Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

[GRG55]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

I like to come to iTulip for informed debate. The Canadian oil sands started as a surface mining operation in 1967. Take photos of any open pit mining operation, for any mineral you choose, anywhere in the world. They all pretty well look the same. Ugly. With a capital "U". That, unfortunately, comes with the territory. So does an impact on the environment. Anybody that says [or thinks] that mankind can run any kind of mining operation without some environmental impact is deluding themselves. On one of the threads about the BP Macondo blow-out I made the self-evident observation that the ONLY way to be absolutely certain there will never be another offshore blow-out is to stop drilling offshore wells, everywhere in the world. Does anyone seriously expect that to happen? Any more than we can expect we will close every nuclear reactor in the wake of Fukushima?

What we are dealing with is trade-offs. Is the benefit greater than the cost? What are the real benefits? What are ALL the costs? Who gets the former and who gets stuck with the bill for the latter? THAT is the real debate that should be happening. Instead we get a ridiculous debate about cutting down a postage stamp size piece of the massive boreal forest. And pictures taken in the cold of a northern winter of condensing steam from industrial stacks that is supposed to be an accurate representation of air pollution. Listen up folks, the stuff that is toxic that is coming out of those stacks can't be seen in any photograph.

Mining for resources isn't the only thing that mankind does that has an environmental impact. So I would like someone to tally up the environmental impact of all the devastation to the original natural state of affairs, over many decades, with all the elements in the picture below [not just the freeways, but everything man has imposed on that landscape]. And then tell me how the cost/benefit of this compares with the oilsands.

I have spent my entire career in resource exploration, development and production. When all the rest of you folks stop driving your cars, heating your homes and using plastics for your "ecologically pure" bottled water, and so many other things, we resource finders and extractors will stop looking for oil and natural gas. When the rest of you stop wanting to live in houses made from lumber we'll stop cutting down trees. When you stop wanting to work in an office we'll stop mining the iron ore, coking coal, and zinc for galvanized steel that is needed to fabricate that building. When you stop insisting on the lights going on when you flip the switch we'll stop extracting copper, strip mining coal and producing uranium. When you stop buying all those low cost airline tickets for that Thanksgiving flight to be with your family we'll stop mining bauxite and smelting aluminum. And when you finally stop listening to EJ and iTulip and no longer buy gold we'll stop heap leaching with cyanide.

Do I have any takers?

[aaron]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

What we are dealing with is trade-offs. Is the benefit greater than the cost? What are the real benefits? What are ALL the costs? Who gets the former and who gets stuck with the bill for the latter? THAT is the real debate that should be happening

I think this is the debate that people want to have, but some divert the discussion to the trees. If the choice were food or Alberta, obviously the trade off is easy. But when we live in a society that wastes vast amounts of energy, perhaps we are sacrificing our environment too hastily. We do not need Alberta oil sands. We need less SUVs and 4x4's and wars and inefficiency.

I get it, Steve. Burn, burn, burn. It is good. But, I cannot feed my kids a tuna fish sandwich anymore. Salmon also must be eaten in moderation because they contain heavy metals. I don't encounter bees as often anymore. These are just examples that come to my mind, in my small part of the world. At some point you must ask, is it worth it to sacrifice this river, or this lake, or this province so that Joe Six-Pack can ride his 4x4 to the bar down the street?

But, i live in the real world. I know we will tear down and burn every single acre we can before we will drive a smaller car, or stop with the plastic cups, or stop the war machine.

[leegs]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

. . .
But, i live in the real world. I know we will tear down and burn every single acre we can before we will drive a smaller car, or stop with the plastic cups, or stop the war machine.

I don't think its a matter of 'or' it's a matter of 'and', and that is what makes it truly inevitable. We will indeed tear down and burn every single acre AND we will have smaller cars, colder or hotter houses, etc. The only way I see a different outcome would be if the (IMO inevitable) decline in our complex industrial society happens fast enough that the infrastructure necessary to support the extraction disappears before we are able to extract the really hard to get at stuff. Not saying if this latter result would be a good or a bad thing . . .

I find this guy's writing on this subject to be quite interesting http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/

[Fiat Currency]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

... Do I have any takers?

I admire your energy GRG55

I would hazard a guess that >99% of the people who own gold/silver & like to recommend how others should preserve their resources, have never stepped foot into a functioning mine. I have done a lot of manufacturing automation over the years, and I have seen just about every type of operation.

One of the worst ones I remember, was actually a soap making operation.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

That picture posted by GRG 55 ( a few posts above ) looks fine to me......... better than the curvey and narrow roads in British Columbia with 30 KPH speed limits, strictly enforced, and with cops hiding behind every bush.

