MrMickeysMom
MrMickeysMom's JournalReading this WSJ article today is making me crazy...
First, I don't subscribe. I can't share the whole article, either, as a link to it was sent to me and is only good for so long. This was sent to me by a politico (young Republican) friend of mine who I often shake my head over, but remain friendly with... The local young Republicans don't like the old ones, but still have their heads in the clouds over "drill baby drill". When reading the anti-climate change related paragraph, I just couldn't believe people still write this stuff. And the writer's rant is over the aftermath of the train crash in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec...
"Like water, business has a way of tracing a course of least resistance. Pipelines are a hyper-regulated industry but rail transport isn't, so that's how we now move oil. As the Wall Street Journal's Tom Fowler reported in March, in 2008 the U.S. rail system moved 9,500 carloads of oil. In 2012, the figure surged to 233,811. During the same period, the total number of spills went from eight to 69. In March, a derailed train spilled 714 barrels of oil in western Minnesota.
Predictable, you would think. And ameliorable: Pipelines account for about half as much spillage as railways on a gallon-per-mile basis. Pipelines also tend not to go straight through exposed population centers like Lac-Mégantic. Nobody suggests that pipelines are perfectly reliable or safe, but what is? To think is to weigh alternatives. The habit of too many environmentalists is to evade them."
Here's where I thought...
My goodness, maybe the response is to ask why, over the course of time where the number of well pads and horizontal drilling was surging, maybe we should ask why was there so much production without any plan as to how to realistically transport it across state lines? To just say, "pipelines are a hyper-regulated industry" and acknowledge the slowness in winning over Obama and XL pipeline, but point to the culprit as rail transport is pretty lame. After the surge of oil (which could not be handled safely by pipeline, so why would rail have made sense?), the real question is, "Is this form of fossil fuel drilling worth transport to other nations?". My answer is that the WSJ is right wing, sure, but I'm also looking for facts in the author's next paragraph...
"Perhaps this is also the reason climate science is so prone to scientific embarrassment. In 2001, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change insisted that "global average surface temperatures [will rise] at rates very likely without precedent during the last 10,000 years," and that they would rise sharply and continuously."
Huh?
It would appear that the U.N.'s "Intergovernmental Panel" is being used as a scientific reference here. Anyone know of real data to back up that last paragraph?
Anyone see "Gasland 2" on HBO Monday night?
I caught it after 25 min's and I can tell this will have a huge impact. It pisses me off so much to listen to Tom Ridge and the sell outs, but what did my heart good was to see (still on congress at the time) Kucinich and other legislators being honest about the Gas and Oil industry - in a word, fascist.
Of course, you KNEW that... Please try to catch this, as I'm sure it'll play again. I'll see it all the way through and get pissed off all over again.
Profile Information
Name: WhoisSkinnerMarriedToGender: Do not display
Member since: Tue Dec 14, 2004, 07:30 PM
Number of posts: 20,453
