Canada’s Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by British Columbia that aimed to stop work on the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, Bloomberg reports, adding that the decision to dismiss the case was unanimous.

“We are all of the view to dismiss the appeal for the unanimous reasons of the Court of Appeal for British Columbia,” the Chief Justice of Canada said after the presentation of arguments.

British Columbia’s government is a staunch opponent of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion on the grounds that it will increase the risk of spills and leaks both along its route and in the waters around the port of Burnaby where the pipeline is supposed to load oil onto tankers bound for export markets. To prevent the expansion from taking place, the government decided to claim a right to dictate how much oil and gas pass through the territory of the province… CLICK for complete article

The American obsession with Iran is about oil and natural gas. If these two resources had been absent, it is hard to imagine such an intense American focus on the country from the time of a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency-backed coup of Iran’s elected government in 1953 to today. The Foreign Policy magazine piece linked above is based on declassified CIA documents and summarizes the coup this way: “Known as Operation Ajax, the CIA plot was ultimately about oil.”

This should come as no surprise. Iran was an oil power back in 1953 and it remains one today. Iran is presumed to have the third largest oil reserves in the world and the second largest natural gas reserves. Even if the numbers cited are somewhat inflated, Iran’s reserves are not small, and the country is likely to play a large role in world energy markets for many years to come.

The recent escalation of tensions between the United States and Iran because of the U.S. assassination of a prominent, popular and by all accounts highly effective Iranian general will allow the advocates of war to trot out all manner of excuses for such a war: terrorism, regime change, the credibility of the United States, Iran’s nonexistent nuclear weapons, and the United States’ geostrategic posture vis-à-vis big power rivals such as Russia and China. (Does anyone really know what the last one means?) CLICK for complete article

Here’s fun fact: the world’s deepest manmade hole goes 15 kilometers into the ground. They stopped drilling at the 15^th kilometer because it got too hot at the bottom of the hole. Welcome to geothermal energy, the reason most religions depict Hell as a place deep underground and the reason why we may succeed in building a clean energy future for the planet without turning it into a disco ball of solar panels.

Geothermal energy is, simply put, heat; heat that is generated from the decay of radioactive elements in the planet’s mantle. The amount of energy this heat translates into is stunning. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, just 33,000 feet below the Earth’s surface there is 50,000 times more energy than the energy all the oil and gas in the world can produce. This energy can be harnessed and used for heating and power generation.

Of course, from a driller’s perspective, 33,000 feet, which is equal to 10 kilometers, is not exactly a small distance to drill. Yet it is not impossible as those engineers in the ‘80s demonstrated with their 15-km hole. We just need to develop the drilling technology….CLICK for complete article