Pres. Obama makes encouraging Keystone reference to 'extraordinarily dirty' Canada oil extraction

[bigtree]

The Media Bloc ?@TheMediaBloc 10m10 minutes ago
Obama notes concerns over 'extraordinarily dirty' Canada oil extraction http://dlvr.it/8sGbh5


(Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Friday repeated concerns that the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline project will only create "about 300" permanent jobs and poses environmental concerns.

"The reason that a lot of environmentalists are concerned about it is the way that you get the oil out in Canada is an extraordinarily dirty way of extracting oil, and obviously there are always risks in piping a lot of oil through Nebraska farmland and other parts of the country," Obama told students at a town hall event.

"I haven't made a final determination on it, but what I've said is, 'we're not going to authorize a pipeline that benefits largely a foreign company if it can't be shown that it is safe and if it can't be shown that overall it would not contribute to climate change,'" Obama said.


read: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/06/us-usa-keystone-obama-idUSKBN0M225U20150306?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews

[Savannahmann]

1. Besides it's flowing now through fantastic rail cars owned by our friend Warren Buffett.

So there is always that.

[geek tragedy]

2. that's a really sad argument on behalf of Keystone.

Not as much oil flows over the rail as would flow through the pipeline. The pipeline would create an economic incentive to extract the dirty oil due to reduced transportation costs (pipeline a lot cheaper than rail/truck).

[Savannahmann]

3. Who's arguing in favor of the pipeline?

I'm just totally on board with repaying our corporate owners while screwing their corporate owners. You see, using a bunch of diesel locomotives to haul the rail cars down along rivers, through hard to access areas near rivers and through forests, where accidents are certain is way better than pumping oil through a pipeline anyway. http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026321177

I wonder if we can somehow make it a law that anyone who drives more than two hundred miles has to be loaded onto a rail car? Because that would really pump some change into the pockets of Warren Buffett wouldn't it? Imagine how much he could donate to Hillary and the whole Corporate Democratic Establishment.

[geek tragedy]

4. it is beyond absurd--to the point of nutty--to suggest that opposition to Keystone

is rooted in the desire to make Warren Buffett richer, as if he needs the money.

And, as if it's possible to do virtually anything with the economy without Buffett or some other billionaire benefiting indirectly.

[Savannahmann]

6. Really? Beyond absurd?

Well, how much opposition is there to the Keystone pipeline because it's proposed by, funded by, and would enrich the Koch Brothers?

Let's see.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014627843

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025819183

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017100631

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022339125

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022420517

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002223492

That one is good, because a Democratic Congressman says that the pipeline is a matter of life and death for the Koch Brothers.

Here the House Democrats seek to subpoena the Koch Brothers over the pipeline. http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002221576

Congressman Waxman asked if the Republicans were calling the Koch Brothers during the recess. http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002220900

Now, let's look at the idea that Buffett standing to make billions on tar sands is crazy.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101612289

Hmmmm.

On Jan­u­ary 23, Bloomberg News re­ported War­ren Buf­fett's Burling­ton North­ern Santa Fe Rail­way (BNSF), owned by his lu­cra­tive hold­ing com­pany Berk­shire Hath­away, stands to ben­e­fit greatly from Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s re­cent can­cel­la­tion of the Key­stone XL pipeline.

If built, Tran­sCanada's Key­stoneXL (KXL) pipeline would carry tar sands crude, or bi­tu­men (“dil­bit”) from Al­berta, B.C. down to Port Arthur, Texas, where it would be sold on the global ex­port mar­ket.

If not built, as re­vealed re­cently by DeSmog­Blog, the grass is not nec­es­sar­ily greener on the other side, and could in­clude in­creased lev­els of eco­log­i­cally haz­ardous gas flar­ing in the Bakken Shale, or else many other pipeline routes mov­ing the prized dil­bit to cru­cial global mar­kets.

Rail is among the most im­por­tant in­fra­struc­ture op­tions for en­sur­ing tar sands crude still moves to key global mar­kets, and the in­dus­try is pur­su­ing rail ac­tively. But trans­port­ing tar sands crude via rail is in many ways a dirt­ier al­ter­na­tive to the KXL pipeline. “Rail­roads too pre­sent en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues. Mov­ing crude on trains pro­duces more global warm­ing gases than a pipeline,” ex­plained Bloomberg.

