The only “blow to the Keystone pipeline” is in the exaggerated reporting of the science…
The “report” (Kurek et al., 2013) did find slight elevations (relative to 1950) of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) in five lakes in the vicinity of the Fort McMurray, near oil sand mining and upgrading operations in NE Alberta. The PAH flux trends in four of the lakes were unremarkable compared to the control (Namur Lake). One lake (NE20) exhibited PAH levels similar to urban and agricultural areas. The other four lakes were very similar to remote lakes in the Canadian Rockies and boreal forests.
This is Figure 1 from Kurek et al., 2013…
The lakes around Fort McMurray clearly do exhibit some increase in PAH flux since 1950. The winds in the area are generally southerly. So, it makes sense that SW22 and SE22 exhibit the least increase in PAH flux; while NE13 and NE20 exhibit the greatest increase. However, apart from NE20, the PAH fluxes aren’t remarkable when compared to Lake Namur. There does seem to be some evidence of minor wind-driven pollution in the lakes to the north of site AR6.
The supplemental information included a comparison table of PAH levels in the study area and in distant urban and remote settings. I transcribed those data to Excel in order to put the oil sands pollution into perspective.
Three of the four oil sands sites had lower PAH concentrations than Namur Lake. Only one of the sites (NE20) was comparable to lakes in urban and agriculturally developed areas.
I noticed that two of the remote, boreal forest sites (PAD 18) had maximum PAH fluxes in 1758 and 1810. So I plotted the PAH concentrations and fluxes against the year in which the maximum flux occurred.
This clearly demonstrates that the PAH “pollution” associated with oil sands development is insignificant. The PAH concentrations in most of lakes in the study area are unremarkable when compared to remote lakes in the boreal forest in the 18th and 19th century and are more similar to modern remote lakes than they are to urban and agriculturally developed areas.
Reference
Joshua Kurek, Jane L. Kirk, Derek C. G. Muir, Xiaowa Wang, Marlene S. Evans, and John P. Smol. Legacy of a half century of Athabasca oil sands development recorded by lake ecosystems. PNAS 2013 ; published ahead of print January 7, 2013, doi:10.1073/pnas.1217675110
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
More evidence that the greenies care nothing for anything except scaring people and advancing a gaia-first–humans-last mentality. The greenies will not be happy until every last human is wiped from existence, just like the “Mr. Smith” character in the Matrix movies.
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CodeTech says:
January 11, 2013 at 12:17 am
So is there a latin term for the logical fallacy of attributing far too much importance to trace quantities of materials? If it isn’t trace amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere it’s trace amounts of hydrocarbons. As I understand it the “aromatic” part is an indication of the volatility of these substances.
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Don’t know nothin ’bout Latin, but in English it’s obsessive-compulsive disorder.
In re logarithmic bar charts; Edward r. Tufte, in The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, calls them “chart junk.” It is a favorite ploy of The Mendicant Order, the ancient order of liars.
mpainter, you comment at 3:21 was spot until until the last sentence, where you presume that President Obama would prefer to see a prosperous North America if not for alienating his supporters. I contend that he opposes the Keystone pipeline not just to sooth the econuts, but to ensure America doesn’t become more prosperous.
There was a time that I used to read CSMonitor daily…I now wonder why.
They talk about micro grams and nano grams in their report. So basically they found: nothing, really nothing. But they could at least make a scary chart, that’s enough for the sellers of fear
@CodeTech
>So is there a latin term for the logical fallacy of attributing far too much importance to trace quantities of materials? If it isn’t trace amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere it’s trace amounts of hydrocarbons.
As someone who builds labs to measure things, I would like to know for sure what was measured and when. “It is not quite as simple as that,” my brother used to say. If they measured sediments all sorts of considerations must be made when checking for something that is known to be volatile (they are called ‘volatiles’ for a reason) and if it is from old measurements using difference instrumentation some proper calibration effort is needed. The old readings may be high or low depending on the technology. Just askin’…
The use of two-stroke engines, popular on boats for a long time and less popular now, and the number of trips made on the lakes could create historic spikes. What is clear is that there are detectable amounts of contaminants and the level seems to be rising though not as high as in urban areas which is exactly what one would expect in an industrialising region.
This result does not support extremist positions and does not support those saying there is no impact (are there any left?) and as several above have pointed out, cannot be a big surprise when the source is an exposed surface feature.
One of the ways to clean up a gigantic area of (natural) oil pollution is to dig it out, remove it from the sand by heating it and turn it into a useful product, sell it and have the whole thing be financially self-sustaining as long as the (natural) contamination of the environment persists. Seems like the oil companies beat the clean-up crews to the punch.
The EPA on PAHs:
http://www.epa.gov/ogwdw/pdfs/factsheets/soc/tech/pahs.pdf
“They [PAHs] are not produced or used commercially but are ubiquitous in that they are formed as a result of incomplete combustion of organic materials.”
“PAHs are found in exhaust from motor vehicles and other gasoline and diesel engines, emission from coal-, oil-, and wood-burning stoves and furnaces, cigarette smoke; general soot and smoke of industrial, municipal, and domestic origin, and cooked foods, especially charcoal-broiled; in incinerators, coke ovens, and asphalt processing and use.”
“There is some evidence that benzo(a)pyrene has the potential to cause cancer from a lifetime exposure at levels above the MCL.”
So, the precautionary principle demands we stop incompletely burning organics. All combustion must be 100% efficient from here on out. /sarc
My research suggests that a lifetime of living is fatal.
