The true cost of oil - Alberta Tar Sands

LadyJazzer wrote: They still labor under the delusion that domestic oil goes to domestic markets... It doesn't. It goes to the highest bidder, and if that doesn't happen to be U.S. companies, then it goes elsewhere. In the meantime, they create 4-6,000 TEMPORARY jobs, and then they go away...and they leave behind damaged lands, water resources that will be damaged when the next disaster occurs...(not "if", but "WHEN"...), and all of the people whose lands were taken for corporate greed by eminent domain seizures....

Another "talking point" shattered...

Science Chic wrote:

CritiKalbILL wrote:

plaidvillain wrote: But Bill, the oil won't come to our country, only through our country (okay, and on our country once there's a spill). The purported economic advantages of this pipeline just aren't there. It won't create any real advantages for our nation, but guaranteed to come with negative environmental impacts.

Big risk, no reward.

As a conservative I respect, I wonder how you reconcile the theft of private lands necessary to bring this project to fruition? It will be necessary to take private property from citizens through eminent domain. Do you think the needs of the many justify this? I don't know about you, but I don't want anyone touching my land, or yours, or anyones.

As for the risk, I don't know of any major oil spills on land that have caused significant impact on the environment (maybe you know of some) .There are already hundreds of large pipelines across this country and can't remember hearing about any disasters. And as for the "stealing" of land, not sure what land will be stolen...maybe passed through in which case the owner should be compensated.

I think there would be 1000 times more environmental risk shipping to China, but that's just my guess.

Three things:
If you watch the video, the majority of the environmental pollution isn't coming from any pipelines - it's from what's done to the land itself. Look at the pictures of what the land should look like, then what one of the mining sites looks like. The size of each site is, according to the speaker, the size of a small metropolitan city. There are currently ten such sites, with 40-50 more applying for approval. The speaker was shown around a village not far from one of these sites, and his local guide told him not to eat anything that came from the river because it was toxic (cancer rates in areas near mining sites are higher than average). The waste water from these sites are dumped into unlined ponds which then leak into the surrounding water table. Imagine that there are probably thousands of people who need to be relocated - is it worth it?

The amount of water required to mine these sites is staggering. Sources of potable water are finite and it's been projected that the battle over fresh water will become the war of the future as sources become more scarce and/or over-tapped. Now, if you're sitting in your home, with a choice between heat and water for survival, which are you going to choose? Do we really need to be wasting water on a resource that we can get in other ways that don't require water?

Finally, a point to think about, and research yourself. The leading climate scientist, the one who made global warming a well-known problem thanks to his 1988 Congressional testimony, Dr. James Hansen, started his career studying the climates of Mars and Venus. Both planets had at some points in their histories atmospheric conditions not all that dissimilar from earth. But Mars lost its atmosphere and became cold and dry, while Venus underwent a runaway greenhouse effect. Dr. Hansen has claimed, though I have yet to see any other scientist publicly back this up, that what happened to Venus has a possibility of occurring on earth. He has also publicly stated that should we fully tap into the Alberta tar sands for fossil fuel, that there will be no turning back from catastrophic climate change. I haven't been able to find any estimates of the total amount of carbon available that if we burned every last molecule of fossil fuel (which I myself don't believe we could do even if we wanted to) what ppm of CO2 we'd end up with, and whether, with the increased energy output of the sun now as compared to when CO2 and other greenhouse gases were exponentially higher millions to billions of years ago than they are now (and kept us from turning into Mars or Titan), that it could mean that we risk runaway greenhouse gas effect; but, considering his experience studying the climates of Mars and Venus, and his accurate forecasting of the warming we've seen to date, I took his warnings seriously enough to start researching global warming in much greater depth (and still am in that journey), and to start changing my lifestyle to minimize my carbon footprint. I'm not saying that what Dr. Hansen has claimed is absolutely a given (nor do I even wish to hazard a percentage likelihood), but it is worth serious consideration. Aside from that extreme scenario, and extremely low possibility of occurring, the other direct harmful effects of those tar sands being fully developed are bad enough to warrant public outcry against them, and continued refusal of the U.S. to facilitate it in any way, shape, or form.

I honestly believe that international pressure on Canada will keep them from fully developing the tar sands. Hell, one of the higher ups in the Saudi government even recently publicly stated that global warming was a serious issue that needed to be addressed, so while it's baby steps in terms of what's actually being done to mitigate the problem, it's steps in the right direction nonetheless.

In a choice between economy and survival, I go with the choices that increase my childrens' chances of survival. And yes, I do believe that survival is on the table - not extinction, but certainly a major overhaul of our population size and our way of life is already in the works. The economy is gonna undergo a drastic overhaul regardless, but if we try to address global warming, maybe it won't be as bad as it will otherwise.