December 20, 2011 by Walter Schneider.

Tuesday, 20 December 2011 21:59
Gabriele Steinhauser, The Associated Press

From the article:

By last week, the price of one emission allowance had tumbled to a meager euro6.41 — making it much cheaper to pollute and slashing the financial incentives for companies to invest in low-carbon technologies….

Shell, which is mostly known for selling oil and gas, has been one of the pioneers of carbon capture and storage, projects in which CO2 emissions are stored underground so they don’t get released into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming. But investing in new technologies like carbon capture and storage only becomes commercially viable at a carbon price of between euro25 and euro30, Hone said.

“Over the last few months, we have seen some of these projects disappear,” he added.

In October, the U.K. government shut down the carbon capture project in Longannet in eastern Scotland in which Shell was one of the partners…. (Full Story)

Posted in Shell CCS Project, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | 1 Comment »

November 5, 2011 by Walter Schneider.

In October 2011, the Alberta Government launched a massive advertising campaign promoting the idea that billions of dollars of tax revenues and increased electricity rates (which climbed in October to about 12.5 cents per kWh for residential consumers) are needed to achieve “carbon” capture and sequestration (that is: “storage”), in an attempt to have Alberta do its part in regulating global climate trends.

First of all, the “carbon” in carbon capture and sequestration is a misnomer, because what is supposed to be captured is not carbon but carbon-dioxide, plain, old CO2, a benign, harmless trace gas that is essential to all life on Earth and without which life as we know it would not exist on Earth.

Atmospheric CO2 levels have been measured regularly and systematically since 1959.  Some people, some of whom are scientists, assert that global temperature trends are being affected and even controlled and driven by atmospheric CO2 levels. That assertion is not supported by hard evidence.  At best, nothing more can be said about it than that it is a theory for which the science is not settled.  It is supported only by computer models.

Computer models will say what they are designed to say, and the adage about computers, “GIGO” (Garbage In, Garbage Out), applies with a vengeance to computer models.  No scientific evidence exists that proves that atmospheric CO2 levels are a controlling factor in global temperature trends.

On the other hand, a good many scientific facts relating to CO2 have been established and are supported by real world measurements, such as,

1. There is no correlation between rising temperature trends and increasing CO2 levels.
2. In 1998, the global temperature trend levelled off and can even be said to have fallen a bit, while atmospheric CO2 increased since then to about 392 parts per million or about four hundredth of one percent of the atmosphere.
3. Man-made CO2 emissions comprise only about three percent of total atmospheric CO2.  The other 97 percent of atmospheric CO2 originate from natural sources.
4. Plants will stop growing when atmospheric CO2 reaches a level of 200 parts per million and will begin to die off when the CO2 level falls to 150 parts per million.
5. The rising CO2 levels during the last thirty years have helped along the greening of the planet and increased agricultural productivity (e.g.; by about 25 percent in China).  In reality, increased levels of atmospheric CO2 have helped substantially to alleviate world hunger.

The truth about CO2 emissions is not wanted by those who spend our money.  Indeed, some people try to oppress it!  Good luck with that.  The advent of the Internet has made it practically impossible to suppress the truth, but the Alberta Government’s CCS propaganda campaign makes it obvious that good, old propaganda tactics are alive and well.  There are just fewer people now who will be willing to swallow government-sponsored lies than there were, say, during the Hitler era.

John O’Sullivan: Popular Skeptic Writer Fired for Exposing Carbon Climate Fraud

Friends, I write to announce my employment with my publishers, Suite101, was  terminated today without prior notice or explanation and all my articles  published over a two-year period with them ar….(Full Story)

In  case you missed the link to it in John O’Sullivan’s article, the  observations offered here are fairly straight-forward and easy to  understand:

Japanese Satellites say 3rd World Owes CO2 Reparations to The West

Well, in a somewhat bizarre twist, it looks like I must reconsider my opposition to CO2 reparations. The notion that the evil sources of CO2 “pollution” must pay those who are lowering the planet’s CO2 levels….(Full Story)

So,  guess what! If we believe that man-made CO2 emissions are the cause of  catastrophic global warming, then let’s do the best thing possible to  ameliorate the problem.  Let’s make sure that the underdeveloped and  developing nations acquire the same living standard as achieved by the  developed nations, and the problem will go away all by itself.

