| Tar Nation Prime Minister Harper is well on his way to transforming Canada into a tar nation; into the world’s largest (by a factor of at least a thousand) miner of tar-coated sand, soil and rock from which oil is extracted at a tremendous cost to the environment. The most damaging and lethal by-product of mining and processing tar to make easily combustible materials are greenhouse gasses (GHG) by the megaton. These gases, which come from the burning of fossil fuels*, have the potential of extinguishing all life on earth, killing even the deepest ground-dwelling bacteria. In the mining of tar to make gasoline for instance, large quantities of fossil fuels are burnt to make fossil fuels. Fossil fuels, including natural gas, is burnt to heat tons of fresh water daily (three barrels of fresh water for every barrel of oil) which is then used to wash the tar from the sand and rocks. The water becomes contaminated and may be undrinkable for perhaps a thousand years. The toxic water is stored in ponds which have grown to the size of lakes that have poisoned thousands of unsuspecting migrating birds and threaten to contaminate the ground water and the springs which feed natural lakes and rivers for thousands of square miles. More fossil fuels are burnt to transform the "washed" tar into an easily combustible product. From one quarter to one half (depending on the method of extraction) of the equivalent of a barrel of oil must be burnt to make a barrel of oil from the Athabaska tar sands, wiping out much of the reduction in the generation of greenhouse gases from more efficient internal combustion engines. If the reckless exploitation of the tar sands continues at the current pace, it is only a matter of time, perhaps only a few years, before the tipping point, a point of no return is reached where the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere causes a runaway increase in global temperatures which won’t stop climbing until the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere approaches that of Venus, 460 degrees Celsius. Think of a baking oven with a door (greenhouse gases) that can’t be opened and a heating element which cannot be turned off (the sun). The oven will eventually melt and whatever was baking inside will have been burnt to a crisp. This is what will happen to the earth if the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reaches that tipping point. As I write this, our Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, John Baird, is on his way to China to talk tar** (among other things, I assume). This can't be good for the future of the planet. --------- * Burning fossil fuels also releases sulphur dioxide (SO2) into the atmosphere. SO2 is what acid rain is made off. Canada solved its acid rain problems a few years back by mandating that "scrubbers" be installed on smokestacks at smelters and such. Acid rain is making a comeback due to the large amount of SO2 generated during the mining and processing of tar to make oil. Acid rain is again killing lakes in northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Ontario and Québec are next, as the corrosive rain slowly but inexorably moves west. ** "China, which already supplies cheap labour to the tar sands, has proposed to Ottawa a major energy deal that would effectively power China's economy with crude from the tar sands via supertankers. To this end PetroChina, one of the world's largest oil companies, purchased a $1.9 billion lease in the tar sand in August 2009." Andrew Nikiforuk In 2011 PetroChina invested another 2.1 billion in the tar sands buying Calgary based OPTI Canada. Supertankers bound for China would fill up with crude at the deep-sea port of Kitimat, British Columbia. The tar/crude would get to Kitimat via a proposed seven hundred mile pipeline across the width of the province. Bernard Payeur, July 12, 2011
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