THREAD: The oil tanker maritime map tweets series has generated a lot of interest over the past year. By popular demand, here’s a thread with the Top 25 most retweeted tanker maps. @MarineTraffic @Resource_Works #cdnpoli
1. The winner, with 356 retweets. What made this one so popular? I’d like to know.
2. Second place is now sitting at 277 retweets. What is it that people find so fascinating? Maybe it’s the realization that there is actually not a lot to worry about here.
3. Maybe the “glass houses” angle of this tweet caused its popularity, so I am ruling out that it was not just me who thought this.
4. Seriously, if you run a global organization decrying Canadians who want to ship the world’s most common commodity, understand the optics of doing so on the doorstep of a major petroleum gateway.
5. A reminder that 2018 was the year we found out that the 🇨🇦 dilbit that Americans are protesting is actually easier to clean up than the Alaskan goop already being shipped into the Salish Sea at extreme levels. Oops. Campaign re-set?
6. Frankly somewhat repetitive, but don’t those pictures tell the story. I wonder how many who’ve heard the wild claims about Canadian oil were also allowed to see the whole context. Instinct is confirmed that context is everything.
7. Again, context is everything. People aren’t stupid, but without access to information it’s difficult to assess contradictory claims. Geo data has helped many to grasp what used to be specialist knowledge. Thanks @MarineTraffic
8a. This animation was created using the desktop version of @MarineTraffic and a paid subscription. Restoring truth to the tanker safety narrative takes time, effort, money, and Oxford commas.
8b. Not long this tweet, my application to become a federal intervenor in the #TMX re-permitting process was accepted. Mainly on the strength of our @Resource_Works Citizens Guide to Tanker Safety, I suspect.
9. The uptake of this message may have had something to do with Western Canada’s feelings about reciprocity of interests under federal equalization regime, if you know what I mean.
10. Hilarious timing. Greenpeace stunt became a free ad for pointing out that Canadian oil is not some inferior unwanted commodity, but rather a trade good safely generating GDP in real time.
11. General reaction being: “WHAT?!”
12. We should admire a lot of what Al Gore accomplished and stands for, especially in these weird times. I’d read the uptake of this tweet as: “Clean up your own house before criticizing ours.”
13. Not a map, just an aerial view of Prevost Passage, the narrowest part of Haro Strait that is the Vancouver port’s shared access channel to the open Pacific. Believe it or not, a lot of the original fears were built around exaggeration about this.
14. MarineTraffic animated journey from beacon data shows normal in-harbour movement for this tanker: slow speed while tethered to three tugboats.
15. This image always grabs people, especially when it’s shared near real-time. The red markers are all the tanker ships using AIS transmitters. (Iran was exposed for hiding its oil trade by switching them off.)
16. It was around June this year that people started to see red - and not just the red markers denoting oil tankers. How had so many people been fooled for so long? By this time, public opinion in BC for #TMX was actually quite solid.
17. Any shipping is a hazard, what counts is how we manage risk. The biggest irrational fear in all this is that one oil tanker a day could somehow annihilate Vancouver’s tourism industry.
18. If you’re listening, San Francisco, we both know you will depend on more Canadian hydrocarbon products coming in safely by ship. So let’s work together to make sure it’s done right, ok?
19. My revelation that Russian instead of Canadian oil is being used as feedstock in Puget Sound refineries caused heads to explode. As it should have.
20. I exposed how the BC government fabricated an artificial threshold for oil quality that favours American crude and discriminates against Alberta product. Does this happen with any other commodity we know of?
21. It’s hard to get people’s attention on dry technical issues, hence pipeline opponents played up emotive issues. Fair game if it’s based on a legit concern, but the “tourism apocalypse” stuff simply wasn’t, and isn’t. Lots of retweets.
22. Anyone can download the @MarineTraffic mobile app but for features like density mapping you need paid access to the desktop version. Red marks are just the oil tankers. Zooming in reveals there are actually way more of them than visible here.
23. Nothing like an obvious double standard to get us going. Is there anything more tedious than listening to a European pontificate about the evils of Canadian hydrocarcarbons?
24. Not as dramatic as some of the views tweeted, but it’s relevant context.
25. We all know BC’s west coast is special and needs to be protected. But it’s not the only place in the world that has weather. That’s all for this thread.
