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Post by clone on Apr 14, 2012 4:42:04 GMT -8
Alberta NDP only ones talking about oil sands upgrading during campaign April 12, 2012 Upgrading and refining oil sands bitumen in Alberta deserves to be hot election topic Political leaders are spending a lot of time talking about consuming Alberta’s wealth, but very little about creating it. Except for Brian Mason of the Alberta NDP, whose little band of democratic socialists is desperately trying to put oil sands bitumen upgrading on the campaign agenda. This story caught my eye because it turns on its head the usual NDP narrative of taxing, spending and government ownership. This campaign, the big spending promises are coming from the PCs and Wildrose, not the NDP. Policy analyst Steve Lafleur is busy writing a series for Beacon News that examines the platforms of each party and thus far says he’s appalled at pledges to increase spending on a wide range of government programs. more: beaconnews.ca/calgary/2012/04/alberta-ndp-only-ones-talking-about-oil-sands-upgrading-during-campaign/
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Post by enbridge on Apr 15, 2012 11:25:07 GMT -8
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Post by clone on Apr 22, 2012 5:41:14 GMT -8
Inventory report confirms oil-and-gas pollution rising April 11, 2012 Canada's official report last year generated controversy because of a decision to exclude a breakdown of oilsands emissions from the inventory, even though this emissions breakdown was included in the previous year's inventory. The missing details eventually revealed that the booming sector's pollution was dramatically rising to levels that would make it difficult for the federal government to meet its own annual emissions target of 607 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by 2020. Environment Minister Peter Kent has repeatedly declined to answer questions over the past year about who made the decision to exclude the details from the report. www.edmontonjournal.com/business/Inventory+report+confirms+pollution+rising/6441525/story.html
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Post by the script on Apr 22, 2012 11:50:15 GMT -8
Canada produces 2% of all emissions, with oilsands contributing approximately 0.2% of global CO2.
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Post by stasi brand on Apr 26, 2012 10:23:15 GMT -8
Critics pan instructions to Environment Canada scientists at Montreal conference April 23, 2012 Government media minders are being dispatched to an international polar conference in Montreal to monitor and record what Environment Canada scientists say to reporters. The scientists will present the latest findings on everything from seabirds to Arctic ice and Environment Canada’s media office plans to intervene when the media approaches the researchers, Postmedia News has learned. Media instructions, which are being described as a heavy-handed attempt to muzzle and intimidate the scientists, have been sent to the Environment Canada researchers attending the International Polar Year conference that started on Sunday and runs all week. “If you are approached by the media, ask them for their business card and tell them that you will get back to them with a time for (an) interview,” the Environment Canada scientists were told by email late last week. “Send a message to your media relations contact and they will organize the interview. They will most probably be with you during the interview to assist and record,” says the email obtained by Postmedia News. The memo, signed by Kristina Fickes, an Environment Canada senior communications adviser, goes on to say that recordings of interviews are to be forwarded to the department’s media relations headquarters in Ottawa. Fickes signs off with a signature tagline that says: "Let the sun shine in " more: www.canada.com/technology/Critics+instructions+Environment+Canada+scientists+Montreal+conference/6500175/story.html_______________________ Canada Restricts Comments by Climate Researchers April 25, 2012, 11:38 am The Canadian government apparently believes it has figured out how to tamp down the political controversy over climate change: Ban talk of it. Hundreds of researchers from around the world are attending the International Polar Year Conference this week in Montreal, and the Canadian government has ordered any researchers working for the government to avoid commenting on anything other than their own scientific work, and to give interviews only when their words can be recorded and a government media official is present. Opposition leaders and organizations representing writers are among those protesting. chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/canada-restricts-comments-by-climate-researchers/42693
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Post by 3 february 2012 on Apr 26, 2012 10:35:37 GMT -8
Feds, Alberta to spend $150M on oilsands environment monitoring First posted: Friday, February 03, 2012 09:39 PM EST | Updated: Friday, February 03, 2012 09:58 PM EST EDMONTON - The oil and gas industry, Ottawa and the province of Alberta will spend up to $150 million to “ramp up” oilsands environment monitoring over the next three years. “In our view what gets measured gets done,” federal Environment Minister Peter Kent said Friday. “We need the best way of collecting scientific information needed to do our jobs and to ensure that accountable and transparent monitoring is in place in the oilsands.” more: www.torontosun.com/2012/02/03/feds-alberta-to-spend-150m-on-oilsands-environment-monitoring...largest industrial project in human history.
