tagged w/ Tar sands
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P.H.A.T.W.A.
*profanity warning*
1. Montezuma’s Revenge in Reverse
2. California Droughting
3. Coke Crude
4. New School student beat down
5. London PoPo G20 murder
6. RNC 8 are not terrorists
7. Univ. of Colorado gets pwend
8. Obama’s war chest
9. P.H.A.T.W.A.
10. Skidmark Bob of Free Radio Santa Cruz
these articles and more at the link aboveP.H.A.T.W.A.
*profanity warning*
1. Montezuma’s Revenge in Reverse
2.... more
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Of course Shell would not carry out its agreement regarding ghg emission reductions, because that would cost them money and the tar sands are not about environmental progress but profit. What they and their stakeholders which not surprisingly include Chevron have done to the Boreal Forest of Alberta is an environmental crime.Of course Shell would not carry out its agreement regarding ghg emission reductions,... more
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For the past few months we have been hearing more and more about Canada’s tar sand in the media. While the world goes green, Canada has elected to go black into the tar.
But this is not good news. Like many people, I know little about the consequences of this tar sands exploitation. I would really like to know the bottom-line of this story.
This is why I was happy to learn this morning that on March 16 – 20, 2009 Andrew Nikiforuk’s book Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent (Co-published with the David Suzuki Foundation) will be offered for FREE via downloadable PDF .
Read the article to know how to get your FREE book.For the past few months we have been hearing more and more about Canada’s tar... more
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I cannot believe President Obama would not condemn the Alberta tar sands and continues to talk about carbon sequestration. Perhaps he should go visit there instead of Parliament.I cannot believe President Obama would not condemn the Alberta tar sands and continues... more
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During President Obama’s visit to Ottawa on February 19, Sierra Club Canada is presenting the Tar Sands Film Festival with films about the tar sands and the Mackenzie Gas Project.
Canada is trying to sell dirty tar sands oil as a solution to U.S. energy needs -- our message is "Don't Buy It!"During President Obama’s visit to Ottawa on February 19, Sierra Club Canada is... more
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On February 19, President Obama will make his first foreign visit - to Canada. His visit sets the stage for America's clean energy future. That's because America's number one source of foreign oil is Canada, thanks to tar sands oil.
Tar sands oil has been dubbed the dirtiest oil on the planet. It is the most harmful type of oil for the atmosphere, emitting high volumes of greenhouse gases.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said that he wants Canadian tar sands oil development on the agenda when he meets with President Obama. The current Canadian government wants to propose a U.S.-Canada climate pact that would "protect" tar sands greenhouse gas emissions from global warming regulation.
TAKE ACTION...
Make sure President Obama knows that the tar sands don't fit in a new energy economy
At this critical moment President Obama has an opportunity to act boldly for a new, clean future. Send President Obama and Prime Minister Harper a letter. Urge them to continue President Obama's path forward for a green energy revolution. Tell them not to step backwards by locking the U.S. into a future dependent on dirty tar sands oil.
Instructions:
Go to the bottom of the action page.
Read the sample letter and modify if you can. Personalized letter text and/or subject headers will increase the impact of your letter.
Clicking "Send My Message" will send your letter via email to President Obama and Prime Minister Harper.
Bob Williamson
Greenhouse Neutral Foundation
Visit the Foundations site and leave a message at
http://www.greenhouseneutral.net
Buy the Book - it will change your life and that of othersOn February 19, President Obama will make his first foreign visit - to Canada. His... more
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We need collective action on this. We need to make it a crusade now. Soon these and others will be drilling in the ice free Arctic. These global polluters have to be stopped.
The greed needs to be stopped.
The rape and pillage of our dieing planet needs to be stopped.
We need action.
Boycott until it is outlawed
Bob Williamson
Greenhouse Neutral Foundation
Author of www.strategicbookpublishing.com/ZEROGreenhouseEmissions.htmlWe need collective action on this. We need to make it a crusade now. Soon these and... more
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Alberta Canada, home of the tar sands has the ability to become a green province in 20 years. Green technologies are popping up everywhere in the province with its extremely high incomes. Such as energy sufficient housing developments that have already been made. Harnessing solar and wind power that are both extremely prevalent in the province will be key.
