Rejection of Keystone XL not yet secured.

SweetChildofMine

sadly now we have to identify as a "liberal blog"

Im serious tar sands and this pipeline are a death knell to the planet ... if you dont know that by now in fking marshmallow land..... you better get educated quick.

all I can picture is myself f* in a shack with a shotgun cuz the idiots who think they are in charge of this place ruined it and were going down the shitter quick

brianlux

SweetChildofMine wrote:

sadly now we have to identify as a "liberal blog"

Im serious tar sands and this pipeline are a death knell to the planet ... if you dont know that by now in fking marshmallow land..... you better get educated quick.

all I can picture is myself f* in a shack with a shotgun cuz the idiots who think they are in charge of this place ruined it and were going down the shitter quick

I keep hearing those D. Boon lines:

"Ship's creaking
Taking on bullshit
I fucking scream
Jump ship! Jump ship!"

Only theres too many sharks in the water and nowhere to go.

....

SweetChildofMine

If I was the captain Id be like whoever is in charge of this Titanic better REPORT to my quarters NOW! Make some people walk the plank! ! !

Newch91

Not sure if this is the right thread to post this in. I know there is a lot of energy talk in this thread and thought I'd post it in this thread.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/articl ... ean-energy

Iowa View: Oil billionaires wrong about clean energy

My name is Rob Hach. I am an Iowa farm boy who moved into town to start a business. That was 10 years ago.

Today my wife and I have 28 employees and four offices in four states at Anemometry Specialists. We work in the wind industry on turbines. We are proud to be among those who help make Iowa the No. 1 state in the country for wind jobs. Iowa also ranks second in electricity generation from wind.

Last August, during President Obama’s rural tour through the Midwest, I had a chance to tell him I have 28 employees working in wind energy who have been kept on our payroll thanks to his administration’s investment in clean energy.

That’s why it makes me so angry to see secretive oil billionaires spending millions of dollars on false smear TV commercials targeting the president’s investments in clean energy. It is difficult to watch these people air their TV ads slapping around the president’s support of my employees’ jobs and ridiculous claims that he created jobs in Mexico and China.

The president kept our doors open and our employees working because of the wind-production tax credit and 1603 Treasury grant program.

And we were able to keep jobs in Iowa. The majority of the people I employ here in Alta are either farm kids or still working on the family farm in the evening. Today, the school district in Alta receives somewhere between 16 percent and 20 percent of its revenue from wind turbines. And almost 30 percent of the taxes paid into the county are off wind turbines.

Wind is an American success story in Iowa.

I support the president and his energy policy because it supports the American farmer and is good for our national security because we still are too dependent on Middle East dictators for our energy needs.

Unfortunately, Mitt Romney, in his economic plan, has said wind and solar power are technologies that “make little sense for the consuming public but great sense only for the companies reaping profits from taxpayer subsidies.”

I can tell you that I’m not reaping massive profits like the oil billionaires funding these ads with their billions in subsidies and tax breaks. Right now my wife and I are living invoice to invoice, praying we have enough money to make payroll every two weeks. I have missed Christmas concerts, wedding anniversaries and school plays and sacrificed so much more to keep my business going.

Romney also says in his jobs plan that the highly skilled personnel who design and build heavy capital equipment like wind turbines “comprise only a minuscule fraction of the U.S. labor force. Even if the sector were to grow rapidly, it would not make much of a dent in the overall employment picture.”

I guess he missed the fact that Iowa has turbine or power production facilities in Fort Madison, West Branch, Cedar Rapids and Newton that employ thousands of people. In some counties in Iowa, wind manufacturing companies are now the largest employer.

When this lands in the local paper, I am going to shock a few people. Many people locally know I am a registered Republican. But I believe in voting for the best candidate and the one who understands that clean energy is helping to revitalize small towns across Iowa and bringing manufacturing back to America when so many other industries have fled town.

I want the people to know that the president is keeping my American dream alive. Forget all the special-interest, out-of-state oil money and ads.

The proof of the success of Obama’s investments in clean energy can be seen in the wind blades dotting the landscapes all across Iowa.

brianlux

Newch91 wrote:

Not sure if this is the right thread to post this in. I know there is a lot of energy talk in this thread and thought I'd post it in this thread.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/articl ... ean-energy

Wind, yes! Here's another idea that might prove to be useful. The design shown in this article is great because these windstalks kill fewer birds. Looks pretty cool at night too!:

http://news.discovery.com/tech/wind-pow ... lades.html

Newch91

brianlux wrote:

Newch91 wrote:

Not sure if this is the right thread to post this in. I know there is a lot of energy talk in this thread and thought I'd post it in this thread.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/articl ... ean-energy

Wind, yes! Here's another idea that might prove to be useful. The design shown in this article is great because these windstalks kill fewer birds. Looks pretty cool at night too!:

http://news.discovery.com/tech/wind-pow ... lades.html

That looks terrific!

