Everything old is new again: The Biden administration is revoking the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, opposed during the Obama years, favored during the Trump term, and now disfavored yet again.
But one reality is eternal: The arguments against Keystone XL are as weak today as ever.
The all-purpose climate argument is the central focus: Keystone XL supposedly would worsen anthropogenic (man-made) climate change.
The pipeline would transport 830,000 barrels per day of Canadian crude oil, the total greenhouse gas emissions from which would be about 150 million metric tons per year or about 0.3% of the world total.
If we apply the EPA climate model using the least favorable set of assumptions, those emissions would have a global temperature effect of about four ten-thousandths of a degree Celsius by 2100.
The impacts upon sea levels and other climate phenomena would be similarly undetectable; so much for the ubiquitous empty rhetoric about the “climate disaster” supposedly to be engendered by Keystone XL.
Why do the opponents attempt to obscure this?
The opponents of the pipeline occasionally concede that, yes, the climate impacts of stopping Keystone XL would be very close to zero, but that many such actions globally would add up to something significant.
Nope: The global climate effects of even large emissions cuts also would be very small. Net-zero emissions by the U.S.: 0.17° Celsius. The entire Paris agreement: 0.17° Celsius.
Net-zero emissions by the entire OECD: 0.35° Celsius. A 25% emissions reduction by the entire world: about 0.5° Celsius.
The opponents argue as well that the pipeline would create a danger of spills. But transport of oil by pipeline is substantially safer than transport by rail or truck, the real-world alternatives to Keystone XL.
For crude oil and petroleum products in the U.S., pipelines carry about 70% of the ton-miles; the respective figures for water transport, trucking, and railroads are 23%, 4%, and 3%.
If we ignore water transport (not relevant as an alternative for Keystone XL), the data on adverse incidents—explosions or fires, spills of five gallons or more, fatalities, personal injuries requiring hospitalization, or all-inclusive property damage exceeding $50,000–show that pipeline incidents per ton-mile are about a quarter of those for rail transport, and about 3% of those for truck transport.
This vastly greater safety of Keystone XL over the alternatives is important because the heavy Canadian oil will be produced with or without the pipeline.
This is because for the heavy Canadian oil to be transported by Keystone XL, the fixed costs sunk into the projects before any oil is produced are uniquely high relative to the cost of actually producing the oil.
So given that the fixed costs have been incurred, even sharp declines in world oil prices will not prevent the oil from being produced.
Accordingly, without Keystone XL, the heavy oil will be produced but transported by rail or truck, to be refined in northern or eastern refineries.
Lighter oil from U.S. hydraulic fracturing operations will be sent to the Gulf Coast refineries despite the fact that those facilities are optimized for heavier crudes.
So, the net effect of stopping Keystone XL will be an inefficient allocation of crude oil geographically.
In short: Without the pipeline, railroad capacity will grow, overall safety will decline, and economic costs will be higher. Who would benefit from that outcome?
These realities demonstrate that the opposition to Keystone XL is almost wholly ideological, driven by a quasi-religious abhorrence of fossil fuels and the wealth, human wellbeing, and independence from government coercion that they facilitate.
Perhaps a journalist might ask Biden to explain his reasoning, and how that rationale was informed, or not, by the truths summarized above.
Read more at The Detroit News
And I had nearly lost all hope for modern journalism. Thank you, BENJAMIN ZYCHER at Detroit News, reprinted in ClimateChangeDispatch.
Biden is just your average Democrat puppet someone pulling his strings and making him dance when they want him to do the Globalist from the Useless Nations the CFR and the rest of them all, Cage the Eagle release the Vultures of the Globalist’ thats the real reason the UN was founded its never ever been about Peace
Jan 25, 2021 Five Years Since The End Of The Earth
Fifteen years ago today, Nobel Laureate Al Gore said global warming would burn up the planet in ten years.
https://youtu.be/LVCUODGuNcs
“Net-zero emissions by the entire OECD: 0.35° Celsius. A 25% emissions reduction by the entire world: about 0.5° Celsius.”
These calculations are based on the erroneous assumption that all of the increase in atmospheric CO2 is from human emissions. Actually we are likely responsible for less than 5% annually so think about 5% of the given figures. Additionally the figures are based on a median climate sensitivity from the IPCC of 3 while almost all new estimates based on data instead of failed models is less than 1.5.
Other than that I agree with the author on all his conclusions about the lack of sound reasoning in the Biden order.
Pre-industrial revolution CO2 was at 228ppm in our atmosphere. It is now at 414ppm, a difference of 126ppm or just over 30%. This isn’t “likely”. This isn’t a guess. This is fact.
But that’s actually irrelevant. You can make the numbers look insignificant, I cam make them look dire. What matters is what the experts say, the climatologists whose job it is to tell us what the actual numbers mean. The ONLY way you know enough about climate change to speak intelligently on it is if you go to college and get a degree in climatology and then research it yourself. If you haven’t done that then you aren’t qualified to give an argument.
This idea that you can read a conspiracy page on the Internet and know more about something than actual experts is ludicrous. The idea that there’s a global conspiracy of pretty much all climate scientists everywhere driven by research funding and magic is equally ludicrous. Yes, you can bribe “a scientist” to say anything you like. You could certainly bribe 10. You could almost certainly bribe 100. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you could find 1,000 you could sway with a paycheck. Or 10,000, if you had that kind of money to spend. But ALL of them? Every climatologist in the world, with the possibly rare exception here and there, is a corrupt money grabber more interested in funding than truth? That’s what scientists refer to as “statistically impossible”.