All the bitumen in Alberta is but a drop when compared to coal. Coal is the real elephant in the climate changing room. The Canadian climatologist Andrew Weaver at UVic recently estimated the impact of Canada's oil sands on climate change (if it were totally and suddenly combusted) and it amounts to a few tenths of a degree. Whatever his definition for commercially viable was, those oil sands would only add 0.03°C. That compares to a whopping 15 degrees from coal.
Don't get me wrong, there's huge environmental costs involved with oil sands extraction, but I think the water issues are far more worrisome than the few hundredths of a degree impact the oil sands will have on the global climate. I don't for one second think it's a coincidence that there are so many changes being announced by this government with respect to water quality and healthy aquatic ecosystems.
What you are doing is akin to propagating an oil sand myth! You can't blame unavoidable climate change on the oil sands! :lol:
You come so close to
appearing like you give a damn.
The real issue isn't how much of the overall radiative forcing the carbon dioxide released from oil sands development will be responsible for, it's how far the continued emissions of so much CO2 will push the global system into a higher state of balance and how significant climate change will be.
This isn't a joking matter, as things stand now a significant fraction of the species now present on Earth are threatened with extinction as their prefered habitat moves polewards faster than they can migrate or simply disappears. This includes, coral reefs which are associated with about 25% of life in the ocean, tropical and temperate alpine biotas, polar ecosystems and more.
The human cost is significant and will continue to rise over the coming decade and will include:
- Loss of coastal regions inhabited by hundreds of millions of people, many of them very poor.
- Increase in the range of disease causing insects and other vectors.
- Loss of water resources.
- Increases in extreme weather events that are already at serious levels.
- Decrease in food production, rice one of the staple crops for several billion people is already decreasing in productivity.
By ignoring the clear warnings being presented by the peer-reviewed science the government of Steven Harper is indicating that Canada will not participate in a global effort to minimize these critical changes that will have a negative impact on billions of lives. By going ahead with large scale development of the oil sands there's no way that Canada will meet any meaningful targets at reducing carbon dioxide emissions, in fact as oil sands development accelerates Canada will be responsible for billions of tons more of CO2 in the atmosphere . By claiming that new emission from the oil sands development will only result in a small part of the total radiative forcing created over almost two centuries we give other large emitters an out. They can also claim they only present a small part of the problem and nothing effective will be done. Already dramatic changes in the Earth's energy balance and climate will increase.
Simply put, Steven Harper is asking Canadians who already carry a significant responsibility per capita for the human generated greenhouse gases already in the carbon cycle to ignore their responsibility to both themselves and the wider global community. It's the way of greed and selfishness over generosity and compassion.
Under Steven Harper Canada has already done what it could to sabotage any effective agreements limiting human generated CO2 emissions at international conferences on the issue and has subverted our democratic system here to prevent any close examination of the issue or any threat to continued Conservative control of our federal government. So at the same time oil sands development will play a crucial role in driving the already historic levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide higher, in the end we will almost certainly be left with a political system that is democratic in name only.
Here's a story on how one of the early oil sands development plans would have used nuclear weapons.
'Why not nuke Alberta?' | Macleans.ca - Canada - Features
