Oil and Global Warming

Intro

• The biggest overall contributor to global warming is power generation that accounts for almost a quarter of the contribution to manmade global warming. The biggest single contributor is deforestation which accounts for a little under a fifth of the manmade contribution to global warming. The other major contributors are transportation in all forms - fuel for cars, planes, ships, trains etc, this is mainly carbon dioxide. The agriculture industry is another major contributor and the single biggest contributor of both methane and nitrous oxide gases.
• Oil&Gas Exploration, Production and Refining account for 6.3% of the green house gas emissions.

Issues with Non-Conventional Oil (Tar sands)

• The majority of tar sands deposits are found under boreal wilderness. The depths at which these deposits lie requires everything on the surface to be scrapped away in order for extraction to be possible - destroying the wilderness forever. When current and future tar sands development are combined the area of destruction will be the size of England.
• Extracting and processing tar sands oil is much more energy intensive than conventional oil and results in between 3 to 5 times more greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) per barrel of oil produced. Most statistics on the amount of emissions currently produced by the tar sands only refers to processing and don’t include the GHGs released through the destruction of boreal forest involved in tar sands development. The global boreal forest ecosystem is the largest terrestrial storehouse of carbon in the world and preserving boreal forest is critical in protecting our planet from climate change.
• 90% of the water used in tar sands operations is never returned to the river, but is diverted to toxic lakes – also called tailings ponds. Already covering more than 130 square kilometres along the Athabasca River, these huge “ponds” can be seen from space. The sludge in the ponds is acutely toxic to aquatic life, birds, terrestrial wildlife and humans, their location along a major flyway, makes the ponds appear to be welcome havens of fresh water, especially to migrating waterfowl. In May 2008, at least 1600 ducks are known to have died in one incident.

Climate Refugees

• In 2005, half of Bhola Island in Bangladesh became permanently flooded, leaving 500,000 people homeless. The Bhola Islanders have been described as some of the world's first climate refugees. In 2007, a Bangladeshi scientist stated: "We're already seeing hundreds of thousands of climate refugees moving into slums in Dhaka." These refugees were fleeing flooded coastal areas.
• Norman Myers of Oxford University has estimated climate change will increase the number of environmental refugees six-fold over the next fifty years to 150 million.
• The UN University's Institute for Environment and Human Security predicts that by 2010, there will be 50 million 'environmentally displaced people', most of whom will be women and children.

Sources

"World Resources Institute - Sources of GHG"
"Greenpeace on tar sands"
"United Nations University - Environmental Refugees"