However, if anyone wishes to put his money where his mouth is with his climate change superstitions and wants to spend billions of dollars implementing measures for amelioration of catastrophic global warming, let him do it with his own money, at the source and not here where it will do no good.  However, if he wants to spend that much money to do some good for humanity where he lives, let him spend it on fixing things that need fixing, such as our health-care system.

Posted in Propaganda debunked, Censorship, Shell CCS Project, Corruption & Fraud, Electric Energy Prices, Community & Industry, Climate Change, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | No Comments »

October 27, 2011 by Walter Schneider.

Not quite so fast, let’s take a step back, take a deep breath, and look at things a bit more objectively.

In October 2011, the Government of Alberta launched a massive advertising campaign on TV and in the press promoting the ostensible benefits of a number of carbon capture and storage projects that are largely funded by Alberta taxpayers and to a smaller extent out of federal tax revenues.

The October 26 issue of the Edmonton Journal included “A SPECIAL SECTION by the Calgary Herald in partnership with the Government of Alberta”, comprised of a collection of articles from various sources printed on a total of six full-sized pages.

Here is just one of those stories: “Taming CO2 crucial to our future“, by Brian Burton, for the Calgary Herald.

I agree to some extent with the assertion in the title of that article, but from a perspective that is opposite to the intended meaning.  CO2 doesn’t need to be tamed.  It is a benign, beneficial but nevertheless vitally essential atmospheric trace gas without which life as we know it would not exist on Earth. Globally, the man-made portion of atmospheric CO2 comprises about three percent of annual CO2 emissions.  The remaining 97 percent of CO2 emissions are from natural sources.  For starters, every human alive breathes out about 1 kg of CO2 each day.

The portion of Alberta CO2 emissions that is to be captured and stored is a minuscule fraction of global man-made CO2 emissions. Even if atmospheric CO2 levels were to drive and control climate trends, the fraction of CO2 captured and stored in Aberta would be so small that it would not ever be possible to measure how that would influence global climate trends.  If anyone ever calculated what the impact of our CCS schemes would be, the results of such calculations must be extremely disappointing, as they have not been published or mentioned in the main-stream media.  Aside from that, the “evidence” of the benefits of reductions in man-made CO2 emissions only exists in computer models.  There is no measurable evidence in the real world that proves that there is any substance to the claims made in the theory that reductions in Alberta CO2 emissions will have any measurable impact on global climate trends.

Those are just some of the circumstances of the context in which Alberta’s efforts at attempting to use CO2 capture and storage as a thermostat for global climate control take place.  Still, far from objectively addressing any of those circumstances, the Government of Alberta ignores and does not even mention them.  That is so because of the main premise of the theory of sucessful propaganda expressed by one of its masters:

“The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training of the individual, but in calling the masses’ attention to certain facts, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus for the first time placed within their field of vision. …

“All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be. But if, as in propaganda for sticking out a war, the aim is to influence a whole people, we must avoid excessive intellectual demands on our public, and too much caution cannot be extended in this direction. …

“The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan….

“The function of propaganda is, for example, not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly.” —Hitler, Mein Kampf, Chapter VI

One may well wonder why the Government of Alberta is waking up to the reality that if the propaganda that supports CCS schemes is not being promoted, all CCS schemes may well and most likely flop.  The CCS schemes are expensive white elephants that cannot come to life, exist and operate without massive government subsidies.

Page 2 of the Edmonton Journal’s special October 2011 section on Carbon Capture and Storage boasts that “Alberta Leads the Way: Pioneering province first to put money behind CCS projects and a levy on carbon emissions”, but I see nothing laudable about a scheme to waste $2 billion through blowing CO2 down Mother Earth’s derriere.  Alberta may lead the way now, but it was one of the last to jump on the wagon and may well be one of the last to jump off.

