Topic
Conserving key to energy independence concludes geologist David Hughes.
Report author David Hughes: Reading trend lines, not pundits.
Nikiforuk tackles top claims fracking industry uses to reassure public. First in a series.
Fracked fuel far more dirty than industry, governments claim. Final myth in series.
Industry's claim that clustered wells preserve forests and farms is a myth, says expert. Second in a series.
Governments and financial analysts who think unconventional fossil fuels such as bitumen, shale gas and shale oil can usher in an era of prosperity and energy plenty are dangerously deluded, concludes a groundbreaking report by one of Canada's top energy analysts.
In a meticulous 181 page study for the Post Carbon Institute, geologist David Hughes concludes that the U.S. "is highly unlikely to achieve energy independence unless energy consumption declines substantially."
Exuberant projections by the media and energy pundits that claim that hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling "can provide endless growth heralding a new era of 'energy independence,' in which the U.S. will become a substantial net exporter of energy, are entirely unwarranted based on the fundamentals," adds Hughes in a companion article for the science journal Nature.
Moreover it is unlikely that difficult and challenging hydrocarbons such as shale oil can even replace the rate of depletion for conventional light oil and natural gas.
Since 1990, says Hughes, the number of operating wells in the U.S. has increased by 90 per cent while the average productivity of those wells has declined by 38 per cent.
The latest panaceas championed by industry and media talking heads are too expensive and will deplete too rapidly to provide either energy security or independence for the United States, concludes the 62-year-old geologist who worked for Natural Resources Canada for 32 years as a coal and gas specialist.
To Hughes shale gas and shale oil represent a temporary bubble in production that will soon burst due to rapid depletion rates that have only recently been tallied.
Taken together shale gas and shale oil wells "will require about 8,600 wells per year at a cost of over $48 billion to offset declines."
"The idea that the United States might be exporting 12 per cent of its natural gas from shale is just a pipe dream," Hughes, a resident of Cortes Island in British Columbia, told The Tyee.
'Tough' energy's tough downsides
Unconventional fossil fuels all share a host of cruel and limiting traits says Hughes. They offer dramatically fewer energy returns; they consume extreme and endless flows of capital; they provide difficult or volatile rates of supply overtime and have "large environmental impacts in their extraction."
Most important, bitumen, shale oil and shale gas, by definition, are much lower quality hydrocarbons and therefore can't fund business as usual. They simply do not provide the same energy returns or the same amount of work as conventional hydrocarbons due to the energy needed to extract or upgrade them, says Hughes.
At the turn of the century it took just one barrel of oil to find and produce 100 more. Now the returns are down to 20. The mining portion of the tar sands offers returns of five to one while the steam plant operations barely manage returns of three to one, says Hughes. "And that's an extremely conservative estimate."
"Moving to progressively lower quality energy resources diverts more and more resources to the act of acquisition as opposed to doing useful work."
A society that progressively spends more and more capital on acquiring energy that does less and less work will either exhaust the global economy or cannibalize national ones as consumers redirect larger portions of their household budgets to energy costs, says Hughes.
"To view them (unconventional hydrocarbons) as 'game changers' capable of indefinitely increasing supply of low cost energy which has underpinned the economic growth of the past century is a mistake."
The exploitation of shale oil and gas (and Hughes reviewed the data for 60,000 wells for the report) may have temporarily reversed declines in conventional resources but they show dramatic limitations often excluded from the mainstream press.
Drilling into a mirage
For starters shale gas and oil don't resemble a manufacturing process.
Companies such as Encana claimed in 2006 that they had turned natural gas drilling into a bountiful factory process with so-called "resource plays."
After drilling a landscape and pulverizing deep formations with high volume hydraulic fracturing the company claimed it could produce predictable and reliable volumes of hydrocarbons across the landscape.
"But geology matters," says Hughes. In every shale play there are sweet spots and unproductive areas and marginal ones. In fact 88 per cent of all shale gas production flows from six of 20 active plays in the United States while 81 per cent of shale oil comes from two of 21 plays.
