demand, the report said. But between them they account for a quarter of all new generation.

It said that by early next decade, power from solar and wind is expected to be as cheap or cheaper than fossil fuels anywhere in the world. Since 2012, more new power generation has come from renewables than fossil fuels.

High-cost fossil fuels will become less attractive investments, Grant said. Even without carbon pricing, his group expects fossil fuel demand to peak early next decade.

... Jaccard has run the numbers.

In a paper published last year, he concluded that if the world honours its pledge to keep global warming under two degrees Celsius, there’s less than a five per cent chance that new oilsands investment — including pipelines — will be profitable over the next 30 years.

The reality is that solar and wind power have been cheaper than fossil energy since 2017 and they've opened the gap much wider over the past year. At the same time there's been a big drop in cost for battery storage.

Does bitumen have the forty to sixty years remaining it will need to make the Justin Trudeau Memorial Pipeline a sound investment? Well, they've already tried to flog it and no takers.

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."

"A Big Step Backwards"

Global consumption of fossil fuels - oil and coal - rebounded last year. It's enough that fossil energy giant, BP, called it "a big step backwards" and warned that the world may be on course to miss the already paltry goals of the Paris Climate Summit.

The renewed upward march of global carbon emissions is worrying and a big step backwards in the fight against climate change, according to BP. 

Emissions rose 1.6% in 2017 after flatlining for the previous three years, which the British oil firm said was a reminder the world was not on track to hit the goals of the Paris climate deal. 

Renewable power generation grew by 17% last year, led by wind and followed by what BP called “stunning” growth in solar. 

But strong economic growth led to above-average energy demand, coal use bounced back in China and efficiency gains slowed down, causing emissions to jump, the company’s annual statistical review of world energy found.

That should be music to Justin Trudeau's bitumen-clogged ears. Misery loves company and he already has Canada on course to miss our emission cut targets. Besides, if China is going back to coal again, they're going to love our bitumen.

Well played, Justin.

"The Greatest Threat Facing Mankind" - Not That You Would Know It, Not In Canada.

"Climate change is still moving much faster than we are." That's the pitch from UN climate change czar, Antonio Gutteres.

“Scientists are now worried that unless accelerated action is taken by 2020, the Paris goal may become unattainable,” the UN chief told reporters at the world body’s New York Headquarters.

“I am beginning to wonder how many more alarm bells must go off before the world rises to the challenge,” Mr. Guterres said, noting that 2017 had been filled with climate chaos and 2018 has already brought more of the same. 

“Climate change is still moving much faster than we are,” he warned, calling the phenomenon the greatest threat facing humankind.

Recent information from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the World Bank and the International Energy Agency shows the relentless pace of climate change. 

For instance, the UN chief said, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions rose 1.4 per cent, to a historic high of 32.5 gigatonnes.

Now I don't want to piss on Justin's Pipeline Parade but Canada has stepped into the Dark Side. We can't blame this on a bunch of foreign oil companies and Texas pipeline bandits. From now on in, it's pretty much "Made in Canada" and it comes with Justin's winning smile stamped right on it.

In social as well as economic terms, the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season was devastating, washing away decades of development in an instant. 

In South Asia, major monsoon floods affected 41 million people. 

In Africa, severe drought drove nearly 900,000 people from their homes. 

Wildfires caused destruction across the world. Arctic sea ice cover in winter is at its lowest level, and the oceans are warmer and more acidic than at any time in recorded history. 

“This tsunami of data should create a storm of concern,” Mr. Guterres said, noting that next year he will convene a climate summit in New York aimed at boosting global ambition to meet the level of the climate challenge.

Yeah, well, Antonio, not so much. The scientists have told us we have to leave that bitumen in the ground and we've answered with a resounding "fuck you, we'll do as we please."

No matter how many cowardly newspaper editorial boards cast this pipeline as an economic issue, it's much, much more than that. This is life and death, especially for the poorest, most vulnerable people on Earth and, at the very least, a brutal and ruinous future for our grandchildren and their kids.

This is a huge catastrophic threat to the coastline of British Columbia and the tens of thousands of jobs that would be lost from a tanker calamity in these treacherous, congested waters. An ordinary, conventional oil spill takes 50 years to clean up. Remember the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound, Alaska, a quarter century ago? It's still a mess and recently marine biologists warned that one of the two local orca pods will soon be no more.

