A Government Controlled By Corporations CANNOT

78 mpg available but not in U.S. because U.S. wants more gas tax money

2013-05-10T01:29:00.000-07:00

U.N. Official Tells Truth About America

2013-04-24T23:47:00.002-07:00

The first paragraph of this story United Nations official said the Boston bombings were retaliation for America's militarized presence in oil rich countries. I don't know about Boston but he is right about the U.S.

The second paragraph quotes the american ambassador at the U.N. She is simply telling us what she was told to tell us, that is defend america right or wrong.

The U.N. needs more Richard Falks and fewer Susan Rices

UN official who tied Boston bombings to Israel must go, U.S. says

A top U.S. official called on Wednesday for the United Nations to fire a human rights advocate who implied that the Boston Marathon bombings were payback for America’s "geopolitical fantasy of global domination" and its friendship with Israel.

“Outraged by Richard Falk's highly offensive Boston comments. Someone who spews such vitriol has no place at the UN. Past time for him to go,” the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, said on Twitter.

Rice was responding to an essay that Falk, who is U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, wrote in Foreign Policy Journal. In it, Falk warns against "darkly glamorizing" the Boston bombings "with flowers and homage" and seems to say the U.S. brought the attacks on itself.
"The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world," Falk said. "In some respects the United States has been fortunate not to experience worse blowbacks, and these may yet happen, especially if there is no disposition to rethink US relations to others in the world, starting with the Middle East."

"We should be asking ourselves at this moment, 'how many canaries will have to die before we awaken from our geopolitical fantasy of global domination?'" Falk wrote.
The U.N. official also condemned President Barack Obama's March 21 speech in Jerusalem as "a love letter to the Israeli public rather than qualifying as a good faith effort to demonstrate his belief in a just peace.
"The war drums are beating at this moment in relation to both North Korea and Iran, and as long as Tel Aviv has the compliant ear of the American political establishment those who wish for peace and justice in the world should not rest easy," he said.
Falk said he thought he detected "a few hopeful signs of awakening" in Americans asking whether policies like targeted assassination using drones might be turning other peoples against the United States

U.S. Soldiers are the Terrorists in Oil Rich Countries

2013-04-23T21:41:00.001-07:00

Oil, money and politics; EPA snags Keystone XL pipeline

2013-04-23T21:23:00.002-07:00

By Ben Brumfield, CNN

updated 5:49 AM EDT, Tue April 23, 2013

CNN) -- The politics of oil and ecology have put President Obama between a rock and hard place, as he faces a decision on whether or not to permit construction of a new pipeline. The squeeze just got tighter with a new, negative environmental assessment.

The Keystone XL pipeline will give America energy independence, thousands of jobs, important industrial infrastructure and won't cost taxpayers a dime, say proponents. Many of them are Republican lawmakers.

It is dangerous, inherently filthy and must be stopped, say opponents, some of whom are Democrats who helped get the president elected.

On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency weighed in on the side of the environmentalists, weeks after the State Department came down on the side of the proponents.

Tycoon T. Boone Pickens picks fight

Fareed's Take: Case for Keystone

Keystone fight explodes

The EPA sent a letter to high officials at State, blasting the draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) it published in March that had reflected positively on the pipeline project.

The environmental agency rated the DEIS as EO-2. It stands for "Environmental Objections-Insufficient Information." That could be seen as a C- on the EPA's grading scale.

President Obama has promised to decide soon on whether or not to allow the TransCanada oil company to lay the 835 mile long Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to Steele City, Nebraska.

While he has contemplated the pros and cons, powerful political forces have aligned on both sides of the argument.

Arkansas spill strengthens arguments of Keystone foes

Economic pros

The Keystone XL would pump 830,000 barrels of oil sands crude per day through America's heartland, connecting crude producers in Canada with refineries and shipping companies in the United States.

TransCanada would cover all the costs, proponents argue, making it practically a gift to the U.S. oil infrastructure.

On its way to Nebraska, where it would connect with other, already existing pipelines, Keystone XL would pick up additional oil produced in Montana and North Dakota and stream it south, TransCanada said on its website.

It would reduce "American dependence on oil from Venezuela and the Middle East by up to 40 percent," TransCanada extols.

Dirty air

It will produce too many greenhouse gases, the EPA said in its letter, and this needs to be amended, before the project goes forward.

The Canadian crude in its raw form is mixed with sand. Extracting the oil and transporting it requires more energy than pumping crude out of a well. Thrusting it through long pipes increases the energy consumption.

That higher energy use leads to greater greenhouse gas emissions, an increase of "18.7 million metric tons (20 million tons) C02 ... per year when compared to an equal amount of U.S. average crudes," the EPA said.

The state department's assessment concludes that just as much Canadian oil will make it to market, by train if necessary, if no pipeline is built, therefore there would be little additional ecological impact.

The EPA argued that "while informative" that train of thought is out of date.

In November: Protestors call on Obama to reject Keystone XL pipeline

Nasty spills

The agency is also concerned about oil spills, particularly since sands crude is different from conventional crude.

It cites a 2010 pipe break in Michigan, which spurted out 20,000 barrels of sands crude. Some of it sank to the bottom of the Kalamazoo River and could not be completely cleaned up in three years' time, the EPA said.

"Spills of diluted bitumen may require different response actions or equipment," the letter stated. "These spills can also have different impacts than spills of conventional oil."

The state department assessment did not address these issues and needs to require TransCanada to do more to monitor for oil leaks into ground water, the EPA criticized.

Bitumen is the tar-like oil extracted from the sand. It is thinned with chemicals, so it can be pumped through pipelines.

Nebraska beauty

State's assessment represents its second go-round with the Canadian company.

It rejected a permit from TransCanada, last year, saying the route through Nebraska was too risky for the state's Sand Hills Region, a landscape of natural beauty. And it endangered the Ogallala Aquifer, which provides water to farmers and ranchers to raise livestock and grow crops.

TransCanada came up with a new route, but the EPA said, it misses the mark.

"The alternative route in Nebraska has avoided most of the impacts to the Sand Hills Region, but still crosses the Ogallala Aquifer," the agency assessed.

In its public reaction Monday, State indicated that the EPA's criticism was business as usual. It also anticipated public protest.

"The State Department has always anticipated that in preparing a Final Supplemental EIS it would conduct additional analysis and incorporate public comments received on the Draft SEIS," said press spokesman Patrick Ventrell.

The politics

Keystone XL opponents have aligned themselves principally behind the greenhouse gas (GHG) issue, as the EPA acknowledged in Monday's letter to State:

"It is this difference in GHG intensity - between oil sands and other crudes - that is a major focus of the public debate about the climate impacts of oil sands crude."

Obama's own former deputy press secretary is leading the charge to push the president to stop the pipeline.

Bill Burton quit his job before the 2012 election to head up the super PAC Priorities USA, which worked for the president's reelection. In January, he joined the PR firm Global Strategy Group as an executive vice president.

He is now representing a new coalition, "All Risk, No Reward," which opposes Keystone XL. It goes after the additional greenhouse gases but also showcases the damage causes by spills to Americans in the heartland.

Another group, 350.org, which wants to bring down carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere below 350 parts per million, is soliciting letters of protest to the state department.

Nebraska's Republican governor Dave Heineman has approved the project, and Nebraskan congressman Lee Terry has called for the Keystone XL's construction in a Republican radio address.

The pipeline "is primed to give our economy a shot in the arm and make energy more affordable -- and it won't cost the taxpayers a dime," he argued.

Terry spoke a day after an apparent pipeline rupture in the Arkansas town of Mayflower in late March, about 20 miles north of Little Rock.

Black torrents of diluted bitumen flowed through the community, forcing the evacuation of 22 homes.

Make Yourself usefull " Don Quixote needs you or else we all fail:

2013-04-22T01:47:00.000-07:00

PUT A NAIL IN THE COFFINS OF POLLUTION EJACULATING VAMPIRES

I am from the punk rock generation in between the hippies and me"generations, followed by the x generation. Who are we now? I am sure that the people born after me think that myself, and the people who were born before me left you with nothing but a world that is hoplessly messed up in many many ways. so why not party because all is lost anyway?

$100,000 a year salaried Washington D.C. politicians who have an additional $100,000,000 in personal wealth made from insider trading on Wall Street by cheating and not by being a true capitolist. The corporations involved in these transactions pollute the earth, are exempted from EPA regulations, as with Natural Gas Drilling on U.S. soil, an industry exempted from the Clean Water Act by Dick Cheney who profits from the Haliburton company which is an International Military, Oil and Natural Gas contractor. The U.S. governement pays out cash in oil subsidies to highly profitable oil companies and politicians profit from the "success" of these companies. A Green Energy Economy is is not actively subsidized by our government nor is it encouraged by Wall Street Corporations.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/02/25/indonesian-mud-volcano-erupt-quarter-century/#ixzz1F39kAkdP

http://www.agiweb.org/geotimes/aug08/article.html?id=nn_indonesia.html

http://englishrussia.com/2008/03/25/darvaz-the-door-to-hell/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/feb/14/chevron-contaminate-ecuador

http://badgasgoodwind.blogspot.com/2011/06/bps-deepwater-horizon-disaster-is-not.html

Corporations sold mortgages and then profitted by betting against them. They shipped jobs over seas. Discuss this with your friends, and the list goes on. Corporations buy TV commercials and use them to tell you only what they want you to know. They even spin newsmedia into a commercial for their demigogary, which is within their right to opinion when reporting news, as the owners of the news corporations. This is a good example of why corporations should not have "personhood." The personal financial aspirations of a few are missrepresented as popular opinion by commercial media.

Whatever happened to the love of which our human intellect bestowed
upon all of us to fight for justice in these and so many more battles:

An end to slavery, a woman's right to vote, the beginnings of equal rights America, an end to the genocide during WWII, an end to the Vietnam War and an end to so many other human inequities: Cambodia, Rowanda, Mogadishu and The Balkans, the confusion in Israel and Palestine, the isolation rof Cuba and North Korea .. workers rights, fail labor, coal mine safety. Are any of these things really won if they are forgotten, or are they just a part of the walk of shame. A walk of shame because our leaders have instigated and bullied their way into these conflicts, and a walk of shame because we allowed them to do it.

This is how America's leaders party to the end, they keep on doing what they are doing until it is all over. They are trying to convince us to let them get away with it, through lies, distraction and with impunity by order of the laws that they have written for themselves.
SINCE DECEMBER OF 2010 youth have been rising up in: Sudan, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, Algeria, Iraq, Iran, Morrocco, Jordan, Kuwait, and Lebonon, not to forget China's Tienamen Square in 1989 and the WTO riots in Seattle in 1999. The Occupy Movement has made widespread dissention in America known.

It is time for all those in America to step up and drive the final nail into the coffin of the pollution ejaculating zombies in world business and government which have exploited the world's resources to the brink of the very extinction of human kind and all that will perish with us.

Your family, your neighbors, and the rest of the world needs all Americans to join the struggle for a new Green Energy Economy Industrial Revolution with which to take planet earth and WE ALL whom are all custodians of it into the future. We must restore democracy in our own country as the voice of the people, in the spirit of the very foundings of democratic civilization upon the soil of our own country, and all of likewise peoples and founders of civilization world wide.

We must restore capitolism to the definition of Fair Trade, the very same principal that capitolism was founded upon. A civilized balance between personal wealth and acceptable minimumm quality of life standards. A balance created by a mix of "for profit" and "social programs". Forward thinkers who profit at the raising of quality of life in their community by providing jobs and tax dollars, and forward thinkers who use those tax dollars to build and maintain schools, fire stations, and hospitals, fight for clean air and clean water, and enough food to ensure that these civilized minimum quality of life standards are not only met for every man, woman, and child, but also increased as societies wealth increases.