I have no intention of presenting here even only a partially complete list of CCS and green energy boondoggles, but let’s at least look at a couple of recent news items in that regard:

1.) In Scotland: “Longannet carbon capture and storage project is no more”, October 22, 2011
http://lce.folc.ca/2011/10/22/longanet-carbon-capture-and-storage-project-is-no-more/

2.) In West-Virginia: “High costs bury AEP’s carbon burial plan”, July 16, 2011
The king wears no clothing, but it is even worse that he can’t afford to pay for being made to look like a naked fool.
http://lce.folc.ca/2011/07/16/high-costs-bury-aeps-carbon-burial-plan/

It seems to me that just as the Nazi propaganda machine went into high gear and intensified its efforts the more elusive Hitler’s dream of his 1000-year Reich became, so the CCS and alternative energy  schemes will be promoted ever more intensively the more their objectives prove themselves to be unattainable.

Posted in Shell CCS Project, Deficits and Debts, Propaganda debunked, Corruption & Fraud, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | No Comments »

October 22, 2011 by Walter Schneider.

There is jubilation and rejoicing over the shut-down of the U.K.’s white elephant of a carbon capture and storage project at Longannet, Scotland.  Shell was one of the parties developing that project.  The project was shut down, because it is too expensive.  Of course, without massive subsidization through tax- and utility-rates no one in their right mind would have expected a profitable rate of return on capital investment.  Read more about it.

There is a comparably-sized CCS project in the planning and engineering stages in Alberta, Canada, Shell Quest CCS project that is supposed to capture CO2 from the Shell Scotford oilsands upgrader, pipe it to Thorhild and blow it down Mother Earth’s derriere through a number of boreholes there, to have it “safely” stored forever, thousands of feet below the surface.

There are CCS projects that use CO2 injection into oil-bearing strata to boost the production of crude oil in oil fields that approach the limits of production by conventional methods.  No one ever made the slightest pretense that the CCS project at Longannet, nor the Shell’s Quest CCS project at Scotford, Alberta, ever were to provide a return on capital investment.  Both projects are manifestations of the politicians’ mania of obsessing with using CCS projects as thermostats with which to regulate what cannot practically be regulated, namely global CO2 contents in the air and thereby our climate trends.

The CO2 that is supposed to be sequestered is a beneficial atmospheric trace gas, a natural fertilizer that increases the productivity of the biosphere and agriculture.  U.K. politicians have come to their senses and put an end to their squandering of more than a billion dollars on a folly that cannot possibly have more than a minuscule, unmeasurable impact on climate trends, while at best the role of CO2 on those trends has not yet been substantiated.  Meanwhile, Canada’s politicians still want to carry on with their obsessing.

About three percent of global, annual CO2 emissions are man-made, 97 percent of CO2 emissions are from natural sources that are not affected in the least by such CCS projects.  The CCS projects that are slated to be put into operation are expensive, and their costs will be born by consumers of electricity and other forms of energy, whose rates will be jacked up considerably to pay for the folly of trying to do the impossible.

Shell’s Quest project at Scotford, Alberta, will be funded mainly by Alberta taxpayers (about $800 million).  Federal tax revenues will provide about $200 million, and Shell will contribute roughly $150 million, which costs will without a doubt be recovered through the price for oil that will be produced and sold by the Scotford upgrader.  Also without a doubt, Shell’s Quest CCS project will generate wealth for Shell (mark-up on oil prices), for the provincial and federal governments (through taxes that are called royalties), while the taxpayers and the consumers of energy will be left holding the bill.  The consumers and taxpayers never turn out to be the winners in these games.

Posted in Shell CCS Project, Taxes, Electric Energy Prices, Energy Issues, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | No Comments »

October 7, 2011 by Walter Schneider.

The Guardian, 2011 10 06

Flagship UK carbon capture project ‘close to collapse’

Scottish Power, and its partners Shell and the National Grid, have just completed a detailed study of the CCS scheme and have deep concerns about its commercial viability without heavier public backing….(Full Story)

Note: Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) a.k.a. Carbon Capture and Sequestration, is a misnomer.  It is CO2 (carbon dioxide) that is being captured and stored or sequestrated.  I guess that CO2 is being called carbon by the proponents of CCS schemes because in that fashion it is a little easier to invoke unfounded fears of “carbon pollution” that is falsely alleged to drive up global temperatures and burn all life on Earth to a crisp.

