An interesting article from http://www.ucg.org/ about environmental spills and stress. This follows this post about China in the Bahamas. For a free magazine subscription or to get the books recommended for free click HERE! or call 1-888-886- 8632.
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A Vaccine for Stress?

Posted on Jul 22, 2010 by Mike Bennett Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

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Stress from oil spills, unemployment, accidents and much more is slowly killing us. Will scientists really find a vaccine to prevent its harmful effects? What can we do now to deal with stress?

“While listless, oil-soaked pelicans may be the most memorable images of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the fishermen and business owners marooned along the Gulf Coast already are proving just as big a challenge for the mental health workers dispatched from Louisiana to Florida to help vaccinate against the fast-growing epidemic of despair,” reported The Los Angeles Times (Kim Murphy, “Oil Spill Stress Starts to Weigh on Gulf Residents,” June 20, 2010).
Although the reference to vaccination was metaphorical, there are researchers working on ways to literally block the deadly effects of stress on the human brain. Whether they will be successful is in question, but the long-term harmful effects of stress are clear.
Stress increases the risk of heart attack, stroke, adult-onset diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, major depressive disorder, back pain and much more.
What are mental health workers expecting from the Gulf oil spill? “The symptoms are well-documented: The Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 touched off a wave of suicides, domestic violence, bankruptcies and alcoholism in Alaska,” according to the LA Times article.

Stress from every side

Of course, the oil spill is only one of the many sources of stress in our lives: accidents and illnesses, relationship problems, money problems, toxic workplaces, frustrating bureaucracies and a general feeling of helplessness in the face of the bad news that bombards us every day.
For example, consider unemployment and how it affects not only the jobless person, but his or her family. U.S. News'HealthDay column reported:
“‘Whenever there's a downturn, it's the kids who suffer a significant burden,' said Dr. Christopher Bellonci, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston. ‘When families are doing well, they can buffer some of this stress. When they can't, it bleeds through to the kids.'
“Nationally, one in seven children (10.5 million kids) has an unemployed parent” (March 25, 2010).

A stress vaccine?

The August 2010 Wired magazine has the cover line: “The Search for the Stress Vaccine,” based on the research of Robert Sapolsky and others. A study published in Nature Neuroscience way back in 2004 outlined some of the promise of this research. Their work on rodents “reversed the outcome of the stress response by rendering glucocorticoids protective rather than destructive. Our findings elucidate three principal steps in the neuronal stress-response pathway, all of which are amenable to therapeutic intervention.”
But the research is still years away from clinical trials on humans. As Dr. Sapolsky said ,“It's not going to help anybody soon, but we've proved that it's possible. We can reduce the neural damage caused by stress.”
There are many hurdles to overcome, including the fact that you can't just eliminate the offending chemicals, “because they are involved in all sorts of important functions, like helping you run for your life” (Jonah Lehrer, “Under Pressure,” Wired, August 2010).
Solving stress with a vaccine is not only fraught with possible side effects and unintended consequences, it is also a long way off. What can we do in the meantime?

Stress reducers

The Wired article (which has not been uploaded to Wired.com yet, but probably will be next month) highlights a number of widely accepted stress reducers:

• Make friends.
• Drink in moderation.
• Get enough sleep.
• Don't fight.
• Confront your fears.
• Meditate.
• Don't force yourself to exercise. (Here they point out that exercise is a great stress reducer, but only if you want to do it.)

Coping techniques for Christians

Jonah Lehrer explained that some of the most dangerous stress involves “feeling that nothing can be done” and a sense of hopeless “existential despair.” Stress reducers and medicines can't deal with these fundamental issues of meaning, purpose and faith. Thankfully, our Creator provides the answers to these, the most important questions of life.
God has a purpose for your life. He wants you to enjoy eternity with Him achieving a potential even greater than we can imagine. This great purpose, and the fact that nothing is outside God's control, helps us to deal with the stresses of this life. God's plan helps give us the positive perspective that allows us to confidently cope with our trials and stresses. It gives us the peace of mind and contentment that are the ultimate antidote to stress.
To learn more about what the Bible teaches about this and other mental health issues, see “The Bible's Keys to Mental Health .” It provides practical help and real hope.

Pope Francis Making a Sharper Left Turn

A timely post about from www.chick.com about Pope Francis. This follows this post about immigration restriction from both conservatives and liberals. This follows this post about Obamacare subsidies and the Supreme Court. 
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"Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?" Gal. 4:16 7 Pope Francis Making a Sharper Left Turn https://www.chick.com/requests/secreq/CatalogReq.asp         Pope Francis is rapidly embracing the new humanist religion of big government to cure the world’s ills. Here he greets the head of the UN Food and Agriculture Administration (FAO). Prosperity comes only through righteousness, not global government. One of the arguments that Roman Catholics have against Protestants is that Protestants are all fragmented into the hundreds of denominations. “Rome never changes” is a common theme. However, the present Jesuit pope is doing a left turn that illustrates how the Vatican has always tried to ride herd on wherever history happened to be going. Francis’s path is in direct line with the Vatican’s long range plan. Ex-Jesuit Alberto Rivera describes that centuries-long plan in the Alberto series of the Crusader comics available from Chick Publications. The early papal institution was organized under Constantine in the 4th century. From that time on, the goal has been world-wide control using spiritual bondage. In the west, this peaked during the dark ages where the strategy was basically convert or die, or pay tribute. Reaction to this Inquisition-punctuated period led to the Reformation in England and America and the Enlightenment in France and Europe. The popes initially backed Hitler and Lenin to regain control, but that phase did not go well. In Asia, Jesuit “missionaries” schmoozed their way into the graces of the leaders for a time, until their goal of domination was discovered. Several dozen countries expelled the Jesuits declaring all “Christians” as unwanted. True missionaries have had difficulty penetrating some of those countries such as China and Japan, ever since. So, where are we today? The tiger has turned sly fox. After World War II, Vatican planners decided to abandon warfare and stress ecumenical love, instead. Beginning in the early 1960s, they convened an “Ecumenical Council” dubbed “Vatican II.” The general purpose of the Council was to redirect the efforts of the “Church” to the modern world. Much confusing language has been employed in this shift, but basically it is intended to keep the pagan doctrines of works salvation, virgin goddess worship, wafer god, priestcraft, etc. intact while making friendly noises to everyone outside. The language was changed from “heretics” to “separated brethren.” Leaders of other world religions, even governments, were invited to ecumenical prayer gatherings. A new, warm face was turned toward the Jews. Most mainline Protestant denominations were quick to respond. Even Evangelicals fell for the new image, mostly ignoring the fact that none of the unbiblical doctrines were changed. Now, with this new Jesuit pope, we see the next chapter. Rivera noted that Rome always adapts to the changing times. She sees clearly that the prevailing new world religion is secular humanism, expressed politically in the liberal “left.” Pope Francis is taking up the leftist, socialist talking points of anti-capitalism, climate change, preferential option for the poor, income inequality, anti-war, globalism, etc. None of this is about the true, biblical gospel. It is all about Catholicism’s millennium-old thirst for world power. There has been much speculation over the years of the pope’s position as the last-days anti-Christ or maybe the False Prophet. One thing is sure: her pagan rituals guarantee that she is not part of the biblical church of Jesus Christ. As soul winners, we need to be aware of Satan’s end-time strategies, but not give them any of our time that should be used to obey the Great Commission. All of the cataclysmic events of the book of Revelation are rapidly shaping up. While we have the freedom to do it, we need to reach out to every sinner we can with the life-giving Word of God. If we saturate our communities with no-nonsense gospel tracts, maybe we can promote a revival that would give us a little more time to continue witnessing.