This means that the large amounts energy needed for the tar sands developments and their upgrade components could in the near future rely off green energy.Alberta Canada, home of the tar sands has the ability to become a green province in 20... more
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It is beyond my comprehension how any climate accord between Canada and the US could even think to exclude tar sands emissions from it. That however, is what Steven Harper is hoping Barack Obama will allow. It will be very telling what he does regarding the tar sands of Alberta, as the Bush administration supported it and its environmental devastation lock, stock, and barrel. Even though Bush now claims to be an "environmentalist' by trying to make us think he saved the oceans that are already saturated with CO2, in part from the huge amounts of CO2 spewed from the tar sands development in Alberta. Let's see what Obama does at this meeting with Harper. If he allows the tar sands emissions to be excluded from this accord it will then be clear to me that he is just a political player who does not really care about the Earth or in reigning in the Co2 that is exacerbating the climate crisis. I hope he stands up for what is right.
The world is watching.It is beyond my comprehension how any climate accord between Canada and the US could... more
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If you want to be scared, you don’t need to watch a horror movie or read the latest Stephen King bestseller. Real terror can be found by simply firing up Google Earth, the computer program that allows users to look at satellite pictures of any place on the planet. By mousing over and zooming in, you can see what Alberta’s tar sands look like from space....If you want to be scared, you don’t need to watch a horror movie or read the... more
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The report covers the various ways tar sands development affects bird populations.
Tar Sands development causes more harm than good!The report covers the various ways tar sands development affects bird populations.... more
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A coalition of North American environmental groups says the development of Canada-s oil sands region threatens to kill as many as 166 million birds over the next five decades and is calling for a moratorium on new projects in the region.
The coalition-s groups, which include the Natural Resources Defence Council, the Boreal Songbirds Initiative and the Pembina Institute, say petroleum-extraction projects in the oil-rich region of northern Alberta are a threat to migratory birds and the boreal forest they rely on.
Their study concluded that development of the oil sands, would be fatal for 6 million to 166 million birds because of habitat loss, shrinking wetlands, accumulation of toxins and other causes.
The solution, the groups say, is to halt new projects in the oil sands and to clean up existing facilities. They are also calling for strengthened regulations to protect Canada-s vast boreal, or northern, forest and for Alberta, whose government has backed oil sands developments, to prove the resource can be exploited without serious environmental harm.
People need to take a hard look at whether this can be mitigated or if tar sands development is just incompatible with conservation of bird habitat said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defence Council.
The report estimates about half of North America-s migratory birds nest in the boreal forest and between 22 million and 170 million birds breed in areas that could be subject to oil sands development.
The oil sands contain the biggest oil reserves outside the Middle East but the crude is expensive and difficult to extract. Mining projects strip large areas of land to access the oil-laden soils below the surface.
While the report has not yet been made public, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, which represents the country-s big oil firms, said the oil sands industry complies with environmental regulations and dismissed calls for a moratorium.
We need a balanced conversation, supported like a stool with three legs, environment, economy and energy, David Collyer, the association-s president, said in a statement. Calls for a moratorium that consider only one leg of the stool, in a vacuum, are not constructive.
Developments in the region have been criticized for pumping large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, using too much water and being harmful to wildlife.
Indeed, the death of about 500 ducks earlier this year after they landed on a toxic tailings pond operated by Syncrude Canada Ltd, the biggest oil sands producer, brought international attention to the region.
The environmental groups' forecast is based on a big expansion of oil production from the region. The oil sands currently produce more than 1 million barrels a day, but the report is based on an eventual output of 5 million barrels a day, in line with industry forecasts of production in two decades or more.A coalition of North American environmental groups says the development of Canada-s... more
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Just like filtered cigarettes tried to make people believe it was safe to smoke, so goes the lie of carbon capture and sequestration for TAR sands. In my view, another scheme cooked up by the industry to make people think they could miraculously clean the toxic dirty elements out of their thick bitumen goo to keep the profits rolling in. There is no such thing as clean coal, and there is definitely no such thing as clean TAR sands.
From the article:
Canada-s government saw only limited opportunities to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the oil sands using carbon capture and storage technology, according to briefing notes obtained by a Canadian media.
The notes, prepared by a carbon capture task force, were used by Canadian federal and provincial politicians and were obtained by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp, which said it requested them under freedom of information legislation.
Carbon capture and storage would see carbon-dioxide removed from the emissions of oil sands upgraders that turn tar-like bitumen into refinery-ready synthetic crude. The captured CO2 would be put into underground reservoirs for permanent storage instead of being pumped into the atmosphere.
