Environment
Journalism Misrepresent Climate Science

From EnergyNow.ca
By Jim Warren
So-called “climate realists” including , Bjørn Lomborg, have long held that climate activists and journalists exaggerate and misrepresent the threat presented by climate change.
In the latest edition of his book, False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet, Lomborg muses, “Recently the media has [mis] informed us that humanity has just a decade left to rescue the planet, making 2030 the deadline to save civilization.”
This column proposes that the milieu of media hyperbole and fear that Lomborg describes has indeed contributed to the overly zealous climate change policy regime the federal government is imposing on western Canada’s agriculture and energy industries.
One of the clearest examples of media and activist misinterpretations of climate science involves the 2019 release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Climate Change and Land (SRCCL). The report’s release launched a flurry of wildly inaccurate mainstream media stories and social media posts that misrepresented its actual contents.
My initial interest in the report on land and climate change was influenced by the fact a colleague of mine at the University of Regina was one of the scholars selected by the IPCC to help produce it. And, given that the report would be addressing land use, food production and food security, I assumed it would likely have things to say that were relevant to agriculture in Saskatchewan.
Work on the SRCCL began in April of 2016. It was one of three special reports that would be incorporated into the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, set for release in 2021. (The IPCC has been publishing Assessment Reports once every four to five years since 1988. They are its principal vehicle for presenting an overview of scientific assessments of climate change to the world.)
The mandate of the special report on climate and land was to explore the relationships between land use, land degradation, desertification, deforestation and climate change as well as the impacts of those relationships on global food security.
The executive summary for the report was released on August 8, 2019 at a news conference held in Geneva, Switzerland. I made a point of reading the summary the day it was released because I hoped to refer to it in an informed way the next time I met next with my colleague. (The IPCC refers the executive summary as the Summary of Policymakers).
By the evening of August 8, the distortion of reality was already underway. I encountered a number of the media stories describing the report that had little or nothing to do with the 107 findings and recommendations that appear in the Summary for Policymakers. Many of the stories led with the assertion that the report’s key message was the need to limit red meat consumption. According to my reading of the report this was patently incorrect—reducing red meat consumption was not a central theme of the report.
The journalists responsible for some of the stories were mistaken, or worse yet, making up things. As it happened, a number of climate scientists also recognized the disconnect between what the media were saying about the report and what the report actually said. In August 2021, the academic journal, Climate Change, published an article by Oxford University academic Mary Sanford and three co-authors about the controversy surrounding the way traditional media and activists on Twitter had characterized the report.
Sanford and her co-authors report that “five UK-based media organizations whose websites are amongst the most used and trusted led their coverage on the SRCCL with a focus on eating less meat in their headlines.”
The offending UK media outlets included the BBC, The Telegraph, The Mail, The Times and The Independent. Sanford’s group gave special mention to “The BBC’s article on 8 August headline ‘Plant-based diet can fight climate change – UN’.” The global reach of inaccurate coverage was bolstered by the London-based Reuters news agency which “led one of its main articles on the SRCCL with the headline ‘U.N. flags need to cut meat to curb land use impact on global warming’.”
In the U.S., articles in Time magazine, the Wall Street Journal and Vox all led with comments critical of the climate effects of meat eating or other negative aspects of the meat industry.
The headline for the August 8 CBC story on the report read, “Farming and eating need to change to curb global warming.” Although, in the body of the story itself dietary change doesn’t come up until the third paragraph and meat consumption is not specifically mentioned.
Some traditional media organizations did better. Fox News, The New York Times, and The Washington Post ran articles that addressed the report’s principal themes such as the bidirectional effects of land use practices on the climate and the impact of a changing climate on the sustainability of land use practices and the global food supply. Some like CNN provided reasonably accurate coverage in their initial August 8 reports but in subsequent days gave dietary change greater attention.
