tar sands

Book exposes the messy conditions of Canada’s tar sands

Of all the absurdities at play in extracting oil from Alberta’s vast northern tar sands deposits, the most staggering might be the nuclear renaissance it threatens to create in Canada. Andrew NikiforukWhether nuclear energy presents a legitimate alternative to greenhouse-gas-emitting energy sources is one question. Environmentalists have long debated that. But Canada is considering something […]

Economics malpractice, climate and poverty, oil sands nightmares, and more WSJ dipshittery

• Max Schulz demonstrates how economics is typically used in the energy debate: "There's an unavoidable problem with renewable-energy technologies: From an economic standpoint, they're big losers." As though the "economic standpoint" is some static, univocal thing. Douchebag.

• A nice report from Brookings on a woefully under discussed topic: Double Jeopardy: What the Climate Crisis Means for the Poor.

• National Geographic has an in-depth examination of the horror that is Alberta's oil sands program. Excellent journalism, albeit the stuff of nightmares.

• Shockingly, the oil and gas industry opposes the Obama administration plan to eliminate some taxpayers subsidies for the oil and gas industry.

• A while back, Holman Jenkins, a Wall Street Journal columnist and member of the editorial board, characterized Obama's concern over climate change as a "soppy indulgence," and said of climate science: "We don't really have the slightest idea how an increase in the atmosphere's component of CO2 is impacting our climate, though the most plausible indication is that the impact is too small to untangle from natural variability." Stuart Gaffin, an actual climate scientist at Columbia University, responded in a blog post, pointing to actual science. In turn, Jenkins retrenched in a blog post of his own, with a bunch of absurd harumphing and misdirection. Gaffin responded again, decimating the smoldering remains of Jenkins argument with a torrent of scientific citations.

This is typical of many other exchanges between ideologues and scientists about climate. The galling thing, with this one as with most of them, is that the scientists are correct, by any reasonable assessment, and yet the ideologues can just go on saying whatever they want, in widely read editorials. There simply is no winning here. It's really hard to see what the scientists should do.

Can the problems of the developing world be solved by ignoring global warming?

Salon has published my article on the biggest flaw in the strategy of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I'm going to expand on that article in a two-parter here.

The timing could not be better with the Tom Friedman "Ponzi scheme" discussion. For while the the richest foundation in the world certainly has taken on the noblest and greatest of challenges -- to help billions of people who "never even have the chance to live a healthy, productive life" (see here) reach that opportunity themselves -- its efforts are ultimately doomed to fail if we don't stop catastrophic warming.

Also, the two men who have donated much of their vast wealth to make it possible, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, are Exhibits One and Two of the "very serious people who are perceived as essentially nonpartisan opinion leaders" who must speak out on climate change if we are to avert the worst (see here).

Yet when we saw them together last summer, they were touring the Ponzi Canadian tar sands, as The Calgary Herald reported (see here):

A source said Gates and Buffett, who in recent months said he favors investing in the Canadian oil sands because it offers a secure supply of oil for the United States, visited the booming hub to satisfy "their own curiosity" but also "with investment in mind."

The tar sands are an environmental abomination that require huge amounts of natural gas to produce fuel with far higher life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions than oil. They have rightly been called by Greenpeace the "biggest global warming crime ever seen." The Catholic bishop whose diocese extends over the tar sands posted a scathing pastoral letter in January that challenges the "moral legitimacy" of tar sands production.

Let's look at the Gates Foundation's strategy, and why, despite the noblest of intentions, it is not sustainable (even though, if you search "sustainable" on the Foundation website, you get 96 hits). In the face of the daunting task of helping the world's poor, which has proven such an intractable challenge for national governments and international aid agencies, Bill Gates retains the techno-optimism that drove his unbridled success at Microsoft. In July 2008, Gates went from being full-time at Microsoft to working full-time at the foundation with his wife, Melinda. With about $30 billion in assets as of January, the Gates are targeting U.S. education, childhood deaths, malaria, polio, AIDS and agriculture in poor countries.

On their Web site, Bill and Melinda state that if "scientific and technological advances" are focused on the problems of developing nations, "then within this century billions of people will grow up healthier, get a better education, and gain the power to lift themselves out of poverty." Bill and Melinda go on to make Pollyanna, Pangloss and Paula Abdul seem like realists:

Obama, Harper fired up to make dirty energy clean

President Obama ventured north to Canada on Thursday to meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, but environmentalists looking for any indication that the two leaders would issue unequivocal calls for action on global warming or a curtailing of America’s dependence on Canada’s vast oil deposits were left disappointed. The two leaders, instead, promised a “clean […]

Memo to Obama: CCS won't make tar sands clean. Memo to all: They ain't 'oil sands.'

