$6 Billion Mackenzie Pipeline Plan Faces Threats From Melting Permafrost

[hatrack]

INUVIK, Canada - Environmental hearings on Canada's proposed $6 billion Mackenzie Valley pipeline opened with warnings that the safety of the pipeline and the natural gas fields that feed it is threatened by climate change that already is damaging northern roads and airstrips.

Government scientists and environmental groups said pipeline builder Imperial Oil hasn't accounted for permafrost melting under the pipeline. Nor has it considered the effect of higher sea levels and longer storm seasons along the low-lying gas fields that would serve Canada as well as the United States.

"It's really the frozen ground that creates the structure that protects the pipeline," said Stephen Hazell, conservation director of the Sierra Club of Canada. "You could get shearing of the pipeline. ... Whole slopes could subside as the permafrost melts."

EDIT

Two federal government departments echoed Hazell's concerns. "The Mackenzie Basin has experienced some of the greatest warming in the circumpolar North in the past 50 years," said Jim Vollmarshausen of Environment Canada. "Climate variability and change poses a serious threat to the viability and integrity of the project."

EDIT

Editor's Note: There have already been more than 2,000 landslides along the Mackenzie Valley from melting permafrost. The company behind the plan, Imperial Oil, made no allowances in their feasibility studies for this possibility.

:eyes:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11383809/

[xchrom]

1. of course they made no allowances for that...

that might obstruct profits.

[phantom power]

2. There was this old SF movie...

where these guys are trying to steal a precious jewel from Neptune, or some very cold outer planet. At the end of the movie, they finally get it, but the jewel turns out to be ice. It melts in the super-hot human ambient temperature.

It's kind of interesting, to see this scenario being played out on my own planet. We treated water like a mineral, and now it's melting.

[skids]

3. Take a moment to appreciate the irony of this. n/t