Oilsands emit more than entire countries: report

Source: The Canadian Press

Alberta's oilsands produce more greenhouse gas emissions than some European countries right now and will produce more than all of the world's volcanoes in just 11 years if the pace of development continues, a new report says.

"Dirty: How the Tarsands Are Fuelling Global Climate Change" is set to be released Monday.

Greenpeace commissioned award-winning author Andrew Nikiforuk, a business and environmental reporter, to write the report.

"Nobody in Canada wants to talk about the scale issues," he said in an interview Saturday.


Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/09/13/greenpeace-oilsands.html

Let's get healthcare in order before we start crafting ways to destroy the economy.

Out of sight, out of mind.

I was worried their volcano production was out of control.

Oh, wait a minute....

"This seems like a huge amount of CO2, but a visit to the U.S. Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) website (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/) helps anyone armed with a handheld calculator and a high school chemistry text put the volcanic CO2 tally into perspective. Because while 200 million tonnes of CO2 is large, the global fossil fuel CO2 emissions for 2003 tipped the scales at 26.8 billion tonnes. Thus, not only does volcanic CO2 not dwarf that of human activity, it actually comprises less than 1 percent of that value."

http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/2007/07_02_15.html

But then again, I'm not surprised you'd present a right-wing talking point.

It's our environment getting ruined first ......... to give you a steady supply of oil. Most of us think it's a sick concept.

Environmental Defence just released a new report on the Alberta Oil Sands, calling it the most destructive project on Earth. DeSmogblog gleaned some facts from it:

-Oil sands mining is licensed to use twice the amount of fresh water that the entire city of Calgary uses in a year.
-At least 90% of the fresh water used in the oil sands ends up in ends up in tailing ponds so toxic that propane cannons are used to keep ducks from landing.
-Processing the oil sands uses enough natural gas in a day to heat 3 million homes.
-The toxic tailing ponds are considered one of the largest human-made structures in the world. -The ponds span 50 square kilometers and can be seen from space.
-Producing a barrel of oil from the oil sands produces three times more greenhouse gas emissions than a barrel of conventional oil.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/tar-sands-most-destructive-project.php

What does our health-care have to do with this?

That's what I wanted to know.

- if not much earlier. The fact is that many things needed to be done in parallel.

By the way, the British Stern report came to the conclusion that the real cost of doing "nothing" is higher than the cost that would be made to make the changes needed.

And that is really all this is. The only difference is the name of the boogeyman.

The same basic, fundamental, undeniable set of facts that allows you to burn the gas in your car also says that when you do so you're heating up the atmosphere.

Global warming through green house gases is not up for debate. If it is, then you need to also question whether or not you are actually on something called "the internet".

Or just bury your head in some tar sands.

Nothing like declaring consensus to really bolster an argument.

The oilsands producers are over 60% foreign owned. Sure our government is spineless, but to say the U.S, China and Britain are blame free is poor reporting. If I had my way we shut the lines to the U.S and produce just what we need, which would reduce our emissions, since you know we are to blame for global warming. Keep our natural gas and oil to ourselves, but we can't because the foreign companies want the profits. I do believe the report also is based on a per capita rating, which compared to China, India, U.S and Britain we actually do not lead the way in actual volume.

Gotta have plenty of cheap fuel for those remote-control gadgets that heat up the SUV while you´re still on the other side of the frosty mall parking lot, and for those heating systems that make sure that the first drop of water that comes out of the shower is scalding hot.

There is a reason the Tarsands have bee avoided for so long.

... then energy demands would decrease over time. Why does not one ever discuss reproductive irresponsibility?

Cheap energy creates material abundance, which leads to population increase. If you consider "energy" very broadly where the sun is the main provider, stored in plants and distributed throughout the living world, and further stored in the earth as fossil fuels since life began, every increase in energy leads to an increase in population. In any case, they are both certainly problems now, as we destroy the planet by our means of harvesting energy to sustain too large a population...

People end up neurotic, diseased, and unable to love one another.

The idea that Sex only for Procreation is one of the worst crimes against the human organism.

The PTB are not concerned with this. They see the Global Climate heading for the tipping point, and that's going to clean out a large number of people for them.

population growth, :shrug:

We have quite a few unwanted teen pregnacies in the US, and guess what, the religious right will force them to term, regardless, entrapping a disproportionately uneducated individual to take care of the child, and reducing the ability to become mature enought to do it properly. This is great for the Church, because a poor upbringing yeilds more neurotic, damaged souls to feed upon.

You can't suppress the sex drive without causing other damage. It is so strng, it will try to escape in other, perhaps dangerous ways, such as Neurosis, Sadism, Fascism, etc. Even Cancer and disease, because the body is fighting with it's basic fundamental goal in life, and that's not procreation. Procreation is a side effect of the sex drive, not the reverse like the church portrays it.

The bottom line is that NAFTA obliterates the sovereign right of Canada's government to establish its own energy policy or to curtail the exportation of Canadian petroleum resources to the U.S.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6859

Under NAFTA rules, Canada cannot reduce its energy exports to the United States, according to Gordon Laxer, director of the Parkland Institute, a research network at the University of Alberta. “The U.S. is the most energy wasteful nation on Earth. And Canada is sacrificing its environment to feed America’s addiction to oil,” Laxer said in an interview.

“Respected energy analyst Matthew Simmons told me Canada should stop furthering the U.S. addiction to liquid fuels and make it illegal to use fresh water in tar sands,” said Nikiforuk.

There is ample evidence that environmental standards and stewardship in Canada and Mexico have plummeted since NAFTA went into effect in 1994, and “accelerated trade under the SPP means accelerated environmental abuse,” he said.



Which is it ......... help us in protesting this horrible rape of our resources and environment, or keep on benefiting from it and blame us for all of it??

http://www.tarsandswatch.org/

I'm another Canadian who is deeply ashamed of what my country is doing both to itself and the rest of the planet. We may have single-payer health care, but our corporations are no less viciously self-interested than those anywhere else in the world.

:thumbsup:

I have been saying this for a while, but now this report puts a fine point on it.

Along with Chernobyl, that area of Alberta, will not be habitable, without serious consequences, for many many decades to come.

The water is polluted, the air is polluted and the earth is polluted.

Again, how is mining this stuff good for us?

We humans are wretched creatures.