EARTH DAY:Prominent Conservationists Call for Immigration Reductions in New Book

A timely post about from www.numbersusa.com about immigration and environmentalism. This follows this post about U.S. workers being displaced by immigrants..
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Prominent Conservationists Call for Immigration Reductions in New Book

https://www.numbersusa.com/sendfax

 

Some of the most prominent immigration-reduction voices in the country are featured in a new book titled Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation. The new book, a collection of essays about the environmental consequences of overpopulation, includes some significant voices for reducing immigration in order to stabilize U.S. population.

Many of Life on the Brink’s contributors have also been advisors to the series of sprawl studies published by NumbersUSA. These authors confront challenges posed by mass immigration and overpopulation that others in politics, the media, and many environmental organizations refuse to acknowledge.

This book is particularly important as the U.S. environmental community has abandoned U.S. population stabilization as goal. The fact that immigration is a large contributor to unsustainable population growth has driven many environmental organizations to completely drop U.S. population from their agendas -- a far cry from the first Earth Day when population stabilization was central to the national environmental agenda.

Life on the Brink editor Phillip Cafaro is the president of Progressives for Immigration Reform’s Board of Directors, one of the few progressive organizations that calls for an end to mass immigration in an effort to stabilize population and preserve a sustainable quality of life for future generations. Cafaro is a professor of philosophy at Colorado State University and co-editor Eileen Crist is a professor of environmental studies at Virginia Tech. Both hope to re-ignite the overpopulation discussion in this country, including addressing immigration’s contributions to the problem.

When speaking about immigration policies, Cafaro notes the lack of thought U.S. lawmakers give to the population component, questioning whether Congress is listening to the voices of its constituents. He says Washington is considering new immigration laws that could add tens of millions more people to the U.S. in the coming decades without any discussion of whether more population growth is smart, or fits into the wishes of Americans.

One of the book’s contributors, Leon Kolankiewicz, has co-authored many studies published by NumbersUSA that quantify the role of immigration-driven population growth in the urban sprawl in the U.S. that causes major loss of open spaces and deforestation along with overcrowding of cities and highways.

Kolankiewicz provided this excerpt from the book description:

"Life on the Brink aspires to reignite a robust discussion of population issues among environmentalists, environmental studies scholars, policymakers, and the general public. Some of the leading voices in the American environmental movement restate the case that population growth is a major force behind many of our most serious ecological problems, including global climate change, habitat loss and species extinctions, air and water pollution, and food and water scarcity. As we surpass seven billion world inhabitants, contributors argue that ending population growth worldwide and in the United States is a moral imperative that deserves renewed commitment."

Contributors include Paul Ehrlich, Captain Paul Watson (of “Whale Wars”), former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm, environmental activists Dave Foreman, Stephanie Mills, Tim Palmer, former and current Worldwatch Institute presidents Lester Brown and Robert Engelman, and thirteen others. They explore the whole range of difficult moral and political issues surrounding population policy sparingly addressed in today’s mainstream dialogue.

If mass immigration policies are not changed, the U.S. population is expected to reach 618 million people by 2100, almost doubling our current population.

“Pursuing environmentalism without addressing our ever-increasing population is an exercise in politically-correct futility,” states Cafaro. “If environmentalists refuse to engage with population issues, we are going to have to say goodbye to most of what we have worked to protect.”

You can read more about the book or oder a copy for yourself from University of Georgia's Press website.

You can also order a copy of Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation from Amazon.

MELANIE OUBRE is the Local Activism Coordinator for NumbersUSA

Tags:

Environment

overpopulation

NumbersUSA's blogs are copyrighted and may be republished or reposted only if they are copied in their entirety, including this paragraph, and provide proper credit to NumbersUSA. NumbersUSA bears no responsibility for where our blogs may be republished or reposted.

An interesting article from www.numbersusa.com about the Earth Day damage from immigration policies. This follows this post about gaps in the Border Fence. This follows this post about foreign workers being increased despite Congress's objections. REMEMBER, “Amnesty” means ANY non-enforcement of existing immigration laws! This follows this comment and this post about how to Report Illegal Immigrants! For more about what you can do click here and you can read two very interesting books HERE.

You can follow me at blogspot here and at twitter here https://twitter.com/brianleesblog. Please consider following both in case one goes down!

Earth Day 2014: Massive destruction of U.S. open space from immigration policies continues

Updated:  

Mon, Apr 21^st 2014 @ 7:57 pm EDT  by  Roy Beck

On this Earth Day, the earth is still losing rapidly in the United States, according to NumbersUSA's latest study on sprawl, authored by Leon Kolankiewicz, Anne Manetas and myself, and entitled:
VANISHING OPEN SPACES: How an Exploding U.S. Population Is Devouring the Land that Feeds and Nourishes Us
(Click here to see the entire study. https://www.numbersusa.com/resource-download/vanishing-open-spaces ]

In just the eight years from 2002 to 2010, over 8.3 million acres (approximately 13,000 square miles) of farmland and natural habitat succumbed to the bulldozer's blade. That is an area larger than the entire state of Maryland -- cleared, scraped, filled, paved and built over -- in less than a decade.