The presence of every individual on earth today is a participant in the dawning of a new age. Terms like Fair Trade, minimum quality of life standards, food, housing, clean water, clean air and clean dirt no longer just apply to your neighborhood school, fire station, hospital, hardware store, Wal-Mart, gas station, and rhetoric from your local Mayor, they have gone global. We are one civilization. We all want the same things. Our hearts tell us what is civilized and what is not.

Don Quixote was an old man who thought he was a knight and a windmill his enemy. The townspeople thought he was dillusional.

xoxoxoxox I love you. Pass it on.

Politicians Hold The World Hostage To Tar Sands and Actively Block Green Energy Development

2013-04-21T00:01:00.000-07:00

The tar sands of Northern Alberta, Canada – also called oil sands – are one of the largest remaining deposits of oil in the world. Developing the tar sands has created the biggest industrial development project, the biggest capital investment project, and the biggest energy project in the world. It has also created a literal hell on earth.

Areas of wilderness the size of small countries are chewed up and replaced by a landscape of toxic lakes, open pit mines, refineries, and pipe lines. The tar sands are what unrestrained fossil fuel use and unchecked greenhouse gas emissions look like. They are pushing us towards runaway climate change.
In September and October 2009 Greenpeace activists took action in the tar sands - see complete live streamed footage on the Ustream channel & more video here.

Get the latest on the campaign to Stop the Tar Sands from:

Greenpeace Canada - English & Français
Greenpeace UK
Greenpeace Norway
Greenpeace France

Images from the Tar Sands:

More info:

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U.S. Politicians subsidize fossil fuel corporations

and block green energy development

even though we have green energy technology

ready and available today.

Politicians coast to coast in america, elected officials in Washington D.C. , in every State of the Union are holding the american people hostage to a failing, polluting, and increasingly more and more expensive fossil fuel economy, while at the same time going out of their way to actively block any and all alternative energy systems that will compete against and eventually replace these increasingly destructive and archaic fossil energy systems.

Why are they all doing this? Why do they control fossil fuels and insist that fossil fuels are the only thing we use? Because they each as individuals make money from them. They are protecting their own personal investements and continuing to grow their own personal financial portfolios, increasing their own private wealth.

They are doing these things for themselves while under oath of elected office to represent the people, but that is not really what is happening. They just want you to keep believing that they represent you. They take campaign contributions and Super Pac cash from fossil fuel corprations, they trade on Wall Street using insider information with fossil fuel companies, some may even be taking bribes from them. They make decisions and they write laws that are in favor of fossil fuel companies to make sure that thier investments make them a profit. Law makers are recruited from fossil fuel executive positions by other law makers such as Secretary of State and Middle East policy Condaleeza Rice from Chevron, Vice President Dick Cheney from Haliburton, and Philip Cooney White House Chief Of Staff on The Counsel of Environmental Quality and Former American Petroleum Institute Lobyist. After resigning, Cooney again took a job in the oil industry working for Exxon Mobil.

Government financial involvement of the promotion of fossil fuels while blockading alternative energy sources is not just an american government activity, it involves other governments all around the world as well.

Here are the Facts:

Fossil-fuel consumers worldwide received about six times more government subsidies than were given to the renewable-energy industry: State spending, paid for with your taxes to cut retail prices of gasoline, coal and natural gas rose 36 percent to $409 billion. Aid for biofuels, wind power and solar energy, rose a mere 10 percent to $66 billion, and this included bio-fuels which like fossil fuels also burn and pollute. In effect, very little money was invested in wind and solar at all. Dirty fossil fuels subsidized and paid for with your taxes was $343 Billion more for gas, oil, and coal than was subsidized to wind and solar.

Bloomburg News Report: Fossil Fuel Subsidized By U.S. Government Six times More Than Renewable Energy

The renewable-energy tax incentives tucked into the 2008 financial bailout package passed by the House include billions of dollars in breaks for old-fashioned fossil-fuel processes such as liquefying coal and squeezing petroleum out of sand and rock.

Larry Winter, vice president of Oil Shale Producing Exploration Co., which operates an experimental project in Utah's Uintah Basin. says, "As we expand our projects we require a very large capital investment, without government support, they are a nonstarter."

A substantial portion of the tax breaks go to energy

companies already flush with record oil profits.

General economic theory holds that companies will produce more of a good if its price is higher, or if it receives subsidies. Funny that these rules didn’t seem to apply to Big Oil in 2011, when the highest oil price since 1864 and $2 billion in subsidies to the five largest oil companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell—yielded lower oil production than in 2010. But these five oil companies combined made a record-high $137 billion in profits in 2011—up 75 percent from 2010—and have made more than $1 trillion in profits from 2001 through 2011.[1] This exceeds the previous record of $136 billion in profits in 2008.
Here are some more highlights from the big five’s activities in 2011:

They produced 4 percent less oil and “oil equivalent” in 2011 compared to 2010.
They spent a total of $38 billion, or 28 percent, of their profits to repurchase their own stock.
They are sitting on more than $58 billion in cash reserves as of the end of 2011.
They spent $1.6 million on campaign contributions and $65.7 million on lobbying efforts.
For every $1 spent on lobbying in Washington, the big five received $30 worth of tax breaks.

Big Oil’s Banner Year: Higher Prices, Record Profits, Less Oil Feb 8, 2012 at 9:50 am

"This is a gravy train. The American people are suffering here, and oil companies are getting a tax break. The public is not even getting clean energy. This is not a way to make laws. This is not even a way to make sausage."
A recent report by the Air Force put the cost of building a coal gasification plant at $6 billion or more each.

The coal investment credit will cost $389 million in tax payer dollars next year.
The bailout package includes a 50% tax write-off on refinery construction, which would assist the oil shale and tar sands industries.
The next refinery expected to come on line is the Hyperion Resources Inc. plant in Elk Point, S.D., The facility, which will cost $10 billion or more is intended to refine crude oil extracted from tar sands pits in Canada's Alberta province.
The tax breaks for refineries that are in turn replaced in the budget with your tax dollars are expected to cost $72 million.
Energy from fossil fuel gets 12 times more in government subsidies worldwide than sustainable energy, says a new report from the USC Marshall School of Business.
LA Times Article : Bailout Tax Breaks Aid Dirty Fuels
LA Times Article : Clean energy gets fewer subsidies, less investment than fossil fuels, report says

RELATED:
U.S. clean-tech investment falls 45% in fourth quarter
China takes lead in clean-power investment

G-20 nations spent $160 billion supporting the production

and consumption of fossil fuels last year:

Saudi Arabia’s outlay of $44 billion.

Iran $81 billion to support fuel sales.

James Hansen, the Head of Nasa's Goddard Space Institute and one of the world's leading researchers on Climate Change said that the Bush administration restricted who he can talk to and editing what he says. All Climate related reports go to the Whitehouse first before going top congress and then the american people. Politicians he said, are re-writing the science.

Hansen says that Climate Change is accelerating and it is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The White House is blocking that message. Ralph Scicerone the President of the National Academy of Sciences agrees with Hansen and adds, that Hansen is one of the best scientists in this field.

Rick Piltz also said that his reports written for The Federal Climate Change Science Program and submitted to the White House were edited heavily by Philip Cooney, a lawyer, former petroleum lobbyist and White House Chief of Staff on The Counsel of Environmental Quality .

Cooney changed the sentence, "earth is under going a period of rapid change" to "maybe undergoing a period of rapid change. Cooney changed "certainty" to significantly reamaining uncertainty." Cooney entirely crossed out the sentence, "energy production is contributing to global warming." he also crossed out references to human health.

These are science reports that the citizens of the United States see, after they are changed in the white house by a lawyer who is deeply involved in the fossil fuel industry!

Nasa scientist James Hansen interviewed on the television news broadcast 60 Minutes
about science reports being edited by the White House Chief of Staff on The Counsel
of Environmental Quality Philip Cooney, a former American Petroleum Institute Lobbyist. (video)

There is even evidence that the U.S. Natuaral Gas Industry censored the Wall Street Journal in a Wall Street Journal report on the gas industry's losing campaign to discredit the film, Gas Land by Josh Fox after the film was nominated for an Motion Picture Academy Oscar Award An article, called "Oscar's Attention Irks Gas Industry," by Ben Casselman.

The article surveys the unsuccessful attempts of the Natural Gas Industry to persuade the Academy of Arts and Sciences to pull the documentary, which depicts nationwide instances of home water contamination near gas drilling sites that have been fracked. Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a novel gas drilling process that introduced the use of large quantities of toxic chemicals. by deleting the comment, "We have to stop blaming documentaries and take a look in the mirror," Matt Pitzarella, a spokesman for gas producer Range Resources Corp., was quoted as saying in WSJ.

" You can see the deleted comment in a screen shot of the original document here:

When the article was published on Friday night, it was the first time an industry spokesperson deployed a shift in strategy from the industry's standard denials and repeated assertions that fracking is safe, despite the numerous reports of problems, such as flammable water, contamination of drinking water, trucks leaking toxic and radioactive waste-water on public highways, the pollution of streams, as well as fires, and explosions in which people have been injured.

This next video was filmed in 2009 before HR2454 American Clean Energy and Security Act failed. It was a bill to create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy.
The video directly addressed the fact that politicians loyal to fossil fuel companies were trying to kill the bill, which they did.

The bill was also known as the Waxman-Markey Bill, after its authors, Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, both Democrats. Waxman is the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Markey is the chairman of that committee's Energy and Power Subcommittee.

^{Highlights of the Bill Were:}

Requires electric utilities to meet 20% of their electricity demand through renewable energy sources and energy efficiency by 2020.
Subsidizes new clean energy technologies and energy efficiency, including renewable energy ($90 billion in new subsidies by 2025), carbon capture and sequestration ($60 billion), electric and other advanced technology vehicles ($20 billion), and basic scientific research and development ($20 billion).
Protects consumers from energy price increases. According to estimates from the Environmental Protection Agency, the reductions in carbon pollution required by the legislation will cost American families less than a postage stamp per day (about $13.20 a month, and $160.60 a year ).
It sets a slightly higher target for reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases than that proposed by President Barack Obama. The bill requires a 17-percent emissions reduction from 2005 levels by 2020; Obama has proposed a 14 percent reduction by 2020. Both plans would reduce United States' emissions by about 83 percent by 2050. Complementary measures in the legislation, such as efforts to prevent tropical deforestation, will achieve significant additional reductions in carbon emissions.
It includes a renewable electricity standard (almost identical to a renewable portfolio standard, but narrowly tailored to electrical energy) requiring each electricity provider who supplies over 4 million MWh to produce 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources (such as wind, solar, and geothermal) by 2020.
It provides for modernization of the electrical grid
It provides for expanded production of electric vehicles and other advanced automobile technology.
It mandates significant increases in energy efficiency in buildings, home appliances, and electricity generation.

Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis
A study in June 2009 by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) indicated that the bill would be roughly deficit-neutral for the government over the next decade:^[7]

"...enacting the legislation would increase revenues by $873 billion over the 2010-2019 period and would increase direct spending by $864 billion over that 10-year period. In total, CBO and JCT estimate that enacting the legislation would reduce future budget deficits by about $4 billion over the 2010-2014 period and by about $9 billion over the 2010-2019 period..."

The study also indicated that the tax burden on individual households would be limited:^[8]

"...the net annual economy-wide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be $22 billion—or about $175 per household...households in the lowest income quintile would see an average net benefit of about $40 in 2020, while households in the highest income quintile would see a net cost of $245. Added costs for households in the second lowest quintile would be about $40 that year; in the middle quintile, about $235; and in the fourth quintile, about $340. Overall net costs would average 0.2 percent of households’ after-tax income."

There Was No Public Debate.

