Tar Sands Hell

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Originally posted by Noise:

I'm hoping the voters decide to do that this coming Monday.

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I had forgotten about the election! It'd be great if the electorate decide they've had enough.

As long as the politicians, the MSM and the sheeple view the economy/environmental protection to be an either/or situation, the majority will always choose the economy, even if its proven to be unsustainable or even disastrous. Ignorance is bliss.

No politician seeking re-election will ever challenge the current economic model, for the corporatists are their bosses and their king-makers.

One trouble with the short-sighted sheeple is that they can't see the effects of disastrous climate change until its right on top of them, otherwise it is simply "weather" implying no control, and no anthropomorphic effect.

[ 11 March 2008: Message edited by: Fleabitn ]

It's about the west coast as well - what if there's a major expansion of ports there to load Alberta oil onto supertankers?

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Wildlife artist Robert Bateman didn't have to see an oil spill to know what one would look like along his beloved west coast.

In his mind, he can see birds soaking in oil spills. And the stark images of black tar-like liquid covering the coast are perfectly clear.

But Bateman, who lives on Saltspring Island on one of B.C.'s Gulf Islands and is perhaps the country's most well-known living wildlife artist, said he believes others need convincing about the need to keep oil tankers out of the area.

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[url=http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/349121]http://www.thestar.com...

[url=http://www.notankers.ca/]http://www.notankers.ca/[/url]

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
[url=http://tinyurl.com/3qddqf]Read more[/url]

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Excellent link - thanks! This subject came up in Question Period today, I think it was raised by Layton, although my memory is hazy on this.

[url=http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/story.html?id=9f1a4588-2047-455... begins oil sands propaganda campaign[/url]

[b]excerpt:[/b]

Today the battle shifts to Washington, D.C., where deputy premier Ron Stevens begins a five-day mission to bolster the oilsands brand.

[b]excerpt:[/b]

The Alberta government is ramping up its effort, too. This week it was revealed the province will spend $25 million over three years on an advertising and marketing campaign to boost the Alberta "brand."

Stelmach vowed he won't let environmentalists hijack public perception of the province's oil.

The stakes for the province are high: $100 billion in national and international investment is flooding into the region, making it a strategic source of new global oil supply and a boon to the entire Canadian economy.

"That's why in the speech I talked about taking the message to other jurisdictions around the world, getting the message out," Stelmach said Thursday.

"I'm not going to leave it up to Greenpeace, Sierra Club or any of these other groups."

[b]excerpt and counterpoint:[/b]

Stelmach even referenced the contentious East Coast seal hunt.

Despite federal and provincial government efforts to characterize the seal hunt as responsible and humane, images of clubbed and skinned seals have struck a chord around the world. Animal rights activists now have the ear of the European Union, which is contemplating a crippling ban on Canadian seal products.

A similar threat may loom for

Alberta's oilsands as climate change concerns mount. For many environmentalists, the development's carbon footprint is too heavy, producing three times more greenhouse gases than a conventional barrel of oil.

"The tar sands are one of the world's largest environmental disasters and they are occurring right on this government's watch," Greenpeace's Mike Hudema yelled as two security guards escorted him out of the premier's dinner Thursday.

This sort of talk -- and the potential risk it carries -- has captured the attention of Canada's powerful oil lobby.

[url=http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2008/06/23/us-mayors-oilsands.ht.... mayors join call for ban on oilsands-based gasoline[/url]

excerpt:

U.S. mayors are adding their voices to those raising concerns about energy produced from Alberta's vast oilsands.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors, meeting in Miami this week, has approved a resolution calling on its members to ban the use of energy from unconventional sources because of its impact on the environment.

"We don't want to spend taxpayer dollars on fuels that make global warming worse," said Eugene, Ore., Mayor Kitty Piercy, who submitted the resolution.

"Tarsands oil emits up to three times the greenhouse gases in the production process per barrel as convention oil production. Our cities are asking for environmentally sustainable energy and not fuels from dirty sources such as tarsands."