I'm not too informed on green/clean energy, but last year I went on a road trip to Indiana and Michigan with my aunt and uncle and throughout Indiana, I saw tons of solar panels. It was really cool to see. I took some pictures of them.

Newch91

Vermont becomes first state to ban fracking.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/0 ... -fracking/

brianlux

Newch91 wrote:

Vermont becomes first state to ban fracking.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/0 ... -fracking/

This is smart thinking. Even smarter thinking would be to continue to look for ways to live with less oil because the reality is all the easy-to-extract stuff is gone and the energy, costs and resources needed to extract oil keeps going up.

This begs the question- why aren't our leaders talking about this? Why aren't they urging us to lessen our commute distances, build walkable communities, improve and expand our rail system (which move more products and passengers per energy unit than cars, planes and trucks) and, at the very least, urge people to drive vehicles that get better gas mileage?

chadwick

brianlux wrote:

Newch91 wrote:

Vermont becomes first state to ban fracking.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/0 ... -fracking/

This is smart thinking. Even smarter thinking would be to continue to look for ways to live with less oil because the reality is all the easy-to-extract stuff is gone and the energy, costs and resources needed to extract oil keeps going up.

This begs the question- why aren't our leaders talking about this? Why aren't they urging us to lessen our commute distances, build walkable communities, improve and expand our rail system (which move more products and passengers per energy unit than cars, planes and trucks) and, at the very least, urge people to drive vehicles that get better gas mileage?

they like oil money, brian. if they didn't have huge oil money they would be sad and have to live with less like humble people do.

how dare us expect our leaders and other country leaders to live normally in a humble way.

they desire oil wealth beyond their wildest dreams. for this exact life style they will not promote anything but what suites their agendas.

all that plus many people in our societies are carefree, lazy and stupid

Newch91

A friend of mine on Facebook shared this picture (http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid= ... =1&theater) and had this to say (let's just say we disagree on things):

Honestly, very little can go wrong, provided conceited enviro-clowns get out of the way. New frakking methods have made this drastically safer and cheaper. When will the left stop playing politics with our energy and face the facts that nuclear power is clean and safe, that wind turbines and solar panels are expensive and inefficient, and potentially environmentally hazardous, and that frakking poses a minuscule--if any threat whatsoever--to our aquifers.

Gas prices are too damn high--especially for poor, working folk. Maybe the left can put them ahead of politics for once, we can help them out.

The people condemning enabling these advancements are not geologists or engineers, they're rich, spoiled assholes who know nothing of frakking techniques.

Thoughts?

polaris_x

yet another oil spill ... in arkansas ...

this is what you need to know about oil spills ...

oil spills are caused primarily because of one thing and one thing only ... the companies in charge do not care ... there is plenty of technology and understanding to prevent oil spills like this from a pipeline but a company has to spend ... oil companies do not spend because it cuts into their profits and when oil spills happen - they can write off the losses and any penalties they may incur ... remember, despite the law saying oil tankers had to be double hulled and equipped with proper sonar ... exxon valdez was not simply because exxon did not want to spend the money to make it safe and the consequences would not hurt the company financially enough to warrant those expenditures ...

oil companies operate for profit and profit only ... they will do whatever is necessary to maximize said profit ... combine that with control of the US and Canadian gov'ts and the result is poor policy and horrible outcomes ...

even flow - question mark

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/201 ... ities.html

polaris_x

even flow - question mark wrote:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/04/03/pol-schindler-letter-to-ministers-sees-pollution-effect-similarities.html

you don't have to be a frickin' scientist to figure this out ... frig ... we chlorinate the shit out of public swimming pools for "safety" ... yet, apparently ... all this runoff is fine ... morons ...

brianlux

You would think the news of these oil spills would help to secure the rejection of Keystone XL but they haven't. The news I read about this subject is depressing. I don't like writing this or hearing myself think it, but I'm not feeling very optimistic about this issue. Just have to keep those calls and letters going, spread the word about how bad an idea KXL is and hope for the best.