The government of Alberta and the federal government are touting carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a way clean up emissions from huge energy projects in the northern Alberta oil sands region, which contains some 173 billion barrels of tar-like bitumen.
Earlier this year Alberta set aside C$2 billion (to fund CCS projects from big emitters like oil sands upgraders and power plants
But the briefing notes say the technology offers only limited solutions to greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands projects.
Only a small percentage of emitted CO2 is capturable since most emissions aren-t pure enough, said a copy of the note that was posted on the CBC website. Only limited near-term opportunities exist in the oil sands and they largely relate to the upgrader facilities.Just like filtered cigarettes tried to make people believe it was safe to smoke, so... more
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Sometimes I feel like I'm living in Russia or Nigeria, I swear to god." Andrew Nikiforuk is on stage at the Capilano Performing Arts Theatre, reflecting on life in Alberta as an outspoken critic of the tar sands. Yet one of the most decorated magazine writers in the country spared little as he carved up the captains of industry and politicians behind Alberta's massive oil boom, in front of about 200 people on Oct. 26.
Drawing on his new book, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of the Continent, Nikiforuk forcefully outlined a very ugly business. He described the tar sands development as the largest capital project in the world, at $200 billion since 1996 when the associated pipelines and refineries are rolled in.
Then he set out the stakes. The development of the world's dirtiest oil has made Canada the biggest supplier of the United States' massive energy needs for the last seven years. "While we were having our donuts at Tim Hortons, we were becoming what Stephen Harper calls an 'emerging energy superpower.' "
Nikiforuk also set out the consequences. Not just the environmental ones -- we'll get to those. The political ones. "We are now a petro-state," Nikiforuk declared, with a wildly fluctuating petro dollar, noting that in Nigeria, Venezuela and Russia the consequences are not too subtle. "In Alberta, it's a little more subtle."
The implications of all that oil lucre sloshing loosely about in politics and society are rather profound, Nikiforuk argued, noting that the only real democracies in the Middle East are the countries without any oil. In British Columbia, he says, our complicity is being bought with the tar sands' dirty money. Toxic sour-gas wells that feed the tar sands' own enormous energy demands are putting $2 billion a year in the B.C. government's coffers. The feds are getting $5 billion to $6 billion a year in tar sands-related corporate tax revenue, Nikiforuk estimates. "They've used it to lower your taxes."
He quoted Thomas Friedman's twist on preacher Jonathan Mayhew's famous 1750 dictum: "There is no representation without taxation." In other words, if oil companies are the ones improving governments' accounts, then governments will do the oil companies' bidding, not ours.
snip
A 2008 industry-funded study suggested that the "steam-assisted gravity drainage" projects (as opposed to the open-pit mines) could extirpate caribou, bear, moose and fish from between one and three million acres. Water in the Athabaska region is in decline by 30 percent since the 1960s, Nikiforuk said. The process of extracting oil from the sand requires vast quantities of water, and produces enormous volumes of toxic waste. Nikiforuk said a dozen tailings ponds cover 50 square kilometers, held back by sand dams that rival the Three Gorges dam in size. "They're all leaking."
Nikiforuk asserts that efforts to monitor the effect on the Athabaska watershed, part of the third-largest river system in the world, is pathetic. In 2004, Nikiforuk said, federal scientists declared that the monitoring program "was designed to find nothing."
"This is Third World," Nikiforuk observes. "It's really disturbing that this would happen in a country like Canada."
http://thetyee.ca/Books/2008/11/06/BlackTar/
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It boils down to this: Canada is now America's drug dealer and making a good profit from it ( the government that is) at the expense of our climate balance, human health, and biodiversity. There is no more stark an example of human greed and political audacity than this. As this speaker asks: how could this happen in a country like Canada? So the next question then is: what will the Obama policy be on tar sands? And if it is continued, how does that make any plan to bring "green jobs" here sustainable with this kind of environmental devastation continuing to be allowed by this government with them profiting from it? This must stop. This country needs an intervention!Sometimes I feel like I'm living in Russia or Nigeria, I swear to god."... more
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Environment and cutting green house gas emissions important issues for 4 of 5 major parties.
