Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Breaking News... Astroturf 'Ethical Oil' files CRA complaint against Sierra Club Canada Foundation]


Sierra Club Canada

Astroturf 'Ethical Oil' files CRA complaint against Sierra Club Canada Foundation

This time last year I told you about a storm gathering here in Ottawa that threatened to blow Sierra Club and other environmental groups out of existence. At the time I asked you to consider making a donation as it may be the last time you could do so and receive a tax receipt. I would have forgiven you for thinking I was overstating the seriousness of the situation at the time. Unfortunately, much of what I predicted came to pass in 2012.
You know all about Joe Oliver and Peter Kent calling us money-laundering radicals and anti-Canadian puppets of foreign billionaire socialists. You certainly know about the Omnibus Bills that gutted federal environmental protection – a regulatory and legal system that took 40 years to build.
Unfortunately, I nailed it when I wrote:

"In this context discrediting the environmental movement at every turn while attacking its sources of funding and ability to communicate is not only a necessary measure – it's key to their strategy. After all, once our ability to influence public opinion is destroyed they'll have a free-hand to build, dig, drill, dam and burn whatever, wherever and whenever they want."

BREAKING PETRO-UPDATE
Tuesday the pressure further escalated when a thick 65 page fax arrived from lawyers (JSS Barristers Jensen Shawa Solomon Duguid Hawkes LLP) representing Ethical Oil. It was a copy of a complaint Ethical Oil filed with the Canadian Revenue Agency the previous week alleging the Sierra Club Canada Foundation was in violation of tax rules.
I'm sure you remember Big Oil's 'Ethical Oil' – the ugly spawn of Ezra Levant. It's the organization that adamantly refuses to disclose where its funds come from, and has mysterious ties to the Prime Minister's office. Could this latest legal attack be raw vengeance for the shellacking they took on CBC's Power and Politics last winter? For the record it was largely Evan who did the ass-kicking. The show became an internet hit – that is, until it was mysteriously scrubbed from You Tube (after 70,000 views). We found a link in the CBC website archive for you here.
I know Ethical Oil was damaged after the show; their credibility really took a hit. I'd guess they privately (and wisely) vowed to never make that mistake again; No more shows with Sierra Club Canada. I know for a fact they refused at least one invitation to re-appear with me on Power and Politics (in spring 2012).
While not very believable, the folks at Ethical Oil aren't fools. They are afraid of Sierra Club Canada for good reason and would love nothing more to than remove us from the picture completely. A hundred years ago big industry sent thugs to smash printing presses. Today, it's lawyers, accountants and the petro-pundits - but the effect is the same.
Are we supposed to be afraid?
I am afraid of a lot of things. I'm afraid my grandson will live in a world of turmoil brought on by climate change or a nuclear disaster. I'm afraid one of my daughters will develop cancer from the toxic bath we're forced to swim in every day. But I'm not afraid of being jack-booted, be it by brown shirts or thugs in expensive suits (or dress suits).
There is nothing like the scepter of a CRA tax audit to put a chill in your Christmas Holiday plans. It's psychological warfare really. A Merry Christmas greeting from Big Oil! Ho Ho Ho.
Normally I wouldn't take notice; we've been audited before – I've seen that movie and have the t-shirt... But back to my prediction - look at Ethical Oil's complaint in the broader picture. Over the past twelve months we've seen the anti-environment Omnibus Bills, then a McCarthyian investigation by a Conservative-dominated senate committee and announcement of new (extra) funding to "investigate" charities. And now we receive this fax.
There is a word to describe when a government and powerful private interests suppress opposition through fear, censorship and other forms of oppression. When I wrote about my fears last year I correctly called what was happening for what it was: an attack on democracy and the environment.
Our society was founded on Freedom of Speech - it's guaranteed in the Charter. But now that freedom is fast becoming no longer "free". How can we "freely" share our words of concern when the bank account is empty and the power has been shut off?
Donations received by Sierra Club Canada and Sierra Club Canada Foundation are used to protect the environment, the air we breathe, the water we drink and the climate we depend on.
This December, I'm asking you to please consider making an anti-bullying donation. You have 2 options:
  1. If you want to support the Sierra Club Canada Foundation and its education and research initiatives (AND receive a charitable tax receipt) then do that! Good solutions always depend on knowledge and sound science.
  2. As always, if you want your gift unfettered by CRA tax rules then donate directly to Sierra Club Canada and support our advocacy work (I promise to make your voice loud and clear).
Let's show Ethical Oil the meaning of ethical.
I wish you and your loved ones a safe, happy and healthy holiday!
Sincerely,
John Bennett, Executive Director
Sierra Club Canada
Executive.Director@sierraclub.ca
Follow John on Twitter
Read more from the Bennett Blog
________________________________________