Reporters today are asking me what actions the study suggests can be taken to reduce this continuing massive destruction of America's farmland and natural habitat. My answer is that the solution can be found in the fact that the No. 1 cause of all this destruction is the majority of Congress which year in and year out votes to force huge national population growth. Until the public demands that Congress stop driving what is the highest level of population growth in our history, the environmental destruction of our nation's land will continue.
Our study found this:

• about 70% of all the open-space destruction around our urban areas in the last decade was related to population growth
• and new immigrants and births to immigrants in the last decade have been the equivalent of about 70% of U.S. population growth.

It's a 70&70 situation that is easy to remember. Immigrants themselves bear no responsibility in any of this, as legal immigrants are merely taking advantage of the invitation that Congress extends to them to take lifetime work permits and to begin adopting the same suburban living preferences as U.S.-born Americans. But it is Congress that sets the policy that has quadrupled annual immigration numbers so that they are the chief factor in the expansion of our cities into the forests, meadows, pastures and croplands.
The acres that Congress annually forces under the bulldozers' blades are:

. . . the open spaces on which the country's human residents depend for food, fiber and the nourishment of their spirits, and to which the non-human inhabitants often tenuously cling for life itself."

In the period studied since 1982, the study concluded that the addition of each new resident of the United States results in the elimination of about a half-acre of farmland or open space.
While the country obviously can survive the recent losses, the report questions how long these trends of destruction can continue. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture has noted that more than one-third of all the open spaces that have ever been converted to development in this country's history were eliminated from natural use and agriculture in just the last quarter century.
The NumbersUSA study concludes:

The good news during the last decade was that the galloping hyper-sprawl of the 1990s calmed significantly. The primary reason was that the rate of per capita land consumption stopped increasing as rapidly as it had over much of the post-World War II era. Indeed, by one measure, the average urban resident increased his or her amount of urbanized land by a relatively modest 3%.
Nonetheless, that lower (per capita consumption) growth rate still combined with a continuation of the largest numerical population growth in U.S. history to drive open-space destruction at a higher volume than any time other than the 1990s.

In the first decade of this century, the 497 Urbanized Areas designated by the U.S. Bureau of Census had to accommodate an extra 26 million, one hundred sixty-eight thousand, five hundred and eighteen residents (most of them citizens from other countries, and their children).
To provide those 26,168,518 new residents with housing, transportation and places to work, to shop and to meet educational, religious, cultural and recreational demands, the 497 Urbanized Areas spread out over an additional 13,586 square miles.
Back in the year 2000, those 13,586 square miles were filled with farmland and the woodland and grassland habitats of myriad animal and plant species. Now, they are filled with urban development.
We wrote in our study:

Yet, there is little sign that the nation is ready to substantially change this population trend – or even to much discuss it – although the open-space destruction it is driving is not sustainable over the long run.

On this week of special Earth Day attention to the stewardship of our natural environment, citizens should ask their U.S. Representative and two U.S. Senators whether they are committed to driving high U.S. population growth or if they will pledge to slow down the destruction of our country's open spaces.
ROY BECK is Founder & President of NumbersUSA

Tags:  

Sprawl

population growth

Three Possible Causes of Overpopulation

Farmland

NumbersUSA's blogs are copyrighted and may be republished or reposted only if they are copied in their entirety, including this paragraph, and provide proper credit to NumbersUSA. NumbersUSA bears no responsibility for where our blogs may be republished or reposted.

Stop EPA's Assault on Affordable Electricity

A very interesting post from http://actformining.org/ about the EPA's mining rules. This follows this post about natural petroleum  reserves in Alaska. This follows this post about the Keystone XL pipeline.  This follows this article about the recent news about ending the ban on offshore drilling which would encourage American energy independence This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran and Venezuela. For more that you can do to get involved click HERE and you can read the very interesting book that is shown HERE!

Stop EPA's Assault on Affordable Electricity


Tell your Senators to Support S.J. Res 37



Join us in calling on Congress to stop the EPA from driving up the price of electricity through backdoor mandates. The EPA is piling on new regulations on Coal - America’s most abundant and affordable source of electricity. These regulations will cause household electricity bills to skyrocket.



With the price of gas reaching $5 a gallon, American's simply can't afford to have the cost of their household electricity being driven up by the misguided energy policies of the EPA.


http://actformining.org/national-actions/stopUMACT/


Ask your Senator to support S.J. Res. 37, which would prevent this misguided rule from increasing your electricity rates and dampen economic growth.

http://actformining.org/national-actions/stopUMACT/

Tell Washington Not To Close The National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska

A very interesting post from http://consumerenergyalliance.org/ about natural petroleum  reserves in Alaska. This follows this post about the EPA and stringent coal regulation. This follows this post about the Keystone XL pipeline.  This follows this article about the recent news about ending the ban on offshore drilling which would encourage American energy independence This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran and Venezuela. For more that you can do to get involved click HERE and you can read the very interesting book that is shown HERE!


Tell Washington Not To Close The National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska









We don't know how to explain this without sounding downright silly. Right now, Americans need to fight Washington for its rights to maintain the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska as a - wait for it - a petroleum reserve!











The federal Bureau of Land Management has drafted a new management plan for the reserve in which many of the alternatives would prohibit access to this energy resource.











Decades ago, Alaska and the federal government agreed to designate the area for oil & gas development - understanding the value that domestic energy would have for the American Navy and U.S. energy security.





Act now! Tell the federal government to allow oil & gas leasing and infrastructure development in the petroleum reserve.

Help Block the Most Expensive EPA Rule Yet!

A very interesting post from http://www.votervoice.net/ about the EPA and stringent coal regulation. This follows this post about the Keystone XL pipeline.  This follows this article about the recent news about ending the ban on offshore drilling which would encourage American energy independence This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran and Venezuela. For more that you can do to get involved click HERE and you can read the very interesting book that is shown HERE!

Help Block the Most Expensive EPA Rule Yet!

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is at it again. The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) is set to become the most expensive rule the EPA has ever written for power plants and would cost a total of almost $90 billion.




While the purpose of MATS is to control mercury and similar pollutants, the EPA is attempting to justify the rule and its unprecedented cost because MATS also reduces particulate matter even though the rule was not written for that purpose. However, particulate matter has been subject to other EPA regulations for more than a decade.



