Oil sands, the coming ecological disaster!!

[4dsc]

Oh please read this whole thing and wonder just how desperate are we in our feable attempts to produce oil from oil sands??

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1158961810919&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home

That dimension is, literally, only the surface. The proportion of oil sands accessible from ground level is less than 10 per cent. The rest of the bitumen — the term for the oil-saturated muck — is deep underground. Companies have a number of methods to extract it, like injecting superheated oxygen or steam as deep as 300 metres below to boil the oil free.

Meanwhile, on the surface, millions of cubic metres of river water, thick with toxic by-products like naphthenic acid, bubble and build in the ponds, never to be returned. According to the U.S. Department of the Interior, Syncrude's dam, which holds back nearly three decades of waste water, is the second-largest on Earth after the Three Gorges Dam in China.

"If any one of those were ever to breach and discharge into the river, you're talking about a world-scale ecological disaster," Schindler says.

For some, the ecological disaster has already begun.

[tbyg52]

1. I've seen articles

that present oil sands as the solution to all our energy problems. No mention of the ecological consequences, of course.

[muesa]

2. Given a choice between Chernobyl technology and oil sands

I think a Chernobyl type reactor is cleaner, healthier, safer, and less of an ecological risk then oil sands (and I am an engineer).

[Porcupine]

3. We shouldn't be burning any of this anyway climate change wise.

But we are far too stupid to get the idea that if something you are doing is causing a bad reaction maybe you should stop doing it.

Let's keep burning this stuff until the atmosphere cooks off and there isn't enough ice on the planet to cool a martini!!

:wtf:

[YankeyMCC]

4. Ever get the feeling

you despertly need to find a way off the planet?

I really need to gather up my towel and find someone with an electronic thumb and hitch a ride somewhere.