Atlantic premiers have toured Alberta for several winters now to plead for native sons and daughters to return home, but they could never drown out the siren call of those six-figure oilpatch paycheques.
Not any more. With two of the four premiers sending their regrets to Monday’s third summit in Calgary, despite the lure of prime Flames hockey tickets, there’s a polar-opposite subtext in the messaging: Don’t move back all at once. Please.
So those wonderful cheques that easterners were sending home for years are about to stop, further depressing the Atlantic provinces. That is step one in the success of the environmentalists fight. Free the workers from their oppression in the "tar sands".
Next we have both the provincial and federal governments working to stop the oil production.
Alberta and Ottawa moved Monday to charge an energy heavyweight with breaking environmental laws after the industry – and the country – were humiliated last spring by the image of hundreds of oil-soaked ducks dying in a toxic byproduct of the oil sands.
Syncrude Canada Ltd. could face fines of up to $800,000 if convicted under provincial and federal environmental legislation in connection with the deaths of 500 waterfowl at one of its tailing ponds north of Fort McMurray, Alta.
Step two is killing the golden goose, or should I say ducks. Environmentalists are excited about the power they now have against government. Let's see how excited they are when Alberta can not send any money to the federal government to fund their little environmental projects because the goose is dead.
44 comments:
Ah, Hunter, the layoffs are a result of oil selling at $40/barrel. It costs the tar sands $75ish to produce. And those easterners, they paid the EI premiums -- it's not welfare.
800,000 is a drop in the bucket for Syncrude. All they have to do is lay off six full time oil patchers, and presto.
Hey Hunter, if the oil production was so clean how come the ducks can't survive a swim in it? Or are you busy demonizing again, playing at demagoguery and calling environmentalists dirty for holding the polluters of dioxide world accountable?
Come on, Mysteee, Syncrude will pay 100,000 and promise *wink* *wink* not to do it again. Gotta keep them ducks alive so the hunters can kill them, doncha know.
Let's be real here, and understand that it is important to improve reduce the effect of the tailings pond. At least Syncrude and Suncor have a successful land reclamation program, but they still must work on improving the water quality in the effluent.
I wish those environmentalists would actually work on a real problem such as water quality, versus carbon dioxide which is NOt a poison.
You're quite right SQ, it is all optics, of course. So let's do some optics.
Hunter, do you mind my asking what's good about the tar sands?
Hunter, do you mind my asking what's good about the tar sands?
Hunter, do you mind my asking what's good about the tar sands?
How does one go about "reclaiming" this?
I was just reading in the Globe that it is estimated one hour of production will cover it if Syncrude gets fined to the fullest extent of $800,000.00. That's pretty slight punishment - even though Syncrude execs are all saying they feel terrible about it. Somehow I don't think anyone feels terrible enough. I don't think it has anything to do with the way people feel. Have you ever read the story of the Golden Goose Hunter? It's a Grimm fairy tale.
Tar sands are in California - ask Arnold
Oil Sands are in Alberta - thank you for feeding my family and paying my taxes
Go for a walk, or better still make it a Mystery Tour
What's with the drug infested slugs in the tailing ponds?
You can't kill the golden goose. It kills everyone who touchs it except the dummling.
I love when the lefties start preaching from thier high horses.
How many more birds are killed by wind turbines every year?
I also love the media's characterization that the tailings ponds are 'toxic soup'. Well it plays well to those that think if you use the microwave too much you'll start to glow green.
Any other Albertans getting really really sick of those Newfoundland tv ads that run 30 times a day here?
No wonder the one Nfders leave home, gawd, they are packed like sardines on the Rock!
Do they still have party lines or have they advanced to rotory dial yet?
Eastern Canada and the US choose to buy most of their oil from overseas countries that harbour terrorists.
By the time the oil is floated across the ocean, if they don't spill the cargo, how 'clean' is it?
