Keystone Get’s a Go?

11 Responses to Keystone Get’s a Go?

1. Princess says:

   Saturday, February 1, 2014 at 5:54 pm

   One more corrupt project from this administration. These pipelines are rupturing all over this country and Canada and Obama is happy to sell off our environment to his big donors. Our children and grandchildren will pay the price of this shame for generations.
2. Libby says:

   Saturday, February 1, 2014 at 9:31 pm

   Ah … Princess … that’s capitalism for ya. There is, unhappily, no preventing the Canadians from selling and transporting to refineries in the Southern U. S. Piping is cleaner than training. All we can do is INSIST they do it as cleanly as possible, and INSIST they clean up all their own messes, and INSIST that the refineries trap and clean all the processing gasses.

   And if you want this done, don’t you be putting any more Repugs in the Congress … or the White House either. Seriously … everybody should go look at all those Republican “Jobs” bills. Absolutely scandalous and shameless and criminal.
3. Tina says:

   Saturday, February 1, 2014 at 11:19 pm

   Libby it isn’t as if you ever invested your own money in anything as useful to civilization and progress as gas and oil, or created ways to make the production and delivery of it cleaner, or paid to repair the occasional spill. Your protestations have little value since your personal investment and responsibility is zot.

   Without capitalism you’d be living in a cave and brushing your teeth with a twig.

   I doubt you mind the comfort and convenience. You can’t have missed the improvements that have been made…unless you’re just one of those pissy people who can never be satisfied.
4. Tina says:

   Sunday, February 2, 2014 at 12:00 am

   Radical leftists greens are not being honest about much of anything having to do with the production and transportation of oil. They always hype the situation because they don’t want ANY oil used. The green hype is irresponsible and unreasonable.

   Our readers will find information that rebuts many of the myths and exaggerations perpetrated by radical green activists here.

   Heartland also dispels myths and includes a map that shows the millions of miles of pipeline that already cross the Ogallala . Heartland also notes:

   We’ve been building pipelines over this and all sorts of other environmentally sensitive areas for a long, long time. We know how to do that safely and responsibility. On those rare occasions when spills or leaks happen, we have the regulatory and technical tools in place to ensure that they are cleaned up quickly and completely. The administration’s hand-wringing over the Ogallala is nothing but a distraction in other words. Just as environmental group’s predictions of disaster surrounding the Alaska pipeline never came true, Obama’s concerns over the Ogallala are merely an excuse to justify opposition to a project that is so clearly in the national interest.

   Come on people, if the leaks were really as bad as the radicals claim the headlines would be filled with people dying and crops and land being permanently damaged. We’d see photos of dead and dying crops. It just isn’t happening. And as our technology and materials improve we see fewer incidents that can be managed, repaired and cleaned up more quickly.

   The benefits we realize from oil production far outweigh the dangers. It’s time to get this project underway.
5. Chris says:

   Sunday, February 2, 2014 at 10:36 am

   Tina: “Without capitalism you’d be living in a cave and brushing your teeth with a twig.”

   Let’s add “historian” to the list of occupations you probably shouldn’t quit your day job for.

   “Heartland also dispels myths”

   Yes, just like they dispelled myths about tobacco use back in the 1990s. Thanks to Heartland’s valiant efforts to protect the persecuted tobacco companies from Big Government/Big Science lies about second-smoke, we now know that second-hand smoke is actually GOOD for you!

   http://www.forecastthefacts.org/campaign/heartland/tobacco/

   Credibility MATTERS, Tina.
6. Tina says:

   Sunday, February 2, 2014 at 3:03 pm

   It certainly does Chris. I’m sure you believe yourself to be on the leading edge when it comes to truthful reporting of facts as well as credibility. I’m certain that you believe you have been well educated and are on the “right” side of things.

   I suggest another scenario. I suggest you are a product of a well organized effort to destroy America from within through propaganda and activism. Radical progressives have used everything at their disposal to fundamentally transform our nation into a socialist “paradise”. They have rewritten history and peddled misinformation in our schools and universities. They have used the power of media and entertainment to reform and reshape public opinion. They have likewise used the power of the courts and the halls of Congress to undermine our laws and Constitution and to move our free republic toward a European socialist model. They have exploited issues as a means of dividing the people rather than as a means of solving problems. These radicals pretend to be compassionate, concerned and caring but they are charlatans and thieves hiding their Marxist motives behind fraudulent faces.

