Locked in

Albertans are so locked into the future of money via TAR that they couldn't give a flying shit about the planet. Just who is going to wake them up??????

Why oil and not tar?

I wonder why these columns use the term oil sands instead of tar sands? Is it because the Tyee hopes that some Albertans might read the column? It would decades to even try and clean up the mess that is there now, so I can not understand how the tar sands could ever become anything close to environmentally sane. The biggest obstacle to any changes for the better is greed, which is the driving force for what government and industry does to the environment.

There certainly are solutions, but most are beyond what the current governmental framework and industry controlled rules and regulations will allow. One solution is already happening in the U.S. - it is called Bloom energy (see www.bloomenergy.com) - a fuel cell that converts natural gas (or methane) directly into electricity - where the electricity is needed, thus avoiding the loss of power from transmission lines. Meanwhile, in Canada, we are wasting this gas to produce bitumen, when it could be use to produce electricity, which in turn could fuel our transportation needs.

The real solutions would include removing the oily corporate control of governments and reviving true democracy in Canada.

The first question should be

The first question should be what that oil is used for ?

Real economics to supply people with the necessities of life, or a hundred thousand airliner flights every day taking people from nowhere to nowhere, to fuel a hundred thousand ships and millions of trucks moving products around that have been and can easily be made locally and billions of people commuting to jobs that could be done next door ? As they have been for thousands of years.

Does anybody ever think of the causes of the mess and the real, logical needs ?

The main tragedy of the tar sands and other similar rackets is the filling of the demands of imaginary money "created" from the air by banks, demanding resources for repayment and endless profits.

There's no such thing as "monetary efficiency", used by a criminal sector to brainwash people to overrule logic and physical laws with the obvious reactions and disasters.

Until humanity accepts the simple fact of physical efficiency used for economics, starting with the re-regulation and total public control of money "creation", the world will be going down the road of self destruction.

The tar sands madness is the best and prime example of a world lost to faith based fraud.

Ed Deak.

CooLLy, rationaLLy and with

CooLLy, rationaLLy and with good wiLL? In a world run by capitalist thugs, ‘ow the ‘eLL is that possible?

The answer, of course, is that it’s not. Cool, rational and good are judgments and therefore will be defined to mean whatever those in control of our thinking want them to mean.

If you believe your tho’ts aren’t controlled then carry on with the energy conversation and no doubt you will convince yourself mining non-renewables, like the tarsands, is sustainable and will allow endless growth to continue.

The fact is, we have moved into a period of “no growth”. The evidence is obvious. The Harper gov’ts destruction of Canada’s social safety nets, global financial bailouts and the collapse of the Eurozone are examples that are hard to ignore.

Andrew Nikiforuk uses the

Andrew Nikiforuk uses the term "bitumen sands," which he says is more accurate than either "tar" or "oil," and which I think makes a good compromise phrase that cannot be politically attacked.

I think it's great the Tyee is doing investigative work on this issue; my only fear is that the reaction by the public and governments to any important info about how Norway sensibly manages their resources will be completely ignored here in the land where all common sense and prudence is thrown to the wind.

This is no doubt a fine

This is no doubt a fine initiative, but there's a problem with it and Ed and KWD have taken the words out of my mouth. I can imagine the people who control Harper and Obama reading this article and guffawing loudly. We are not "collectively" going to accomplish anything because our elite masters won't participate.

How many excellent solutions have been proposed over the years and yet things continue to deteriorate? How many studies, conversations, analyses, all come to naught? Our energies are dissipated across too many peripheral issues. All efforts should be focused on stopping the elite and their not so secret weapon, the banking system.

Nice idea but...

Advance apologies for the long post. I commend David and The Tyee for this important initiative but a few words of caution beginning with the premise "Oil sands full bore? Oil sands full stop? Neither is realistic."

This is not really accurate. I agree that "Oil sands full stop" seems highly improbable for the reasons that David points out, but "Oil sands full bore" is very much within the realm of possibility and is in fact the desired outcome by many (most?) of those individuals in government and industry who are currently controlling the levers of power.

Will an appeal to "the middle path" as this Tyee project endeavours to do convince the political and economic masters to alter their course? I am highly skeptical.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the premise of this series seems to be that both sides are taking an extreme position but we can indeed have our cake and eat it too if we manage this resource better. That there are both "challenges" and "opportunities" that lie ahead. [An aside: when I worked in government, "challenges" was always used as a euphemism for "problems".]

Yet such a "solution" is only feasible IF both of the so-called "extreme" positions are in fact wrong. In other words, if the truth therefore lies somewhere in the middle. If it turns out, as many scientists believe, that climate change and the state of the global environment is so serious as to warrant a revolutionary shift in how we produce and consume energy, it seems to me that the "middle way" will only delay, yet not solve the inevitable crisis staring us in the face.

Yes, it's true due to political/economic realities that we can't/won't shut down the tar sands or get off fossil fuels tomorrow but that doesn't mean taking such a position is wrong from the perspective of what science is now telling us. I fear that any meaningful solution will not come from an appeal for all of us to "just get along" (R.I.P Rodney King) but will only come through conflict and confrontation. I hope I'm wrong about this.