There's no shortage of clean crude oil on the market but we're going to undercut that with rotgut bitumen at bargain basement prices. You've got to go low to flog that stuff. And you've got to be low to go low. Trudeau might as well revive the asbestos trade.

Great. Now Notley Imagines She's Speaking for All Canadians. You Too?

Rachel Notley is taking to the interwebs in her war with British Columbia. If it's war B.C. wants, it's war she'll get.

Now the Alberta premier, speaking for Alberta and all Canadians (including you, I guess) is going to expose the recalcitrant coastal curmudgeons, damned hippies and geriatric draft dodgers,  as never before.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Notley explained that this would drive home Alberta's message in the “ongoing dispute that British Columbia has triggered with Alberta and with all Canadians.”

“Albertans (will) be able to engage with people in other parts of the country to help make our point around why this is so important for Canada, for the Canadian economy, for Canada’s environmental progress, for all these issues,” Notley told a press conference in Edmonton, Alta.

But B.C.'s goal of improving scientific research into spills was actually supported by the federal government's Environment Department in 2016.

In January of that year, Environment and Climate Change Canada told the federal pipeline regulator, the National Energy Board, that there were significant "knowledge gaps and uncertainties with respect to hydrocarbon product behaviours in the marine environment," and that the company should commit to funding more research to strengthen spill response planning and risk assessment.

"Significant knowledge gaps." Now there's an understatement. 

As renowned Alberta ecologist, the University of Alberta's professor David Schindler wrote in a recent op-ed in the Edmonton Journal, we know essentially nothing about what a dilbit spill in British Columbia's coastal waters would mean. This admits of but two possibilities. Either the federal government hasn't researched the threat, which would make Justin Trudeau a despicable liar. Or it has done the research and, for some reason, has chosen not to share it with the public, especially coastal British Columbians. 

Me? I'm going to assume Ottawa has done the research and knows what a generational, environmental catastrophe awaits British Columbia's coast when, (not if but when and how often*) a wallowing, fully loaded supertanker has a mishap. And I'm going to make that assumption based on the decision of Dame Cathy McKenna's environment minister to quietly approve the use of the lethal chemical stew, Corexit, as an oil spill dispersant.

Before that other Albertan asshat, Shifty Steve Harper, rescinded it, our federal government imposed a tanker exclusion zone, that kept U.S. supertankers carrying Alaska crude oil to the lower 48 well out of British Columbia coastal waters. That wasn't dilbit. It was the far more benign conventional crude oil. Canada didn't implement that exclusion zone for shits and giggles. We knew the hazards even a conventional oil spill would pose to our coastal waters.

So, let's recap. Justin Trudeau's own environment ministry has said all along that the essential research into dilbit spills hasn't been done, directly contradicting this prime minister's empty assurances. The eminent science body, the Royal Society of Canada, says the research hasn't been done, not a lick of it. Alberta's most renowned ecologist, professor Dave Schindler says the British Columbia government's argument isn't intransigent. In fact it's pretty much unassailable. Trudeau lies to our faces and says his government has the science but won't produce it. Possibly his dog ate it. McKenna's environment ministry has green-lighted a vicious chemical compound that sinks oil spills straight to the bottom where the toxic sludge will contaminate the marine ecosystem for generations. And those uppity British Columbians should just shut up and keep their damned questions to themselves.

* during National Energy Board hearings, many experienced mariners from the Canadian Coast Guard, the Royal Canadian Navy and the merchant marine testified that a tanker spill isn't a matter of if but of when and how often.

Setting the Record Straight on Trudeau, Notley, Bitumen, and Our Future.

What's the difference between all-out nuclear war and catastrophic climate change? So far we haven't been stupid enough to resort to all-out nuclear war.

Both of them can end civilization, indeed most life on Earth. The way we're going it's unclear which will get the job done first.

Canada, of course, doesn't field a nuclear arsenal but it sure as hell is doing its bit on the other threat, runaway global warming. We have huge proven reserves of the filthiest, most dangerous, high-carbon ersatz oil on the planet, Athabasca bitumen. And we've got two provinces and a succession of federal governments hell bent on getting as much of that deadly crap as conceivably possible to foreign markets.