Contrary what many of the media reports suggested, several of the findings and recommendations in the Summary for Policymakers actually recognize the importance of well-managed livestock grazing to sustainable food production and biodiversity. One of the findings indicates that grazing lands provide habitat for a far greater range of plants and animals than annual field-crop agriculture. Another finding notes the carbon sink value of grassland. One of the findings regarding diet notes the important role animal protein plays in the food system. Another point recommends diversity in diets and the beneficial role played by public health dietary guidelines. At the same time the report does acknowledge that ruminant livestock (cattle, bison, sheep and goats) produce methane emissions that contribute to the greenhouse effect. But according to the report that fact does not mean we need to cease raising ruminants for food.
One needs to dive much deeper into the 910 page report than the executive summary to find any discussion about the effects of meat consumption on the climate or the food supply. In Chapter 5 the report surmises that if everyone on the planet ate as much beef as the average resident of the UK, 95% of the world’s agricultural land would be required to support meat production. And, it mentions there is academic literature which recommends reducing the consumption of animal food products while increasing the proportion of plant-based food in diets.
Chapter 5 also has a paragraph that suggests red meat consumption could potentially be reduced with the development of plant-based meat substitutes. And, in case you were wondering where Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau and the environment and climate change minister, Steven Guilbeault, get some of their more novel ideas, there is indeed a sentence in the report that suggests we might be able to make greater use of insects for food. Yep, you read that right. Buried in Chapter 5, a single sentence on insect eating is presented as a sort of blue sky idea that might help reduce red meat consumption.
It is safe to say consumption of red meat was not a significant theme in the report and eating meat was not categorically condemned. The report supports well-managed sustainable livestock grazing and recognizes the dietary importance of red meat.
As one might expect, news reports focusing on diet and meat consumption were condemned by agricultural organizations such as the UK’s National Farmers’ Union. The tenor of the news stories was also a cause of alarm for the IPCC. I met with my colleague the week of the report’s release and asked her if the IPCC was aware of the distortions in the media coverage. She said that they were and acknowledged it was a problem since the media’s focus on diet and red meat detracted from their efforts to have the actual findings of the report publicized.
No less important than identifying the inaccuracies in the news stories about the SRCCL is understanding how and why the reporting was so bad. There are a number of possibilities. One is that many journalists were simply too busy or too lazy to actually read the Summary for Policymakers before writing their stories. We might also suspect many relied on their personal world-views and preconceived ideas about what they thought they should say. Worse yet they might have actually read the report and intentionally misrepresented its contents. A good follow up question might be what are the origins of journalists’ established views on climate change and meat consumption?
Sanford and her co-authors make an effort to get at these questions and propose that many journalists’ mindsets are influenced by social media. They suggest the January 2019 release of a report published by the EAT-Lancet Commission was still fresh in many journalists’ minds when they wrote about the SRCCL in August that same year. The EAT-Lancet report was produced by 37 scientists in association with the medical journal, The Lancet, and promoted itself as “the first full scientific report of what constitutes a healthy diet from a sustainable food system that can support and speed up food system transformation.” (By way of comparison the SRCCL report was generated by 330 scientists and social scientists – more than 1,500 scientists contribute to the IPCC Assessment Reports).
The EAT-Lancet report does indeed recommend a reduction in global meat consumption. It is noteworthy that it does not advocate for the end of meat and dairy consumption but does support vegetarianism and veganism.
The EAT-Lancet report states: “The planetary health diet is a global reference diet for adults that is symbolically represented by half a plate of fruits, vegetables and nuts. The other half consists of primarily whole grains, plant proteins (beans, lentils, pulses), unsaturated plant oils, modest amounts of meat and dairy, and some added sugars and starchy vegetables. The diet is quite flexible and allows for adaptation to dietary needs, personal preferences and cultural traditions. Vegetarian and vegan diets are two healthy options within the planetary health diet but are personal choices.”
According to Sanford and her co-authors, the publication of the EAT-Lancet report coincided with growing interest in veganism and the popularization of “reports associating meat eating and livestock farming with a range of negative impacts, particularly on GHG (methane) emissions.”
