Another Scolding From The Oregonian
As I’ve no doubt mentioned before, my somewhat less terrible than average local rag, The Oregonian, has this weird tendency to adopt unpopular, right-wing causes, and stick to them even in the most humiliating defeat, which always culminates in a scolding editorial about how they were, dammit, right and it was the whole world that was wrong. Assisted Suicide, Medical Marijuana, the recent tax hikes on the rich… all nationally significant and all cases where the state’s largest daily went down screaming, wailing, and generally flushing its credibility down the toilet as it went on and on about the perfidy of democracy and the commie wrongheadedness of its former readers.
The Oregonian’s one successful area of this sort of endeavor has been on matters of the environment; so far it has forestalled the only possible salvation of Columbia River salmon, Snake River dam removal, promoted the destructive and useless deepening of the Columbia River Channel, and it has gone a long way toward re-legitimizing nuclear power in the eyes of a forgetful public. Win, win, you know? So why not go whole hog for that absurd, Enron-bred chimera, Liquified Natural Gas? Why wouldn’t you transport flammable gas, expensively liquified, across the ocean where it could expensively be re-converted to gas, and piped under the property of thousands of unwilling property owners through eminent domain to people who may or may not need/want it? As a business model, it’s hard to beat, particularly in the regulatory climate in which we find ourselves, where failures are all socialized and profits taken before they ever materialize, but c’mon, Oregonianistas…. LNG is like soooo 1999. There’s better scams out there, now. I guess at the Oregonian, though, Kenny Boy Lay still lives, and the stupid idea of carrying refrigerated Sterno across the Pacific through the treacherous shoals at the mouth of the Columbia pencils out somehow.
This week, the front company designed for nothing but fleecing investors rolled up its tent, after its road show, the Bradwood Landing LNG Terminal, finally retreated from its makeshift stage under a hail of rotten vegetables. While most people, particularly those who don’t want exploding gas pipes under their land, looked askance at such a cockamamie idea, the Oregonian thought this baby was pure gold, and my only wish is that they owned shares, so they could put their money where there mouths have been. You see, ever since Enron’s ridiculous and immediately mothballed India plants made a mockery of the entire notion of LNG, and the two other heavily subsidized West Coast ports have failed to see any business, anyone deeply involved in LNG has been tossed under Ayn Rand’s bus, but the Oregonian maintains, to this day, that that’s because hippies must have been driving it that day.
Although the company’s withdrawal of the proposal (for indolence on the part of Bradwood’s hucksters, among other things) occurred just a day before the inevitable bankruptcy of the sham firm touting it, the Oregonian somhow decided that it wasn’t the Free Market, but rather that Oregon is run by a bunch of radical environmentalists too busy doing bong rips and making sand candles to faithfully expedite the March of Progress.
Bizarre, far-fetched crony capitalist deals that trash the planet and make no sense economically can never fail, they can only be failed. I read it in the Oregonian.
Interesting post CH.
When I lived in the Seattle area a decade ago, I wasn’t very impressed with the moronic news and analysis provided by the Seattle Times, but I did like what I read in the Oregonian, which I picked up from time-to-time at my favorite coffee shop near Pikes Street Market.
It had some nicely written “Pacific Northwest” articles on environmental, social and political issues. I especially liked the arts section which had very well written coverage of local cultural events.
I’m sorry to hear that the Oregonian has become “A Rag”, as you say. But I guess it’s just a sign of our times. My local paper here in Arizona is a “Rag Extraordinaire”, and the papers I used to read in the Bay Area are even worse.
I guess it’s best if we just stick with “CH News Central” for our daily dose of reality.
It works for me.
It’s not always a rag, but this issue just gets it going, evidently. It’s sad that Seattle suffered a lengthy and ruinous newspaper war between the Times and the PI, which made both papers crappy before crappiness became the norm; it was only a couple of years ago that BOTH dying newspapers could be had for four bits. How many layoffs did that absurd price war spawn?
I’ll be very sad when all these papers go shithouse, which they are doing… CHNN can’t cover Salem or City Hall; too thirsty, and there’s that pesky day job, too.
