cannuck

Not trying to be a jerk about this, but where do you get the idea that the Athabasca sands contain any significant CO2???? It contains a high percentage of carbon as these are long chain hydrocarbons (API grade under 10), but hydrocarbons are generally saturated with Hydrogen, so it then falls to the asphaltene content, which is not very high in the Ft. McMurray region (as it is in Lloyd/Cold Lake crudes that are, arguably, part of the Athabasca basin). The really high carbon crudes are usually turned into pavement or upgraded to synthetic light crude (as does Syncrude, Suncor and Shell, not burned to MAKE CO2. If you are looking for a heavy oil boogeyman, why not single out Orinoco crudes? They are more cabon intense than Athabasca, but again, do NOT "contain" CO2. Carbon dioxide is often a component in natural gas, but reservoirs that are at the opposite end of the spectrum seldom have much at all in the way of associated gas.

Dougie: you grasp of internationally military and diplomatic history is impressive, and from what little I know, accurate. However, you really know diddly squat about recent Canada. The NDP was formed in a formal alliance between the CCF (Co-operative Commonwealth Federation - who's Regina Manifesto defines their very core beliefs and was only taken down from the NDP website a few years ago - out of embarrassment and pure political ambition) and the CLC (Canadian Labour Congress). The NDP is both a true Marxist party and a trade union, but NOT in any way "Liberal" - although some luminaries such as Ed Schrier were indeed genuine Liberal/liberals). It was PET clutching his beloved Communist Party (of Europe/France) card that shifted the LPC over to the left to tread on NDP ground and steel votes from Tommy Douglas et al. You are right, though: it is today near impossible to tell them apart. The real difference is that Liberal lefties wear their allegiance proudly on their arms as they walk into the offices with bags of cash to bribe their way into contracts, whereas the NDP big biz/union supporters have to put their money into party back room boys' accounts off shore - or just postpone their rewards for LAP (Life After Politics) - usually as a board appointment.

I live in a "city: of 10,000 served by the RCMP. A few years ago, I caught a guy robbing the contents of my chore truck (he broke door handle and couldn't get out). My wife called the police. I opened the door and pinned the guy, really, REALLY wanting to beat the shit out of him, but I live in Canada and have no right to defend my property - and I need the passport. Then, his accomplice pulled up jumped me from behind, allowing the felon to escape. 15 minutes later, the RCMP arrived....duh!! Fortunately, I had knocked his wallet out of his back pocket while holding him down against the driver's seat, and the cops immediately let slip that they knew exactly who he was. Even though they arrested him, he got off with probation and was no doubt back at it overnight. Had it not been for the incredible good fortune of him losing his wallet, there would not even have been the minor inconvenience in continuing his criminal career. We have dozens of facilities with easily stolen assets in remote areas of WY. EVERYONE in WY carries a rifle in their pickup, and many carry handguns. We simply do not have any theft from any of our facilities, since potential thieves know they are far more likely to get a bullet from the owner than a visit from the cops. Now, I also have a farm in SK. If you think 15 minutes is bad in the city, just imagine how long it would take to get a cop to respond to an armed robbery and assault out there? Ask Gerald Stanley. No, you are not getting my guns. You (the Royal "You" that includes police forces) can not be everywhere, and are far more likely to be in the doughnut shop than where I need you and when I need you. At least I can cling to the last hope of throwing a round into a 12 gauge if my family is ever threatened. I am not prepared to die for your principals and fears, but I am in no way ever going to submit to a threat and feel I have the right to whatever it takes to do so.