   These people have no interest in the truth or in giving the public facts that are meaningful. They have a political end and they abuse and distort information to manipulate the people…they particularly target the young.

   Any of our readers who have the ability to weigh information and form opinion based on facts rather than exaggerated hype, lies, and manipulation of fact might find the Heartland Institute’s rebuttal to Chris’s claims of interest. Find it here.

   Regarding the effects of smoking:

   Heartland’s long-standing position on tobacco is that smoking is a risk factor for many diseases; we have never denied that smoking kills. We argue that the risks are exaggerated by the public health community to justify their calls for more regulations on businesses and higher taxes on smokers, and that the risk of adverse health effects from second-hand smoke is dramatically less than for active smoking, with many studies finding no adverse health effects at all. These positions are supported by many prominent scientists and virtually all free-market think tanks.

   We take these principled positions on tobacco control despite their being very politically incorrect and despite receiving little (and in some years no) funding from tobacco companies because they are freedom issues. The left uses junk science to demonize smokers, which then clears the way for higher taxes on smokers, restrictions on their personal freedoms, and restrictions on the property rights of the owners of bars and other businesses. This is why advocates of liberty must address tobacco control issues, even if it means losing financial support from potential donors who are anti-smoking.

   Attacks on the reputations and ethics of the scientists we work, which frequently appear online, are uninformed and disheartening. Dr. Bruce Ames, Dr. James Enstrom, and Dr. Kip Viscusi, to name just three, are among the world’s elite experts on cancer, epidemiology, and risk. Their accomplishments and personal integrity vastly exceed those of their critics. Just as importantly, their ideas and factual statements are readily available on our Web site and elsewhere, open to rebuttal and discussion.

   You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to read and understand the science of second-hand smoke and the economics of excise taxes and smoking bans. Our critics ought to actually read what Ames, Enstrom, and Viscusi have written and point out their errors, if they exist, rather than engage in ad hominem attacks. It’s obvious that few of them have or can.

   It is also noteworthy that

   “More than 200 academics and professional economists serve as policy advisors to The Heartland Institute, including members of the faculties of Harvard University, The University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Georgetown University, Pepperdine University, Vanderbilt School of Law, and scores of other respected universities.”

   “Approximately 200 elected officials — Democrats as well as Republicans — serve on Heartland’s Board of Legislative Advisors.”

   To hear people like Chris tell it these are a bunch of high school drop outs without credentials whose purpose is to make sure that the American people are poisoned. That is the ludicrous hyped story peddled by the people Chris finds so credible. In fact they are a group of calm sensible minds, dedicated to the scientific method with a negative attitude toward exaggerated tales of doom or of false security, in a sea of charlatans and liars who are trying to dismantle and destroy America as a free republic and the capitalist success story of the world.
7. Libby says:

   Sunday, February 2, 2014 at 7:43 pm

   Let’s add “historian” to the list of occupations you probably shouldn’t quit your day job for.

   Yes, indeed.
8. Chris says:

   Sunday, February 2, 2014 at 8:39 pm

   “To hear people like Chris tell it these are a bunch of high school drop outs without credentials whose purpose is to make sure that the American people are poisoned.”

   http://lmgtfy.com/?q=strawman+argument
9. Chris says:

   Sunday, February 2, 2014 at 8:42 pm

   Tina: “It is also noteworthy that

   “More than 200 academics and professional economists serve as policy advisors to The Heartland Institute, including members of the faculties of Harvard University, The University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Georgetown University, Pepperdine University, Vanderbilt School of Law, and scores of other respected universities.”

   Of course. It’s “noteworthy” that Heartland was able to find 200 academics to support their cause, but the fact that 97% of climate scientists believe that man-made climate change is occurring is just not relevant at all.

   Statistician! There’s another one.
10. Tina says:

    Sunday, February 2, 2014 at 10:58 pm

    “The Myth of the 98 Percent,” by Joseph L. Bast – Heartland Institute:

    Do 98 percent of climate scientists really believe in man-made global warming? A little research reveals that the often-cited figure is a confused and erroneous reference to two different studies that both fail to prove what those who cite them believe or allege.

