Tar Sands Extraction: A Slow Motion Oil Spill

[depakid]

As the oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico destroys habitat and livelihoods, the extraction of oil from Canadian oil sands deposits is having a similar impact on fragile ecosystems and communities deep in the North American interior.

The dramatic impact of oil sands expansion should give the companies involved and their investors pause, cautions a new report commissioned by Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmental groups, and authored by the financial risk management group RiskMetrics.

Oil sands development is "kind of like the gulf spill but playing out in slow motion", said report co-author Doug Cogan, director of climate risk management at RiskMetrics. He called it a "land-based" version of the gulf disaster.

The value in the oil sands is bitumen, a thick, heavy form of petroleum with a tar-like consistency that requires energy-intensive processing to separate it from clay and sand. The bitumen is not drilled for but mined, and that mining has led to the razing of boreal forests and fouling of water supplies in parts of the 140,000 square kilometres of Alberta in which the oil sands are found.

Cogan drew the connection between the huge amount of seawater being polluted in the Gulf of Mexico and the huge amount of freshwater that is polluted in the course of extracting oil from the oil sands.

It takes up to four barrels of water to obtain one barrel of oil, as opposed to one barrel of water to one barrel of oil for more conventional oil extraction.

That water is then left in tailings ponds that currently cover 80 square miles. Those toxic ponds pose a hazard to migrating birds, risk contaminating nearby soil and water resources, present health problems to downstream communities and, the report notes, pose the risk of "a catastrophic breach".

The particulates in the mining waste take decades to settle out in the ponds. "After 40 years of production, no oil sands companies have yet fully reclaimed tailings ponds created by development," says the report.

The report also notes how expansion of oil sands in Alberta is turning one of the world's largest carbon sinks - the province's vast boreal forests - into a fast-growing emitter of carbon dioxide.

More: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/05/17-7

[Nihil]

1. You're forgetting a vital difference ...

... this isn't happening in America (or anywhere that can be seen from
mainland America) so it doesn't matter ...

[TommyO]

7. But Canada is part of North America

How much more "happening in America" can you get?

[Nihil]

9. Not according to what passes for geography (or awareness) in the US

You are correct, of course, but to most of your compatriots, "North America"
is Michigan, Montana, Vermont, Maine, ...

Things that don't happen in the continental 48 (or immediately adjoining
them) don't appear on their TV screens and so don't make any mark in
their awareness. Your parochial chat shows that masquerade as "news"
have only noticed the most recent oil spill because it happened right
off *their* beaches rather than "some foreign place".

The chances of them noticing (much less caring about) the tar sand tragedy
is pitifully low.

[TommyO]

8. But Canada is part of North America

How much more "happening in America" can you get?

[madokie]

2. Humans are killing his planet as fast as they can

and from every possible direction

[GliderGuider]

3. Git 'er done!

:banghead: :nuke:

[madokie]

4. Those who won't learn from the past

and all that. You'd think with all the intelligence we've gained these last few thousand years we'd have figured this one out. I'm nearing the end of my life and am happy for having it while I did, its those who aren't so old as me that I worry about. Greed is what took us down or is taking us down now and once we're there greed will be shown as the reason for our failure.

[tom_paine]

5. Don't expect too much from barely-evolved monkeys like us "homo sapiens"

"wise apes"

(if ever their was a more conceited and incorrect naming of a species, I've yet to see it)

If there one thing living through what is very likely "homo sapiens" high-water mark prior to a long, slow painful journey to extinction has taught me, it's that our monkey-ness, our animalistic evolutionary imperatives, cannot be stopped or even slowed down.

It lives on and never dies - it exists in the grotesque bowels of Gold Sacks and the criminal enterprise known as Wall Street. It lives in Teabaggers as it did in medieval witch-burners, almost without change, other than cosmetically and PR-wise.

It lives in the relationship of the Ruling Elite to pretty much every single human society that ever existed. When it's briefly beaten back or attempted to be overcome, it responds by making a few small adjustments which shed the old snake-skin and present a shiny new one.

It lives in the fact that we Peasants are ALMOST ALWAYS fooled by our Rulers, and that even when we aren't, they simply invent new mechanisms of perception and crowd control to restore their iron grip.

Google Ed Bernays, who in many ways is the author of our Empire of PR and Lies and the False Reality that suffuses us all through Corporate M$M and the technological delivery systems that are the Atomic Bombs and ICBMs of the mind.

Bleak? Hell yes! Bleak as the Titanic going down and only having enough life boats for Richie Rich & Co. while the Ship's Officers hold us under lock and key belowdecks as the water terminally rises.

Bleak, but true, and it's best to live in reality than a comforting but 100% false PR Lie.

The worst part of all is KNOWING that, if we "homo sapiens" :rofl: survive this round of greedy elite devasatation without extincting ourselves, then it's only a matter of time until the same "Alpha Apes" figure out a new Con and start the whole thing all over again just as it was.

Sorry if this is a bit gloomy, but it is a truth rendered in 100-foot-high neon letters by human history and it's repetitious nonsensical cruelty.

[JohnWxy]

6. Oh please! Not to worry, CARB says we don't have to worry about environmental impacts of petroleum

recovery! No, really! It's cool.