Moreover shale gas and oil fields deplete so quickly that they resemble financial treadmills. In order to maintain constant flows from a play industry must replace 30 to 50 per cent of declining production with more wells.
Recovery rates from shale fields are also dismal. Conventional drilling, which uses less energy, often captured up to 70 per cent of the gas in the ground. But shale gas barely averages 10 per cent despite deploying more horsepower and water over greater landscapes.
Nor is shale gas long-lasting. Industry promised that shale gas plays would produce for up to 40 years but the Haynesville, a top U.S. producer, reached maturity in five years and is already in a state of decline, reports Hughes. "Nobody had heard about Haynesville until 2009."
"That's the Achilles heel of shale gas. You need a lot of wells and environmental collateral damage and infrastructure to grow supply."
Implications for BC and Alberta
The government of B.C. now plans to export shale gas while the province of Alberta anticipates dramatic declines in conventional gas production of more than 30 per cent.
Hughes calls exporting B.C. gas to Asia "a really bad idea" and adds that B.C.'s embrace of shale gas production has been "a shining star of hype."
Hughes' analysis confirms and supports the work of Texas oil analyst and geologist Arthur Berman who has questioned the growth rate claims of the shale gas industry for years and has offered the most reliable forecasts for the industry to date.
The report also provides a reality check for aggressive bitumen forecasts in Canada's tar sands.
Projections of four or five million barrels a day by 2035 made by a variety of industry cheer leaders will likely not be realized due to "logistical restraints on infrastructure development and the fact that the highest quality, most economically viable portions of the resource are being extracted first," says Hughes.
"It has taken 40 years to grow tar sands production to 1.6 mbd, yet forecasts call for a nearly tripling of production over the next 18 years," says Hughes.
But industry has already "high graded" or dug up the highest quality bitumen deposits first. Most of the active development is now taking place in shallow open pit mines while the bulk of the resource (and the lowest quality) lies so deep underground that it requires large amounts of water and natural gas to extract.
Adds Hughes: "The economics of much of the vast purported remaining extractable resource are increasingly questionable and the net energy available from them will diminish toward the break even point long before they are completely extracted."
'Don't give a damn what pundits think'
In conclusion Hughes warns that societies that switch to high-cost fuels that deliver diminishing returns in terms of energy output without analyzing some cold hard energy realities will experience economic contraction, and price shocks and be held hostage by industry propaganda.
"I live on a pension and don't give a damn what pundits think. My report is based on fact not hyperbole. My friends in the industry, who don't want to be mentioned, will agree with my findings."
According to Hughes, the exploitation of shale oil and gas and bitumen marks a dramatic turning point for both financial and energy markets and thereby challenge all economic growth projections.
"Worldwide energy consumption has tripled in the past 45 years, and has grown 50-fold since the advent of fossil oil a century and a half ago. More than 80 per cent of current energy consumption is obtained from fossil fuels."
Although shale oil, shale gas and bitumen may be abundant they are not cheap or environmentally-friendly.
"The lack of abundant cheap energy, which allowed the rapid growth in supply of natural resources inputs and the exploitation of arable land and water over the past century, is likely to be a steep change unlike anything observed thus far in the evolution of industrial society."
The Post Carbon Institute is a California-based think tank that advocates for resilience in the face of what it calls "business unusual." ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
Read more: Energy, Labour + Industry, Environment
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Fiat lux
12 weeks ago
The sale and export of
The sale and export of resources is not an "income", but a liability, to begin with, and economies built on them are economies planned and forced on people by fools and crooks.
Ed Deak.
rantnic
12 weeks ago
BLEVE IT
The Liberals in BC say that shale fracking is good, therefore it is.
The Blevers will Bleve even in the face of truth for the Liberals do not lie and the GDP stands for Greater Dam Profits.
Horror of horrors, should the cursed NDP get in, as they may believe the truth and act accordingly.
KWD
12 weeks ago
putting it mildly
"Worldwide energy consumption has tripled in the past 45 years, and has grown 50-fold since the advent of fossil oil a century and a half ago. More than 80 per cent of current energy consumption is obtained from fossil fuels."