CO2 is a vital natural fertilizer without which life as we know it could not exist on Earth. All life on Earth is carbon based and exists within a biological life-cycle that evolved to have plants extract carbon from CO2 in the atmosphere, while almost all other life forms depend on plants doing well enough to be a direct or indirect source of food without which no other life can exist. CO2 is a trace gas that comprises a little less than 0.04 percent of our atmosphere. The majority (97%) of atmospheric CO2 stems from natural sources, while a tiny fraction (3%) of atmospheric CO2 is man-made.

The unproductive, useless and expensive luxury of burying a minuscule portion of man-made CO2 is a futile attempt to regulate global temperature trends. There is no scientific proof that rising levels of atmospheric CO2 drive up temperature trends.  Even though all measurable evidence that has been found indicates that rising temperature trends have a direct, positive influence on global atmospheric CO2 levels over time and life on Earth, economic policies throughout the developed nations are now geared to regulate and restrict the minuscule, man-made portion of atmospheric CO2. Moreover, the developed nations impose policies that restrict the economic development of the under-developed nations, also in attempts to constrain man-made CO2 emissions.  Those policies keep the underdeveloped nations in squalor and poverty.

Carbon capture and storage schemes such as the UK carbon capture project at Longannet in Scotland are not economically viable and can be brought into existence and operation only and entirely through massive subsidies derived either through taxes or through surcharges on utility prices or both. CCS schemes that serve no other purpose than to bury CO2 may reduce global temperatures somewhat. However, their impact will be so small that the temperature reduction hoped to be achieved a hundred years from now can only be calculated to be at best a few ten-thousands of a degree Celsius, which is far beyond the capacity of any instrumentation in existence to measure. The calculated delay of global warming will by the year 2100 amount at most to only a few hours.

The most efficient method for the disposal of man-made CO2 is to let it escape, unhindered, into the air, whereby it can then contribute to the greening of the Earth.

Yes, our globe has for a long time suffered from a dearth of CO2. Scientific evidence shows that the rising CO2 levels experienced lately are caused by global warming resulting from a more active Sun. Atmospheric CO2 levels are presently at 392 parts per million by volume or at 0.0392% of the atmosphere. Plants will stop growing when CO2 levels drop to 0.02% and die when CO2 levels fall to 0.015%. Earth experienced periods during the recent geological past when CO2 levels were many times, 10 and even 20 times, higher than they are now. Many recent scientific studies established that the rising levels of CO2 have contributed to the greening of the Earth and caused substantial increases in agricultural productivity during the past 30 years or so.

The CCS project at Longannet in Scotland is only one of such projects in the planning, engineering or construction stages around the world. It is also not the only one that is in peril. See “High costs bury AEP’s carbon plan”. http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/business/2011/07/15/high-costs-bury-aeps-carbon-plan.html

“…American Electric Power [AEP] said it would halt a project to bury carbon dioxide deep beneath a coal-fired power plant in West Virginia, experts say the decision reflects a seismic change in the economics of generating electricity.”

The CCS project at Longannet in Scotland is also not the only one involving Shell. Shell is promoting CCS projects in Alberta, Canada. The Alberta Government reserved $2 billion for those. While one of Shell’s CCS projects will collect CO2 for injection in central Alberta, to enhance oil-field production, another one is a CCS project called Quest that will not serve any purpose other than to inject CO2 underground for storage.

Shell’s Quest CCS project will cost about $1.25 billion dollars and is planned to go into operation in about 2015. About $150 million of the costs will be provided by Shell. The remainder of the construction costs will be born by Canadian (mostly by Albertan) taxpayers. Shell’s commitment for the construction of their Quest CCS project is a result of a condition by Canadian governments for granting the operating licence for Shell’s Scotford Oil-Sands bitumen upgrader at Scotford, Alberta.

Shell’s Quest CCS project is purely political folly funded by taxpayers and users of fossil fuel.  It is not something that Shell should be required to put into operation.
____________
More concerns about Shell’s Quest project are expressed in the following article, “No price too high for appeasing climate alarmists”, http://lce.folc.ca/2010/11/06/no-price-too-high-for-appeasing-climate-alarmists/

Here is Shell’s website that promotes Shell’s Quest CCS project: http://www.shell.ca/home/content/can-en/aboutshell/our_business/business_in_canada/upstream/oil_sands/quest/

Posted in Shell CCS Project, Deficits and Debts, Electric Energy Prices, Energy Issues, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | 1 Comment »

July 16, 2011 by Walter Schneider.

