I've enjoyed many of our conversations. It is genuinely sad to see you sink so low.

On a larger scale, it has been sad to see so much Trumpian style politics seep into Canada the last few years. The type of politics where someone can say this:
and not feel an ounce of contrition, not feel they stepped over any lines, just think they are fighting the good fight against their politics enemies.

It is a sickness in Canada. And it is sad to see you embrace it.

Come to the dark side and learn to embrace the derps for the derps that they are. You underestimate the power of the Dark Side. If you will not fight, then you will meet your destiny.

As a bonus, they can potentially buy you a new house!

Personally I am not interested in uke's triple speak and denial around the issues.

He asks questions and expects answers and then gets all haughty and holier than though with the 'how dare you... i am not going to answer anything', despite the facts others have laid out about his own statements in this thread.

I mean he says something as child like in comprehension as this...

..which show no comprehension, (LITERARAL ZERO) that keeping Canada from getting its pipeline only means more oil DOES NOT get out of Cdn ground, but DOES THEN get out of Russian ground or US shale grounds, so to extrapolate that to increases that are "massively contributing to global warming", is just nonsense.

If the Canadian OIl in pipelines FIRST reduces the emissions for the Cdn product getting to market only. That is a positive.

Second if it means Russian product is not then extracted and shipped across the ocean it is a good thing.

If Shale does not have the pricing to make the market viable, it is a good thing.

But uke sees the world as not connected. That somehow you stop the Cdn extraction and pipelines and that helps the issue of global warming while the Russian and SHale have no countering or offset impact?

It really is a child like view, but sadly that is much of the left in Canada. They see the trees but not the forest behind it. So they are fighting pipelines and celebrate Canada not getting them thinking they are winning for the environment and the only thing they are doing is shifting the economic gains to others.

And ironically it is often people in fields who rely the most on gov't money (academics, etc) who are the least well informed on this topic and repeat the most uninformed positions.

Lol. Literally not a single thing you typed out here follows from my very benign and simple conditional statement. I said IF more oil is being burned THEN it will contribute to global warming. That should be an utterly uncontroversial baseline statement.

That statement doesn't advocate to "stop Cdn extraction and pipelines" ffs! That statement doesn't comment one way or the other about the degree to which Canada has pricing power and other countries can or cannot fill up the slack. That statement doesn't compare pipelines to rail. You have concocted an entire fake position you imagine me to hold all based on an entirely trivial initial statement.

Wtf is wrong with you and lozen? Why on earth are you two so ****ing obsessed with my profession.

You've convinced me to stay with the light. I shall explain my attitude towards pipelines here.

Let's take the 30,000 ft view first. I believe as a society we need to take significant action to dramatically reduce our carbon expenditure, and that we are not sufficiently on track to be able to accomplish this. There are many things I think we should do that we could get into, but recall I already mentioned that I tend to be more demand-side; that is, taking actions that reduce the demand for carbon as opposed to supply-side where we restrict the availability of carbon. First and foremost of these is putting a big price on carbon, something Canada is slowly doing.

Secondly, I primarily think we should focus our efforts on lowering specifically domestic consumption. As a rich and highly polluting country we have a particular moral imperative, but also we just have more control here. We don't have control over Russia or Iran or Venezuela. But we can and should take a leadership role in the world.

As for pipelines, do they have a transitory role? Well yes. To me it depends very much on the context. I'm sensitive to the argument that the world isn't doing anything and we shouldn't shoot ourselves in the foot while that happens and certainly prefer pipelines to other transport methods. I opposed keystone Xl, as Shifty noted (I'm more supportive of transmountain expansion), because the US does not have a price on carbon today and isn't doing anything meaningful to combat global warming and so in that context we are supporting the wrong side without to counterbalance. We don't have global pricing power on oil, that has alternated between the US and Saudi Arabia for most of history. But we do influence the price in the north american market. So flooding the market with far more Canadian oil is likely to drop the price of say WTI and lead to increased relative consumption in the US. Is it going to be partially offset by other sources if we don't? Obviously. But demand curves still exist.