But what Hughes fails to mention is that the once easy-to-get abundance of cheap hydrocarbon energy, which has allowed the rapid growth of industrialized societies, will not be replaced by an equivalent easy-to-get abundance of renewable energy.
The idea that society will experience economic contraction and price shocks is an understatement.
Feverish
12 weeks ago
Thanks Andrew N and David H
"That's the Achilles heel of shale gas. You need a lot of wells and environmental collateral damage and infrastructure to grow supply."
It seems to me that 'collateral damage' is an equally acceptable result in warfare and resource extraction. Infrastructure is used predominantly by industry, primarily to perpetuate the cancerous cycle of 'development.'
"In conclusion Hughes warns that societies that switch to high-cost fuels that deliver diminishing returns in terms of energy output without analyzing some cold hard energy realities will experience economic contraction, and price shocks and be held hostage by industry propaganda."
The whole world is being held hostage but we continue our trajectory in the darkness of willful ignorance as happy slaves enjoying 'unprecedented freedom and prosperity.'
bcwoodcarver
12 weeks ago
response to MP.
I am having a conversation with my Mp and need some info on any subsidies, tax breaks etc, that the federal gvmt. provides to the oil industry today. Any help?
Fiat lux
12 weeks ago
The history of the world is
The history of the world is the chronicle of human stupidity for having accepted and always submitted to the rule by darkness and willful ignorance from day one.
The worst enslavement and destruction has never really been caused by weapons, but by words, used by religions, ideologies and theories to force humanity to submit to rulers, and never more, or worse, than right now in the Age of Information, endangering survival.
The world has always been ruled by applied psychology, through the use of implanted beliefs, programming people to react to certain words in certain prescribed ways.
The most misused words in our society are "free", "cost cutting", "cheap", "wealth creation" , "conservative", "efficient" and a few more, typically used for mind control and enslavement.
A science professor friend just sent me the story and speech by the president of Uruguay.
Something the like of which we've never heard before from our politicians and unimaginable from our so called "leaders" of any party.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20243493
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr465Atwenw
I hope humanity will wake up one day to the age old fraud and enslavement, before it is too late.
Ed Deak.
Dannyboy
12 weeks ago
Vote Green then
Thats the only alternative. The NDP is no different than the Liberals when it comes to the Frakking file, even though they and their blind followers try to dress it up and tell us they will do it "sustainably" which is the exact term used in the BCNDP website.
Sure. Extract a non renewable resource sustainably. Orwell couldn't have said it better
cyberclark
12 weeks ago
And just who is counting may I ask?
The US in this glut is beyond sustainability but not be great margins they would have you think. Roughly 30%of the identified Shale gas and oil is salvageable! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxG4CpNSZTQ
The link is a good watch for Taxpayers and investors alike
The US now is a very major exporter of Bulk Oil much of which comes from Canada. Their LNG market as is every supplier is hanging on the thread of Japan and what Japan needs.
Much of the demand will disappear rests entirely on whether Japan builds new nuclear generation (Chances are 99% in favor of that) Japan's economy has tanked buying crude and LNG of which the US is a big supplier.
All in all they are most certainly self sufficient.
rangerkim
12 weeks ago
some realities
Over and above everything else being said, one must recognise that this petro resource is a FINITE resource. We are minimg it and the reality of mining is that you take and take until it is all gone ... and then there is NO MORE TAKING. PERIOD!!!
What will we do then?
An intelligent group will be aware of, and take some actions to mitigate the effect of, such a absolute event. And as Ed points out above, this is the most frustrating aspect of this whole mess; this resource is being used simply to increase the wealth of a few people while providing some others some opportunities to 'become' consumers.
The idea of using a more scarce and vanishing resource to help humanity leapfrog past todays problems into a more stable and benign future seems so ludicrously idealistic. But again, what are we going to do when it runs out?
This is a serious human concern. Just because it might not run out in your time doesn't make any less so.