The king wears no clothing, but it is even worse that he can’t afford to pay for being made to look like a naked fool.

High Costs Bury AEP’s Carbon Burial Plan
Posted on July 15, 2011 by News Staff

American Electric Power has scuttled its pilot project to bury CO2 from its Mountaineer coal-burning plant in Red Haven WVa. The original projected cost, before unanticipated overruns, was $668 million. About 1/3 of the gross output from a plant would be required to capture, compress and inject the CO2 into the ground, generating an automatic 50% increase in the cost of net output, before conversion costs.

“The AEP plan, announced with much fanfare in 2009, marked the first time that carbon dioxide was to be captured and buried at a US power plant.”

The pilot system would only have captured 110,000 tons of CO2 per year, out of a total of 7.9 to 9.8 million tons per year from the plant. The company, headquartered in Columbus, “cited difficulties in getting state regulators to approve charging customers for the costs of carbon capture.”

From this morning’s Columbus (OH) Dispatch: http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/business/stories/2011/07/15/high-costs-bury-aeps-carbon-plan.html?sid=101

______________
It is a good thing that the people that made the decision to scuttle the AEP CCS project came to their senses. A country that is at the verge of bankruptcy should not waste one-third of a power plant’s energy production to bury even a fraction of the beneficial natural fertilizer that plant exhausts into the air, fertilizer that is essentially free of cost.

The economics of the decision to scuttle the CCS project are sound and make sense. It boggles the mind why anyone in their right mind and not blinded by harmful environmental fanaticism ever made a move to spend even a single dollar on such a hare-brained scheme.

The situation with Shell’s CSS project in Alberta is no different with respect to it being a hare-brained scheme by environmental fanatics and government agencies catering to them holding Shell over a barrel. Don’t blame Shell for the idea that blowing CO2 down Mother Earth’s derriere at a billion-dollars a shot is a thing that Alberta consumers must fund. It is a political decision which Shell supports only because it cannot lose on it on account of taxpayers and consumers footing the bill.

I you think that those observations are not substantiated by facts, then you better have a look at the comments that were posted at wattsupwiththat.com in relation to the AEP CSS scheme.

Posted in Climate Craziness, The New World Order, Shell CCS Project, Corruption & Fraud, Community & Industry, Electric Energy Prices, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | No Comments »

March 15, 2011 by Walter Schneider.

Do you fear serious health problems due to being exposed to radiation from the Japanese nuclear plants?

You are not alone.  There is now a run on potassium-iodate in the land of the fearful and many pharmacies have run out of it.  What is that hysteria all about?

There is little to fear.  The situation in Japan is a far cry from being as harmful as other nuclear accidents were, and the dangers from those, too, were blown out of all proportions.  Here is a very informative account of that:

From the Summer 2010 Issue
of 21st Century of Science and Technology

Observations on Chernobyl after 25 Years of Radiophobia
Zbigniew Jaworowski, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc.

The worst possible nuclear plant accident produced no scientifically confirmed fatalities in the general population. But there was enormous political and psychological damage, mainly the result of belief in the lie that any amount of radiation is bad.

Here is another item that will do much to allay hysterics, specifically with respect to the nuclear energy plant in Fukushima, that presently and increasingly raise fears of nuclear-energy-induced radiation impacts to heights that have not been seen since the tidal wave of fear about the consequences of the Chernobyl incident was set into motion.

Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors. | Morgsatlarge – blogorific.

There exists a copy of this post on Barry Brooks excellent blog, where you can still use the discussion function: http://bravenewclimate.com

Last but not least, see this:

MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub

Information about the incident at the Fukushima Nuclear Plants in Japan hosted by http://web.mit.edu/nse/ :: Maintained by the students of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT

It is extremely difficult not to become influenced by the fear mongering promulgated by the media. The sad reality is that “The News” are vehicles by which to bring advertising to the people.  One must make a deliberate effort to avoid becoming influenced by the media.  After all, their primary purpose for existence is to influence people and thereby to make a profit.  The media employ professionals schooled and trained in influencing people, all for the sake of profit.

