Official (Alberta) Oil Discussion Thread

[LanceUppercut]

Originally Posted by oilyfan

How does separating into a landlocked country with no access to ports better for building pipelines?

We'd be Puerto Rico! Become a independent US protectorate and watch how fast a pipeline south would get built.

[afc wimbledon]

We're never going to have a federal government that is strong enough to 'ram' anything through. The left and right, east west and Quebec voting blocs means that neither Tories or Liberals will feel secure enough to annoy the bejesus out of the urban vote in BC and Ontario.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

We're never going to have a federal government that is strong enough to 'ram' anything through. The left and right, east west and Quebec voting blocs means that neither Tories or Liberals will feel secure enough to annoy the bejesus out of the urban vote in BC and Ontario.

At some point there has to be someone in power with a grander vision of the country though. The kind of thinking that allowed for the railroad to be built and someone willing to spend the political capital to do that.

We also might have to get someone to look long and hard at the science and realise that "global warming" is a joke. I realise that I run the risk of being branded as a guy who doesn't follow science or labelled as a science denier, and I have zero desire to get into an argument about that, particularly in this thread. I just feel like we've been sold a false bill of goods on this.

[Tinordi]

I would never trust my money to a money manager who believed in conspiracy theories and dismissed decades of scientific research. Stunning you would admit that Slava.

[Tinordi]

Originally Posted by peter12

How is this different than the status quo?

The new country would not be a member of NAFTA as one obvious and significant difference.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Slava

We also might have to get someone to look long and hard at the science and realise that "global warming" is a joke. I realise that I run the risk of being branded as a guy who doesn't follow science or labelled as a science denier, and I have zero desire to get into an argument about that, particularly in this thread. I just feel like we've been sold a false bill of goods on this.

Yikes.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

I would never trust my money to a money manager who believed in conspiracy theories and dismissed decades of scientific research. Stunning you would admit that Slava.

Maybe he caught some autisms from a bad batch of vaccines.

[stampsx2]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

I would never trust my money to a money manager who believed in conspiracy theories and dismissed decades of scientific research. Stunning you would admit that Slava.

I would. You've obviously never talked to Slava. I have and have gotten very helpful advise I wouldn't give back. If I hadn't started working with someone else before him he would have another customer.

[stampsx2]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Maybe he caught some autisms from a bad batch of vaccines.

Maybe there's a Victoria puck forums you could go post on instead of here.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by stampsx2

I would. You've obviously never talked to Slava. I have and have gotten very helpful advise I wouldn't give back. If I hadn't started working with someone else before him he would have another customer.

I don't actually discount the guy's financial acumen, but you lose a lot of credibility when you go against science.

Edit: I also believe Slava once ran for public office before. I don't know if he has any designs on doing it again, but that's a bad position to take on if he does.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by stampsx2

Maybe there's a Victoria puck forums you could go post on instead of here.

Sick burn, bro.

[afc wimbledon]

I'm more stunned Slava thinks that at some time Canada will elect a political leader with a grand vision.

global warming denial seems tame by comparison.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

I'm more stunned he thinks that at some time Canada will elect a political leader with a grand vision.

Why? I mean most of our recent PMs have had some sort of grand vision. Harper's doesn't immediately spring to mind but Martin, Chretien, Mulroney, Trudeau, Pearson, etc. all had their own versions of big things they wanted to accomplish.

[GaiJin]

Originally Posted by rubecube

I don't actually discount the guy's financial acumen, but you lose a lot of credibility when you go against science I believe in.

Edit: I also believe Slava once ran for public office before. I don't know if he has any designs on doing it again, but that's a bad position to take on if he does.

fyp.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by rubecube

I don't actually discount the guy's financial acumen, but you lose a lot of credibility when you go against science.

This is the kind of flippant dismissal that has turned the global warming issue into just another black and white partisan litmus test. It shall not be discussed is no way to treat any serious issue. Especially a science issue. The whole point of science is to relentlessly challenge every theory. Here are some perfectly rational questions that are worth asking regarding global warming.

1) How accurate are the models we're using to assess global temperature changes and projections?

2) To what degree are man-made activities responsible for any warming, and what other factors could be at play?

3) What is the range of effects that increases and decreases to carbon emissions are likely to have on climate?

4) How practical are alternatives to carbon-based energy sources in supplying the energy requirements of the planet?

Unfortunately, dogmatic zealots use 'the science is settled' to stifle debate. You have the Gaia religionists, who idealize pre-industrial living and who crave certainty and piety just as surely as any fundamentalist Christian. And you have anti-capitalist activists, for whom a theory that justifies ratcheting down global industry and taxing trade is a godsend. These groups make up some of the most passionate advocates for reducing carbon emissions, and neither is known for being especially literate in science, or for being open to empiricism or nuance.

So I chuckle when the issue is framed as a science vs ignorance debate. Last time I checked there was a tremendous amount of overlap between the anti-vax crowd and global-warming activists.

