And then there was one...

[Asher]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
No it is not, it is just very difficult to achieve in today's world because of our massive reliance on fossil fuels...

Any part of Canada close to forestry could easily utilise renewable biomass for energy requirements right down to the humble fire place - that is carbon neutral.

You believe this carbon neutral ****? Fine then -- I'm willing to bet with the massive amount of forests in Canada, we're carbon neutral. It's the countries like the UK with little to no forests and high pollution density that are not carbon neutral.

yay for carbon neutral?

Now yes - because Canada made insufficient effort in the 1st place!

You've shown yourself to be completely ignorant of Canada's situation here, so there's no point in discussing this until you put the effort in to learn it.

[Asher]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
Funny, all I can see is a steady decline in their use...

Source your claims and I'll source mine...

You "see" a steady decline in their use? Where do you see this? If you've got the figures infront of you, source them.

My source is from the president of CP Rail, who happens to be a family friend. And, you'll love this, he used to be an oil executive.

A quick google search will show you both CN Rail and CP Rail have surging revenues and profits. Seeing as these are the only two rail freight companies in Canada, it puts your claim that use is "declining" to shame.

You want to know why they're not being expanded? Because, as Spec says, trucking is what's making a lot of sense to most businesses. You want to know the big reason? Guess how much it costs to build a 5-6,000 km railway, and don't forget the mountains it has to go through.

Try Toronto Vs London instead. And besides, are you telling me that 1,252.3 per km^2 is not enough to have a decent public transport system?

Correct. The vast majority of people live spread out in neighborhoods that are equivalent to suburbs in the US. This means that tons and tons of bus feeder routes need to feed them. Given the low density of the neighborhoods, bus service is infrequent (every half hour to every hour), and given the weather in Canada in the winter, it's unreliable and extremely uncomfortable to wait for the bus. FWIW, Calgary's LRT is the most heavily used in North America. Ridership has more than doubled since 1995. Still, the car is king for reasons I've outlined -- most people can't live near the trains without having to deal with the busses.

It's a different scenario compared to densely populated UK cities. Or even to cities like Toronto, which are sufficiently densely populated (which is why I actually use public transit in Toronto, and I've actually said the system is decent here). Go outside Toronto proper and the situation sucks again. There are far more cities like Calgary in terms of mass transit than Toronto in Canada, which was the whole point.

12.5% to 6%. If you're this ignorant about Canada's obligations to Kyoto, imagine how ignorant the average Canadian must be and then see why your country refuses even to attempt the modest targets it agreed to. Look it up yourself - you clearly need the education...

It's 12.5% to 6% below 1990 levels. In terms of today's numbers, it's 30+% for Canada to nil needed for the UK. That's what you don't seem to comprehend. For various reasons, the UK's levels were already dropping after 1990 while Canada's were rapidly increasing. I'm happy to discuss the basics of Canada's economy and demographics, but I'm not sure you'd listen anyway. The point is, the UK can preserve the status quo and meet Kyoto, and in Canada you're asking for a full one third of all greenhouse gas emissions to be completely obliterated within a few years.

To any intelligent person, that's unreasonable and absurd.

[Arrian]

I'm a European, but apparently I obviously know more about N. American geography than you - I even gave you clues!

Yeah, ok Moby.

I'll leave you to Asher, since he certainly knows more about Canada's rail & trucking situation than I (and, quite obviously, you) do.

-Arrian

[Kuciwalker]

.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
The really bad thing is that we cannot just erect a very high wall around the US and China so that only they are affected by their emission policies, wheras the rest of the world can save themselves due to sound environmental policies.

Have we been reading the same thread?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Arrian




Yeah, ok Moby.

I'll leave you to Asher, since he certainly knows more about Canada's rail & trucking situation than I (and, quite obviously, you) do.

-Arrian

I'm still grinning about the Thunder Bay being the heart of Canada and all that. Yes, it's rather central, but the heart isn't exactly central either. Funny way to describe it.

