Discover Canada's devastating oil sands

Discover Canada's devastating oil sands

www.wwf.org.uk

The oil beneath Alberta's ancient forests was once considered too expensive and difficult to extract. But in their desperation for fuel, oil giants have resorted to these 'unconventional' oil supplies, the production of which generates three times the level of greenhouse gas as conventional oil. WWF is calling for a freeze on further oil sands developments.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Canada is Americas biggest supplier of Oil - look what Canada is doing to her native lands to satisfy Americas addiction to oil. People rave on about all the oil available - I dont think so. Iran and Iraq make a lot more sense after seeing this.



www.wwf.org.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

llalalala Oil me this oil me that...

Oh look a shiny new oil field in New Mexico.. Interesting that.

Its about us not using our oil and raping everyone else of theirs, when the end comes and nobody got theirs we will have ours..

its like civilization. you win wit most resources, you lose cause your country sucks at collecting them..

[edit on 7/31/2008 by ThichHeaded]

it is claimed that back in the 50s , you would have to spend (use) one liter of oil in order to extract 20 . Now as the reserves are harder to reach, for every 1 liter of oil spent during extraction you can get out about 5 ! The oil sands would give 3 liters of oil for every one liter spent in the process. This thing will not stop untill it costs one liter of petrol to extract another liter of petrol. So, all the oil that is in our reach will end up as green house .And it is not sure we reached a half of our worldwide reserves..

Without raising the spectre of whether global warming is true or not - and assuming that it is - then we are doomed.

As much as I hate global warming denialists - for once - I hope they are right.

WWF are loony
they should stick to confiscating American National parks as liens on non payments for their unpayable debts

Canada HAS more green area more lakes and parks and set aside virgin
Territories
Than most countries have cities
So They ought to start hiring new people over there at the WWF
people that know what the hell they are talking about
why dont they go see what Brazil is doing with the Amazon these days
the bloody kooks they are hiring today make me think it can only be nepotism
that gets these idiots these jobs
it is enough to drive me crackers





[edit on 31-7-2008 by solo1]

I have to admit I hadn't researched the extraction processes behind the Canadian bitumin, so though I knew it required mining, I didn't realize it required surface mining (I guess I should have figured that though). Unlike coal mining, I'm not sure you can even reclaim these areas! It's terrible...just terrible. Hopefully they will put a moritorium on this at least until some one can figure out some cleaner best practices and how to reclaim the areas.

Global Warming is the scam of the millennium
they want to tax your breathing every exhale costs you a dime
get use to paying tax to the UN
the NWO is upon us

The Canadian Government designated our Largest oil fields as National Parks in order to prevent drilling.

If we were allowed to drill for oil, we wouldn't have to strip-mine the landscape trying to extract tar from oil.

Example; there is oil beneath the Alberta oil sands. But our Government forbids drilling in order to extract it! A drilling platform takes up very little space and is the best way to extract the petroleum.

Canada could supply the world for 200 years - but we are Hindered by UN policies that our government has decided to enforce. The result if environmentally destructive loopholes and ridiculous regulations that interfere with our amazing potential to extract vast sums of oil.

This is done via the lobbying of politican and campaign contributions - as well as a misguided form of environmentalism that puts the common man at a disadvantage whilst not adressing the real problems ( GM crops, chemical dumoing/improper storage, pollution of the watertable, etc)

Government always focuses on the problems that have profitable solutions such as the manufactured C02 issue, and "curtailing our addiction to oil" - whilst refusing to offer an real solutions, but instead co-opt it as another excuse to TAX YOU, and control you.

A good analogue would be that of a drug dealer who gets his customers hooked and then triples the price. He then charges them a 25 percent "recovery fee" to help them recover from their addiction by forcing them to either buy less or quit - when in actuality the will just rob and steal even more in order to get their fix....

...In the case of petroleum "users", most wouldn't have problem chopping town the nearest forest in order to heat their family's home during the Canadian winter, nor would the bother using dirty coal or any other method to prevent freezing because heating oil and natural gas is too expensive.

This would have a severely detrimental effect on the environment, and stirct penalties would be imposed. but...

...This would force men chopping down trees to fight whoever tries to stop or arrest them, as their family is at home in the cold without wood to cook their food or heat their house - then we will see how thin the veil of civilization truly is.

reply to post by solo1


well, the petrol is made up of carbon burried from the ancient times. And now we take it from under the ground and put it back in the air. Forests do not provide the help as ppl think: when a tree dies the CO2 goes back to the air (it takes longer) , like a cycle - unless the tree ends up burried and the CO2 cannot escape . So with other words - we brake the cycle of carbon by cutting the trees (so the CO2 will stay in the air) and we put extra CO2 in the air from under the ground.

The total mass of the athmosphere is 5.1480×10^18 kg . How much CO2 can we output without making a major change?



lol, got an idea now on how to clean the planet from CO2 !!! grow trees, then burry them under the ground in special mines. Then on the ground - just grow more trees ! they should find the plant that is fixing the largest ammount of CO2

[edit on 31-7-2008 by sty]

reply to post by sty


That is ridiculous.

Do you know how silly your idea is? Any idea on the cost?

I hope you don't think Al Gore is telling the truth. The earth is cooling, the warming period has ended.

Every planet in our solar system has experienced a warming period lately.

I highly doubt what happens on earth can influence The sun and every other planet.

C02 levels rise AFTER a temperature increase -which is primarily influenced by Solar Activity and geo-thermal activity. Human influence in miniscule, we just think we're all powerful.

