of predictions and trends

[dissent]

Ah, so in support of your contention -

You know, with that much net wealth, power and the right wing views they espouse, the Koch Brothers are a influential powerful force in the upcoming 2012 election, and not a good force either. They're just part of the Plutocracy trying to fully take over our country to use for their own enrichment. Evil is evil. If you think they're just wealthy little angels out for the good of this country, go right ahead and believe your delusion.

You provide the following objective source -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/no ... 2-election

ooh. Let’s see how may times the Guardian writer, Ed Pilkington, can use an emotionally loaded word, phrase or expression:
“secretive” and “vast”; wow, that's two already in the headline.

First paragraph – “secretive” (again, in case you missed it the first time) and “anti-government”. Wow. So maybe they’re really secretive; ……. or maybe they just don’t talk to Ed Pilkington. And, are they “anti-government” or just some flavor of anti-Big Government? The journalistic stylings of Mr. Pilkington can only leave us to wonder.

“secrecy” appears again at several points in the article (surprise!). And the “vast” network the Kochs are reported to be setting up? Why it “has been modelled in part on the scheme created by the left after the defeat of John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. Catalyst, a voter list that shared data on supporters of progressive groups and campaigns, was an important part of the process that saw the Democratic party pick itself off the floor and refocus its electoral energies, helping to propel Barack Obama to the White House in 2008.”

Ah, so what’s good for the goose is not good for the gander, eh? So progressives can utilize any technological tools at their disposal to advance their own agendas, but dissenting individuals or groups are supposed to just lay over and play dead. Finally, I understand what it is that liberals mean by the term “fairness”.

The rest of the article is yadayadayada, SOS, so no further comment from me.

As for oil speculation, I still think the big banks need to quit playing with our money and stay out of a commodity that is so important for the functioning of our economy. They crashed it once in 2007 and now they're screwing around with commodities to just make a buck, with no other purpose by the way, and it's going to tank things all over again.

As it happens, Robert Rapier has written yet another post that might help you to overcome your need to continue grasping for a bad guy - The Professor Who Knew Too Little. The professor here seems to have a number of misconceptions that are fairly common, and, as Robert points out, erroneously goes to biased source material (the Center for American Progress, in this case) to buttress his arguments. Spend some time here and follow through on the links. It will be well worth your time, and Robert articulates the position much better than I ever could.

[flip]

you have yourself at least a grain of truth there, flip. However, turn it around and tell me how ignoring a flagrant reality, such as a finite amount of oil with two nations(India and China again) with a total population that dwarfs ours rapidly expanding oil usage serves us..
If we, in the US, keep wishing to put our heads in the sand, keep buying those big old trucks and SUV's just to run to the grocery store(not talking about you construction guys), keep poo-poohing electric vehicles and alternative power R and D, we are in far deeper economic straits down the road than most folks can conceive of. It isn't simply a matter of environmentalism anymore, it's facing a world and a nation in which we are frozen in time. And that, flip, gets the US looking a lot like, say, Afghanistan or the Congo quicker than one might suppose.......

Not sure how I missed this Slick. Well, you know I'm a creationist for lack of a better word, I think there is just enough oil until the whole thing ends. I'm more concerned with things of the heart now. I have no confidence in our leadership, I know they are just flesh. So, get your jungle boots and have them close, because every end of the age and the beginning of another has always been accompanied with bloodshed.

[Isaac]

A poor analogy. How can children know it's not true? We both know that's a lie that parents tell their children to encourage them to behave when Mom and Dad aren't looking. But how can we know we're not being sold a line by the big oil companies?

simple. you just have to see if something makes any logical sense. and if the story doesn't add up, then it starts to fall apart, like the santa construct.

Santa's not real?

[Tunnelcat]

http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/ind ... _puts.html

The other nasty is that once the volatile and acidic carrier chemicals evaporate from the water and sicken people as they float by, the bitumen sinks to the bottom, making it almost impossible to clean up.

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012 ... l-keystone

Do we really want more tar sands oil coming through our country this bad, especially if it ends up being sold outside the US anyway? I mean, if we're going to pollute our country for this stuff, we at least need to keep it for our own use.