And why is it so much more sensible, and less idealogical, to allow a few of this generation to take ALL of a common resource for their own? Not only does this practice generously favour a few and disadvantages and worsens the lot of the rest alive today but it also steals any benefits for future generations. We see the same thing in BC forest with the timber industry as noted in another current Tyee piece.
What will it take? To get some far-sighted thinking going on. To disrespect the idea that policies that promote for one at the expense of many. To recognise that the common good is a better value than corporate profit.
Will Obama say no to KXL? Will Dix bring back the Forest Practices Code? Will he manage the LNG casino in Kitimat? Will Redford even try to get the stated 50% take of royalties? Will the voters in Albaturda notice? Will Harper manage to sell off every publically owned asset in Canada? Will he transition Canadian federal governance into some sort of mutant private-provincial-public partnership (PPPP)?
What will it take?
Perry
12 weeks ago
telling the truth is a revolutionary act
Dannyboy, speaking of Orwell, he said:
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
That explains Harper's demonization of environmental protesters as radical terrorists.
Fiat lux
12 weeks ago
There's a Hungarian proverb
There's a Hungarian proverb that also says:
"Tell the truth and get your head bashed in"
Ed Deak.
Dannyboy
12 weeks ago
Perry
Glen Clark said the same thing about Greenpeace long before Harper
Perry
12 weeks ago
Japanese proverb
Japanese proverb: "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down."
That partly explains the extreme conformity in Japanese culture. At least that's what I observed when I lived there in 1974 and again for several years in the 1990s. The only times I experienced non-conformity there was wide-spread student protests in the 70s, many violent clashes with police. Also, the Harajuku district of Tokyo there is a sort on non-conforming counter culture there, but those expressing themselves there may only be superficial non-conformists, seeking a week-end outlet for the stress they live under. I'm not sure. Perhaps its different today. Recent nuclear events may be changing the culture there a bit.
Perhaps many cultures have similar sayings. Sticking your head up and your neck out to tell the truth certainly threatens the elite, so their reactionary response to label truth tellers as radical revolutionaries makes sense. It is fear-mongering to demonize dissenters and create obedient, docile citizens who never question authority.
As for Glen Clark, Dannyboy, while I think he may have got a rotten deal over that whole balcony scandal or whatever that dirty politics was about, he showed his true colors to me by joining up with a billionaire capitalist, so I don't doubt he said that. I gave the NDP a chance to do the right thing in the 1990s, but they didn't. And I don't think they will once back in power again.
gilbert marks
12 weeks ago
nuclear power is all that is left.
So called renewables aren't really - totally dependent on inefficient gas backup run inefficiently and providing no GHG's saving over an all gas solution. Costing 40 cents a kwh for wind and 90 cents for solar today when 5 times sized transmission and gas backup is included, the green dream of green storage adds another buck a kwh.
New nuclear costing 4 cents a kwh when built by public power is well under way in the US, and a massive transformation in the BRIC countries at 3 cents a kwh continues.
All 7 Candu's built in the last 20 years were on time on budget built in 4 years and less at 3 cents a kwh.
France was able to go from zero to 80 percent nuke in a decade.
As the world's number one climatologist NASA physicist James Hansen tell us, like it or not we can waste our money on pixie fairy dust or embrace the only possible in time solution to the fast approaching warming cliff - nuclear power.
There is no other choice.
KWD
12 weeks ago
there is no other choice for what?
Pretending we can carry on with the same lifestyles we have become accustomed to?
Elevating third world countries to industrialized society living standard?
Ask folks that live near Hanford how much they enjoy nuclear energy.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20130223/us-hanford-leak/?utm_hp_ref=sports&ir=sports
We are running out of more than cheap energy.
max von smartt
12 weeks ago
the empire grabs the good stuff
the amerikan empire and nato comrades are well aware of dwindling supplies of light sweet crude, and with this in mind have already secured iraq and libya, with sights on iran, the caspian basin and inroads into africa. talk of fighting "terrorism" and delivering democracy are mere smokescreens. there is still ample clean oil abroad to be had for the empire.
pwlg
12 weeks ago
Cool Hand
I sure hope Cool Hand is able to recover his investment into the yet to be built fantasy of BC LNG. The writing is on the wall!
pwlg
12 weeks ago
gilbert marks
I understand your enthusiasm however the real history of nuclear power in Canada is not as rosy as you suggest.
