nubbsgalore:covering an area the size of england, the tar sands are the second largest oil

nubbsgalore:covering an area the size of england, the tar sands are the second largest oil reserve in the world, with an estimated potential of 173 billion barrels. situated in alberta’s northern boreal forest, and holding almost twice as much carbon as all tropical rainforests, the area is also the most carbon rich terrestrial ecosystem on the planet. but to obtain a single barrel of crude oil, two tons of peat and soil must be extracted from the forrest to access the tar sand bellow, and three barrels of water are needed to then separate out the tar from the sand and refine the bitumen. (the trucks in the sixth photo are the size of a house.)the extraction processes uses more water in one day than a city of two million people, with 90 percent of it then stored in contaminated tailings ponds (large enough to be seen from space) which pollute key waterways like the athabasca river (first and last photos) with 11 million litres of toxic runoff every day.the process also consumes enough natural gas a day to heat six million canadian homes, and daily generates more carbon dioxide emissions than all the cars in canada combined. it also laces the air with dangerous toxins, poison communities with rare cancers and autoimmune diseases, and destroy critical animal habitats. photos by peter mettle, garth lenz and yann arthus bertrand. for more information, see “tipping point” on the nature of things, and petropolis  -- source link

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