Maybe I have a liberal vendetta, dissent, but The Koch Brothers are Plutocracy at it's finest. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/06 ... s-20110206

http://washingtonindependent.com/114812 ... l-politics

http://www.iwatchnews.org/2011/04/06/39 ... -influence

[woodchip]

Ummm TC, George Soros makes the Koch Bros look like pikers.

[callmeslick]

[o, get your jungle boots and have them close, because every end of the age and the beginning of another has always been accompanied with bloodshed.

heck no! I'm packing the beach gear and fishing tackle and enough marine gas to run an outboard for a good long while. Screw the bloodshed, my southern neck of the woods is so remote(it's a damn narrow penisula for crying out loud!), with lots of land available, and ample seafood. Come on down and we'll steam crabs. Good times, end times.....

[dissent]

http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/ind ... _puts.html

The other nasty is that once the volatile and acidic carrier chemicals evaporate from the water and sicken people as they float by, the bitumen sinks to the bottom, making it almost impossible to clean up.

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012 ... l-keystone

Do we really want more tar sands oil coming through our country this bad, especially if it ends up being sold outside the US anyway? I mean, if we're going to pollute our country for this stuff, we at least need to keep it for our own use.

TC -
I'll have a look at your last group of links later.

For now, let's look at ....oh yeah – Mother Jones, another objective source .

Should I consider this article to be more trustworthy that the last one you linked? Let’s see -

But bitumen is thick and heavy, and has to be diluted with a noxious chemical cocktail so it can flow in the pipe.

Well, would the author care to elaborate on what he considers to be a “noxious chemical cocktail”? Is this just a solvent or solvent mixture, or some kind of surfactant blend? I work with lots of different chemicals all day long. Some could be a real concern if spilled; others – not so much. But the author just leaves me hanging, without a point of reference; just his statement that it is “noxious”. (btw - I think your first link says that the diluent was a lighter petroleum distillate. Not that you'd want to take a bath in it, or live in an atmosphere containing a high concentration of vapors, but "noxious chemical cocktail" is not what comes to mind.)

Still, the local ecosystem was lucky, Hamilton said, because the actual spill took place in a nearby marsh, which weeded out some of the worst contamination before the oil reached the river proper. Had the spill happened in a more open body of water—such as the Ogallala Aquifer in Nebraska, through which the Keystone pipeline was originally destined to pass—things could have been much worse.

What? The Ogallala is a more (whatever that means) open body of water?. My understanding is that the Ogallala is primarily underground, again, as could be easily checked by some quick searching. Such as from these two sources -

this article

The depth to the water table of the Ogallala Aquifer varies from actual surface discharge to over 150 meters (500 feet). Generally, the aquifer is found from 15 to 90 meters (50 to 300 feet) below the land surface. The saturated thickness also varies greatly. Although the average saturated thickness is about 60 meters (200 feet), it exceeds 300 meters (1,000 feet) in west-central Nebraska and is only one-tenth that in much of western Texas. Because both the saturated thickness and the areal extent of the Ogallala Aquifer is greater in Nebraska, the state accounts for two-thirds of the volume of Ogallala groundwater, followed by Texas and Kansas, each with about 10 percent.

or from the Ogallala Aquifer article at Wikipedia.
Of course it sounds much more potentially calamitous if they were just going to run the pipeline over an enormous lake, which I doubt that they were. Not to mention (again)that there are already pipelines running over the Ogallala (see previous post links).

I don’t know a great deal about Oil sands oil, but I don’t get the impression Mother Jones is an expert either. As such, I’m suspicious of the rest of the article. I’ll dig around a bit to see what I can find out. There are some basic articles here at the Government of Alberta energy web site.

[flip]

I didn't say end times, I said end of the age

[callmeslick]

I didn't say end times, I said end of the age

yeah, but the words worked for a quick Led Zeppelin riff, and you get the point......I'm riding out the craziness at the beach. Hard to
get overly violent when at the shore. OK, there was D-Day and other beach landings, but as an overall matter.......

