Halt oilsands production: climate expert

Note:This article is not about specific free energy development but road towards it.

Last Updated: Tuesday, October 5, 2010 | 7:02 PM MT CBC News
James Hansen is the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. (CBC)

Northern Alberta's oilsands deposits should not be mined because the effect the resource will have on the world's climate will be irreversible, one of NASA's top scientists told a review panel into an proposed oilsands mine Tuesday.

"We're going to have to prevent the development of the unconventional fossil fuels," James Hansen told reporters during a break in the joint federal and provincial panel hearings into Total E&P Canada Ltd.'s $9-billion Joslyn North Mine Project.

"Otherwise, we will send the planet's climate on a path that is going to cause enormous problems for young people over the next several decades and the rest of this century."

Hansen, one of the world's leading experts on climate change, is the director of the American space agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Instead of relying on carbon-producing fuels such as coal and oil, Hansen wants the world to move toward renewable and nuclear energy sources. Otherwise, Hansen says, the Earth will experience irreversible effects, including the extinction of species.

"If we develop unconventional fossil fuels we're going to have to figure out a way to suck that CO2 back out of the atmosphere. And the current estimates are that could cost something like $200 to $500 per tonne of carbon," he said.

"Someone's going to have to clean that up and the costs of cleaning it up are more than the money that's made by burning that. So it doesn't really make sense. That's why I say, it looks like gold but it's fool's gold."

Carbon capture expensive

Hansen believes that the courts will eventually have to intervene to force governments to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels, which he believes are "ignoring" the problem.

The Alberta government often cites carbon capture and storage technology as a solution to handling the emissions created by oilsands production. But Hansen believes the technology is an unrealistic solution

"Carbon capture and storage would work. The problem is it's very expensive," he said. "So what happens is that governments talk about it and they pretend that they're going to capture the carbon dioxide but they're not doing it."

If approved, the Joslyn mine would eventually produce 100,000 barrels of bitumen a day and employ 600 workers. The development would take up 5,400 hectares next to the community of Fort McKay, located about 60 kilometres north of Fort McMurray.

Hearings into the project moved to Sherwood Park, just east of Edmonton, this week after starting last month in Fort McMurray.

With files from The Canadian Press