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Why US Coal Can’t Ship From Canada
Sightline has an updated new a research memo, "Coal Exports From Canada" that documents the facts about Canada's coal exporting capacity. The truth is that ports in British Columbia do not have sufficient capacity to handle the volumes of coal planned for Washington ports. It's not even close.
The state coal lobby continues to claim that US coal exports will simply shift to BC if Washington doesn’t build its own export facilities. But it's simply not true. The full details and analysis are here.
Sightline has an updated new a research memo, “Coal Exports From Canada” that documents the facts about Canada’s coal exporting capacity. The truth is that ports in British Columbia do not have sufficient capacity to handle the volumes of coal planned for Washington ports. It’s not even close. The state coal lobby continues to claim that US coal exports will simply shift to BC if Washington doesn’t build its own export...Read more » -
Coal Exports from Canada
Virtually all coal exported by Canada is sent from just three ports in British Columbia. Most of it went to Asia, but in recent years very little US coal has been actually been exported through BC ports. Several of the ports are planning to expand their coal capacity, yet even with this additional capacity BC’s existing coal ports could not come close to serving the volumes of Powder River Basin...Read more » -
Measuring Congestion Wrong, Version 3.0
There they go again. First, the Texas Transportation Institute came out with its urban congestion rankings. Then it was traffic firm INRIX’s turn. Now, TomTom, which makes in-car navigation systems, has its own urban congestion rankings. And as the Seattle Times pointed out yesterday, TomTom’s methods rank Seattle as having the continent’s fourth-worst congestion. Meanwhile, Vancouver, BC, ranks #2 on the continent, second only to LA.Read more » -
Top Time Wasters of the Year
Here are most the popular videos, maps, and charts we’ve featured in Sightline Daily over the last year. You may have shared some of them with your friends. Now, we’re asking you to share our daily news service. In exchange for recommending Sightline Daily to people you know who might enjoy it, you also have the chance to win a fabulous weekend getaway in Seattle. (If you’re not already subscribed,...Read more » -
Climate and the Colorado Fires
How to meaningfully put the devastating wildfires raging in Colorado and elsewhere around the West into the context of climate change? Here’s my “best of” from four recent expert responses: Dave Roberts, Grist First up: David Roberts. I’ve written recently about getting past the “blame” question, recommending that we instead focus on questions (and answers) that are more basic and informative: Is climate change happening? Is it caused by humans?...Read more » -
Recent Coal Export Trends: Q1 2012
Here’s data from the latest coal report from the US Energy Information Administration, taking us up through the first quarter of 2012: In the Western Customs Region, depicted above, three Districts reported meaningful quantities of coal exports: The Seattle District shipped 937,908 short tons of coal in the first quarter of 2012, which marked the third consecutive quarterly decline. (Down from the high-water mark of more than 1.4 million tons in...Read more » -
Channel Surfing: An Online Writing Guide
In today’s rapid-fire digital landscape, it’s not unusual to find ourselves writing for a bunch of different platforms—websites, blogs, emails, Facebook, Twitter, and others—during any given day (or hour). To save time, we take shortcuts. When we hastily copy and paste, we often miss opportunities to expand our audience and boost the impact of our work.Read more » -
DC: Bike sharers save $819 a year
For all the Northwest cities looking to launch successful bike share programs, one of the country’s largest bike share systems (Washington D.C.) just released a trove of data about how people have been using the bike sharing program. The good news? Residents who joined the bike share program saved an average of $819 a year on transportation costs, 80 percent said they now bicycled more frequently, and organizers estimated that...Read more » -
Competitive Rain Gardening
Green stormwater engineers have joined the ranks of fashion designers, Donald Trump wannabes, and gourmet chefs. That’s right, there are now contests for designing the best environmentally friendly stormwater solutions. The practice appears to have gotten its start in Houston with a contest that drew 230 design professionals, offered $45,000 in cash prizes, and even has videos on YouTube. It’s not exactly American Idol, but c’mon, polluted runoff is a...Read more » -
Weekend Reading 6/15/12
Eric dP: I’ve got a pair of good suggestions this week. In the Vancouver Observer, Barry Saxifrage looks at national emissions trends and reveals that the world leader is—it’s hard to believe it, but it’s true—the United States. And as he points out, US reductions are no small potatoes: How big is a cut of 430 million tonnes of CO2? It’s equal to all CO2 from all Canadians outside Alberta....Read more »