[Heineken]

Americans used to believe their wild lands and natural resources were unlimited too, fossilnut. The sad fact is, it can all go very quickly. Also, damage to ecosystems isn't always apparent to the untrained eye on a country drive or hike.

[fossilnut2]

Americans used to believe their wild lands and natural resources were unlimited too, fossilnut. The sad fact is, it can all go very quickly. Also, damage to ecosystems isn't always apparent to the untrained eye on a country drive or hike.

That has nothing to do with hysteria.

'Untrained eye'? that's so patronizing. We're not bumpkins up here. Albertans are the best educated population in the western world. More post-secondary educated adults than anywhere else. We value our ecosystems and take great measures to preserve it. My city, Calgary, has 2 of the 3 largest wilderness areas (not just 'parks') within an urban setting in North America.

Have you been to the tarsands? Drive north to Fort McMurray and then, once your there, drive further north, east or west. You'll drive a hundred miles without reaching the next gas station...in some directions you'll never reach one, period.

Go back to the original post. What's the purpose? 11 sq miles? Hysteria without any perspective or reality check. Reminds me of the recent post about 'is Mt Everest sinking' because of oil extraction....or the one showing Niagra Falls and getting all googly-eyed because someone has no perspective of volumes of liquid and the size of the Earth.

[seldom_seen]

Albertans are the best educated population in the western world.

Then how come you can't read? The article says that development is just getting started in an area of land equal to the size of Florida. Your province will be reduced to a toxic slag heap when it's all said and done.

Luckily, mining these sands requires large amounts of water and natural gas. Meaning you'll probably run out of one or the other before you can completely destroy your province under this assinine scheme.

[Heineken]

You are too sensitive, fossilnut. I had no patronizing intent. Perhaps if I rephase: Very few people (Albertans, Alabamans, Albanians, Martians, ad infinitum), including me, have the education and training necessary to recognize, measure, or fully understand some of the subtle and far-ranging ecological, hydrological, and climatological impacts of projects like Canada's oil-sands operations. Not all of the damage is apparent to the naked eye, and not all of the damage is immediate. Also, not all of the damage is confined to the immediate area of mining operations.

One example: Mining is notorious for polluting watersheds over vast areas.

It's worth noting that all this activity is taking place in a particularly fragile ecosystem, too: that of the far north.

[Heineken]

Albertans are the best educated population in the western world.

Then how come you can't read? The article says that development is just getting started in an area of land equal to the size of Florida. Your province will be reduced to a toxic slag heap when it's all said and done.

Luckily, mining these sands requires large amounts of water and natural gas. Meaning you'll probably run out of one or the other before you can completely destroy your province under this assinine scheme.

May I suggest that many Albertans have been temporarily blinded to such arguments by dollars signs attaching themselves to their corneas? When this phenomenon occurs, vision becomes highly selective and biased. It then becomes easy to look away from the devastation and gesture enthusiastically toward the undisturbed areas still remaining.

[nero]

Yes the tar sands are going to affect a large area. Go talke a look on google earth to see for yourself. While you're there zoom out and take a look at how vast northern alberta is, then look around at all the other signs of human impact around. The clearcutting is having a much larger visible impact that the tar sands. Agriculture has a much larger impact than the tar sands. Resevoirs have a much larger impact than the tar sands. Even roads have a much larger impact than the tar sands.

Talking about a "moonscape" is a bit extreme. Once a mine site is finished they should be able to replace the overburden and find a use for the new land. It probably will never be virgin taiga again but it won't be totally barren forever.

[elroy]

Made a sig image after the remark, thought it was funny.

[holmes]

sensationalism? Your kidding right. we are about to enter the last gasp the culling of the last great places and your "feeling" sensationalism. Get back to that detached 'burb boy! LOL. U dont belong out here in the wild. we watch from within your on the other side.
http://www.numbersusa.com/index

[seldom_seen]

Made a sig image after the remark, thought it was funny.

That, or this is the point where the bacteria in the petri dish have consumed all the glucose and begin to scavage on waste by-products (lactate) before running out of energy.

[FatherOfTwo]

Only a relatively small area of the deposit is recoverable by mining, so it won't be too bad.

right. just a little swath of land the size of Florida. nothing to see here...move along...

Get your facts straight.
The total area of the oil sands does cover an area about the size of Florida, but only 10% will be mined. The rest will be in-situ.

Oh sorry, right, I forget that a lot of people here don't let facts stand in the way of their fear mongering.

[seldom_seen]

Get your facts straight.
The total area of the oil sands does cover an area about the size of Florida, but only 10% will be mined. The rest will be in-situ.

Oh sorry, right, I forget that a lot of people here don't let facts stand in the way of their fear mongering.

What's your point? So they "plan" on using in-situ mining techniques to get at much of the deposits? Do you think this has a benign effect? Can you even comprehend how much water and natural gas it will take?

Location: Heart of Canada's Oil Country

Oh sorry, right, I forget that a lot of people here let dollar signs and royalty checks from the government get in the way of clear judgement.