Supporters of and arguments for the bill:

The bill is supported by a number of environmental organizations including, the Defenders of Wildlife,^[9] the Alliance for Climate Protection,^[10] the Environmental Defense Fund,^[11]^[12]^[13] the National Wildlife Federation,^[14] The Nature Conservancy,^[15]^[16] the Audubon Society,^[17] the Natural Resources Defense Council^[18] and the Sierra Club.^[19] The League of Conservation Voters has threatened to withhold endorsements from any Representative who votes against the bill.^[20] In addition to environmental organizations the Energy and Commerce Committee received letters of support from a broad range of organizations, including the United Auto Workers, Exelon, General Electric, Dow Chemical Company, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, and DuPont^[12] The New York Times noted that "industry officials were split, with the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers opposing the bill and some of the nation’s biggest corporations, including Dow Chemical and Ford, backing it."^[2]
The Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP), a national grassroots organization, issued a press release after the vote stating "House passage today of the American Clean Energy and Security Act is a step in the right direction in the fight against dangerous climate change and for developing cleaner, more secure energy resources."^[21] David Jenkins, REP vice president for government and political affairs, noted that "Doing nothing is not an option. The costs and risks of failing to limit greenhouse gas emissions are too high. We owe it to our country and to our country's future citizens to take action. Today, the House looked to the future and did the right thing for our economy, security, and environment."^[21]

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated the discussion draft version of the bill to cost average households $98–$140 per year. A preliminary update of this study says that the changes "would likely result in lower allowance prices, a smaller impact on energy bills, and a smaller impact on household consumption."^[22]

Arguments against the bill

Criticism has focused on ultimate costs and benefits of the plan. A report written for the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation on the discussion draft of the bill claims that the economy would react to this cap-and-trade system like it would to an energy crisis.^[25] This same report also claimed that the impact on global temperature by the end of the 21st century would amount to a reduction of no more than 0.2° Celsius.

Issues around equity

Economist Arnold Kling said the bill "maximizes rent-seeking (favoritism toward particular businesses) and minimizes carbon reduction".^[26] Other economists have argued that the bill will create significant financial costs. The Wall Street Journal accused the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) of significantly underestimating the bill's ultimate costs, pointing out supposed flaws in its calculations. The Wall Street Journal also suggested that the bill's costs would disproportionately affect lower-income households, for which the CBO estimates did not account.^[27] The New York Times reported that the bill's provisions to levy tariffs on Chinese imports due to carbon emissions could provoke a trade war.^[28] The Competitive Enterprise Institute argued that the bill was essentially the "largest tax hike in world history".^[29] The American Petroleum Institute, which represents the petroleum and natural gas industry, said the bill would place "disproportionate burden on all consumers of gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil, jet fuel, propane and other petroleum products", and by 2035, it would cause gasoline prices in excess of $4.00 per gallon by today's standards.^[30]

^{These "Issues around equity arguments are totally laughable. Everything they argued would happen to low income families, a Chinese Trade war and $4.00 per gallon gas prices has already happened by 2012, while they give us nothing in regards to clean energy and fossil fuel companies continue to reap record profits for themselves.}

Other high emitting nations

There is criticism that unless China and India adopt similar emissions standards, the impact on global climate will be insubstantial. This is largely an argument based on the leading role these two countries have obtained in carbon dioxide emissions which could reach 34% of the global total by 2030.^[32]

^{This too is a rediculous argument. To say that we won't do something that benefits ourselves because another country might not also do it is just plain stupid. It is no excuse not to address our own energy security, provide our own jobs, and to be good stewards of our own land.}

Debate among environmental organizations and scientists

While the Environmental Defense Fund^[13] and many other environmental organizations strongly support the bill, other environmentalists have sharply criticized the legislation in its present form as too weak and have called urgently for it to be amended so as to include additional and more vigorous measures to protect climate and natural resources.

Impact on Copenhagen Climate Change Conference:

It was reported that the passage of ACES in Congress would increase the likelihood that a successor to the Kyoto Protocol would be adopted at the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen. The Guardian US environment correspondent noted that ACES passing the US House of Representatives "delivers an important boost to the prospects of reaching an agreement for international action on climate change at Copenhagen this year."^[47] The NYTimes noted that "the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who was in Washington on Friday to meet with Mr. Obama, strongly endorsed the bill even though it fell short of European goals for reducing the emissions of heat-trapping gases."^[2]

Legislative history

It was offered as a "discussion draft" in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on March 31, 2009.^[51] A final version of the legislation was introduced on May 15, 2009 by the same title, assigned bill number H.R. 2454.^[52]
On May 21, 2009, the bill passed out of the Energy and Commerce Committee by a vote of 33-25, largely falling along political party lines.^{[citation needed]}

Republicans proposed over 400 amendments to the bill, the majority of which many think were proposed to delay passage.^[53]

The Bill was voted down for two reasons, first by those loyal to fossil fuels that opposed the Bill two, the opposition watered it down so much as to be inafective so those who supported the bill in it's original form also rejected it. The fossil fuel companies won the battle, polkiticians were their puppets, and the american people are the ones who lost.

Wikepedia HR2454 American Clean Energy and Security Act Link

Solyndra was given $ 535 million dollars in government subsidies in the form of loans and still allowed to fail, our politicians are blaming the failure on China's exports and as they are so fond of, accusing China of being our enemy when the truth is China and the U.S. have one very important thing in common, we both use alot of energy and we will both need alot more than we have in the future.

China's wind energy generation already equals the power of 13 "Three Gorges Dams." The Chinese Three Gorges Dam electricity generation capacity equals more than twenty 1,000MW coal powered electricity generating plants. It is the fault of U.S. politicians for not investing in Green Energy that has allowed China to be better than us at producing it for export as wellas for their own uses.

Even though the world market for solar panels doubled from 2009 to 2010 and expanded another 44% in 2011, Solyndra and five other U.S. solar panel makers went bankrupt and at least six other American solar manufacturing companies suffered layoffs and plant shutdowns over the past two years.

During the same time, China's photovoltaic (PV) solar manufacturing companies, led by Suntech, the world's largest solar panel maker, have captured more than 55% of the world market. How? It's not what you think. The Chinese in this case do not have an edge in labor or material costs. Chinese solar panels are in fact heavily and directly subsidized by the Chinese Government.

Beacon Power is the latest Solyndra type casualty from lack of government funding while fossil fuels continue to get Billions of dollars. Beacon Power was/is developing Advanced Flywheel Technology that can store electricity like a battery and deliver it when needed. This technology also provides load leveling otherwise known as voltage regulation to balance the varying power input from wind and solar sources.

Beacon Power

Beacon Power recieved a miniscule $6 million in government subsidies and was allowed to fail by the U.S. Government while China subsidizes their own counterparts. Beacon Power assets where sold to Rockland capitol with the "promise" to re-hire employees and continue developement but you will never guess what fills out the rest of Rockland Capitol's entire portfolio, Natural Gas, Coal, and oil. In fact they get their oil supply from none other then BP, British Petroleum.

It is doubtful that Rockland will actually utilize Beacon Power technology and it is more likely to shelve it in a dark corner somewhere never to be used. The $36 million paid by Rockwell for Beacon Power is a tiny drop in the bucket financially in comparison to the profits they reap from Oil, Natural Gas, and Coal.

It is more likely that Rockwell, a fossil fuel company will bury Beacon Power technology in the same way that General Motors buried their electric car in 1996 , re-possesing each and every one of them from their owners and destroying them. At this same time Chevron bought the battery technology patent which made the electric car possible from the scientist who designed it, only to lock it in a vault never to be used.

View trailer for the Sony Pictures Classics Documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car?

Starring George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condaleeza Rice, and General Motors.

This is not the first nor the last time the fossil fuel industry destroyed a competing industry. 100 years ago, nearly every trolley and city bus in america was electric, and even with 100 year old battery technology they worked fine, but the U.S. Government and the fossil fuel industry made sure that the next technological revolution would end before it matured, a century ago.

Electric truck advertisement
circa 1911.

“What Would Jefferson Do?” “He would do what our country has always done — support emerging technologies -– to drive innovation, create jobs, protect our environment, enhance our national security in a time of rapid change and to further a distinctly American way of life in which resources once thought to be endless are replaced by ones that actually are.” But as the report demonstrates, the country also makes a habit of supporting technologies that emerged long ago.

Russell Beard of Earthrise goes on a tour of Gemasolar, near Seville, Spain -
the first Concentrated Solar Thermal Power with molten salt storage (CSP+)
plant to produce energy 24 hours per day.

This power tower plant produces 20MW, enough to power 25,000 homes but much bigger CSP+ plants are now being in the Middle East and the US that will produce 100MW and 150MW. Even larger CSP+ plants are possible.

Research by Beyond Zero Emissions (www.beyondzeroemissions.org) and the Energy Research Institute at Melbourne University shows that a combination of energy efficiency and a mix of 40% wind and 60% CSP+ Solar can provide all of Australia's energy needs including a fuel-switch by transport from oil to electricity.

Here is a video of the Gemasolar installation in Seville, Spain in a story for an Australian news organization that toured Gemasolar because Australians are also building one in their country. It kinda looks like american politicians were lying about other countries not doing anything to reduce fossil fuel consumption when they use it as an excuse not to invest in Green Energy Technologies.

Nevada's Molten Salt Solar Power Plant is the same type as Australia's Molten Salt Solar Power Plant but it won't be operational until about 2014. Nevada's plant will produce 1,100MW, the same as a coal fired electricity generation plant, and this solar power plant can provide electricity 24 hours a day.

Why not build more of these solar plants instead of more of the coal fired electricity power plants that our government proposes to subsidize and build?

SolarReserve, a U.S. developer of large-scale solar power projects, today announced completion of the 540-foot solar power tower for its 110 megawatt (MW) Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Plant located near Tonopah, Nev. Utilizing the most advanced solar thermal technology worldwide, the Crescent Dunes Plant will be the nation's first commercial-scale solar power facility with fully integrated energy storage and the largest power plant of its kind in the world.

To view the multimedia assets associated with this release, please click: http://www.multivu.com/mnr/54637-solarreserve-world-s-largest-molten-salt-solar-tower-plant-zero-emission
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120209/MM49517 )

"Completion of the solar power tower is a significant milestone not only for SolarReserve and our plant, but also for the solar energy industry as a whole. This project is on track to bring American innovation to fruition and is already creating jobs," said Kevin Smith, CEO of SolarReserve.

"Our U.S.-developed technology has the ability to store energy for 10-15 hours and solves the issue of intermittent power generation to the grid, the number one limitation to other solar and wind renewable energy technologies.

We can deliver electricity 'on demand' the same way a coal, natural gas or nuclear fueled plant does – but without emitting any harmful pollution or hazardous materials – providing a genuine alternative to conventional power generation."

Construction of the facility began in September of 2011 and currently has over 100 workers on site. Construction is expected to peak at more than 600 jobs on site during the 30-month construction period and is estimated to create more than 4,300 direct, indirect and induced jobs at companies throughout the U.S. that provide engineering, equipment supply and manufacturing, transportation and other value-added services. To date, orders for the project have been placed for equipment and services in more than 20 states.

The Crescent Dunes project has secured a 25-year power purchase agreement with NV Energy and will provide clean power to approximately 75,000 homes when complete. The project closed financing in September of 2011 utilizing private equity investment from SolarReserve, ACS Cobra and Santander along with support from the US Department of Energy's loan guarantee program.

Once operational, the project will expend more than $10 million per year in salaries and operating costs, and is forecasted to generate $47 million in total tax revenues through the first 10 years of operation - contributing to workers' paychecks, service businesses, local school systems and police and fire departments. The plant is expected to be operational by the end of 2013.

SolarReserve, LLC – headquartered in Santa Monica, Calif. has assembled a concentrated solar power development portfolio of more than 25 projects with potential output of more than 3,000 megawatts and 1,100 MW of photovoltaic projects, equal to the output of four coal or Natural Gas Powered burning power plants.