The science is settled on very few scientific theories, especially not ones as complex and difficult to assess as global climate.

[Tinordi]

Frankly CliffFletcher I'd you have to ask those four questions as a feign to foment uncertainty then you don't have a GD clue as to what you are talking about.

And for a guy who likes to wade in as the level headed arbiter of reason your false equivalence between anti vax and the legitimate science of climate change wears particularly ugly.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

I would never trust my money to a money manager who believed in conspiracy theories and dismissed decades of scientific research. Stunning you would admit that Slava.

Something tells me we wouldn't mesh well to begin with, regardless of this particular issue.

Originally Posted by rubecube

Yikes.

I knew this was the reaction that I would get from some.

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

This is the kind of flippant dismissal that has turned the global warming issue into just another black and white partisan litmus test. It shall not be discussed is no way to treat any serious issue. Especially a science issue. The whole point of science is to relentlessly challenge every theory. Here are some perfectly rational questions that are worth asking regarding global warming.

1) How accurate are the models we're using to assess global temperature changes and projections?

2) To what degree are man-made activities responsible for any warming, and what other factors could be at play?

3) What is the range of effects that increases and decreases to carbon emissions are likely to have on climate?

4) How practical are alternatives to carbon-based energy sources in supplying the energy requirements of the planet?

Unfortunately, dogmatic zealots use 'the science is settled' to stifle debate. You have the Gaia religionists, who idealize pre-industrial living and who crave certainty and piety just as surely as any fundamentalist Christian. And you have anti-capitalist activists, for whom a theory that justifies ratcheting down global industry and taxing trade is a godsend. These groups make up some of the most passionate advocates for reducing carbon emissions, and neither is known for being especially literate in science, or for being open to empiricism or nuance.

So I chuckle when the issue is framed as a science vs ignorance debate. Last time I checked there was a tremendous amount of overlap between the anti-vax crowd and global-warming activists.

The science is settled on very few scientific theories, especially not ones as complex and difficult to assess as global climate.

I think that I should've pointed out that its not that I don't believe the planet is warming. It might be. I just dispute the idea that its man causing it. Frankly there are so many factors that lead to it, we have zero idea whether its us causing the warming. I also find the "science denier" angle amusing. I have been hearing for decades now. The Kyoto protocol is about 19 years old, and before that we had the UN framework which was from 1992. Is there credible evidence that over those 25 years that we have experienced global warming? Is there any evidence that its been caused by man? Those were the two original premises of the UN framework.

I find the current carbon discussion troublesome for two main reasons (three if you count the fact that you can't have an adult discussion on it without being labelled as ignorant, or a pure knuckle dragging science denier!):

1. These issues are based on projections that go out 50 years. Frankly humans and our forecasting skill is tedious at best. We think we have things figured out, but in reality things tend to wind up very differently. So maybe the planet warms, maybe it doesn't. We are a society so bad at predicting things that we can bet on the outcome of hockey games (which a lot of us on here think we are experts) and the odds are against us...yet we can apparently predict the future temperatures for the planet five decades away? I'm sure that's completely accurate.

2. Is the warming man-made? We all know (thank you science!) that the earth has warmed and cooled before. We might have watched "An Inconvenient Truth" with Al Gore and saw the graph that looks like a hockey stick and fell for the "we've never seen this kind of temperature change before" kind of line. The thing is we might not have seen it directly, but its not the first time in the history of the planet. We know there was a "mini ice-age" in the middle of the last century or so. We also know that this was sandwiched between a couple of warmer periods. Were those warm periods because of increased carbon in the atmosphere? Seems unlikely. Most of that warming is attributed to things like solar activity, changing ocean currents and other things that man simply cannot control at this point. How much of the changes we perceive today are due to those factors?

So, long story short (and in the wrong thread), I just think that there are more questions than answers. There are theories that aren't even close to proven. If that makes me some kind of "science-denier" in your eyes, that's your issue. I just think that since we as a world really began having this discussion the global temperature has increased something minimal like 0.14-0.2 degrees? (The science seems in dispute for these things), but as far as I can see we've seen a 1.2 degree increase over the past 140 years. That doesn't mean that we are going to rise forever. Maybe this is a good place to remind everyone that in the 70's science was concerned about global cooling. There is a significant division here.

[J pold]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

I would never trust my money to a money manager who believed in conspiracy theories and dismissed decades of scientific research. Stunning you would admit that Slava.

Ridiculous. If anything I would want my manager to have a healthy dose of scepticism and question the prevailing theory even in the face of being ridiculed by his peers.

[PsYcNeT]

Yes because skeptics are well regarded as being climate change deniers.

http://www.michaelshermer.com/2008/0...ental-skeptic/

[peter12]

This is rube et al's Stalingrad. They don't know much about markets or policy beyond ideological baffle-gab but the climate change issue is such a perfect wind up for them to lose all semblance of decor and launch their favourite little snarky one-liners.