By the time the IPCC released its SRCCL report the EAT-Lancet report had generated over eight million Twitter posts. While the reaction on Twitter was divided between supporters and opponents of vegetarianism, the participation of anti-livestock vegan and vegetarian activists was clearly influencing the discussion. Sanford and company propose that views critical of meat consumption were likely shaping the attitudes of journalists.
A number of studies have described the symbiotic relationship that exists between journalists and Twitter. Journalists use Twitter to post comments and links to their own stories. They also use it to inform the news stories that they write. Furthermore, journalists constitute the largest user category on Twitter, accounting for 26% of the platform’s verified accounts. Journalists and news organizations are frequent tweeters. A 2022 article in Editor and Publisher, an online publication, states that 70% of journalists claim Twitter is the first or second social media site they use most frequently in their jobs. They make posts about the content they produce and have more followers than any other verified user groups on Twitter.
In 2018, an article in the Columbia Journalism Review expressed alarm over the reliance journalists were placing on Twitter as a source for their work. Especially worrisome was the fact some journalists claimed to place more reliance on anonymous tweets than information provided by The Associated Press. The quality of journalism is bound to suffer if reporters rely on the claims of activists with agendas that don’t include dissemination of unvarnished objective evidence. The danger is that this can produce a cycle of garbage in garbage out journalism.
We can reasonably assume that at least some journalists writing articles in the week following the release of the SRCCL were influencing the discussion on Twitter and were in turn influenced by it. However, the data presented by the Sanford group also suggests that journalist-Twitter cross fertilization was occurring in only two corners of the Twitterverse.
It is hardly surprising that the research shows when it comes to issues related to the IPCC and climate change, social media posts reflect the culture wars occurring in wider society. Social media posts about climate change occur within two polarized echo chambers. There is the activist group who embrace the idea that climate change is a real and urgent problem threatening life on the planet. Some members of the activist faction claim climate change is the greatest threat facing humanity and nature. And, then there is the skeptic faction that includes those who claim the science on climate change is uncertain and the dangers are frequently exaggerated. And, it’s true some members of the skeptic group assume human caused climate change is a hoax.
Social scientists often feel the need to invent jargon to describe social phenomena. One of the concepts they use to explain the climate divide on Twitter is “homophily,” the tendency for people to be attracted to and seek out others who are similar to themselves – and share their opinions. Added to this is “confirmation bias,” the tendency of people to accept new information when it confirms their pre-existing beliefs and reject ideas that contradict those beliefs.
Sanford and her co-authors systematically parsed over 6,000 Twitter posts related to the SRCCL. They show that most of the discussion on Twitter was indeed contested by the usual suspects. There was a skeptic camp who criticized the IPCC “for in their view slandering the meat and dairy industries, and trying to take away their right to eat meat.” And there was an activist group, which included vegans and vegetarians who criticized meat eaters for contributing to climate change.
Given the actual content of the Special Report on Climate and Land, the content of the Twitter war makes absolutely no sense. The skeptics were incensed over things the report never actually said and the activists defended it for things it didn’t actually say. Particularly troubling for people who hope for objective unbiased reporting is that journalists tended to side with the inaccurate assessments being made by the activist camp. As we’ve seen, many of them wrote stories that identified diet and meat eating as the focus of the report. Both vegan activists and sympathetic journalists would have come closer to “their own truth” had the news stories criticized the IPCC for failing to pay enough attention to diet and meat eating.
It is disturbing to learn objective reality had such a minimal impact on the Twitter debate or the journalists writing inaccurate stories. It was a case of homophily and confirmation bias on steroids. People simply chose sides based on their usual positions regardless of actual facts and evidence. It was wearing the team colours that really counted.
For people who rely on agriculture or jobs in the energy sector for their livelihoods the current quality of media articles and discussions on social media in relation to climate change is not very comforting. In Canada, the problems may well be exacerbated by the federal government’s subsidization of traditional media organizations. The agendas of strident environmental activists and the federal government’s climate policies often coincide. Given the incestuous relationship between journalists and environmental activists on Twitter it is perhaps understandable that traditional media, environmental activists and the federal government often sing from the same hymn book. For people who practice healthy skepticism, the fact our federal government is subsidizing the news media is grounds for suspicion about the veracity of Canadian journalism.