The premiers of both Alberta and Saskatchewan were on CTV's Question Period today, and both said they will oppose Dion's carbon tax and continue with their own carbon capture and storage programs. Stelmach in particular wants Canadians to become better educated about Alberta, as he's tired of the ignorance about their pollution control measures. (don't shoot the messenger, I'm just reporting what I heard)

That quote is hilarious! The carbon tax being proposed by "other parties" would not have accomplished what he says at all: its' revenue neutral = no revenue for infrastructure, and the article criticizes Harper's corporate tax cut without mentioning that those same "other parties" support that cut! Obviously the author knows there is a problem but they seem to have been fooled into thinking the Liberals have a solution!

Latest CBC radio news from the tar sands is that the techies who are expected to find means of "burying" carbon emissions in old oil wells are quietly admitting that it's just too difficult to collect the emissions from the upgraders themselves.

Alberta has committed to spending $2 billion on emissiions capture and burial, but it would seem their best hope now is to go after the emissions at the stacks of the energy generating producers - coal in particular.  

At present, the oil patch  is producing five per cent of Canada's total carbon emissions.  Talk is of this being expected to rise to 15 per cent of Canada's total by 2020 - although I'm not sure if that was based on $100 + oil or allowed for the cutbacks in production expansion that are now underway.

And we can hope that the new U.S.administration, together with the consortium of "cleaner" states, will decline increased imports of oil from the tar sands early on. Although a Calgary Obama-watcher, Jane Cawthorne's letter to the editor observes that the president-elect has just chosen Lawrence Summers to be on his national economic council. He's the former "boys are best at math", Harvard president and one-time chief economist at the World Bank, whose infamopus 1991 memo read "just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LCDs (less developed countries)?"

Anyway, the technological fix of carbon sequestration - first experimented with by the late NDP government of Saskatchewan along the Alberta border,  and held up by the incoming yahoos as a sign of their progressiveness - is less and less likely to mean diddly squat.

Ned Ludd had it right.

I mentioned the complicity of both the Conservative provincial and federal governments in perpetuating the Big Lie about carbon capture over here, yesterday. I also provided links to Stelmach lying his pasty old ass off about creating jobs in Ontario (rather than destroying the entire manufacturing sector here with his buddies Harper and Flaherty), and his mendacious claim that 13% of the Tar Sands have been rehabilitated - an impossibility, when only 0.2% had been certified as reclaimed as of May.

Tar sands threaten millions of birds

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The development of the tar sands could lead to the loss of more than 160 million birds over the next 30 to 50 years because of the elimination of habitat and deaths from drowning in tailings ponds, according to a report being released today.

Wilder wrote:

I think a major factor in this blindness is that so many Albertans are not, in fact, from Alberta. I think they must be the most deracinated people in Canada. The strongest tie most of them have to the land is through the money they make from it. Being wealthy has become part of the Albertan identity. Take the oil sands and they are just displaced suburbanites from Ontario. Perhaps the backup plan is just to go back home when its all over, although I really don't feel very many have a backup plan.

I think this is quite a good point, everyone from out here in Atlantic Canada (that is those who I know personally) who has headed out to Alberta to work has done so purely for money. I haven't known any of them to actually express affection for Alberta (the land or its' people). They are there for the money, they suffer through living in the West, and then they return to Atlantic Canada to live off oil sands money with the people they do care about, on the land they do value. Although one must be very ignorant to suppose that what happens in Alberta stays in Alberta (environmentally speaking), many are able to put the long-term consequences aside to justify the short-term need for $$$ to provide for their families.

To It's Me.

Yes. And if you think those of us with pioneer roots in Alberta appreciate the fact that workers who have no intention of staying here  are encouraged by corporate control and our traitorous government to come here, help rape the land at breakneck speed, and return to other lands they so deeply "care about," with no thought to the destruction they're participating in and what they're leaving behind - ie. "take the money and run," we don't.  There's no virtue there; it's all selfishness in everyone involved. What goes around, comes around and we're ALL affected.

But perhaps you'll find out what I'm talking about when the oil industry starts reving up in your neck of the woods.  Don't hold your breath, it's ugly, and you won't be able to do a damned thing about it because everyone, including some of your own, will sell out for the MONEY. You 're just lucky because you won't see the environmental damage as it's out under the ocean floor, that's all.

