Smoldering shadow of former self, Neil Young, blames oilsands. MT @BCheadle Neil Young likens oil sands landscape to Hiroshima. #softball
— Katewerk (@katewerk) September 10, 2013
It’s Probably Nothing
Leaked transcripts of a closed-door meeting between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan shed an extraordinary light on the hard-nosed Realpolitik of the two sides.
Prince Bandar, head of Saudi intelligence, allegedly confronted the Kremlin with a mix of inducements and threats in a bid to break the deadlock over Syria. “Let us examine how to put together a unified Russian-Saudi strategy on the subject of oil. The aim is to agree on the price of oil and production quantities that keep the price stable in global oil markets,” he said at the four-hour meeting with Mr Putin. They met at Mr Putin’s dacha outside Moscow three weeks ago.
[…]
The Putin-Bandar meeting was stormy, replete with warnings of a “dramatic turn” in Syria. Mr Putin was unmoved by the Saudi offer, though western pressure has escalated since then. “Our stance on Assad will never change. We believe that the Syrian regime is the best speaker on behalf of the Syrian people, and not those liver eaters,” he said, referring to footage showing a Jihadist rebel eating the heart and liver of a Syrian soldier.
Prince Bandar in turn warned that there can be “no escape from the military option” if Russia declines the olive branch. Events are unfolding exactly as he foretold.
Via Zerohedge. (h/t Robert of Ottawa)
Fracking With Nukes
Premier Brad – call your office.
Canada’s Professional Protesters Exposed
Ezra Levant hosts a 45 minute exposé on the childish, extremely ignorant, hypocritical, anti-progress foot soldiers of Canada’s Radical Left:
Ethical Oil: Program Note
PREVIEW: Ezra Levant crashes an anti-oil protest
Oh, Frack! (EXCLUSIVE)
Via a source in the Canadian energy industry;
… at least four crude IEDs have been discovered at Pennsylvania gas wells near the Susquehanna River. Anti-fracking groups are suspected.
I can’t provide a weblink for this so keep an eye out for stories as they emerge.
Meanwhile, search “The Anti-Fracking Pledge of Resistance” and “Earth First!” for a backgrounder on this movement.
Emphasis mine.
Oh, Frack!
Extinguishing life on earth before extinguishing was cool: “Fracking hell!”
… the researchers calculate that the impact would have generated thousands of earthquakes of up to magnitude 9.9 (significantly more powerful than the largest recorded by modern seismologists) for hundreds of kilometres around. In effect, it would have been the biggest fracking operation in history, releasing oil and gas from the shattered rock in prodigious quantities.
The upshot, Dr Tohver believes, would have been a huge burp of methane into the atmosphere. Since methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, that burp would have resulted in instant global warming, making things too hot for much of the planet’s animal life. Presto! The Permian mass extinction is explained.
But of course.
h/t Larry
CTV’s Randomly Selected Eco-Socialist In The Street Interview
James, via email;
CTV Ottawa just ran a story on its 6 o’clock news about Trans-Canada’s plan to run crude-oil through a natural gas pipeline that goes through eastern Ontario.
It did one interview with a “concerned resident”…this dickhead: Ian Angus.
http://climateandcapitalism.com/tag/ian-angus/
http://socialisteducation.blogspot.ca/2009/04/audio-capitlaism-and-climate-change-ian.html
They presented this interview without identifying him as the leftist, socialist, arsehole that he is. Just another “man in the street”.
I hope you can come up with the CTV Ottawa footage – I just don’t have the knowhow.
And I’m on the road and don’t have the time or resources. If someone can come up with the clip, pass it along. Dishonest agenda journalism or incompetence? You can mock them here.
Update: The clip is here along with a better Twitter link to the incompetent/dishonest reporter responsible: Joanne Schnurr.
Oh, Frack!
Oh, Frack!
A landmark federal study on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process moved up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site, the Department of Energy told The Associated Press.
After a year of monitoring, the researchers found that the chemical-laced fluids used to free gas trapped deep below the surface stayed thousands of feet below the shallower areas that supply drinking water, geologist Richard Hammack said.