When challenged on this, our prime minister pops a fuze and says the only thing he can come up with. Here's what he told an angry crowd yesterday in Nanaimo:

"We wanted a national carbon reduction plan, a national emissions plan that is going to allow us to reach our climate goals, to reach our Paris commitments but in order to do that, part of moving forward is approving the Kinder Morgan pipeline. It is something many people feel very strongly about on either side, but that is the nature of the compromise we had to make in the best interests of Canada."

That's some ripe horseshit to be sure. Flogging Black Death is "part of moving forward." It's "in the nature of the compromise" that the Liberal government "had to make in the best interests of Canada."

If that's "moving forward," in what direction exactly is Canada heading? Well, given that Trudeau's climate goals were set by Stephen Harper and we're not on track to even meet those, you can probably figure out where Justin is taking us.

One of America's top climate scientists and advocates, James Hansen, had this to say five years ago about the Tar Sands.

"To avoid passing tipping points, such as initiation of the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, we need to limit the climate forcing severely. It's still possible to do that, if we phase down carbon emissions rapidly, but that means moving expeditiously to clean energies of the future. Moving to tar sands, one of the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive fuels on the planet, is a step in exactly the opposite direction, indicating either that governments don't understand the situation or that they just don't give a damn."

Hansen isn't alone. Climate science backs him up. When Justin Trudeau and his environment minister burst onto the floor of the Paris Climate Summit in 2015, they scored big by urging that the old target for maximum global warming, then at 2 degrees Celsius, be cut to a humanity-saving 1.5C. McKenna and Trudeau didn't hear, nor heed, the warning of another top world climate scientist at the Paris Summit, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber's warning that any hope of holding global warming to 1.5 C would depend on an "induced implosion" of the fossil energy industry.

Schellnhuber said if we want to do this we can if the petro-states move quickly to shut down their fossil fuel resources and rapidly transition to alternative energy. It doesn't sound like Hans had Trudeau's let 'er rip energy policy in mind.

Here's the thing. Trudeau, Notley and their Oil Patch patrons, frame this as a purely economic issue. Schellnhuber argues it goes way beyond economics.

“In the end it is a moral decision. Do you want to be part of the generation that screwed up the planet for the next 1,000 years? I don’t think we should make that decision.”

Oil field experts say that these new pipelines are 30-year investments. Barring some collapse of markets, those investing the hundreds of billions of dollars into these pipelines have confidence that they'll reap their rewards. And, so long as the Oil Patch has reliable and indulgent governments like Harper's and Trudeau's, they're probably taking a safe bet.

Trudeau sees calls for real action to fight climate change as "sanctimonious crap." Ask David Suzuki:

Trudeau called him personally June 28, 2015, to talk about the Liberal platform on climate change that was to be revealed the next day. “I didn’t call Justin, he called me,” Suzuki said. “He wanted an endorsement and he wanted to tell me exactly what his program was.”

The program includes support for the Keystone XL pipeline, a rejection of the Northern Gateway pipeline and a commitment to work with the provinces to establish a cap-and-trade system.

“I said, ‘Justin, stop it, you’re just being political, you just want to make headway in Alberta,’” Suzuki says he told Trudeau. “You’re for the development of the tar sands, you’re for the Keystone pipeline, but you’re against the Northern Gateway, you’re all over the damn map!”

Suzuki went on to advise Trudeau that taking the target of a two-degree rise in temperature seriously means 80 per cent of the oil sands has to stay in the ground. Suzuki believes stopping oil sands development will mean “no debate about pipelines or expanding railways or shipping stuff offshore—none of that comes into it.”

Suzuki says this is when the exchange turned nasty. “He said, ‘I don’t have to listen to this sanctimonious crap.’ I proceeded to call him a twerp.”

Mr. Trudeau obviously won't be talking about this but if you want to know how Athabasca bitumen impacts humanity's chances of averting climate catastrophe, a good place to start is this 2012 U. Vic. paper by Neil Swart and Andrew Weaver. I suppose, in Trudeau's mind, that's just more sanctimonious crap.

Hansen, Schellnhuber, Suzuki, and Weaver, there are plenty more voices backing them up. You can't reconcile their science with Mr. Trudeau's political bafflegab. 

Schellnhuber is right. This is a moral issue. It's a deadly serious moral issue. Deadly as in lethal. Remember how we used to export asbestos to sketchy markets offshore even though we knew it would condemn people in the Third World to a horribly painful end? Well, we're doing something along those same lines with bitumen.

