General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPowerful NYT Op-Ed: The Tar Sands Disaster
IF President Obama blocks the Keystone XL pipeline once and for all, hell do Canada a favor.
Canadas tar sands formations, landlocked in northern Alberta, are a giant reserve of carbon-saturated energy a mixture of sand, clay and a viscous low-grade petroleum called bitumen. Pipelines are the best way to get this resource to market, but existing pipelines to the United States are almost full. So tar sands companies, and the Alberta and Canadian governments, are desperately searching for export routes via new pipelines.
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The most obvious reason is that tar sands production is one of the worlds most environmentally damaging activities. It wrecks vast areas of boreal forest through surface mining and subsurface production. It sucks up huge quantities of water from local rivers, turns it into toxic waste and dumps the contaminated water into tailing ponds that now cover nearly 70 square miles.
Also, bitumen is junk energy. A joule, or unit of energy, invested in extracting and processing bitumen returns only four to six joules in the form of crude oil. In contrast, conventional oil production in North America returns about 15 joules. Because almost all of the input energy in tar sands production comes from fossil fuels, the process generates significantly more carbon dioxide than conventional oil production.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/opinion/the-tar-sands-disaster.html?_r=0
G_j
(40,366 posts)thanks
nonoyes
(261 posts)Hes written the whole trip up in an excellent new e-book Keystone XL: Down The Line. The book is a fairly quick read and really offers a fascinatingly detailed look at many of the issues raised by the pipeline. Its highly recommended for anyone interested in energy and environmental topics.
Here are seven interesting things about the Keystone XL pipeline I came across in the book though keep in mind theres a lot more in there:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/01/seven-things-you-learn-driving-the-length-of-the-keystone-xl-pipeline/
DhhD
(4,695 posts)the public about who will be making this $25 million a day as the paid for product is being loaded on ships for transport to foreign countries?
Is is not true that China has been allowed to buy land leases in our country? How many export refineries and coastal shipping facilities do they own? Texas Governor Rick Perry knows the answer; ask him for starters.
Testing on varies section of the Ogallala Aquifer should be going on now. So there is a starting point is knowing that contamination was NOT already present there.
Department of the Interior should demand that the Energy Company(ies) set up a clean up/spills manual that says that the company will set up reservoir lakes if the Great Plains aquifer system and its downstream users, receive contaminated the water from any source. Then tar sands may not be worth the money. The Obama Administration was supposed to be studying the venture.
http://co.water.usgs.gov/nawqa/hpgw/HPGW_home.html
[link:co.water.usgs.gov/nawg/hpgw/HPGW|http://co.water.usgs.gov/nawqa/hpgw/HPGW]
malaise
(267,813 posts)Rec
happyslug
(14,779 posts)nonoyes
(261 posts)Not everyone reads each and every forum for articles they might find of interest.
I'm not sure what your point is in pointing this duplication out. I would imagine more people read this General Discussion Forum than read a forum on Environment. We will see. So far today, this article has been viewed almost 10 times more than the link in the other forum.
truth2power
(8,219 posts)WillyT
(72,631 posts)siligut
(12,272 posts)The GOP greed destroying democracy in Canada now.
Evoman
(8,040 posts)The government we have is absolutely horrible. They are ruining our country just fine by themselves.