Despite claims of being built on time and on budget:
"Initial Capital Cost — Because of the need for heavy water to be used as moderator and coolant, the CANDU is even more expensive than other reactor systems. High capital cost has killed nuclear power expansion in Canada — in the last 25 years, the cost of CANDU reactors has more than doubled in real terms.
Cost overruns are one of the most serious risks for CANDU purchasers. Canadian utilities have never estimated capital costs accurately. Ontario Hydro’s Darlington Nuclear Station (four 881 MW reactors) was estimated in 1978 at $3.95 billion, but by 1993, the cost was over $14 billion — an increase of over 250%. The Point Lepreau Nuclear Station in the Canadian province of New Brunswick is a single 600 MW reactor, similar to the standard CANDU-6 offered by AECL for export. It was originally estimated at $500 million but cost $1.25 billion when it started in 1983."
This report from 2003:
http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/programs/atmosphere-energy/nuclear-free/overview.shtml
And these:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/reactor-design-puts-safety-into-question/article4279995/
http://ep.probeinternational.org/1969/12/31/candu-reactors-buyer-beware/
pwlg
12 weeks ago
Andrew Nikiforuk
Thanks once again for this timely series of articles. And thanks to the Tyee for continuing to publish his writings.
I hope that the opposition parties will use David Hughes' research in ads in the upcoming election in BC.
Gordon Campbell peddled hope, Christy peddles hype but neither will cover up the debacle.
ireckon
12 weeks ago
pwlg
Good points re cost. Then of course there is the cost to the taxpayer of storing deadly fuel rods for a couple of hundred thousand years.
Ironic that an alarmist Like James Hansen is able to shill for Nukes. Maybe he never noticed but Fukashima is an ongoing disaster with no end in sight.
http://thecanadian.org/item/1499-fukushima-reactor-4-most-important-story-nobody-talking-about-japan-nuclear-tsunami-gillis
dave49
12 weeks ago
Gilbert Marks, what science fiction novel did you read?
About ten years ago, I talked to a young guy who had worked on Ontario Hydro's planning department. I had worked on the manufacturing side of the nuclear industry in my first job (many moons ago). He told me Ontario Hydro used $0.12 a KW-h [12 cents] as their levelized cost for nuclear-generated power. At the time he told me this, Ontario was struggling with their failed experiment in free-market electricity and were forced to reduce the price to something like $0.046 a KW-h [4.6 cents]. What was the cost to the taxpayer to subsidize this electricity?
So, where did you get your numbers? They are not honest cost figures!
Lawrence
12 weeks ago
Gilbert Marks
Sounds like Patrick Moore, called the Eco Judas by some.
Well whoever you are did you 6 tanks holding atomic waste are leaking at Hanford.
Do you know there is a measurable background level of plutonium in the world thanks to TMI, Chernobyl not to mention Fukashima.
Sustainable energy is everywhere in BC and only a tiny part of it is used.
That should be a major plank in the NDP's election platform to develop sustainable energy in BC.
Feverish
12 weeks ago
How?
How did poisoning the well (literally) become a viable strategy for sustaining life on earth?
It appears that the strategy has nothing to do survival but more to do with culling the weak, vulnerable, timid and/ or isolated members of the herd.
Fiat lux
12 weeks ago
Fever.....You have just
Fever.....You have just defined glorious world history going back to day one.
Ed Deak,
Illahie
12 weeks ago
It seems to me
It seems to me that David Hughes does not like the idea of finding and exploiting new sources of oil and gas.
What is unconventional oil and gas anyways?
Resource extraction has always started with harvesting the lowest hanging fruit first.
Exploitation of energy is critical to the development of civilization.
The human body can produce about 100 watts of continuous output, which is about a kilowatt hour per day, which is worth about 3 cents of coal fired electricity.