This local Canada/US observation is part of a larger conversation about carbon tarrifs between countries. I've quite like proposals that basically say with carbon intensive products we will put on tarrifs in countries that don't have a price on carbon and remove those tarrifs on those that don't. Canada can't do this alone, but there is some growing international momentum behind such an idea. This is the kind of multilateral proposals that I think we should be focusing on. And in those types of contexts, I'm quite supportive of significantly expanding Canadian oil production to support a transitionary phase.

To summarize it a bit, if most of our energy policy is entirely tuned towards increasing production, then I think we are part of the problem. But if we are working meaningfully domestically and internationally to try and move away from carbon heavy societies, then I absolutely think that a pipeline delivered Canadian oil can and should be part of that say 20 year transition phase. I'd like to see, for instance, 10 times (to make up a number) the investment dollars into alternative energy things going up at the same time as new money is invested in increased pipeline capacity.

I'm sure I will be proven correct and there was no point in typing the above out, but hopeful I will be mistaken.

There was likely no point typing that with regard to how the derps will react, but I will address it with a bit of an odd tangent, because I am a huge believer in alternative energy sources, but at the same time I have seen how many of them get funded and proposed and sold, and being polite - that area has been pretty horrid, as much of that space got filled by the "Old Gil needs a sale" type sales guys that went from selling sub prime mortgages (more in the US than here) to selling solar energy or wind systems, where selling was the only thing that mattered (for commission). Toss in various bizarre government grants and funding that would go up and down or be removed (sometimes retroactively) without any warning or notice and you had industries that rivaled the online poker industry in terms of surprise kicks to the testicles.

I will not pretend to be an expert in this other than understanding what will make consumers interested, and gimmicky expensive systems rarely do that, but the equivalent of LED lights (which are easy to replace old ones) will work, so once for instance solar roof shingles are developed that are price and longevity competitive with current ones - you will see an adoption rate that will change quickly and then grow over time as more people make the change. I actually have faith in humanity for innovation, but I do not have faith in government for always having the best plans and approaches that pass the common sense test. My hope is eventually the money to be made from truly innovative technology will lead the way, much like what happened with digital cameras when they replaced the film industry.

Not sure that this is directly on point with your post, but then you did it in reply to mine where all I was suggesting was join the dark side and make fun of the derps instead of trying to reason with them .

Bravo Kenney !
You fu**in idiot ….

Cut taxes when u make money and lets hear him next year saying his got no money left to pay down debts ….
And of course accusing taxes are too high or Quebec and Ontario are evil to explain alberta debacle again lol .

Same right wing economics failure for decades and still he goes into it even more ….
Can someone send him a email to tell him the best cure of high prices is ….high prices ?
And his suppose to be the defender of free markets right ? Lol ….
And of course will hear him complain on trudeau buying votes right because u know , high oil prices is far more dangerous than covid …. Jfc .


Ps: kenney too naive to see by reducing taxes , the oil sector will sell it to consumer a little bit higher to fill the emptiness left out by the tax cut ….
What do I care , my dividends will just be higher , thx kenney !

Could not have said it any better. Though you do realize Rachel Notley would probably be giving bigger subsidies.

Its the main reason I understand when other provinces have no sympathy for Alberta in tough times

When you post an answer like this I gain respect for your position and do appreciate it even though as wrong as I think it is

The flaw in your argument is demand is not going down even at current prices. You think that electric cars would be flying off the lots or cars that get 50-60 km a gallon They are not.

I think on the commercial side carbon tax can have a role. Businesses are more willing to invest in long term energy efficiency .

Good on you for adding some detail to your positions instead of just obstinately refusing to do so, while having conflicting statements (for pipelines while being clearly against some) and then pretending everyone else should just be able to parse what you mean and getting pissy when they 'assume' positions in the gaps.

If you (anyone) is going to ask others to flesh out their view for critique while refusing to do same, then I think it is not only fair, but necessary for others to assume what you mean in the gaps so you cannot create an unassailable or challengeable position later where you can fill in those gaps after the fact with whatever you think best fits the argument at that point.