Dr. Mark S. Winfield is a former Program and Policy Director with the Pembina Institute and founding committee member of the Ontario Smart Growth Network. He is currently an Assistant Professor at York University in the Faculty of Environmental Studies. His academic research is focused in the areas of climate change policy and sustainable energy.Environment and cutting green house gas emissions important issues for 4 of 5 major... more
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A report issued by the nonprofit organization Environmental Defense has declared petroleum extraction projects in Canada's oil sands to be "the most destructive project on Earth."
"When even former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed, who started the Tar Sands ball rolling, is calling for change, you know this is a major disaster," said Aaron Freeman, the group's policy director.
The report accuses the Canadian government of allowing the Tar Sands Project to emit levels of greenhouse gases that far outstrip any reductions made in other areas.
"Ottawa is letting the Tar Sands hold Canadians hostage on global warming," said Program Manager Matt Price. "The federal government is not using laws already on the books to require companies to reduce emissions and clean up their toxic mess."
The group also says that the project has contaminated rivers and groundwater with toxic chemicals, caused an increase in acid rain and created "health sacrifice zones" in the surrounding region.
On the same day as the report's publication, Canadian First Nations groups also attacked the Tar Sands Project for its contamination of community water supplies.
"Elders tell us water is the boss," said Councillor Willis Flett, of Mikisew Cree First Nation, "and without clean water we wouldn't exist. Now the boss is in trouble and needs our help."
"Nobody lives closer to the land and water than we do, and we've seen bad changes over the past dozen years," said Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. "As goes the water so go we, and we are seeing strange diseases now."
In 2007, Canada's national health agency launched a complaint against the Fort Chipewyan town doctor after he publicly complained about rates of abnormal diseases in the town.
"This is Canada's problem," Freeman said of the Tar Sands Project. "Our federal elected leaders need to clean it up or shut it down."
A report issued by the nonprofit organization Environmental Defense has declared... more
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The Anglo-Dutch energy giant Shell misled the public about the green credentials of a vastly polluting oil project in Canada, in an attempt to assure consumers of its good environmental record, a media watchdog will rule today.
In an embarrassing rejection of Shell's "greenwash", the Advertising Standards Authority said the company should not have used the word "sustainable" for its controversial tar sands project and a second scheme to build North America's biggest oil refinery. Both projects would lead to the emission of more greenhouse gases, the ASA said, ruling the advert had breached rules on substantiation, truthfulness and environmental claims.
Carried by the Financial Times on 1 February to accompany Shell's financial results, the company claimed: "We invest today's profits in tomorrow's solutions."
The advert continued: "A growing world needs more energy, but at the same time we need to find new ways of managing carbon emissions to limit climate change. Continued investment in technology is one of the key ways we are able to address this challenge, and continue to secure a profitable and sustainable future."
Shell explained it was harnessing its technical expertise "to unlock the potential of the vast Canadian oil sands deposits".
The WWF (formerly the Worldwide Fund for Nature) complained that extracting low-grade bitumen from sand was highly inefficient and destroyed huge tracts of virgin forest. In its defence, Shell maintained that new technology was reducing pollution from the Athabasca Oil Sands Project in Alberta in which it owns a 60 per cent stake.
Shell quoted a critical WWF report as rating its Muskeg River Mine one of the least damaging coal-tar sands projects because it sought to limit emissions of nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide and organic compounds.
Making its ruling, the ASA quoted Canada's independent National Energy Board that oil sand developments had considerable social and economic impacts on water conservation, greenhouse gas emissions, land disturbance and waste management.
David Norman, the WWF's director of campaigns, said: "The ASA's decision to uphold WWF's complaint sends a strong signal to business and industry that greenwash is unacceptable."
The Anglo-Dutch energy giant Shell misled the public about the green credentials of a... more
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The Guardian: What happens when the world's biggest oil companies target a northern wilderness?The Guardian: What happens when the world's biggest oil companies target a... more
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Using tongue-in-cheek humor, Greenpeace draws attention to the dirty Alberta oil industry which is trying to win a PR war with millions in spending.
Using tongue-in-cheek humor, Greenpeace draws attention to the dirty Alberta oil... more
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Imagine this: Allowing a Canadian foreign company eminent domain to build a pipeline through Illinois farmland to pipe dirty sludgy tar sands oil to the West coast to be sold to China to continue the cycle of perpetuating the very climate change we are supposed to be mitigating. I surely hope the farmers fighting this win. And of course, EXXON is right in the middle of it. I think it is despicable.Imagine this: Allowing a Canadian foreign company eminent domain to build a pipeline... more
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