Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Why Keystone Democrat too nuts to caricature is a bad idea

This is not a parody. Democrat congressman Raul Grijalva on why the Keystone Pipeline is a bad idea:



I love the equations on the whiteboard behind him. And how he repeatedly demonstrates that rocks don't float. And the assistant with the goggles (perhaps to protect him from getting any "Democrat crazy" splashed in his eyes).

"Well", you say, "every organization has its loons. You can't blame progressive Democrats for this guy. He's an outlier"

Heh. Congressman Grijalva is Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He's the leader of the Progressive Democrats in Congress.

Many Democrat groups are pushing for his nomination for Secretary of the Interior.

"A coalition of 238 environmental, ethnic and other groups sent a letter to President Obama Monday recommending Rep. Raúl Grijalva as the next interior secretary..."

He's a very senior player in Congress. He's writing your laws, and has a bright future in government.

Not all of your Progressive government overlords are dour. Some are nuts.

13 comments:

  1. Agreed. The video is just silly. According to the video, the pipeline is supposed to be transporting the oil sands. It has to be treated on site using heat. The original proposal back in the '50s was to use a small nuclear bomb to create a crater which would then fill with the released oil.

    Now that abundant shale gas has been discovered, so much that America doesn't know what to do with it and is proposing to become an energy exporter again, it has become feasible to use natural gas to heat the sands.

    This means that a lot of energy has to be used to produce energy. Something like the equivalent of a barrel of oil to produce 5 barrels of oil - similar to shale oil - both borderline economically.

    Even without worries of AGW, it would be better to use the shale gas directly for energy production, convert transport to electric vehicles as much as possible, and to use conventional oil for transport that can't be electric driven (such as planes).

    There are also environmental concerns with the project. Large lakes of toxic tars and the pollution of pristine Canadian rivers.

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    Replies
    1. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyJune 4, 2013 at 7:04 PM

      I agree with what you're saying, backflow. We should only use energy sources that consume no energy to produce energy.

      Fortunately, we have two: solar and wind. Solar panels and windmills are produced by elves in Middle Earth. You can see a photo of the Rivendell mine here.

      Delete
    2. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyJune 4, 2013 at 7:10 PM

      Oh, wait. There is one more. The semi-sentient race of gasbags from the planet Ecotard can produce vast quantities of hot air.

      Delete
    3. Georgie,

      You're an idiot. You always have to use energy to get energy. Back in the 19th century in Pensyllvania it was possible to 'mine' oil virtually with just a shovel. In the Middle East, it takes the equivalent of one barrel of oil to produce 20 barrels of oil.

      In America, it's increasing rapidly towards one barrel for 5 barrels, which is a marked disadvantage compared to Saudi Arabia.

      Delete
    4. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyJune 4, 2013 at 7:21 PM

      blowhard: " You always have to use energy to get energy"

      You do?!?!?!

      Hm. Obama lied, my dreams died. I feel soooo betrayed. Where is Cindy Sheehan when you need her?

      Delete
    5. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyJune 4, 2013 at 7:26 PM

      Cindy, are you there? The camping is better on Martha's Vineyard. Really!

      Delete
    6. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyJune 4, 2013 at 7:40 PM

      backfire, did you know they still mine oil in PA? No, really. I swear. It's just not as goopy as it used to be. It got cold up there because of the Coming Ice Age That Will Kill Us All.

      The after it got so cold, the oil miners started calling it cold oil, which was shortened to just cold (they were cold miners, literally).

      Over time the pronunciation drifted to coal, kind of like some people call a barbeque a "barbie" (that got started on some island where the inmates - they still call each other 'mates - stayed so drunk they couldn't get the whole word out).

      You need to learn some history, man. Don't they teach it down there in New Gondwanaland?

      Delete
    7. bach:

      Thanks for your input on Keystone. I was waiting to get the take from the Solyndra investors before I decided whether I liked Keystone or not.

      Adm:

      "Planet Ecotard" Heh.

      Delete
  2. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyJune 4, 2013 at 6:58 PM

    I'm impressed with the science.

    y = mx + b

    Isn't that A. Gorestein's equation that was used to prove Eek!ological Catastrophe Theory?

    And we're not done yet.

    I think I see a swine wave back there. It was originally used to model the gravitational lensing that occurs around the supermassive Michael-Moore Object.

    And look! There's the Nagorean Theorem. It predicts that weather can cause an infinite quantity of hot gases to be emitted in the vicinity of EPA Headquarters. Somebody ought to plug that hole.

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  3. While the simplified "demonstration" was silly, bitumen sinks in water, complicating cleanup (see: Kalamazoo, for one). And the Keystone XL is more Keystone 1, which leaked twelve times in one year.
    But don't worry. I'm sure ridiculing the hated Democrats and other hippies (Nebraska ranchers are hippies, aren't they?) will make the pipe leak-free when it's built (and it will be built). In any event, it's not your back yard, right?

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    Replies
    1. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyJune 5, 2013 at 8:39 AM

      Actually, I'd rather ridicule you.

      1)Your use of the word "ranchers", when you really meant "rancher" in the singular, is incorrect.

      2) Yes, pipelines leak. And eek!oloons smell like rotting tofu. But that doesn't mean we should do away with either. Pipelines are good for energy, and eek!oloons are good for entertainment.

      3) The University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Nebraska Rural Initiative ran their annual poll and found that 65% of rural respondents supported the pipeline and rejected this statement: "the environmental risks outweigh the economic benefits".

      4) I wish it were going through my backyard. That way, I could collect the rent.

      5) And I don't really care one way or the other. When the Lackwit Administration delayed the approval for the election, I bought a bunch of Canadian Pacific Railroad stock. Because any fool knows that the oil is moving, one way or the other. And I've made a pile of money on rolling pipeline segments, otherwise known as tank cars. I'm equally happy to invest in Canadian jobs or American ones.

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    2. Why is spilling one of Gaia's 'natural' products (petroleum) on the ground thought to be such a disaster? It comes out of the ground. It is natural, like water. There are places [Sta. Barbara Channel] where seepage happens naturally, all the time. But if some human puts some of this petroleum in a container and then spills it back onto the ground there is panic in Ecotardia.

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  4. Isn't it amazing? No matter how nuts we think "progressives" are, they can always out-do our imaginations.

    ReplyDelete