Alberta’s oilsands alone won’t doom the world to more than two degrees of warming, suggests a new study, but that doesn’t mean we should keep developing them.
A study published last week in Nature Climate Change by Phd candidate Neil Swart and Andrew Weaver, the Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis at the University of Victoria, looked at the global warming potential of the Alberta oilsands compared to other fossil fuels.
Researchers generally agree that the world must keep global warming below 2 C to prevent its most catastrophic effects. The world has already warmed by about 0.76 C.
Alberta has about 1.8 trillion barrels of oil in the oilsands, the study found, and burning all of that would warm the world by about 0.36 C — equivalent to about half the warming the world has experienced in the last century. Just burning the economically viable reserves would produce about 0.03 C of warming, while the warming caused by the reserves currently being developed would be “almost undetectable.” This warming does not include the effects of other oilsands pollution, the study notes, such as natural gas use.
Coal is a much bigger threat, the study found, as there’s a lot more of it. Burning all proven coal reserves would cause 0.92 C of warming, while burning all coal would cause about 15 C.
“The statement that utilizing the oilsands is in and of themselves ‘game-over’ for the climate system does not stand up to scrutiny,” Swart said in an interview.
But that doesn’t give us carte blanche to develop it, he added. “The oilsands alone can’t meet North American or global energy demands,” he said, and, when combined with other fossil fuels like coal or natural gas, they will certainly commit us to vast amounts of warming.
The oilsands are also a problem if Canada is to live up to its commitments under the Copenhagen Accord, noted Rob Powell, director of the World Wildlife Fund’s St. Albert branch.
“Canada agreed in 2009 to be part of an effort to limit emissions in order to avoid catastrophic climate change,” he said, yet according to Environment Canada, we’re on course to miss our Copenhagen target by about 178 megatonnes. About 62 megatonnes of those excess emissions will be due to the oilsands.
The atmosphere does not discriminate between coal and oilsands carbon, Swart said.
“As long as carbon is going into the atmosphere, we have a problem.”
If we are to avoid two degrees of warming, he said, we will have to rapidly move towards renewable energy sources and oppose infrastructure that commits us to fossil fuels, such as pipelines or coal-fired power plants.
The study is available at www.nature.com/natureclimatechange.
Canadians could improve their health by bringing in cosmetic pesticide bans, says a noted chemist, but should be prepared for the bugs and weeds that would result.
Margaret-Ann Armour, an associate dean of science at the University of Alberta and Order of Canada recipient, will give a free talk on pesticides and human health next week at the Telus World of Science in Edmonton. The talk is part of a series of lectures called Toxic Bodies.
Armour, who has done extensive research on pesticides and their disposal, will discuss the effects of various environmental toxins such as DDT, the herbicide 2,4-D, and the plastic additive bisphenol A on people and the consequences of banning their use.
It’s easy to call for a ban on DDT, a mosquito-killing chemical known for its disastrous effects on bird populations, Armour said, but that’s because we don’t have malaria. The World Health Organization has approved its use to fight that mosquito-borne disease.
“I’ll never forget the time that Edmonton banned DDT,” she said. “We didn’t have any alternatives at the time, and the following summer was just awful.”
While a global ban on pesticides would mean less food from the world’s farms, Armour said, local bans on cosmetic pesticide use would reduce the health risk caused by these chemicals. “In most instances, there are other alternatives we can use.”
Armour’s talk starts at 6:30 p.m. next Wednesday. Visit www.ualberta.ca/ersc for details.