Anyone got the stats on how many birds meet their maker by electrocution or flying into airplane engines?
Where's Ducks Unlimited when yah need them?
How many years have there been tailing ponds. How many ducks have been killed in all those years.
I bet more than 500 high paid workers will lose their jobs and go back east. A huge amount of those wages earned over the years has gone back east to support families, businesses, schools, and the tax base of said province. Now that they are going home the premiers are worried, all that money will not be there, the taxes will not be there, but the health costs, school costs etc will increase as more people will need them.
Maybe when all these people come home, those envirowackos will realize what they have done to our economy.
West Coast Freddy:
Tar sands -- Alberta
Tar ponds -- Nova Scotia
Tar pits -- Collyfornia
There will be a test later :)
Actually S.Q. very little of the BITUMEN mined has the consistency of 'TAR'. Much of what gets unearthed in Syncrude, Suncor, CNRL and the like is suspended in sandstone. Yep, solid rock, just like those beutiful, scenic, tourist attracting open pit ore mines outside of Alberta. You might also have a pocket of bitmen that looks like the black volcanic sand in Hawaii. Ooooooh, Hawaii! Wanna-lakka-heekee! "Oh wait, Alberta votes Conservative so this is BAD sand....their open pit mines are dirtier than Ontario's and Kweebec's because we vote left-lib".
That said, for CENTURIES some of this bitumen that DOES have the conistency of tar has leeched out of the banks of the Athabasca River and was carried downstream. Got it, SQ? For CENTURIES. How about you hold a candleligh vigil for the for ducks that died over the years? Maybe we should pay reparations to thier surviving great-great-great grand ducklings. Oh, the humanity!
To raving wannabe environmentalists, the word TAR can conjure up images of the poor wooly mammoth (or baby seal/polar bear) being sucked in like quicksand while Ralph Klein and Stephen Harper stand on the sidelines laughing and lighting cigars with thousand dollar bills.
TAR is a general purpose F-word for moon bat sissies, interchangeable with 'neocon', 'American-style' and 'greedy Albertans'.
Hate to break it to you weak-kneed sissies, but we NEED oil. Until these campus radicals and lazy beificeries of government make-work largesse can come up with a substitute to fossil fuels, I suggest you drop the double standard of mourning for a handful of mallards all the while you and every Canadian benifits for said 'TAR'.
Even the soybeans that make up your latte is brought to you at Starbucks thanks to 'TAR'. It takes big equipment to harvest soybeans. BIG, turbo-charged AMERICAN BUILT John Deere ALBERTA DIESEL spewing engines to harvest these magic little beans that give you lefties such self appointed superior consciousness.
The last I checked, David Suzuki's Aerogold points are thanks to General Electric kerosene burning engines slung below the wings of the jets as he spreads his 'do as I say, not as I do' message to the unkempt masses.
Finally, your $75ish per barrel refining cost is also pure bunk. Maybe last year when cost over runs weere the order of the day, but drop the Marxist line and update your figures. As much as I love pointing and laughing at you as you're standing there with your pants down, this misinformation you continually spew is getting tiring.
Love when the lefties swoop down on conservative blogs making it their new homes. It must be because of the eventual bordom that sets in when everyone at Kos and Rabble are in complete agreement all the time!
How about the slicing and dicing machines the greenies see as the end all and be all of the future.
Oh, but those don't count because
oil - bad
wind power - good
In the US, a pilot that ran into canadian geese and killed how many, is treated as a hero. No mass hysteria to ban airplanes as they kill birds. No threats to sue the pilot or airline for killing birds. And how many birds are killed every year (with more to come) by windfarms.
Re Eskimo: "I love when the lefties start preaching from thier high horses."
Demonizing demagoguery.
Re Eskimo: "How many more birds are killed by wind turbines every year?"
And re Wilson:"Anyone got the stats on how many birds meet their maker by electrocution or flying into airplane engines?