More: Gasland II’s Luddite Slander Of ‘Fracking’ Is The Latest Technophobe Attack On Progress
Oh, Frack!
The old burning water trick;
Consider a celebrated case in Parker County, Texas. Resident Steven Lipsky had methane in his drinking water. The EPA fastened on the idea that Range Resources had contaminated his well through fracking, and hit the company with an endangerment finding and remediation order. But as Mario Loyola of the Texas Public Policy Foundation recounts, the EPA couldn’t actually defend any theory whereby the fracking had polluted the well.
Slowly, the agency retreated in ignominy. It turned out that the well wasn’t contaminated at all, but contained levels of methane typical in the area and below levels that the federal government considers a threat to health. “Area residents,” Loyola writes, “had found natural gas in their water wells years before any drilling for natural gas. Some water wells were even ‘flared’ for days after drilling, to release dangerous levels of methane. One area subdivision’s water tanks warn ‘Danger: Flammable Gas.’
The Bakken Bids Ye Adieu
Lac Megantic: Crime Scene
Ed Burkhardt, chairman of the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, said Sunday night that the train’s sole engineer shut down four of the five locomotive units on the train, as is standard procedure, in the neighbouring community of Nantes before heading to Lac Mégantic to sleep. Burkhardt said the next engineer was probably due to arrive at daybreak.
But someone managed to shut down the fifth locomotive unit, he said. The railroad alleges someone tampered with the controls of the fifth engine, the one maintaining brake pressure to keep the train stopped.
“If the operating locomotive is shut down, there’s nothing left to keep the brakes charged up, and the brake pressure will drop finally to the point where they can’t be held in place any longer,” Burkhardt said.
There are two ways to shut down the fifth unit: There’s an emergency lever on the outside of the locomotive that anyone wandering by could access. Or, there are a number of levers and buttons inside the unlocked cabin.
Both means were used, said Burkhardt.
Important Questions … The Left Don’t Want Asked
Now Is The Time At SDA When We Juxtapose!
Council of Canadians, June 26th: Council of Canadians opposes the Energy East pipeline
Sun News, July 6: A train transporting crude oil derailed and exploded early Saturday morning in a town three hours east of Montreal, forcing the evacuation of the town’s downtown and flooding a river with crude.
Related.
Shaming the Hamilton Police Force
The Hamilton Police seem to have been following the example of their OPP cousins, making their policing decisions based on a person’s political stripes. Then a local fellow named Gary McHale reminded them of their professional responsibilities.
Open Question: Why is it that oil flowing from West to East is more dangerous/risky than oil flowing from East to West?
I Amuse Myself
Q. Why are there trees in Saskatchewan?
A. Because we don’t have to burn them to stay alive.
Oh, Frack!
FrackNation to air on Sun News Network;
FrackNation follows journalist Phelim McAleer across America as he faces threats, malicious 911 calls and bogus lawsuits for just trying to question green extremists for the truth about fracking.
The film was written and directed by a trio of filmmakers: Husband and wife team Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney and their colleague Magdalena Segieda.
“FrackNation is pro-truth and pro-investigative journalism. It reveals the exaggerations and frauds that are at the heart of the anti-fracking movement and the length activists will go to reach their goal of banning fracking,” said Phelim McAleer, co-director.
The New York Times called FrackNation “meticulously researched” and said that “much of what it reveals is provocative.”
Watch for it June 6, at 8 and 10 p.m. Eastern
I’ll Miss Buying BC Lumber
BC rejects Northern Gateway proposal. So send it down the scenic Fraser Canyon on rail cars, I say.
Ezra Levant’s take.
Free Ethical Oil!
The US State Department is starting to release 1.2 million public comments on the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline. Going into the comment period, environmental groups geared up to show their muscle. They promised that they would deliver one million comments from ordinary Americans who oppose the pipeline, which would create an estimated 20,000 jobs. The one-million comment march would, according to the pipeline’s foes, show a strong grassroots opposition to it, while also showing strong support for President Obama’s position scuttling the pipeline.
As the 1.2 million comments begin to emerge from the State Department, more than half of them turn out to have come from Americans who support the pipeline.