The MATS rules could drastically disrupt electricity reliability for the nation. Many public officials and experts have expressed widespread concerns that the new rule would force the premature retirement of many coal-fired power plants. So far, it has been announced that more than 140 coal-fired electricity generating units in 19 states will retire by 2015 because of MATS and other EPA regulations.



The rule will wreak havoc with electricity rates for all Americans and destroy jobs in Appalachia -- we need your help to stop it.



TAKE ACTION now and contact your lawmakers and urge them to disapprove the MATS rule by voting for S.J. Res. 37.



Thank you for your support,

Federation for American Coal, Energy and Security

(FACES of Coal)







Click the link below to log in and send your message:

http://www.votervoice.net/link/target/faces/5qzW2qGM.aspx

Say “YES” to American jobs and “NO” to dependence on overseas oil

A very interesting post from http://consumerenergyalliance.org/ about the Keystone XL pipeline. This follows this previous post about myths vs. facts of the KeystoneXL pipeline. . This follows this article about the recent news about ending the ban on offshore drilling which would encourage American energy independence This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran and Venezuela. For more that you can do to get involved click HERE and you can read the very interesting book that is shown HERE!

You can also write your two Senators in favor of the Keystone Oil Pipeline HERE!

Say “YES” to American jobs and “NO” to dependence on overseas oil.





Keystone XL means jobs and investment for our economy, relief from record gas prices for our families and energy security for America. It's up to us to make sure President Obama gives Keystone XL the green light.


http://www.buildkxlnow.org/

Earth Day Special: The Media's Top 25 Wackiest Environmental Quotes

A very interesting post from http://newsbusters.org/ about Earth Day. This follows this post about myths vs. facts of the KeystoneXL pipeline.  This follows this article about the recent news about ending the ban on offshore drilling which would encourage American energy independence This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran and Venezuela. For more that you can do to get involved click HERE and you can read the very interesting book that is shown HERE!

You can also write your two Senators to reign in the EPA HERE!




Earth Day Special: The Media's Top 25 Wackiest Environmental Quotes

By Geoffrey Dickens



This Sunday marks the 42nd anniversary of Earth Day and for 25 of those years the MRC has documented the liberal media’s role in advancing the left’s green agenda. From fretting about overpopulation to scaring viewers about global warming, for over 25 years the media have championed the capitalism-killing agenda of the modern environmentalist movement.



So sacrosanct the liberal media believes its mission to be, that they haven’t even bothered to hide their bias. CNN’s environmental editor Barbara Pyle, as quoted in the July 1990 issue of American Spectator, actually bragged: “I do have an axe to grind...I want to be the little subversive person in television.” Time magazine’s science editor Charles Alexander, at a September 16, 1989 global warming conference, confessed: “I would freely admit on this issue we have crossed the boundary from news reporting to advocacy.”



(Top 25 Countdown with videos after the jump)



That advocacy has been on full display as reporters and anchors have gone overboard in scaring their audience about the perils of our effect on the Earth, from overpopulation to global warming. In its January 2, 1989 “Planet of the Year” Time magazine’s editors warned: “Unless the growth in the world population is slowed, it will be impossible to make serious progression on any environmental issue.” Two years later, in an ad for its “Lost Tribes, Lost Knowledge” issue that appeared in the April 27, 1992 Sports Illustrated, Time magazine again warned: “Nature has a cure for everything, except the spread of Western civilization.”



Perhaps the media’s most popular scare tactic has been the specter of global warming. CNN’s Don Harrison, on the August 1, 1989 primetime special Climate in Crisis, hyped: “Global warming could mean economic upheaval. It could bring suffering. It could bring starvation.” Narrator Roy Scheider, in a ten-part PBS documentary aired in 1990 starkly intoned: “The environmental revolution has made us understand where we humans are taking the Earth: Towards a world poisoned by pollution.”



The forecasts coming from the media have been apocalyptic. Reporter Mark Phillips, on the January 16, 1990 CBS Evening News predicted that if nothing was done, global warming “would turn much of the planet into a desert.” On the January 11, 1990 Today show, it wasn’t arid land to be feared, but rather too much water as ecologist Paul Ehrlich predicted: “The Supreme Court would be flooded. You could tie your boat to the Washington Monument.”



Sixteen years later the Today show was still in the outlandish prediction business, as on the May 24, 2006 Today show, then co-anchor Katie Couric prompted former Vice President Al Gore, “What do you see happening in 15 to 20 years or even 50 years if nothing changes?...Even Manhattan would be in deep water?” Gore responded: “Yes, in fact the World Trade Center Memorial site would be underwater.”



Of course being a lead spokesman for the global warming hysteria movement meant Gore was elevated to almost deific status by the liberal media. Former Time reporter Margaret Carlson, on the October 13, 2007 Bloomberg TV’s Political Capital, deemed him a “prophet.” However, if any critic dared to express skepticism they were trashed. In his magazine’s special Earth Day, 2000 issue Time’s Michael Lemonick dismissed: “Only a handful of the most doctrinaire die-hards still dispute the idea that human activity is heating up the planet.” The cover of the August 13, 2007 Newsweek denounced the “well-funded naysayers who still reject the overwhelming evidence of climate change. Inside the denial machine.” NBC’s Anne Thompson, on the August 16, 2007 Nightly News, mocked: “Deniers are confusing the issue and delaying solutions...The scientific debate is no longer over society’s role in global warming. It is now a matter of degrees.” CNN’s Miles O’Brien, on the October 12, 2007 Newsroom, went as far as to cast global warming skeptics as “dead enders.”



When e-mails surfaced, during the ClimateGate scandal, that showed science was being perverted to advance a hoax, the liberal media leapt to the movement’s defense. ABC’s Clayton Sandell, on the December 6, 2009 World News, assured viewers “the science is solid, according to a vast majority of researchers.” NBC’s Anne Thompson, on the December 7, 2009 Nightly News huffed: “It doesn’t matter what’s in those e-mails - the Earth is changing.” Wyatt Andrews, on the December 9, 2009 CBS Evening News, scoffed: “ClimateGate is a sideshow.”



The same disgust the media exhibited against those bringing reason to the ClimateGate debate was also brought against conservatives attempting to scale back overly-burdensome regulations. When the GOP controlled Congress attempted to do just that in 1995, the late Peter Jennings, called it “the most frontal assault on the environment in 25 years.” NBC’s Roger O’Neil, in a July 28, 1995 Nightly News story on proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act, feared: “if the plants and animals can’t survive, what future is there for the human species?” On the August 5, 1995 edition of CNN’s Capital Gang, Time’s Margaret Carlson complained: “This is deregulation madness! We’re gonna have dirty water, dirty air.”



