Yes, it's a sad situation. Called GREED.
Mankind has been destroying the earths ecosystem with serious intent since the late 40's and with renewed vigor after the 70's when synthetic fertilizers were commercialized - which has contributed to increased erosion multifold - to the point where the Gulf of Mexico "dead spot" is now immense and destroying marine life at an alarming rate. All over the world the same scenario exists in one trashy form or another.

I cry for the earth...

SoilGuy

I sorta care 'bout soil but IMO this is more of a political or environmental topic than SC&M so I'm gonna not go into this one.

Lloyd

I agree, it's a political and environmental issue, as well as being about "soils, compost, & mulch." But the foundation of the problem is economics, I think. It made no sense to dig up the Canadian forest and separate out the tar when sufficient supplies of cheap crude were available from other places. Global oil demand today has grown to where conventional oil fields can no longer produce enough, so the price per barrel goes up, and suddenly expensive oil produced from tar sand deposits becomes attractive to investors. I expect that we will see oil shale deposits in Colorado developed soon, for the same reason.

Colorado does not have the water resources the develop the oil shale.

Yeah - California is getting most of their water resources... Back to "political" interests again.

SoilGuy

Paul, what are your sources for the claim that the majority of the US imported oil comes from Canadian tar sand? That seems highly unlikely to me given the massive importation from many regions around the world. And if it were true then it would logically follow that the majority of Canada's own energy consumption derives from tar sand which also seems quite unlikely.

It sounds like an unpleasant business, quite similar to the strip coal mining of Appalachia. But on the scale of petroleum extraction and consumption around the world, pretty minor. What about the forest above these sands? No doubt a massive forest-reduction business goes on in concert with the mining of the tar.

Paul, what are your sources for the claim that the majority of the US imported oil comes from Canadian tar sand? That seems highly unlikely to me given the massive importation from many regions around the world.

Takes about 7 seconds with Google:

From U.S. Energy Information Administration
Crude Oil Imports (Top 15 Countries)
(Thousand Barrels per Day)
Country Sep-09 Aug-09 YTD 2009 Sep-08 YTD 2008
CANADA 1,938 2,007 1,929 1,947 1,928
MEXICO 1,124 1,057 1,125 890 1,174
SAUDI ARABIA 1,031 745 1,023 1,429 1,525
VENEZUELA 1,014 1,007 1,014 944 1,038
NIGERIA 868 877 714 508 944
IRAQ 428 500 456 543 661
ALGERIA 419 404 272 319 314
ANGOLA 401 352 475 416 502
COLOMBIA 285 260 263 142 185
BRAZIL 262 269 325 197 215
KUWAIT 246 148 186 110 195
RUSSIA 163 229 255 65 120
ECUADOR 147 131 187 227 211
CONGO (BRAZZAVILLE) 119 37 53 67 66
UNITED KINGDOM 117 72 113 108 64

Total Imports of Petroleum (Top 15 Countries)
(Thousand Barrels per Day)
Country Sep-09 Aug-09 YTD 2009 Sep-08 YTD 2008
CANADA 2,356 2,524 2,448 2,399 2,465
MEXICO 1,271 1,159 1,266 1,003 1,284
VENEZUELA 1,146 1,070 1,139 1,051 1,190
SAUDI ARABIA 1,045 766 1,052 1,431 1,542
NIGERIA 894 917 752 591 1,014
ALGERIA 641 551 491 657 540
RUSSIA 486 512 607 433 485
IRAQ 428 500 457 543 661
ANGOLA 414 364 486 416 512
COLOMBIA 301 269 286 149 203
UNITED KINGDOM 295 225 253 281 225
VIRGIN ISLANDS 280 223 290 345 328
BRAZIL 268 275 341 271 248
KUWAIT 246 148 189 110 197
ECUADOR 153 131 191 233 218

Note: The data in the tables above exclude oil imports into the U.S. territories.

Oh, and to be fair, it's not a majority of our oil, but more than from any other foreign source; a plurality if you will.

Many years ago I moved to California from the midwest and I had vastly different ideas about life than I do now. I came from a place with relatively clear air and water, gas was cheap. I have learned quickly to hate seeing the air that I breathe, paying $4 for a gal. of gas, trash everywhere, on and on. There is nothing that I can do about it but change my own world. I have 2 fireplaces. I won't use either 1. When gas hit $4 and my air is thick I quit using my car on a whim. Last year I forked over $125 total for gas, this year $85. I have a personal vendetta against taxes, air that I can see, bad soil, trash everywhere. Global warming is not my war. My backyard is. Every bit of my world that I can improve, I will. But I never tell my family back home about any of this because we all know about those California treehuggers.

my own 2 cents.

