OT. Interesting link. Tar sands.

[harryagain]

Some of the "facts" might need checking.

[John Williamson]

So which facts do you think are wrong, harry?

It wouldn't be the bit where the Greens are blamed for stopping nuclear development so we need to burn stuff to keep warm and see what we're doing, would it?

[The Natural Philosopher]

I learnt about the 'Athabasca Tar Sands' at age 14 IIRC in Geography, because they contained the worlds largest reserves of petroleum.

But, as the geography master pointed out, they were too expensive to extract.

They still are, 40 years later.

Did you know that 30% of the Guardians circulation goes to the BBC?

I am surprised that harry is only 40 years behind the times. Usually its

150.

[Brian Gaff]

Well the environmentalists have been making a nuisance of themselves in Canada for a while now about this dirty business. Brian

[Nightjar]

I assumed he meant the claims by the IPCC.

Colin Bignell

[David Paste]

"If you can be sure of one thing, it's that oil companies didn't get the United Nations' latest memo on climate change: the world must urgently switch to clean, renewable energy"

That single, first sentence tells you everything about that writer's grasp of science and timescales.

[Huge]

It's the Guardian, what did you expect?

[David Paste]

A few more spelling mistakes :-)

[harryagain]

Out of date and out of touch as usual I see. If you'd read the article you'd see they have been exploiting them for years.

But you live in Lala land.

[John Williamson]

I note that you still haven't told us which of the facts in the article you think are wrong.

[michael adams]

Yeah well. Selective quotation can "demonstrate" just about anything.

Had you gone on to quote his next sentence, his meaning would have clear.

" Over the next few decades, the UN report shows that a shift from fossil fuel extraction is the only way to prevent a complete destabilization of the planet - of which raging storms, droughts, and extreme weather are a taste of things to come."

I.O.W., according to the writer's interpretation of this UN report at least, if the importance of switching from fossil fuels the next few decades isn't given "urgent" consideration right now, then this might cause a complete destabilization of the planet.

michael adams

...

[The Natural Philosopher]

I didn't bother to read it: the default assumption with the guardian is that it will average between 90 and 95% wrong, or else it represents a selected 5% of the real facts with the utterly crucial 95% left out to spin it in the politicallly correct direction.

Guardian-spik is of the 'England's cricket team has been rubbish ever since Labour lost power, therefore left politics cause better cricket.

Hoever iof you want them listed

Lie 1. "oil companies didn?t get the United Nations? latest memo on climate change". I am quite sure they did.

Lie 2. ": the world must urgently switch to clean, renewable energy." No it must not.

Lie 3. "Over the next few decades, the UN report shows that a shift from fossil fuel extraction is the only way to prevent a complete destabilization of the planet ? of which raging storms, droughts, and extreme weather are a taste of things to come."

Actually it shows exactly the opposite. There is no evidence whatsoever linking extreme weather and global climate change. There is in fact unlikely to be a major impact from climate change, and the most appropriate way to tackle it is by adapting to it. All that IS in the IPCC report.

FIRST REASDONABLY FACTUAL STATEMENT "But as conventional oil reserves have dwindled, oil companies have done the opposite of embracing this shift: they?ve doubled-down on their business model by seeking out remote, more polluting fossil fuels, in harder-to-extract places."

WEll everybody knows the 'green' shift is bunk so they have behaved sensibly in rejecting it.

Lie 4. "Places like Alberta?s tar sands, a source of oil so dirty that renown ex-NASA climatologist James Hansen has described it as a ?carbon bomb? whose full exploitation would spell ?game over? for the climate. "

James Hansen may have described it like that, but then he would, wouldn't he? But it certainly wouldn't be 'game over' fr the climate.

Lie 5. "Oil shale is different from the shale gas that is extracted through fracking. It is geologically un-evolved oil: the remnants of organic matter buried underground for millions of years but never sunk deep enough, nor long enough, to be transformed into petroleum"

Er no, it IS petroleum it just hasnt been strained by pressure.

Lie 6. "Mined or heated underground, shale rock is cooked at extremely high temperatures, usually with natural gas, to separate out the solid organic matter that contains the hydrocarbons. The process releases five times more emissions than conventional oil extraction, more even than the tar sands ? making oil shale the world?s dirtiest energy source."

Only if you think carbon dioxide is dirty. Otherwise its just a rather low EROI way to get oil, which is why - as my geography master said 'most of it will never be extracted'. Of course you COULD do te refining with nuclear power instead of burning fossil fuel.

Lie 7/. "In Estonia, which has been extracting oil shale longer than anyone, the industry consumes a staggering 90 percent of all the water used in the country." Firstly that's because if its true, which I can find no reference for, Estonia has a LOT of water. But 'using' water is a strange concept. I mean what happens to water after its 'used' In California they are drinking refined piss..

Lie 8. " It?s not simply about dumping enough carbon into the atmosphere to fry the planet, though that is one of its least pleasant features."

Fisrtly even if the IPPCC is right its certainly not enough to fry the planet.

Secondly all the evidence is that CO2 has at best (worst) a marginal influence on climate. Evidence of the last few thousand years shows absolutely no real coupling between temperatures and CO2, WE managed several warmer periods than today and a little ice age or two without CO2 varying an inch from anything.