That is imo, a very dishonest debate tactic often used by the Trump derps, where they use all the points Trump did not say and then fit those 'potential' arguments to whatever they feel they need to do to support him.

Anyway I will reply to this after directly.

EV sales were double in 2021 what they were in 2020. Lot's of growth.

This objection is just weird. Why on earth would energy ignore the basic laws of economics enjoyed by everything else (ignoring fringe cases like veblen goods)? It has lower price elasticity, to be sure, but people on the margins make different choices that affect consumption when prices are high.

If you were right, and this wasn't true, then we shouldn't do a carbon tax. Instead, we would have to do a much more government-based restrictive system like quota systems or whatever else. That is, the whole point of a carbon tax is to let the market figure it out how to be most efficient at reducing energy consumption when you put a price on energy. But if you genuinely don't believe the market is able to respond to higher energy prices, then the only option is a much more heavy handed approach.

uke the reason that it is not "following the basic laws of economics" where a rise in the O&G price results in a drop in demand is because the demand side of this equation is growing so rapidly and there is not a sufficient alternative, and won't be for a long time yet. What we have right now with alternative energy is a growing 'offset' but not replacement.

China, India, Africa, all have a thirst to enter the 1st world and energy is the key to that for them. The West, has no thirst to give up our luxuries and won't no matter how much some think and hope we should for the betterment of all the world.

I do not mean this to be snide but there is an element on the left who feel they can force the West into reducing and downsizing everything and being better world citizens if only they can harm the industry and drive costs up, in the belief it will force a shift to downsizing and renewables.

Quite simply, they are flat out wrong'. It is a utopian hope that will never happen.

So the pragmatic alternative is to have 2 parallel tracks.

Track 1 utilizes O&G resources and seeks to 'green' them as much as possible. That does include pipelines.
Track 2 is to tax that industry heavily and incentivizes them to re-invest profits into expanding their business lines into Green Energy which is a path almost all big Energy producers want to build out regardless.


The belief you expressed prior that if we block O&G lines that necessarily drives up prices which necessarily then cuts demand and thus necessarily improves the environment is just wrong.

As i demonstrated, the price increasing, in THIS TIME of unflinching DEMAND regardless, just means that you now have Shale and other more harmful and expensive sources becoming more accessible while dropping their cost of retrieval. We are making Shale more competitive for the future due to todays higher cost. The exact opposite of the dynamic you think is a no brainer to understand.,

Instead of Cdn pipelines were in place and the impact was lower prices in the N.American market those same Shale assets may stay sidelined as their investors need a higher price to be incentivized to spend, and then over time as more and more Green Energy assets come into play the DEMAND for O&G is offset and drops and those Shale and other assets end up stranded as they did not make the investments to get their price down.

So while my calling it a 'childlike view' might be harsh, it comes from my frustration that it misses so much of the bigger global picture and in fact leads to 'recoverable O&G asset growth at a lower price point' thus meaning it will take that much longer for Green Energy to eventually replace it.

The top selling vehicles in Canada in 2021 from multiple sources

1. Ford F150
2. Ram Pickup
3. GMCC Sierra
4. Rav 4 Toyota
5. CHevy Silverado

So that still tells you trucks sell.

I googled EV car sales and 2021 it was 26,700 and 2020 it was 21,400. I am no math major but that is not double. 2019 was the best at over 50,000

Which brings us to another problem. These vehicles use a 240 volt system for optimal charging which puts a strain on the grid as most people charge during peak hours

So you are correct a heavy handed approach may be a better strategy.

Have to laugh Justin Trudeau had to be taken in through the back at Number 10 Downing Street as a large protest was out front chanting Fxxk Justin Trudeau

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canad...?ocid=msedgntp

As well European Media notices like we do how much difficulty Justin has at answering questions

When asked about whether Canada would be boosting its military budget to meet the NATO spending target of two per cent of GDP: “We need to make sure that the women and men in the Canadian Armed forces have all the equipment necessary to be able to stand strongly, as we always have as members of NATO.”