The following collection of 25 quotes represents the worst of the media’s environmental pandering culled from the MRC’s archive:





25. Billions of Lives At Risk





“Will Billions Die from Global Warming?”

— ABC’s on-screen graphic from the January 31, 2007 Good Morning America.









24. Who Needs Tanks, When You’ve Got the EPA?





“And yet, Congresswoman Schneider, in 1989, fiscal 1989 as we say in America, the Environmental Protection Agency got $5.1 billion dollars and the Defense Department got $290 billion dollars. What’s that tell us about our priorities?”

— ABC anchor Peter Jennings on the September 12, 1989 Capital to Capital special “The Environment: Crisis In the Global Village.”







23. $6 a Gallon Gas Will Save the Earth!









22. If We All Died Would the Earth Even ‘Miss Us?’









21. Someone Get the Statue of Liberty a Life Preserver Before She Floats Away!





Tom Brokaw: “About 10 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by ice, most of that in the polar regions. But if enough of that ice melts, the seas will rise dramatically and the results will be calamitous....If this worst-case scenario should occur, in the coming centuries New York could be abandoned, its famous landmarks lost to the sea.”

Dr. James Hansen, Goddard Institute for Space Studies: “Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Miami -- they would all be under water.”

— From Brokaw’s two-hour Discovery Channel special, Global Warming: What You Need to Know, excerpt shown on the July 15, 2006 NBC Nightly News.







20. Earth to George W. Bush: You Make Me Sick!





“No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth....Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us....Something has gone grievously wrong. That something is global warming....It’s undeniable that the White House’s environmental record — from the abandonment of Kyoto to the President’s [George W. Bush] broken campaign pledge to control carbon output to the relaxation of emission standards — has been dismal.”

— Time’s Jeffrey Kluger in the magazine’s April 3, 2006 global warming cover story: “Be Worried. Be Very Worried.”





19. Big Oil Caused Hurricane Katrina





“The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming....Unfortunately, very few people in America know the real name of Hurricane Katrina because the coal and oil industries have spent millions of dollars to keep the public in doubt about the issue....As the pace of climate change accelerates, many researchers fear we have already entered a period of irreversible runaway climate change.”

— Former Washington Post and Boston Globe reporter Ross Gelbspan in an August 30, 2005 Boston Globe op-ed.





18. When You Fill Up Your Tank, You’re ‘Fighting Science’





“ExxonMobil - I think this is a real group of bad guys, considering that they have funded all the anti-global-warming propaganda out there in the world. And Bush is just not going to go against guys like that. They are bad, bad guys, because of what they are doing in fighting the science of global warming.”

— New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in an interview published in Rolling Stone, October 17, 2002.







17. Put Down That Hairspray Can or Else We’ll All Be Riding Camels to Work!









“If nothing is done to reverse ozone damage, scientists predict hundreds of millions of skin cancer cases in the U.S. alone, not to mention increased global warming that would turn much of the planet into a desert.”

— Reporter Mark Phillips on the January 16, 1990 CBS Evening News.





16. ‘Radical’ Republicans Could Kill Off Snail Darters, Owls, Even You!





“The noises coming from [Rep. Sonny] Bono and many of his fellow Republican signers of House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s ‘Contract with America’ signal a radical shift in Congress’s attitude toward environmental issues -- a shift that may bode ill for the health of snail darters, spotted owls, and even the human species.”

— Time reporter Dick Thompson in a February 27, 1995 story headlined “Congressional Chain-Saw Massacre: If Speaker Newt Gingrich gets his way, the laws protecting air, water and wildlife may be endangered.”





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15. GOP’s Full ‘Frontal Assault’ on the Environment











“Next week on ABC’s World News Tonight, a series of reports about our environment which will tell you precisely what the new [Republican] Congress has in mind: the most frontal assault on the environment in 25 years. Is this what the country wants?”

— Peter Jennings in an ABC promo during the July 9, 1995 This Week with David Brinkley.





14. Earth Would Be Okay It Weren’t for Us Pesky Humans





“Ultimately, no problem may be more threatening to the Earth’s environment than the proliferation of the human species.”

— Anastasia Toufexis, “Overpopulation: Too Many Mouths,” article in Time’s special “Planet of the Year” edition, January 2, 1989.





13. Ronald Reagan = Earth Day Buzzkill











“The missteps, poor efforts and setbacks brought on by the Reagan years have made this a more sober Earth Day. The task seems larger now.”

— Today co-host Bryant Gumbel, April 20, 1990.







12. Heed the Words of the ‘Prophet’ Al Gore





“You know, Bob, you’d still be holding your breath and kicking your feet if what had happened to Al Gore in Florida had happened to you. He rose above a great injustice....He became a prophet on an issue that is crucially important to the world.”

— Ex-Time reporter Margaret Carlson to Chicago Sun-Times columnist Bob Novak on Bloomberg TV’s Political Capital, October 13, 2007.





11. Climate Change a Greater Threat Than USSR’s Nukes





“Despite the danger that climate change poses, the resources currently devoted to studying this problem -- and combating it -- are inconsequential compared with the trillions spent during the Cold War. Twenty years from now, we may wonder how we could have miscalculated which threat represented the greater peril.”

— Time contributor Eugene Linden, September 4, 2000.







10. Ted Koppel to Global Warming Skeptics: The Earth is Round!











Karen Kerrigan, Small Business Survival Committee: “To say that the science is conclusive...is actually bunk.”

Host Ted Koppel: “I was just going to make the observation that there are still some people who believe in the Flat Earth Society, too, but that doesn’t mean they’re right.”

— Exchange on the December 9, 1997 Nightline.







9. Call in the Climate Cops!





“Put an international tax on emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases....Find a way to put the brakes on the world’s spiraling population, which will otherwise double by the year 2050....Give the United Nations broad powers to create an environmental police force for the planet.”

— Time list of “What They Should Do But Won’t” at the United Nations “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, June 1, 1992.