Climate change is already claiming innocent lives, predominantly in the poorest, most vulnerable corners of the world. They're dying from heatwaves, drought, flooding, severe storm events, sea level rise, crop failures and more. We've now got a new phenomenon, climate wars - wars that are triggered in whole or in part by the devastation of climate change. The civil war in Syria began as the result of famine caused by crop failure. And this is just the early onset stuff. There's a lot more coming their way. These people are collateral damage to our economic imperative. 

I'm one of a growing number of British Columbians steadfastly opposed to the machinations of Harper-Trudeau, Klein-Notley, the Tar Sanders and their very sketchy dilbit pipeline operators with their horrible accident track record. They've shown us what these pipelines do to the territories they cross. Ask the people of Kalamazoo, Michigan. That, of course, was Enbridge. But what do you know about the current contender, Kinder-Morgan? Let's put it this way. If they were operating school buses instead of pipelines you would probably wind up home-schooling your kids.

And when it comes to an armada of lumbering, dilbit-laden supertankers navigating British Columbia's very challenging and dangerous coastal waters, there are many problems. The odds aren't on our side. We've had Coast Guard and RCN officers, merchant mariners, all advise Trudeau's National Energy Board that  a supertanker calamity isn't a matter of if but when and how often.

It was March 24, 1989, nearly 30 years ago, that the Exxon Valdez came to grief in Alaska's Prince William Sound. Ten million gallons were spilled. But that wasn't dilbit. It was conventional crude oil, kid's stuff. That spill covered 1,300 miles of coastline, 11,000 square miles of ocean.  More than a quarter of a century later the oil still isn't cleaned up.

On March 24, 2014, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the spill, NOAA scientists reported that some species seem to have recovered, with the sea otter the latest creature to return to pre-spill numbers. Scientists who have monitored the spill area for the last 25 years report that concern remains for one of two pods of local orca whales, with fears that one pod may eventually die out.[33] Federal scientists estimate that between 16,000 and 21,000 US gallons (61 to 79 m3) of oil remains on beaches in Prince William Sound and up to 450 miles (725 km) away. Some of the oil does not appear to have biodegraded at all. A USGS scientist who analyses the remaining oil along the coastline states that it remains among rocks and between tide marks. "The oil mixes with seawater and forms an emulsion...Left out, the surface crusts over but the inside still has the consistency of mayonnaise – or mousse."[34] Alaska state senator Berta Gardner is urging Alaskan politicians to demand that the US government force ExxonMobil to pay the final $92 million (£57 million) still owed from the court settlement. The major part of the money would be spent to finish cleaning up oiled beaches and attempting to restore the crippled herring population.

The Exxon Valdez spilled conventional crude oil and yet Trudeau and Notley want to put us to that very risk only with something vastly worse, dilbit, diluted-bitumen. Bitumen, a persistent sludge laced with acids, abrasives, toxins, heavy metals and carcinogens, that will head right for the sea bed where it will remain for decades contaminating the coastal waters, devastating the marine ecology. To borrow Hansen's words, "they just don't give a damn."

The Trudeau government put the lie to its vaunted "world class oil spill clean up" preparations when Dame Cathy's environment ministry was caught having approved an incredibly dangerous chemical, Corexit, for use in BC waters as an oil dispersant. We know a lot about Corexit from its use during the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon oil spills. 

If you don't know about this chemical that our federal government has cleared for use in British Columbia's coastal waters, watch this.

If you've got the stomach for it and want to watch the entire Vice expose on Corexit, you can watch it here.

This is the reality of what Justin Trudeau wants to do to our coast, intends to do to our coast, tells us he is going to do to our coast.

Pushing ever more bitumen onto world markets is morally reprehensible. Worse yet, it's a betrayal of our own kids and grandkids. Shipping it in the most lethal possible form, dilbit, rather than requiring that it be refined on site, in Athabasca, to remove the most odious components - the acids, the abrasives, the heavy metals, the carcinogens, the pet coke, and the sludge - is equally reprehensible. To even imagine using Corexit in British Columbia's coastal waters is fiendishly reckless. And they're doing it all just to put a few extra bucks in Rachel Notley's and her Oil Patch patrons' pockets.

There's No Selfie to Fix This One

When Justin Trudeau or one of his drones pimp pipelines they're sure to claim they're "following the science." Oh yeah, the science is on their side. Science says dilbit pipelines are safe. Science says so.