SolarReserve's molten salt, concentrating solar power tower technology was successfully demonstrated in California under a U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored pilot project in the late 1990s. The 10 MW pilot facility utilized a molten salt receiver designed, engineered and assembled by Rocketdyne, now a part of United Technologies Corporation.
For more information on SolarReserve, please visit www.SolarReserve.com

Media Contact: Andi Plocek
1.310.315.2233
Andi.Plocek@SolarReserve.com

Wind Energy in West Texas CBS Sunday Morning television broadcast. (video)

There are already 1,000's of wind turbines in Texas and each one can power 500 homes. West Texas is the fifth largest "nation" in wind energy today after Germany, Spain, India, and China.

Ranchers earn money from leasing land from electric companies to have wind turbines on their property, the same way Natural Gas companies lease land to drill fracking wells on private property. The difference is that fracking wells use millions of gallons of water mixed with toxic chemicals, and in effect cause earthquakes with this water/chemical mixture underground to fracture rock and release gas which can aslo contaminate peoples well water seperately from the contaminated water used to fracture the rock in the first place. Then there are the leaks, explosion hazards, fires, heavy truck traffic, and fumes. Wind turbines have none of these additional hazards.

West Texas needs more housing built to accomadate wind energy workers, the local community colleges have added classes in wind energy technology because the pay is 2 to 3 times the local average. Wind energy tax revenues are improving the regions schools and public services.

Texas has put up withand even welcomed oil wells for more than a century, why not replace them with wind turbines. They aren't any uglier than an oil rig, and they don't smell like oil.

CGI of MAGLEV 2GW (Giga Watt) Wind turbine. It produces the power of 1,000 blade style wind turbines and can be constructed on less than 200 acres.

2,500 Watt Wind Turbine, small enough to install millions of them in millions of homes, parking lots and interstate highways, and light poles accross the entire country.

One more very important thing to consider is that a massive Green Energy Initiative will not only provide jobs and energy independence, along with a cleaner, more sustainable environment, it will make rationing the oil reserves that are already tapped last for 1,000 years instead of just 100 more years when it is not burned and instead used more wisely and reserved only for things like as a manufacturing ingredient and ultra heavy equipment that does not have a ready replacement for oil yet.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle want to exploit dangerous fossil fuels domestically to "combat" rising fuel prices caused by the falibility of criminal U.S. foriegn policy that attempts to sieze fossil fuels from other countries

2013-04-20T11:45:00.000-07:00

Newt Gingrich accuses Obama and liberals of wanting higher gas prices. What a fool he is. Nobody wants higher gas prices but it is inevitable no-matter what we do. We can continue to increase military spending to sequester as much as we can from other countries or we can change our minds and pollute our own land to get it here, which is something we havn't done not because the technology didn't exist, but because it is a filthy dirty dangeroues business and we would rather do it on some other countries land.

The Tar Sands technology that Gingrich, Romney, Santorum, Obama, Boehner and other politicians want is dirtier, filthier, and more dangerous than any other that has ever before existed. So why do they all of the sudden want to take all these risks for fossil fuels on american soil, the answer is simple, they all stand to profit personally from these ventures.

Let us not forget that the Haliburton Company most well known for being an american contractor wherever we send troops, and as one of the corporations responsible for the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster is also a major Natural Gas Fracking Contractor. Let us not forget that Haliburton rose to power under the Bush Administration under Vice President Dick Cheney, and let us not forget that Newt Gingrich was part of this illustrious administration and he himself was forced out after 84 ethics violations while working alongside of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld.

Let us not forget that speaker Of the House John Boehner stands to profit immensely from the Keystone Pipeline project if approved and has been doing everything possible as a politician (supposedly elected to serve the people) to see his oil and gas investmenst return a powerful dictorial profit for himself.

Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are both part of this incestuous relationship between politicians and fossil fuel corporations past and present. They both admitting to "voting with the team" but not despite being against the teams goals as they claim, but because they are elitists and don't ever really consider that you and I are a part of the team, in their greedy sociopathic minds, we are not even really valued as fans of the time, oh sure they all claim that they love their fans in public because they need us, but the truth is that they don't really give a shit about us, in thier minds we are thought of less than a negroe shoe-shiner in the subway of their pathetic miniscule 1950's minds.

Obama is only half right about energy policy, he is still a corporate whore and has done just as much to sell us out and vainly hold on to his fleeting power as all the rest have done. Obama also says drill baby drill, and then almost as an afterthought, "and also develop alternative energy."

Yes I am a liberal, and a proud, patriotic one, and no I havn't had a bath today because I have been up all night writing to you about what is really important during our time in this world today. Very few generations in the history of the world have found it necessary to rise up in defense of freedom and democracy and now is that time.

A Global Green Energy Economy is KEY to the changes we need in this world in all fronts: The economy, global politics, the environment, and technology. We need a massive change in the way the world works on all fronts for the good of the all, for the future of all, and we need it now. The rhetoric of those in power serves only to prolong our journey down what has become a wreckless path.

We need a Green Energy Evolution. This is four revolutions in one. It is a social revolution. It is a political revolution. it is an economic revoltution, and it is a brand new industrial revolution.

It is not the fanning out and spreading of more and more complicated, polluting and dangerous fossil fuel exploration, it is not the building of more and more coal powered electricity generation plants, it is not the use of the Deepwater Horizon technology in america's heartland, main agricultural area and largest fresh water aquafir, It is not the polluting of America, Chile, Argentina, the Amazon, China and the Middle East. It is not emiting pollution that is so far reaching that the fallout from it lands in each and everyone of our National Parks and on both of earths poles, it is not sending more and more troops to other countries under the guise of ensuring democracy so that we can really force contracts with them and U.S. corporations to aquire their natural resources through duress and at gun point.

A Global Green Energy Economy IS true energy independence for every community. It is more jobs than you could ever imagine. It is an interstae highway system as part of a superconducting electricity grid constructed of tens of thousands of miles of wind turbines and solar panels, corner to corner and coast to coast of every nation. It is highrise buildings that are all retrofitted with both solar and wind power. It is using massive gyro's for both electricity storage and load leveling, it is a technology of mining superconducting metals and lithium, all of which is 80% recyclable once extracted. It is a world where coal and fracking no longer have any value due to the damage it causes. It is a world where oil in not used as a fuel, but is reserved only as a manufacturing ingredient. It is a world with clean air, clean water, clean soil, and clean food.

A new prosperity, with new values, where the fossil fuels of last centuries industrial age are relegated to the history books with the dinosaurs from which they came, and we the people of america and we the people of our beloved and only mother earth write a new chapter in evolution, create a new industry, build a reinvigorated democracy, embrace new values, and become stewards of the earth, as one people, united.
~ cleanelectric

Stopping the Coal Rush

Welcome, Coal Activists!

If the 100-plus coal-fired power plants currently proposed are built, the global warming pollution pumped into our air will make all our other efforts to reverse climate change irrelevant. Coal plants are the dirtiest, most regressive source of energy- poisoning our communities and environment. The Environmental Law Program is working with activists around the country to champion clean energy in the face of this unprecedented rush to build new coal plants.
We have created a number of tools to provide coal activists with key information and resources:

Check out our Google map of proposed coal-fired plants across the United States.
Visit our Coal Plant Tracker, which lists detailed information about each proposed plant.
Read about our recent victories and the latest news!

The Sierra Club's Environmental Law Program also provides legal and technical resources for stopping the coal rush, including:

The top questions activists should ask about proposed coal plants.
Keywords for permits and other legal documents.
Information about the most stringent coal plant permits.
General coal documents and resources, such as recent reports and fact sheets.

Coal by the numbers:
Coal mines use an astonishing 260 million gallons of water every day and produce 90,000,000 gallons of liquid waste every year.
21,000,000 million people live within 5 miles of a coal fired electricity plant.

More than 2,000 rivers and streams have been buried and destroyed due to "mountain top removal" mining.

47 states have fish consumption warnings due to mercury pollution from burning coal to generate electricity.

Burning coal generates 130,000,000 million tons of solid waste every year.

245 more NEW coal plants have been proposed accross the country (and even more new plants are propsed in China.)

Pollution from these facilities reaches everywhere, the arctic and the antarctic.

These legal and technical resources are password-protected; for access, email environmental.law@sierraclub.org

Other Sierra Club Coal Work

The Sierra Club.org

Final Report on Probe into Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster Released

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

(CHARLESTON, W.Va.) -- The state of West Virginia Thursday released what is expected to be the final report on the investigation into the Upper Big Branch mine explosion that killed 29 people in April 2010.

The report, like three others, says a methane explosion at the mine was exacerbated by coal dust. Massey Energy -- owner of the Upper Big Branch mine -- favored production over safety and failed to properly rock dust the mine, according to the report.

The state issued 253 citations against the coal company. Those violations were for improper ventilation, equipment problems, and personnel issues pertaining to the foreman or fireboss, among other areas.

Presumably "personnel issues" refers to the fact that employees on the ground do exactly what the CEO's tell them to do, or else lose your job.

The explosion at Upper Big Branch has been called the worst U.S. mining disaster in nearly 40 years.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

ABC News Radio Original Story Here

Read On ABC News Radio: http://abcnewsradioonline.com/national-news/final-report-on-probe-into-upper-big-branch-mine-disaster-re.html#ixzz1nJHqTl5F

Oklahoma Impact Team: Is Fracking Really Putting Oklahomans At Risk?

Posted: Feb 20, 2012 5:18 AM PSTUpdated: Feb 23, 2012 8:49 AM PST

Jennifer Loren, Oklahoma Impact Team - bio | email

Original Story News on 6 Oklahoma

Natural gas well drilling operation in western Oklahoma

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process of creating small cracks in rock formations thousands of feet below the surface to release trapped oil and gas.

In rural Oklahoma, renewed oil and gas activity is as prevalent as farming.

Mike Paque is the director of the national Groundwater Protection Council, based out of Oklahoma City.