8. Matt Lauer: Let’s Face It, There’s ‘Too Many of Us’











“Today, life on Earth is disappearing faster than the days when dinosaurs breathed their last, but for a very different reason....Us homo sapiens are turning out to be as destructive a force as any asteroid. Earth’s intricate web of ecosystems thrived for millions of years as natural paradises, until we came along, paved paradise, and put up a parking lot. Our assault on nature is killing off the very things we depend on for our own lives....The stark reality is that there are simply too many of us, and we consume way too much, especially here at home....It will take a massive global effort to make things right, but the solutions are not a secret: control population, recycle, reduce consumption, develop green technologies.”

— NBC’s Matt Lauer hosting Countdown to Doomsday, a two-hour June 14, 2006 Sci-Fi Channel special.







7. New York City: Iceberg Capital of the World





Bryant Gumbel: “At the risk of starting an argument, are you a believer in global warming?”

Mark McEwen: “Absolutely.”

Jane Clayson: “Of course.”

Julie Chen: “Yeah.”

Gumbel: “So am I....And you wonder what it’s gonna take. I mean, is it gonna take some kind of a real catastrophe? I mean, does an iceberg have to come floating down the Hudson before somebody stands up and goes, ‘Oh, yeah’?”

— Exchange during CBS Early Show’s co-op time at 7:25 am on April 18, 2001.







6. Meredith Vieira Freaks Out: ‘Are We All Gonna Die?’











“So I’m running in the park on Saturday, in shorts, thinking this [warm weather] is great, but are we all gonna die? You know? I can’t, I can’t figure this out.”

— Co-host Meredith Vieira talking about global warming on NBC’s Today, January 8, 2007.







5. One Day ‘You Could Tie Your Boat to the Washington Monument’





“There is an even greater threat that scientists can only speculate about. As global temperatures rise, they may cause the massive West Antarctic ice sheet to slip more rapidly. Then we’ll be facing a sea-level rise not of one to three feet in a century, but of 10 or 20 feet in a much shorter time. The Supreme Court would be flooded. You could tie your boat to the Washington Monument. Storm surges would make the Capitol unusable. For Today, Paul Ehrlich in Washington, DC, on the future shoreline of Chesapeake Bay.”

— Ecologist Paul Ehrlich reporting for the January 11, 1990 Today show.











4. PBS Hires the Guy from ‘Jaws’ to Scare You About Global Warming











Actor Roy Scheider: “Earth Day appealed to every one.”

Children singing: “Oil drops are falling on their heads/And that surely means that soon they will all be dead.”...

Scheider: “The environmental revolution has made us understand where we humans are taking the Earth. Towards a world poisoned by pollution. Towards an atmosphere disrupted by greenhouse warming and losing its protective layer of ozone. Towards rivers, oceans and beaches made unusable by sewage and toxic waste. Towards unmanageable piles of garbage filled with the squandered resources of the planet. Towards a population of 10 billion in 60 years, twice as many as today. With the prospect of feeding those billions from farmland eroded toward the breaking point. It will be a world in which wild things have no room to live. A world in which forests have disappeared. Only the environmental revolution can save the planet from this fate.”

— Actor Roy Scheider narrating ten-part PBS series Race to Save the Planet aired from October 7 to 11, 1990.







3. Too Bad Obama Cut NASA’s Budget











“Could global warming one day force us into space to live?”

— ABC’s Sam Champion teasing an upcoming segment on Good Morning America, February 8, 2008.







2. Ted Turner: We’re All Going to Be Eating Each Other!











“Not doing it [fighting global warming] will be catastrophic. We’ll be eight degrees hotter in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years, and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals. Civilization will have broken down.”

— CNN founder Ted Turner on PBS’s Charlie Rose, April 1, 2008.







1. Save the Earth, Stop Breathing!





“It’s a morbid observation, but if everyone on earth just stopped breathing for an hour, the greenhouse effect would no longer be a problem.”

— Newsweek Senior Writer Jerry Adler, December 31, 1990 issue.





About the Author

Geoffrey Dickens is the Deputy Research Director at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow Geoffrey Dickens on Twitter.



Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/geoffrey-dickens/2012/04/19/earth-day-special-medias-top-25-wackiest-environmental-quotes#ixzz1saiEhjgs

Keystone Pipeline: Myth vs. Reality

A very interesting post from www.buildkxlnow.org about myths vs. facts of the KeystoneXL pipeline. This follows this previous post about the Keystone Oil Pipeline for oil sands from Canada. This follows this article about the recent news about ending the ban on offshore drilling which would encourage American energy independence This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran and Venezuela. For more that you can do to get involved click HERE and you can read the very interesting book that is shown HERE!

You can also write your two Senators in favor of the Keystone Oil Pipeline HERE!

 

Myth vs. Reality

Myth: The Keystone XL Pipeline will hurt the environment.
Reality: After over three years of environmental review, the Department of State concluded in its Final Environmental Impact Statement that “no significant environmental concerns exist” that should preclude the permitting of the pipeline. Furthermore, to ensure the pipeline operates safely, the operator, TransCanada, has agreed to construct the pipeline with an additional 57 safety requirements and has agreed to re-route the pipeline to avoid any potentially environmentally sensitive areas in Nebraska. In the United States, over 170,000 miles of liquid pipelines help transport 11.3 billion barrels of petroleum each year. American pipelines maintain, by far, the lowest spill rate per volume than any other transport method available.

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Myth: Building the Keystone XL pipeline will lead to higher gasoline and diesel prices for American consumers.
Reality: Keystone XL will provide U.S. refineries with upwards of 700,000 barrels of crude oil each day and will increase the overall supply of oil. This stable, long-term supply will give us greater energy security and help mitigate the impact that supply disruptions, like those caused by storms or political turmoil, have on prices. This ultimately means greater price stability for American consumers.

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Myth: Oil transported through the Keystone XL pipeline will be exported to China.
Reality: The United States imported over four billion barrels of oil in 2010; a 700,000 barrel per day pipeline will make a real impact on American energy security, but it will not make America a net oil exporter. In addition, there is already spare pipeline capacity from the oil sands to the Pacific coast, a distance of only about 500 miles. Why would companies choose instead to ship the oil 1,700 miles in the opposite direction, load it onto tankers in the Gulf of Mexico, and then ship it south and through the Panama Canal toward Asian markets, incurring additional and avoidable costs at each step?

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Myth: Oil from Canada is more dangerous and more corrosive than other forms of crude oil.
Reality: Keystone XL will ship a wide variety of crude oil types including conventional oil, shale oil, partially upgraded synthetic oil and oil sands derived bitumen blends. None of these crude types create a significant risk of destroying the pipeline from within and causing leaks. These products have shipped and are currently being shipped across to the United States via other cross‐border pipelines from Canada. It would be an uneconomic business proposition to spend billions of dollars constructing a pipeline system that would be destroyed by the product it transported.