Noggy
12 weeks ago
Illahie, two sides to a coin
I can understand how resources have furthered the development of civilization, it could also be said the exploitation of resources has set back the development of society. Which side would tip the balance scales, would take more time than I'm willing to spend pondering the idea.
gilbert marks
12 weeks ago
Big Oil's financed propaganda
@kwd
The Hanford issue is nuclear weapons material nothing to do with nuke power. All the worlds high level nuke power waste completely contained - fuel rods - would fit on a football field. When burned in Gen IV reactors while powering the world for a thousand years, that waste would be reduced to a single equipment locker in the that football stadium. This compares to the cubic miles of toxic forever end of life solar waste soon to be leaching out from land fills. All radioactive waste released into ground water and the atmosphere comes from coal and gas plants and the hundreds of cubic miles of toxic coal ash waste.
@pwlg
The Candu heavy water plant is long paid for - no issue. The last 7 Candu's built all around the world including were build as I stated for $2B/Gw or less than 3 cents a kwh, based on the experience gained in previous Candu install. Why is it so hard for you to get that?
http://www.cnnc.com.cn/tabid/168/Default.aspx
Budget cost South Carolina VC Summer now 20% complete $4.5/Gw 4 cents a kwh if built by public power - Bonneville or TVA. That's twice the cost of the same units built in China almost complete on time on budget using advanced construction techniques not allowed in the US.
http://www.scana.com/en/investor-relations/nuclear-financial-information/default.htm
Nukes today in Canada are a lower capital cost than new coal or high efficiency gas plants and the fuel cost is a tiny fraction of the same. The only impediment is corrupt politicians and media paid off by Big Oil, as Andrew here demonstrates beyond a shadow of doubt. A Candu is 15% the cost of Site C per unit energy but because of that corruption it isn't even considered. On a levelized cost per kwh it is half the cost of new gas plant even at today's 30% of cost prices.
Actually, if you were take the time to learn something before posting you'd find that the Darlington cost overruns were entirely political caused by the halfwits Bob Rae and David Petersen deferring the construction and financing at 20% per annum. The actual cost of the first of a kind Candu 6's overruns included were $2.7B/GW, the cheapest power available at the time.
@dave49
The number of times I've heard "I talked to a guy"!!! I pointed out the actual costs of recent nuke projects and the reason for Ontario's issue above.
gilbert marks
12 weeks ago
more Big Oil propanda
@larry
Hanford issues are related to nuke weapons not power.
Chernobyl was a nuke weapons plant similar to the plants at Hanford - nothing to do with nuke power.
There were no significant radiation emissions from TMI
The amount of radiation released by TMI, FUKU, and Cherno is a small fraction of that released by coal and gas plants worldwide annually.
The only workable forms of not so "sustainable" energy in BC are wind/solar/tidal and hydro - the first two would require gas backup with any significant usage eliminating any GHG savings, and latter produces more GHG's than coal because of annual methane emissions. All in with gas backup and 5 to 7 times sized tranmission requirements, wind costs 40 cents a kwh and solar 90 cents at today's low gas price, no tidal installs have ever worked at costs exceeding 30 cents a kwh, and hydro exceeds 12 cents a kwh. All are destructive to the environment in major ways.
By contrast modern nuclear has to all intents and purposes zero environmental cost and are only 3 cents a kwh.
Keep in mind that Washington state views new nuclear with end of the decade SMR's as a major growth medium, and China, Russia and India our major trading partners are building nukes as fast as practical moving to 1 cent a kwh advanced nuclear by the end of the decade. If we wish to be competitive, we have no choice but to follow their lead.
Lawrence
12 weeks ago
@ gilby
TMI Fuku and Cherno as you call them have several things in common
1 They fed power to the grid.
2.They melted down and released radiation into the air
3. The governments of their respective countries started to lie about what was happening and so who knows how much radiation was given off by TMI or any of them
Fiat lux
12 weeks ago
It is a physical and
It is a physical and historical fact that competitive systems need more and more energy to stay on top, until they all and always burn out and self destruct.
The main purpose of today's economic competition is not to cut prices and costs to the public, but to increase the profits of a special interest sector by stealing it from the public and the environment. The stockmarkets are the best proofs. The biggest thieves are have the highest stock prices.