P.S. -- Every donation is precious so please donate today.

Sierra Club Canada National Office
412-1 Nicholas St
Ottawa, ON K1N 7B7
Canada
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Sunday, December 16, 2012

LNG: Calais LNG drops lump of coal in Quoddy's Xmas Stocking!

The post below appeared 2 years ago. DLNG remains in the game this Christmas and concerned citizens need to stay engaged on this issue.

While groups and individuals around the Passamaquoddy Bay area, celebrate the withdrawal of State of Maine apl;lications, CLNG dropped a lump of coal into their Christmas Stockings by requesting the further indulgence of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. See the entire letter at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/45554014/CLNG-abandons-State-Applications-but-requests-FERC-s-indulgence
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BBC: “One of the most contaminated places on Earth” — Silence is deafening 10 miles from Fukushima plant — Nuclear power’s lie has been so tragically exposed

Think Bay of Fundy when you read this.
******************************

EARTHQUAKE / 11.3.2011 - 14:45 (PT) / 9 MAGNITUDE
EARTHQUAKE / 11.3.2011 - 14:45 (PT) / 9 MAGNITUDE (Photo credit: Wikipedia)


BBC: “One of the most contaminated places on Earth” — Silence is deafening 10 miles from Fukushima plant — Nuclear power’s lie has been so tragically exposed

Title: Why Japan’s ‘Fukushima 50′ remain unknown
Source: BBC News
Author: Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
Date: 13 December 2012
Entering the exclusion zone around the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant is an unnerving experience.
It is, strictly speaking, also illegal. It is an old cliché to say that radiation is invisible. But without a Geiger counter, it would be easy to forget that this is now one of the most contaminated places on Earth.
The small village of Tatsuno lies in a valley 15km (9.3 miles) from the plant. In the sunlight, the trees on the hillsides are a riot of yellow and gold. But then I realise the fields were once neat rice paddies. Now the grass and weeds tower over me.
On the village main street, the silence is deafening – not a person, car, bike or dog. At one house, washing still flaps in the breeze. And all around me, invisible, in the soil, on the trees, the radiation lingers. [...]
Back in the 1960s and 70s, getting rural Japanese communities to accept nuclear power plants was hard.
[...] they were promised that nuclear power was completely safe.
Now that the lie has been so tragically exposed, the feeling of betrayal is huge. [...]


Subscribe at http://www.worldwhalenews.com
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Saturday, December 15, 2012

INBOX: Healthy Habitat Helps Create Healthy Fisheries


Sea Anemones and Kelp. Photo Art MacKay

From: Conservation Law Foundation

One of the fundamental concepts of marine ecology and modern fisheries management is that fish and other ocean wildlife need various types of habitat to feed, grow, and reproduce. Healthy ocean habitat is crucial to the well-being of ocean ecosystems and also provides spawning grounds for commercially important groundfish. New England’s ocean waters are home to several special places that deserve permanent protection.