When asked whether Canada would be using its petroleum sector to help Europe lessen its dependence on Russian oil: “We need to move forward on decarbonizing our economies, but we need to do that in a way that supports people through that process and we’re going to continue doing that.”

When asked about the effectiveness of sanctions in curbing Russian aggression: “The courage of the Ukrainians in standing up to the Russian invaders has inspired and humbled us all and we need to show ourselves as determined to push back against Putin.”

I have never heard anyone offer a counter to my oft repeated view (i argued this during the Texas ice storm) of gov't incentivizing (requiring) new homes builds to all have an energy wall (batteries) installed along with some solar panels to fuel it, and perhaps retrofit credits for home improvements?

I ask, as I wonder if I am missing something? (of course, rare earth element capacity might be a factor)


It seems to me that a Smart Grid, with a good percent of homes having their own battery wall would instantly push (incentivize/make easier) EV adoption. but also serve as a great backup for emergency times when the grid is taxed.


Texas, in particular (extreme heat and cold surges) would benefit massively if a good percent of homes had this option tied in to a smart grid. As soon as peak demand was taxing the system and about to crash it, they could rotate and shut down power to a rotating number of homes thru the smart grid and let them rely on their stored power.


I get this is 'picking winners' in that it is the gov't thru tax credits and perhaps legislation forcing these into homes, but I see no other downside to it. It helps all of Canada go more green, it helps EV sales. It helps out the current grid. It decentralizes power.

i see only positives and cannot foresee a single negative. And I am not saying there are not any. I am just saying I cannot foresee them?

I saw that somewhere else last night, and as someone who has no love for the PM, but also doesn't suffer from a blinding hatred of him, I wondered how that made any sense. Like, WTF would people in the UK be so upset with Trudeau for that would inspire a "large protest"? About the only thing these days that would get much international notice would be his stance on Ukraine, and I can't imagine anyone other than Russian sympathizers being upset at him for that.

What I see in the video clips is some people outside the gate, and I hear yelling that could be **** Trudeau. Is Trudeau getting some special entrance because of a protest aimed at him, or is this just standard practice when there are protestors of any kind out on Whitehall? I'd suspect the latter. Is there a big crowd of Londoners there just to protest Trudeau, or could it be just a variety of people protesting a variety of things, and/or a handful of loud Canadians upset about any number of things? Again, I'd suspect the latter. I can't imagine Trudeau's visit garnering a whole lot of attention, TBH.

It is because of the emergencies measures thing. There was a massive push in the far right media internationally to try and portray Trudeau and Canada as some sort of dictatorial state. Coverage in places like fox news and russia today was absolutely wall to wall, and no doubt this was the case in far right UK media as well. A charitable view would say this ended up appearing slightly hyperbolic in comparison to Russia's invasion of Ukraine where we are seeing what an actual dictator does (our "dictator" voluntarily ended his new powers in under a week after solving the problem). A more conspiratorial view would be that given all we know about russian fifth column attempts to change election results and stir up problems in western countries it is awfully convenient that the whole world spent a moment reflecting on whether ****ing Canada of all places was a dictatorship a week before Russian invaded Ukraine. Hmmmmmm

Lets be fair there was a lot of coverage on the left as well about the emergencies act. Joe Rogan, Russel Brand, Breaking Points, The Hill as well were critical of it

I may be able to answer this. One builder here in Edmonton brags about solar panels on their houses yet they build a crappy house that does not utilize many energy efficient upgrades.

Another issue with adding solar panels is in many jurisdictions you can not sell excess power back into the system. As well here in Edmonton if you had enough panels and batteries to power your system you still pay all the fees distribution fee etc. So you may consume no power but pay $75 a month.

Another issue is the fact many newer subdivisions do not allow it as they are not pleasing to the eye .

A better solution is mandating better practices that make a home more energy efficient.

Appreciate the attempt.

I don't see any of those issues being gaiting or an impediment.

There will always be crappy home builders so that is not really relevant to this.

Change the laws where necessary and allow excess power to be sold back into the grid. It would be dumb not to, as a way to gauge how much 'purchased power' could be reduced.