Question: who is this guy, Mr. Science? Maybe there's an Archibald Science or a Jean Luc Science, perhaps a Mary Francis Science? Because there's no actual science-science supporting Trudeau and Company's constant claims that bitumen is safe. None anybody can find. None that the Trudeau gang has been willing to produce.

The problem is that some scientists say the evidence flies in the face of what Trudeau called a safe project, the west-coast Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion. In fact, they say there is very little published evidence in the scientific literature about bitumen to back up the prime minister’s claims.

And one of the most glaring gaps of evidence, the scientists say, is the absence of any significant research on the effects of spills of bitumen — the heavy oil from Alberta’s oilsands industry that is expected to flow in the new pipelines — into the oceans.

A group of scientists from Canadian and American universities reached these conclusions after a comprehensive review of thousands of scientific papers on oil and the environment. They found literature on impacts of oil spills, but very little published research about how bitumen affects marine organisms, as well as how spill response would affect these organisms. Their findings were peer-reviewed and are scheduled to be published later this month in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

In an interview with National Observer, three of the scientists said they gave advance copies of their findings to Trudeau’s office and others in his cabinet on Nov. 21, but it’s not clear what the government did with that evidence.

“It’s hard to imagine that the federal government decision (to approve new pipelines) could be based on science, just when we’ve found that in many cases, there’s very little science to base those decisions upon,” said Wendy Palen, an associate professor of biological sciences at Simon Fraser University in B.C., and one of the authors of the paper.

But there's plenty of evidence that Trudeau is pulling a fast one. There's even a smoking gun. It was the Trudeau government's (not Harper's, Trudeau's) quiet decision to approve the truly hideous, thalidomide-grade chemical, Corexit, to be used if and when - or, when and when - there's a catastrophic dillbit spill on the West Coast. In case you haven't read my posts on Corexit over the past couple of years you can check them out here or here.

Or, you can watch this Vice News look into the impact of Corexit in the Gulf of Mexico.



Or this from Australia's 60 Minutes:



Keep in mind that the spills discussed by Vice and 60 Minutes Australia are just ordinary crude oil. Exxon Valdez grade stuff (by the way, Prince William Sound? still not clean). Bitumen is a different creature altogether. It's a heavier than water sludge that's chock full of acids, heavy metals, carcinogens, abrasives and other junk such as petcoke,  Once the diluent evaporates out, it slowly sinks to the bottom where all those nasties leach out presumably for generations devastating the marine ecology.  That "bottom" out here can be 600 feet down - or worse.

The last honest statement I can recall hearing out of Ottawa was from the Harper days. A reporter caught then enviromin Peter Kent off guard. Simple question - does the government have a way to clean up a dilbit spill. I can remember minister Kent's reply, verbatim - "Not yet but we're working on it." Those experiments must not have panned out very well if the Trudeau government has fallen back on Corexit 9500A.

And so Trudeau is going to take one ecological catastrophe, a major bitumen spill, and make it vastly worse by throwing Corexit 9500A on it, poisoning not just the marine life but any human unfortunate enough to get exposed to it, like all those folks on the American Gulf coast. 

When Does a Carbon Tax Work?

When it comes to carbon taxes, it's all about pricing. The purpose of the tax is to discourage consumption of fossil fuels thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It seems to work, sort of, but carbon taxes are hindered by a lack of political will, a.k.a. cojones.

So where to set the carbon tax/price bar? According to two influential economists, Nobel laureate Joe Stiglitz and Britain's Nick Stern, a hundred U.S. dollars a metric tonne should do it.

A hun per tonne. That's enough to send Rachel Notley, Brad Wall and, yes, Capt. Selfie into terminal apoplexy. Their blood would boil until their eyeballs popped.

Experts including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern said governments needed to move quickly to tackle polluting industries with a tax on carbon dioxide at $40-$80 per tonne by 2020.

A tax of $100 a tonne would be needed by 2030 as one of a series of measures to prevent a rise in global temperatures of 2C.

In a report by the High Level Commission on Carbon Prices, which is backed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, they suggest poor countries could aim for a lower tax since their economies are more vulnerable.

The aim of a tax on carbon would be essential to meet the targets set by the Cop21 Paris Agreement in 2015, they said.

Wait a second. Our then freshly minted Liberal government was instrumental in formulating that 2015 Paris climate accord.  Justin and Cathy went to the City of Lights to proclaim that "Canada is back." They squeezed every drop of political capital that they could out of that performance and the world cheered them on.