Cashes Ledge, an underwater mountain range 80 miles off the coast of Maine, supports the largest and deepest kelp forest off the Northeastern United States and is home to an enormous diversity of ocean wildlife – from whales, Atlantic wolffish, and blue sharks, to fields of anemones and sponges. This kelp forest provides an important source of food and habitat for a vast array of ocean wildlife. Other places such as Jeffreys Ledge and Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary provide rich habitat for highly depleted cod and haddock, sea turtles, and four species of whales.
Most of these three areas in the Gulf of Maine currently benefit from fishing regulations which prohibit harmful bottom trawling, but these protections are temporary. Some of the largest commercial fishing trawlers in the region are pushing for changes in regulations to allow bottom trawling in Cashes Ledge, Jeffreys Ledge and the only protected portion of Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary.

After the last cod crisis in the 1990s the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC), after a court decree spurred by a CLF legal action, designated Cashes Ledge and an area known as the “Western Gulf of Maine” which holds Jeffreys Ledge and 22% of Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, as “mortality closures.” The action restricted destructive trawling, but it allowed a wide array of other commercial fishing gear such as bottom gillnets, purse seines, hook and line and more the questionable practice of “mid-water trawls,” which despite their name, often catch groundfish. Recreational fishing and charter boats were not restricted.

This single protective measure restricting commercial bottom trawling helped to restore seriously depleted populations in these areas. Moreover, protecting areas like Cashes Ledge created the “spillover effect” where larger populations of fish migrate out of the boundaries of the protected area. This is why commercial fishing vessels often “fish the borders” of protected areas.
After a new stock assessment released one year ago showed that populations of cod, haddock and other groundfish were at all time lows, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) under pressure from some of the largest trawlers in the New England fleet started to hint that allowing bottom trawling in previously protected habitat areas – places like Cashes Ledge – might help to increase falling harvest amounts. At a time of the lowest recorded groundfish populations in history, how does it make sense to increase trawling in the best, remaining habitat areas?

This is why we must urge NOAA to keep our habitat protections in place.
Cashes Ledge is important not only to fish and ocean wildlife but also to scientists hoping to learn about the health and function of New England’s oceans. Many scientists believe that Cashes Ledge represents the best remaining example of an undisturbed Gulf of Maine ecosystem and have used Cashes Ledge as an underwater laboratory to which they have compared more degraded habitat in the Gulf of Maine.

The basic fact is that opening scarce protected habitat in the Gulf of Maine to bottom trawling at a time of historically low groundfish populations is among the worst ideas for recovering fish populations and the industry which depend upon them. But fisheries politics in New England remain.

On Dec. 20th the NEFMC may take action through a backdoor exemption process to allow bottom trawling in a large portion of Cashes Ledge and other areas. NOAA needs to keep current protections in place. CLF is committed to securing permanent protection to ensure the long-term health of this important and vulnerable ecosystem. Click here to urge NOAA to protect New England ocean habitat and help ensure a healthy future for New England’s ocean.



Friday, October 26, 2012

LNG: Ooops! Downeast LNG stumbles again.



Kimberly D. Bose, Secretary
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

888 First Street, NE Room 1A

Washington, DC 20426

eFiled on 2012 October 19


Re: Downeast LNG, Docket Nos. CP07-52-000, CP07-53-000, and CP07-53-001 Inappropriate Boilerplate Submission to FERC


Dear Ms. Bose,

On 2012 October 12 Downeast LNG filed responses to FERCʼs September 11 & 13 Information Requests (Accession Nos. 20120911-3001 and 20120913-3024). Included in those requests were inquiries into the proposed 20-foot-tall vapor fence specifications, and into how Downeast LNG would maintain those vapor fences.

In Accession No. 20121012-5103(27695846), in the very first paragraph, under 1.0 Purpose/Applicability, Downeast LNG claims it would install its vapor fence to ensure that natural gas concentrations of a certain level are contained within the EcoEléctrica facility.




