Eco-minded Bus drivers tone down the Oil Sands Rhetoric

Its my pleasure to report that the bus drivers at the Coumbia Icefields are no longer lying and exagerating about the Oil Sands.

I'm told that the bus drivers now tell each and every visitor that the Oil Sands consumes between 2 and 3 barrels of water per barrel of oil.  Its a far cry from the 10 barrels they claimed to me only a year ago.  I wonder how much water one of those bus drivers consumes per barrel of oil produced? They produce negative barrels remember. I don't know the exact numbers but I bet they have a much much less efficient water to oil ratio than the Oil Sands could ever have.

My information is second hand. I was busy destroying the earth (and so were you mwahahhahaha!). My girl and her cousins went without me. They destroy the earth in their spare time. (I'm kiddng girls!)

It might surprise you that I consider myself an environmentalist. To me that means I must simply leave things better than I found them. As liberals have left the idea of liberty so too has the green religion lost itself.

What perplexes me is the activist role that this particular operation on the Glacier is so keen on.  Why talk about Fort McMurry at all?  There you are in a jewel of the Rockies talking about oil production as your giant bus chuggs away like a dump truck in a strip mine.  Does any one else see the humour in this?  The attempted boycott of Alberta Tourism is knee slapping irony.  These Eco-nuts don't just bite the hand that feeds them, they bite the mouth that bites!  Its mass hysteria. 

I took a tour of some priceless Centosuar bonebeds in the Alberta Badlands a few weeks ago.  Funny that we didn't talk about the Oil Sands at all.  We talked about Geology, Natural History, even Natural Climate Changes that led to the melting of the ice age glaciers.  When I take a tour this is what I want to know.  I don't want to hear about politics.  I'll tour the parliment buildings when I want politics. 

They also ask the tour goers at the Athabasca Glacier if they beleive in Global Warming. This is great.  Some brave people actually spoke up and declared themselves apostates, unbelievers, heretics, deniers, and skeptics.  I call them Heroes.

You could argue that Climate Change has a big impact on Glaciers.  One can expect every glacier that ever existed to be either in a state of growth or contraction.  Ask an honest scientist how common it is for the accumulation compaction and melting of a Glacier to be in perfect static equalibrium.  They grow or they contract.  Thats pretty much it.  All of it independantly of CO2 as well.

Not only is thre undeniable proof that CO2 levels were in excess of 10 times the current level but these occured during ice age periods of overgrown glaciers.  In fact earths history is mostly hot.  Many Ice ages and warm periods have come and gone all by themselves, but the earth seems to have a bias towards warmer temperatures.  Compared to the earths history this is an ice age!

So the next time you find yourself listening to activist bus drivers on an Icefield just turn your back to the glacier and look down the valley.  You'll see great mounds of till called Morains.  They tell you that the Glacier has been shrinking more than it grows for a long long time.  The glaciers have been shrinking since before Pharohs built the pyrimids. 

I didn't discover this and I didn't just read about it.  Most poeple have read it but can't put it all together.  I'm lucky in that I've crossed paths with many Geologists, real earth scientsts, who've told me all about Glaciers and ice ages and Natural Climate Change.