Last updated on 2012.03.14
Land mogul and neighbor Ted Turner says he doesn't want Keystone XL wrecking his beautiful Bad River Ranch:
Closer to home, the pipeline presents an immediate threat to drinking water for millions and to the livelihood of farmers and ranchers. To transport via pipeline, the thick tar sands crude must be mixed with toxic chemicals and then pumped at extreme temperature and pressure. This sets the stage for more pipeline failures and spills that create a highly toxic mess.
The existing Keystone 1 tar sands pipeline has spilled more than 12 times in its first 12 months of operation. In July 2010, a spill of more than 800,000 gallons of toxic tar sands crude from the Enbridge pipeline contaminated more than 30 miles of water and shoreline along the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. This created public health problems, threats to groundwater, widespread fish kills, and destruction of wildlife habitat, contamination that is still being cleaned up at a cost exceeding $700 million. Downstream landowners like me are thinking this is a preview of coming attractions if Keystone XL is built [Ted Turner, "Keystone Oil Pipeline Would Risk Disaster," CNN, 2012.02.22].
Turner, a more experienced and successful businessman than I, agrees with me that the economic benefits promised by TransCanada and Republican pipeline boosters are mostly bogus:
Meanwhile, the pro-pipeline lobby is pushing the public to accept Keystone XL with fuzzy promises about jobs and security. But TransCanada's jobs claims have been widely discredited, and there is no guarantee the oil transported by the pipeline would remain in the United States for sale. An attempt in Congress to require the oil to be consumed in the United States was rejected just last week, and it has been widely detailed that Gulf Coast refineries plan to export the finished product to Europe and Latin America. How do we become more energy secure under that scenario? [Turner, 2012.02.22]
In other news, a diesel pipeline has ruptured and spilled about 500 barrels of fuel up by Aberdeen. Stuff happens. Let's minimize the stuff.
Update 2012.02.25 19:04 MST: Kevin Woster gets more on Turner's Keystone XL concerns from Turner's ranch manager Tom LeFaive.
Rewild the West.
Larry, I think Ted Turner might be o.k. with that!
$700 million environmental cleanup costs from tar sands spill in a different pipeline in Michigan? The GOP in South Dakota don't even want to force Keystone to be financially responsible for a $100 million spill if it happens here. A comparable spill here could mean that you and I the taxpayers, and any unfortunate landowners, may foot the bill.
Let's watch this Aberdeen spill closely. I'd strongly recommend that the landowner(s) involved have independent testing done rather than relying on the polluter to tell them when it's all cleaned up. Let's also see how quickly DENR closes its file on the Aberdeen spill, how detailed their investigation is, and whether any penalties are levied.
Thanks for renewing the issue here.
A oil exec's son called a pipeline and the industry one that's impoverishing and imprisoning us.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/22/lee-brain-northern-gateway-pipeline_n_1295061.html
Chris Martenson shows us the laughable Bakken bump as he urges us, belatedly, to find alternatives.
http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/dangerous-ideas/71666
Better learn to return to the days of pot belly stoves, grow your own food, etc. as you will not be able to afford fuel or food. You would cry and wail at the government for not giving you these things but they wont hear you because you can't afford the electric to drive the computers for you to complain. But Ted Turner will.
He'll build some more electrified fences to keep you away from his bison, puff on his stogie and laugh at his friends in Madville that think he's great.
Yeah, you guys got it all figured out.
False choice, Ed. Our greatest gains in quality of life come from doing more with less energy. Efficiency and conservation are the key to surviving, not digging up and burning every drop of oil and crumb of coal as fast as we can. Consumption is not a virtue.
Turner commits his sins of consumption, but that doesn't mean he's not right about Keystone XL. We can get our energy from other sources, and we can use the energy we have more efficiently.
Rapid City=Gaza
Your judgment, not mine, Cory. What other real, not theoritical wishful thinking vapor that you wish were true.
Is it wind? Might work today. Tomorrow? In August? Moot point anyway 'cause it's probably not affordable on your poor persecuted teacher's salary. Maybe we could put a wind turbine on the roof of a coal-powered plant, huh?
Maybe Obama could print more moolah and buy power from the Chinese who generate the power in coal-fired plants.
Bet you don't like nukes much either. Maybe we could use the fissionable material from the nuke weapons that Obama wants to trash to weaken our deterrent and build some nuke plants (if he doesn't just give the weapons to the Chinese or his beloved Muslim "democracies." No that wont work.....there aren't any Muslim democracies. No prob we'll just give them to the Muslim Brotherhood.
How about ethanol? If we use lots of corn to make ethanol, we can decrease our dependence on fossil fuels.....wait you can't afford that either without subsidies, plus you wont be able to afford cornbread either, or beef or Turner's bison, or chicken, or tofu.
Tell us, oh oracle of the classroom, how shall we proceed??? But hurry, the Korean battery in my Chinese laptop is in need of charging soon and Black Hills Power is shutting down 3 plants and laying off some folks because their plants can't afford your regulations and they can't increase their rates until they beg for permission.
I foolishly thought the champion of South Dakota's conserative Christian RINO hunting community would have the following passages from Matthew 6 memorized. I guess I was wrong.
25Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
26Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
27Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
28And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
29And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
30Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
31Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
32(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
Before you get witty with the devil quoting scripture line or evasive with the public policy differs from personal policy line, remember that everything in your comment that precedes this one from it's tone to it's substance was very heavy on a secular American worldview and very low on the Christian worldview.
Missing from all that blah, blah, blah by Ed Razzledazzle-o is any substance to refute what Ted Turner says. Can't RazzleDazzle them with brilliance? Buffalo them with BS.
"Fact: POTUS' historic fuel efficiency stndrds, done w/o Congress, will save more oil than would flow thru Keystone pipeline in 45 years." Jay Carney (EOP) †@PressSec
Indeed, Ed's response is a classic example of Alinsky-style tactics: throw all the mud you can to avoid the issue at hand. I consider LK, R, and Larry to have offered sufficient responses.
Turkey is a democracy with a mostly secular Muslim population: Al Jazeera.
Black Hills ecological collapse forecast is a decade old: http://rapidcityjournal.com/article_b1ec60d5-36ff-58b3-a8cd-a49daf9c100c.html
Pray for Paha Sapa.