Capturing and storing some of the carbon that would be released in the processing of Canada's tar sands may not clean the industry up. To turn the vast but dirty resource into useable oil, Canada will have to spew vast amounts of greenhouse gases.

That's the conclusion of a new study on the potential of so-called carbon capture and storage technology to reduce carbon emissions from tar sands operations.

The Athabasca tar sands of north-eastern Alberta, Canada, hold more than 170 billion barrels of recoverable oil, second only to Saudi Arabia's reserves. However, the oil is in the form of tarry bitumen that requires a great deal of energy to extract and turn into usable oil – some three to five times as much as conventional crude. The greenhouse gases released during the processing of tar sands make it an environmentally disastrous proposition.

No wonder, then, that the government of Alberta is putting much emphasis, and billions of research and development dollars, into carbon-capture technologies that aim to remove carbon dioxide released by the tar sands industry and store it safely underground.

But a new analysis (PDF) published this week by a UK consumer cooperative and the UK branch of environmental group WWF suggests that carbon capture will be too little, too late. Using the oil industry's own best-case estimate – that 30 per cent of carbon emissions could be captured by 2030 and 50 per cent by 2050 – the analysts note that this falls far short of the reduction needed to make tar sands oil compare favourably with conventional crude.

But carbon-capture technology is still experimental, retorts Jerry Bellikka, a spokesman for the Alberta government's energy department. "To do a paper analysis and suggest that it can't work is a great hypothetical exercise," he says. "We're trying to do the practical application and [get] results."

Source: New Scientist

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written by Linda Parker, December 28, 2009

You folks (mostly) are ignorant of history.
Let's take a look at a few facts relevent to the following question:
Why do the ultra-rich pretend to "donate" to what is euphemistically called "cancer research"?
1. Way back in the 1860's, "Old Bill" Rockefeller, the itinerant pappy of John D. Sr. and a patent medicine showman, used to sell bottled raw petroleum as a cure for cancer.
2. The DuPont's custom essay writing in fluorine chemistry led to vast amounts of the toxic, cancer-causing stuff being dumped in our water supply -- This is now known as "fluoridation".
These very same Merchants of Death (primarily the members of the old "trust" families") not only commit treason for profit during time of war, but have also created the vast system of "cancer treatment" which has no desire to seek a real, permanent cure for cancer.
Your body is chattel for their profit - when are you going to vote like you understand what they have done to you?

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