Downeast LNG has obviously and carelessly pasted boilerplate text from a completely unrelated LNG project into its response to FERC. The EcoEléctrica LNG terminal near Peñuelas, Puerto Rico, is very different from the proposed Downeast LNG terminal in Robbinston, Maine. The settings and safety issues are different.


It is an offense to FERC, to the LNG industry, and to public safety that Downeast LNG has confused its

own application with the conditions at the Puerto Rico EcoEléctrica LNG terminal.


Save Passamaquoddy Bay suggests that Downeast LNG has demonstrated a lack of professional competence in its application, and that the applications be denied.

Save Passamaquoddy Bay

A 3-Nation Alliance

(US • Passamaquoddy • Canada)

PO Box 222 • Eastport, ME 04631

(207)853-2922

info@SavePassamaquoddyBay.org

www.SavePassamaquoddyBay.org

Respectfully,
Robert Godfrey

Researcher & Webmaster





LNG: Ooops! Downeast LNG stumbles again.

Friday, October 19, 2012

MYSTERY: And the Mystery Vine on Tim Foulkes' Mountain is ...



Sean Blaney wrote:

Hello Tim and Rick,


This is an exceptionally robust colony of Fallopia cilinodis (=Polygonum cilinode), Fringed Bindweed. The shape of the basal lobes of the leaves (truncate, or sort of “squared off”) is a useful distinction in comparison to Fallopia scandens (=Polygonum scandens). The latter species is relatively uncommon in NB, being found only in quite rich floodplain soils and very rarely along the margins of saltmarshes on the Northumberland shore. The bright red stems (which are not always present, especially when the plant is in low light) are useful in distinguishing the plant from non-flowering Hedge Bindweed (Calystegia sepium), which is remarkably similar in general growth form and leaf shape. A close examination of the nodes, where the leaves join the stem, would reveal a fringe of hairs encircling the stipular sheath (called an ocrea in this family). That is also distinctive for the species from all other similar plants, and it is what gives the species its common and scientific names. Fringed Bindweed is a generally fairly common to common species throughout the province and is native to our region. It occurs in a variety of habitats but does well in clearcuts, forest openings and floodplains.


Cheers,

Sean Blaney


Sean Blaney, Botanist & Assistant Director

Atlantic Canada Conservation Data Centre

PO Box 6416, Sackville, NB. E4L 1G6. 

Photo Credit: Tim Foulkes





MYSTERY: And the Mystery Vine on Tim Foulkes' Mountain is ...

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

MYSTERY: Strange Vine on Tim Foulkes' Mountain - Can you identify it?





Here is something new to be seen in the wilderness on Tim Foulkes’ Mountain (aka Simpson Hill.) located just starting up Yellow Jacket trail from branch to Cedars trail.


The first photo is an overall view of the vine that has “taken root” near the broken top of a very tall  (30 ft) stump of an old poplar tree (second photo) which is leaning over so that the tendrils of  the vine have descended to the ground along the trunk of a fir tree, last photo.


These are not Tarzan compatible but could be fun for fairies, pixies, etc. I have not been up this part of the Yellow Jacket trail since early spring, but feel that this must be all one season’s growth!


It does not have any nasty razor wire type barbs like some vines from the deep south, so am inclined to leave it, even if it is an invasive species. Who knows what forest critters may be enjoying it?


Any ideas?

Tim, From September 2009




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MYSTERY: Strange Vine on Tim Foulkes' Mountain - Can you identify it?

Friday, October 12, 2012

ENERGY: More oil shipments to pass through Fundy waters?



Shell Oil Company

Shell Oil Company (Photo credit: Wikipedia)



For decades, the United States has bemoaned its dependence on oil imports. But now, the world’s biggest oil consumer is looking at seaborne oil exports of its own.


Royal Dutch Shell PLC is among the companies that have applied to export oil from the United States, with oil-tanker shipments out of the Texas Gulf Coast to refining complexes on Canada’s East Coast one possible destination. This comes as energy companies in Canada also eye Atlantic shipping routes, although some hope to bypass domestic processing facilities and get their oil to India and China.