Who cares what subdivision builders want? As part of permitting many things are obligated otherwise they cannot build.

Energy efficient homes are better. Even better still, is energy efficient homes with a solar wall, as far as I can see.

First of all I just want to point out that with your posting history ITT you are green energy evangelist and climate alarmist. You don't get to walk that back now that the world is in the midst of a terrible global energy crises, the policies and rhetoric you endorse helped cause this. You have voted for the Green party that openly compaign on shutting down the oilsands, you praised Trudeau for his speech at COP24, you were glad when keystone was cancelled, you were against the continuation of Trans Mountain, you have mentioned quite a few times you want fossil fuels to stay in the ground and you label anyone who questions your dogma as "climate change denier's" or "anti-science". Now that your dogma is falling apart you are playing the victim, claiming posters are lying about you, that you just never had a chance to actually clarify your position. Give me a break ��.


3.3 Billion people use less energy than your refrigerator, let's solve that. Your idea of putting a big price on carbon is/will have enormous consequences, as an example of that is this: https://www.bloombergquint.com/busin...nd-destruction


You're right we do have control, Canada produces the cleanest oil in the world. We should be taking a leadership role in that and embracing it not traveling to climate summit apologizing for it.



This statement is just bizarre and probably has something to do with the dogma of all things Trump wanted are bad. 12 states that are home to over 1/4 of the population have carbon pricing policies. Where do you think Trans Mountain is shipping it to?



They rejoined the Paris climate accord and banned all drilling on federal lands while drastically cutting production.


Demand for oil is growing and has steadily for years. Why do you think it's better the US get it's oil from Venezuela rather than Canada?


What are the alternative energies you want? Is it safe to say you want Canada to follow in the foot steps of say Germany with the green energy transition?

Ah, so it's on to the personal attacks now? Yes, yes, I know, you're "just asking".

Not sure why you'd direct that at me given that I'm not advocating "stopping drilling" any time soon. If ever.

Oh, I had no idea that alternative sources of energy had been found to be destructive and unsustainable.

I could go Shifty86 on you and say "Then I guess we better destroy all of our existing solar panels now, right?", but that would just be a boring back-and-forth waste of time (if you bothered to respond), so I'll assume that of course isn't what you're suggesting, and ask what you see as the future for alternative energy. No more? Or are you OK with alternative energy with no subsidies? And if yes to that, what about with lower subsidies? What is the line in the sand for you on the future of alternative energy?

LOL. I simply don't want us to be expanding oil production in a big way, and would like us to continue the path to reducing our production over the coming decades. If that makes me a zealot, well, the majority of Canadians might be zealots. But perhaps you'd agree with that.

I don't recall being smug when I posted anything, but I'm not wasting any more time on this. You asked why there would be subsidies for oil, I pointed out that we had subsidies now, and that was my entire point. As I said in my last post: "If you believe otherwise, perhaps you can explain why, and if you had some other point, please share. My knowledge on the subject is limited, so I'd be happy to learn more."

Your disingenuous question bullshit is getting tiresome. I haven't suggested stopping investment, and LOL @ this false reliable/unreliable dichotomy.

If you want to have a real conversation about this, I'm here.

I got, surprisingly, three at least somewhat thoughtful replies to my ted talk post, so thank you. And my apologies for not having the time right now to respond in detail.

However, I want to point out that you three have a lot of disagreement with each other, even though you are manifesting it all as disagreement towards me. Take this:
Shifty believes there will be a lot of demand destruction from higher prices that lead to enormous consequences. But lozen believes that people won't really change their behaviour with higher prices and Cuepee believes that demand won't diminish because other countries will just fill up the supply. So which is it, you three? Will increasing price of oil - either from carbon taxes or supply constraints or geopolitics etc - actually result result in lowered consumption all else being equal?

In reality it looks like a big NO . You do realize a great portion of this country live in areas were public transportation is not an option at all because their is none.

Uke, if you are going to use simple economic theories you also have to be able to distinguish between macroeconomics and microeconomics. Everyone is right here, even you.