Big fire and explosion in Canada

[The Mad Monk]

The bottom line is still: get rid of oil!

Uranium for everyone!

[Colonâ„¢]

This is why people who oppose oil pipelines are idiots.

Rail is 100x more dangerous and deadly.

Pipelines have also been known to explode.

In fact there was a scare in the port of Antwerp last weekend when a subsidence nearly caused 6 pipelines to explode. These pipelines are carrying oil, gas, butane, nitrogen and hydrogen. Reportedly an explosion would have torched everything in a 1km radius and that area is loaded with petrochemical facilities.

[H Tower]

This is why people who oppose oil pipelines are idiots.

Rail is 100x more dangerous and deadly.

Rail transportation is actually less likely to spill than pipeline.

https://www.aar.org/safety/Documents/Freight%20Railroads%20Safely%20Moving%20Crude%20Oil.pdf

Last year, the pipeline crude oil spill percentage was 10 times that of the railroads (Rail = 0.00006% vs. pipelines = 0.0005% in 2012)
.
Over the past decade (2002 - 2012), the estimated spill rate for crude oil moving by rail was 0.38 compared with the estimated pipeline spill rate of 0.88 (measured as gallons spilled per million barrel miles moved)

Pipelines are still the far better choice for moving oil. The railroads wouldn't be able to move the volume of oil needed to keep the US and Canada moving. Rail transport of oil is just a drop in the bucket compared to what the pipelines move. But when a pipeline fails, the disaster is just magnitudes larger.

[Sava]

Asher rarely lets facts stop him!

[regexcellent]

The bottom line is still: get rid of oil!

Great idea! Let's get rid of food, too. And safe drinking water, I hear that involves chlorine.

Spoiler:

getting rid of food (efficient food production anyway) is something Boris has seriously proposed in the past, which is why I bring it up.

[Asher]

Rail transportation is actually less likely to spill than pipeline.


Pipelines are still the far better choice for moving oil. The railroads wouldn't be able to move the volume of oil needed to keep the US and Canada moving. Rail transport of oil is just a drop in the bucket compared to what the pipelines move. But when a pipeline fails, the disaster is just magnitudes larger.

Yes. Let's cite statistics from the American Association of Railroads and pretend like it's substantial.

Most spills are minor and are cleaned up pretty quickly.

But explosions that vaporize 60+ people are far less likely to happen on a pipeline than unmanned trains running on 150 year old tracks.

The numbers are misleading, as you hinted to. So little is moved by rail right now and so much is moved by pipelines, a single pipeline spill can skew the numbers to a ridiculous degree.

These rail cars also travel in the middle of huge cities, while massive oil pipelines seldom are built in downtown cores, etc.

[Asher]

This is the bandwagon the oil industry was quick to catch right as the tragedy unraveled.

While pipelines are less likely to explode, they're more likely to cause spills, with other adverse effects.

The bottom line is still: get rid of oil!

Yeah, let's just get rid of oil.

Life is so simple when you're a simpleton.

[Asher]

Asher rarely lets facts stop him!

Facts like...

The propaganda source he linked to cited 2002-2012 numbers. Virtually no oil was shipped by rail til the very end of that range.

For example, in Canada 500 train cars of oil were shipped total in 2009.
The number this year is 140,000 train cars of oil in Canada alone.

They played games with numbers. Rail is far more dangerous.

A few weeks ago we almost had oil spill into the river running though downtown and feeding the water reservoirs. It was from a train derailment...on a bridge.

[Colonâ„¢]

That was a pipeline explosion in Belgium. I suspect the real danger of rail vs pipelines is that the former tend to be more next to inhabited areas.

[MRT144]

Do you ever get the impression Asher walks around his office just shouting "WRONG WRONG WRONG" all the time?

[Asher]

That's what my job is, actually. I review other people's code and designs, I catch what other people can't think of, and I am critical of many business decisions. It's a valued skill if you're almost always right.

[Dinner]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23261322

The BBC is reporting that the train's brakes were not properly applied. The hand break was applied at the engine but not to each individual car as was company policy.

[Egbert]

Asher rarely lets facts stop him!

Facts are meaningless. They can be used to prove all sorts of things.

[H Tower]

So little is moved by rail right now and so much is moved by pipelines, a single pipeline spill can skew the numbers to a ridiculous degree.

Not sure you understand numbers

[Wezil]

From wiki -

On November 10, 1979, a 106-car freight train derailed on the CP rail line while carrying explosive and poisonous chemicals just north of the intersection of Mavis Road and Dundas Street. One of the tank cars carrying propane exploded, and since other tank cars were carrying chlorine, the decision was made to evacuate nearby residents. With the possibility of a deadly cloud of chlorine gas spreading through Mississauga, 218,000 people were evacuated.[10] Within a few days Mississauga was practically a ghost town.

Later when the mess had been cleared and the danger neutralized residents were allowed to return to their homes. At the time, it was the largest peacetime evacuation in North American history. Due to the speed and efficiency in which it was conducted, many cities later studied and modeled their own emergency plans after Mississauga's. For many years afterwards, the name "Mississauga" was to Canadians associated with a major rail disaster.