What works for one place in this vast country simply doesn't work for them all. You and Dougie are a perfect example of the contrasts on a very small scale. You both make a vaild case that in each of your minds is perfectly reasonable, but when you put them side-by-side, they are radically different. In the grand scheme of things, though, what the very Liberal/liberal Toronto and Southern ON find appropriate is completely disconnected from the values and beliefs of most of the ROC. As I pointed out, even though SK leads the country in gun crimes and deaths per capita, any kind of gun control meets with strong opposition for a large number of reasons. I sit here with my guns (not fired in decades) in the house and can state clearly that any attempt to invade my personal life, property and possessions ESPECIALLY INCLUDING MY GUNS would be seen as an act of aggression that would not go unchecked if you are a thief or the state - makes no difference. Now like Dougie, I am trained to use weapons to kill people, but my 7.62 mm training is behind my 105 and 155mm training. The weapons I keep are not in any way comparable to military stuff but intended to keep pests down on the farm (so some will get used again maybe next year) or just plink at targets. IF the state were to become any more invasive and restrictive than they already are, though, I would start adding weapons I can defend myself from the Crown with - as I can easily relate to the US second amendment and the very reasons it exists. BTW: another way to look at it - if you take away their guns, what will the genuine fruitcakes (such as the Texas guy from yesterday) do? You think that in any way is going to stop them? It would take about 10 minutes to poison a water supply, or a bit longer to figure out how to unleash a deadly virus. A whack job is a whack job. How they express their insanity is merely a matter of their choice, but they WILL chose to do their deeds regardless of what "gun control" (that as has been noted will be totally ineffective for illegal arms) is in place. You will notice that several recent terrorist killings are being done with motor vehicles. In Canada, about 10,000 people a year die from motor vehicles, whereas only a couple hundred perish at the hands of gunshots fired in anger or mistake. If you really want to be effective in saving lives, ban the cars.

I can understand the desire of someone living in an Aholefactory such as Hogtown wanting a ban on weapons. The whole context of inviting as many drug dealers, terrorists, extremists, etc. to live there and operate their divergent criminal enterprises is a completely different environment from the ROC. BUT, in reality Canada wide, about 1% of violent crimes involve firearms. When you have 4 or 5 million people living cheek-to-jowell the Media just covers it and spread panic more effectively. The highest incidences of gun crime actually occur in SK, and there is no real effort or pressure here to ban any firearms. Of course, if you look at the ethnicity of those violent crimes, you can quickly figure out why SK leads the pack.

It is more of a second world problem - China in particular. However, they ARE doing a lot to reduce emissions in general, just have to get trough the period of ultra-high emissions that every other developed nation did at this stage of development.

Spanky: The Manchester Guradian has about zero for credibility on anything that may have a political component. The comments in the link are typical of so much of this debate. While there is good reason for alarm over climate change, using a 2,000 year window and blaming ALL of what is seen on human activity is not technically honest. Do we contribute? Unquestionably, of course, we do. Are we the sole cause? THAT is where actual scientists disagree. The climate of this planet has changed far, far more than what we are experiencing, but the cycles are very long (about 405,000 years) and while we are definitely shitting in our own nest, it is still only a small deviation from the inevitable.

Argus: concrete (vs. stone that is not logical in this environment) can be built cost competitively with traditional kindling homes. Electric heating would only work for MB and parts of Quebec. Even so: it is the lack of thermal insulation that makes it really stupid - well, that and the fact we just don't have that much energy available that isn't coming from burning the same natural gas in a generator, so why not burn it with far higher efficiency in the house>?>???

Zeit: Hey...wave to my kids. We have the 4 YO and 5 MO with us for a a few weeks (or more to the point my wife does, but I am home for a rare week). Our baby and #2 Son-in-law are celebrating anniversary with an Italian vaca, but came in through Paris with a side trip to visit one of my friends in Nice. They are in Venezia today and on way to Roma so your paths must have/might cross. I of course love every minute of drinking in Euro stone, but in reality, high mass structures need separate insulation within, taking away some of the advantage of the thermal mass. I have been working with PFCCs for a while (pre-formed foam cellular concrete) trying to achieve sufficient insulating value from the actual structural members. My fallback will be to go with aerogel core and inner plus outer high denisty panels, all in pre-fab, tilt-up, post tensioned (unbonded tendons), but the bottom line is the next home I build will be with the intention of being a thousand year structure. I am working with one of my business partners to incorporate some of my innovations into low cost housing that he builds in developing world.