I’m amazed at so little pollution in Canadian lakes as stateside some individuals/companies will do anything to save a buck, including illegal dumping of drilling fluids (or anything else regulated) into ground water or shallow wells (maybe where some of the fracking damage to ground water comes from). Unfortunately such incidents only harm the very industries they are in because of the negative political fallout. Typically when (right wing) politicians says industry needs fewer regulations, they really mean less oversight (aka Greenspan/Do away with Glass-Steagall/Big Banking derivative gambling/2008 meltdown). Few bother to analyze how or why regulations (and complex specifications/buying rules) got put into place to begin with (usually an attempt control abuses and cheating), and then those rapidly grow in size because the banks of retainered lawyers come out to find loopholes which then need closing (goes a long way toward explaining much of the oh so complex tax code). Trading moral sensitivity for profit is one of the expensive downsides of a “Free Market System”.
Would you have also found this to be visually deceptive?
Would you have also found this to be visually deceptive?
Linear Scale
You guys crack me up!
Linear Scale
Dave, your hobby is debunking junk science. You said it, hobby.
Because you have an axe to grind and a prejudice, your work is suspect.
You’re not an objective scientist presenting his work in an established journal for peer review.
The junk science is yours, Dave.
They were the Athabasca Tar Sands back when I was in college (Late Pleistocene). But, that was back before tar was a four-letter word and Al Gore invented GAGW… 😉
Speaking of sludge-filled cups, AGW is set to destroy coffee!!!
http://www.theawl.com/2013/01/the-coming-coffee-apocalypse
Peter Miller says:
January 11, 2013 at 1:18 am
When you have the world’s largest oil/tar deposit outcropping on surface, everywhere nearby is going to be polluted with hydrocarbons. There is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
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Two strategies are available to clean up the oil sands:
method 1 – regulation:
Slap a big hefty fine on god for having placed it there in the first place. US currency says “in god we trust” for a reason.
method 2 – business:
Dig it out of the ground and and sell it to the highest bidder.
The cash strapped americans are playing “those grapes are likely sour anyways”, so it may well be the Chinese that end up with the oil.
While the US will continue to be firmly in the pockets of the house of Saud and OPEC, ensuring 100 more years of arab-israeli conflict and global terrorism, financed by US oil purchases.
Al Gorzeera TV makes perfect sense as a stepping stone along the way, to promote continued US reliance on middle east oil, leaving the middle east to dominate US foreign policy for the next century.
@Mike, the “axe to grind” version of Microsoft Excell is a hot seller to us skeptics.
Gail Combs says:
January 11, 2013 at 5:24 am
All true about styrene and benzoin – but the EPA managed to call CO2 a pollutant
Speaking of Al Gorizma, I guess we all know where the anti-science and anti-technology funding is coming from.
David Middleton says:
January 11, 2013 at 6:49 am
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Seriously, no joking; presentation is crucial. The alternative you offered is a much better presentation, imo. It puts everything into perspective, visually. It makes your point at a glance, and the presentation you used did not. I suggest the broken bar method for presenting data that runs off the scale, as the urban data. Such treatment would have allowed a larger scale for the other plots.
mpainter
Don’tTrust’M/ says:
January 11, 2013 at 6:36 am
Big Banking derivative gambling/2008 meltdown
=========
It was not a banking meltdown. The banking system got two presidential candidates bidding to see who would give them the most money to cover their potential real-estate losses. It was all very smart business.
All that was required was to withhold credit and the candidates were tripping over themselves trying to “solve the problem” by throwing cash at it, all under the spotlight of television.
Goldman Sach’s has a long history of manipulation of the US financial system from the inside for the advantage of a privileged few. Look at the number of high ranking Treasury officials that started as Goldman executives. Look at their connection with Gore and CCX.
These folks are very well connected and pull the purse strings. When they say jump, the politicians say “how high”. Why else would politicians spend hundreds of millions of dollars to get a job that pays hundreds of thousands?
The Federal Reserve was brought into existence as a privately held company with the power to control the governments ability to create credit for just this reason. So that in return the government would not have to bail out the banks using taxpayer money. All this went out the window in the panic. Largely because the US taxpayer has been led to believe the Federal Reserve is owned by the people. It is not.
From January 7/13
Schindler and Smol both mentioned in this article.
Alberta oilsands pollution ‘clearly evident’: scientists; Sending toxins into the atmosphere for decades
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Alberta+oilsands+pollution+clearly+evident+scientists/7785635/story.html
I see Schindler’s name mentioned several times in the references of the PNAS paper.
( http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/01/02/1217675110.full.pdf )
I agree it would be easy to describe the logarithmic scale as deceptive. Posting both graphs is more informative and would avoid the deception charge. Other than that thanks for the informative post.
CodeTech says:January 11, 2013 at 12:17 am
So is there a latin term for the logical fallacy of attributing far too much importance to trace quantities of materials?
I would guess something like ‘homeopathy’. /sarc
http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/a?dbs+hsdb:@term+@DOCNO+7092
Polycyclic Aromatic hydrocarbons (PCA) are well known carcinogens. However, most data we have come from cancers due to occupational exposure.
So, let’s say that the amount of PCAs in that one lake roughly doubled. This in itself is not a meaningful number. The question is: does it fall outside of the range that humans are usually exposed to? How high is the exposure through air or through food in that area?
Human intake of PCA is approximately 1-5 ug/day from food, 0.16 ug/day from ambient air, 0.006 ug/day from water. Active smoking of 1 pack per day adds another 2-5 ug/day. The data have to be evaluated against this background. If human exposure in that area is outside these normal ranges (or shows a clear trend towards going outside of these ranges) I start worrying.
I am not sure that I would want to use urban lakes as a yardstick, because some of the urban lakes are so badly polluted that you are not allowed to swim in them and they cannot be used for drinking water (I used to live in Syracuse, NY for along time… They have one of the most polluted lakes in the USA).