If those are questions you have then find out and let us know. If those are your arguments, they are insufficient. Comparing one wrong to an other unsubstantiated wrong doesn't make it right.
Re Eskimo: "I also love the media's characterization that the tailings ponds are 'toxic soup'. Well it plays well to those that think if you use the microwave too much you'll start to glow green.."
Nice try but again where's the argument?
Re Eskimo, on the consistency of tar sands, how much we need tar to bring us our lattes and slurs against David Suzuki:
Those are the irrelevant demonizing
rants of a demagoguasaurus.
Re MaryT: "In the US, a pilot that ran into canadian geese and killed how many, is treated as a hero. "
He was treated as a hero because he succesfully landed the plane without losing any passengers.
Re MaryT:"And how many birds are killed every year (with more to come) by windfarms."
You are the fourth person in this thread to apply this pseudo "logic" as an argument.The question is posed as if it were the only way of thinking. Skyscrapers kill birds and so do pesticides. That doesn't make it right. Do you care about birds or not? How about elevated cancer rates in Fort McMurray? How about loss of habitat for all boreal plants and creatures. How about thinking up alternatives instead of sticking so hard to fallacious mendacities.
".....If those are questions you have then find out and let us know. If those are your arguments, they are insufficient. Comparing one wrong to an other unsubstantiated wrong doesn't make it right....."
So suddenly the 'wrongs' that you put forth are gospel and mine are 'unsubstantiated'? Go away you high horsed Marxist troll.
If you continue to profess your piety, I suggest you practice what you spew. Same goes for Suzuki. Stop using fozzil fuels, build yourself a loom, plant some hemp, live off the land and shut your pompous pie hole.
PS. I can't wait to get my motorhome out of winter storage. I get 14 miles per gallon with it and that doesn't bother me. I could give a rat's behind to be honest. I can also afford it. This summer I'm going quadding up in TAR sand country. Going to pull these single cylinder C02 belchers behind the motorhome so my mileage will drop to about 8 or so. We'll build a big smokey campfire out of the local jackpine, catch our limit of fish and perhaps chase a few ducks with the boat. We'll hike the sand dunes and bring home some chunks of bitumen that litter the trails up there. Sorry to break it to you, but there are no tar pits up there, so the cute little furry creatures only need fear me and Cooter and Billy Bob. Perhaps we'll gather up a few of these big chuncks of bitmen and I'll display them on the mantle, right below the stuffed mallard.
Let me know how that loom goes, but only one caveat....you can't cut down any trees to build it, because that would be wrong.....right?
Oil sands were used by the ancient Mesopotamians and Canadian First Nations, among others. In the modern era, they were extensively mined near the city of Pechelbronn, where the vapor separation process was in use in 1742.[2]
The name tar sands was applied to bituminous sands in the late 19th and early 20th century. People who saw the bituminous sands during this period were familiar with the large amounts of tar residue produced in urban areas as a by-product of the manufacture of coal gas for urban heating and lighting.[3] The word tar to describe these natural bitumen deposits is really a misnomer, since, chemically speaking, tar is a man-made substance produced by the destructive distillation of organic material, usually coal. Since then, coal gas has almost completely been replaced by natural gas as a fuel, and coal tar as a material for paving roads has been replaced by the petroleum product asphalt. Naturally occurring bitumen is chemically more similar to asphalt than to tar, and oil sands (or oilsands) is more commonly used in the producing areas than tar sands because synthetic oil is what is manufactured from the bitumen.[4]
So I passed right? and get what Southern Quebec has gas!! shale gas
OK mystery meat, I'll bite.
Yes, to 'wrongs' don't make a right. If I may speak for a few other here, it is the deafening silence of the media when only 'tar sand ducks' are newsworthy. Face it, it sells more newspapers when you see the videos of volunteers in full bio-hazzard costumes, scrubbing Daffy with dish soap. Where's PETA, where are the anarchist rent a mob protesters, the university students, the Suzukis when 'wind farms' are shredding migrating birds?
