The first stage of restoring an oil sands mine into a peat wetland is to gather branches and wood that contain seeds for shrubs like blueberries and cranberries.
Image: Photo courtesy of Syncrude Canada Ltd.
Previous studies have vastly underestimated the carbon footprint of the Canadian oil sands by not considering the industry's impact on peatlands, according to new research.
Scientists from the University of Alberta found that 10 operational oil sands mining projects would destroy enough peatlands to release 11.4 million to 47.3 million metric tons of stored carbon into the atmosphere. That release is the equivalent of seven years' worth of emissions from the oil sands mining region.
If the full area currently under lease for future mining had been calculated, as well, the carbon emission numbers could be three times higher, said Rebecca Rooney, a research associate in the biological sciences department at the University of Alberta and a co-author of the study, which appeared yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The carbon emissions numbers also would jump if companies do not fully implement their plans to "reclaim" land by planting carbon-absorbing trees over mined areas, she said.
"The industry can't tell you how much peat they've agreed to have destroyed," Rooney said. "That's quite alarming."
The other authors from the University of Alberta were professors Suzanne Bayley and David Schindler, who is well-known in Canada for publishing a 2010 study about water pollutants from oil sands mining that prompted a national review of the industry.
Rooney said the emission numbers take into consideration the offsetting carbon benefits of existing efforts by industry to reclaim land.
The carbon deficit still occurs because peatlands cannot easily be restored. Additionally, the upland trees like spruce and aspen commonly used as replacement do not have nearly the carbon-absorbing ability of peat, the researchers said.
The study comes amid a fierce debate about the carbon footprint of the oil sands generally. A study released last month in Nature Climate Change found that emissions released from burning oil sands fuel would be minuscule in comparison to those from combusting coal and natural gas.
Rooney said the current study does not contradict that research, since the footprint of the oil sands would still be less than that of coal even with consideration of the peatlands.
The point, she said, is that Canadians are being asked to weigh the economic benefits and the environmental impact of the oil sands without complete information.
'Misleading' notions of restoration
It is also important for people to understand that mined land is not being restored to its original state, despite industry claims, she said. There have been television ads running in Canada showing people walking through reclaimed areas of flowers and trees that are "completely misleading," Schindler said.
Greg Stringham, a vice president at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said in a statement that "industry's obligation is to restore the land to a sustainable condition, a similar but not identical state. As such, we have not said we will restore peatland, although we are working on it."
Albertan law generally requires all land disturbed by oil sands operations to be reclaimed by an official company plan. The province also does not have a comprehensive wetlands policy, which makes it difficult to craft rules for what to do with disturbed lands, specifically peatlands, according to Bayley, a study co-author.
The study is the first that measures the cumulative effect of reclaimed mines, and not each mine in isolation, Bayley said.
Peat, the mass of decomposed plant matter that has settled in many wetlands in Alberta, is composed of about 50 percent carbon, accumulated over thousands of years. Peatlands are an important component of slowing the onset of climate change, as they absorb carbon dioxide and prevent the release of the gas into the atmosphere.
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23 Comments
Add CommentToo many American politicians have already been bought off for this type of information to stop the pipeline now. Many wealthy investors that also have control of the spin of key news sources stand to lose out on their investments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNice try though...
Given that more and more research is showing CO2 to be a minor component in climate change, I fail to see the significance of this article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf there is anything that the American people is misinformed about it is CO2. Coal, oil, and natural gas produce carbon monoxide (CO1) and very little carbon dioxide (CO2) from their fossil fuel power plants and automobiles than anything else. So why don't the republicans stop hiding behind CO2 and start telling the truth about CO1 that their fossil fuel is producing that is killing people, animals and destroying environments? The scientific rags should start calling it CO1 instead of CO2 and take away the republicans harping point and nasty name calling to our scientists.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI see nanoparticle emissions as the big issue. It has potential to react with DNA. Today's engines have increased the output. That is what will kill it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMore irrelevant nonsense. When so called scientists can change the words "Could be" in this title of this article to IS, then there is something to talk about. Otherwise this is nothing more than some shaman telling his villagers some deity "could be" upset because they didn't give him is allotment of chickens for the day.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe usual number of credible references (0), I see. No surprise...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo testable repeatable, falsifiable experimental results have ever demonstrated that CO2 is anything but a 98 pound shivering virgin in the humping sweaty brothel of climate change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you have one show the world. I double dog dare you.
@Shoshin,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe know you are lying because multiple times you have been presented with the following info:
This question has been answered many times prior.