[jk]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

That picture posted by GRG 55 ( a few posts above ) looks fine to me......... better than the curvey and narrow roads in British Columbia with 30 KPH speed limits, strictly enforced, and with cops hiding behind every bush.

then why don't you relocate?

[GRG55]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

I think this is the debate that people want to have, but some divert the discussion to the trees. If the choice were food or Alberta, obviously the trade off is easy. But when we live in a society that wastes vast amounts of energy, perhaps we are sacrificing our environment too hastily. We do not need Alberta oil sands. We need less SUVs and 4x4's and wars and inefficiency.

I get it, Steve. Burn, burn, burn. It is good. But, I cannot feed my kids a tuna fish sandwich anymore. Salmon also must be eaten in moderation because they contain heavy metals. I don't encounter bees as often anymore. These are just examples that come to my mind, in my small part of the world. At some point you must ask, is it worth it to sacrifice this river, or this lake, or this province so that Joe Six-Pack can ride his 4x4 to the bar down the street?

But, i live in the real world. I know we will tear down and burn every single acre we can before we will drive a smaller car, or stop with the plastic cups, or stop the war machine.

Yep. And it doesn't seem to matter which Party you vote for. The expedient of raising gobs of money to get re-elected trumps all else...

Obama Asks EPA to Withdraw Ozone Rules

Sep 2, 2011 1:16 PM MT

President Barack Obama quashed proposed rules on ozone from the Environmental Protection Agency, agreeing with Republicans and industry to withdraw the costliest regulation being considered by the administration.

Obama said he is seeking to reduce regulatory burdens as the economy recovers, and said the EPA would weigh tighter standards on ozone, which causes smog, in two years...

[Starving Steve]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

then why don't you relocate?

My home is BC, but I will fight the eco-frauds and the preservationist-frauds on the West Coast until my last breath. I will organize an effort in Victoria to challenge the entire bunch running the Province.

[btattoo]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

...Salmon also must be eaten in moderation because they contain heavy metals.

I don't want to hijack this thread, but do you have any sources I can look at regarding metals in wild Salmon (not farm-raised).

[c1ue]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

But, I cannot feed my kids a tuna fish sandwich anymore. Salmon also must be eaten in moderation because they contain heavy metals.

That's always been true. Eating top of the food chain predators will do that for you.

If you ate bald eagles, you'd have the same situation.

I don't encounter bees as often anymore.

That's mostly due to the combination of domestic bees reaching epidemic population levels plus habitat destruction. Only the open pit mines are more destructive to nature, and even that is arguable since the mines - as far as I know - don't generally occur in arable areas. Mines are generally in rocky and inhospitable areas.

Even the oil drilling like Macondo - the ocean immediately around that area was very low biomass even before the arrival of the rigs.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

That's always been true. Eating top of the food chain predators will do that for you.

If you ate bald eagles, you'd have the same situation.



That's mostly due to the combination of domestic bees reaching epidemic population levels plus habitat destruction. Only the open pit mines are more destructive to nature, and even that is arguable since the mines - as far as I know - don't generally occur in arable areas. Mines are generally in rocky and inhospitable areas.

Even the oil drilling like Macondo - the ocean immediately around that area was very low biomass even before the arrival of the rigs.

Yes, open-pit mines are destructive to nature, especially by destroying the natural contours of the land. One of the reasons why the Mesabi Range in Minnesota is so flat now, and barely visible on the land, is that large parts of the Mesabi Range have been carted away for iron ore. One ore car after the other, in long ore trains, running every hour of the day, for decades, and
the Mesabi Range has all but disappeared from the horizon.

So I have a solution: Why not dump solid waste in any form, into the excavations in the Mesabi Range, and re-construct the contours of the land? Maybe even ski hills could be constructed from solid waste in any form, from mining waste to household waste, to hospital waste, to waste mud and rock dredged out from the bottom of the harbour of Duluth and Superior. Trees could be planted on top of the re-constructed contours, and the Mesabi Range could re-appear.

This reads like a kid's dream, but this proposal does make sense. Actually, Richmond, California was built upon hills of solid waste from San Francisco and Oakland, about a century ago. To-day, the old solid waste at Richmond is now soil.

I am not proposing to build a city on top of the Mesabi Range, but certainly trees could be planted and ski hills could be constructed. Ore trains returning to the Mesabi Range from the shore of Lake Superior could carry solid waste of all types. The cost would only be in the loading and unloading of the ore trains, and the unloading would be by simple dumping of the ore cars into the old open-pit excavations.