Don't hide behind the skirt of 'two wrongs'. It's deceptive. It's amateurish. It horsecrap. It's also standard operating proceedure for you and your ilk, I'm just calling you on it.
Re Eskimo: So suddenly the 'wrongs' that you put forth are gospel and mine are 'unsubstantiated'? Go away you high horsed Marxist troll."
That bit is the last on the list of the methods of the demagogues and falls under emotional appeal. The 'wrong of the ducks in the pit of goo' is demonstrable. Your 'wrong' is insubstantial because you haven't bothered to substantiate it.
Instead you call me a Marxist troll. That falls under ad hominem in the methods of the demagogues.
Demagogue - look it up. Not flattering.
I would rather be a Marxist troll any day. I wear my David Suzuki tee shirt I bought at CBC gift shop
with pride.
You have yet to provide anything remotely resembling a statistic on the effects of turbines on birds.
Cough it up and we'll talk.
Aaaah, I'll help you out Esk, here's an American study so we don't need to mention Suzuki again ok
Various sources:
Deaths due to collision:
300,000,000 - buildings
200,000,000 - free roaming cats
150,000,000 - transmission and distribution lines
70,000,000 - trucks and autos
60,000,000 - pesticides
50,000,000 - communication towers
Wind companies like FPL Energy, wildlife groups and the US Fish and Wildlife Service are trying to agree on ways to lower the risk for birds flying into big spinning turbine blades at the 584-megawatt Altamont Pass wind center in rolling hills about 50 miles east of San Francisco.
Altamont Pass, which produces wind power for sale to Pacific Gas & Electric Co., a unit of PG&E Corp. is along a migratory path for raptors and near a nesting area for golden eagles.
One megawatt of wind energy can power about 250 to 300 homes with no emissions.
A study last year by the California Energy Commission estimated that up to 4,720 birds from 40 different species are killed each year at the wind farm, including as many as 1,300 protected raptors.
The yearly death toll includes more than 100 golden eagles plus red-tailed hawks, burrowing owls, kestrels, and meadowlarks, according to the Audubon Society.
Giant wind turbines at Altamont Pass, California, are illegally killing more than 1,000 birds of prey each year, according to a lawsuit filed January 12 by the Center for Biological Diversity. The suit demands an injunction halting operation of the turbines until and unless protective measures are taken and highlights increasing concerns regarding a power source long hailed as environmentally friendly by environmental activist groups.
Thousands of Deaths Every Year
Thousands of wind turbines were built in Northern California’s Altamont Pass region during the 1980s in response to activist groups’ call for greater reliance on renewable energy sources. Construction of the wind turbines, however, has made the region one of the most deadly places in the world for a large variety of birds. Literally thousands of birds are killed by the turbines each year, including roughly 1,000 annual kills of such valued birds of prey as golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, and burrowing owls.
" I wear my David Suzuki tee shirt I bought at CBC gift shop
with pride."
Like I'm surprised.
Eskimoose: Do you know that you are a cliche? Please tell me that you wear an open neck shirt with lots of gold chains. I would feel better.
What, no links? No html heh?
Next question Esk:
Which quote unquote LEFTY in this thread - ever said that the tar sands was the only man made problem for birds?
One megawatt of wind energy can power about 250 to 300 homes with no emissions?
cool
I'll mention Suzuki until the day he retires his air miles card and spreads his snake oil sermons by pack mule.
Same goes for you. Either practice what you preach or you're a hypocrite. You conceal the whole truth by issuing drive-by smears and you're selective with the facts.
You play coy by demanding everyone else provide citations, yet you sit there like a spoiled child throwing a fit.
Typical moonbat. (and I don't care that this hurts your feelings)
Well, back to work now. I've got to pay both my fair share of taxes and mystereeoso's too.
What do you mean by that?
