Oil Sands and Coal

If people were not so concerned about being in celebrates and actually knew something about global warming there would be protesting about coal and coal mining. If anything will tip our planet into a greenhouse effect, it will be coal not our oil sands.

Canada produces less than 2% of the global warming gases. From the oil sands you get something like 0.15% of the global warming gases. The big problem is coal. Ever see pictures of smog in Chinese's cities? This is cause by coal burning. See pictures or heard of the famous London smog? That was coal burning also.

From anything I had read the US still produces some 50% of their electricity from burning coal. If they really wanted to do something about global warming, they would attack burning coal for electricity.

Aw, but you say that the oil sands development causes cancer. But if you look at cancer rates by province then Alberta is below the median level with an incident rate of 440.3 per 100,000. Nova Scotia is higher at 497.1 per 100,000. See table. In table I used "All Cancers", "All Ages", "Both Sexes" and "Latest Multi-year Averages". Even David Suzuki's site, which discusses this very topic, says that we cannot demonstrate that the oil sands development causes an increase in cancer rates. Review his information here.

Of course this is a very complex subject and we have the problem that lots of things cause cancer and lots of people get cancer. Also, what about all the health problems caused by mining coal? It is not that any of this is great, but we need to put things into perspective.

Maybe, just maybe, the people who want to develop the oil sands in Alberta are not the monsters that some make them out to be.

On my other blog I am today writing about Russel Metals Inc. (TSX-RUS, OTC-RUSMF)...continue...

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