If you want to be on the side of evidence-based policies on climate change, you shouldn’t rely on exaggerations when writing about Keystone
This piece, published in the Guardian by Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann, takes on the Keystone XL pipeline with exaggeration rather than evidence. The article continues a disturbing trend among some of our most prominent climate scientists who continue to equate Keystone XL with the extraction of hundreds of times more oil than it will ever likely transport and with more oil than will likely ever be extracted from the oil sands. The article ignores important market realities with respect to how pipelines interact with production decisions. If we’re going to have a conversation about greenhouse gas impacts of a pipeline, let’s have them on an honest footing. If you want to be on the side of evidence-based policies on climate change, you shouldn’t rely on exaggerations when writing about it.
Mann claims that, “even the very conservative estimate of my climate scientist colleague Andrew Weaver is dire: extracting and burning all the Keystone-targeted oil would likely result in approximately 0.4°C of additional warming.” Keystone-targeted oil, in this case, is Mann’s new way of referring to the entire oil sands resource—it would take the Keystone XL pipeline 10,000 years to transport that much oil.
10,000 years? Really? Yes. When Andrew Weaver and Neil Swart, estimated the emissions impacts of extraction and combustion of the oil sands resource, they used a figure of approximately 2 trillion barrels of original oil in place—a defensible number for oil in place, but not for expected future production, and certainly not for Keystone-targeted oil (a distinction about which the Swart and Weaver piece is very clear). At a capacity of 830,000 barrels per day, Keystone XL would be expected to transport about 200 million barrels of oil sands bitumen and about 100 million barrels of diluent (usually a natural gas liquid) each year, assuming 30 per cent dilution. At those rates, it would take about 10,000 years for the Keystone XL pipeline to transport the amount of oil sands bitumen associated with the Swart and Weaver 0.4°C estimate. Furthermore, given current prices and technology, only about 10 per cent of that total resource is economically viable and, while technology may improve and prices may increase, much of it is unlikely to ever be produced.
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New language, same old story on Keystone from climate scientists - Macleans.ca
This piece, published in the Guardian by Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann, takes on the Keystone XL pipeline with exaggeration rather than evidence. The article continues a disturbing trend among some of our most prominent climate scientists who continue to equate Keystone XL with the extraction of hundreds of times more oil than it will ever likely transport and with more oil than will likely ever be extracted from the oil sands. The article ignores important market realities with respect to how pipelines interact with production decisions. If we’re going to have a conversation about greenhouse gas impacts of a pipeline, let’s have them on an honest footing. If you want to be on the side of evidence-based policies on climate change, you shouldn’t rely on exaggerations when writing about it.
Mann claims that, “even the very conservative estimate of my climate scientist colleague Andrew Weaver is dire: extracting and burning all the Keystone-targeted oil would likely result in approximately 0.4°C of additional warming.” Keystone-targeted oil, in this case, is Mann’s new way of referring to the entire oil sands resource—it would take the Keystone XL pipeline 10,000 years to transport that much oil.
10,000 years? Really? Yes. When Andrew Weaver and Neil Swart, estimated the emissions impacts of extraction and combustion of the oil sands resource, they used a figure of approximately 2 trillion barrels of original oil in place—a defensible number for oil in place, but not for expected future production, and certainly not for Keystone-targeted oil (a distinction about which the Swart and Weaver piece is very clear). At a capacity of 830,000 barrels per day, Keystone XL would be expected to transport about 200 million barrels of oil sands bitumen and about 100 million barrels of diluent (usually a natural gas liquid) each year, assuming 30 per cent dilution. At those rates, it would take about 10,000 years for the Keystone XL pipeline to transport the amount of oil sands bitumen associated with the Swart and Weaver 0.4°C estimate. Furthermore, given current prices and technology, only about 10 per cent of that total resource is economically viable and, while technology may improve and prices may increase, much of it is unlikely to ever be produced.
more
New language, same old story on Keystone from climate scientists - Macleans.ca