Natural gas well drilling operation in western Oklahoma

TULSA, Oklahoma -

Energy experts say fracking is the key to American energy sustainability. Some environmentalists say it's the worst human innovation ever. Either way, it's happening at a record pace in Oklahoma.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process of creating small cracks in rock formations thousands of feet below the surface to release trapped oil and gas. To create those cracks, producers push huge amounts of water, sand and chemicals into the rock formations.
Related Story: Oklahoma Earthquake Swarm
But fracking is nothing new. Companies like Haliburton have been fracking oil and gas wells for decades. What is new? Horizontal drilling. Combine that with fracking and the continued demand for natural gas and it creates the current boom.
The Boom
In rural Oklahoma, renewed oil and gas activity is as prevalent as farming. Drilling rigs crowd the Oklahoma horizon and shiny new wellheads dot the plains. But with increased production comes increased pollution-related complaints, now hovering around 2 thousand per year.
Walter Grabow lives and farms in Kingfisher County. He's filed several complaints with the state over the last four years and still doesn't know what's killing his crops. He says he's watched a small patch of dead wheat grow to cover several of his acres and cross the road into his neighbor's field. There are eleven gas wells surrounding his property and he fears they are the source of his problems.
The Oklahoma Corporation Commission has investigated Grabow's problem several times and still can't say what is killing his crops. They suspect it is something other than oil and gas activity, but on one trip to Grabow's land, inspectors found a small amount of gas beneath the surface. Corporation Commission field inspectors say the case is still open.
In the meantime Grabow says he has seen gas wells create problems for his neighbors, including an incident where gas was bubbling in a nearby creek. He fears the increase in natural gas drilling and fracking is disturbing the groundwater around his acreage too.
"So if it's getting in the water and running around in the water table, then coming up some place, we got a problem," said Grabow. "Water's going to be worth more than the oil someday."
The Experts
Mike Paque is the director of the national Groundwater Protection Council, based out of Oklahoma City. He says there will always be pollution problems associated with the oil and gas industry, but he says the Oklahoma Corporation Commission does a good job regulating it, keeping those pollution issues to a minimum. But, when it comes to fracking, he says the chemicals involved are the most important issue and the public has good reason to be concerned.
"They should very much be concerned about the chemicals in the ground. That's really the bottom line," said Paque.
That's why the Groundwater Protection Council created the website FracFocus.org. Soon all oil and gas companies fracking in Oklahoma could be required to post the chemicals they used there. Right now, some are posting voluntarily.
We looked up a well in Dewey County to see what kinds of chemicals were used to frack it. Some chemicals were relatively harmless while others like glutaraldehyde are listed in chemical databases as "poison" and "toxic," chemicals that cause damage to organs if inhaled, ingested, or absorbed through the skin.
The Industry
Gas producers say the chemicals make up less than one percent of fracking fluid.
"Point five percent is chemicals," said Jim Heinze of Devon Energy, who took us on a tour of a frack job. "And a majority of that chemical that we're running is a friction-reducer that allows us to be able to pump down the hole at lower pressures than we would be able to do without that friction-reducer. And then also a biocide. And the biocide is to kill any bacteria that's in the water."
Heinze walked us through the entire fracking process, showing us all of the safeguards put in place to protect the groundwater near the site. (See "What is Fracking?" tab above) The safeguards include four different types of casings which are metal pipes that encase the well bore surrounded by three inches of cement.
Still, at that frack site alone, 0.5 percent amounts to about 20 thousand gallons of chemicals.
Possible Groundwater Contamination
Mike Paque with the Groundwater Protection Council says it's good to have access to the specific kinds of chemicals that were used in specific frack jobs. He says if a water well owner ever finds those chemicals in their well, they could use that information in a lawsuit against the energy company involved. He says FrackFocus.org is also a good resource for energy companies that may come under fire for contaminating water wells with fracking chemicals.
However, Paque says it's highly unlikely anyone will ever connect a groundwater problem to the actual process of fracking.
"It's important for the public to understand that hydraulic fracturing is a very short event in the life of a well. It occurs literally miles below the ground and there's just no drinking water down there," Paque says.
In Oklahoma, regulators say they have never linked groundwater pollution to the actual process of fracking.
We looked through thousands of pollution-related complaints reported to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission and the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality and discovered it's the post-fracking operations that pose the biggest pollution risks.
Injection Wells
When a well is fracked, it produces millions of gallons of wastewater. In Oklahoma that wastewater, which sometimes still contains toxic chemicals, has to go into another type of well called an injection or disposal well. There it is pushed back into the ground, trapping it in rock formations beneath the water table.
There are just under 11 thousand injection and disposal wells across Oklahoma. Companies have pushed 8.8 billion gallons of oil and gas wastewater into those wells (the ones that are tracked by the Corporation Commission) in just the last two years.
But, is it possible for injection wells to fail and leak the very fluids they're supposed to keep away from our water? We found a landowner in Creek County who says it happened to him.
"We had a glass. He took a drink of it. He literally fell down and spit it out and said 'Oh my God!"
We'll have his story and our discovery of an Environmental Protection Agency report detailing serious concerns with Oklahoma regulators Tuesday night at 10 o'clock.

Special Report: The Truth About Fracking

Original Story CBS News Channel 21

Reported by: Kirk Clyatt

Email: KirkClyatt@CBS21.com

Published: 2/22 2:12 pm

Updated: 2/23 11:34 pm

If you live in Pennsylvania you have heard of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, but how much do you know about it?
There have been claims that a series of earthquakes to hit Northeastern Ohio, including one that had a magnitude of 4, that may have been caused by wells related to fracking.

Just as the drill bits for fracking go down through many layers of rock, there are many layers to this story. It seems so simple, you reach down you flip the switch and the gas is there for you, but the more we investigated this issue, the more questions we had and quickly realized just what an amazingly complex issue fracking is for our state.

Recently signed into law, House Bill 1950 regulates gas drilling. It is 174 pages long, but nowhere in the bill could I find a mention of earthquakes and how to keep them out of Pennsylvania.
The genesis for this story came back on New Year's Eve. Near Youngstown, in northeastern Ohio, an earthquake registered magnitude four on the Richter Scale. This quake did damage to homes near the epicenter, some suffering large cracks in their floors and foundation.

The epicenter of the quake was less than a 1/4 of a mile from a waste water injection well and almost immediately the suspicions began. Political support for getting to the trillions of cubic feet of gas locked in the Marcellus Shale comes from the top down.

“We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years,”

stated President Obama.

But as there is more and more fracking, should we expect more and more earthquakes? The fracking itself is like a mini-earthquake. The intense pressure breaks apart the rock and frees up the gas. But the size of the cracks are tiny, so small that a very fine sand is used.

PA DCNR Geologist Helen Delano:
“It moves into the the little fractures with the water, then as the water recedes," explained Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Geologist Helen Delano. "The sand grains stay behind and that props the cracks open.”
While they may may not look like much, seismographs are the key to earthquake detection here in Pennsylvania and throughout the world.

“There are underground injection wells for the disposal of fracking waste water in Pennsylvania, but not as many as in Ohio, so a lot so a lot of Pennsylvania's fracking waste water is being shipped to Ohio,” stated President of Penn Future Jan Jarrett.
Would it be possible for a fracking well in Pennsylvania to cause an earthquake similar to one that happened in Ohio? “It's much less likely, but there are no absolutes here,” stated PA Sierra Club Director Jeff Schmidt.
Closing the disposal well in Youngstown has made a huge difference. The well stopped injecting waste and the earthquakes have seem to have gone away, in December the seismographs were seeing more than three tiny earthquakes a day.

Should you be worried if a gas fracking well is near your property?
The chances of any one well causing earthquakes is small, so if you are collecting royalties you might well make a calculation, I'll take the risk and I'll take the royalties.
Here is the bottom line when it comes to earthquakes and fracking: “There are a lot of environmental issues, but earthquakes is not one that would worry me,“ commented Delano.
At least not for us in Pennsylvania. But we did talk to the legal department for the City of Youngstown in Ohio and most of the city officials there have earthquake insurance, including the Mayor.
The Youngstown well was just one of 177 wells in Ohio, so other wells in Ohio have capacity, but now seismologists are starting to see the same kind of small quakes near Marietta in Southeast Ohio that they saw in the months leading up to quake in Youngstown.

Keystone XL Pipeline

National Wildlife Federation Article

A company called TransCanada has proposed a Keystone XL tar sands pipeline that would cut through six U.S. states and put American people and wildlife at risk from toxic oil spills, polluted water and more. National Wildlife Federation is working to stop this dirty fuel.

What is the Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline?

The U.S. already imports 800,000 barrels per day of tar sands oil, and the stage is being set for a drastic increase. Several pipelines already transport tar sands oil from Canada to the U.S. and two new ones have been built in the last few years.
But the next one could be a game-changer.

Click to Zoom

TransCanada, a Canadian pipeline company, has proposed a pipeline called Keystone XL, which would carry up to 900,000 barrels per day of tar sands oil from operations in Alberta, Canada, more than 2,000 miles to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The pipeline would cut through six American heartland states, including Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
Keystone XL would lock the U.S. into a dependence on this dirty fuel and drive a massive expansion of the tar sands operations in Alberta, Canada. Because Keystone XL would deliver tar sands oil to the Gulf Coast, America's largest oil refining and transport hub, it would effectively open the entire U.S. market and international markets to dirty fuel.

The added capacity of Keystone XL and the other two pipelines that have been built recently could more than triple U.S. consumption of tar sands oil. If expansion of tar sands goes unchecked, it will be impossible to reach our goals to reduce global warming pollution, and will have serious impacts for both people and wildlife.
Learn more about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline (PDF) >>

How Could the Keystone XL Impact People and Wildlife?

If approved, the Keystone XL pipeline will cross through America's agricultural heartland, the Missouri and Niobrara Rivers, the Ogallala aquifer, sage grouse habitat, sandhill crane habitat, walleye fisheries and more. Our public water supplies, crop lands, wildlife habitats and recreational opportunities will all be at risk of dangerous tar sands oil leaks, like the Enbridge Oil Spill in Michigan.
Learn more about the threat the Keystone XL pipeline poses >>

Speak Up to Stop the Keystone XL

Thousands of people around the country are taking a stand against the import of dirty tar sands oil, from farmers in Nebraska who don't want a tar sands pipeline plowed through their property to activists in Seattle who want to move towards a clean energy future.

Join us in taking a stand against the Keystone XL pipeline >>

Will Tar Sands Pipeline Threaten Groundwater?

National Geographic News Article

Proposed Keystone XL pipeline would carry diluted bitumen, or “dilbit.”

More than a million gallons of dilbit leaked into Michigan's Kalamazoo River in July 2010.

Photograph courtesy Michigan Department of Environmental Quality

Mason Inman

for National Geographic News

Published September 19, 2011

This story is part of a special National Geographic News series on global water issues.

For two weeks in late August and early September, environmental activists staged sit-ins in front of the White House to protest a pipeline that would carry a slurry of tar sands from Alberta, Canada, to Texas.

Their objection? Because the gooey mixture of oil and sand that comprises tar sand must be broken down to form normal crude, extracting it is a messy business that produces far more carbon emissions than does extracting regular crude.

But while emissions worries have seized much of the attention directed at the nearly 2,000-mile (3,218-kilometer) Keystone XL pipeline, experts are also concerned about another environmental problem: the threat to water quality all along the conduit’s route.

The pipeline, which would transport the tar sands material to refineries near Houston, would cross one of America’s largest underground water reserves, the Ogallala Aquifer, which stretches across 174,000 square miles (450,000 square kilometers) and underlies eight Great Plains states.

Last month, the U.S. State Department said in an environmental review that the project would have “no significant impacts to most resources” during “normal operation.” But what many opponents of the project worry about is what happens if those normal operations fail.

TransCanada, the company seeking to build the pipeline, already runs one pipeline from the tar sands region that crosses the eastern edge of the aquifer. The Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups have argued that such pipelines are dangerous because they carry a watered-down version of the sticky tar sands deposits known as diluted bitumen, or “dilbit.”

Dilbit carries hazardous chemicals such as cancer-causing benzene and toxic heavy metals such as arsenic. Because it also contains particles of sand, the environmental groups say, dilbit is much more corrosive than oil alone, thus more likely to cause leaks.

Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, a co-author of a recent report by the Defense Council, said that piping dilbit is “like sandblasting the inside of the pipe,” making pipes 16 times more likely to leak than when they are carrying regular crude oil.

Keystone XL would pass over the heart of the aquifer, cutting through the Sand Hills of Nebraska, a region of grass-covered dunes that contains one of the largest wetlands ecosystems in the United States. The region's porous ground acts as a thick sponge, environmentalists say, allowing oil to soak into the aquifer more easily than it would if the soil were more solid.

Along much of its length, the pipeline would be buried in a trench, a design that would protect it from harsh weather but one that would also make it harder to spot leaks.

“I could imagine a worst-case scenario where a potential dilbit spill might reach the water table in a matter of hours or days,” said Jason Gurdak, a hydrologist at San Francisco State University. A spill would likely immediately migrate downward, he said, possibly reaching the aquifer and creating a plume. Because much of dilbit is denser than water, he said, it could sink deep, making any contamination worse than that caused by more common pollutants.

TransCanada argues that piping is the safest way to transport petroleum over long distances and that the impact of any spill on the aquifer “would be limited to a very small area.”

Dilbit spills have already occurred in other areas. One, in July 2010, dumped about a million gallons of the substance into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River, closing the waterway to fishing and swimming for more than six months.