For example if less heat is escaping the Earth's atmosphere because green house gases are capturing it and re-radiating it, then that should be observable. Lo and Behold! Satellite observations observe just this.
From the JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 114, D19101, 12 PP., 2009
Global Atmospheric Downward Longwave Radiation Over Land Surface Under All-sky Conditions from 1973 to 2008
From the Abstract: "We found that daily L d increased at an average rate of 2.2 W m−2 per decade from 1973 to 2008. The rising trend results from increases in air temperature, atmospheric water vapor, and CO2 concentration."
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JD011800.shtml
Note that is only one of a string of observations of downward welling IR.
Another piece of the evidence dates back to the late 19th century when Arrhenius Svante derived from the physics the prediction that nights would warm faster than days. Lo and Behold! 20th and 21st century observations published in peer reviewed journals show just that:
From the Journal of Geophysical Research, 2006, 111,
From the Abstract: "Over 70% of the global land area sampled showed a significant decrease in the annual occurrence of cold nights and a significant increase in the annual occurrence of warm nights. Some regions experienced a more than doubling of these indices. This implies a positive shift in the distribution of daily minimum temperature throughout the globe."
http://www.knmi.nl/publications/showAbstract.php?id=706
Want another? You do? Well now we got that old chestnut that I cited many, many times to you before. If the CO2 is capturing more heat then the stratosphere should COOL. A prediction using physics models ways back in 1967 by *Manabe and Wetherald. Lo and Behold! Empirical observations decades later show just that.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 30, 1228, 4 PP., 2003
Those are just some of the predictions and later observations of human induced climate change and you have seen all of them at some time. This is why you are called a denier.
Even if it isn't restored very well now, eventually it will revert to a natural form at some point. There are plenty of places that were once teeming with humans that are currently overgrown and restored to a natural habitat. As the Bitumen and oil is extracted the overall elevation drops and more wetland occurs. All it takes is time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThats right, there are lots of peat deposits in central and northern Alberta. Next time you buy a bale for your garden, check where it comes from. Even if its 'Alaska' brand or whatever, chances are, its been mined in Ab. The stuff is just dug up with a front end loader, then natural gas dried, baled,compressed, and bagged in a continuous process. The footprints of these peat operations are vanishingly small in relation to the size of the moose pasture/peat bogs that surround them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAb has occasional massive forest fires-natural and anthropogenic, just like anywhere else. If conditions are dry enough the fire gets into the peat, and the fire will smolder underground for months-despite aggressive fire suppression.
A few years ago we had a big one and the energy release was said to be the equivalent of the Hiroshima atom bomb. So whatever figures are cited in the study, have to be viewed in the bigger picture of energy exchanges in Ab peat-by the year, the decade, by centuries.
While they are at it, why dont these profs start snivelling about the wildfires that periodically close tens of miles of the main highway between Edmonton and Fort McMurray?
There is plenty to be concerned about with oilsands development, but I fail to see how adding the carbon footprint of the removed peatlands adds to an intelligent discussion of the overall impact.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease cite one published paper in a recognized scientific journal that shows
"CO2 to be a minor component in climate change".
You realize all you have shown is satellite information which only covers the smallest fraction of time when compared to the age of the planet and at best evidence some years have different levels of heat that others. Even if there is more, it is not evidence of your CO2 caused global warming theory. The heat generated by 7 billion humans, their livestock, homes, factories, engines, hot water heaters and etc. could just as easily be part of or even all of the heat difference your satellites picked up.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI know, you people discount the sun producing more heat as well or any other possible cause of combinations of cause.
Your initiate statement is totally wrong. Your theory is CO2 is the only green house gas and that it has an effect of trapping heat. Your "proof" is the simple presence of heat by looking at statistical information on partial temperature data going back a few years and comparing that to local statistical temp data doing back a few centuries from ice cores and somehow this heat can only be caused by your theory of CO2.
Actually, you would have to demonstrate CO2 having this effect in a real experiment, such as an enclosed atmostphere in a lab as well as disprove all other possible sources of heat or greenhouse effect and then perhaps you could conclude CO2 might be the cause.
Your statement that we think CO2 is a greenhouse gas trapping heat and the fact we think the atmosphere is hotter is only more religious like assumptions and claims found in bibles.