That, of course, was before Canada's enviro-duo said "bugger that, we've got bitumen to sell," at which point all their credibility was rapidly flushed down the political crapper, their false majority government.

There is a way for Justin to redeem his enviro-cred, an export carbon tax on bitumen. Figure out how much greenhouse gas will be emitted from the processing, transportation and end use of that energy and tax it, per tonne, right on the dock. And no cheating. You have to tax the carbon bomb hidden in that bitumen, the pet coke, the high sulphur/high carbon granular coal that comes free with every boatload of bitumen. The end user is going to burn that crud sure as hell and Justin needs to tax every kilo of that stuff.

And what do you think the chances are of any of that happening?

Okay, Justin, Now Tell Us What Those Facts Are

Serial bullshitter, JustinTrudeau, was quick off the mark to defend the Kinder Morgan bitumen pipeline expansion in the wake of the announcement that the NDP, backed by the provincial Greens, will form the next government of British Columbia.

With a straight face the prime ministerial bullshitter defended his government's decision to toss out his election campaign promises and approve the hazmat pipeline.

"The decision we took on the Trans Mountain pipeline was based on facts [and] evidence, on what is in the best interest of Canadians."

What Canadians would those be, Justin?  It can't be the companies behind it. They're American. It can't be the supertanker armada owners. They're offshore. So I suppose you've defined Canadians as everybody except me and those like me, the majority of the people of British Columbia who stand opposed to this damned pipeline, the same people who just tossed Christy Clark and her Liberals out of office. 

Believe me when I say that doesn't come as a shock. We got over that when you turned into just another greasy opportunist and reneged on your solemn promise that there would be no pipeline without First Nations approval and "social licence" (the consent of the municipalities through which the pipeline would be routed).

Save the righteous indignation you jackass. What about that other promise of yours, that your government's decisions would follow the science? There's plenty of science involved in this decision and you've got plenty of scientists to advise you. Show us your science, Slick. What do your scientists tell you? 

Let's see these "facts" you talk about. Why have you not laid all that out already? This isn't about facts. They're not on your side. This is about political opportunism of the very worst kind. This is real Harper-grade shit. At least have the decency to wear that proudly.

What are the facts behind the stellar spill record of Canada's pipeline operators? What are the facts about what happens when there's a dilbit spill in our coastal waters. We've got plenty of evidence on record - from Canadian naval commanders to mariners to Coast Guard experts - that tanker accidents are inevitable. It's not a matter of "if" but "how often." All that evidence was given at your rigged National Energy Board hearings.

What are the facts about what happens when dilbit pours into our coastal waters with their tides and currents and storm-tossed waters? Does it float in a nice blob where it can be sucked up and safely removed? Or does it, as the facts state, head to the bottom, delivering all the acids and heavy metals, all the carcinogens, to the seabed and into our marine environment? 

What about your government's concession that you're powerless when that spill happens? What concession, what admission, what smoking gun? That evidence comes from your enviromin, Dame Cathy's approval of the use of Corexit as an oil spill dispersant.

The Americans used Corexit on the Exxon Valdez spill. It sickened the clean up workers. BP used it on the Deepwater Horizon disaster. It sickened clean up workers and people of the Gulf coast. It plagues the Gulf fishery to this day and will for years, perhaps decades to come. The thing is, those were conventional crude oil spills, kid's stuff compared to bitumen.

If it's facts you want, Slick, read the manufacturer's warning labels:

Corexit isn't an oil dispersant. In an open water spill, Corexit causes the oil to sink straight to the bottom where it can contaminate the marine ecology for many, many decades.

This is "in the best interests of Canadians"? I always thought I was one of those Canadians. It doesn't seem quite that way any longer. Thanks for the heads up.

Betrayal

That's it. Prime minister Slick has greenlighted the Kinder Morgan pipeline initiative that will ship 900,000 barrels of toxic, lethal dilbit a day across British Columbia, through the Lower Mainland municipalities, and into an armada of supertankers that will become a daily feature as they ply the waters of Burrard Inlet, Coal Harbour, English Bay and coastal British Columbia through the Juan de Fuca Strait scraping along the US boundary.

All that business about First Nations approval and social licence, like just about everything else that has come from Trudeau, was a pack of lies. All that bold talk about fighting climate change - more lies. Bastard.