To It's Me D:

Thanks for that clarification!

I'm sorry, I read your post in a bit of a hurry and mistook your one line to mean that those Eastern workers were "smart enough to know how to value their own land, as Albertans clearly don't." I enjoy your writing very much, as well. It's critical that we don't get torn from sea to sea, blaming each area of Canada for what's happening environmentally, when it's clear that progressives from every single area are heartsick to see the destruction global corporatization is wreaking both socially and environmentally in all countries and lands.

By the way, I don't know how to start a new thread, but I wanted to comment on Laxer's article - great insight."

Outwest, I actually DID leave Alberta due to the outrage over the
environment/corporate control that I was feeling, and the changing
quality of the air there.

This is a terrific thread... I summarized some of the main jabs at the Tar Sands Hell:

There is the natural gas waste -

There is the water usage - Quote: "119.5 billion gallons of water
for tar sands extraction est. 82% from the Athabasca River. Of that,
extraction companies were only required to return 10 billion gallons to
the river"

There is the local population's health - "Fort Chipewyan cancer cluster."

There is the boreal forest lain to waste, and the tailing ponds issue too {"Planned area the size of Florida"}

Tar sands threaten millions of birds:
Quote: "The development of the tar sands could lead to the loss
of more than 160 million birds over the next 30 to 50 years because of
the elimination of habitat and deaths from drowning in tailings ponds,
according to a report being released today. "

Lack of financial benefit to Albertans or Canada:
Quote "We have circa 14 -18 billion in our Heritage Trust Fund;
Norway, an equivalent petro-state, has close to 400 billion"

I
would just add that Norway nationalised it's oil industry, as have a
few other nations, and they have done wonderfull things for the general
population. I am stunned at how many votes the Tories get in
Alberta.... [sheeple!!].

Also, about the pipeline
from Alaska: energy industry humps say that they need some new supply
to keep the pipelines filled up because supply we have now is running
low. So, just stop wasting it all on the tar sands!

 Finally, about natural gas use, from what I heard: 1/3rd of Alberta's
natural gas production goes to the Tar Sands; no royalties need to be
paid on nat.gas that is used at the tar sands.

[url=http://westcoastclimateequity.org/?p=2486][color=mediumblue][u]Tar Sands Facts[/u][/color][/url]

Yibpl wrote:

This month’s National Geographic has several photos of the Oil Sands industry.  I was shocked at how close to the Athabasca River some of the settling-ponds are.  Even as a layperson,  it strikes me as being a very obviously remarkably bad idea to have a toxic waste settling-pond within a few meters of a river!

Why can't Liberal Messiah Iggy, who dismissed the National Geographic story completely, see this as well?

Yibpl wrote:

This month’s National Geographic has several photos of the Oil Sands industry.

The article, but not all the photos, is [url=http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/canadian-oil-sands/kunzig-text... online[/u][/color][/url]. An excerpt:

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A poll conducted by the Pembina Institute in 2007 found that 71 percent of Albertans favored an idea their government has always rejected out of hand: a moratorium on new oil sands projects until environmental concerns can be resolved. "It's my belief that when government attempts to manipulate the free market, bad things happen," Premier Stelmach told a gathering of oil industry executives that year. [b]"The free-market system will solve this."[/b]

But the free market does not consider the effects of the mines on the river or the forest, or on the people who live there, unless it is forced to. Nor, left to itself, will it consider the effects of the oil sands on climate. Jim Boucher has collaborated with the oil sands industry in order to build a new economy for his people, to replace the one they lost, to provide a new future for kids who no longer hunt ptarmigan in the moonlight. But he is aware of the trade-offs. "It's a struggle to balance the needs of today and tomorrow when you look at the environment we're going to live in," he says. [b]In northern Alberta the question of how to strike that balance has been left to the free market, and its answer has been to forget about tomorrow. Tomorrow is not its job.[/b]

Boom Boom...  Here is a [url=http://rabble.ca/babble/environmental-justice/alberta-orders-oil-sands-f... Previous Thread[/url] where the Trailbreaker project was discussed...  ClaudeB's post #10 in particular really highlighted this projects goals.