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One World Trade Center
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Post by One World Trade Center on May 5, 2012 10:11:00 GMT -8
Tories cut environment panel March 31, 2012 ...members of the government, including Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird and Environment Minister Peter Kent, applauded, grinned and chuckled in the House of Commons Friday as NDP MP Dennis Bevington slammed Thursday's federal budget for pulling the plug on the panel that employs about 30 people. www.canada.com/Tories+environment+panel/6391215/story.html
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Post by NE on May 6, 2012 11:42:52 GMT -8
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Post by deforestation CCS on May 8, 2012 14:31:01 GMT -8
Caribou in Alberta's Oil Sands Stressed by Human Activity, Not Wolves, Research SuggestsScienceDaily (June 22, 2011) — Caribou have been dwindling in Alberta for several decades and some scientists believe they could be gone entirely in 70 years. In the area of the petroleum-rich Athabasca Oil Sands in the northern part of the Canadian province, some say they could disappear in as little as 30 years. Efforts have begun to remove wolves from parts of Alberta to reduce caribou predation, but new research suggests that human activity related to oil production and the timber industry could be more important than wolves in the caribou population decline. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110622102646.htm Study: Absence of large carnivores throughout North America allows overpopulation of large grazers, damaging ecosystems Submitted by admin on Thu, 04/12/2012 - 10:25 CORVALLIS, Ore. – A survey on the loss in the Northern Hemisphere of large predators, particularly wolves, concludes that current populations of moose, deer, and other large herbivores far exceed their historic levels and are contributing to disrupted ecosystems. The research, published today by scientists from Oregon State University, examined 42 studies done over the past 50 years. It found that the loss of major predators in forest ecosystems has allowed game animal populations to greatly increase, crippling the growth of young trees and reducing biodiversity. This also contributes to deforestation and results in less carbon sequestration, a potential concern with climate change. www.georgewright.org/node/6044full story: Loss of predators affecting ecosystem health oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2012/apr/loss-predators-northern-hemisphere-affecting-ecosystem-health
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Post by clone on Jun 1, 2012 17:25:37 GMT -8
Government media minders are being dispatched to an international polar conference in Montreal to monitor and record what Environment Canada scientists say to reporters. The scientists will present the latest findings on everything from seabirds to Arctic ice and Environment Canada’s media office plans to intervene when the media approaches the researchers, Postmedia News has learned. No data, no worries! NC Considers Making Sea Level Rise Illegal May 30, 2012 blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/2012/05/30/nc-makes-sea-level-rise-illegal/
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Post by clone on Jun 2, 2012 9:16:40 GMT -8
A 'savings' of $2 million - Feds sink key science program Posted: 05/18/2012 1:00 AM "This isn't a Canadian jewel. It truly is an international jewel," said University of Alberta biologist Vincent St. Louis, who began his career as an undergraduate at the ELA and just returned from a research visit two weeks ago. "Everyone in Canada should value the research being done at the experimental lakes regardless of political tendency, because everyone values clean drinking water, nice lakes to swim in, fishing." www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/feds-sink-key-science-program-152000845.html
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Post by moabiter on Jun 7, 2012 8:48:05 GMT -8
december 12, 2011 www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/12/11/weston-carson-lobbying.htmlThat's when he left to head up a newly created Alberta-based think-tank, the Canada School of Energy and Environment, supposedly to help develop new sources of green energy. Ex-PMO aide Carson's lobbying probe completeLocated at the University of Calgary, the school was funded with a special $15-million grant from the Harper government. Carson was its first head. Only weeks after his appointment was announced, Carson was seconded back into Harper's service as a senior adviser during the 2008 federal election campaign, and for several months after that, he was back working in the PM's office. During that time, he appeared to have lobbied high-ranking bureaucrats to help him obtain a $25-million federal grant to establish *another new research institute — Carbon Management Canada* — which he would also go on to head. That prompted Harper's then chief of staff, Guy Giorno, to write two letters to the federal ethics commissioner in an apparent attempt to contain any damage from Carson's actions. Carson returned to his post as head of the Canada School of Energy in February 2009, changing the mandate of the organization from green energy research to public relations strategies aimed at cleaning up the image of the oil sands.