Yes, it's a railway hub like many other cities. But its passenger train service was discontinued 17 years ago. The heart of Canada!

Thunder Bay will always been ingrained in my memory as the place where the cops pulled me over thinking I was smuggling drugs. Took out everything in my (packed) car that I was moving my **** with, then left it.

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by Asher

I'm still grinning about the Thunder Bay being the heart of Canada and all that. Yes, it's rather central, but the heart isn't exactly central either. Funny way to describe it.

It's in the middle of the inhabited part of your godforsaken ****hole of a country - deal with it!

Yes, it's a railway hub like many other cities. But its passenger train service was discontinued 17 years ago. The heart of Canada!

Sounds like you're only backing up what I have to say about rail cutbacks...!

Thunder Bay will always been ingrained in my memory as the place where the cops pulled me over thinking I was smuggling drugs. Took out everything in my (packed) car that I was moving my **** with, then left it.

And now we have the real reason behind your irrational dislike of the place - obviously they had great judge of character behind deciding who they were going to piss off!

[MOBIUS]

The main reason behind Canada becoming the new glove puppet of the US' criminal attempts to derail any sort of tangible action on Climate Change is the rampant destruction of your hinterland for oil shales, that alone has massively boosted your carbon footprint.

Still, your country is so backward that progress for you will be being able to navigate the Northwest passage and think that that's a good thing...

[Asher]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
The main reason behind Canada becoming the new glove puppet of the US' criminal attempts to derail any sort of tangible action on Climate Change is the rampant destruction of your hinterland for oil shales, that alone has massively boosted your carbon footprint.

It's not the destruction that increased carbon footprint. It's processing of it. This is one reason, BTW, that it's stupid to compare the UK and Canada -- the resource industry in Canada and it's role in the economy. While it's easy to ask residents in the UK not to drive their ****ty 0.5L engine cars/go-karts to their pub to get sloshed, it's less easy to ask millions of Canadians to stop working so we can meet Kyoto and appease ignorant Britons.

[MOBIUS]

Yep, Canadian logic: Uproot a perfectly good renewable resource (not to mention carbon sink) to belch forth vast amounts of CO2 into the earth's atmosphere with one of the most energy intensive and polluting forms of hydrocarbon precisely at a time when the exact opposite needs to be done...!

[Asher]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
Yep, Canadian logic: Uproot a perfectly good renewable resource (not to mention carbon sink) to belch forth vast amounts of CO2 into the earth's atmosphere with one of the most energy intensive and polluting forms of hydrocarbon precisely at a time when the exact opposite needs to be done...!

You seem to think that Fort McMurray is buried deep in a forest or something? Do some research. Basic research. Any research. Please.

You also don't seem to understand how economies work.

[Asher]

You'll also be thrilled to know that the oil companies spend a LOT of money "reclaiming" the land after the oil is harvested.

Here's an example of what it looks like afterwards: http://picasaweb.google.com/rajan74/...28397789500946

If you knew what it looked like before (which you clearly don't), you'll see it's identical in ecology.

[MOBIUS]

Proving you wrong is like swatting a fly - Uh oh, it's Thunder Bay Cops time all over again...

Described by the United Nations Environment Program as one of the world's top "environmental hot spots," the project will eventually transform a boreal forest the size of Florida into an industrial sacrifice zone complete with lakes full of toxic waste and man-made volcanoes spewing out clouds of greenhouse gases.

Bollocks to your bull**** propaganda, Asher. It doesn't wash just like the rest of your feeble arguments...

[Asher]

Boreal Forests the size of Florida? Seriously?

How the hell can you say "Bollocks to your bull**** propaganda" while you quote **** like that RIGHT above it? Have you no shame? You even quote it from an advocacy group/hippy organization, and its wording should set off big alarms about it being propaganda.