The best news of all to accomplish that with are bad news, better yet, alarming news, and, if the news are not bad enough to achieve that with, then news that have been invented or have been made alarming when they were not and should not have been presented as alarming news in the first place will do better than all others.  “Dog bites man” is not news, “Man bites dog!!” is.

Randolph Hurst was someone who had the reputation of being ruthless in inventing and presenting alarming news for boosting the circulation of his newspapers.  I believe that it was he who once said: “There is no such thing as bad News,” meaning that, for the purpose of increasing circulation, the more alarming the news are, the better, because the greater the circulation numbers, the larger the advertising revenues.

Newspapers derive the vast majority of their revenues from advertising.  The prices charged for copies of their newspapers pay for nothing more than just the paper they are printed on and perhaps putting them into circulation.  The reporting, the editorializing, the writing, the composing, the typesetting, the wages and salaries of their staff, and all of the capital and operating expenses of newspapers are paid through advertising revenues.

Of course, very similar considerations apply to other branches of the media, such as broadcasting.

Increasing the circulation (or the size of a listening or viewing audience) increases the advertising revenues.

I believe that the recognition of that reality is one of the most important things any activists should engage themselves in.

There is an enormous media bias regarding feminism and men’s issues.  I admired many of the human rights activists whom I met throughout my life for being fully aware of that.

Now get this.  That bias in the media is not driven by an evil conspiracy.  It is driven by greed for media profits.  It just so happens that some ideological opportunists exploit the greed of the media for their own purposes.

That happens not only with respect to vilifying men and fathers for the purpose of creating and enlarging a rift between the sexes and to aid the systematic deconstruction of the traditional nuclear family.  The same principle creates opportunities for other fanatical ideologists or pain alarmists such as those who wish to promote their agenda for world domination or perhaps nothing more than their greed for power and wealth by creating unfounded fears about specific environmental issues.

One little aspect of the manufacturing of fears for profit is the creation and intensification of fears regarding nuclear energy.  Accidents such as those at Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima are god-sends for environmental-alarmism opportunists and carpetbaggers.

__________
Note: Dr. Jaworowski’s report on radiophobia may seem at first to be difficult reading, but get into it and become fascinated.

By understanding what Dr. Jaworowski stated about radiophobia and in reading his explanation of how it was created and exploited in connection with Chernobyl you may be making the most important contribution you could ever have imagined to becoming enlightened in your career as a human rights activist.

There is no shame in being duped once…

Posted in Alarmist Insanity, Propaganda debunked, Health issues, Alternative Energy Sources, Pollution: Health Issues, Explosions & Fires, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | No Comments »

February 16, 2011 by Walter Schneider.

This is from a source that is not necessarily impartial:

Using a gasifier instead of a coker will allow the upgrader [the North West upgrader, across the highway, west from Agrium, south of Redwater, Alberta, that will commence production in 2014] to capture 1.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, shipping the liquefied gas through a pipeline to central Alberta, where it will be used to recover more oil from depleted conventional oilfields.

And when that much CO2 is taken out of the upgrading process, Alberta diesel from North West will be the greenest in the world, even better than Saudi medium crude, North West chairman Ian MacGregor told the Heartland Association last month.

(Read more at Deal gives go-ahead to upgrader, Edmonton Journal, 2011 02 15, pp. D1 and D6)

Outgoing premier Ed Stelmach, a source whom many consider reliable but who is not necessarily impartial either, concurs:

Alberta takes ‘bold step’ into oilsands upgrading

Evoking the spirit of pioneers, outgoing Premier Ed Stelmach said Albertans know success comes from having the courage to take risks, and the $5-billion North West upgrader/refinery announced Wednesday is just the latest “bold step” in that direction….

“I have always said, shipping bitumen out of the province is comparable to selling the topsoil on a farm. This is fulfilling a commitment I made in 2006 to the province during the leadership (race),” he said at the ceremony.

Stelmach added he is keen on ensuring Alberta is a world leader in carbon dioxide reduction, which is why the government announced a $2-billion program two years ago, and has agreed to fund four innovative projects.