Since the present Chicago School, Friedmanite, neoclassical economic system was forced on humanity by a criminal sector, calling themselves "conservatives", our living costs inflated by over 1000%, but wages and incomes of the general public stagnated, which was and still is the original purpose of the racket, with the sucker public going along with it.
The only way we can cut costs and destruction is by cooperation, not the fraud of competition. This can be proven very easily.
I competed in a number of sports, in 2 internationally. Motorsport is an excellent example of the demands and results of competition. When I was team captain of a factory, long distance rally team, we had to change tires, which usually last for years under normal, even every day driving conditions, twice a day and our cars were worn out in a week of driving. In race driving it is even worse.
The purpose of economic systems is supposed to be to feed, clothe and house everybody, not to impoverish and steal the public blind, as we can see it now, with poverty growing every day here, in the richest country on Earth, and 30 million starving to death every year globally, because they're not "competitive".
History's empires are the best examples of the results of so called competition: all burned out and gone to hell, as ours will also go, unless humanity wakes up to the fraud and stops it cold.
Oxfam just came out with a report, that the thievery, fraudulently called "earnings", of the 100 richest people on Earth could wipe out all starvation.
But that wouldn't be "conservative" and "competitive" would it ?
The "private property rights" of the biggest crooks, and criminals, are more important than the "private property rights for life" of the starving millions,
Ed Deak.
Ed Seedhouse
12 weeks ago
Still a lie.
"There is no other choice."
This is just a typical propaganda lie used always by those who want to distract us from the real world and the real choices it presents us.
You can be about 99% sure that anyone who uses it is lying, and moreover probably knows themselves to be lying. And that whenever it is used there will almost certainly be at least one or two other reasonable, and very possibly better, choices.
freewilly
12 weeks ago
Ever since
Ever since we had our wood stove installed, Ive been glued to this whole topic of energy, the environment and sustainability. I wonder how much fuel Im using, how to turn down the flue valve to get the most out of a pile of wood.
Ive lived in the city most of my life and I have taken energy for granted . Office tower lights are on 24/7, pizza ovens, restaurants, grow ops, cars, manufacturing junk etc.. the real world eats energy, rarely giving it a thought, We should be using energy to make more energy. DOenst work that way. we just waste the earths resources and are oblivious.
In our small village they want to take away our dump and valuable garbage. The system wants our garbage. Thousands of potential gallons of plastic which is actually 'fuel' and recyclable products. Its all perception isnt it?
In a few years we will be the losers. We are giving away our greatest and last asset garbage. The technology is here, right now, and we are wasting an opportunity.
Fracking, its desparation, just like the tar sand oil, sure its there but the costs will be artificially 'deflated'. Ed might say the economic system is an illusion,made up money, made up energy, it is!. It really costs more in energy drilling for shale gas, more than its worth . Like foraging for blown down alder instead of huge scraps of fir or yellow cedar. No, more like burning newspaper instead of wood, it wont last but a few minutes.
Perry
12 weeks ago
Ed Deak, I recently watched
Ed Deak, I recently watched the National Geographic documentary "Collapse", partially based on Jared Diamond's book. Your comment is basically a summary of that doc.
Our current civilization certainly will collapse, likely within a few decades, unless humans quickly learn to cooperate with each other.
ModestyBlaise
12 weeks ago
Cooperate with the East, says Thomas
Sounds like there ain't nobody gonna stop that oil flowing.
"Tom Mulcair says an NDP government would be a willing partner with Alberta's energy industry,
Mulcair did offer support for proposals to send bitumen to Eastern Canada on existing pipeline infrastructure, saying he knows Canada needs "a diversity of markets.
Mulcair told the crowd the NDP and Calgary business community hold similar views on many topics.
calgaryherald.com/news/politics/leader+Mulcair+ready+partner+oilpatch/7989103/story.html#ixzz2LtGuw9UM
Fiat lux
12 weeks ago
Perry , I`ve been doing my
Perry , I`ve been doing my private research on the causes of history's repetitious tragedies since 1945, when as an 18 year old volunteer orderly I was standing by a primitive operating table, holding the legs of about 100 victims on doctors' orders as they were amputated and reamputated.
