There is a new not totally unbiased review of the impact of the Athabasca Oil Sands on climate and Alberta’s economy.

You can download it here.

We all know that the technology is polluting and wastes too much natural gas but what bothers me is as stated in the report.

As a consequence, the governments of Alberta and Canada are now gambling on another technology, carbon capture and storage (CCS), to reduce GHG emissions in the tar sands. Both governments have invested nearly $3 billion worth of taxpayers money to develop several demonstration projects.105 This largely untested and complex technology, intended primarily for coal-fired power plants, strips CO2 emissions from smoke stacks, compresses the gas and then transports it to be stored in deep underground formations. This waste must then be monitored for an undetermined time, possibly thousands of years, at an uncalculated cost, to ensure no leaks occur.

If the federal and provincial governments had any intelligence they would spend this money on proper sustainable ways to conserve energy and utilize sustainable resources.

News flash, to coincide with the now Greenpeace has blockaded Shell’s Albian Sands open-pit-mine north of Fort McMurray.

Here is another blog’s take on it.