The good news is that the Tsleil-Wauthuth Nation on Burrard Inlet has vowed to block the deal. The less than good news is that the Green Party was all over the announcement, wasting not a second to notify the membership to send more money to Elizabeth May.  

Look Justin, Cut the Bullshit

Today's the day when we learn whether the federal government will put our north coast in jeopardy or merely threaten our south coast with disaster.

Which pipeline will Trudeau approve? Will it be the Enbridge Northern Gateway or the expanded Kinder Morgan line through the Lower Mainland? Maybe it'll be both. Maybe he'll kill off both, the least likely option.

Whether it's Enbridge or Kinder Morgan or both, the decision will be heavily larded with Trudeau's favourite bullshit line about how it is the federal government's sacred duty to get Canadian resources to market. Sure, fine, but let's take a minute to scrape the crap off that before swallowing it whole.

The devil is in the details and Trudeau's definition of "resources." The resource he'll tell you he wants to move is Athabasca oil. That's a damned lie. What he wants to move is something much more than oil. It's bitumen.,

There's oil in bitumen and with enough processing, refining, it can be extracted and turned into burnable petroleum products. The end product, heavy oil, is bad for the environment, bad for the planet, an affront to Trudeau's promise to cut carbon emissions, but that's only part of the problem.

The bigger problem is what else makes up bitumen. The stuff is jam packed with other goodies such as petcoke, abrasives, acids, heavy metals and various carcinogens.  Even after initial upgrading the sludge has to be mixed with light oil, diluent, just to help it move - with the benefit of added heat and high pressure - through pipelines.

Now if Slick had a shred of honesty in his bones he would admit that the greatest jeopardy comes from getting dilbit to market instead of shipping fully refined heavy crude. He would admit that, when his dilbit reaches Asia, that heavy-carbon petcoke is refined out and also burned for power generation.  He would admit that the heavy metals, acids, and carcinogens no one is willing to refine out on site in Alberta are what pose the gravest risks to BC's marine ecology. He would admit that they're willing to put our coast at such great, long-term (generational) risk because no one wants to foot the refining bill in Alberta.

This is where you see the real face of Justin Trudeau and it's ugly. The rest of Canada may be willing to swallow his bullshit but we can't get past the smell.

Justin, Andrew Would Like a Moment of Your Time

Is petro-statehood the path that leads to the Americanization of Canada? It kind of looks that way to Canada's top petro-journo, Andrew Nikiforuk.

The Tyee energy scribe sees Justin as "Harper-lite with a surfboard." Rachel Notley is one who thinks a bad bet can be transformed into a winner if only you double down. As for Brad Wall, he offers this:

In Saskatchewan, Premier Brad Wall has compared pipelines to economic miracle workers even as his petro-province flounders thanks to the overproduction of heavy oil in a glutted market.

(Wall’s subservience to petroleum interests, by the way, has taken on Trump-like proportions. The province’s recent Throne Speech even dubbed proposals to limit climate change as “misguided dogma.”)

For these misguided petro-pols, Nikiforuk offers up "four hard truths."

Numero Uno - first and foremost, there is no way, as in none, to clean up a bitumen spill.

There's a reason the Harper government and now the Trudeau government have resolutely dodged this issue. They know it can't be cleaned up. If they could the easiest way to respond to opponents would be to demonstrate that they can clean it up. 

Yet our bitumen-besotted politicians would have British Columbia gamble with its fisheries, tourism and coast on the bold lie that diluted bitumen, a dirtier product than crude, can be cleaned up in a timely and tidy fashion.

Because the low-grade heavy oil must be diluted with a gasoline-like product to move through a pipeline, it presents an even graver logistical challenge than a conventional spill.

A 2015 report by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences summed up the nature of the dirty problem: “Spills of diluted bitumen into a body of water initially float and spread while evaporation of volatile compounds may present health and explosion hazards, as occurs with nearly all crude oils. It is the subsequent weathering effects, unique to diluted bitumen, that merit special response strategies and tactics.

So what do Justin and his enviromin, Dame Cathy, have in mind for a bitumen spill on the B.C. coast? They've authorized the use of Corexit for chrissake! Corexit, the thalidomide for marine habitats. It's promoted as an oil dispersant but it's really a highly toxic, persistent chemical brew that causes oil to sink, out of sight/out of mind. And, once stuck to the bottom, which around here can be 600 feet or more below the surface, it can leach out its heavy metals, acids and carcinogens for decades, possibly generations, fouling the marine habitat.