Lie 8. "If Alberta?s reserves are a carbon bomb, this global expansion of tar sands and oil shale exploitation amounts to an escalating emissions arms race, the unlocking of a subterranean cache of weapons of mass ecological destruction."

Alberta's reserves are not a carbon bomb whatever that is, and the rest is just emotional twaddle.

Lie 9. "A transition to 100 percent clean, renewable energy is possible and within reach,"

No, its not possible and its not within reach.

Lie 10. Well less a lie than a throughly undemocratic and illegal proposition. "We need, simultaneously, a disarmament movement geared to this age of climate crisis ? a movement that deprives oil corporations of their legitimacy, strips of them of their investments, and blocks their industrial infrastructure. That, too, is underway, on campuses and in regions across the globe."

In short the left will take all the money and wreck whole industries, put the money in its pockets and destroy civilisation.

Stupid statement 10.

"The good news is also that, so far, none of the new tar sands and oil shale projects outside of Venezuela and Estonia have been commercialized on a large-scale."

WE4ell I already told you why. Venezuealan tar sands produce at about $110/barrel. Athabasca would be a lot more. Its simply not economic. It may never be economic. At worst I can see it being acgived using nuclear energy to make hydrocarbon fuel with no extra emissions being involved

40-60 years up te timeline. Canada has plenty of nuclear power and water.

What that article does, is to take unjustified assumptions that even the IPCC doesn't believe in any more, couple them to a geographical area whose oil shales will probably never be exploited and spin it into green scare to justify direct action seizing oil company assets and shutting down the oil business.

It is pure communist style agitprop.

[John Williamson]

*I* know that, you know that, but I'd like to have a laugh at harry's view of it.

So far, I an unamused.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not might, he makes it clear it WOULD.

The IPCC actually is far far milder.

The guy is a climate commie: climate is the excuse for state control over capital .

[David Paste]

I say this dispassionately: None of what you write has any negative effect on what I wrote.

I have no doubt that humans are causing damage to the environment. It isn't limited to "warming", or climate change. What humans do with pollution in general is far worse. And sadly, people who like to rant on about how bad 'nuclear waste' is miss the point that most nuclear waste ISN'T waste, and that the total amount of polluted land or waters from nuclear activity doesn't come close to the shere volume of other s**te pumped out by various human activities. The climate change stories are simply politically convenient to raise taxes. You may say I am lazily cynical, I don't care.

Climate change is a perfect bogeyman. It is essentially unseen, and works over long timescales which humans by and large have difficulty understanding.

If we don't give a shit about pollution (and lets face it, our demonstrable behaviour shows we don't), then why the f*ck would we care about a warming of 2 degrees celcius? Yeah, well, I personally find it difficult to be arsed in the slightest, and I actually understand some of the the issues! *some* being very important there, most people are almost perfectly disinterested and it's difficult to get them to even pay lip-service. So how do you do something about a possible danger to which essentially no one cares? Repetedly tell them it's a long term problem, and use financial carrot & stick games. But as we are finding out, these don't work either. We are a lazy species, and have become very used to comfortable warm homes, easy journeys in cars, availability of food which 150 years ago would be seen as fantasy, etc etc.

Now my point is that the writer for the guardian is either a clueless, or a disingenuous shit. If the subject is serious, you don't treat everyone like a child, especially when the paper is supposed to be read by "smart" people. No one listens to anything if they are being condescended to.

This is NOT helped by using that childish title of "renewable" energy. We are not children, and names like that are frankly misleading. Renewable has essentially become a sysnonym for environmentally freindly, when all the available evidence points to them being anything but.

So feel free to berate me, but please understand that I shall hold contempt for similar newspaper articles due to the complete uselessness, linguisticaly incorrect, blase approach to the subject, as well as entirely missing the point about pollution.

I'm tired, so appologies if this isn't the most coherent thing you've ever read.

[David Paste]

From what I can tell, when people talk about 'climate' what they actually m ean is 'a climate agreeable to humans'. Life carries on. It adapts. If the worst predictions came true for climate change, humans (and a lot of other mammals) might get wiped out, but life would carry on, the world would NOT be 'ruined'. Humans might, but not the world.

Also, if people REALLY were concerned about the environment, they be fighti ng tooth and nail to save the oceans. But they are not. Because they either don't understand how important the oceans are, or they are just not arsed. (Which do you think is most likely?! How would a government institute a ta xation on ocean use??)

[michael adams]

Which is presumably why you've snipped what you wrote.

...

Which by selectively quoting him, implied that he had no conception of the timescale involved. Which is clearly incorrect.

I'm not sure why you think that re-iterating your own position on the matter at great length, interesting though this no doubt is, has any relevance to this point.

< snippedy snip snip snip >

michael adams

...

[michael adams]

I'll see your commie, and raise you two Enrons.

michael adams

...

[harryagain]

Anything of a technical nature reported by run of the mill journalists is a bit suspect and needs to be verified elsewhere.

[harryagain]

You don't bother to read anything do you? You have the little fantasies in yout head. From denying that that tar sands were being exploited, you have suddenly gone to being a world expert on the topic. How very peculiar.