YIKES! The slippery slope from soil health to water rights to shale oil extraction may be taking us away from the reason why we value this forum. But just to correct one impression. I don't think that CA take the lion's share of CO River water any more.CA got the unused allocations of the other states, but population growth and drought in those states has dried up their "unused" shares. CA has 15 years to find other resources and save water [desalinization/water recovery] I know that in the Imperial & Cenral Valleys' agriculture water is being sold to nearby cities, letting the ag-land go fallow. adios

[[ CA's CO River water share [as of 3/2009]
http://www.mwdh2o.com/mwdh2o/pages/yourwater/supply/colorado/colorado04.html ]]

I was trying to find the mine sites in google maps - what towns/cities are they near? It is hard to find them in AlbertaÂs 255,500 square miles because they would make up about a half of one thousandth of a percent of the land area. Are there more tar sands being mind in some of CanadaÂs remaining (not counting Alberta) 3.25+ million square miles?

I did notice that the people in the entire Southeast of the province of Alberta (and the rest of SE Canada) are going to have to really start planting trees like the dickens if they are going to leave the place in anywhere near the condition in which they found it!

Perhaps the people of Copenhagen could ask the people of Alberta if they were even aware of the tar sand activity and their hard feelings toward it while educating the people of Alberta how to manage their land properly (Denmark and Europe look very nice from space :) ).

Anyway, getting closer to home for me - I spent a bit of time today wondering if a tree that is leaning (or growing) over my barn needed to come down - as I have done once and a while for years now (my place is much smaller than the nice places in Alberta- so my barn would probably be a shed there), the tree which is a native species that is probably 10 inches in diameter won yet again and will probably outlast the barn (or shed) and me if it does not flatten it first. Maybe the nice people of Copenhagen could send advice to me as well?

From published map date, the Alberta tar sands are located north of Edmonton, and the total area of the three zones is about 20% of Alberta total land area. The three zones are 1)Peace River, 2)Athabasca River, 3)Cold Lake. Some of the tar is mined using open pit method, digging down from the surface, and removing large amounts of soil to be processed for oil. Some of the tar is too deep for open pit mining, so wells are drilled, and steam is injected to heat the tar, so it can be pumped to the surface. Also, there exist large deposits of tar that cannot be mined or recovered with any known technology.

So Canadian petroleum is nowhere close to a majority of that imported to the US, as I supposed. Further, obviously not all of that is from the tar sands. It seems that less than half of all petroleum produced in Canada is from the tar sands. Garg's google search gives the country of origin of the imports, not the type of source.

Fossil fuel usage, by humans, is voracious and insatiable. We are going to use every drop, glob, and clump of it that can be gotten and burned. Those few of us with the inclination and luxury to worry about it might reduce our own usage a tad. Any soil with coal under it, or tar in it, is doomed. Any water nearby will be ruined.

The best strategy for an individual during this mad run to collapse, IMO, is to be someplace a little isolated or remote so as to be relatively clean, and with relatively few or no raw resources of a profitable scale. No huge valuable timber, coal or petroleum reserves. No glacial rivers or major falling water to be dammed. No vast flat growing lands to be befouled with poisons. Someplace with stable or increasing precipitation for sustainable agriculture. In a place like that one might be left largely unmolested by profit-driven destruction.

Here's a map of the area underlain by tar sands.

The wikipedia article's reasoning for calling them 'oil sands' is revealing:

"The word tar to describe these natural bitumen deposits is really a misnomer, since, chemically speaking, tar is a man-made substance produced by the destructive distillation of organic material, usually coal... Naturally occurring bitumen is chemically more similar to asphalt than to tar, and oil sands (or oilsands) is more commonly used in the producing areas than tar sands because synthetic oil is what is manufactured from the bitumen."

Calling them 'oil sands' makes it sound as if there's oil for the taking, which is heartbreakingly (if you care about soil) far from the truth. If anything they ought to be called 'Bitumen sands'. Growing up, I learned that bitumen was the softest form of coal.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:318436}}

I'll rephrase that (you're sharp as a tack pnbrown). Canada is the USA's single largest source of foreign oil. Is that not still surprising? You will hear from your government that America has to wean itself from dependence on foreign oil, and is making great efforts toward accomplishing this, while glossing over the fact that Canada is a foreign country, and that most of the money invested in the tar sands is American.

