Jump to content
A Note on Topic Titles – Be Clear & Descriptive!

ReeferMadness

Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    3,953

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by ReeferMadness

  1. ReeferMadness
    Five of the occupiers (including both Bundy brothers) were arrested and one killed. Looks like the Feds are shutting them down.
  2. ReeferMadness
    Quebec residents place a lot of value on the environment. They're the only non-municipal jurisdiction I know of in North America to ban fracking. They also have a lot of clean, renewable electricity. WRT the characterization of of the dispute as Quebec vs the ROC, I should remind everyone that BC is not fond of dilbit either. Nor are First Nations communities in BC or elsewhere. Northern Gateway is the subject of a dozen and a half lawsuits. There are huge protests over Trans Mountain as BC municipalities don't want dilbit being pumped by their back doors either. And need I remind people that the Americans, who suffered the Kalamazoo River nightmare, just rejected Keystone. They know better than anyone that dilbit is essentially impossible to clean up when it's spilled in water. It's been over 5 years and the mess isn't cleaned up yet. Residents of Montreal are rightly concerned about their drinking water. Mayors Nenshi and Iveson reportedly want science to drive the debate. I completely agree. Science doesn't know how to clean up dilbit after it has sunk in water. Unfortunately, I need to link to an American source for that - it seem like the agencies in Canada aren't interested in knowing how bad dilbit is.
  3. ReeferMadness
    I wouldn't either. It certainly can be a tough job but the question is whether we need $100k a year people for everything that they're doing.
  4. ReeferMadness
    Which may mean they are even worse over-policed. I don't understand how the policing ratio is increasing even as the crime rate drops.
  5. ReeferMadness
    Can you arrange for history to categorically demonstrate that for the rest of us? If not, could you provide some citations?
  6. ReeferMadness
    Actually, you're trying to have a discussion about opposition to pipelines while somehow avoiding the reason that there is opposition to pipelines. Maybe next you could start a forum on the execution of Marie Antoinette and insist that nobody be allowed to discuss the plight of the peasants. Fossil fuels apologists insist that nobody could ever live without fossil fuels. When confronted with proof they're wrong, they turn away and change the subject. If climate change plays out the way scientists predict it will, creating tens of millions of rising see refugees and rampant water shortages, there might be real enormous wars. Glad you find it so amusing though. You go right on and crank up your butt warmer in your SUV and don't think about a thing. You clearly have "taken a side", You're just not comfortable enough defending it.
  7. ReeferMadness
    The world will be a tiny bit less awash in surplus oil?
  8. ReeferMadness
    Shhhh!! You're going to destroy their mantra. "Harper was a great fiscal manager. Harper was a great fiscal manager. Harper was a great fiscal manager"
  9. ReeferMadness
    Honestly, I have no idea where all that money went. OK, that's not true. I know they spent a lot of advertisements.
  10. ReeferMadness
    Do they use 100k a year police officers as liquor inspectors?
  11. ReeferMadness
    When it comes to budget cuts, police seem to always be sacrosanct. I've seen cuts to teachers, social workers, scientists, all kinds of admin staff and almost every other type of government employee. But not police. Nor, come to think of it, fireman. This editorial claims that policing costs have risen faster than the rate of inflation in Canada (at all 3 levels of government) despite a falling crime rate. It also claims that police resources are used inefficiently with $100k a year policeman doing all kinds of work that could be done by lesser trained staff. Perhaps when marijuana is legalized, that would be a good opportunity to examine policing needs. Maybe there is an opportunity to redirect resources towards supporting people, not prosecuting them.
  12. ReeferMadness
    This gets shadier and shadier. CSIS was involved and is trying to keep the case under wraps. And Nuttall was known to the police as someone with mental health issues.
  13. ReeferMadness
    Sigh. What I said what that your characterization of the term toxic sludge was inaccurate. As it was. Get past it. Funny, I heat my home without fossil fuels and know people who drive cars without them. There is an enormous battle being waged between people who are making enormous fortunes from mining and selling this toxic material and people who want to move towards safer and more sustainable alternatives. For someone who claims to have no interest in the fight, you sure seem to be helping one side. I find your analysis trite and superficial. Before Northern Gateway was effectively killed by Trudeau's tanker ban, it was subject to 18 First Nation lawsuits. It would have been in court forever. Trudeau made few specific environmental commitments - a lot of it was quite general. He certainly campaigned on higher environmental standards than Harper but unless you deliberately poured oil on all the lakes and set fire to the forests, I'm not sure how he could possibly have had lower standards. Trudeau did promise to work with provinces to implement a price on carbon (in progress) and fix the environmental review process (to be determined). First, he hasn't approved anything - he's just weighed in on the debate. Second, this will only "twerk the heads" of people who made up their minds about him without paying attention to what he actually said. It seems to for you and others who are working off of flawed perceptions instead of actual promises or actions.
