Monday, November 10, 2008

It's all in when you decide to stop quoting.


Over at the Stephen Taylor Home for the Perpetually Bewildered and Pathologically Dishonest, Blogging Tory "Gay And Right Fred" gets his quote on:

Oilsands weath hugely underestimated....

More than $1.5 trillion in wealth....

The wealth in Canada's oilsands, even taking into account the recent plunge in world oil prices, is nearly $1.5 trillion, more than four times the $342 billion officially estimated by Statistics Canada, a Canadian think-tank argues in a report released today.

That works out to a $34,591 increase in the wealth of Canadians to $243,950 for every man, woman and child, according to the analysis by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards.

Last year, Statistics Canada valued the oilsands at $342.1 billion, or five per cent of Canada's total tangible wealth of $6.9 trillion, the centre said.

However, the federal agency's method of evaluating that wealth underestimates the quantity of oil the oilsands contain and the speed at which that wealth will be extracted, it said.

The reasons the agency underestimates the wealth in the oilsands is that it takes a restricted view of reserves, including only those that can be exploited now, Andrew Sharpe, chief economist at the centre and one of the authors of the report, said.

The official Statistics Canada estimate of the reserves, at 22 billion barrels, is "very small compared to those obtained using more appropriate definitions" resulting in an underestimation of their true value, it said. Further, the failure to take into account the projected growth of the industry significantly magnifies this underestimation.

More reasonable measures of the total oilsands reserves put them at 173 billion barrels, or eight times the StatsCan estimate, the centre said. And the rate at which that oil is projected to be extracted -- from 482 million barrels per year in 2007 to a peak of 1,350 million barrels in 2015, and at the 2007 price of $70 Cdn per barrel -- boosts the estimated present value of the oilsands to about $1.483 trillion, more than four times the official estimate of $342.1 billion.


Curiously, Fred decides to quote almost the entire article ... with the exception of the very last one-sentence paragraph:

But the extraction of that wealth comes with a hefty price tag, the Ottawa-based research firm also cautioned, estimating that the social and environmental costs resulting from the emission of greenhouse gases alone at $69.4 billion.

Yeah, that bit would have been handy to know. What rotten luck that Fred ran out of blog space right about then. Dontcha hate it when that happens?

7 comments:

Red Tory said...

Funny how that works, isn't it?

When they're not overtly LYING, they LIE by omission.

Bottom line: THEY LIE... ALL THE TIME.

Lore_Weaver said...

Do the math, retard. What percentage is $64 billion of $1.5 trillion?

(psst, it's 4.2%)

Lets say we spend 10% or more on environmental concerns, and 1% on enough drugs to fuel your writing staff (we don't want you to run out).

I'll give you a chance to not look retarded, how much does "Big Oil" spend on environmental concerns today?

Metro said...

Four-point-two equals zero to conservative bloggers, apparently.

It certainly doesn't seem to be enough of a difference for them to fully and honestly reproduce the entire quote.

Of course, it's 4.2% as long as you accept the $something-trillion figures as given by the report. If you accept the StatsCan figures, it's closer to twenty percent, but I'll leave the math on that to others.

Lore_Weaver said...

It isn't 120% is it.

CC said...

Um ... "the social and environmental costs resulting from the emission of greenhouse gases alone at $69.4 billion" ... as in, "alone", as in, just that lone issue has an associated estimated cost of 69.4 billion, as in there are other issues that have a cost that aren't being addressed, as in, fuck off, LW, you retarded dumbshit.

Jesus, how the fuck do these people dress themselves in the morning without help?

Lore_Weaver said...

Oh no, a 4.2% loss "alone" so what, let it bring five of it's 4.2% friends.

Fuck it, let it bring 10.

Fuck it... if you still make 20 points off of the project you still come out smelling like a rose.

You're a retarded dumbshit CC. I'm sure there's a 12-step program for it.

lrn2read and comprehend stuff and we won't have to have this discussion again.

CC said...

Here's a thought, LW -- why don't we skip right over the "me learning to read" part and jump right to the "not having this discussion again" part?

Does that work for you?