Zeit: Once again, you are focused on making small changes in infrastructure to simply do more of exactly the same thing. 30 years down the road, we will simply be in the same pickle, except whole mess will be even larger and more energy wasteful at a time when the 10 Bn population is using resources at an even greater rate. To shift your view from how to be ever greater consumers: When encountering this whole "urban planning" (now THERE's an oxymoron!!!) thing I am reminded of what one of my Vietnamese friends had to say about his Father's greatest embarrassment. When he was married, it was in the compound where the family and all of their employees lived (river boat manufacturers...significant to me as at the time I was a boat manufacturer, and he and one brother worked for me). All of the (hundred or so) employees and their families plus MANY guests sat at tables in the central building for dinner and there was no room left for the orchestra - that had to play outside. Yes, they all lived within the factory grounds. THAT is how you stop commuting and get a lot more flexibility out of production facilities. We need to switch as far away from a consumer based society to one who's focus is on how to stop wasting resources at an ever increasing rate. All of the structures and infrastructure of a city is a perfect example. For the most part, we replace EVERYTHING in less than a century because we build things that fall apart. Ever been to Rome? There are structures standing for two millenia that are still sound. Reason? No idiot dirt digger (i.e. CE) put steel in the concrete. We built early homes from a material that WAS readily available (i.e. wood) but it rots, feeds bugs and burns with alacrity (take a tour of the 19th century mansions along the Hudson South of Albany, and save for the Suckly home - ALL of the wooden ones are gone while the stone and concrete edifices are doing just fine, thank you. Yet we continue to build single family and even multiple family homes that puke energy out of wooden structures that are all busy feeding the bugs, rotting and burning just as they have since we first got here. As far as office and other buildings go: I once ran a consortium that had a UK engineering partner. On my first visit to their head offices, my host was explaining on the way up the M1 how I might be dissappointed in their offices as they were about 250 years old. I replied as to how I really like older buildings and he should not be ashamed of using them. He looked back at me dumbfounded and said: "in Cambridge, anybody who is ANYBODY has an office that is at least 400 years old!". We then reflected on our Moroccan partner's home (600 years old) and the infrastructure (we had just walked there on pre-Roman stone walkways). That was many years ago, and it reset my thinking radically as to sustainability in buildings and cities. We have the technology today to build energy and resource efficient homes (especially from concrete), but instead of paying for better and more sustainable structures, we give out as much as an extra million bux for "location, location, location". Another note: even 70 years ago, the average American (no idea for Canada) family home was something like 700 sq. ft. I could go on product and category for ever about this subject, but it IS one of the keys to genuine sustainability. The other is, of course, the link I posted earlier of the population growth curve of this planet. We could probably go on fine until the next big asteroid hit if we kept population between one and two billion, but we are heading for a really nasty end by thinking we can just go over 10Bn and laugh about it.

Ah...but you haven't learned the language of the virtue signalling world: to criticize the South Americans, Africans and Central Asians for breeding like rats is racist, and geez, avoiding racist buzzwords and topics is SO much more important than the survival of our species.

I realize that you are speaking from a close time, close minded frame of reference. What I am getting at is is not bandaid solutions that will make any substantial difference, it is more a matter of gross amputations. Any less is, as I have stated, nothing more than virtue signalling. The whole environmental/resource management thing has to reach a LOT deeper than the carbon emissions of transport and utilities (and I won't go into the discussion of how valid the carbon boogeyman witch hunt is), we need to look at how we run our entire societies and economies. For instance: why should housing ever be unaffordable????? The answer lies mostly in taxation and how we give a free ride to speculative gain. As I said, amputations, not bandaids.

To take your line one step further: when Mr. and Mrs. Yuppie sell off the Escalade or F350, they think they have "done their part". The damage started the day they BOUGHT it, but will continue until the vehicle is crushed. All they ever accomplish is passing the buck along to someone else while signalling their virtuous liberalism.

You just demonstrated my point about virtue signaling. You are willing to give up your Escalade or your Prius for a communter train (which even if the power it uses comes from a generator that runs on unicorn farts still puts out CO2), but there is no way in hell you are willing to change anything substantial in your life - which IMHO at the top of the list means commuting at all.