The book I quoted from at #72 above is now available for download in .pdf format [url=http://www.dmpibooks.com/pdf/tar-sands][color=mediumblue][u]FREE OF CHARGE[/u][/color][/url] until Friday.

Don't miss this opportunity to get this valuable book! It belongs in your library.

[b]Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, by Andrew Nikiforuk[/b]

Sorry posted Black Hell and didn't see this post as Suncor and Petro Canada unite to create the biggest blackest hell hole on earth.  They need to be stopped as the consequences will be disatorous as we are all more than aware.  But they seem unstoppable in their pursuit to take everything that this country stands for and what it means to Canadians and flush it down some black hole they call Oil Sands.  ILLMUD

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For each barrel of oil produced from the tar sands, between two and 4.5 barrels of water is needed. The water is used in the process of extracting bitumen from the naturally occurring the tar sand. The bitumen is later "upgraded" into synthetic crude oil.

In 2007, the government of Alberta approved the withdrawal of [b]119.5 billion gallons[/b] of water for tar sands extraction, of which an estimated 82 per cent came from the Athabasca River. Of that, extraction companies were only required to return [b]10 billion gallons[/b] to the river.

Most of the water used ends up in giant, toxic tailing ponds. As of 2006, tailing ponds covered [b]50 square kilometers of former boreal forest.[/b] By 2010, according to the Oil Sands Tailings Research Facility, the industry will have generated 8 billion tons of waste sand and [b]1 billion cubic metres of waste water[/b] - enough to fill 400,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Today, [b]the largest human-made dam by volume of materials[/b] is the Syncrude tailing pond, a few kilometres from the Athabasca river.

[url=http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/1480]What the Tar Sands Need[/url]

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The federal government has confirmed that it will spend $1.5 billion dollars in [b]additional subsidies to tar sands companies[/b] as a result of its slow phase out of tax breaks for one of Canada's largest greenhouse gas emitting (GHG) industries. And [url=http://www.kairoscanada.org/e/ecology/PumpedUpInsides080415.pdf]Pumped Up, a new KAIROS study,[/url] (3 MB .pdf file) concludes that [b]by 2012 GHG emissions from the tar sands alone may wipe out all anticipated reductions in GHG emissions from all federal government programs.[/b]

The government confirmed the tax break figures in its responses to a formal petition filed with the Auditor General of Canada by KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives, a church-based social justice organization. KAIROS' analysis of likely GHG emission reductions is based on the federal government's own figures.

The petition was filed last November and the government was legally required to respond within 120 days. While the government provided answers to some questions, it failed to respond to the key question at the heart of the petition.

"Why does Canada spend millions of dollars on subsidizing oil and gas industries - a prime cause of climate change - and so little money on green alternatives when the majority of Canadians want action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? That was the essential question we asked the government," says John Dillon, a KAIROS Program Coordinator and co-author of Pumped Up: How Canada subsidizes fossil fuels at the expense of green alternatives. "The government didn't answer that core question."

[url=http://tinyurl.com/3qddqf]Read more[/url]

What's with these websites that have ridiculously long computer generated URLs? Are they [b]trying[/b] to make it hard to link to them? That's ten minutes of my life I'd like to have back again.

[url=http://thetyee.ca/News/2008/07/28/LawSuit/]Aboriginal lawsuit could shut down Tar Sands[/url]

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Jack Woodward and the Beaver Lake Cree aim to change Canadian law -- and their success likely would throw a huge wrench into Alberta's tar-sands oil production.

The [url=http://www.beaverlakecreenation.ca/upload/documents/statementofclaim.pdf... [caution: 9 Megabyte, 704-page .pdf file!][/url] pits the Beaver Lake Cree band against the governments of Canada and Alberta, asking the court to rule invalid the government authorization for thousands of petroleum projects on the band's core territory.

Woodward, a Victoria-based Aboriginal-law expert, filed the suit on behalf of his clients this May, and says its intent is to lay the groundwork for a new legal regime governing resource extraction on land reserved for or claimed by Canada's First Nations.

- from The Tyee