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Myth: Keystone XL pipeline will lead to greater GHG emissions resulting in climate change.
Reality: Canada’s oil sands resources will be developed regardless of whether the Keystone XL pipeline is built. Canada is a stable, democratic country with strict environmental oversight – the same cannot be said about other countries from which we purchase oil. Furthermore, much of the crude oil that currently supplies the Gulf Coast refineries is transported on barges from faraway regions of the world, which requires significantly more energy to transport; pipelines, on the other hand, require the least amount of energy to move crude.

10 Ways Obama Could Reduce Gasoline Prices Now

A very interesting post from http://www.redstate.com/ about ways Barack Obama could reduce the price of gasoline NOW! This follows this post about Warren Buffett profiting from the rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline. This follows this previous article about encouraging American energy independence. This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran  and Venezuela. For more that you can do to get involved click HERE and you can read a very interesting book  HERE!

You can also write your two Senators about the Keystone XL pipeline HERE!

10 Ways Obama Could Reduce Gasoline Prices Now




I'll hold my breath.


Posted by Steve Maley (Diary)



 Tulsa World headline:





Obama: No magic bullet to lower gas prices

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama says there is no easy answer to the problem of rising energy prices, dismissing Republican plans to address the problem as little more than gimmicks.



“We know there’s no silver bullet that will bring down gas prices or reduce our dependence on foreign oil overnight,” Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address. …



Obama said Republicans have one answer to the oil pinch: Drill.



“You know that’s not a plan, especially since we’re already drilling,” Obama said, echoing his remarks earlier in the week. “It’s a bumper sticker.”



Speaking of bumper stickers, remember “Yes We Can”, Mr. President? No one understands the concept better than the oil and gas industry. The main thing holding domestic energy companies back from making a stronger commitment to future domestic supplies is uncertainty. Capital hates uncertainty, avoids it like the plague. Your rhetoric may appease your doctrinaire base, but it makes domestic energy producers hold back, fearful that you will punish their success, or that you will change the rules on them in the middle of the game.



Erasing uncertainty is the #1 thing you can do as a national leader if you truly desire to lower gasoline prices. Not only could it change the psychology of energy investing, there is still time for companies to change their 2012 investment plans.



Below the fold is my humble 10-point plan: Things President Obama could (but won’t) do to reduce domestic gasoline prices by November 2012.

1. Commit to a strategic goal of North American energy security. That includes reasonable and responsible domestic drilling. That includes taking the lead on the Keystone XL Pipeline; we could find a way to make it happen while addressing the legitimate environmental concerns of Nebraskans. It includes a commitment to maintaining the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System and opening ANWR.

2. Ditch the anti-industry, anti-capitalist rhetoric. It is not the President’s or the government’s place to decide when an industry’s profitability is “high enough”. High oil company profits fund more drilling; more drilling means more future supply and lower prices. Besides, American oil companies are not owned by a cabal of wealthy executives, but by America’s pension funds, mutual funds and private investment accounts. “They” are “us”.

3. Stop targeting the oil industry for punitive tax treatment. States such as Texas and Louisiana have production tax abatement programs that have successfully encouraged new drilling. If you don’t believe that the threat of increased taxes discourages drilling, just ask Governor Perry or Governor Jindal.

4. Realize that Uncle Sam is in the energy business and is a partner in industry’s success. Oil and gas royalties are the federal government’s #2 source of revenue, after the income tax. Offshore slowdowns hurt not only industry and jobs, but government revenue.

5. Recognize that industry does not need to be led by government; industry needs to be unleashed and encouraged to innovate. The resurgence of the domestic energy sector was rooted in the private sector, not matter how much President Obama and Dr. Chu would like to take credit for it. The growth in North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Texas happened in spite of the federal government, not because of it.

6. Trust that no oil operator wants to be the “next BP”. The BP spill cost that company something on the order of $40 billion. Industry safety and environmental commitment is motivated more out of self-interest and less out of fear of the government. When it comes to federal regulation, the nation would be better served by Sheriff Taylor, not Barney Fife.

7. Return offshore permitting to the pre-Macondo pace. Your overreaction to the BP Spill has cost on the order of 500,000 barrels per day of domestic oil production from the Gulf of Mexico. The ridiculous “Worst Case Discharge” calculation as a routine part of offshore permitting is engineering malpractice, in my humble opinion. The professional staff of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement is capable of reasoned regulation, but they currently operate in fear of their political masters.

8. Declare hydraulic fracturing & well design to be the regulatory domain of the states, not the EPA. Geology and environment vary widely; Pennsylvania is not Louisiana is not North Dakota is not California. It is insanity to think that one broadly-applied set of rules can be applied to regulate industry without suffocating development.

9.  Rescind the recently-enacted royalty rate increase for new onshore Federal oil and gas leases. Secretary Salazar’s stated rationale for increasing the government’s take by a whopping 50% – from 12.5% to 18.75% of gross production – was to equate onshore royalties with the offshore royalty rate. That makes no sense. Higher royalties mean less drilling, poorer economics of production and premature abandonment of wells. Besides, an IHS-CERA Study recently showed that the federal government’s total take of offshore cash flows makes the Gulf of Mexico the second-most punitive fiscal regime in the world, after Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. [Update: In keeping with the First Rule of Holes, rolling back the royalty rate increase may be the first thing the government should do if it is serious about reducing energy prices. - Ed.]

10. Encourage development of a nationwide distribution system of natural gas as a transportation fuel. Natural gas is clean, abundant and nearly 100% domestic. Its potential as a transportation fuel has scarcely been tapped.



Bonus #11: Get real about the promise of alternative fuels. Recently you said: “You’ve got a bunch of algae out there; If we can figure out how to make energy out of that, we’ll be doing alright.” Maybe so, but I will stick my neck out and say it ain’t gonna happen, at least not in my lifetime, not on a scale that will impact pump prices.



Energy policy will be a President Obama’s key vulnerability in November. His goal has always been to encourage alternative fuels by raising conventional energy prices. Alternative energy may poll well, but the average voter who fills his tank with $4+ gas on the way to the ballot box will certainly “Hope for Change”.



Cross-posted at http://www.stevemaley.com/.