Unfortunately coming up with effective strategies for combating widely-held misconceptions about climate change in traditional and social media is a daunting challenge. The problem is unlikely to be remedied any time soon.
Jim Warren is an Adjunct Professor and Lecturer in environmental sociology at the University of Regina.
Business
WEF has a plan to overhaul the global financial system by monetizing nature

From LifeSiteNews
By Tim Hinchliffe of The Sociable
The WEF is plowing full steam ahead with the globalist agenda to monitor and monetize everything in nature, including the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the very earth we walk upon.
With billionaires Larry Fink and Andre Hoffmann as the new co-chairs, the World Economic Forum (WEF) publishes a 50-page blueprint on how to monetize everything in nature.
The WEF’s latest insight report, “Finance Solutions for Nature: Pathways to Returns and Outcomes,” provides “stakeholders” with dozens of financial solutions for monetizing everything in nature.
Nature pricing, biodiversity crediting schemes, natural asset companies, debt-for-nature swaps, and so much more are all packed into this agenda to overhaul the global financial system with nature-based activities:
The landscape of nature finance is rapidly evolving. From sovereign debt instruments and blended capital platforms to biodiversity credits and emerging asset classes, a growing range of mechanisms is being deployed to fund, finance and de-risk nature-positive action.
The WEF leadership page says that in their work on the board of trustees, “members do not represent any personal or professional interests.”
However, the target audiences for latest WEF insight report are “institutional investors, banks, asset managers, and development actors” – the very business interests that Hoffmann and Fink represent.
WEF interim co-chairs Larry Fink and Andre Hoffmann have everything to gain in their business dealings should the documentation, monetization, and tokenization of everything in nature ever come to full fruition.
And they are well on their way.
Fink’s BlackRock manages over $11 trillion in assets, and last year BlackRock said it was “conducting proprietary research on natural capital investment signals, identifying companies poised for financial advantage in avoiding nature-related risks or leaning into opportunities. Those signals cover themes such as energy management, water management, waste management and biodiversity – and can feed into portfolio construction or support custom exposures.”
Hoffmann is also a key player in a whole host of so-called green financing initiatives, including biodiversity crediting schemes, through his various roles as founder, president, and chairman at several companies and NGOs such as: Innovate 4 Nature – the “accelerator for nature-positive solutions” and Systemiq – the “system change company” established specifically to advance U.N. Agenda 2030.
“The economy depends on natural resources. Their value derives not only from their use as direct inputs to production – such as timber for construction – but also for their benefits to society like living trees that help clean the air. Economists use the term “natural capital” to refer to the total value that natural resources provide to the economy and to people.” — BlackRock, Capital at risk: nature through an investment lens, August 2024
Investigative journalist Whitney Webb: BlackRock and other companies are attempting to seize control over the natural world under the guise of "saving the planet".
"BlackRock being able to unlock and take control of as many natural assets as possible… is obviously a way for… pic.twitter.com/XgRBBqW7qr
— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) February 26, 2025
“Debt-for-nature swaps [DNS] are a financial mechanism that allow countries to restructure bilateral or multilateral debt in exchange for commitments to fund local conservation and restoration. They are also known as ‘debt-for-nature conversion.’” — WEF, Finance Solutions for Nature: Pathways to Returns and Outcomes, September 2025
Is your country millions, billions, or trillions in debt? No problem!
With debt-for-nature swaps, you can restructure your nation’s debt just by letting somebody else come in and take control of your natural resources under the guise of conservation and restoration, but what they’ll really be doing is forcing you to “take out private insurance policies to ‘mitigate the financial impact of natural disasters‘ as well as ‘political risk,’” as investigative journalists Whitney Webb and Mark Goodwin report in Bitcoin Magazine.
Don’t have any money, but want to create value out of thin air, water, soil, or trees? You can set up natural asset companies that can “convert the full economic value of nature into financial flows via equity models.”