Meanwhile, near the mining sites in Western Canada’s Athabasca River basin, fishermen have pulled up fish with crooked spines and strange sores, and even one with two mouths.

Both the oil industry and the provincial government of Alberta have denied any link between fish deformities and the mining. But in two studies, researchers at the University of Alberta reported that near and downstream from the mines, they found higher-than-normal levels of toxic compounds that can cause cancer or developmental problems, including heavy metals such as mercury and thallium, as well as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

“We saw the same thing for every toxin we looked at: mercury, arsenic, lead, you name it,” David Schindler, professor of ecology at the University of Alberta, told the Canadian parliament last year.

Research funded by the oil industry has suggested that the pollution around tar sands sites occurs naturally, from the deposits being exposed and washed away. But an independent panel of experts said the research failed to meet basic scientific criteria, used too few monitoring stations, and had no real baseline.

Panel member Monique Dubé, an aquatic toxicologist at the University of Saskatchewan, said, “There’s no question there’s contamination in the air, water, and land from the oil sands.”

To move forward, the pipeline needs the approval of the U.S. State Department. But even with that, it is still likely to confront local opposition. “I am not opposed to pipelines in Nebraska,” U.S. Sen. Mike Johanns, a Republican, said in a statement. But he faults the environmental review and wants the U.S. government to explore other options. “We have only one Ogallala Aquifer,” he said, “and we must take seriously our obligation to protect it.”

Speaker of the House John Boehner incested his personal portfolio into the Keystone Pipeline Project and has spent all of his time as one of our alledged leaders trying to get the pipleine approved by congress and the president so that he can profit from his "insider investment."

(vid) We Love Oil

2013-04-20T11:43:00.001-07:00

You Are Here : Freedom : Apathy : Enslavement : Revolt

2013-04-20T11:43:00.000-07:00

National Security Best Bet : Protect Our Food Supply And Proliferate Green Energy

2013-04-20T11:42:00.000-07:00

The absolute best way to protect American citizens and provide National Security is to protect America's food supply. The growth and distribution of our agricultural products (food) rely completely on pollutiin causing fossil fuels, most of which are under the control of foreign governments whom our government attempts to control by force.

The first thing every American can do to protect thier family is to promote green energy supplies and usage by America's entire agricultural (farming / ranching) industry. By creating electrical self sufficiency upon and within the vast acreages of America's bread basket, all of our farms and ranches, we must develop "electric vehicle" tractors, plows, harvesters, and semi trucks to grow, harvest, and transport food to our markets.

The most frightening, ominous threat to "a supply chain" for civilized society in the 20th Century was the German U-Boat during World War 2. his submarine is essentially a "hybrid diesel/electric vehicle" about 65 feet long. That U-Boat technology is now 70 years old. We can improve this anique technology exponentially with todays knowledge and use it instead for peace and prosperity.

If we utilize today in the 21st Century the same amount of money that America has spent on: "Landing on the moon, space stations, the Space Shuttle, satellite technology, nuclear technology - civilian and military (dangerous ways to boil water and make weapons), the aquisition and refinement of the 3 polluting fossil fuels, oil, coal, and gas, (and the Federal Subsidies which are all really taxpayer cash given to already rich oil companies), stealth aircraft, smartbombs, and computers, then we could easily improve upon the 70 year old U-boat "diesel/electric hybrid" thechnology.

America has the money and the brains to make our nation's entire food supply 100% clean, and renewable energy independent, managed and controlled by americans on U.S. soil.
A clean green, renewable energy food source should be the number one priority for every kid, student, mother, father, family, scientist, politician, and senior citizen in this country.

Why stop there, a clean green renewable energy food source should be the absolute top priority for every person in every country in the world.

Exxons TV Adds Bragging About Tar Sands Are Blatant Lies.

2013-04-20T11:39:00.000-07:00

They (Exxon and thier peers) don't care about us. They lie to us and hope we are too stupid to notice while they get rich and we and our planet suffers.

Stand Up, Speak Out Against The. Stop The Pollution Insanity.

Here are two articles about the costly, wastefull, and polluting Tar Sands Operations:

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/4379

Shell, Exxon tap expensive oil sands & gas, oil reserves dwindle.

by Alejandro Barbajosa & Ian McKinnon

Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Shell Canada Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Clive Mather says oil from his Athabasca project, where tar sands are boiled to produce crude, can cost twice as much as drilling in the North Sea. And it's worth every cent, he says.
``If we had access to unlimited conventional oil, I guess the interest in Athabasca would diminish quite quickly, but that isn't the case,'' Mather said in a Feb. 3 interview in London. ``This is high-cost oil, there's no question about that. At current prices, it's still very good business.''
A 15-year decline in oil reserves is spurring companies such as Royal Dutch/Shell Group, Exxon Mobil Corp. and ChevronTexaco Corp. to spend $76 billion in the next decade to boost supplies of oil from tar sands and diesel fuel from Qatari natural gas. Oil executives say they have no choice but to try alternatives to drilling because there is not much more crude to be found in their current fields.
``We're damn close'' to the peak in conventional oil production, Boone Pickens, who oversees more than $1 billion in energy-related investments at his Dallas hedge fund firm, said in an interview in New York Feb. 16. ``I think we're there.'' Suncor Energy Inc., the world's second-biggest oil-sands miner, is his largest holding.
New Production
Companies will produce 10.1 million barrels of oil a day by 2030 from projects in Canada and Qatar, more than Saudi Arabia does today, according to forecasts by the International Energy Agency in Paris. That's 8 percent of the world's total.
Shell is spending $13.70 per barrel at its Athabasca project in Canada, higher than drilling projects, said Mather. Oil executives say that crude prices near $45 a barrel more than offset the extra cost. Crude for March delivery today was little changed, trading at $47.68 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 9:30 a.m. London time.
The oil industry needs to spend $3 trillion by 2030, or $105 billion a year, to meet an expected surge in demand, the IEA estimates.
``Pressure on supply will become sufficient for more money to be put into non-conventional oil,'' said Peter Odell, an oil politics and economics professor emeritus at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. ``This is a natural development of a resource base from the lowest cost to the highest cost.''
Exxon Mobil, BP Plc, Shell, ChevronTexaco and Total SA, the five largest publicly traded oil companies, last year reported net income of about $85 billion, equal to the economic output of Venezuela, a nation of 25 million people and the third-largest member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Falling Reserves, Returns
Oil-sand mining projects offer a rate of return of 13.6 percent, less than half the 33.4 percent at a deepwater Gulf of Mexico field such as BP's Mad Dog project, said Scott Mitchell, an analyst at energy consultant Wood Mackenzie in Edinburgh. West Africa's deep waters offer an 18.2 percent return, he said. The estimates are based on an average price of $21 per barrel.
Shell and BP, Europe's two largest oil companies, this month reported oil and gas reserves declined in 2004, based on U.S. rules. It was the first drop in more than six years for London- based BP, whose only investment in non-conventional oil sources is in Venezuelan heavy crude. BP acquired the stake when it bought the Veba Oel German oil-refining business from E.ON AG.
Shell Reserve Slump
Shell, based in London and The Hague, reported Feb. 3 that reserves fell in 2004 because it found enough oil to replace just 15 percent to 25 percent of what the company pumped. BP replaced 89 percent of production, the company said Feb. 8.
BP forecasts it can expand oil and gas output by 5 percent a year using existing deposits and doesn't need to turn to non- conventional projects. BP's growth comes from Russia, where it spent $7.7 billion on the TNK-BP joint venture.
``To renew our exploration business, we only need to rely on the exploration for and development of primarily conventional oil and gas resources,'' Chief Executive John Browne said on a Feb. 8 conference call.
Oil futures show crude prices will stay close to $40 a barrel until 2011 because of rising demand, spurring investment in projects once considered to be marginal. Futures contracts are a promise to deliver a commodity at a specified price at an agreed- upon date in the future.
Supply Pressure
Canada's tar sands may get $48 billion of investment by 2012, according to Canada's National Energy Board, double the amount spent in the decade ending in 2003. As part of that, Imperial Oil Ltd., controlled by Exxon, said in November it may pay $6.5 billion to double its capacity to produce oil from tar sands.
For investors, oil sands have been a better bet than the best- known oil companies. Canadian Oil Sands Trust, which invests only in the Albertan mining projects, is up 67 percent in the past year. BP shares during that time are up 34 percent in London and Exxon Mobil, based in Irving, Texas, gained 39 percent in New York.
Current spending plans show Canada's oil sands may produce 2 million barrels a day by 2015, more than Iraq today, crude worth $29.2 billion of revenue a year at oil prices of $40 a barrel.
Qatar may receive more than $28 billion of investment, to cause a 22-fold surge in the amount of fuels produced from natural gas, based on IEA estimates. Only two gas-to-liquids projects exist now, in Malaysia and South Africa, representing 35,000 barrels of daily production. The Qatari ventures are for a total of almost 800,000 barrels a day in 2011, according to the IEA. The fuels may be worth $15.5 billion a year in revenue, based on today's diesel prices.
Oil's Limits
Shell will spend as much as $6 billion in Qatar to produce diesel fuel in 2009, according to project director Andrew Brown. Projects announced by Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil Corp., ChevronTexaco and Sasol Ltd. will cost another $22.3 billion.
The potential for non-conventional oils may exceed the IEA forecasts. Should oil reserves be lower than expected, non- conventional oil production may be 37 million barrels a day in 2030, or 39 percent of global demand, the IEA said in an alternative to its most likely scenario in the 2004 World Energy Outlook, released in October.
Ignoring oil sands and the potential to make fuels from natural gas ``is a mistake,'' said Ian Henderson, who manages $680 million at the JP Morgan Fleming Natural Resources Fund in London. ``It's taken millions and millions of years for hydrocarbons to form, and we are running out of them.''
Henderson owns shares of Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. and Petro-Canada, a partner in Syncrude Canada Ltd., the world's largest oil-sands mining business. Both companies are based in Calgary. His investment fund is up 30 percent in the past year, compared with a 20 percent gain in the FTSE 350 Mining Index.
Making Canada's oil sands viable would ease demand for crude from Saudi Arabia and other suppliers, Odell said. Alberta's oil sands deposits contain 174.5 billion barrels of reserves, according to the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board. That total is two-thirds of Saudi Arabia's proven reserves of 262 billion barrels.
Sticky Mixture
Alberta's oil sands cover an area larger than the state of Florida, and about two tons have to be dug up, heated and processed to make a single 42-gallon barrel of oil. Suncor Energy spends C$12 ($9.62) to C$12.50 to mine and upgrade a barrel of oil. Saudi Arabia pumps a barrel of oil for about $2.
Devon Energy Corp. President John Richels, a Canadian and a lawyer by training, remembers the first time he held a handful of the oil-encrusted sand, in the early 1990s. He said he had a hard time believing the sticky mixture could be turned into smooth- flowing crude. Devon, based in Oklahoma City, is now investing C$527 million in the Jackfish oil sands project in Alberta.
``They're not particularly high-return projects,'' he said in an interview. ``We see the same kinds of returns, though, in other parts of the world.'' And given the lack of exploration and political risk, the projects pay off, he said.
`Operating Risks'
Failures are costly. A blaze at Suncor Energy in Alberta slashed output by about half, and full production won't resume for months. The lost output is worth $4.4 million a day at $40 a barrel. The company expects insurance to cover most of its losses.
``There are operating risks,'' Suncor Chief Financial Officer Ken Alley said in an interview. ``It's not unlike the refining industry where you operate with hydrocarbons, at high pressure and high temperature, and that is a risk that you design facilities to protect against. Nevertheless there is a level of residual risk.''
Oil sands projects of Shell and Suncor failed to meet their budgets and deadlines, the companies said, the result of competition for equipment and labor.
`Cost Overruns'
Syncrude Canada's project to boost capacity by 100,000 barrels a day to about 350,000 is expected to cost $6 billion by mid-2006, almost double a 2001 forecast of $3.14 billion, according to Canadian Oil Sands Trust, lead partner in the venture. Developments by Shell Canada, 78 percent-owned by Shell, and Suncor cost as much as 70 percent more than planned, the companies reported.
``The problem is the consistent, continual and predictable cost overruns,'' Pickens said. ``That can't keep happening, I don't think, but still those overruns are a concern.''
Exploiting Venezuela's heavy oil may double the reserves of non-conventional sources. Paris-based Total SA, Europe's third- largest oil company, and Statoil ASA, the biggest in Norway, are among those exploiting Venezuela's heavy oil deposits, reserves that may equal another 100 billion barrels to 270 billion, according to the U.S. Energy Department. The country already is processing 500,000 barrels a day of heavy crude.
In Qatar, the plants use a basic technology invented in the 1920s and exploited by the Nazis during World War II to make oil products from coal when embargoes cut off crude oil imports. The technology was also used in South Africa during Apartheid.
Wasted Gas
The gas-to-liquids process is wasteful, with about 45 percent of the natural gas lost in conversion, the IEA estimated.
The process consumes 10,000 cubic feet of gas to make one barrel of fuel, according to Malcolm Wells, a spokesman for Sasol Chevron Ltd., a joint venture between San Ramon, California-based ChevronTexaco and South Africa's Sasol, which is spending at least $6 billion on building plants in Qatar.
At that rate, the amount of gas used for seven barrels of diesel is equal to what is burned in the average American household in an entire year.
Project costs are escalating because of higher steel prices and increasing demand for equipment. Shell's gas-to-liquids plant will cost as much as $6 billion, 20 percent more than initially forecast, the company said.
BP just closed its gas-to-liquids pilot plant in the U.S. and is planning instead to sell natural gas to use in power plants, said Robert Wine, a BP spokesman in London.
`Isn't Cheap'
Gas-to-liquids ``isn't a cheap industry to get into,'' said Wells at Sasol Chevron. ``It requires massive investment into infrastructure and huge sources of gas.''
Qatar has the world's third-largest natural gas reserves, after Russia and Iran. Another 12 plants to make fuels from natural gas are in various stages of planning, in Nigeria, Iran, Egypt, Australia, Venezuela, Brazil and elsewhere, according to Paris-based Technip SA, Europe's largest oil-services company.
A lack of information about proven oil reserves complicates assessing when supply from the world's conventional oil fields will peak, the IEA said in its world energy outlook. The agency estimated it will occur sometime between 2013 and 2037.
``Oil won't last forever,'' said Manouchehr Takin, a senior analyst at the Centre for Global Energy Studies in London, a consulting company founded by former Saudi oil minister Sheikh Zaki Yamani.
To contact the reporters on this story:
Alejandro Barbajosa in London at abarbajosa@bloomberg.net, and Ian McKinnon in Calgary imckinnon1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Tim Coulter in London at tcoulter@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: February 18, 2005 05:09 EST