If they make it sound worse, they can get more grant money to do more research. If they find nothing, the gravy train may end. This is why many people don't view climatologists as real scientists. They have a built in bias toward finding more disaster.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRubbish -- Intellectual saboteur alert! Here's just another typical economically/politically motivated denial using the distraction/digression of citing some mythological, never-achievable, absolutist "proven fact" as the only acceptable foundation for the initiation of progressive action.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCould someone please explain how burning fuel derived from oil (tar, or bitumen) sands produces less CO2 than coal or natural gas. Is it because of a lower carbon content, hence lower energy output per kilogram of fuel?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisre: Peat bog recovery after degradation
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is completely restored to its original state in about 70 years. Left undisturbed as some are suggesting it will be completely destroyed within a period of not much longer than 150 years (often much less) due to natural fires.
Total carbon released from wildfire destruction and subsequent natural rebuilding process is much, much greater than from the current oil sands driven human disturbance of the peat bog.
Anyway, the total area of disturbance is trivial compared to the size of the bog.
Does anyone proofread any more? Or is it just "rush to press"?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAfter claiming that "nearly 30,000 hectares (115 square miles) of peatlands will be lost despite the reclamation efforts and about 3 hectares restored" the article goes on to note (just six short paragraphs later) "committed $7 million this year to recreate a 54-hectare peat wetland called the Sandhill Fen Watershed project".
That one project alone is almost 10 times the size the earlier "3 hectares restored" claim - which presumably was meant to be a "lifetime" number since the "30,000 hectares" would correspond to the total if the entire lease is mined out over it's commercial life.
Congratulations on a new record for short term memory loss!
Did you pass high school chemistry? Do you still have the textbook? Re-read it ...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes. The particular study referenced referred to CO2 released by burning "all" of the currently available resource for coal, natural gas and oil sands; not to the CO2 released "per unit". Much of the oil sands are uneconomic or unrecoverable, compared to some fairly large natural gas deposits in North America and around the world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this#17 gwmckenzie
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMakes an excellent point.
Something else that is missing in the article is a definition for _lost_. The author's claim vast peat territory will be lost as if it isn't a natural process where the peat bog regenerates itself in response to its physical surroundings.
By reclaimed I take them to mean that a given plot of land has been terraformed to speed up the process and give a visual confirmation that the bog is still there.
Peat bogs don't _build up over thousands of years_. However they do _last_ for that period in some locations. If they built up for that period they would reach the sky. Trust me there are no mountain ranges composed of peat.
Peat is routinely harvested as a fuel source, one which is very inefficient when compared to the bitumen from the oil sands.
"Given that more and more research is showing CO2 to be a minor component in climate change.."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this------
Seems that even one of the world's most recognizable climate skeptics, Fred Singer, is saying, "Climate Deniers (shoshin) Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name."
Singer says:
"Another subgroup simply says that the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is so small that they can’t see how it could possibly change global temperature. But laboratory data show that CO2 absorbs IR radiation very strongly. Another subgroup says that natural annual additions to atmospheric CO2 are many times greater than any human source; they ignore the natural sinks that have kept CO2 reasonably constant before humans started burning fossil fuels. Finally, there are the claims that major volcanic eruptions produce the equivalent of many years of human emission from fossil-fuel burning. To which I reply: OK, but show me a step increase in measured atmospheric CO2 related to a volcanic eruption."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=3263
"Your theory is CO2 is the only green house gas and that it has an effect of trapping heat....Your statement that we think CO2 is a greenhouse gas trapping heat.."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this------
Nobody has EVER said that CO2 is "the only green house gas," but CO2 certainly absorbs IR radiation very strongly and at different wavelengths than other green house gases like water vapor and methane.
Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name
by S. Fred Singer
"One of their (denialists like priddseren) favorite arguments is that the greenhouse effect does not exist at all because it violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics—i.e., one cannot transfer energy from a cold atmosphere to a warmer surface. It is surprising that this simplistic argument is used by physicists, and even by professors who teach thermodynamics. One can show them data of downwelling infrared radiation from CO2, water vapor, and clouds, which clearly impinge on the surface. But their minds are closed to any such evidence."
"Another subgroup simply says that the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is so small that they can’t see how it could possibly change global temperature. But laboratory data show that CO2 absorbs IR radiation very strongly. Another subgroup says that natural annual additions to atmospheric CO2 are many times greater than any human source;"
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=3263
Shoshin is a Troll, and a poorly informed one. Do not feed him, ignore him(and any like him). They live to inflame, and don't care to inform, of be informed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article is VERY relevant-
We should all be concerned about the Carbon Intensity of Fuel. How much CO2 was released to produced a given barrel/gallon? That includes, in the case of Tar Sands mining, the loss of Peat and it's concomitant C02 re-uptake capability.
This is why the Eu created the Fuel Quality Directive. Burning Fossil Fuels and releasing the carbon is bad enough... lets at least find/produce/refine the fuel(s) them in the least carbon intense manner.