  14. ReeferMadness
    Wow, you never quit. Do you run your life according to some magical happiness formula? If the formula accounted for all of the damage done by fossil fuels, and if the formula actually works, you might be on to something. But wait. Turns out the formula is useless. Back to the drawing board.....
  15. ReeferMadness
    I never said it was as simple as a definition. The dilbit that people seem to assume they have an inalienable right to transport anywhere they want is both toxic (not to mention carcinogenic and mutagenic) and is being transported in huge volumes. You're the one who keeps comparing it to other things that come in tiny amounts - as you continue to do here. For a period of time, it will be. How long that period of time continues depends heavily on the heroic stands taken by the likes of Coderre, First Nations and environmentalists. Your attempts to limit the scope of debate notwithstanding. Illegal and legal is not the same as wrong and right. It's a matter time and wisdom. Once upon at time, it wasn't illegal to sell tobacco to kids. Now, tobacco is recognized as an addictive substance and people use it mostly because it's addictive. You can choose to see your addiction to fossil fuels differently than peoples' addictions to tobacco but that doesn't make it so. The comparison with tobacco is particularly relevant when you look at how the companies fight laws and regulations. The fossil fuel giants are fighting regulations tooth and nail, as well as burying evidence and denying the harm that their product is causing. Exactly the way the tobacco companies did it. In some cases, aided by the same morally bankrupt "scientists". I suspect that Quebec and Alberta will toss rhetoric back and forth. This is going to drag on for a while so it's unlikely to go nuclear anytime toon. As for Trudeau, environmentalists will be disappointed but nobody will be terribly surprised. I roll my eyes when people refer to Trudeau as if he's some sort of socialist. When it comes to most things, he's a centrist. Trudeau's not really the problem anyway - the problem is the millions of people who can't (or won't) wrap their heads around the need to quit fossil fuels. Unlike Harper, Trudeau is playing the middle and if polls show that people support moving off fossil fuels, that's where he will go. Unfortunately, most people know that what we're doing is unsustainable but are too afraid to confront it.
  16. ReeferMadness
    And yet I keep hearing those same fans heaping glory on Harper for getting us through the recession. Exactly what he did, nobody has ever been clear.
  17. ReeferMadness
    Funny you should mention amounts because that's exactly what makes your comparison of dilbit to vitamins so ridiculous. If someone were to want to pipe 35 million gallons per day of vitamin concentrate, you can bet environmentalists would want an assessment of the consequences of a leak. Fortunately nobody is dumb enough to want to do that. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for dilbit. Of course, fossil fuel addicts like to limit the discussion to the false choice of train vs pipeline. The real discussion about the continued use of oil is how long and how much. In fact, all of the serious science on the topic (I know, you got comfortable ignoring science during the halcyon years of Harper) says that we need to get off of fossil fuels and the sooner the better. And you think that you can somehow divorce the long list of health, environmental and safety effects from the provincial trade discussions? That would be like Ontario tobacco farmers trying to sell their product to kids in Alberta and Saskatchewan and insisting that the health discussions should be separated from the trade issue. lol Good luck with that.
  18. ReeferMadness
    You're really fond of unattributed quotations. Are you afraid to debate people who might run circles around you? General agreement, not total agreement. There are plenty of people in the middle who can be swayed. Right wingers have become used to 9 years of "my way or the highway" Harper who, by the way, accomplished absolutely nothing in the way of pipeline building. . You need to start dealing with reality. And the reality is that people aren't going to sit by and accept the risk of huge toxic spills for no benefit. That includes the First Nations. Most of the profit from these deals is disappearing into the fingers of foreign investors who could care less about what happens to the part of the biosphere that is Canada. Also, you're wrong on another point. Trudeau is already on record siding with Wynne and Notley in being in favor of the pipeline expansion. When I read through the comments around here, I see the bitterness of Harper losing is clouding peoples' abilities to even see what is going on.
  19. ReeferMadness
    I don't know what you did at CRA but clearly if you can "honestly laugh" at the suggestion, it clearly wasn't senior enough to know what goes on at the political level. The fact that the CRA was given funding specifically to audit charities is a matter of public record. So, if you want to "honestly" do anything, the first thing you can do is admit that whatever your experience at CRA, you are clearly wrong in this instance. Despite nobody having seen an example of a right-wing group like the Fraser Institute being subject to an audit CRA denies that it targeted left wing groups. Yet, although the CRA claimed to have been very careful to ensure that the targets reflected a cross-section of Canadian charities, curiously, no records are kept of what this even means. At least one independent researcher cast doubt on the objectivity of CRA with respect to these audits Yep. Sounds perfectly above board to me.