******************* The centre is a tri-party collaboration between the Universities of Alberta, Calgary and Lethbridge, whose original mandate was to coordinate and support research and commercialization in energy and environment through institutes established at each university. www.cautbulletin.ca/en_article.asp?SectionID=1332&SectionName=President%27s%20Column&VolID=322&VolumeName=No%205&VolumeStartDate=5/17/2011&EditionID=34&EditionName=Vol%2058&EditionStartDate=1/13/2011&ArticleID=3253********************* �This can become the go-to place in Canada for research into the environment and alternative and clean energy,� said Carson. Each of the founding universities has a coordinating structure within its institution to organize its efforts, and expected contributions, to the CSEE. At the U of A, this entity is known as the School of Energy and Environment; at the U of C, the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy; and at the U of L, the Water Institute. www.uleth.ca/notice/display.html?b=300&s=10345********************* greenwash news...Mulroney: National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (March 31st, 2011). NRTEE was created by Mulroney in 1988 in response to the international Brundtland Commission, which cemented the idea of sustainable development in the minds of policy makers. It produces policy analysis reports on environmental issues, including water, climate change, and air quality. And as of 2011, it too is chock full of Conservatives with at best a vague connection to environmental science. sixthestate.net/?p=1387Energy policy during Alberta's provincial election. Interesting. Ostrich Alberta Burying our heads in the tarsands Published April 19, 2012 by Geoff Ghitter & Noel Keough in Viewpoint Well that was interesting. We just finished an online search wondering where climate change, humanity’s most profound challenge, and renewable energy, the world’s fastest growing energy sector, fit into Alberta’s provincial election party platforms. The result? “Reader has finished searching the document, no matches were found.” The only platform to even address climate change directly is Evergreen’s. The party also has a solid renewable energy strategy. The New Democrats have a modest proposal for a $50-million Renewable Energy Development Fund. It seems that in Alberta we truly have our heads in the (tar)sand. Defenders of current energy policy rightly point out that the 169 billion barrels of recoverable oil is enormous — the third largest recoverable reserve in the world. But take your head out of the sand for just a moment and you would see that even this impressive reserve pales in comparison to the carbon-free energy contained in the sunshine that bathes us and in the winds blowing through our hair, day after day after day — forever. We typically talk about energy in units of joules, megawatt-hours or barrels of oil. So let’s start with barrels of oil. Calgarians’ total energy use, for heating and lighting our homes, driving our automobiles and running our economy, is the equivalent of approximately 40 barrels per person per year. Imagine a family of three with its yearly stock of 120 barrels of oil in the backyard. That’s a lot of energy. But when you crunch the numbers you would find that a typical 25-foot infill lot in inner-city Calgary has the equivalent of 240 barrels of oil in the form of solar energy raining down on it every year. If half that energy were harvested it would cover the energy requirements of that same family. For years, residents of Freiburg, Germany have been receiving cheques in the mail for the excess energy their solar panel-adorned Passivhauses feed into the grid.That’s pretty impressive. Now imagine how much energy falls on southern Alberta. We’ll use the land use districts of the South Saskatchewan and Red Deer Region (104,000 square kilometres) as our example. If you do the math you discover that over a mere 11 months those two districts receive the solar energy equivalent of total recoverable oil from the tarsands. Wind energy, though not quite as plentiful, is also impressive. With wind turbines covering 10 per cent of the South Saskatchewan Land Use District, generating energy a modest 30 per cent of the time, we could harvest the equivalent of the recoverable tarsand reserves in about eight years plus a month. Do we have the capacity to realize this energy bonanza right now? No. Is it economically feasible by conventional economic analysis? For wind, it is. The City of Calgary has saved millions of dollars in the last 10 years by contracting to run our LRT on wind energy. As for solar, in some parts of the world where it’s really sunny and conventional energy is relatively expensive, it’s already competitive. For years, residents of Freiburg, Germany have been receiving cheques in the mail for the excess energy their solar panel-adorned Passivhauses feed into the grid. A decade of government subsidies to pay above the market rate for non-carbon energy has helped bring solar energy almost to parity with conventional sources and the German industrial powerhouse is poised to sell the world its 21st century energy technology. The price of power generated from photovoltaic technology has fallen from about five dollars per kilowatt hour in 1978 to 20 cents today. By 2020 the price is expected to fall to about 2 to 3 cents per kw-h. Efficiency gains in the technology are a big part of the story. A typical solar panel in 2000 was 10 per cent efficient. Today, they average 15 per cent and by 2020 are expected to exceed 20 per cent. The main ingredient in the panels, silicon dioxide, is the second most abundant element on Earth. While we plow our windfall oil and gas profits back into the technology of yesterday, or give it away as Ralph bucks (or its new incarnation, Dani Dollars), other countries are developing the technology of tomorrow. Last year, Europe installed more PV electric capacity than any other energy source. China installed more wind capacity than all the rest of the world combined. As these energy sources mature, will Europe and China still want to buy dirty oil? This generation has the potential to capitalize on the single biggest business opportunity in human history — the shift to a low-carbon economy. We have the opportunity to confront the biggest ethical challenge in the history of humanity — the irreversible altering of our climate to one that is more hostile to human life. The challenge of converting even a fraction of that abundant clean energy into usable form is a challenge worthy of Albertans. But all of this will not happen without bold and visionary public policy. In order to realize the potential for a renewable future, our political parties need to pull their heads out of the sand and let the sun shine in. Geoff Ghitter teaches urban studies at the University of Calgary. He can be reached at geoff.ghitter@gmail.com. Noel Keough is an assistant professor in the faculty of environmental design at the university, and is co-founder of Sustainable Calgary Society. He can be reached at nkeough@ucalgary.ca. www.ffwdweekly.com/article/news-views/viewpoint/ostrich-alberta-9028/___________________ A few years ago, people were saying that collective drilling expertise in the area could be great for geothermal energy development.