“So today we take another bold step in the area of value added with this historic agreement with North West and Canadian Natural for a project that will use carbon-capture technology from Day 1.”….(Full Story)

That enthusiasm at the taxpayers expense will not colour Alberta’s diesel green, unless “green diesel” is tinted by the colour of money.

Alberta diesel will not be the greenest in the world.  Given that Ed Stelmach has thrown $2 billion dollars at “four innovative projects” for oil production (of which Shell’s Quest CCS Project, is one of the “innovative projects”, with a contribution of $780 million, due to Ed Stelmach’s generosity funded by Alberta’s taxpayers obligations) that will do exactly zilch for addressing local or the world’s climate trends. Alberta diesel will not be the greenest but will without a doubt be the most expensive to produce in the world.

Mind you, one must consider the veracity of the source.  Amongst many other illogical panaceas, Ed Stelmach tried to initiate a program for switching the driving- and passing-lanes on Alberta’s highways to postpone the need for road maintenance work (a move that was fortunately stalled and eventually defeated through massive public opposition) and he also asserted that, with respect to the hurtful impact of rapidly rising utility costs in the wake of Ralph Klein’s program for the deregulation of the utilities,

We will continue to monitor energy supplies and pricing and take appropriate action when necessary in the best interest of all Albertans.
The Alberta Government is committed to putting more money back into the pockets of Albertans.

Ed Stelmach (PC), Alberta Minister of Transportation,
MLA Vegreville-Viking, 2002 04 19,
in his response to an open letter on utility pricing policies.

That is a little confusing, isn’t it?  That tug in your pockets, is that from the increased weight of the money that the Alberta Government is committed to putting back into the pockets of Albertans, or is that from Ed Stelmach’s hands pulling out more money “required” to increase the price of motor fuel in order to make it the “greenest” or rather the most expensive in the world?

If increased levels of atmospheric CO2 cause global warming, should we not by now see some increasing warming in the Edmonton temperature trends?

The Edmonton weather or temperature trends are not representative of  global temperature trends, you say.  Yes, that is correct, but what about the global trends?

Take a look at global CO2 and its dispersion over time.  Can you by any chance detect Alberta’s role in that?  Not very likely, but it is quite obvious that if CO2 could accumulate in the atmosphere due to mankind, there would not be such very large seasonal fluctuations.

Other than that, given that the North West upgrader will capture and sequester 1.2 million tonnes of CO2 a year and that man-made global CO2 emissions are being generated at the rate of 957 tonnes of CO2 a second, the carbon capture and storage scheme associated with the North West upgrader will compensate for 21 minutes of man-made global CO2 emissions a year.  Do you think that is worth spending about $500 million on?  That is just what Ed Stelmach wants to devote of our tax revenues to the cause, for no other good effect than to be favorably mentioned in the history books.  Annual operating costs, and initial contributions by North West and from federal sources are not included in that. What will history have to say about that 30 years from now?

However, in order to determine whether it is truly necessary to increase the price of Alberta diesel or of any fuel anywhere, we really need to know whether rising CO2, globally, causes rising global temperatures.

First take a look at temperature trends over time:

Hockey Stick over Time - Narrated

Here is another view of global atmospheric CO2 versus temperature.

CO2, Temperatures, and Ice Ages
Posted on January 30, 2009 by Anthony Watts

Guest post by Frank Lansner, civil engineer, biotechnology.

It is generally accepted that CO2 is lagging temperature in Antarctic graphs. To dig further into this subject therefore might seem a waste of time. But the reality is, that these graphs are still widely used as an argument for the global warming hypothesis. But can the CO2-hypothesis be supported in any way using the data of Antarctic ice cores?

At first glance, the CO2 lagging temperature would mean that it’s the temperature that controls CO2 and not vice versa.

(See Graph, Full Story)

Carbon capture and storage, what a scam!  Just think of what could be done with $2 billion dollars to fix, say, the Alberta Health-Care system; but Ed Stelmach had to cut back on that, to save enough for carbon capture and sequestration.