Numero Dos - the economic case for pipelines has totally collapsed.

According to the lovestruck politicians, bitumen exports to China will make Canadians rich, and the sulfur-rich crude will miraculously command a higher dollar with marine access.

But bitumen will always require higher transportation costs and more upgrading and processing due to its appalling quality. As a consequence, it has always sold at a price differential of around $6 to $7 dollars to conventional oil.

This historic differential widened when the Alberta government rubber-stamped so many projects that industry flooded the North American market with bitumen between 2000 and 2008. The differential dropped again to historic norms as more and more refineries in the U.S. retrofitted to process heavy oil.

The Parliamentary Budget Office explained these elementary facts in 2013, but politicians beset by hydrocarbon hallucinations have trouble reading. The PBO emphasized that eliminating the discount paid for bitumen relative to conventional oil “is not realistic, as there is a significant difference in the quality of these crude oil benchmarks that is reflected in the price difference.”

Now you have to ask yourself why would oil companies keep pushing bitumen if it has become uneconomic? A corporate finance guy explained that they have to keep it going, even at a loss. That allows them to keep harvesting executive salaries and bonuses. It allows them to avoid having to tell shareholders that bitumen is no longer really viable, especially without massive government subsidies. That could lead to greater problems - a bursting of the carbon bubble foremost among them. All of those hard truths may come out, just not on their watch. Leave it to the next guy or the one after him. Let them take the heat.


Numero Tres - bitumen cannibalizes the economy.

Nearly 100 years ago, it cost but one barrel of conventional crude to find and pump another 100 barrels. Today those energy returns now average about one to 20. In the U.S., they’ve fallen to one to 10 and in the oil sands they have collapsed to one to three, or in some cases close to zero. In simple terms, bitumen doesn’t bring home the bacon.

Our world was built on easy energy returns the same way, say, grizzly bears once depended on easy salmon fishing for comfortable winter living. Abundant energy returns from cheap oil fed the growth of government, funded healthcare and encouraged much civility. Expensive energy constricts that flow and shrinks the public sphere.

Unfortunately, mined bitumen and fracked oil aren’t easy, cheap or carbon neutral. Companies extracting fracked oil from Texas and North Dakota typically spend four times more than what they make. Bitumen miners aren’t much better. They burn more energy and capital, and all to deliver fewer returns and surpluses to society. It’s like cycling backwards.

Yet no one in Alberta or Ottawa talks about declining energy returns or its political and economic implications. The consequences generally include words like collapse, ruin and volatility.

Numero Quatro - "Climate disruption and carbon anarchy aren’t a distant threat... they’re here now."

How many times must ordinary people be slapped in the face before our politicians grasp the gravity of the insult?

Climate disruption, driven by oil consumption and forest destruction, has become a global insurgency that can only be combated by rapidly changing patterns of energy consumption. That means using less energy and living locally. Pipelines and their political champions now look and behave like horsemen of the apocalypse.

The emissions math on climate change in Canada is now pretty simple. Environment Canada states it boldly: “Emissions of GHGs from the oil and gas sector have increased 79 per cent from 107 megatonnes (Mt) in 1990 to 192 Mt CO2 in 2014. This increase is mostly attributable to the increased production of crude oil and the expansion of the oil sands industry."

What this all boils down to is that Harper stuck Canada with a lousy bet on bitumen. He's gone but now the new guy, Trudeau, along with Alberta's Notley and Saskatchewan's Wall, want to double down on that same lousy bet.

From my perspective on the west coast the fact that these hucksters - Trudeau, Notley and Wall - know that there's no way to clean up a bitumen spill off our coast is enough for me to see them, not as fellow Canadians, but as a threat. They know that if they had a shred of decency and consideration for the coast and for the territory between the Tar Sands and "tidewater" they want pipelines to cross, the very least they could do to even partly reduce the catastrophic damage of an oil spill is to refine that bitumen into synthetic crude oil on site in Alberta. They won't entertain the idea and that's why we've got nothing to talk about.

From the perspective of central and eastern Canada, it's still a lousy deal. It's an economic boondoggle and an enormous waste of federal and provincial subsidies, money that could be put to something, anything useful.

In the context of climate change, it's lousy for the nation and lousy for the world. Even for today's already sullied Canada, it's a disgraceful thing for us to do.