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An environmental catastrophe is underway in the tar sands of Alberta.. And it’s about to infect the Great Lakes Basin and the US Midwest, too. : environment

Too bad. Minnesota has been causing environmental damage in Manitoba for decades.

Turnabout is fair play.

Canada is a world leader in mining technology and runs large scale mining operations all over the world.

Many of those operations are responsible for large scale pollution.

Canada is also the world leader in timber exports making huge areas of west, east, and central Canada look like a patchwork quilt.

And the same can be said of many countries around the world.

I suppose yours is perfect?

Welcome to Washington state, USA.

:(

Yeah, fuck the loggers.

We don't need no stinkin' buildings!

There are just too many people in the world.

It's a damn shame.

Because the only thing we can make buildings from are clear-cut trees.

Trees grow back, and wood is probably the least environmentally destructive building material.

Building materials should not be environmentally destructive.

I was making two points: We can make buildings from things other than wood, such as cob and stone.

Clear-cutting to make 2.6's is bad forestry.

We can make buildings from things other than wood, such as cob and stone. Cob is incredibly expensive to build with, especially trying to create a 2 story house with it. Stone is a fine but I don't really think quarries are that much better for the environment . Stone doesn't grow back. Clear-cutting to make 2.6's is bad forestry. I'll defer to you here, I'm not in forestry.

Cob is less costly to build with, even if you don't factor in the cost of environmental damage due to clear-cutting, the lost jobs and destroyed towns when the logging corporations move on, etc.

Check out eco-sense.ca. Stone houses last pretty much forever if done right, and of course the stone is reusable.

Even if it looks bad from satellite the lumber companies in Canada are planting more trees than they are harvesting.

I worked at a lumber company and in the FMA my division handled they planted at least 1.5 times the trees they harvested. edit: Wow what a train wreck of a sentence, fixing.

They can't redo what nature does.

They can't recreate an old growth habitat.

They replant so that at sometime in the future, they can re cut.

An old growth forest is a highly complex community that differs from a foresters utopian tree plantation.

I don't think you know how they plant now.

Matching seed lots to elevation, species to micro-habitat, mixed bag planting.

It's not the days of clear-cut and monospecies anymore.

Mostly this is driven by an economic realization that trying to recreate what was there gives the best results when all things are considered like fire suppression, pest control, natural regeneration.

How's that pest control working out?

Not so good, is it? They can't duplicate an old growth forest.

As just one example, the old growth of certain lichens which some animals have evolved to depend on.

A forest doesn't just consist of trees, BTW.

There's a complex biodiversity that has evolved in an environment that too complex to duplicate by replanting some trees after cutting them down every x years.

How's that pest control working out? The Mountain Pine Beetle spreads fastest in the old growth lodgepole pine s pretty good all things considered.

Yea, sure/ http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Forests/Canada/BC/Beetle/ David Suzuki is one of my favorite Canadians.

I was being facetious because you implied that old growth is somehow slowing down the beetle population.

C l

This isn't biased at all.

Ok, how about this

The Great Lakes, threatening water and air quality around the world's largest body of fresh water. No, wrong.

That would be Lake Baikal .

I'd expect more from a Canadian (major?) newspaper. I do agree with the premise of the article, however.

Moving water such a long distance is very dangerous and could really fuck up the ecosystems there.

They should really try to keep things local.

Largest body of fresh water. not largest lake.

Pedantic Check and match.

Huh? Lake Baikal is larger by volume than all the Great Lakes combined.

From the great W .

As you have linked there, so can I The Laurentian Great Lakes are a chain of freshwater lakes located in eastern North America, on the Canada–United States border.

Consisting of Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, they form the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth. This is most likely why the writer would write that.

Also of note is that in Ontario, that is also what is taught to us. I'd expect more from a Canadian (major?) newspaper. So would I yet for very diffrent reasons

So now tree spikers have a bigger target.

I'll bet the recent explosions around a gas pipeline in Northwestern B.C.

Were done by someone who loves the planet.

Lets save the planet by blowing up pipelines full of pollutants, so they can make the problem we are trying to fight. I find it amazing how extremist eniromentalists think.

"kill everything to prove others are killing one or two things"

Fine, then let the U.S.

Continue spending billions of dollars fighting in foreign lands and killing thousands of innocent people, just to guarentee oil exports from a region dominated by oppressive, authoritative nations. I get it -- the environmental damage is already great and could get potentially worse.

I'm working on an Oil Sands project and can attest to the environmental considerations that go into these projects -- it's not as simplistic as digging a hole and leaving it there when you're done. So, in the long run, which is better option for our neighbours and, ultimately, the rest of the world? [EDIT - spelling]

So that is your stark choice: dig the sands or go to war.

Your country really is between a rock and a hard place if that is what it has come to, simplistic as it sounds.

I'm Canadian ('our neighbours' was referring to the U.S.)...

And I appreciate that the options aren't as simplistic as I've described.

The U.S. (and the world) have to curb their reliance on oil.

I agree that environmentally friendly solutions are key, but it is naive to think that this can happen even in a few decades.

Realistically, it will take a couple or more generations to accomplish this, once there is a fundamental shift in the world's attitude toward fossil fuels.

Until then, I still believe the U.S.

Has options that lead toward or away from conflict when searching for its energy requirements.

I agree that environmentally friendly solutions are key, but it is naive to think that this can happen even in a few decades. The entire US auto industry was retooled to make war machinery in six months in WWII.

We can go green much faster than we think;

It just takes the will to do it.

Absolutely, but the will isn't there for many and the will isn't being lead by the government (no surprise, based on who's been in the White House for the last eight years).

I don't think the attitude will shift until it is all gone.

I'd like to think otherwise, but so long as there is oil to sell, nobody is going to want to save it for more important things than burning in an engine.

You act as if the only choice we have is to import oil or use the tar sands.

How about putting more funding into solar and other alternative sources.

So now tree spikers have a bigger target.

I'll bet the recent explosions around a gas pipeline in Northwestern B.C.

Were done by someone who loves the planet.

The title is incredibly misleading.

The article is written by a PR person, NOT a scientist.

There is no way oilsand production pollution, which is obviously terrible, can enter the Great Lakes watershed.

Just have a look for yourself.

Alberta is within either the Hudson's Bay or MacKenzie watersheds (Arctic Ocean!). http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http:%2F%2Fbbs.keyhole.com%2Fubb%2Fdownload.php%3FNumber%3D238839&om=1&ie=UTF8&z=3

DOOM!




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