Exporting oil is a politically contentious issue in the U.S., where politicians repeatedly push for energy independence and exports are highly restricted. Shell’s move, however, is not about independence.


Instead, it is struggling with a backlog of oil in certain areas of the continent – bottlenecks that push North American crude prices below the global benchmark.


“What this is simply showing is the pipeline imbalance in the U.S.,” said Len Waverman, a professor of strategy and global management at University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business.


“So the reason for exports is the fact we have regional markets in the U.S.,” Prof. Waverman said. “We don’t have a national market.”


Shell’s application is part of an industry-wide rush to deal with the glut of oil hitting the North American market, thanks to expanding production in new and revived oil fields in North Dakota, Texas, Alberta and Saskatchewan.


As the prospects of major pipeline projects to Canada’s West Coast and the Texas Gulf Coast remain muddy, oil companies must find ways to expand their traditional markets or continue to receive a discounted price for their crude.


“We can confirm we applied to the Department of Commerce for licences to export domestic crude oil,” Kayla Macke, a spokeswoman for Shell in the United States, said in an interview Thursday. “Crude oil trades on a global scale, and imports and exports follows supply and demand.”


She said Shell can not yet specify which markets it hopes to reach.


BP PLC and Vitol Group, the world’s largest oil trading house, have also applied for licences, the Financial Times reported. It said the Department of Commerce refused to confirm the existence of licences or licence applications, citing U.S. law. But the newspaper quoted the department as saying exports to Canada had a “presumption of approval.” The paper said BP and Vitol declined to comment


The political debate, however, could extend beyond the United States. TransCanada Corp., for example, has faced regulatory roadblocks in its quest to connect Alberta’s oil sands to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast via the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.


Canadians may want to retaliate if Shell and its competitors try to reach refineries such as the Irving Oil complex in Saint John, in their bid to better their bottom lines.


“One might say: ‘Why should oil be going to Canada if the U.S. right now is blocking the XL pipeline?’” said Jack Mintz, a director at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy.


The political issues could open negotiations for a North American energy strategy, a more “holistic approach,” he said.


Energy companies are pushing a variety of export options, such as expanding existing U.S. networks, replacing natural gas with oil in an existing line, building new lines such Enbridge Inc.’s Northern Gateway pipeline, and turning to rail cars to transport crude. Shell’s export ambitions could add further pressure to major projects such as Gateway.


“Over time, things change and you don’t want to have an opportunity lost,” John Carruthers, president of the Gateway project, said in an interview on the sidelines of the project’s regulatory hearings in Prince George, B.C.


But, he said, Asia will continue to be a desirable market, and the possibility of U.S. exports emphasizes the need for Canada to find another destination for its oil.


With files from reporter Nathan VanderKlippe in Prince George, B.C.




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ENERGY: More oil shipments to pass through Fundy waters?

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

EXPLORE: Fundy Highway Inukshuk, Rock Art and Grafetti


There’s something comforting about the inukshuk (or inuksuk if you prefer) that can be seen along all of our highways. These brand new little guys were overlooking the recently opened Trans-Canada Highway at St. David’s Ridge east of St. Stephen, N.B.


Have you got a favourite or some other story in stone like a carving on a mountain, names etched in rock, a strange geological formation, or striking graffiti even (our modern version of pictographs) or even wall art in your town? If so send a photo or two as attachments to an email addressed to fundytides at gmail.com. The subject is the title so be sure to capitalize it and the body is the text where you tell us all what it is, where it is, and when you saw it.


Who knows what spirits lurk here in Quoddy.


Art


PS. Want to know more about rock art? Check this out at Wikipedia and my very, very favourite site Stone Pages.




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EXPLORE: Fundy Highway Inukshuk, Rock Art and Grafetti