Want to help asset managers, bankers, and hedge fund execs get extremely rich while leaving you with only a tiny fraction? Go ahead and get involved in a Payment for Environmental Services (PES) scheme, where financial incentives are provided to individuals or communities in exchange for maintaining or restoring ecosystem services, like carbon sequestration or biodiversity conservation
And if you’re compliant with their rules, you can be rewarded by producing “positive nature and biodiversity outcomes (e.g. species, ecosystems and natural habitats) through the creation and sale of either land or ocean-based biodiversity units over a fixed period” with biodiversity credits, aka “environmental credits.”
Prefer to be left alone and live on the property that you worked hard for all your life? You better be compliant with all the environmental regulations that are coming in the name of preserving biodiversity, so that the $44 trillion of economic value generated by nature doesn’t diminish.
With Larry Fink & Andre Hoffmann having everything to gain, today the WEF published a blueprint for the complete monetization of everything in nature. Natural Asset Companies, Biodiversity Credits, Debt for Nature Swaps, Payments for Ecosystem Services https://t.co/bV1SBKlM41 pic.twitter.com/knqErANBlV
— Tim Hinchliffe (@TimHinchliffe) September 11, 2025
“Environmental credits are verified units of positive environmental outcomes, including biodiversity, water, carbon and nutrient credits. Though developed independently, projects increasingly blend credits via stacking, bundling or stapling.” — WEF, Finance Solutions for Nature: Pathways to Returns and Outcomes, September 2025
“Nature is rapidly emerging as a strategic investment frontier and more institutional capital is flowing into new business models and projects.” — WEF, Finance Solutions for Nature: Pathways to Returns and Outcomes, September 2025
In keeping with the own self-interests of the co-chairs and their business relations, the report highlights “10 priority financial solutions” for these stakeholders to implement:
- Sustainability-linked bonds (SLBs):
- Commercial bonds tying coupon rates to nature-related targets for corporates or governments.
- Thematic (or use-of-proceeds) bonds:
- Bonds with proceeds earmarked for nature projects. Scaling-up requires clearer guidance and aggregation to improve outcomes for issuers and investors.
- Sustainability-linked loans (SLLs):
- Flexible debt, linking interest rates to nature-related targets. SLLs need simpler verification, standardized metrics and stronger triggers to drive nature-positive lending.
- Thematic (or use-of-proceeds) loans:
- Loans for specific nature-related projects. Greater clarity on taxonomies and aggregation is needed to enhance capital flows.
- Impact funds:
- Funds investing in nature-positive outcomes, often accepting higher risk or longer pathways to returns.
- Natural asset companies (NACs):
- Publicly and privately listed companies that convert the full economic value of nature into financial flows via equity models. NACs hold significant potential but need more transactions for price discovery and replicable investment blueprints.
- Environmental credits:
- Tradeable certificates for verified environmental benefits, used in compliance or voluntary markets.
- Debt-for-nature swaps (DNS):
- Mechanisms to restructure sovereign debt in exchange for conservation or restoration commitments, with investable components including bonds and loans.
- Payments for ecosystem services (PES):
- Contracts rewarding conservation for specific ecosystem services, driven by the public sector. Private sector schemes require longer contracts, aggregation and supply chain integration to scale up.
- Internal nature pricing (INP):
- Unexplored, voluntary shadow pricing or fee-based tools to incentivize nature-positive performance in companies or across investment portfolios, similar to internal carbon pricing (ICP).
“While some components of nature – such as food, timber and ecotourism are priced and traded in global markets, the value of many critical ecosystem services remains undervalued….
Carbon sequestration, water filtration, flood protection and pollination are often treated as ‘free’ inputs, despite underpinning our economies and societies.” — WEF, Finance Solutions for Nature: Pathways to Returns and Outcomes, September 2025
“The natural capital approach extends the economic concept of capital to the environment, conceptualizing stocks of natural resources as conventional goods worth restoring, maintaining and enhancing for their productive flows.