  20. ReeferMadness
    I think the word you're looking for is invention. In fact, the main reasons that Canada did as well as it did in the recession is that Harper wasn't elected sooner. He likely would have deregulated the banking sector, got us into the Iraq war that is still bankrupting the US and put us into a deficit situation even before the recession. If Harper gave honest advice it would be something like this: The way I steered through a global recession is that I inherited a massive surplus from a previous government, inherited sound banking regulations from a previous government (which I opposed at the time), wasn't mired in the Iraq war thanks to a previous government and was in a time when world commodity prices rebounded quickly.
  21. ReeferMadness
    The definition of toxic sludge is hardly a scientific issue. Use dictionary.com. It's not that hard. Good point. I'll take vitamins - you drink dilbit. No, I don't. I do drive but not a lot. And if gasoline and other fossil fuels were taxed to reflect the level of damage they do, it would spur the development of electric vehicles to the point where they'd be affordable. Seems like I've hit a nerve here. I'll give you time to vent. I'll dismiss the false choice you've offered and focus on analysis. Go look at the scientific analysis on the long terms costs of our addiction to fossil fuels. There's plenty of it out there. Ohhhhh.... They did the analysis on the cheapest way to ship the sludge but nobody bothered to do the analysis on what would happen when it spilled. Convenient, that. It's the new way of doing business. Don't bother to look at the risks and then when the worst happens look surprised and say we've never dealt with that before.
  22. ReeferMadness
    Here you go. Once you understand the word, then maybe you can participate in a discussion about it. If digging toxic sludge out of Northern Alberta is crucial to Canada, then we're screwed. Because it won't continue forever. The world is moving on. It might be 5 years, 10 years, 50 years or 100. But it will stop. What then?
  23. ReeferMadness
    Harper would never get his hands dirty himself. Instead he sent CRA to intimidate charities he didn't like. He branded environmental protesters as terrorists. He simply refused to engage with the 60% - 70% of Canadians who disagreed with him (and in many cases deeply despised him).
  24. ReeferMadness
    So, I can tell you didn't do the research - that's very disappointing. Not only that but you seem to lack an understanding of the words "toxic" and "sludge". Toxic means poisonous, which dilbit certainly is. Sludge means mud-like. (In fairness, dilbit isn't mud-like because it has all of those carcinogenic, mutagenic solvents added to it to make it flow. The bitumen is mud-like. So sue me). So, how do you come to the conclusion that toxic sludge is a useless waste product? If you have a need for a carcinogenic, mutagenic, biotoxic substance that is almost impossible to clean up once it's dropped in water, then dilbit is probably a perfect fit. Would you like some in your backyard? You think you have me on this? I know little about Premier Wynne and I care about as much. She's a politician so I expect she goes along with a whole bunch of stuff she doesn't like to get whatever she does want. It sounds like this is very important to you so I'll let you answer your own question. I couldn't even begin to guess and as luck would have it I don't have to. Trudeau has sided with Notley and Wynne on this. It's not really surprising. Like Wynne, Trudeau is a politician. Whether he really believes what he's saying or whether he is being careful to not alienate Alberta is impossible to know. Maybe he really believes his own bullshit about being able to protect the environment while still being the world's leader in purveying toxic sludge. But one thing is certain. Unlike Harper, Trudeau is showing he can make common cause with his provincial counterparts.
  25. ReeferMadness
    Do I detect a certain bitter tone? Why is it so many people are so determined to preserve Alberta's status as diggers of sludge and inheritors of the world's largest toxic hole in the ground? Alberta was there before the oil was discovered and will be there after the sludge is gone. Or worthless. Did you just call me an eco marxist? You flatterer you. What are you trying to get from me? Actually, Marx doesn't really do it for me. All those workers throwing off chains - it seems so medieval and tiresome. Tsk. Dishonest. Now them's fightin' words. That's OK. I've been called enough things enough times to know which ones have merit, which ones I need to think about some more and which are just the empty words of people who don't get it. Dishonest is the pretense that we can keep on endlessly expanding in a finite world. It's the delusion that we can keep on poisoning the biosphere because we'll always have the technology to fix it by time it comes back to us. It's the biggest of the big lies: that Russian experiment started in 1919 had some real association with socialism and that unregulated capitalism cannot only coexist with but is somehow synonymous with democracy and freedom. Dishonest is the belief that we understand enough to mess with the physical world of climate and biospheres but somehow the human-invented world of economic activity is too complicated for governments to get involved in and so we need to let markets regulate themselves.
×
×
  • Create New...