"oil sands" v. "tar sands"

Coop wonders, "I wonder why these columns use the term oil sands instead of tar sands? Is it because the Tyee hopes that some Albertans might read the column?"

See Oxford English Dictionary definition of "tar": "dark viscid liquid got by dry distillation of wood, coal, etc., & used as preservative of timber & iron, antiseptic, etc.".

For example, the tar produced by smoking cigarettes is caused by substances in tobacco that are first heated when the cigarette is burned. It then condenses in your pink tissues, forming a tar.

There is no tar in the oil sands because bitumen is not produced by dry distillation.

I am an Albertan Tyee reader and I am tired of seeing a preference for accurate use of an English word being cited as evidence of a global terminological conspiracy engineered by the nefarious corporations who respond to global demand for petroleum products.

I look forward to following Tyee's projected attempt to see if some civilized reconciliation can be found between "full speed ahead" and "shut 'em down now" advocates.

the war is already joined

There will be no peace talks until it is apparent that neither side will have easy victory. Not nearly enough blood and treasure have been wasted yet.

Ed Deak said it right - thank you.

Ed Deak is right on the mark. Read his response to this article.

Murray Stone says, ""tar":

Murray Stone says, ""tar": "dark viscid liquid got by dry distillation of wood, coal, etc., & used as preservative of timber & iron, antiseptic, etc."."
This is true and the Tar Sands are like that with sand mixed with the tar-like goo.
To get oil, a very expensive and energy intensive process must be undertaken. You must separate the tar from the sand. Then the tar must be broken down and these chemicals must be converted into oil or some other fuel. It is a very expensive and polluting process. It is the most difficult and expensive, both financially and energy-wise way for us to obtain petroleum fuels.
The foulest thing I have ever smelled is the tailings pond in Fort McMurray.

So, Ed

What form do these profits take?

There is another piece to this

And I don't understand why it's being so neglected.

The technological solution has been bruited about from time to time, 'new technologies will come along to save us' Well they have.

Or at least they might. The last great stock market swindle resulted in the 1930s, and was eventually cured by undertaking a huge new task and devoting the labors of the mass of unemployed to rural electrification. We have a perfect opportunity to do that again to cure this one.

Technologies are emerging capable of permitting each house and village to produce it's own power through a mix of passive and active solar, wind and water generation, methane digesters, fuel producing bacteria, and we are pretending this oil is our future?

It would take a huge push for education and innovation, tens of thousands of people devoting their efforts to developng and manufacturing the necessary equipment.

Somebody would have to finance and manage it.

It seems unfortunately unlikely that oil companies ever would, or their bought and paid for government dogs either. But within a decade or less, I think civilized life would be within the reach of everyone, and the infrastructure would belong to families themselves.

Are we so far gone that the most inspiring path we could take to create our future is not even under consideration?

Snerty.....What form do

Snerty.....What form do profits usually take ?

Has anybody ever added up and published the figures on how much of that imaginary cash stays in the country, one way or another, and how much of it goes out, into the pockets of "foreign investors"

Plus, the real physical and imaginary monetary damage the present economic accounting system has no debit columns for.

Ideal book keeping, I wish I could have used in my businesses. The more damage the higher the GDP. As one of the real economists, Herman Daly, put it over 30 years ago, "Everything goes on, nothing comes off"

Just imagine how much the Fukushima and generally the tidal wave disaster raised the Japanese GDP!

Also, how much of that imaginary GDP is of any benefit for Canadians and how much of it leaves ?

Ed Deak.

Fiat Lux

"Has anybody ever added up and published the figures on how much of that imaginary cash stays in the country, one way or another, and how much of it goes out, into the pockets of "foreign investors""

About 25 years ago Mel Hurtig did the math and found that about $4 million an hour was leaving Canada in the form of repatriated profits. That was about 35 billion a year in 1988 dollars. Obviously the number would be a lot bigger now.

Think of what that money could do if it stayed in Canada.

Its funny how people that demand austerity because of what we pay in interest on our debt, even though a lot of that interest is paid to domestic interests, don't have a problem with foreign ownership and all that money leaving the country.

tar is the appropriate terminology

Looking through the Tyee archives, it is clear that oil sands is the term used in their articles, including those by Nikiforuk. However, his book is titled, "Tar Sands, Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent." He devotes a chapter to why the term tar is appropriate, including this quote: "In 1983, engineer Donald Towson made a good case for calling the resource tar, not oil, in the Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology. H e argued that the word accurately captures the resource's unorthodox make-up, which means it is "not recoverable in its natural state through a well by ordinary production methods."

Bitumen is thick and dirty like tar, it contains 50 percent pitch, five percent sulfur as well as nitrogen, heavy metals and abrasive sand.

Nikiforuk writes, "calling the world's dirtiest hydrocarbon 'oil' grossly diminishes the resource's huge environmental footprint." Unfortunately, Nikiforuk has to use the term oil sands in the Tyee, but that is still better than not having the opportunity to read his very insightful articles.

It is unfortunate that the Tyee feels it is necessary to use the term "oil sands" to appear neutral, as most of its readers flock to this website for its alternative news and opinion. Would it not be better to call a spade, a spade - why not then bitumen sands? After all, Alberta is destroying the environment to get the oil out of the tar-like bitumen.