Report-Obama-supporter-buffett-to-profit-from-rejection-of-keystone-xl-pipeline/

A very interesting post from http://biggovernment.com/ about Warren Buffett profiting from the rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline. This follows this post about al-Jazeera and Green Peace opposing domestic energy independence.  This follows this previous article about encouraging American energy independence. This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran  and Venezuela. For more that you can do to get involved click HERE and you can read a very interesting book  HERE!

You can also write your two Senators about the Keystone XL pipeline HERE!


Report: Obama Supporter Buffett to Profit from Rejection of Keystone XL Pipeline
by Publius


From Bloomberg Government:



Warren Buffett’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC is among U.S. and Canadian railroads that stand to benefit from the Obama administration’s decision to reject TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL oil pipeline permit.







With modest expansion, railroads can handle all new oil produced in western Canada through 2030, according to an analysis of the Keystone proposal by the U.S. State Department.



“Whatever people bring to us, we’re ready to haul,” Krista York-Wooley, a spokeswoman for Burlington Northern, a unit of Buffett’s Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said in an interview. If Keystone XL “doesn’t happen, we’re here to haul.”



The State Department denied TransCanada a permit on Jan. 18, saying there was not enough time to study the proposal by Feb. 21, a deadline Congress imposed on President Barack Obama. Calgary-based TransCanada has said it intends to re-apply with a route that avoids an environmentally sensitive region of Nebraska, something the Obama administration encouraged.



The rail option, though costlier, would lessen the environmental impact, such as a loss of wetlands and agricultural productivity, compared to the pipeline, according to the State Department analysis. Greenhouse gas emissions, however, would be worse.



If completed, Keystone XL would deliver 700,000 barrels a day of crude from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico, crossing 1,661 miles (2,673-kilometers) over Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

Tanker Car Bottleneck



Investors such as John Stephenson, who helps manage $2.7 billion for First Asset Management Inc. in Toronto said he anticipated the project would move forward next year. Pipeline shipping costs remain lower than rail, and a lack of readily available tanker cars may create a bottleneck.



The availability of tank cars may create a temporary “hiccup” in transport capacity, according to Tony Hatch, an independent railroad analyst in New York. Rail cars are “a pretty hot commodity,” as a result of demand from oil producers in North Dakota, he said.



Rail car production is already at a three-year high as manufacturers such as Greenbrier Cos Inc. and American Railcar Industries Inc. expand to meet demand for sand used in oil and gas exploration, according to Steve Barger, an analyst at Keybanc Capital Markets Inc. in Cleveland, citing Railway Supply Institute statistics.



‘Long-Term Solution’



Rail-car suppliers can add capacity, Hatch said.



“Railroads are not just a stopgap while we wait for a pipeline,” Hatch said in an interview. “They are potentially part of the long-term solution.”



Railroads are being used in North Dakota, where oil producers have spurred a fivefold increase in output by using intensive drilling practices in the Bakken, a geologic formation that stretches from southern Alberta to the northern U.S. Great Plains. During 2011, rail capacity in the region tripled to almost 300,000 barrels a day as higher production exceeded what pipelines handle, according to the State Department report on Keystone XL.



Shipping oil using tank cars on rail costs about $3 more a barrel than pipeline transport, using prices in North Dakota, a differential “unlikely” to slow the development of oil sands crude if no pipeline is build, the State Department said. The gap is shrinking as larger storage terminals are built, the agency said.



‘Ready to Haul’



Burlington Northern carries about 25 percent of the oil from the Bakken, said Krista York-Wooley, the railroad spokeswoman. The company can carry higher volumes from North Dakota or Alberta, she said.



Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd.’s shipments from North Dakota climbed to more than 13,000 carloads last year from about 500 in 2009, Ed Greenberg, a spokesman, said in an e-mail. The Calgary- based company has a similar plan in western Canada.



“With an extensive rail network and proven expertise in moving energy, CP offers a flexible option for transporting crude oil and other energy-related products to and from key locations in North America,” Vice President Tracy Robinson said in an e-mail. “Rail is scalable, allowing CP to effectively keep pace with the shipping needs of producers.”



Oil Sands



Canadian National Railway Co., the biggest Canadian railroad based on annual sales, considers Alberta’s oil sands a chance to expand its business, according to company filings.



“CN continues to work closely with customers in Alberta to capitalize on oil-and-gas related opportunities,” the Calgary- based company said. “CN sees potential for the outbound movement of oil sands products such as bitumen and synthetic crude to refineries in the U.S. Gulf Coast region, or eventually through West Coast ports to offshore markets.”



Imperial Oil Ltd., a Calgary-based unit of Exxon Mobil Corp., will consider “various transportation options” for oil sands exports, according Pius Rohlheiser, a spokesman. Cenovus Energy Inc. uses railroads to bring in dilutants needed to mix with heavy crude before it can be shipped by pipeline, and to export oil from the Bakken formation in Canada, according to Jessica Wilkinson, a spokeswoman.



Environmentalists’ Opposition



Environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council have campaigned to stop Keystone XL because leaks could threaten drinking water supplies and processing Alberta crude produces more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil.



Railroads too present environmental issues. Moving crude on trains produces more global warming gases than a pipeline, the State Department said.



Union Pacific Corp., based in Omaha, Nebraska, anticipated an increase in rail traffic with or without Keystone, Chief Executive Officer Jim Young said in an interview.



“We would have been involved with moving the pipe and a lot of the construction business in building it,” Young said. “On the other hand, if you don’t build any pipeline capacity, you’re going to be moving a lot of crude by train.”



It will take five to eight years before oil sands production outstrips existing export capacity, the State Department said.



Tank car utilization is at “record levels” fueled by demand from oil and natural gas producers, according to Doug Reece, director of marketing for Oakville, Ontario-based Procor Ltd., a rail-car leasing company. The soonest new cars will be available is 2013, he said.



“In western Canada, shippers and third parties are investing in the necessary infrastructure and we see strong growth ahead,” Reece said in an e-mail. “We are having regular dialogue with customers about their potential needs, as collaboration and fleet planning have become critical.”



Rail allows shippers to reach different markets and capture better prices at refineries, said John Mims, a transportation analyst at Friedman Billings Ramsey & Co. in Arlington, Virginia.



“It’s a good secular growth story for the railroads,” Mims said in an interview.“They’re playing an increasing role, especially as you see this push back from a regulatory standpoint on the pipelines.”