So there is a story going on about the Canadian Tar Sands, a pipeline, and environmentalists who want to stop it from happening. Sounds like more lefty liberal hippies trying to kill the American Dream and unicorns? Well if you don’t read further into the story this is a nice spoonfed way of looking at the situation, but what if you take some time to learn about Tar Sands and their impact on our world?
Faced with this question I turned to the mighty Google and found this page:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3839
Talk about an in depth article on Tar Sands! While I dont really understand most of the science speak (Rick Perry might say this is a Theory, except there are facts involved), but there are a few interesting segments:

Economics

The average production cost of one barrel of syncrude from the oil sand resources in Canada was approximately 32 USD in the year 2006. The mining process costs about 16 USD2006/barrel of oil equivalent (boe). The InSitu SAGD extraction costs about 14 USD2006/boe, and the upgrading process to syncrude costs about 16.5 USD2006/boe. Figure 2 shows the break down of the total costs that were incorporated in the EROI calculations above (Herweyer 2007). Mining costs appear to be decreasing according to some reports in early 2008.

Syncrude has approximately the same quality as conventional crude oil, and is therefore competitive. So long as the conventional crude oil price stays above 31.5 USD2006/boe (excluding profits) it is profitable to extract oil sands. The conventional crude oil prices in 2006 were 56 and in 2007 as much as $80 USD/boe (BP 2006). However at the same time the price of diesel, natural gas, steel and so forth used in generating the syncrude were increasing. Nevertheless it appears that tar sands will be a competitive source of oil for the indefinite future.

So from a business perspective it makes sense to get into the Tar Sands and get that oil out while the Middle East is in chaos and Oil Prices are inflated by the markets.

Then there is the tax implications:

The Alberta oil sands tax regime is such that it makes it very appealing for investors to put their money into oil sands business. The attractiveness in the fiscal regime is that until all original capital (plus a return) is recovered, only a production royalty of 1% of revenue is required. After the original capital is earned back by oil sand recovery, a royalty of 25% of net operating income is required. The tax regime is such that essentially no income tax has to be paid until all capital costs are recovered (TD Securities 2004).

Since the most expensive part of getting oil from Tar Sands is the capital expense it sure is nice that the politicians made it so that until those costs are recouped they dont have to pay any taxes at all.

Seems like a total win for businesses and consumers who get more profits and possibly lower costs. As Charlie would say this is #winning!

It turns out those crazy environmentalists are concerned about CO2 which is a direct cause of Global Warming. When we look at the CO2 production of Tar Sands refinement we get some really bad news:

Tar Sands CO2 Emissions

The oil sand industry is one of the major GHG emitters in Canada and the entire process approximately doubles to triples the amount of CO2 released per barrel of petroleum used compared to conventional extraction. The mining process emits about 35 kg CO2 equivalent/barrel, and the upgrading process 45 kg CO2 equivalent/barrel, and the SAGD process 55 kg CO2 equivalent/barrel, (Bramley et al. 2005). In the business as usual scenario for the GHG emissions per barrel of bitumen, the total oil sand GHG emissions until 2020 are as follows: (Herweyer 2007).

At least the CEO’s who are working to pass this pipeline will be dead by 2020 so they wont have to live with the consequences. If you bothered to read that last quote it says that CO2 emissions are doulbled to TRIPLED in oil sands extraction. Thats like, a lot(insert valley girl voice for that last sentence).

What about tax payer costs? Apparently you have to use a lot of natural gas to extract oil sands oil. Apparently you have to use A LOT of natural gas:

According to the National Energy Board (2006), natural gas use will increase from 0.7 billion cubic feet per day in 2005 to 2.1 billion cubic feet per day in 2015. Although Canada has natural gas resources, this enormous rise in natural gas demand will be difficult to meet. The current capacity of the natural gas infrastructure and production will not be sufficient to keep up with these rises and might present a problem. In addition, the natural gas prices are coupled to the crude oil prices, and so they have risen as well. There is also the large issue of where the natural gas will come from – Exxon is now saying they may not be able to build the necessary MacKenzie pipeline unless they receive significant monetary help from the government.

Sounds like capitalism at its finest!

Here is the conclusion:

In conclusion, tar sands are an economically and energetically viable, although hardly ideal, approach to maintaining liquid fuel supplies. The most severe problem is probably their local and global environmental impact, and they are already impacting Canadian CO2 releases significantly. But the tar sands are unlikely to make a large impact on overall supply of liquid fuels because their supply is likely to be rate, rather than total resource limited. If the maximum rate were to grow to about 2 billion barrels a year this would approximately meet Canada’s demand and could leave relatively little for export if Canada’s production of conventional oil continues to decline. Achieving even this rate of production from tar sands is uncertain because of growing concerns about environmental impacts downstream and insufficient hydrogen and water.