The highest elevation of the Mesabi Range to-day is under 2000 feet above sea-level, and the swamp land adjacent to the range is about 1200 feet above sea-level. So, the most extreme rise of the Mesabi Range to-day is about 600 or 700 feet above the swamps of North-eastern Minnesota. In fact, most of the Mesabi Range has a rise of only about 200 feet, if even that much above the swamps.

Perhaps, a new Mesabi Range constructed from solid waste could be 2000 to 2500 feet above sea-level, and that would mean a rise of 800 to 1300 feet above the swamps. For Minnesota, in fact for the entire Upper Midwest, that mountain range would be quite impressive!

[Adeptus]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

What we are dealing with is trade-offs. Is the benefit greater than the cost? What are the real benefits? What are ALL the costs? Who gets the former and who gets stuck with the bill for the latter? THAT is the real debate that should be happening. Instead we get a ridiculous debate about cutting down a postage stamp size piece of the massive boreal forest.

I'm afraid for me, the debate can't so easily be framed as a choice between cheaper goods or the environment, at least not in the long term. Morality, for me, trumps profits and comforts. The issue for me, isn't just the size of the land that's being sacrificed, or the quantity of carbon units being burned into the atmosphere. It is just simply, the principle of the matter. It is flawed to the core.

Call it a non-western philosophical outlook, or whatever you want, but the bottom line is that 90% of the crap we think we need isn't required at all. It's just a bunch of wants that have been confused as needs. Humanity, in its inate search for happiness, ends up getting very confused and instead chases after temporary pleasures and comforts, none of which are required for our survival, and even when acquired do not EVER satisfy the thirst permanently, and so our desires grow even bigger and we move on chasing after the next thing. Meanwhile, we are semi-miserable during the entire chase process (which is often a much longer phase than the temporary pleasures we experience as the reward), we even tell ourselves that if only we could get X, then we would be happy, until perhaps we get it, but then another "need" comes up, and we tell ourselves the same lie over and over again; subconciously forgetting that we should already be happy with what we just got. Most often this goes on for an entire life-time, and at the cost of everything else, including our own overall happiness. I think the western term for this is "the rat race", but it isn't merely confined to climbing corporate ladders either. And then to top it all off, we consider ourselves the pinnacle of intelect on Earth. That might be so, but the wisdom, or lack thereof is highly questionable.

One of the root problems of our Western society, aside from the obvious global exponential population growth, is that we go around believing that "this is our only life", and therefore we should "make the most of it", "live life to the fullest", "enjoy it while you can". Sound familiar? These beliefs stem from a huge assumption, not any certainty. But since Science has no tools to investigate the beyond (or the 'before'), we default to: Until we can't see it, we can't prove it, and so it must not exist. Which by the way, is not scientific at all. Under this root assertion, we justify all our consumarism, the environment and other living creatures be damned if they get in our way.

Anyway, my point is that it becomes too easy to use our so called superior intellect to chase after external things at the cost of other living entities that have just as much right to be here as we are, and in the process; over a few hundred more years, if the philosophical outlook of the masses doesn't change, it is obvious the Earth with its natural resources ,won't be around for our great grand children to survive in, nevermind enjoy.

Survival of the fittest is a theory applicable to the animal kingdom, that even living under such a rash aphorism manages to find a near perfect equilibrium. Humanity on the other hand, isn't happy with mere survival. We implore that it is our right to fulfil all our desires at the cost of everything and everybody else. At some point, the scientific advancements allowing us to get this far may hit a brick wall, and then reality will dawn upon us. Perhaps it will be peak oil, or peak X commodity, or maybe it'll come in the form of some devistating disease that through our perverted ways of living, we end up propogating to the demise of billions. Or perhaps, as we study here on iTulip, it will be the global wall of debt, resulting in the escalating global misery that we are witnessing on our television sets each night.

As the saying goes, we reap what we sow. So be gentle to the Earth and its creatures, because at least for now, it's our only home, and besides, what have they done to you? Question your needs and desires, and the justification you make up for the comforts you seek. You may find, you can live quite happily without the vast majority of them - all our forefathers already did.

[jk]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

I'm afraid for me, the debate can't so easily be framed as a choice between cheaper goods or the environment, at least not in the long term. Morality, for me, trumps profits and comforts. The issue for me, isn't just the size of the land that's being sacrificed, or the quantity of carbon units being burned into the atmosphere. It is just simply, the principle of the matter. It is flawed to the core.