What I would ask our lefty visitors is this
Where did the 500 number come from. Funny how EXACTLY 500 ducks settled on that pond - funny how only a few were ever recovered.
Is is just possible that a few ducks landed there but the enviroweenies saw the chance to make an issue out of this?
If you have a link that "proves" that 500 ducks landed there, please provide it - oh and I don't want greenpeace or the sierra club or WWF as your link either. Actually a video or a photo would be great.
I'll be waiting.
Sud Kweebec....who's Eskimoose? If you're talking to me, I hate to put a damper on your mid day lefty fantasy of having an 'encounter' with an Alberta redneck, I actually dress quite professionally.
And to mystery meat, one of the links was from the Audubon Society. They wouldn't lie to you, now would they? So it ain't so! Oh Mommy Earth, mystereeoso needs a hug!
Didn't Suzuki once preach about the impending ice age, circa 1970 os so? Just sayin'.
Feel free to delete any of all of my posts Hunter, but I;m having so much fun pulling the wings off of these flies that somebody let in!
Re: "You conceal the whole truth by issuing drive-by smears and you're selective with the facts."
Mendacious.
Re:"You play coy by demanding everyone else provide citations, yet you sit there like a spoiled child throwing a fit."
But imaginative.
Re: "Typical moonbat. (and I don't care that this hurts your feelings)"
Name calling again? Low levels of empathy.
Re: "Well, back to work now. I've got to pay both my fair share of taxes and mystereeoso's too."
No really, what DO you mean by that?
ABG - you're looking at the small picture, Demagogue Lilliputian Style.
"ABG - you're looking at the small picture, Demagogue Lilliputian Style."
What is it with our visitors NOT answering questions asked of them. Funny, because if they do not get an answer, they stamp their feet and DEMAND that we pay attention and answer.
Just wonderin'
I want photos of every duck, numbered one through 500. No Photoshops or duplicate photos please.
I want to see a sworn affidavit signed by the cheif duck scrubber dude that he/she personally witnessed each and every treatment performed at Daffy's Duck Day Spa Coiffure and Tar Sand Supply Centre, Peter Pond Shopping Mall Fort McMurray.
Anything less would be conjecture and hearsay.
I guess you better get down to the courthouse when they present the evidence then.
What do you mean by that? Good grief, someone tell me why that sounds so whiny? heh heh!
Well it means that for the time it took toying with you over my extended lunch break, I probably will have paid more in taxes than the average Marxist/anarchist/CBC fan/leftist welfare bum makes in a month, maybe a year.
Present company excluded of course! I'm sure you're a fine civil servant/graduate student/Fringe Festival performer/community organizer that pays his/her fair share of taxes.
Thanks for putting that in writing. It's good to know a professionally dressed person such as yourself is busy making assumptions over lunch.
And projections as well.
Re MaryT: "In the US, a pilot that ran into canadian geese and killed how many, is treated as a hero. "
I don't think that the nationality of the geese was ever confirmed.
The geese were obviously dual citizens, and this should be looked into, we can't just have geese flying willy nilly across borders!
Comments are open again because it is difficult for my to access my blog from work. Play nice please. Keep to the issues.
And the nationality was never denied. I am sure the info is out there somewhere.
Another hilarious thread. I always enjoy the poseurs who pretend they are rich people on their lunch break who come to sneer at the rest of us.
Other than the heirs and dilettantes frittering away their inheritances, actual wealthy people are not quite so prone to "extended lunch" breaks. Plus to be where they are they are generally not boneheads.
Thanks hunter, most entertaining today!
Front page item in the Lethbridge Herald, also on Drudge,
Canadian geese brought down jet.
For the person who was saying the identity of the geese had not been proven.
Canadian geese brought down a jet with no loss of life.
A canadian plane crashed today with 50 dead. The Dash 8 had been grounded in Canada by our govt. due to safety concerns. Sympathy to all the families.
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