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Post by RIO20 on Jun 21, 2012 14:29:26 GMT -8
Rio+20: Canada shielding fossil fuel subsidies at Earth Summit June 19, 2012 David Sawyer, an environmental economist and director of climate change and energy at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, has estimated the federal government could save more than $1.3 billion per year if it phases out all of the existing subsidies for the oil and gas industries. Former Conservative environment minister Jim Prentice, who left politics in November 2010 to accept an executive position at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, had previously urged Finance Minister Jim Flaherty in a memorandum to phase out the oil and gas subsidies, honouring a commitment made by Canada with the G20 countries. But Flaherty has protected many of the existing tax incentive programs for oil and gas exploration and development. www.canada.com/business/Canada+shielding+fossil+fuel+subsidies+Earth+Summit/6794291/story.html
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Post by oh god more facts on Jul 12, 2012 15:53:27 GMT -8
Harper deploys diplomats to counter U.S. climate change campaign - 2 hours ago OTTAWA — The Harper government has deployed a network of Canadian diplomats to lobby Fortune 500 companies in the United States in order to counter a global warming campaign launched by an environmental advocacy group targeting the oilsands industry, says a newly-released internal memorandum from Natural Resources Canada. o.canada.com/2012/07/12/harper-deploys-diplomats-to-counter-u-s-climate-change-campaign/________________________ Courtesy of Manning/ U of C Puke-Propaganda Centre: Carleton U concedes problems with $15M donor deal for politics schoolPosted: 3:33 PM | Comments: 4 (including replies) | Last Modified: 5:56 PM Carleton quietly released the donor agreement on the Friday afternoon before Canada Day after stonewalling The Canadian Press for almost a year to keep it under wraps. The contract reveals the Riddell Foundation effectively appointed three of five people on a steering committee. That committee was given sweeping power over the graduate program's budget, academic hiring, executive director and curriculum. The contract reveals the Riddell Foundation effectively appointed three of five people on a steering committee. That committee was given sweeping power over the graduate program's budget, academic hiring, executive director and curriculum. Said Turk: "That's just unheard of." Manning, the former Reform party founder, chairs the committee, while his former chief of staff Cliff Fryers sits on it along with Chris Froggatt, the former chief of staff to Conservative cabinet minister John Baird, and two university representatives. www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/carleton-u-concedes-problems-with-15m-donor-deal-for-politics-school-162262105.htmlRobocalls and the petrostate - April 2012 Fryer wrote, “Topics covered included voter identification. Discussion ensued about suppression techniques. Instructors explained voter suppression tactics were borrowed from those used by the US Republican Party. Many kinds of suppression calls were canvassed. Another instructor gave detailed explanations of how robocalls worked, techniques for recording messages, plus costs involved. He distributed his business card upon request. Instructors made it clear that robocalling and voter suppression were an acceptable and normal part of winning political campaigns. With election ethics like this, a more compelling case for changing to a system of proportional representation where each and every vote counts is hard to imagine.” focusonline.ca/?q=node/355
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Post by olympic oil days on Jul 26, 2012 16:57:20 GMT -8
Premier's Olympics trip dings taxpayers for $83,800 CBC News Posted: Jul 26, 2012 11:19 AM MT Last Updated: Jul 26, 2012 1:16 PM MT Read 73 comments Alberta Premier Alison Redford's trip to London during the Olympics will cost taxpayers $83,800. Redford will spend five days in London beginning Sunday along with Tourism Minister Christine Cusanelli and Culture Minister Heather Klimchuk and three staff members. Redford will not be attending any sporting events, said the premier's spokesman Jay O'Neill. The province is hosting three receptions and Redford will be delivering speeches at two others — a "Canadian Energy Day" hosted by the federal Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and a Canada-UK Chamber of Commerce function, he said. more: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2012/07/26/edmonton-premier-olympics.html
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