Call it a non-western philosophical outlook, or whatever you want, but the bottom line is that 90% of the crap we think we need isn't required at all. It's just a bunch of wants that have been confused as needs. Humanity, in its inate search for happiness, ends up getting very confused and instead chases after temporary pleasures and comforts, none of which are required for our survival, and even when acquired do not EVER satisfy the thirst permanently, and so our desires grow even bigger and we move on chasing after the next thing. Meanwhile, we are semi-miserable during the entire chase process (which is often a much longer phase than the temporary pleasures we experience as the reward), we even tell ourselves that if only we could get X, then we would be happy, until perhaps we get it, but then another "need" comes up, and we tell ourselves the same lie over and over again; subconciously forgetting that we should already be happy with what we just got. Most often this goes on for an entire life-time, and at the cost of everything else, including our own overall happiness. I think the western term for this is "the rat race", but it isn't merely confined to climbing corporate ladders either. And then to top it all off, we consider ourselves the pinnacle of intelect on Earth. That might be so, but the wisdom, or lack thereof is highly questionable.

One of the root problems of our Western society, aside from the obvious global exponential population growth, is that we go around believing that "this is our only life", and therefore we should "make the most of it", "live life to the fullest", "enjoy it while you can". Sound familiar? These beliefs stem from a huge assumption, not any certainty. But since Science has no tools to investigate the beyond (or the 'before'), we default to: Until we can't see it, we can't prove it, and so it must not exist. Which by the way, is not scientific at all. Under this root assertion, we justify all our consumarism, the environment and other living creatures be damned if they get in our way.

Anyway, my point is that it becomes too easy to use our so called superior intellect to chase after external things at the cost of other living entities that have just as much right to be here as we are, and in the process; over a few hundred more years, if the philosophical outlook of the masses doesn't change, it is obvious the Earth with its natural resources ,won't be around for our great grand children to survive in, nevermind enjoy.

Survival of the fittest is a theory applicable to the animal kingdom, that even living under such a rash aphorism manages to find a near perfect equilibrium. Humanity on the other hand, isn't happy with mere survival. We implore that it is our right to fulfil all our desires at the cost of everything and everybody else. At some point, the scientific advancements allowing us to get this far may hit a brick wall, and then reality will dawn upon us. Perhaps it will be peak oil, or peak X commodity, or maybe it'll come in the form of some devistating disease that through our perverted ways of living, we end up propogating to the demise of billions. Or perhaps, as we study here on iTulip, it will be the global wall of debt, resulting in the escalating global misery that we are witnessing on our television sets each night.

As the saying goes, we reap what we sow. So be gentle to the Earth and its creatures, because at least for now, it's our only home, and besides, what have they done to you? Question your needs and desires, and the justification you make up for the comforts you seek. You may find, you can live quite happily without the vast majority of them - all our forefathers already did.

crass materialism embodies, as you say, the foolish pursuit of ever more goods in the mistaken hope that therein lies happiness and satisfaction. and research has shown that hedonic adaptation quickly dissipates the subjective value of goods beyond a certain level of comfort. however, even this realization is not adequate to decide, one way or another, whether a certain natural resource should be developed at a certain environmental cost.

if we are to exist at all, we must consume certain goods. were we to be living in a more enlightened and more spiritual society, we would still need shelter, need clothing, and need food, and these requirements would require some consumption. i suppose we could posit that in this theoretical society, there would be fewer of us, and we would walk a lot more lightly on the earth. but walk on it, we would.

now the problem arises that there are so many of us. were we all to simultaneously achieve enlightenment, would a certain high proportion of us come to the realization that they should kill themselves to reduce man's footprint?

if not, how do we get there from here? and what would be the requirements for supporting the population in the interim, given that all these newly enlightened people would find themselves not in your vision of a pastoral, spiritual community, but in current circumstances, in current jobs and with current infrastructure? it seems to me that they might decide they need the oil.

[Adeptus]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

Thanks jk. I would like to reply to your questions, but it will have to wait a day or so. I will not have the time today.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Obama agrees to 1,700 mile pipeline (Tarsand 2 Texas)

Rachel Maddow standing beneath the front wall and powerhouse of the Hoover Dam: (paraphasing what she said) "Our grandparents left us this infrastructure. Projects like these are our heritage. Our grandparents did not pursue micro-solutions to solve problems..... What have we done?"

Sad to say, our generation has adopted an archaic Eastern World approach of mysticism and hope to solve daunting problems. In other words, we have done nothing. Sad to say, the heritage that our children will receive from us will be poverty and misery.

Finally, the Obama Administration, by approving the 1,700 mile pipeline from the Alberta tar-sands to Texas, is taking a step forward to solve the daunting problems of oil supply and oil independence from OPEC...... To quote from MSNBC:

"LEAN FORWARD"