The cause has always been "faith", in reality human ullibility, in the crazy ideas of "leaders". And never worse than now.
Here's a story on China`s cancer villages. Just wait what will happen to the people and workers in the wealth creating tar sands area of Alberta.
Ed Deak
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/23/china-cancer-villages-pollution_n_2744879.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=4617161,b=facebook
Perry
12 weeks ago
Ed, I lived in China for a
Ed, I lived in China for a few years in the 1980s, in Hong Kong and Beijing. Pollution in Hong Kong was horrendous. I lived in the New Territories and daily passed by a styrofoam factory located right on the bank of a small river or creek. The surrounding land and the water was black. Today, HK has a massive garbage problem with no good solution in sight.
When I first traveled to mainland China in '82 or '83 it was shortly after the government had ended its closed door policy and was slowly opening up to the West. I was one of the first 'tourists' not required to travel in a group tour. I took the train from Guanzhou to Shanghai, and it was like I had traveled back in time. The country side of small villages and towns was almost completely dark at night, like N. Korea is today. When I returned to HK from that trip it was Christmas time and that temple of capitalism was ablaze with wasteful light. Coming from the darkness of the mainland into that extravagance was quite a trip.
Later, in '85 and '86, I lived in Beijing. The city was just starting to rebuild. The city streets were clogged with bicycles, buses, taxis and trucks, but almost no private cars. Only government officials and a few of the new capitalists had private cars.
The only air pollution I experienced there was from the occasional dust storm blowing off the Gobi desert or when city workers were freely spraying city trees with pesticides, without almost no protection for themselves. You could still buy bug spray with DDT in it there, maybe still today.
Today, look at any photo of Beijing's main streets and you will see them clogged with cars and very few bicycles in sight. And the air is almost unbreathable on many days.
As that article you linked to shows, it's becoming an environmental nightmare there and it will only get worse before it gets better, if it ever does.
Perry
12 weeks ago
Making up ‘Terror Identities’ report
A good related article in the Vancouver Observer today:
"Petro-state politics prompts CSIS to spy on citizens at alarming rate, FOIs reveal"
http://www.vancouverobserver.com/politics/investigations/canadian-security-intelligence-service-spying-citizens-alarming-rate-fois
Here's a link to a report cited in that article:
"Making up ‘Terror Identities’: security intelligence, Canada's Integrated Threat Assessment Centre and social movement suppression" free download at:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10439463.2011.605131
Feverish
11 weeks ago
Shadowy
Good link Perry. The militarization of police coupled with the labeling of dissent as a threat to national security is a very worrying trend for the last threads of democracy in this country.
APEC was an RCMP pepper spray demo and the G8/20 introduced many CDNS to the process of kettling. The existence and use of these suppressive tools & tactics (plus old fashioned batons, rubber bullets & tear gas) along with tasers and the rise of drones are making it very difficult for people to commit to attending protests and rallies. More than ever, it is easy to find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time, simply by exercising the right to speak up for what you believe in.
Judging by the low numbers, one might conclude that these tools & tactics were being used to dissuade citizens from going to the polls to vote during elections also.
wiley
11 weeks ago
ignoring the end of the shale bubble?
What the Liberators dont want you to know:
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.ca/
Rolf Auer
11 weeks ago
Native affect by Oil Sands. Fracked Gas, too?
Seems clear Canada's First Nations Peoples are adversely affected by bitumen extraction:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/125705758/Double-Double-Oil-and-Trouble
What about fracked gas? Seems like anything fracked is bad since water becomes unpotable. At least, that's how I understand it.
Rolf Auer
11 weeks ago
correction to previous caption
Should read: "Natives affected..." Sorry.
HectorWilson
11 weeks ago
Moreover it is unlikely that
Moreover it is unlikely that difficult and challenging hydrocarbons such as shale oil can even replace the rate of depletion for conventional light oil and natural gas.
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