    Doran and Zimmerman

    The first study, by Doran and Zimmerman, appeared in EOS, the journal of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in 2009. You can retrieve it at

    http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf

    This article reports the results of a survey, but it was a meaningless one.

    The researchers – a professor at the University of Illinois and a graduate student – sent a two-minute online survey to 10,257 Earth scientists working for universities and government research agencies, generating responses from 3,146 people. Only 5 percent of respondents self-identified as climate scientists. The survey asked two questions:

    “Q1. “When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?”

    Q2. “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?”

    Overall, 90 percent of respondents answered “risen” to question 1 and 82 percent answered “yes” to question 2. The authors get their fraudulent “98 percent of climate scientists believe” sound bite by focusing on only 79 (not a typo) scientists who responded and “listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50 percent of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change.”

    The Doran and Zimmerman survey is often confused or conflated with a second study, Anderegg et al., “Expert credibility in climate change,” in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences:

    http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06041003187107

    From the abstract:

    Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the
    researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.

    Note that this is not a survey of scientists, whether “all scientists” or specifically climate
    scientists. Instead, Anderegg et al. counted the number of articles published in academic journals by 908 “climate researchers,” defined as people who had signed petitions opposing or supporting the IPCC’s positions or had coauthored IPCC reports and had published a minimum of 20 climate publications.

    They found that 97 to 98 percent of the most prolific 200 climate researchers, so defined,
    appeared to believe that “anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been responsible for ‘most’ of the ‘unequivocal’ warming of the Earth’s average global temperature over the second half of the 20th century.”

    Observe that this counting exercise did not determine how many of these authors believe global warming is a crisis, or that the science is sufficiently established to be the basis for
    public policy, or even that future global warming would be bad (or good). Anyone who cites this study in defense of these views is mistaken.

    Anderegg et al. also didn’t count as “skeptics” the scientists whose work exposes gaps in the man-made global warming theory or contradicts claims that climate change will be catastrophic.

    Dennis Avery identified several hundred scientists who fall into this category, even though some profess to still “believe” in global warming.

    Looking past the flashy “97-98%” claim by Anderegg et al., you will see the study found the average skeptic has been published about half as frequently as the average alarmist – 60 versus 119 articles. Most of this difference was driven by the hyper-productivity of a handful of alarmist climate scientists – the 50 most prolific alarmists were published an average of 408 times, versus only 89 times for the skeptics.

    So what, exactly, did Anderegg et al. discover? That a small clique of climate alarmists got their writing published hundreds of times in academic journals, something that probably would have been impossible just a decade or two ago. Anderegg et al. simply assert that those “top 50” are more credible than scientists who publish less, but they make no effort to prove this.

    See more here and here.
11. Chris says:

    Monday, February 3, 2014 at 10:30 am

    Tina, thanks for linking to critiques of scientific studies from an academic perspective.

    I’m not sure I buy Bast’s argument that 79 climate scientists is too small a sample size, or that examining peer-reviewed, published articles is an inferior method to polling scientists. I also disagree with his opinion over the questions asked in the Doran and Zimmerman study. Yes, it might reveal more to ask climate scientists to say to what extent humans are warming the earth, and whether it will be a catastrophic problem. But that’s not the purpose of the study, and what it did find is still revealing. Climate skeptics, including many from Heartland, HAVE spent a lot of time publicly arguing that man-made global warming simply *does not exist,* so a poll that says 97% believe it is occurring is not as unimportant as Heartland is making it out to be.

    There are also many other studies, such as Cook et al and Farnsworth and Lichter, that found similar results.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveys_of_scientists%27_views_on_climate_change

    “See more here and here.”

    Tina, this is at least the third time you have posted articles misrepresenting that study even after I have shown you exactly how it has been misrepresented. That study did not examine the views of climate scientists, it focused on engineers and geoscientists working for the oil industry in Alberta, Canada. Their views fit into five different “frames,” and the largest of those frames at 36% was that that green house gases are the driver of global warming and we need to do something about it. The majority agreed that human activity was at least contributing to global warming in some way. I have shown you the comments by the study’s own authors repudiating James Taylor’s misleading coverage of their study. Why are you citing these articles again?

Comments are closed.