Editorial Notes

Original title: "Shell, Exxon Tap Oil Sands, Gas as Reserves Dwindle (Update1)".-LJ

Original article available here

Canada's Tar Sands - Dirty energy muddies green promises

http://wc-zope.emergence.com:8080/WildernessCommittee_Org/campaigns/wildlands/boreal/alberta/reports/Vol27No04

Smokestacks spew emissions from tar sands processing (S. Jocz) Below: The Mackenzie River watershed is one of the largest in the world and contains over half of the nation's freshwater flowing north to the Arctic Ocean. Tar sands pollution impacts much of the watershed and now wildlife are at risk from the proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline bisecting this vast wilderness. (Garth Lenz). The blackburnian warbler is just one of the hundreds of bird species who depend on boreal forests for habitat. (Robert McCaw).

Few Canadians know that Canada is home to one of the world's largest dams and it is built to hold toxic waste from just one tar sands operation in northern Alberta. Everything about the tar sands happens on a massive scale. The enormous toxics problems go hand-in-hand with massive global warming pollution and the impending destruction of a boreal forest the size of Florida.

Because of sheer scale, all Canadians are impacted by the tar sands, no matter where they live. If you live downstream, your water is being polluted, and your fish and wildlife may be dangerous to eat. If you live in Saskatchewan you are a victim of acid rain. If you live in BC, "supertankers" may soon be plying your shoreline carrying tar sands oil to Asia. If you live in Ontario, you are exposed to harmful emissions from the refining of tar sands oil. And the impacts do not stop at Canada's border – US refineries are re-tooling to handle the dirty oil from Alberta.

Moreover, no matter where you live in Canada, your desire to tackle global warming is being held hostage to the tar sands. Instead of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Canada is quickly increasing them, and fully half of that emissions growth is projected to come from the tar sands.¹ Because Canada's elected officials refuse to clamp down on tar sands operators, they also refuse to clamp down on industry across Canada for fear of a double standard. Sands Fast Facts

Tar sands mining is licensed to use twice the amount of fresh water that the entire city of Calgary uses in a year.

90% of this fresh WATER ends up in tailing ponds so toxic that cannons are used to keep ducks from landing in them, although this isn't always effective.

Producing a barrel of tar sands oil produces three times more greenhouse gas emissions than a barrel of conventional oil. In a day processing the oil sands uses enough natural gas to heat 3 million homes.

Tar sands Operations are the fastest growing source of climate-changing emissions in Canada.

And it is just beginning. Approvals have already been given that will double the size of existing operations, and our leaders have been talking with the US government to grow the tar sands five-fold in a "short time span."² The tar sands are now the biggest capital project anywhere on Earth and the biggest energy undertaking anywhere. Already, Canada is the largest foreign supplier of US oil.

In the service of growing the tar sands, the government gives tax breaks to the worst polluters; it fails to enforce its own environmental laws; and it is even trying to silence whistle-blowers who've tried to speak out on how the tar sands have harmed our health and our environment. With the tar sands, Canada has become the world's dirty energy superpower.

It doesn't need to be this way. Technologies are available to curb the damage, yet the Canadian government so far refuses to force industry to clean up.

All Canadians should join the chorus of leading figures such as Peter Lougheed, the former Premier of Alberta, in calling for a moratorium on new projects and a clean up of the tar sands. Premier Lougheed, originally instrumental in scaling up the tar sands in the late 1970s, now says:
"...it is just a moonscape. It is wrong in my judgment, a major wrong... So it is a major, major federal and provincial issue."
This is Canada's problem. It's time to clean it up or shut it down. Read on to find out more about the tar sands and what you can do, and then take action. There is only one atmosphere but there are many people who can take action to protect it.

Additional Information:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-chameides/obama-on-tar-sands---or-s_b_168587.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6820643/Oil-firms-attacked-for-tar-sands-pollution.html

http://colorlines.com/archives/2009/08/the_us_canada_and_tar_sands_po.html

http://www.sej.org/publications/tipsheet/canadian-tar-sands-pollution-moves-south-us-refineries-0

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/08/tar-sands-projects-responsible-water-pollution-alberta-rivers.php

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/lizbb/the_tar_sands_pollution_delive.html

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/581400/canada_tar_sands_industry_ignoring_toxic_river_pollution.html

(vid) GalleryFront.com : Political Art

2013-04-20T11:38:00.000-07:00

Tell Obama to shut down nukes - One year after Fukishima - Environmnetal Action Network

2013-04-20T11:37:00.000-07:00

Click here to sign the petition

Nuclear

MARCH 8, 2012

One year after Fukushima, there are dozens of nuclear plants just like it operating in the U.S. But President Obama and too many members of Congress are still touting nuclear as 'safe' and 'clean'. It's not - it's a disaster waiting to happen that could impact up to 50 Million Americans.

Sign to tell Congress and President Obama to both shut down existing nuke plants and to stop approving new ones.

Our petition:

We, the undersigned, call on President Obama and all members of Congress to drop their misguided support for nuclear power in the U.S. We must learn the lessons of Fukushima, 3-mile Island and Chernobyl. We must close down all existing U.S. Nuclear plants and stop building new ones for the sake of the planet and all of us who live on it.

Data for this map provided by USPIRG

Tags:

nukes

Obama

fukushima

Since 1970

(petition) Stop the XL Tar Sands Pipeline ~ Natural Resources and Defense Council

2013-04-20T11:33:00.000-07:00

The State Department needs to hear from you

The Department of State is responsible for issuing a permit for the proposed extension of an oil pipeline. The Keystone XL pipeline would carry tar sands oil straight across the Canadian border from Alberta and across the width of the United States to the Gulf of Mexico.
There is some model language for you to review in the form to the right. We encourage you to use the language as the basis for your own comments. We also urge you to include your own stories about why fighting climate change is important to you, your family and your community.
Fill out the form and press the "Submit Form" button to tell the State Department that you oppose this pipeline and that they should deny the permit.

Sign The Petition To Stop The Tar Sands
Natural Resources Defense Council

(petition) Stop the Keystone Oil Pipeline - League of Conservation Voters

2013-04-20T11:32:00.001-07:00

The Keystone XL fight has reached a crisis moment.

Republican leaders in the Senate and their Big Oil backers are once again pushing the risky toxic oil pipeline.

President Obama was right to stand up to the political pressure from Big Oil and Republican leaders in Congress and refuse to make a rushed decision that could affect the health and safety of Americans. But now, continuing to walk in lockstep with their Big Oil backers, Republican leaders in the Senate are putting the oil industry's profits ahead of the public interest.

Instead of playing politics around a pipe-dream, we need to focus on the things that most contribute to our energy security strengthening America's clean energy economy and moving forward with improved standards for fuel efficiency.

To stop them, we need a remarkable response. That's why for the environmental movement is uniting in a serious way to blitz the Senate over a 24-hour period with messages from across the country demanding that they reject the risky Keystone XL pipeline. Our goal is to collect and send 500,000 messages between now and the vote on the toxic oil pipeline. Dozens of organizations are working together, and we will be joined by bloggers, media figures and our celebrity allies to make our message unavoidable.

And then, within 24 hours, a team in Washington, D.C., will march into the Senate with 50 giant boxes, each holding 10,000 signatures. It will be a unified show of our power: our voices against the dollars of Big Oil.

Thank you for standing up to block the risky toxic oil pipeline.

SIGN THE PETITION HERE
League Of Conservation Voters

(mov) Willie Smits Restores A Rainforest ~ TED.com

2013-04-20T11:32:00.000-07:00

Willie Smits restores a rainforest Video on TED.com

The rainforests he talks about have been Destroyed
by Oil Companies making Bio-Fuels for Western Countries.

We need more Willies!

Environmental movements are evidence of our failures.

If you only learn about one person this year,

learn about Willie.

He explains the interdependence of ecosystems quite well. Projects like his can and should be done worldwide.

Even in america, the labor required would be a new economy and new jobs for the unemployed.

(vid) Tar Sands Clean Up Un Manageable : Leaking Hanford Nuclear Waste : Rachel Maddow

2013-04-20T11:31:00.000-07:00

(mov) How to film a revolution - Independent Social Media Tactical Methods - Tutorial Video

2013-04-20T11:30:00.000-07:00

Puget Sound Energy Customers Can Choose Wind Power Now

2013-04-20T11:29:00.000-07:00

Get ALL OF YOUR ELECTRIC POWER from

PSE's SNAKE RIVER WIND FARM !

(149 turbines generate power for 100,000 homes.)

www.pse.com

Signing up for Green Power is easy—just call a PSE Energy Advisor at 1-800-562-1482.

Don’t Be Fooled by Green Scams: the 2013 Report

2013-04-19T22:30:00.000-07:00

April 23, 2013 · Jeff Gang

On Earth Day, it seems like everyone is trying to sell green products or eco-friendly companies. But some of these claims are just slick marketing: they’re green scams. Click on the images to view the slideshow, or scroll down for our report and news release. And cast your vote for the worst one!