[flip]

Lol, well, I already thought of that and it depends who you are hiding from. if it's civil, you will probably be alright, if it's the government, you are a sitting duck with no cover. Just saying, it's all speculation at this point anyways right?

[Tunnelcat]

dissent, there is no source of information from any company source that's going to admit that their process is "not dangerous for people and the environment". Why would they admit something that would be detrimental to their corporate public relations and bottom line? Any contradictory source I find will be from environmental points of view, which of course, will be biased to their side of things.

As for oil sands oil, it IS in a form that is either semi-solid or solid. Since it's petroleum-based and the company would like it to flow through a pipe as a means of shipping it to refineries, it stands to reason that some form of lighter hydrocarbons, ie., solvents, will be needed to make that happen. Solvents that are toxic, possibly corrosive to metals (pipes), volatile and dangerous when they get spilled into the environment. Why do you think there is such an uproar over frakking? The solvents and chemicals required to get at that oil are toxic to life!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_sands

As for the Ogalla, it's these "solvents" that people are worried about in a spill. Solvents have a nasty way of percolating through the soil and getting into aquifer systems. No river needed. Only porous soils and rain to carry it downward. Have a nice drink of solvents people.

[dissent]

dissent, there is no source of information from any company source that's going to admit that their process is "not dangerous for people and the environment". Why would they admit something that would be detrimental to their corporate public relations and bottom line?

I believe you meant to say is "dangerous for people and the environment", correct?

Nevertheless, you would be wrong. Federal OSHA regulations require that such documentation be produced, at least in the form of Material Safety Data Sheets. Detail on the sheets can vary widely, depending on the manufacturer and the materials in question, but they still must be produced. Producers commonly make these available via their internet web sites.

Any contradictory source I find will be from environmental points of view, which of course, will be biased to their side of things.

And this issue, of course, usually is with the quality of the source. I've taken issue with the quality of several of your sources, not that they were from environmental groups.

As for oil sands oil, it IS in a form that is either semi-solid or solid. Since it's petroleum-based and the company would like it to flow through a pipe as a means of shipping it to refineries, it stands to reason that some form of lighter hydrocarbons, ie., solvents, will be needed to make that happen. Solvents that are toxic, possibly corrosive to metals (pipes), volatile and dangerous when they get spilled into the environment. Why do you think there is such an uproar over frakking? The solvents and chemicals required to get at that oil are toxic to life!

But it is the nature of the solvents that is the very thing that is at issue. Some solvents are corrosive, some are not. Some solvents might exacerbate the corrosivity of the heavy oil components, some might dilute or otherwise mitigate that corrosivity. The Wikipedia article on Naphtha has some links to various manufacturers MSDS for naphtha - it looks to be flammable, but not corrosive on its own. Would it exacerbate the corrosivity of heavy oil in a "dilbit" formulation? I don't know. And the point I'm trying to make is that neither does any of the sources you've linked so far - they don't know, and neither will you ever know based on what they've told you so far. They much more interested in getting you riled up with inflammatory language than they are in getting you to understand the issues at hand.

As for the Ogalla, it's these "solvents" that people are worried about in a spill. Solvents have a nasty way of percolating through the soil and getting into aquifer systems. No river needed. Only porous soils and rain to carry it downward. Have a nice drink of solvents people.

No, I think it is the crude oil that most people are wound up about, based on the wild hysteria that followed the Deepwater Horizon spill. You have no idea whatsoever as to how well any fluids would "percolate" through the 2, 10, 20 or 200 feet it would take to reach the aquifer from a surface spill, because that depends on the nature of the local soils and numerous other factors. This would all end up being part of the discussion during the permitting process.

One thing I think you can count on is that the pipeline company is not interested in having a spill of any kind that contaminates the water supply of multiple states. So they'll spend money to mitigate the potential for a spill. Does that mean there could never be a spill? Of course not. But the alternative to taking no risks is for all of us to quit what we're doing right now and stop breathing. The solutions to our problems might be found through the careful consideration of risks and benefits, but will not likely be found via wild speculation and misinformation.