So it's recognized that the tar sands oil is moving. President Obama obviously knows it's moving via railroad. Yet no action to prevent this awful, dirtiest of oils from moving along tankers despite a flood of accidents and fires in the last couple years. No move by President Obama to prevent this awful oil from moving along rail cars. How many oil spills are a few jobs worth?

Now, you can pretend that President Obama is acting out of the purest of motives. You can pretend that the pipeline opposition is more to do with environmental reasons than with payback for political cronies. You can pretend that by preventing the pipeline, we're doing a lot to protect the environment. But the facts are that rail accidents happen far more often, and over the last few years, have been creating environmental disasters that are unequaled.

I know you don't believe me. I know, it's hard for you to accept. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/02/20/its-a-lot-riskier-to-move-oil-by-train-instead-of-pipeline/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=&w=1484

Forty thousand barrels of oil spilled for each billion barrels of oil transported in 2013. So dangerous oil being transported by rail is perfectly acceptable to the White House as long as the environmental threat is mitigated by the jobs created. If that doesn't prove to you that this entire thing is just a cover to keep the money flowing into the pockets of supporters, I don't know what will. But it's past time that we woke up and saw how we're being manipulated by the corporate indebted politicians. We just had another one, the fires were still burning this afternoon. The Fire Department had given up since the site was inaccessible and were letting the fire burn out. How many toxins are being released into the air, and nobody, and I mean nobody is saying we should do a damned thing about it. If we required new stronger better designed rail cars, Warren would lose a ton of money wouldn't he? Besides, the old cars are just fine most of the time. You have to look at the big picture right? So why aren't the environmental groups hopping up and down releasing press statements and holding protests to stop the oil tankers that are exploding at record numbers? Do they not pollute when the spill and explode?

Think my friend. All the train accidents, imagine it with any other industry. If Airbus jets were falling out of the sky that often the entire line of planes would be grounded while investigations were ongoing. If Toyota had cars that exploded as often as train cars have been then Toyota would be banned from the nation's roads. If a laptop maker had batteries that exploded this often there would be a massive recall, congressional investigations, half the Federal Agencies would be on the job crawling up someones ass. Trains and oil? Meh. We have to stop the pipeline, or something.

We're being played for suckers my friend. We've been played before, and we'll be played again. We follow with the best of intentions in our hearts, and we're being led by those whose intentions are not nearly that pure. I don't object to the opposition to the pipeline. I do object to being manipulated and treated like a fool.

[geek tragedy]

7. Your theory that the anti-Keystone protests have a hidden agenda

of making Warren Buffett richer is utterly psychotic.

[Savannahmann]

11. Then why are there no protests to stop oil tank cars on railroads?

All these accidents and nobody is demanding that the oil be stopped. Why?

[JaneyVee]

13. Eminent domain.

[bigtree]

14. individual states and environmental orgs DO regularly protest oil trains

Google: protest oil trains

http://www.bing.com/search?q=protest+oil+trains&qs=n&form=QBRE&pq=protest+oil+trains&sc=1-18&sp=-1&sk=&cvid=916a546d9de54dad904af7877b409f59

[bigtree]

5. if you want to lead a campaign against shipping oil on rail cars, you have my support

...but if you're just looking to shift the argument away from denying this particular pipeline, I don't think you'll be doing a service to either protest.

[Savannahmann]

10. As a youth in the early 80's, I was seriously Anti-Nuke

I didn't know, there was no way for me to know, that the groups were funded and supported by the Oil Companies. They funded the anti-nuke organizations and groups because they knew that nuclear power plants would cut into their bottom lines. No more natural gas power plants.

Solar power was originated as an idea to build more natural gas power plants. Unbeknownst to us everytime they built a solar plant, they also built a natural gas plant for when it was shady, or short winter days.

More natural gas plants are still being built today over all others. http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=17891

Why? Because Solar while holding a lot of promise, and while sometime in the future, it may provide a majority of our power, is too dependant on factors far outside of our control. A few shady days, and any energy storage facility would be drained. Imagine that, warehouses full of batteries all of which are drained because the day was cloudy again. Oh well, thankfully we have the Natural Gas plants to help light the night, keep us cool, and keep the hospitals running.

Did you know that the Federal Government had a new nuclear reactor design working when President Clinton was in office? I'm talking about a test rector, a proof of concept. It was a safe fail system. A passive safety system design.

