By Erika Zell
Photo by By Mark Burnham
Oil sands advocates may have been given some unexpected fuel for their fire this month, with the release of a new study claiming that burning off the entire Alberta oil sands would only raise global temperatures by 0.36 degrees Celsius.
The study, “The Alberta oil sands and climate: The claimed economic benefits of exploiting the vast Alberta oil-sand deposits need to be weighed against the need to limit global warming caused by carbon dioxide emissions”, was co-authored by Neil Swart and Andrew Weaver and published in the journal Nature Climate Change. At its core, it is an attempt to quantify the total combustible carbon in the oil sands, but maybe more importantly, it makes several key inferences about what this could mean for future climates.
The methodology is simple and upon closer inspection the results are actually unsurprising. By using known oil sands data, the authors were able to calculate the total carbon stored in the oil sands today. They then performed similar calculations to determine the carbon content of other known fossil fuel sources, and compared the results. What they found was that the oil sands are actually a relatively small source of carbon when viewed on a global scale — their numbers indicate that the oil sands hold less than two per cent of global carbon stored in fossil fuel reserves, and that as a source of emittable carbon, coal reserves trump the oil sands by two orders of magnitude.
However with so many stakeholders, the results were bound to be controversial. Those personally or financially invested in the oil sands are using the report to further justify oil sand exploration and expansion, while environmental groups claim journalistic bias or poor science. The report’s tone is moderate, but the findings have been prominently featured across major Canadian news outlets — The Globe and Mail and National Post recently ran news stories under the headlines “Canada’s oil sands: Not so dirty after all” and “Coal worse than oil sands: study”, respectively. In relation to other international events, the sensationalist coverage has likely played a role in affecting public opinion regarding the EU’s stalled vote on classifying the oil sands as a source of ‘dirty’ fuel.
One of the most interesting aspects of the controversy, and one media outlets were quick to jump on, surrounds the team who authored the article. Both Swart and Weaver are climate scientists out of the University of Victoria’s prestigious Climate Modelling Group, which has produced internationally-renowned climate research since its inception. Weaver, especially, has been an outspoken advocate of climate warming for the last decade, and is one of the most well-known researchers in the field of climate studies. As well as heading the Climate Modelling Group, he was a lead author on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, which, although published in 2007, stills stands as the most comprehensive summary of modern climate research, and is a benchmark for other climate modelling studies being done today. Weaver’s reputation in the field of climate science lends a lot of weight to the article, and has almost certainly increased the attention that the results have been given. His level of expertise also limits the likelihood that the figures were born out of bad science: Weaver has helped develop some of the most sophisticated climate models in the world — the calculations that went into the oil sands report are child’s play by comparison.
So is the study really worth the attention it’s received? It was intended for use as a comparison tool, and the authors place some important qualifiers on the work, especially on temperature projections. In fact, a careful reading of the original work reveals that the authors did not intend for the work to be used for predicting temperature change at all — the “warming potential” calculations (as they’re referred to in the paper) were provided for comparison only, and they admit that the models behind them are far too simple to accurately predict something as complicated as temperature responses.
Global warming is something of a media darling these days and makes for excellent news; however, problems arise when crucial facts are misrepresented to an uninformed readership. It’s difficult to say whether the problem stems purely from irresponsible reporting or the ongoing trend towards more sensationalized news, but one thing remains clear: few people seem to actually understand the crux of Swart and Weaver’s argument — and this is having serious ramifications on an international scale.
Behind the numbers
The trick to understanding the results comes from reading beyond the media reports.
Kirsten Zickfeld, an SFU climate scientist, says she was appalled by the reaction that the study got from news outlets. “I was shocked by the biased reporting in the media, who cherry picked the results reported in the article. The article clearly concludes that if policymakers are serious about limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius, there is no room for oil sands development. I was really disappointed that they all [chose to write] on this same idea that the tar sands don’t impact climate, which isn’t true.”
What most articles have focused on is the easy-to-grasp conclusion that burning off the carbon in the tar sands would only increase global temperature by 0.36 degrees Celsius. In fact, if the tar sands are broken down into economically viable and unviable oil reserves, and the impact of only the usable oil is calculated, Swart and Weaver claim that global temperature would increase by just 0.03 degrees. To compare, the authors performed similar calculations on the known stores of conventional oil (such as Saudi Arabian oil reserves) as well as known coal reserves, and found that if all the carbon found in coal was burned off, global temperatures would increase by almost 15 degrees. The comparison is staggering, and the headlines practically write themselves. The tar sands are a small source of carbon — but is this a new development in the climate change canon?
“I was not surprised [by the results], no,” said Zickfeld. “The tar sands are just one single resource.” Zickfeld also has some concern about the framing of the results: “They compared this single resource to all the coal available on the planet. It’s a bit of a mismatch. No wonder the warming potential of coal would be so much higher. There’s so much more of it.”
Another factor in interpreting the results is the idea of warming targets, or limiting global warming to a defined, measurable ceiling. In 2010, the Copenhagen Accord adopted a safe warming ceiling of two degrees Celsius. “[In relation to a two-degree target, 0.36 degrees] of warming is actually very big. We’re not talking about limiting warming to 10 degrees; in that case the tar sands might not make a big difference. But in the context of a two-degree limit, the tar sands are important.”