Re: this being a political subject: given the tar sands debacle, isn't it 'political' to promote the use of oil and gas to perform tasks like turning and shredding compost materials, which are optional to making compost - activities that are promoted on this forum nearly every day?

Paul, the US TV ads with the slick chick promoting more domestic production now refer to "North America" versus "Foreign".

Which, were I Canadian, I'd find discouraging.

Paul, I did find it a little surprising. If I had been asked to guess, I'd have put Canada maybe 4th or 5th.

Not to stir up trouble, but on such broad economic matters I think the US and Canada are pretty close to a single unit, and perhaps Mexico as well. One can probably speak realistically of whether or not north america is self-sufficient in petroleum. Since Canada and Mexico are number 1 and 2, north america as a whole isn't too far from being balanced between imports and exports?

The La Brea "tar pits" are located in La Brea, California, east of Los Angeles. This is a natural deposit of oozing black tar, and it has been sitting there long enough that it has trapped and killed all sorts of large mammals, including some that are extinct. There was no "destructive distillation" involved in the formation of this geologic feature. To me, the word "tar" is used to describe a viscous mix of hydrocarbons that typically have high molecular weight, found in nature. The material derived from distillation of coal is called "coal tar."

Ericwi--Read the section of the wikipedia article on Term misuse to see why the La Brea tar pits are not an example of making tar without the use of destructive distillation. The La Brea tar pits contain asphalt, not tar.

I enjoy reading stuff like this. Differing points of view are good and make my two brain cells work hard... :O)

What I think is silly is the fact that we Canadians send our oil down to the 'states' to be refined into gas and then the Americans sell it back to us at a pretty price.

Just a couple of years ago we were sitting on a massive federal surplus which could have paid for a few refineries to be built so we could actually sell the stuff south. We'd be making even more money and put more people to work and voila!

OK, now I'll go back to my compost and do some turning...

paulns - this article appeared over here a couple of weeks ago. The 'tar sands' issue is getting wide publicity.

Here is a link that might be useful: Canadian 'tar sands'

That's the best article written for a general audience that I've read so far - thanks Flora. We need the world's disapproval; threatening to kick Canada out of the Commonwealth would be a great start.

Tiffy, maybe your question is answered in the article: "Canada is a cultured, peaceful nation, which every so often allows a band of Neanderthals to trample over it." 'Nationhood' is becoming irrelevant, unfortunately.

One of the people invited to my sister's Christmas dinner works long distance, by computer, as a geologist for Shell Oil's operations in the tar sands. How to refrain from challenging her? She's a wonderful person in every other way. But land issues have become moral issues for me.

"How to refrain from challenging her?"

I'd recommend getting information that is actually somewhat accurate first, but that's just me.

Lloyd

As an Albertan, I must object to the inaccuracies in George Monbiot's article. Very little of the oilsands are close to the surface. Most production is obtained through drilling and recovery through steam heating. Mined areas are reclaimed so that anyone walking there would not know that oilsand production had occured. Most of the water used in processing oilsands now are recycled. Very little water is taken from rivers.

The reason that oilsand activity is "dirty" is because of the release of CO2 in processing the oilsands. CO2 is a fertilizer, not a pollutant. It is a greenhouse gas but so are N2O and CH4. Of a barrel of oil from oilsands, only 5% of the greenhouse gases associated with that barrel are produced during its extraction. The tailpipes of vehicles produce 80% of the greenhouse gases from that barrel of oil.

I find paulns hypocritical. Alberta sends billions of dollars to other provinces, including Nova Scotia, in equalization payments. He certainly wouldn't be enjoying the standard of living he does if it wasn't for Alberta's oilsand production.

The a link below gives voice to the science of global warming/climate change. It would certainly be worth a glance.

If you read any of the e-mails from Climategate, it is apparent that the global warming alarmists do not have much science on their side. Manipulation of data and suppresion of criticism seems to be the major activity.

Here is a link that might be useful: CBC - Global Warming Doomsday Called Off

Hey pnbrown: your described location is the eastern third of KS excluding the areas near the KS metropolitan area. Check out the northern tier of counties east of Republic county.

Hey Michael, I've driven through that region and I liked it. If I recall it's rolling hills with nice clusters of oaks and cottonwoods. Lots of wildflower meadows. Kinda like the hill-country of Texas.

