This Carbon-Based Day In Clarkland...The Real Filth And The Real Belching.

AllThingsToAll
CarbonEmittersVille


Yesterday, I took umbrage with the following statement from our fine Premier that was uttered at a pro-Frack gas rally in Northeastern British Columbia as reported by Jonny Wakefield in the Alaska Highway News:

“This early start to the fire season is alarming for everyone in the province,” (Premier Christy) Clark told reporters after a speech to LNG supporters from the back of an oilfield crane truck. “I know it’s been an immediate, urgent issue for people in the northeast, but if it’s starting this early here, it’s going to start early everywhere in the province.”

“If there’s any argument for exporting LNG and helping fight climate change, surely it is all around us when we see these fires burning out of control.”

“This is the reality we’re facing today as the planet gets warmer,” she continued, saying climate change leads to dry conditions that exacerbate wildfires. “If there’s any argument for exporting LNG and helping fight climate change, surely it is all around us when we see these fires burning out of control.” ...

{snip}

“The only way China is not going to build those filthy, belching coal plants is if they have a different fuel to power the country. That has to be LNG,” Clark said in a followup interview. “If everyone who is using coal and oil switched to natural gas today, we would be a third less polluting. In one leap.”...


My taking of the umbrage was based on the science of the thing.

Rigourously peer-reviewed science like the following, as published in the top-of the ladder publication 'Nature':

...Assessment of the full impact of abundant gas (obtained by fracturing) on climate change requires an integrated approach to the global energy–economy–climate systems, but the literature has been limited in either its geographic scope or its coverage of greenhouse gases. Here we show that market-driven increases in global supplies of unconventional natural gas do not discernibly reduce the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions or climate forcing. 

{snip}

...Our results show that although market penetration of globally abundant gas may substantially change the future energy system, it is not necessarily an effective substitute for climate change mitigation policy...

****

Now.

If the science of the thing is not bad enough...

There is also the blatant hypochristy, as Laila noted late last night:

...Some days, I would rather muck out the dirty stalls of a horse ranch and not wade through this kind of muck instead.

Let’s talk about that dirty nasty coal BC LNG is going to save the world from. And why Premier Clark, so clearly motivated to save the world from those “filthy belching coal plants”, isn’t stepping into immediately intervene and help those trying to stop more thermal coal exports overseas out of Surrey Fraser Docks? 

Yes, you read that right. Surrey Fraser Docks and Port of Vancouver are trying to get the courts to drop the challenge against this facility that would see coal ships loaded with thermal coal brought up by train from the US, to ships in the Fraser River. Frankly after reading Clark’s comments above, I’m shocked she isn’t down there protesting herself to stop it! Oh but wait…she’s too busy making sure the Massey Bridge gets built,a project specifically designed to allow large ships to travel up and down the Fraser to ship that dirty coal overseas….

But wait, I haven’t even begun to talk about the mile long trains of thermal coal moved through White Rock,Surrey and Delta daily that US ports won’t ship and has been shipping out of Deltaport for years!...


So.

What's next...

A massive  'Bonfire Of The Carbon Capture Vanities'-type  PR blitzkrieg ghost-written by the life partner of the failed sheep herder?



_______
Please note: North Van's Grumps was also on to the hypocrisy of the thing right out of the gate in the comment threads last night.



.