There is a good article over on Watts Up With That about a proposed pipeline to bring tar sand oil from Alberta Canada to Houston area refineries where we can make it into gasoline. I saw this subject pop up elsewhere and it’s being spun with the usual environmental rhetoric. What I didn’t know is we already pump tar sand oil from Alberta to Oklahoma and Illinois!
First, it’s not like we’re not getting any “dirty oil” from Canada right now. The existing Keystone pipeline is currently delivering about 160,000,000 (160 million) barrels per year of the allegedly nasty stuff. So why are the AGW folks screaming as if they were “dirty oil” virgins?
The new pipeline pretty much takes a shorter route, and then completes the journey all the way to Texas (see map in the article). The other big point author makes is that if the Canadians can’t sell the oil to us they will put it one a boat and sell it to China. So either way the stuff is going to get burned.
Finally, the most telling point to me in all of this is that the Canadians are not going to sit on the oil. Either it will go to the US via the existing Keystone and perhaps the proposed Keystone XL extension pipeline … or it will go to Asia via the Kinder Morgan and perhaps the Northern Gateway pipeline. But either way, it will be extracted, it will go through a pipeline, and it will be burnt.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/06/the-only-choice-is-where-it-gets-burned/
I’m a big F1 fan. Every year the rules of F1 get tweaked and changed, usually with the aim of “making racing better” or encouraging more passing. This year is no different as the Drag Reduction System (DRS) was rolled out. DRS grew out of the F ducts and blown rear wings of last year, allowing a reduction in the drag (and also downforce) created by the rear wing down a straight. Don’t underestimate it’s effectiveness, aerodynamic forces get big when you approach 200 MPH. DRS has definitely created more passing.
The passing is almost too easy when using the DRS. I’ve been skeptical about it’s use. During a race a car trailing another car by 1 sec or less can use the DRS, the car ahead can not. My gut reaction is that this is a gimmick, that it takes away from the purity of racing and reduces the amount of skill required to pull off a racing pass. Martin Brundle recently wrote something that put DRS into perspective.
I’m consoling myself like this: technology through tyre development and aerodynamic knowledge has created a massive problem, such that well driven high performance single-seaters can’t follow each other closely and overtake. The engineers and designers cannot forget what they have learned, so technology has been used to fix the problem, and it’s called DRS.
I totally agree that engineers have created the lack of passing problem and also the tendency for one team to dominate for long periods of time via aerodynamics. And it’s hard to go backwards and drop all that knowledge and progress we have made. So DRS is an antidote to problem that we became so effective at using the air flowing around a racecar. I can accept it better from that perspective.
In that same article Martin also reminds us that in the 1980′s F1 cars had a turbo overboost button. Just as recently as a few years go Indy cars were using push to pass, maybe they are still using it. So gimmicks to encourage passing aren’t new though DRS is certainly a fresh way of approaching the problem. I think with a little tweaking it may be something that catches on.
From the “I told you so dept.” I knew it would happen, just a matter of when. Didn’t think it would be so soon.
A Saskatchewan farm couple whose land lies over the world’s largest carbon capture and storage project says greenhouse gases seeping from the soil are killing animals and sending groundwater foaming to the surface like shaken soda pop.
The gases were supposed to have been injected permanently underground.
Cameron and Jane Kerr own nine quarter-sections of land above the Weyburn oilfield in eastern Saskatchewan. They released a consultant’s report Tuesday that links high concentrations of carbon dioxide in their soil to 6,000 tonnes of the gas injected underground every day by energy giant Cenovus (TSX:CVE) in an attempt to enhance oil recovery and fight climate change.
Paul Lafleur of Petro-Find Geochem found carbon dioxide concentrations in the soil last summer that averaged about 23,000 parts per million — several times those typically found in field soils. Concentrations peaked at 110,607 parts per million.
Lafleur also used the mix of carbon isotopes he found in the gas to trace its source.
“The … source of the high concentrations of CO2 in the soils of the Kerr property is clearly the anthropogenic CO2 injected into the Weyburn reservoir,” he wrote.
From the Winnipeg Free Press via Watt’s Up With That.
If you want to know more about this project Modern Marvels did a segment about it during it’s Environmental Tech episode.
From Watt’s Up With That:
Cancun COP16 attendees fall for the old “dihydrogen monoxide” petition as well as signing up to cripple the U.S. Economy
These are the people who are pushing the global warming agenda that the media and government is now eating up. And they want to cripple our economy? We are supposed to listen to people who want to do us harm? And apparently they will sign just about anything as long as it’s a petition. Maybe someone should give these “scientists” a chemistry lesson. This is why we have to watch out for our own interests and not be as concerned about what everyone else (money hungry globalists) thinks.
Tesla Motors was fined $275,000 by the EPA for failing to get a Certificate of Conformity certifying that the cars comply with the Clean Air Act. They got one in 2008 but did not for the 2009 & 2010 model year cars. I doubt the cars changed much between MY 2008 and MY 2010. So it is a little stupid of the EPA to make them go through retesting every year. Well that and the fact that the car makes no pollution since it is 100% battery powered. That’s bureaucracy at it’s finest.
But that is not what I want to focus on. The real smoking gun in my mind is a little gem from Tesla’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) 10Q filing where they must disclose risks to the company for the benefit of potential stock buyers. In that risks section they admit that:
the imposition of a carbon tax or the introduction of a cap-and-trade system on electric utilities could increase the cost of electricity;
That’s right. Cap and trade would raise electricity prices and hurt their business. This isn’t some right wing rhetoric. This is a serious government filing by a company that we have to assume is smart and is a darling of the left and AGW crowd saying this. If that is not a smoking gun and reason enough to reject cap and trade and carbon taxes I don’t know what is.
Read more on Watt’s Up With That.