This approach includes both accounting – embedding nature in national and corporate balance sheets – and valuation – pricing nature’s contributions into cost-benefit and investment analysis.” — WEF, Finance Solutions for Nature: Pathways to Returns and Outcomes, September 2025
Putting prices on water, air, and soil is a hot topic among globalists at the U.N., the G20, the World Economic Forum (WEF), and the COP meetings.
At the WEF Annual Meeting in Davos this year, Singapore’s President Tharman Shanmugaratnam said that water credits and biodiversity credits should be “stapled” on to carbon credits.
Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam tells the WEF he wants to put a price on everything in nature: "Just like we've got carbon credits, WE NEED TO DEVELOP THE MARKET FOR WATER CREDITS & BIODIVERSITY CREDITS" #wef25 https://t.co/wv04rzht3K pic.twitter.com/UuSiDBSuu3
— Tim Hinchliffe (@TimHinchliffe) January 21, 2025
"Much better that we work on a reliable CARBON CREDIT system with the stapling on of WATER & BIODIVERSITY CREDITS": Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam at the WEF #wef25 https://t.co/wv04rzht3K pic.twitter.com/EhWCvZAsxj
— Tim Hinchliffe (@TimHinchliffe) January 21, 2025
The year prior, at the 2024 WEF Annual Meeting of the New Champions, aka “Summer Davos” meeting in communist China, University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership CEO Lindsay Hooper told the panel on “Understanding Nature’s Ledger” that every part of the economy depends on nature, and that in order to protect natural systems, one solution would be to “bring nature onto the balance sheet.”
"We can't do business on a dead planet. If we're going to protect natural systems, one of the solutions is to bring nature onto the balance sheet; bring nature into the ways that decisions are made within business to allocate a value to it" Lindsay Hooper WEF #AMNC Summer Davos pic.twitter.com/Y1dpjMgmS6
— Tim Hinchliffe (@TimHinchliffe) June 27, 2024
In addition to putting “nature on the balance sheet,” another proposal coming at the end of the panel discussion suggested putting a tax on natural systems like water in the same vein as carbon taxes.
"Beyond carbon [taxes] let's think about other aspects of nature that are easier to quantify.. What about water? That's quite possible for us to start integrating systematically into current trading carbon pricing mechanisms" WEF managing director Gim Neo #AMNC24 Summer Davos pic.twitter.com/0rlomVk3ph
— Tim Hinchliffe (@TimHinchliffe) June 27, 2024
With putting prices on nature comes tokenization and derivatives.
At least that’s what former Bank of England adviser Michael Sheren said at COP27 in November 2022.
'Carbon is moving very quickly into a system where it's going to be very close to a currency' …
Next, 'We start thinking about putting prices on water, on trees, on biodiversity … How do we start tokenizing?': Michael Sheren, Former Bank of England Advisor #COP27 pic.twitter.com/r5Nw3b2aeo— Tim Hinchliffe (@TimHinchliffe) November 9, 2022
“Carbon, we already figured out, and carbon is moving very quickly into a system where it’s going to be very close to a currency, basically being able to take a ton of absorbed or sequestered carbon and being able to create a forward-pricing curve, with financial service architecture, documentation,” said Sheren.
And with carbon being close to a currency, “There are going to be derivatives.”
"The biggest challenge is how do we move from a SHAREHOLDER ECONOMY to a STAKEHOLDER ECONOMY" Andre Hoffmann WEF interim co-chair. Agenda 2030 advocate, Club of Rome member, Chatham House Adviser, heir to the 5th largest pharma company in the world, Roche https://t.co/NQlEF36IRy pic.twitter.com/kPI2jtDNxL
— Tim Hinchliffe (@TimHinchliffe) August 20, 2025
Now, under the newfound leadership of Fink and Hoffmann, whose personal business dealings stand everything to gain, the WEF is plowing full steam ahead with the globalist agenda to monitor and monetize everything in nature, including the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the very earth that we walk upon.
Reprinted with permission from The Sociable.