[aflurry]

Once a mine site is finished they should be able to replace the overburden and find a use for the new land.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.... that is the funniest remark i have heard all day.... thanks man. it was getting too serious around here.

[cube]

Canada is just like any third world country when it comes to pillaging their natural resources.
...........

Since when did Canada become a third world country?

[rockdoc123]

Well first off making judgement about what is happening in the mined areas around syncrude based on the statement from any of our First Nations peoples needs to be viewed with healthy skepticism. For everyone that is complaining about a destroyed trapline (that was likely played out a decade ago) there are 3 or 4 who are encouraging the oil companies to increase activity so they will have better job prospects.
Also some who post here seem to think that oil companies can pretty much do what they want. This is not the case the approval process is quite lengthy and requires an environmental impact assessment which includes extensive plans for reclaimation. Companies are required to continually monitor sediment load, chemistry etc. of rivers, creeks and streams....this information has to be provided to the government on a regular basis. There is an on-going reclaimation in the mined areas....at this point in time much more area has been disturbed by mining than has been reclaimed (simply because the extraction business is just picking up). The plan is that reclaimed areas will gradually catch up with disturbed areas and full reclaimation for mined sites will happen by 2060 or so.
It is not an ideal situation of course....the area is not pristine...but in actual fact this is not what one might call holiday country.....it is flat, the forests are made up of small scrawny trees and as a consequence the wildlife isn't nearly as plentiful as one would see further west into the foothills. The bugs are large and plentiful....this ain't Yellowstone.
Here are a couple of photos, one before and one after reclaimation at one of the Syncrude sites....

[SurvivalAcres]

My latest blog entry covered this mentality. The last frontier appears to be the Artic. What is happening in Canada has been underway for sometime.

I have always hated that stupid bumper sticker by the way. I don't blame the trapper one bit.

[Heineken]

Funny how so many Canadians suddenly sound like they work for the Chamber of Commerce. Too much money floating around those oil-sands pits.

[rockdoc123]

Funny how so many Canadians suddenly sound like they work for the Chamber of Commerce. Too much money floating around those oil-sands pits.

well I sincerely hope you are one of the few "environmentalists" that actually walks the talk.....ie. you do not own a car....you do not buy produce from the supermarket (it was trucked there most likely), you do not buy material made in factories as they too are powered by fuel.....and on and on....so unless you live on a farm where you plow your fields by hand and grow all the food you live off and feed your animals I have a problem with you complaining about controlled extraction of what could be one of the last large hydrocarbon resources in North America. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
By the way the reclaimation is not to "golf courses" but rather to a mixture of aboreal forest and wetlands.

[Keith_McClary]

By the way the reclaimation is not to "golf courses" but rather to a mixture of aboreal forest and wetlands.

You mean "bush" and "muskeg", eh?

[MrBill]

It's worth noting that all this activity is taking place in a particularly fragile ecosystem, too: that of the far north.

Sorry I have to agree with fossilnut (sp?) Alberta is a big province. Twice the size of Germany. Germany has 80 million people and Alberta just two million that all live in central/southern Alberta and not up north.

This is not a particularly fragile area as far as ecosystems go. It is not Arctic. It is located in the Boreal Forest of N. Alberta. It is an area characterized by relatively low annual rainfall, and thin brown/grey soils. Most of it is not suitable for agriculture or even ranching. it is very sparsely populated. Before this, the only economic development outside of some government subsidised Native and Metis communities was some pulp & paper making from wood chips. But the predominant poplar tree is fast growing, more like a weed than a hardwood tree, and inferior in quality to spruce or pine or anything else as a building material.

In short, if you were going to find tarsands this is about as good a place as you could wish for. Let's us not be hypocritical. The world needs energy and strip mining for copper and coal takes place on a much larer scale elsewhere. Heck, we even mine for gold & diamonds. Aside from limited industrial uses, they have no genuine purpose therefore environment destroyed for their production is much worse than for oil.

The land will be reclaimed. Albertans may be hypocrits and drive large SUVs & pick-up trucks for personal transportation, but in other areas they are very green and aware of the environment. No Albertan is going to allow wholesale destruction of our Province. okay, a few golf courses in Banff National Park that we do not really need, but the greater public good, right?

However, it is good that the rest of the world is keeping an eye on us. This will keep our politicans and oil cos. honest. That is good too.

p.s. the nat gas argument is so old. Canada was selling Candu reactors to China when most of you were in diapers & Jimmy Carter was wearing sweaters. Nevermind hydro electric from B.C., which is right next door, and the fact that Alberta ships most of its nat gas to the States. We can certainly divert some for our own use. Also we have large deposits of coal nearby, and in a pinch, heavy oil can be burned as a source of heat or fuel. Nat gas just happened to be cheap up to now.

[MrBill]

I think most promising is that Syncrude and Suncor have been operating in this area for over 30-years and the environmentalists have been watching them. They have certainly learnt valuable lessons as they developed all these years, so hopefully it will help avoid those painful steep learning curve mistakes common when a new area is exploited. Exploited is a poor choice of words, but again as someone else said, I hope all those would be environmentalists walk the walk, and are by the way not just recent converts now that they can afford to be?