You conveniently gloss over that what we are doing right now is messing with mother nature. But you're quite set that what we do is meaningless, so there's little point in carrying this any farther.
Oil Sand Myths
- Thread starter Redmonton_Rebel
- Start date
You conveniently gloss over that what we are doing right now is messing with mother nature. But you're quite set that what we do is meaningless, so there's little point in carrying this any farther.
No prob. tonne,I'm not a graph man,I prefer to see things with my own eyes and not believe the hype on the net about melting ice caps and drowning polar bears.
Myself i believe the evidence of GW is credible -I do believe that Govts will do little to mitigate this-Complete and utter faith that they will make small changes which are useless.
I think most companies are doing their due diligence themselves now,mostly exceeding govt. expectations and goals.Last thing they want is the government involved so enviro stuff is done in house.
That will still not address the problems of increasing levels of GG each and every year forwards-
I disagree.
Oil sands production is already at 1.3 million barrels a day and is slated to dramatically increase over the coming decades to over 5 million barrels a day. Considering that producing 1 barrel of sythetic crude produces about 3-4 times the CO2 as conventional oil and you start to see the true impact on climate change alone. Oil sands are already the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada before we even ramp up production, how are we going to participate in a global climate change mitigation program if we have the oil sands elephant on our back.
I agree about the use of coal being a serious issue and it needs to be phased out in conjunction with oil sands and in my posts on other threads I've already detailed the water use issue and creation of huge toxic waste dumps on the surface in the Athabaska region so the oil sands are unsustainable in multi dimensions.
It's amazing how some people here are trying to soft peddle such a serious issue, I'm starting to see this must be a Conservative affiliated forum, I guess the color scheme should have alerted me.
Has the oil sands improved on their use of water, lowering GG and other environmental issues?
Where have you been living for the last couple of decades, in Steven Harpers head.
Climate change is real and so is massive pollution in the Athabaska region. The Rockies glaciers that feed much of the year-round flow of rivers in the west are also in rapid retreat, what are we going to replace them with in the future. Some climatologists are predicting a desert stretching from Mexico to central Alberta in the coming decades and many cities in the western North America being abandoned due to lack of water resources.
In 2009 we had one of the worst droughts on record here with no rainfall for months. When the winds blew strongly as they tend to do more now in the summer(something else the old-timer mentioned) it almost felt like something out of films about Arabia with dense dust clouds covering the sky. What happens if the Athabaska dries out and a lot of that dust is toxic, it's not just Alberta that is at risk.
The issues just go on and on, people are living in a dream world if they think what our government is doing on oil sands development and climate change in general is sane. We're not winning Fossil Awards from the rest of the world for our sound grasp of reality at climate change conferences.
Who knows, security is tight up there.
They claim they've increased efficiencies, but the overall process has to use massive amounts of water, and produce massive amounts of toxic waste and CO2, there's no way around it. To make a pollution free oil sands project would cost so much it wouldn't ever be practical.
Sorry but the tailings ponds can now be reclaimed in max 5 years,try and keep up with the new technology bud.
Guess you havent heard about the new TRO programs the last few years?
They are required to file a number of reports - the who knows is BS.You know it,I know it and anyone familiar with the topic knows it.
PS - And cut the insults
Water use?Maybe in sagd ops,not in conventional oilsands mining methods,its shovel and truck mining,no water needed.As the majority of oilsands production is strip mining your water argument is moot.
Pine and spruce beetles have been around for thousands of years, it's in recent years their numbers have exploded due to lack of winter cold enough to cull them. Two years ago people in edmonton woke up to dense smoke covering the city that came from much of central BC on fire, we were advised to stay indoors for 3 or 4 days. In the last decade or so it's been possible to see the high smoke cover from huge forest fires in Siberia something that's new.
The isotherms are migrating poleward as research shows and our plant and animal species reflect this change.
I know,I worked on the first pine beetle control program in Canada,most of what you have posted so far has absolutely no merit.
Pine beetles exploded because of not cutting mature forest and not letting mother nature and fires balance things out.
Mining is the first step, the heavy water and power use is in creating the synthetic crude. It's also where most of the waste comes from. All the mercury, arsenic, lead, heavy metals and volatiles that were safely trapped in the matrix of tar are now concentrated and exposed to weathering at the surface.
That particular species of pine beetle came from China - suspected source- wooden pallets.
Well,you lost me there,did you read that on the net somewhere or is this from personal experience?
Of course it does, the pine beetle in BC and now Alberta and the Spruce beetles killing millions of trees in Alaska are allowed to over-populate because the lack of winters cold enough to cause high enough levels of die-back. Something you should know if you actually worked in the field.