ReeferMadness

There actually is a difference. The First Nations are separate nations (see if you can spot the clue in the name!) and there is international recognition of that. That's also why they consistently win in the courts. Unlike you, we didn't massacre the native population - we just kept on making deals and breaking them (or in the case of BC, displacing them without making deals). That's why we still today have an unbelievable mess of unsettled land claims and a mostly clueless population of Canadians who don't understand their own history. Unfortunately, a bunch of clueless hillbillies whose sole unifying characteristic is misinterpreting your constitution don't qualify for nationhood. Perhaps they could register as a religion.

Good for you. And when you have your own planet, you can go ahead and pollute it all you want. Personally, I'm not in favour of wrecking the planet just to avoid some hypothetical worst case slowdown in the economy. Get back to me when the long term studies are done.

Well, isn't that nice. So, you have no objection to having your backyard coated in dilbit then? After all, you wouldn't want to worry about some "unknown harm" that may be caused by a "hypothetical worst case scenario".

Do you ever read anything? They were called the tar sands for decades until someone figured out that the term oil sands sounded nicer. Very good, then. So you think that it's OK to spread this stuff around until someone proves that there is significant harm. Sort of like the precautionary principle in reverse. Since you're OK with that, I think you should volunteer to have the stuff spread in your backyard! After all, there's no studies that show significant harm, right?

"oil sands". I see the PR people in Alberta have trained you well. Tell me - do you think the editors of Scientific American have bought into the "phony cause" of the tar sands? Here's what they have to report about dilbit. Are you going to dredge the Strait of Georgia?

It's geared to capturing money and you can't get money from poor people. So, yes, it is geared to the rich.

That's it - the yeehawdis camped in a wildlife refuge are "freedom fighters". Just like the Mujahideen when Reagan supported them.

Awwww. Don't like the performance of your energy shares lately? That's OK. It's all Rachel Notley's fault.

And you know that how exactly? Here. Just like fracking fluid. The good people who poison the environment don't even have to tell us what's in the poison because it's a "trade secret". How convenient. Too simple? I just love the way "some people" pull shit out of their butt, never back up their claims with any links and then sneer at those who do.

It's not as bad as dilbit but I agree gasoline is nasty stuff too. Hey, I have a great idea! How about all the people who are afraid to let go of fossil fuels actually open their minds to the possibilities and help figure out how to reduce and gradually eliminate them? I'm sure once people yank their heads out of the sand and actually look for solutions instead of problems, it's easier than they think.

There are a lot of people who just assumed the good times for the energy sector would never end. They made lots of money when the price of oil went up and patted themselves on the back because they were so smart to invest in it. Now that the price of oil is crashed, they need someone to blame and it obviously isn't themselves. ETA: and your point about the manufacturing sector is well made. Oil exports artificially inflated the Canadian dollar and contrary to what many were claiming, it hurt the manufacturing sector. Hard to say how much of it will rebound now that the dollar has sunk again.

Tarsand sludge may not be explosive itself but the toxic solvents they add to make it flow are. Check out the MSDS sheet for dilbit. Carcinogenic. Mutagenic. Emrbyotoxic. No, thanks.

Kevin O'Leary is Canada's Donald Trump - minus the money. A million dollars. hahahahahahahahahahahaha. Think of O'Leary as mini-me saying 1 MILLION DOLLARS. hahahahahahahaha

Again - you don't bother to read what I wrote. Why even bother with your idiotic response? Stop wasting my time until you go and read what happened in Kalamazoo.

Yeah - and then they presume to lecture people on economics.

And sex has nothing to do with babies.

I don't think anyone should be shipping dilbit anywhere. Period. If they can't refine it in Alberta, leave it in the ground. Look at the nightmare in Kalamazoo.

Hopefully, that's the case. Albertans are clever enough to do more than dig toxic sludge out of the ground, dilute it with solvents and pack it in a pipeline. Or are you saying they're all stupid? spend their money now..... that's all that matters to some people. Do you know what happens when dilbit is dumped in water? The people in Kalamazoo, Michigan found out the hard way. It separates as the lighter solvent floats and evaporates, leaving the heavier sludge to sink beneath the waves. Enbridge is spending over a billion dollars dredging ponds, creeks and rivers around Kalamazoo cleaning up a 1 million gallon spill. If a supertanker carrying 80 million gallons of dilbit goes down in the Strait of Georgia, the beaches of Vancouver and Victoria would probably be fouled permanently. Property values would be destroyed. Cancer rates would go up. Sludge would be washing up for decades, if not centuries. If you sold all of the tar sands oil tomorrow, you couldn't fix it. Are you going to come out and dredge the Strait of Georgia?

I don't think he wrote such a thing - in fact he said that sea level in Miami would likely be 3 feet higher in 2100. It doesn't matter - I won't waste time debating people who believe the world is flat. If you think the sea level has changed in 50 years, go gather some actual information before you come back.

Ah - economics. ekka gnaw mix Economics is what told Alberta to stop building refineries, which provide stable, good paying jobs to well educated professionals and concentrate on digging toxic sludge out of the tar sands, diluting it with even more toxic solvent and shipping it as fast as they could. And anyone who could stomach enough schooling to get a pipe-fitters ticket and is willing to live in (or commute to) Fort Mac can earn 200K a year. Economics is what drove the madness of people living in Newfoundland and commuting to Alberta for work. Maybe if you guys had hung on for the rest of the economics course, you would have seen the part where oil is a volatile commodity and when prices go down, those trades people find themselves earning $500 a week on pogey - until it runs out. I can explain that. It's ekka gnaw mix again! Back when globalization was an emerging phenomenon, progressive groups like the Council of Canadians pointed out that manufacturing would naturally move to the places on earth where labour and environmental standards were lowest, and this would hold down those standards in the developed world. And of course right wing economists (what other kind are there, really) poo-pooed the idea. But that's exactly what happened. Economics is what has moved the production of our cheap crap to India and China and since it is so price sensitive, they need to generate their electricity in the absolutely cheapest way possible. Coal. And here is the kicker. The CO2 emissions generated by those massive freighters that haul cheap crap here and haul toxic "recycling" waste back accrue to nobody!! In the Paris accord, nobody is responsible for ocean going traffic. It's actually VERY easy to fix. Just use ekka gnaw mix. Apply a carbon price at the source. Every scoop of sludge from the tar sands, every barrel of oil at the wellhead, every BTU of natural gas (whether it's captured or vented), every bucket of coal dug out of the ground is taxed. Then suddenly, it's not so cheap to get all the manufacturing done in China and the world rights itself. The fix is easy but the right wingers don't have the intestinal fortitude to confront it.

The economy will be geared to the rich as long as there are rich people. It would be that way even if there were no politicians and no bureaucrats.

I'm not talking about Federal Law Enforcement. I'm talking about these guys What a farce. The Hammonds have disowned the Bundys and now the Bundys are disowning these guys.

So, the Kinder Morgan deal isn't dead, it's just sleeping.

No need. The list of companies that are working on self-driving car sharing services includes General Motors and Lyft. Tim can hug the past as tightly as he likes but the future will come anyway.

You figured it out. I'm a sustainability consultant for a company that installs solar panels on electric cars. Business isn't great so I'm hoping for a government takeover.