Alberta
How Alberta is moving to speed up oil sands reclamation with mine water treatment

From the Canadian Energy Centre
New standards to build on rules already in place for other mining sectors
In what the former Chief of the Fort McKay First Nation calls “a critical step in the right direction,” the Alberta government is moving to accelerate reclamation of more than 1.3 trillion litres of water stored in oil sands tailings ponds.
On Sept. 5, the province announced it will expedite setting standards that allow for “mine water” to be treated and released into the environment, building on the rules that are already in place for other mining operations across Canada.
“We cannot ignore this challenge, we need to keep working together to find practical and effective solutions that protect Indigenous rights, people and the environment,” said Chief Jim Boucher, a member of Alberta’s Oil Sands Mine Water Steering Committee.
That committee is behind a suite of nine recommendations that Alberta is putting into action to improve mine water management and tailings pond reclamation.
The Mining Association of Canada (MAC) says decades of research give the industry confidence that mine water can be safely treated and released once regulations are in place.
But that will take the federal government moving faster too.
Both the federal and provincial governments play a role in potential regulations for the treatment and release of oil sands mine water.
“Alberta is proposing science-based parameters to ensure the safe return of treated water used in oil sands mining, just as other provincial governments do for their respective mining sectors,” MAC CEO Pierre Gratton said in a statement.
“We are hopeful that this will accelerate the development of federal regulations – which we requested almost 15 years ago – to be similarly advanced.”
Gratton said setting standards for safe mine water release could unlock “significant investments” in oil sands reclamation and water treatment.
What are tailings ponds?
Tailings are a byproduct of mining operations around the world.
Oil sands tailings ponds are engineered basins holding a mix of mine water, sand, silt, clay and residual bitumen generated during the extraction process. There are eight operating oil sands mines with tailings ponds in northern Alberta.
Recycling water held in these basins helps operators reduce the amount of fresh water withdrawn from the Athabasca River.
In 2023, 79 per cent of the water used for oil sands mining was recycled, according to the Alberta Energy Regulator.
What is oil sands mine water?
Oil sands mine water is water that comes into contact with the various stages of oil sands mining operations, including bitumen extraction and processing.
Tailings ponds in the oil sands also hold water from significant amounts of rain and snow collected in the decades since the first mines began operating.
While the oil sands mining sector has reduced the amount of fresh water it uses per barrel of oil produced by nearly one-third since 2013, the total volume of mine water in tailings storage has grown as production has increased.
What’s in oil sands mine water?
The constituents of oil sands mine water requiring treatment for safe release are both typical of water in other industrial processes and unique to the oil sands sector.
MAC says common materials are suspended solids like sand, silt and clay, as well as a range of metals. These can be treated by a wide range of proven technologies already in use in Canada and globally.
Unique to oil sands mine water are organic compounds such as naphthenic acids. According to MAC, operators have demonstrated and continue to invest in processes to treat these to levels safe for environmental release.
How does mine water impact reclamation?
At the end of an oil sands mine’s life, operators must remove all infrastructure and restore the land to features of a self-sustaining boreal forest similar to what was there before.
Addressing the challenge of tailings ponds and the mine water stored in them is critical to the overall success of oil sands mining reclamation.
Why is mine water release important?
MAC says the only way to remove mine water in tailings ponds is to treat it for safe release to the environment.
Strict regulations allow for this process across Canadian copper, nickel, gold, iron ore, and diamond mining operations. But it is prohibited in the oil sands.
The safe release of treated oil sands mine water into the environment can reduce the need to store it, minimize further land disturbance and help reclamation happen faster.
MAC says operators have shown they can treat mine water to safe release levels, using processes that include innovative technologies developed through Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance.
What is Alberta doing?
Alberta has accepted the Oil Sands Mine Water Steering Committee’s nine recommendations aimed at speeding up solutions for safe mine water release.
The province says the recommendations, developed with input from industry, technology providers, Indigenous communities and scientists, will now be evaluated to determine how they can be put into practice.
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