Climate Wire ($ub. req'd) reports this morning, "Obama says 'technology' can fix oil sands skirmish":

President Obama said "clean energy mechanisms," like carbon capture and storage, would allow the United States to continue consuming Canadian sand oil, an emission-heavy fuel that often requires strip-mining vast stretches of boreal forest in the province of Alberta.

The assertion yesterday came two days before Obama is scheduled to meet with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Ottawa, and it promises to raise questions among environmental groups, which see the oil sands as a key contributor to climate change.

Uhh, no, no, no, and no. First, the tar sands are a key contributor to climate change -- it is absurd for ClimateWire to hedge (and weaken) this fact by attributing it solely to environmental groups.

Second, the "biggest global warming crime ever seen" (see here) cannot be made green with carbon capture and storage, even in the unlikely event CCS proves practical for the tar sands. If the President wants to understand everything the tar sands would have to do to be "clean," he should start with the pastoral letter of Canadian Bishop Luc Bouchard (see here).

Third, Obama said, "I think that it is possible, for us to create a set of clean energy mechanisms that allow us to use things not just like oil sands, but also coal." Did he really say "oil sands"? I can understand why greenwashing Canadian shills use the phrase rather than the traditional term "tar sands" (see here), but not why the U.S. media does, and certainly not somebody as smart as Obama.

No doubt the phrase makes it seem like, oh, I don't know, maybe up through the sand came a bubblin crude, oil that is, black gold, Texas tea, Athabasca euphemism (see ClimateProgress commenter, Jim Eager, here).

Obama says tar-sands oil has ‘big carbon footprint,’ but doesn’t rule out its use

President Barack Obama is heading up to Canada on Wednesday Thursday to chat with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as David mentioned earlier. The two are slated to discuss, among other things, trade, climate change, and tar sands. Harper is expected to encourage Obama to support a partnership between the neighboring nations that protects Alberta’s tar […]

Canadian PM and business groups use Obama's visit to shill for dirty tar sands oil

On Wednesday Thursday, Barack Obama is heading up to Canada, where they're getting nervous about growing protectionist and environmentalist sentiment in the U.S. Canadian PM Stephen Harper is widely expected to hype the special trade relationship between the two countries and push Obama for a climate partnership that spares tar sands oil -- one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in North America -- from any carbon restrictions. (Hey, if the U.S. is going easy on coal, why shouldn't Canada go easy on tar sands?)

To that end, during Obama's visit, a group called the Canadian American Business Council (boasting such luminaries as Exxon Mobil and Shell Oil) will be running full-page ads in major U.S. publications, which say:

The countries share the largest energy trade relationship in the world, with Canada supplying more oil and natural gas to the U.S. than any other foreign supplier. Second only to Saudi Arabia in proven petroleum reserves, Canada is poised to securely supply even more oil and natural gas to the U.S., while industries on both sides of the border innovate and invest in technologies to enhance environmental responsibility.

"Enhance environmental responsibility," you say? Let's take a look at a recent dispatch from Canada's Pembina Institute:

Today the Pembina Institute submitted comments on a draft Alberta Government policy that would allow in situ oil sands operations to burn dirtier fuels, which would significantly increase the intensity and total amount of greenhouse gas pollution and air emissions from the sector. ...

The policy would allow oil sands companies operating in situ projects to switch from burning natural gas to much dirtier, more carbon intensive fossil fuels such as raw bitumen or the waste from oil sands upgrading (petroleum coke and asphaltenes). Compared to conventional oil production, in situ oil sands production produces four times the greenhouse gas pollution per barrel when burning relatively cleaner natural gas. According to the Pembina Institute's analysis, in situ oil sands operations burning petroleum coke without any mitigation would produce 66 per cent more greenhouse gas pollution than if the same operation were to burn natural gas. The Alberta Government document states that the policy may be expanded to include other industrial activities in the future.

Depends on what the meaning of "enhance" is, I guess.

U.S. group Forest Ethics is running the following full-page ad in response:

Syncrude faces fines for duck deaths

OTTAWA — Canadian environmental authorities on Monday charged Syncrude in the death of 500 migrating ducks that landed in its oil sands sewage ponds in western Canada. The waterfowl died after being coated in April 2008 with toxic oil residue from an Alberta mine left behind in the ponds by Syncrude Canada Limited, the world’s […]

Canada loves ducks, fines oil company

"We are protective of our environment, of ducks, of conservation in this country. We have laws. We expect them to be abided by and there will be consequences for people who don't live up to the full extent of the Canadian conservation environmental laws."

-- Canadian Environment Minister Jim Prentice on the effort to fine Syncrude for tar-sands duck deaths