Point in fact; if we could actually cause the earth's temperature to increase and decrease as it has over the past seventy years - we would then be doing something Michio Kaku attributes to a Type 1 civilization.
It is actually just a combination of Ego and Fear Mongering.
Kaku also states that if mankind detonated every nuclear weapon we had and burned all our currently accessible oil at once we could only get the temperature to increase by a maximum of 5 degrees Celsius, but more likely 2 or 3.

Thi s would be followed by a drastic cooling of our atmosphere, thus negating the temperature increase.
-bodies in space are a part of a long running vaccuum fluctuation the is continually balancing itself.

This man made event would release about half of the energy as the Krakatoa eruption Event.






[edit on 31-7-2008 by TruthTellist]

I saw a documentary on the Canadian Oil Sands and the huge areas of land that have to be excavated in order to actually access the reserves.

Something like 1% so far of all of the land and Forrest destroyed due to Oil Sand mining has been partially restored. And apparently that took 30 years for it to happen.

This is going to leave a lasting impact on Canada's environment.


I doubt some of these areas can even be rehabilitated.

The extraction process also requires HUGE tailing ponds of water to produce synthetic oil.

currently 349 million cubic metres per year, twice the amount of water used by the city of Calgary

www.greenpeace.org...

This water is sourced from nearby rivers, and after usage is just dumped back into huge lagoons of toxic tar and chemicals.


Recycling this water would prove almost impossible.

It's having a steady impact on Canada's rivers:

People who live near tar sands projects in Northern Alberta have been noticing the water levels in lakes and rivers decreasing as oil production has accelerated.

[edit on 31/7/08 by The Godfather of Conspira]

To ALL Canadians on this site, Warn your Government, the US will invade you soon and pretend to overthrow your Government leaders , then milk your oilfields ... BEWARE

Originally posted by DataWraith
To ALL Canadians on this site, Warn your Government, the US will invade you soon and pretend to overthrow your Government leaders , then milk your oilfields ... BEWARE

Well, I hope to gawd they go ahead and take your refineries too then...because U.S. refineries can't crack bitumin (aka oil sands, aka heavy oils, aka tar sands). Pretty much this stuff is being refined in Canada...not the U.S.

i worked as a welder on a few oil platforms in the north sea for 2 and half years..they found and then capped dozens of oil wells because they didn't have enough machinery \ oil rigs to pump it out....they just kept on looking \ finding fresh pockets of oil the closed them and moved on to another site...

Originally posted by Valhall

Originally posted by DataWraith
To ALL Canadians on this site, Warn your Government, the US will invade you soon and pretend to overthrow your Government leaders , then milk your oilfields ... BEWARE

Well, I hope to gawd they go ahead and take your refineries too then...because U.S. refineries can't crack bitumin (aka oil sands, aka heavy oils, aka tar sands). Pretty much this stuff is being refined in Canada...not the U.S.

Yep I'm waiting for them to come over here and try to take the oil from the north sea, you just watch the UK government bend over and let them take it.

For anyone who thinks oilsands mining/drilling is going to ruin the Canadian or global environment, you're out of your mind. Do you have any idea how big Canada is? The oil sands take up such a tiny area that it's ludacris to think the trees that will be cut down will effect anything.




Further, Canada is mostly wild and undeveloped. Hardly anyone lives here. Think of how much land there is that lies unused in the US even with 300,000,000 people. Well Canada has 1/10 that many and is larger.

Ontario just designated a huge area of the Boreal Forest as a reserve which can never be developed. And What's more, Canadian cities have huge amounts of greenspace. Toronto itself is 50% greenspace. So with all due respect, you have no idea what you're talking about. Developing the oil sands isn't going to hurt anything.

reply to post by sc2099


Well, Toronto is 50% greenspace, mostly by design, but you're right. Canada has more protected nature than pretty much any other nation. What can we say, we love nature.

Luckily for us, most logging companies now follow the rule of replacing what you cut.

The oil field isn't going to have a big impact on the Canadian eco-system, as the above poster mentioned, Canada is freaking huge. Bigger than the states, with less people.

I can literally drive northwest of here for a couple hours, and bang, untouched land. Never been used before. Of course, chances are it's protected and you aren't allowed to develop on it, but you can still go camping at least.

You can quite literally spend the rest of your life in Canada's wilderness without ever seeing evidence of other humans again.

[edit on 31-7-2008 by johnsky]

Originally posted by The Godfather of Conspira

People who live near tar sands projects in Northern Alberta have been noticing the water levels in lakes and rivers decreasing as oil production has accelerated.

Wow, that's gotta be, like, maybe 100,000 people tops!

There's a little song I like to sing to myself when I feel blue and it always picks me up... I'll share it with everybody.
"pump, pump, pump the crude
wherever it may lay.
Marrily, marrily, marrily,
Al Gore's a horse's ass."

It doesn't rhyme, but it doesn't have to.

Peak oil is a fraud, and you gotta break some eggs to make an ommelette. Besides, any country that still kills baby seals with pick axes and 2X4s with nails in them (hopefully not while giving a Jim Duggan "Hooooo!!!!!" call while swinging) and calls it part of their heritage really shouldn't see any problems with recovery of oil, regardless of the reclamation work that will follow its recovery.

reply to post by audas


Hey! We're not the ones putting a gun to Canada's head to force them to dig the oil out. They are the ones acting like true capitalists wanting to make a buck.