View our news release here.
Download Executive Summary here [pdf].
DON’T BE FOOLED 2013: Executive Summary
Green marketing isn’t a new trend. Countless books, experts, and seminars agree: advertising a product as earth-friendly, or a company as a good eco-citizen is a good way to stand out from the crowd. But with so much emphasis on marketing, it’s tough for green-minded citizens to shop their values — and that undermines the environmental movement. This year, on the day after Earth Day, The Green Life is releasing our annual “Don’t Be Fooled” report to call out the worst green scams.
Here are, in alphabetical order, the top 10 green scams from the past year:
Amazon: Despite FTC action ordering them to stop, Amazon continued selling rayon sheets labeled as “100% bamboo.”
Apple advertises the new Retina Macbook Pro laptop as “the world’s greenest,” but experts say it’s the “least repairable, least recyclable” computer in a decade.
Audubon International: certifier of golf courses under dubious standards, using the well-known name and bird logo, despite no affiliation with the Audubon Society
Canadian Tar Sands: the Canadian government spent millions to run ads calling tar sands oil extraction “responsible,” while undermining environmental protections
Kashi: Their cereal stretches the meaning of “all natural” with genetically-engineered ingredients.
McDonald’s & Marine Stewardship Council: a partnership to sell “sustainable” fish sandwiches, despite a murky record for protecting fish and wildlife
Organix: A hair-care brand. Most of their products aren’t organic.
Sherwin-Williams: their Dutch Boy Refresh paint claimed to be “zero-VOC” – but most colors actually contained dangerous VOCs.
Sustainable Forestry Initiative: an industry-dominated group that greenwashes paper and wood
Two Sides: A paper industry group that pressures banks and utilities to stop offering paperless billing

United States and China Wage War

2013-03-27T02:16:00.000-07:00

Against the Environment

The leaders of every other country are also involved.

Crimes against the environment
amount to crimes against humanity.

Oil, Coal, Natural Gas, Gas Fracking, Bio-Fuels*, and Nuclear Energy are false economies thier value only being in corporate profit.

The truth is that these technologies have an overall negative value to all life on earth due to their waste products and are actually more valuable left unused and un polluting.

* Bio Fuels like all other fuels create pollutants when burned and therefore are not viable unless it is to recapture gasses from landfills etc.

Air pollution linked to 1.2M deaths in China in 2010

2013-03-27T02:15:00.000-07:00

By Senior Media Reporter Dylan Stableford, Yahoo! News | The Lookout

A woman rides her bicycle with a protective mask in Beijing. (Getty Images)

More than 1.2 million people died prematurely in China in 2010 as a result of outdoor air pollution, a new analysis of scientific data shows.
The summary—released Sunday in Beijing and first published by the Lancet, a British medical journal—is based on 2010's Global Burden of Disease Study and was reported on by The New York Times.
Air pollution led to 3.2 million deaths worldwide in 2010, the study found, with China contributing more than a third of them.
“Ambient particulate matter pollution” was listed fourth among the leading risk factors for deaths in China, the Times noted, behind dietary risks, high blood pressure and smoking.
Reports like these "are politically threatening in the eyes of some Chinese officials," the Times reported:

Chinese officials cut out sections of a 2007 report called “Cost of Pollution in China” that discussed premature deaths. The report’s authors had concluded that 350,000 to 400,000 people die prematurely in China each year because of outdoor air pollution.

And:

There has been growing outrage in Chinese cities over what many say are untenable levels of air pollution. Cities across the north hit record levels in January, and official Chinese newspapers ran front-page articles on the surge—what some foreigners call the “airpocalypse”—despite earlier limits on such discussion by propaganda officials.

"Since the beginning of this year," the Atlantic noted, "the levels of air pollution in Beijing have been dangerously high, with thick clouds of smog chasing people indoors, disrupting air travel and affecting the health of millions."
The problem, of course, is not limited to China. In India, 620,000 deaths were blamed on outdoor air pollution in 2010, according to the study.
Urban air pollution is set to become the top environmental cause of mortality worldwide by 2050, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned last month, jumping ahead of dirty water and lack of sanitation:

Air pollution concentrations in some cities, particularly in Asia, already far exceed World Health Organization safe levels. By 2050, the number of premature deaths from exposure to particulate matter is projected to more than double to reach 3.6 million a year globally, with most deaths occurring in China and India.

P.R.I.S.E.

2013-03-27T01:23:00.000-07:00

P.R.I.S.E.?

At what price do we really pay to be ruled by

government that values coal oil and gas above all?

P.R:I.S.E.

Political Revolution: Industrial Social Economic

Political Revolution Is Social Evolution

Put a PRISE on Green Energy

European Commission Report Finds Fuel Produced From Canadian Tar Sands Significantly Dirtier Than Average | The Energy Collective

2013-03-26T02:22:00.000-07:00

European Commission Report Finds Fuel Produced From Canadian Tar Sands Significantly Dirtier Than Average | The Energy Collective

Molten Salt Solar Power - Utility Scale Solar Solution In Operation Now

2013-03-25T21:30:00.000-07:00

Using todays technology Molten Salt Solar could power every home in America, unfortunately it is not attracting the 1% who can affford to invest and the U.S. Department of Energy has only given this technology less than $1Billion in loan guarantees while the profitable fossil fuel industries enjoy more than $12 Billion in government subsidies.

Here is the math based on current Molten Solar Technology which in it's infancy (though it was invented 30 years ago in the 1980's) is technologically speaking, as new as the hybrid technology of a WWII submarine as compared to a the auto industries "meager" 2013 Hybrid offerings:

A molten salt solar electricity generating power plant covers approximately 4 square miles with no green house emmissions and no toxic waste. Each plant of this size can power 25,000 homes.

The two U.S. States with the most sunshine are Arizona and New Mexico. They have a combined square footage of 235,054 square miles, that is enough room to build 58,763 molten salt solar plants. This is enough power for 1.469 Billion homes. There are 313 million people in the U.S. assuming 4 persons per household this covers vurtually everyone by more than double the power they need. So Renewables Are Possible.

Compare this to Gas Fracking and gas fracking accidents in the U.S. on the map below.

The superconducting properties of a modern electricty grid connecting molten solar to photo voltaic solar, and wind energy is certainly preferable to oil and gas wells, pipelines, coal minesd and open million gallon slurry ponds, spills, fires, explosions, air and water pollution and the unstabilities of a militarily enforced global fossil fuel economy.

America can do this on her own even if other countries don't, but the truth is that other countries are already ahead of America in doing just this. Germany is looking at 100% Green Energy in ten years, the world's first molten solar is a joint venture between the King of Spain and the King of the United Arab Emerites, and Chinese government subsidizes their own green energy program while the U.S. does not.

Meanwhile ... the U.S. accuses China for our own failure of Solyndra, lies to the american people about the dangers of natural gas, force "democracy" at gun point in oil rich nations with the stipulation that american corporations do business with them to be written into their laws, and allow Beacon Energy's proprietary wind and solar advanced energy storage flywheel technology to be bankrupted and absorbed by a fossil fuel corporation, the science doomed to be shelved forever like GM's 1989 electric car, while Toyota and Nissan market the worlds only two true electric cars. Only one U.S. company is building an electric truck and it is not a major automaker.

Please watch these videos and learn more about molten salt solar.

How Your Home Will Be Powered

By Molten Salt

Concentrated solar power isn’t what you think of when you think of solar power, but it might be the future of how we get energy from the sun. Get excited: It works with a giant field of mirrors and molten salt.

When you think of solar power, you probably think of a few desultory panels perched on the roof of a well-meaning neighbor, generating enough power to knock a few dollars off their electric bill every month. That’s probably not so charitable of you: Residential solar panels are often a good and cost-effective way to reduce your power bill and carbon footprint.
However, for solar to be a major part of the energy mix in America, it’s not going to be because of panels on people’s roofs. Instead, it’s going to be with huge solar installations out in the middle of the desert that can store power at the times when the sun isn’t out.
Those can be a little hard to wrap your head around, conceptually--there aren’t even solar panels involved. But this video from Solar Reserve, a concentrated solar power company, is a great primer about how this power of the future works. It’s simple, really: Thousands of mirrors focus the sun’s light into a giant tower, where it heats salt until it melts (the amount of mirrored panels may be drastically reduced due to some inspiration from sunflowers). That molten salt is then used to heat up water and make steam to spin a turbine. Because salt maintains temperature very well, the molten salt can be used even after dark to create power.
It’s solar power, but not the way you think of it. But it is one of the ways to make solar energy most effective, so much so that the DOE has helped give Solar Reserve’s installation a $737 million loan guarantee.

A Government Controlled By Corporations CANNOT

78 mpg available but not in U.S. because U.S. wants more gas tax money

U.N. Official Tells Truth About America

U.S. Soldiers are the Terrorists in Oil Rich Countries

Oil, money and politics; EPA snags Keystone XL pipeline

Make Yourself usefull " Don Quixote needs you or else we all fail:

Politicians Hold The World Hostage To Tar Sands and Actively Block Green Energy Development

Images from the Tar Sands:

More info:

Related blogs:

U.S. Politicians subsidize fossil fuel corporations

and block green energy development

even though we have green energy technology

ready and available today.

The renewable-energy tax incentives tucked into the 2008 financial bailout package passed by the House include billions of dollars in breaks for old-fashioned fossil-fuel processes such as liquefying coal and squeezing petroleum out of sand and rock.

Supporters of and arguments for the bill:

Arguments against the bill

Issues around equity

Other high emitting nations

Debate among environmental organizations and scientists

Legislative history

Republicans proposed over 400 amendments to the bill, the majority of which many think were proposed to delay passage.[53]

Politicians on both sides of the aisle want to exploit dangerous fossil fuels domestically to "combat" rising fuel prices caused by the falibility of criminal U.S. foriegn policy that attempts to sieze fossil fuels from other countries

Stopping the Coal Rush

Welcome, Coal Activists!

Other Sierra Club Coal Work

Oklahoma Impact Team: Is Fracking Really Putting Oklahomans At Risk?

What is the Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline?

How Could the Keystone XL Impact People and Wildlife?

Speak Up to Stop the Keystone XL

Proposed Keystone XL pipeline would carry diluted bitumen, or “dilbit.”

(vid) We Love Oil

You Are Here : Freedom : Apathy : Enslavement : Revolt

National Security Best Bet : Protect Our Food Supply And Proliferate Green Energy

Exxons TV Adds Bragging About Tar Sands Are Blatant Lies.

Shell, Exxon tap expensive oil sands & gas, oil reserves dwindle.

Editorial Notes

Canada's Tar Sands - Dirty energy muddies green promises

(vid) GalleryFront.com : Political Art

Tell Obama to shut down nukes - One year after Fukishima - Environmnetal Action Network

Nuclear

(petition) Stop the XL Tar Sands Pipeline ~ Natural Resources and Defense Council

(petition) Stop the Keystone Oil Pipeline - League of Conservation Voters

(mov) Willie Smits Restores A Rainforest ~ TED.com

(vid) Tar Sands Clean Up Un Manageable : Leaking Hanford Nuclear Waste : Rachel Maddow

(mov) How to film a revolution - Independent Social Media Tactical Methods - Tutorial Video

Puget Sound Energy Customers Can Choose Wind Power Now

Don’t Be Fooled by Green Scams: the 2013 Report

United States and China Wage War

Air pollution linked to 1.2M deaths in China in 2010

P.R.I.S.E.

European Commission Report Finds Fuel Produced From Canadian Tar Sands Significantly Dirtier Than Average | The Energy Collective

Molten Salt Solar Power - Utility Scale Solar Solution In Operation Now

Republicans proposed over 400 amendments to the bill, the majority of which many think were proposed to delay passage.^[53]