[Asher]

Your article also fails to discuss how the government has mandated restoration of the lands once mining completes:

http://www.tarsandswatch.org/oilsands-newest-project-greener-image-park-nearly-finished-first-land-reclaimed-mining

Oilsands' newest project: a greener image; A park is nearly finished on the first land reclaimed from mining

Hanneke Brooymans, October 14, 2007, The Edmonton Journal -- In just a few weeks Syncrude could begin grinding down one of the environmental millstones that the oilsands industry has dragged around for years.

The Alberta government is expected to do a final inspection this month of Gateway Hill, formerly 106 hectares of muskeg that now rear up as high as 40 metres above Highway 63. The oilsands giant used this land north of Fort McMurray, but has now cleaned it up and considers it restored.

If the land passes inspection, Syncrude will be the first oilsands company to get a reclamation certificate.

It's a critical step, because the industry already has approval to mine 95,000 hectares of land, an area almost 13 times the size of Edmonton's entire river valley parks system. The fact that none of the 33,000 hectares used so far has been reclaimed to the government's satisfaction is seen by conservationists as a sure sign of an unsustainable, environmentally hostile industry.

If Syncrude gets the stamp of approval, it will be the result of a long process -- and one criticized for its lack of transparency.

Weighted with the responsibility of setting a precedent for the rest of the industry, Syncrude's small piece of land has gone through the certification process at a sluggish pace. A freedom-of-information request by The Journal shows the process started 10 years ago.

"In 1997, it was decided that Gateway Hill would be the first block of reclaimed mine land in the oilsands region to go through the reclamation certification process," Syncrude wrote in its 2003 certificate application to Alberta Environment.

The choice is interesting because Gateway Hill isn't really representative of the more difficult task of reclaiming mined land. Instead, it's the place where Syncrude stored the earth scraped off of nearby land in preparation for mining.

The site looks nothing like it did in its pre-Syncrude days, when it was a nearly flat, wet area with lowland spruce and willow swamp and fen.

Now it's a dry, forested hill sprinkled with non-native tamarack and hybrid poplars and threaded with public walking trails.

By provincial law, companies are required to replace what was there before industrial activity with a landscape of "equivalent capability." This means the land should be able to support similar, but not necessarily identical, uses after the reclamation is complete.

The government long ago conceded that land with mineable oilsands won't look exactly like it did before mining took place. But it's unclear exactly what is being allowed, said Dan Woynillowicz, a senior policy analyst with the Pembina Institute, an environmental think-tank.

He said it seems like the company and the government are deciding together, behind closed doors, what the government should accept as reclamation.

Woynillowicz also questions the timing of the process, because a committee of industry, government and non-government members is currently trying to figure out what reclamation standards should be.

Alberta Sustainable Resource Development is the ministry responsible for ensuring the reclamation of Crown land. Spokeswoman Eilish Lemieux said there were a lot of back and forth exchanges between the company and Syncrude from 2004 until this year.

The company submitted what it considered a final application in August, Lemieux said. The process took so long because "we want to get it right," she said.

The inspector assessing the site this month could decide in early November about the certificate, she said.

Towards the end of the process, the ministry was still trying to get Syncrude to do a few things which the company felt were not necessary. One of them was documenting current wildlife use of the area. Syncrude argued this wasn't legally required and would set a precedent.

Syncrude is reluctant to embed that cost in all future certification applications," said a letter to the government.

Company spokesman Alain Moore said this issue is still an ongoing discussion. Lemieux would not comment on why the government wanted the company to do the survey.

It's clear from the correspondence that in 2004 Syncrude was already hoping for a final inspection. Moore would not say the company was growing impatient. But he did say Syncrude anticipates a speedier process for future applications, once a more established protocol is in place.

Woynillowicz wonders what that protocol will be.

"I'm not sure we'll ever really have a clear sense of what exactly the process was and what exactly Syncrude has done in terms of reclamation."