Mon September 07, 2020 5:17 pm
Thu September 17, 2020 12:54 am
Tue September 22, 2020 2:21 am
Thu September 24, 2020 12:16 am
Thu September 24, 2020 3:07 am
Thu September 24, 2020 3:07 am
Thu September 24, 2020 4:08 am
Fri September 25, 2020 2:42 am
Fri September 25, 2020 2:43 am
Fri September 25, 2020 2:46 am
Fri September 25, 2020 3:02 am
96583UP wrote:less than 60 seconds
Fri September 25, 2020 3:23 am
Fri September 25, 2020 3:30 am
This is the world's most destructive oil operation—and it's growing
Large enough to be seen from space, tailings ponds in Alberta’s oil sands region are some of the biggest human-made structures on Earth. They contain a toxic slurry of heavy metals and hydrocarbons from the bitumen separation process.
THE SCALE OF Alberta’s oil sands operations, the world's largest industrial project, is hard to grasp. Especially north of Fort McMurray, where the boreal forest has been razed and bitumen is mined from the ground in immense open pits, the blot on the landscape is incomparable.
If Alberta, with its population of four million people, were a country, it would be the fifth largest oil-producing nation. While it produces conventional oil, most comes from the Alberta oil sands, the world’s third largest proven oil reserve at 170 billion barrels.
And these days, even as Canada promotes action on climate change on the world stage, the Canadian and provincial governments are pushing to expand oil sands operations—which brings substantial economic benefits to the region—in the face of a chorus of opposition from environmentalists and indigenous people.
The Syncrude oil sands plant is seen north of Fort McMurray, Alberta. The oil sands give Alberta the third largest reserves in the world, but extracting the oil is energy-intensive and destructive to the landscape.
[...]
However, Canada is not likely to meet its 2020 carbon emission reduction target, experts warn. Nor is it likely to meet its 2030 Paris climate target—and that's almost entirely due to increasing emissions from the oil and gas sector, which are expected to reach 100 million metric tons a year by then. A study published in April in Nature Communications found that emissions from the Canadian oil sands, measured directly from aircraft, are about 30 percent higher than the figures reported by the industry.
[...]
Air pollution, including acid rain, also plagues the remote region. One study found that acid rain would eventually damage an area almost the size of Germany.
[...]
The oil sands industry has been very destructive to the environment and our communities in the region, says Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, executive director of Indigenous Climate Action, an indigenous-led organization.
“It’s had a huge impact on caribou, bison, moose, birds, fish, the water, the forest. It’s affected our ability to travel, to gather food from the land—it’s really overwhelming,” says Deranger, a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation located near Fort Chipewyan, north of Fort McMurray.
Fri September 25, 2020 3:37 am
Fri September 25, 2020 3:40 am
For weeks at a time, April would be sent to Alberta’s oil patch in Fort McMurray to sell sex to the men working there.
Alberta’s oil sands have the third-largest oil reserves in the world, after Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. It spans 142,000sq km (54,826sq miles) in northern Alberta, running through the traditional territories of the Cree, Chipewyan and Dene First Nations.
Thousands of workers from Canada and elsewhere work on the oil sands. To house these workers, “man camps” were built next to the processing plants. The “man camps” are precisely what their name implies: camps housing mainly male employees working on resource development projects.
Fri September 25, 2020 3:40 am
Stickman wrote:
But, but you were all over that like you all over a meth addled prostitute.
Fri September 25, 2020 3:45 am
Fri September 25, 2020 3:48 am
Canada will be significantly short of its goal to reduce oil and gas methane emissions by 40 to 45 per cent below 2012 levels by its 2025 deadline, and advocates want stronger federal regulation to help bridge the gap.
Five environmental organizations released an analysis of the government’s recent emissions modelling, which shows that under current federal regulations, Canada will only reduce methane emissions by 29 per cent by 2025.
Fri September 25, 2020 3:52 am
Our oceans are facing a plastic crisis. Plastic debris has been found floating on the sea surface, washing up on the world’s most remote coastlines, melting out of Arctic sea ice, sitting at the deepest point of the ocean floor, and in the stomachs of fish, marine mammals and seabirds. It’s everywhere. To make matters worse, the volume of plastic waste is expected to increase four times by 2050.
And yet, here in Canada some people still think that plastic pollution, especially in our oceans, is not a Canadian problem.
[...]
“Canadians recycle their plastic waste.”
FACT: About 86 per cent of Canada’s plastic waste ends up in landfill, while a meager nine per cent is recycled. The rest is burned to create energy, which causes emission problems, or the plastic enters the environment as litter. Additionally, Canada ships about 12 per cent of its plastic waste outside of North America to be processed for “recycling”, which far too often results in waste polluting the environment around the world rather than being properly recycled.
“Canada doesn’t produce as much plastic waste as other countries. Its their problem, not ours.”
FACT: Many countries in Asia have become the world’s dumping ground for plastic waste. About 12 per cent of Canada’s plastic waste is sent outside of North America to be ‘recycled.’ The majority of this exported plastic waste is sent to countries in Southeast Asia, many of which do not have the proper infrastructure to deal with this waste. Unfortunately, this results in the plastic either being incinerated or entering the environment.
North American and European countries specifically have been sending waste there for decades, but many countries, like China, are now refusing it. Canada is contributing to the plastic problem halfway across the world.
Fri September 25, 2020 3:54 am
Massive open-pit coal mines in British Columbia are leaching high concentrations of selenium into the Elk River watershed, damaging fish populations and contaminating drinking water. Now this pollution is flowing across the Canadian-U.S. border, threatening the quality of U.S. waters.