Where I am now pretty well fits my description also. I didn't come here for that reason, so fate worked out in that regard.

I think people would be wise to look hard at the various criteria of their region. Is precipitation predicted to go up or down? The climate scientists have been fairly accurate on that so far. If one's area is a heavily populated region with low precipitation and predicted to drop (usually the case in such climates, it seems), I would think about moving. Read some accounts of what has been happening in such areas in India and nearby countries - and soon parts of China - to be good and scared. It's a bad deal. Total impoverishment of populations is the likely outcome.

One wants the default or last-resort situation to be one where at least food for subsistence can be grown fairly easily, and where population is likely to be stable, not completely deplete or suddenly swell.

Lloyd, I took your advice and posted a thread on Hot Topics, but haven't seen you over there.

I'm glad to read your comments Cowgirl because we so rarely hear the perspectives of Albertan citizens, about the tar sands. I've often wondered why you all are not up in arms.

Motive is everything, and the motives behind supporting tar sands mining are obvious: jobs and money. But what motives do you see behind the objections to mining, which are coming from the Pembina Institute, the National Geographic, native groups, wildlife protection agencies...Why would they lie? I can't believe any of them simply want to deprive anybody of jobs. Do you doubt the Pembina Institute's statitistics? When I read the Alberta Government's claims about land reclamation for example it is mostly wishful thinking and projections into the year 2020, if such and such happens...

Your comment about transfer payments made me smile. My family's standard of living is as high as anyone's anywhere in the world, because for us the environment comes first, and ours is beautiful and unspoiled. On the other hand you might be dismayed at how little money we have to get by on. I certainly am.

What I find most shameful about the tar sands is that we, collectively, Canadians and Americans, prefer the despoiling of the environment to conserving energy. But that is due in large part to ignorance about the reality of the mining, which I posted this thread to help correct.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pembina

What do you think about the National Geographic piece?

Here is a link that might be useful: nat geo

Hi Paul, I don't do Hot Topics, too many wingnuts enthusiasts!

As far as transfer payments, being from Manitoba we get a LOT of our funds from Alberta. And it's those funds, going into our medical system, that are keeping my daughter alive right now so my perspective might be a bit different than yours some.

Lloyd

As of January 2008, according to the Pembina report:

Despite over 40 years of oil sands
development, not a single hectare of
land has been certified as reclaimed
under Government of Alberta
guidelines.

Ya, that's the thing I hate about using dated reports, they're not always up to date and can make me look like I'm not quite up to speed on the subject and I'm just randomly cherry picking quotes that agree with my position....

From the Alberta Government....

"In March 2008, the Alberta government issued its first reclamation certificate to Syncrude Canada Ltd. for the 104 ha parcel of land known as Gateway Hill, approximately 35 km north of Fort McMurray."

(my bold)

Lloyd

I'll see your March 2008 and raise you 20 months. By the way you're keeping me up past my bedtime - it's 10:40 in Nova Scotia.

See link below, November 25 2009: A first-hand look at what the Alberta govt means by 'reclamation'. What reason do I have to trust the government of Alberta, home to GW Bush's wilier cousin?

"Stephen Harper was born on April 30, 1959, in Toronto, Ontario. He moved to Alberta in 1978 to work in the petroleum industry and went on to obtain both a bachelorâÂÂs and a masterâÂÂs degree in economics from the University of Calgary. Mr. Harper and his wife Laureen have two children, Benjamin and Rachel, and maintain a permanent home in Calgary.

Here is a link that might be useful: tar sands reclamation

From the Alberta Government.

"Currently, over 65 km2 of disturbed lands are in the process of being reclaimed. Reclamation certificates will not be issued until monitoring through time demonstrates that these particular lands meet the Alberta Environment criteria for return to self-sustaining ecosystems."

From your link

"Recent company test sites have grown forests and wetlands just as diverse as any natural site"

and

"he thinks reclaimed areas can succeed: "They're not pristine ecosystems, but they can provide a habitat, an acceptable degree of restoration."

But I grow weary of this and your bringing Stephen Harper into the discussion is a real arguement winner.

No really, you're right, you won, I don't know how I never saw it that way before.

Lloyd

"I'm just randomly cherry picking quotes that agree with my position."

I forgot to say, because the name may mean little to folks on this forum, that Stephen Harper is Canada's prime minister, which is the rough equivalent of President of the US. Our 84 year old neighbour casually calls him Stephen Parker, as if it's not worth remembering his real name. Very amusing ...

And so off to bed.