So the long term costs are horrendous and even at maximum capacity it won’t be enough oil to affect even the low oil using country of Canada of 2 billion barrels a day(the US consumes 18 Billion per day). However it is cheaper than traditional oil processes so lets aim short term and make some dough! Yeehaw!

Bored and warm Roger decides that a video is easier than typing about Gaddafi and British SAS:

Last week the O man dropped a proverbial bomb on the bither argument by releasing his long form birth certificate. I hear that people are upset that he stooped to this level of discussion and capitulated but to me its a very strategically done move which makes the republicans look more out of touch and racist than ever before.

The concern now is what will the birthers do now that their entire mission is over:

Get help people, get help.

I try to participate in government by protesting and talking and speaking with my elected officials. In the last few years email has become a good way to communicate especially when groups that I participate in give me a quick and easy way to send emails with their messages. Recently Planned Parenthood has been pretty active with the recent passing of HB2443 which further chastises women who choose to have an abortion. So I took action and filled out the form and sent it to my Governor, Jan Brewer.

Look at what I got back:

Governor Jan Brewer not accepting emails

Seriously? She is getting so many emails that she cannot accept anymore? Whats the threshold of how many emails she can handle? Is she getting more emails than the President of the United States?

Great read about the current economic and political conversations regarding Debt and Taxes. I dont like giving the gubnerment my cash but I am more not interested in having food riots and shit.

Our Debt: Why Rich People Should Be Worried Too | The Awl.

I wasn’t necessarily looking for this but our friends at Consumerist were nice enough to give me a link:

Interactive: Which Banks Got Emergency Loans from the Fed During the Financial Meltdown?.

What do you think? Does it matter if you bailed out your own bank? Has their service gotten any better to show you their thanks?

If this doesn’t make you laugh at Libertarians I am not sure what will.

Come on people of Arizona with brains and spines still in your body. Its time to get involved and active, or just move the fuck out of the state and give up. Which is it gonna be?

So is it “hopeless??” No. Goddard must work harder than he’s ever worked in his life to overcome the white-right. Hispanic turnout must be mobilized. The real enemies of the working class need to be identified. Arizonans need to understand how the “conservative” elected leaders have repeatedly failed them, how the policies of the right have been tried with disastrous consequences. Good luck finding penetrating, muckraking or balanced coverage from most of the local media, but maybe social networking can get some young people to offset the reliable senior and LDS vote. And start building that bottom-up infrastructure as the right did. Still, I know people such as Kyrsten Sinema and Chad Campbell who have been working at this for years. I’m not telling them anything they don’t know.

The sad reality is that the left has nearly disappeared from America. Barack Obama holds down a center that is far to the right of historic American politics. But further right still are the ever more radical and dangerous cadres of reaction. More states will catch the Arizona syndrome. In November, we’ll see how badly.

Rogue Columnist: The Arizona syndrome.

Rogue Columnist: Second time around?.

Solution ideas:

Repeal SB 1070.

Elect Terry Goddard governor.

Throw out the Kook majority in the Legislature.

Raise taxes on the rich and, if the Growth Machine ever revives, enact a real-estate transfer tax and a tax on long commutes.

Stop all residential development outside existing urban footprints (and the extravagant planning maps of Buckeye, Surprise, Maricopa, et al, are not existing footprints). For one thing, there’s not enough water.

Establish a real state commerce department employing best practices to attract high-wage jobs.

Build out the Phoenix Biosciences Campus on a speedy schedule to include a hospital, large med school, pharmacy school and private-sector research facilities. Add a full-court press to lure biomed manufacturing from California.

Eliminate GPEC. Let the cities go their own ways.

Fund the public schools and universities to compete at top levels.

Establish real infill incentives along the light-rail line.

Put a premium on shade, including enhancing and reclaiming the shady oases in central Phoenix.

Reform the tax structure so cities aren’t so dependent on sales taxes.

Create a climate-change emergency plan now and begin acting by, for example, building intercity rail, commuter rail, light rail, streetcars and an integrated, easy-to-use transit system.

Put that in your tea bag and drink or smoke it. If you want I can come and tea bag you for a small fee as well.

Bush’s total, of course, was suppressed by the slowdown he inherited from Clinton and the full-scale meltdown during his last year. But even during the recovery in between, job growth lagged. In only eight of Bush’s 96 months did the economy create as many jobs as the 290,000 it did last month. Clinton exceeded that level 33 times. Reagan exceeded it 24. In all, the economy gained about 1.2 million jobs annually during the six years of recovery under Bush. It averaged about twice that during the expansion from March 1991 to February 2001.

This record suggests two conclusions. One is that there’s no evidence to support the argument from congressional Republicans that tax cuts offer a silver bullet for expanding employment. Job growth boomed after Reagan cut taxes, but expanded even faster after Clinton raised them, and then faltered despite two massive tax cuts under Bush. If tax rates are the critical factor in that record, the relationship is well disguised.

via National Journal Magazine – Repairing The Job Machine.

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.

via PageRank – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.