Now, this project was shut down, after it had demonstrated the proof of design in a series of tests. Loss of coolant? No problem, the reactor shuts down and cools off over time with no danger of meltdown. Now, there is an energy system available today, not in a decade, or ten decades, today that would provide energy to the people with no greenhouse gas emissions.

We're the party that is in favor of science. Yet we abandoned the science. We walked away from one of the best chances of power without the global climate change side effects that we could have imagined. Oh, what about nuclear waste? Next to none in that design.

Here's some more info.

So Nuclear Power is being used all over. Yes, the old systems are dangerous, and dirty. But so were the first engines by comparison to today's motors. India has fired up a Thorium based reactor. It's operational. It's running today. Power with no greenhouse gasses.

But we were manipulated in the 1970's and 1980's. We were manipulated. We accept the older reactors, and like Fukushima leave them running far longer than they should have been because we don't want to see what our engineers can build today with modern science. Fukushima was designed by smart men, using slide rules and pads of paper. It was designed before we went to the Moon, which was also done with slide rules and pads of paper. It was designed when our cars had fins on the back. It was state of the art, but that was a long time ago. Cars today have some things in common with autos of that era. They have tires, an engine of some sort, and they have metal involved somewhere. But look at the difference in Formula 1 from then to now. A formula 1 race car from that era would be blown off the track by a modern car. It would struggle to be a pace car.

Imagine if we were still flying around in airplanes designed in that era. No Boeing 747's, they don't exist. The state of the art is the 707 for long range flights. A plane that was considered obsolete after the 747. An aircraft that was surpassed in capability by the now obsolete 757.

But we pretend that nuclear reactors can never be more advanced now than the Boeing 707 is compared to modern aircraft.

No, I am not saying we should all embrace Nuclear Power. Far from it. I am saying we should look at everything, and examine it with a critical eye, and examine the SCIENCE involved. Solar is a part of the energy strategy. So is wind. I love those ships that are installing wind turbines offshore, they are marvels of engineering. Jack up vessels weighing hundreds of tons that stand above the water and install the turbines. Absolutely amazing.

I am saying we should learn about what state of the art really means, and we should question everything. Every assumption, every ideal, and every belief should be subject to periodic review. Because those things we think we know, may not be quite as true as we think they are. We won't know unless we put those beliefs to the test now and then. Examine them with all that we have learned since we made those conclusions. It's how we have learned about Black Holes, the Big Bang, Quantum theory, Gravitational Theory, and so much more. We were willing to go back and examine our ideals and see how it held up to new information.

We wouldn't accept that our cars were doomed to be 1957 Desoto's for all of eternity. We demanded more mileage from the engines. We demanded more safety. We demanded better designs to increase survivability in a crash. We demanded hybrids, electrics, hydrogen powered. So why is Nuclear off the table where progress is concerned? I honestly don't know. I don't know if it is part of the answer for the future, and I don't know if it isn't part of the best answer. I do know there is a lot of manipulation going on, by both sides, and I do know that manipulation is based on fear, not logic, and not any science I prefer to believe in.

[bigtree]

12. the nuclear industry also supports and promotes wind power

...should we recoil from that, as well?

There were/are important and relevant reasons to oppose nuclear plants and nuclear efforts by the government involving waste disposal proposals and neglect and the intentions of the government to conflate support for new plants with their desire for more 'nuclear pits' to develop new 'usable' nuclear mini-weapons and refurbishment of nuclear weapons instead of continuing dismantlement and auguring for abrogation of the nuclear testing bans. I supported the 'no-nukes' effort back then, and I ally myself with the 'no-nuke' efforts and concerns of Dr. Helen Caldicott today.

[Cha]

8. Good to read.. mahalo bigtree.. Meanwhile, Canadian & US celebs and Environmentalists

are urging the President to reject it once and for all in this vid that illustrates the 'extraordinarily dirty' Canadian Oil extraction that he is referring to..

[KoKo]

9. That is Hopeful...and can we get him onboard against TPP/TPIP!

He sounds better and better these days. Let's hope it lasts. He does have a Legacy and we have to hope he's awakend that "Keystone Pipeline/TPP/TPIP is NOT the LEGACY he wants to be remembered for. There are a few "green shoots" that he finally sees more vision..and hopefully Rahm's thrashing in Chicago Election gave him some way to move back to "Hope and Change."

Let's HOPE for Ourselves Out Here......