Look up the word bleve. When I worked at UC Santa Barbara, I was, for a year or so, a member of the emergency response team for my area of the campus. At the time, UCSB got its gas cheap because the administration agreed to be among the first to have its service cut off by the gas company if there ever was a shortage of ordinary natural gas. (This was in the Seventies, when such things were of genuine concern.)
In order not to have to shut down the campus, four or five propane tanks the size of railroad cars had been installed below a cliff (and the administration building parking lot) at the north edge of the campus. When, as part of the committee, I was briefed on the emergency plan dealing with what might happen in the event of a rupture in one of the tanks, I couldn’t believe it. They were describing a disaster on the order of Texas City 1947. When I left the briefing that day, I was still shaking my head.
Ahhh, reality. What the Oregonian chose to forget is a pesky blowout of a natural gas pipeline just a couple of years ago in Bellingham made confetti of a local man and his son, so those on the Washington side, where the plants and its pipelines were located, were understandably skeptical.
Same shit, different day.
My uncle Godfrey got kicked by a horse and never was able to walk right again. The next door neighbor was gored to death by a dairy bull and wasn’t found for eight hours. He was a mess. I almost cut my toe off splitting wood once. Didn’t get any stitches and there’s still a pretty impressive scar but it had no effect on my walking. Pretty lucky, I guess.
What I’m interested in is your head injury story, Tom… I bet it’s a doozy.
I was asked by my last employer to do a market and technology evaluation of LNG. It was quite interesting. One thing I would be careful about is calling it economically absurd. The liquefaction cost is less than $1/mcf (million cubic feet) and they use feedstock ($0.08/mfc) to run the liquefaction plants. The transport is next to nothing (they can even use the runoff gas that can’t be avoided to fuel the engines). Then they can tap into existing distribution infrastructure on the customer side (minus the terminals to be developed). I can see why on a pure numbers basis, this makes business sense (at natural gas price levels of >$5.00/mcf and more – right now those are at $6). Glad to send studies and findings to who wants them.
The technologies to convert natural gas (methane) into “better” (beter because of better compression ability) fuels is well understood since before WWII and can be deployed quickly. As the world runs out of oil, this will be a smooth, fast transition. Then, in 200 years, we will go after coal and do teh same for another 500 years. It will happen. – UNLESS (and I am personally banking on this one) we understand that a) man made CO2 emissions are a risk we shouldn’t take going forward and b) the national security aspects don’t improve much by importing LNG from Quatar, Russia West Africa and other shitholes. We need electric cars powered by solar cells made in USA.
a) is for Hippies (or more generally speaking people with IQs > than their shoe size)
b) is for wingnuts & tea baggers & all the other right wing scum
The real problem is political resistance and the fact that you now let vessels with the explosive energy of nuclear weapons come near your coast (actually we Californians are much smarter and do that south of Tijuana instead – let some potentially illegal immigrants take the risk and us get the rewards – slick, huh?)
BTW, what’s wrong with sand candles?
Political resistance, in this case, means common sense. They thought that by picking a remote spot in a depressed area of southern Washington they’d be able to steamroll it through. (According to the Oregonian, the terminal would have created a whopping 65 jobs. Woo hoo!)
As for sand candles, they scratch the furniture and never burn right….
“My uncle Godfrey got kicked by a horse and never was able to walk right again. The next door neighbor was gored to death by a dairy bull and wasn’t found for eight hours. He was a mess. I almost cut my toe off splitting wood once. Didn’t get any stitches and there’s still a pretty impressive scar but it had no effect on my walking. Pretty lucky, I guess”
Tom, it sounds as if you’ve been reading the 100 Years Ago section,in the Walton Reporter , a local weekly. ( Sorry , not online, at the moment. It’s supposedly in the works.) Just about every issue has at least one story of somebody just about cutting something off , while splitting/choping wood.Are you from here in Teh Shoulderland ?
Every once in awhile here, somebody’s house gets fried by a leaky gas pipeline. That’s not supposed to be normal?
!)
“Just about every issue has at least one story of somebody just about cutting something off , while splitting/choping wood.” ……..& incidents with livestock.
Btw, you an also see GG’s point about the increasingly punitive nature of our legal system. People got off lightly, by today’s standards.
^*can* also see….