Loss of Stored Carbon from Albertan Oil Sands Development is Irrelevant

The recent release of a study on the "Impact of the Keystone XL pipeline on global oil markets and greenhouse gas emissions" in the journal Nature Climate Change has refocused media attention on GHG emissions from Alberta's oil sands development. Pipeline proponents argue emissions will be very low; pipeline opponents contend emissions will be very high.

Current global emissions are estimated at 50.1 Gt CO2e per year (carbon dioxide equivalent; with a 95% uncertainty range of 45.6 to 54.6 Gt CO2e), and are expected to rise to at least 58 Gt CO2e per year by 2020. Even accepting this most recent high-end Keystone XL GHG emission impact of 0.11 Gt CO2e per year translates into only 0.2 percent of current global emissions. Given how global emissions are likely to continue rising for the foreseeable future, Keystone XL's impact will only continue to decline in relative terms. But if we use the State Department's lower bound estimate of Keystone XL's impact (0.0013 Gt CO2e per year), this translates to only 0.0026 percent of global emissions. Either way, Keystone XL's impact on its own is undoubtedly negligible from a global perspective. What is even more irrelevant are the impacts from the loss of stored carbon due to Albertan oil sands development. In 2012, David Schindler and colleagues from the University of Alberta published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences attempting to quantify this impact. In their article, these authors "quantified the wholesale transformation of the boreal landscape by open-pit oil sands mining in Alberta, Canada to evaluate its effect on carbon storage and sequestration." The authors came to the conclusion that "landscape changes caused by currently approved mines will release between 11.4 and 47.3 million metric tons of stored carbon [between 42 and 173 Mt of CO2e] and will reduce carbon sequestration potential by 5,734-7,241 metric tons C/y [21,025 to 26,550 t CO2e/y]." These numbers simply do not warrant the alarmist title of "massive loss of peatland and stored carbon." The reduced carbon sequestration potential is only 0.00004 to 0.00005 percent of current global emissions. In other words, clearly in the "who cares" district.

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The stored carbon release will not be instantaneous, but even if it was, it would amount to 0.08 to 0.3 percent of current global emissions. Of course, these oil sands related emissions will occur in the future (when global carbon dioxide emissions will presumably be much higher, and will thus comprise a significantly lower percentage of total emissions), and they will occur over a period of time rather than be instantaneous releases to the atmosphere. Schindler and colleagues, unfortunately, appear to provide no quantitative estimate for the period of time over which these carbon emissions will occur -- and which the readers require for context. In the release occurred over the span of a decade, we are only talking about somewhere in the neighborhood of far less than 0.008 to 0.03 percent of global emissions. Once again, this is irrelevant. On a lesser note, but also problematic, one is amused by the level of precision assigned by these authors to their estimates. They can estimate carbon sequestration potential to five significant figures (i.e.,"21,025-26,550 t CO2/y")? No chance. The authors would be lucky to achieve one or two significant figures in such estimates. Let us not pretend we understand more about environmental systems than we actually do. Consequently, in the context of the purported global climate change issue over the coming decades, the releases discussed by Schindler and co-workers are anything but "massive", and are -- instead -- effectively irrelevant. If we use the "carbon-climate response of 1.5 C per trillion metric tonnes of carbon emitted" from the paper by Neil Swart and Andrew Weaver in Nature Climate Change entitled "The Alberta oil sands and climate," it appears the so-called "massive" carbon emissions calculated by Schindler et al. would induce a global mean temperature change of approximately 0.000017 C to 0.000071 C. These values are absolutely irrelevant. We can also conduct a similar contextualization for the reduced carbon sequestration potential estimates of 5,734 to 7,241 metric tons C/y. These translate into global mean temperature changes of 0.000000009°C/year to 0.000000011°C/year. Even more irrelevant. Greenhouse gas emissions from the loss of stored carbon and reduced carbon sequestration potential of the landscape due to Albertan oil sands development by currently approved mines are so ecologically irrelevant as to not even be worthy of discussion, never mind publication in a leading journal.