You are doing EXACTLY what I expect government and the citizenry at large seems to think is moving "forward" in resource and environmental management should be: you want to find "greener" ways of doing exactly the same thing - i..e. what the left accuses the "right" (as if there was such a thing in Canada). This is EXACTLY what Neil Austin accused Scheer of in the opening post - just the mindless Liberal/liberal interpretation of how to continue unsustainable lifestyles. Cities here are designed for personal transportation, adapted (poorly) for mass transit, but the real question is WTF are we doing moving millions of people every day probably two hours on the average to and from work?? We can only do such idiotic things because we live in a country with massive amounts of resources we have exploited (really, WASTED) to build a lifestyle that is ultra-energy and resource wasteful. The term "virtue signalling" precisely fits this kind of BS. So, you suppose parking your Escalade and taking a Prius from Barry to Toronto every day and then out to the Muskoka cottage for the weekend is really the answer???? IF (and that is a BIG IF) your job is really necessary, you simply need to live a short walk or bicycle ride from it. In greater detail: we really need to consider EVERY job and question weather it creates wealth and contributes to society or if it is simply an element of waste (and I would guess 2/3 fall under the latter) and simply stop doing them. It is really simple, for instance, to stop buying shit that has been built on one side of the globe and shipped half way around the world because it is cheaper than making it here. In stead, we need to return to making ONE good thing that will last at least a lifetime, instead of consuming hundreds of pieces of crap that all require resources to be shipped one way and product back the other, over, and over and over. Then, of course, there is the heard of elephants in the corner of the room. We simply can not continue the rate of population growth we have over the last century. Very few people in the "environmental movement" have the brains or the balls to address this - which is the REAL problem. https://www.google.com/search?q=world+population+historical+graph&rlz=1C1GCEA_enCA752CA752&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=iYteHE3FRTDeYM%3A%2CIhFQCKVy7G06BM%2C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kS-sOAGfVtGQDE0pEFJAbo7Ab1VPA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiUnPzTo9jjAhVbLs0KHWThDlYQ9QEwAHoECAkQAw#imgrc=z-XE6EEzEZ9aoM:&vet=1

I am not fluent but can get by in French. We chose to raise our children as fully bilingual. Language is a very stimulating part of culture and education and I think we are fortunate to have two offical languages in Canada. I just wish that was truly nation wide. that is about the ONLY positive thing one could say about PET.

without adequate access to tidewater the republic of western Canada would be in bad shape. churchill is too difficult failed to maintain railbed. opening port Nelson might work.

I don't think there is a country on earth that does not include racism as a primary element of its culture. To deny that would be foolish and dishonest. What Trump said about their home countries of these four women was 100 per cent accurate. As usual, he is playing the dems and their media moron pals like a well tuned violin ...er...fiddle.

One of my kids is a DVM in AB...and they use off peak private human diagnostics for small animals. I live in SK and we know a guy with badly damaged shoulders from RSI and surgical repairs. When worker's comp wants him assessed in a hurry they do not get in the gummint lineup, they fly him to AB and get an instant private MRI. He has told me of occasions where he sat for hours in SK waiting for an X ray in SK while the MRI he was booked to get weeks later sat fully staffed but unused in the same imaging facility. when he tried to get the staff to let him use that obviously available service he was sternly lectured about que jumping. just one example of how and why private service delivery is needed that can simply be left alone to bid to supply at best cost what government union facilities abuse with no consequence (to them, not patients. )

there is no need for the government to buy ANY new MRI, or cat scanners or anything else. the private sector can buy and operate all of the medical imaging equipment we need and in some provinces does just that. It is not socialized service delivery that we need, it is socialized medical insurance. In any other developed country they coexist happily.

I am looking at an analysis of some Athabasca crude and I am not seeing any associated CO2. Normally we see it associated with very light ends.. and that is what extra heavies and heavies don't have...or seldom have in significant amounts. that changes a bit as you go SW in the formation but fugitive emissions are regulated and controlled. I would not call Russia a has been...all of the same people resources and weapons are still there that made them a superpower and the guy steering the ship is a modern day Joe stalin. Saudi not only could become a nuclear power but may be forced into that with proliferation.

This thread will stall since the reasonable people will post more of what is here already and the rest will proclaim we are racists or whatever for daring to question the sunny ways of Marx and Lenin.

IF there was a quote of the day...week...year, etc. THIS would be it. I do have to concede the point that there needs to be an assessment of soundiness of mind to express said free will. Without that, it would fall to the state to afford protection to the person (such as SHOULD be the case for unborne children).

We quite gleefully pay for abortions by the thousands, and this is for children who did NOT express their wish to die. So, what's the big deal about one who does\?

Yeah, I think I did. Or, it is just pick on OW day for the hell of it.