TransCanada: Keystone XL Would Have No Measurable Effect On Global Climate

[hatrack]

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a shift in strategy, the company that wants to build an oil pipeline from western Canada to Texas said Tuesday that the project will have no measurable effect on global warming. Alex Pourbaix, TransCanada's president for energy and oil pipelines, said opponents of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline have grossly inflated its likely impact on emissions of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

Canada represents just 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, Pourbaix said at a forum sponsored by a manufacturing group that supports the pipeline. Oil sands concentrated in Alberta, where the 1,700-mile pipeline would start, make up 5 percent of Canada's total, Pourbaix said.

"Simple math tells us, therefore, that the oil sands represent only one-tenth of 1 percent of global greenhouse emissions," he said. "Even if production from the oil sands were to double, the (greenhouse gas) contribution from the oil sands would be immaterial to global" greenhouse gas production.

Pourbaix's comments came two days after a rally Sunday by pipeline opponents drew an estimated 35,000 people to Washington. Organizers, including the Sierra Club and other environmental groups, billed the event as the largest climate rally in U.S. history. Thousands of people marched past the White House to urge President Barack Obama to reject the $7 billion pipeline and take other steps to fight climate change.

EDIT

http://www.sfgate.com/business/energy/article/TransCanada-Pipeline-would-not-affect-climate-4290934.php

[Conium]

1. Two words: eminent domain

TransCanada is a foreign corporation. Why should they be allowed to push US citizens off their land?

[newfie11]

2. More bullshit

Don't believe a word of it.

[Viking12]

3. Whenever you see the phrase "simple math" applied to a complex phenom

You know it's bullshit.

[FBaggins]

4. No single project will have a "measurable effect"

It's a lousy argument.

The insulation in your home... the type of car you drive... etc etc etc... make no measurable difference. But there are billions of us.

[Warren Stupidity]

5. The pipe itself is not a major contributor, it is what the pipe is transporting.

Oakland — Today the International Energy Agency released its World Energy Outlook and confirmed estimates that the overwhelming majority of known fossil fuel reserves (75-80%) will have to be kept in the ground to avoid 2 degrees Celsius temperature rise. 350.org founder Bill McKibben, who is on a national tour discussing this math, issued the following statement:

“A week after we launched the nationwide “Do The Math” tour, the planet’s chief energy watchdogs put out a huge report that essentially confirms what we’ve been saying: most of the carbon in the fossil fuel industry’s reserves has to stay below the ground if we’re going to keep the planet from disastrously overheating.(1)

“For American leaders, keeping carbon in the ground means blocking the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, stopping coal ports on the Pacific Coast, ending mountaintop removal, and cracking down on rampant fracking. Easy long-term gestures aren’t enough any more; we’ve delayed so long that we have to stop exploiting new extreme energy.

“This is the basic, horrifying math of the planet we live on. Business as usual will bust it–that’s why we’re on the road all month and why a divestment campaign is suddenly building out of nowhere.(2)

“Our math–from Rolling Stone and 350.org–is suddenly the mainstream math. It’s the fossil fuel industry that’s the outlying radical fringe.”

http://math.350.org/press/

Lying liars are lying.

[wtmusic]

6. What about Bakken shale oil that will make up 1/4 of the flow?

What about twinning (or tripling) the pipeline?

What about the loss of Canadian boreal forest twice the size of Ireland?

These people are evil.

[OnlinePoker]

8. You're assuming all of the oil sands will be mined

Alberta assures us that of the 142200 km2 of oil sands deposits, only 4200 km2 will actually be surface-mined, about a 20th the size of Ireland. Of the 715 km2 disturbed as of 2010 (the most recent shown on the Alberta Oil Sands reclamation site) 1 km2 has been certified reclaimed and 48 km2 have been listed as Permanent Reclaimed. (I can't find any statistics more up to date and have sent an inquiry to their link).

http://www.oilsands.alberta.ca/reclamation.html

[wtmusic]

9. Of course. Why wouldn't I?

"Alberta assures us"...how trusting you are! Will you stand in the way of the bulldozers when they don't?

"Certified reclaimed?" What a crock of shit. By the time their lunar hellscape grows trees again, we'll all be dead.

[quadrature]

7. pipeline, or barge-truck-railroad

pick one