The nine most-feared words in the English language: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” (Ronald Reagan)

Posted in Climate Craziness, Shell CCS Project, Propaganda debunked, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | 1 Comment »

December 13, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Financial Post
2010 12 13

Carbon burial scheme goes under

By Lawrence Solomon

The UK’s first commercial scale CCS facility – a plant at a colliery in Yorkshire that would capture carbon and then pump it for burial in old gas-wells under the North Sea – has itself gone under after failing to raise the £635 million needed to fund its construction….(Full Story)

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November 22, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

It was a few years ago, when I said that the media don’t always tell the truth, and that even the evening news on TV are often used to tell falsehoods, either by distorting the truth, putting the wrong spin on things or by not reporting some things at all, and someone commented: “Why should I believe you, when professionals tell me something that is quite different from what you tell me?”

Well, it seems that a good answer to that is not that easy to come by; but is that true?

I have not ever knowingly tried to pull  a fast one on people by deliberately telling a lie in anything I told on this blog or anything else I presented as the truth on the Internet.  Still, why should anyone believe me?

The answer to that is that no one needs to believe me or believe anything I state, but if they don’t believe me, why should they believe anyone else who is making an effort to tell them anything? The truth is out there, and, thanks to the Internet, the truth about anything is as accessible as are lies about it.  All that is necessary is to be able to tell the truth from lies that are intentional or unintentional.  The difference is often easy to tell.

Let’s take the truth with respect to what is being told in Richard Lindzen’s testimony to the US Congress about global warming hype and hysteria and compare it to what some parties like Shell, the Canadian federal government and the Alberta provincial government want us to do.  That is, buy in and pay for, at a billion dollars and more a shot,  to allegedly alleviate the consequences of global warming through Shell’s CCS project that is proposed to be constructed in Alberta’s Industrial Heartland, north-east of Fort Saskatchewan and north of Bruderheim.

Richard Lindzen, one of the foremost climatologists in the world, said in concluding his testimony to the US Congress, Nov. 17, 2010, that,

You now have some idea of why I think that there won’t be much warming due to CO2, and without significant global warming, it is impossible to tie catastrophes to such warming. Even with significant warming it would have been extremely difficult to make this connection.

Perhaps we should stop accepting the term, ‘skeptic.’ Skepticism implies doubts about a plausible proposition. Current global warming alarm hardly represents a plausible proposition. Twenty years of repetition and escalation of claims does not make it more plausible. Quite the contrary, the failure to improve the case over 20 years makes the case even less plausible as does the evidence from climategate and other instances of overt cheating.

In the meantime, while I avoid making forecasts for tenths of a degree change in globally averaged temperature anomaly, I am quite willing to state that unprecedented climate catastrophes are not on the horizon though in several thousand years we may return to an ice age.

Richard Lindzen provided the following information on slides 11, 12, and 13 of his presentation to the US Congress:

(Click on each image to see it in full resolution.)

Will anyone in their right mind truly believe that the range of temperature trends for global average temperatures (the area covered by the red line in the preceding image) compared to local measurement for Boston (or anywhere else for that matter) will be impacted in any measurable fashion by what is contemplated through Shell’s CCS Project?  After all, the width of the red line would at best be reduced by no more than an infinitesimally tiny fraction of 4 percent of the width of the red line.

Mind you, Richard Lindzen uses well-mannered language in his presentations.  Instead of using words like “anyone in their right mind”, he uses words such as these: “Given the above, the notion that alarming warming is ‘settled science’ should be offensive to any sentient individual, though to be sure, the above is hardly emphasized by the IPCC.” (Emphasis as in the original on page 4 of the full PDF file of Richard Lindzen’s testimony to the US Congress)

Whether one says “anyone in their right mind” or that the claims of global-warming alarmism are based on ’settled science’ is “offensive to any sentient individual,” makes little difference.  Someone who is right in his mind is a sentient individual, and the facts are the same.  Cries of climate alarmism and all attempts to use “Carbon Capture and Storage” as a thermostat for regulating global temperature trends are bunk.

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By the way, besides Richard Lindzen, there were other prominent authorities who set straight the facts at the US Congress Hearing on Global Warming:

Watch: The House Hearing on Global Warming today

Posted on November 17, 2010 by Anthony Watts

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