For companies to mine Canadian oil sands crude, or bitumen, they must remove trees, along with approximately 2 meters of peat, sand and gravel, before reaching oil. Part of the large carbon release results from peat's faster decomposition when it is disturbed and drained of water.
The shift from peatlands to uplands also has a long-term effect.
After the initial release of carbon, the altered landscape -- including with "reclaimed" trees -- will continue to absorb carbon at a much lower rate in the mined oil sands region without peat, or about 5,734 to 7,241 metric tons less annually, the three scientists found. Peatlands make up a majority of the fully leased area of the oil sands, a plot about the size of Rhode Island that is expected to be fully developed.
In the 10 mines examined, nearly 30,000 hectares (115 square miles) of peatlands will be lost despite the reclamation efforts and about 3 hectares restored.
"A lot of assumption here have never been tested," Bayley said. "Three hectares is a drop in a bucket."
The industry notes that less than 1 percent of global emissions come from the oil sands.
It also emphasizes that about 80 percent of the oil in Alberta is not attainable by mining but must instead be produced in situ, using natural gas to heat steam to loosen bitumen. The process does not disturb peatlands or wetlands much, but also has a larger greenhouse gas footprint than mining because of the natural gas usage (ClimateWire, Dec. 16, 2010).
Even so, the industry and the government of Alberta have invested heavily in land reclamation amid outcry against industrial "tailings ponds" of waste at oil sands facilities. In 2008 and 2009, the government of Alberta awarded $4.5 million to the School of Energy and the Environment at the University of Alberta to support oil sands reclamation research.
Research on peatlands remains in its infancy
Suncor and Syncrude Canada Ltd. are two oil sands mining companies that have spearheaded mining reclamation projects.
Syncrude Canada has committed $7 million this year to recreate a 54-hectare peat wetland called the Sandhill Fen Watershed project. Once the Sandhill wetland, or fen, is completed this year, it will serve as the site of a 15-year research study on peatland reclamation.
The restoration of wetlands have always played a role in Syncrude's reclamation, said Robert Vassov, a boreal forest researcher in the company's environmental research team. The focus on reclaiming upland forests over peatlands is dependent on timing -- in order to restore peat, the mine basins must be spent of the valuable bitumen.
"Now that we have the basins, we can progress into more wetland reclamation," Vassov said.
The research to recreate wetland or peatland environments is still in its infancy, said Kelman Wieder, a professor of biogeochemistry and ecosystem ecology at Villanova University who studies Canadian peatlands. The current commitment across oil sands companies should be increased at least tenfold, Wieder said.
In the perspective of large-scale landscape projects, the authors of the study are probably right: The reclamation efforts will do little to recoup the greenhouse gas emissions from extracting oil sands and digging out peat. Nevertheless, it is a field that is still evolving.
"I don't think that anyone is saying that reclamation promises to restore the complete systems that were there prior to mining," he said. But "they can get a small carbon sink, which is better than nothing."
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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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.