The two-degree temperature limit is even tighter when you consider that the IPCC recommends this limit of a two-degrees temperature increase from pre-industrial levels — and that we’ve already seen a 0.8 degree warming from this pre-industrial baseline. That leaves us with 1.2 degrees of climate wiggle room, and the projected 0.36-degree impact of the tar sands account for almost one-third of the remaining room.
“We need to see the tar sands in a global perspective,” emphasised Zickfeld. “If the tar sands were the only fossil fuel resource on the planet, it’s true that the climate effects would not be dramatic. But the rest of the world won’t stop exploiting their own fossil fuel resources just to let Canadians exploit the tar sands. If every country would follow Canada’s example and fully exploit their resources, the warming would be very large. Canadians have already used up more than their fair share of the carbon budget that would allow us to limit warming to two degrees.”
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If the tar sands were the only fossil fuel resource on the planet, it’s true that the climate effects would not be dramatic. But the rest of the world won’t stop exploiting their own fossil fuel resources just to let Canadians exploit the tar sands.
– Kirsten Zickfeld, SFU climate scientist
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Finally, she has some words of warning in regards to the inertia befalling current energy policies and the path of high greenhouse gas emissions that society is bound to. “Research from the International Energy Agency has shown that most of the remaining [carbon budget] that would allow us to stay within two degrees of pre-industrial temperatures is already committed within existing energy infrastructures.” In other words, because there has been no real effort towards the large-scale use of alternative, ‘greener’ energy sources, we will continue to be dependent on high-emissions infrastructure for the foreseeable future. Because of this, there is a high likelihood that continued development of the tar sands — not including the continued development of other fuel sources — could push the climate system beyond the two-degree limit, to potentially hazardous results.
Beyond climate
The study and subsequent media reaction isn’t only raising ire in the climatology community, however; professionals from many other disciplines in environmental studies feel that the take-away message got taken out of context as well.
“My knee-jerk reaction is that it’s not the full story,” said Meg Krawchuk, a landscape and conservation ecologist, and assistant professor in SFU’s Department of Geography.
“Talking about the effects that the oil sands could have on climate is one part of the story, but the other part is that land cover change [in this area] is leading to changes in biodiversity and species composition, and that all species — including humans — living in oil-sands affected landscapes are being impacted. In fact, this will be a concern whether or not we use all or some of the deposits.” She continued, “[People] get so excited about climate change that they forget about what’s happening on the ground.”
“[Scientists’] concerns about the oil sands have dominantly focused on land-cover changes, water, and species, that live in that region. In my mind that’s been a primary concern, but because there’s been an extraction of carbon based resources, climate will obviously be a concern as well.”
While the Swart and Weaver report focuses on the direct effects of burning fuel deposits found in the oil sands, it does touch on the other environmental question marks regarding the development of this resource. In their supplementary materials, the authors explain the concept of “well-to-wheel” calculations to better include the impacts of extracting and refining oil. The oil sands are an input-intensive source of oil; extracting the crude product requires massive amounts of super-heated water, which in turn requires a lot of fresh water and energy — even before the fuel is combusted, or even refined, the energy required is high. In light of this, there have been industry studies which assert that extracting oil from the oil sands is only economically viable when oil prices are high, and after this threshold, extracting and processing a barrel of oil sands oil costs more than that same barrel can be sold for.
Another key relationship between the oil sands and climate is the biome — the Canadian boreal forest — in which they are found. Many scientists hypothesize that the boreal is acting as a major carbon sink, or storage site for inactive organic carbon. The carbon in these systems is stored as biomass (i.e. as trees or shrubs), or in the soils, and is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide very slowly, thus potentially mitigating the effects of climate warming.
“Having peatlands and bogs, having the boreal, which stores huge amounts of carbon and methane [a greenhouse gas several times more potent than carbon dioxide], and having those affected by disturbances and land-cover change [also has an effect on climate],” said Krawchuk. “[The study] didn’t include an assessment of the life cycle of trees as sinks for carbon, or idea of landscape value versus extractable carbon.”
In any case, wires seem to have gotten crossed somewhere along the line, and Krawchuk has a pretty good idea where: “[The idea of] ‘It’s not the worst emitter’ got confused with the idea that ‘It’s not as bad as we thought it was’. The paper came out saying that it’s not the biggest emitter, but it’s being interpreted as being that it’s not as bad as we thought it was, which isn’t necessarily the case.”
“I don’t think anyone would have suggested that the oil sands would ever be the largest contributor to climate change. We never thought that they were that bad [for climate] to begin with.”
A warmer future?
Although public opinion of the oil sands has already been affected, Swart and Weaver are blunt in their conclusions: “If North American and international policymakers wish to limit global warming to less than two degrees Celsius they will clearly need to put in place measures that ensure a rapid transition of global energy systems to non-greenhouse-gas-emitting sources, while avoiding commitments to new infrastructure supporting dependence on fossil fuels.”
The omission of this key point illustrates how this whole situation swung wildly out of control: sensationalized news and under-informed citizens create opinions, not educated decisions, and if Canada ever hopes to make a stand against climate warming, opinions won’t be good enough.
