Back in 2010,residents near the shores of Canada’s Lake Athabasca called on the government to commission an independent study about the impact of the tar sands development in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan on the environment. Lake Athabasca is located downstream from one of the major tar sands developments and residents, who had found more and more fish with deformities (including huge tumors), demanded that a system of environmental monitoring be put in place and an investigation be carried out.

On Monday, the study resulting from these concerns was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and the verdict is clear: tar sands are bad for our health and for the environment.

In the study, Canadian researchers found that, since the 1960s when the tar sands development was started, the level of pollutants — specifically, of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which have been shown to adversely affect birds and aquatic organisms — has risen in six freshwater lakes. By examining sediment from five lakes within a 22-mile radius of the tar sands and one remote lake about 60 miles north, scientists found that PAH levels are now 2.5-23 times greater than than had been around 1960.

In the past decades, there has been a huge increase in developing the tar sands, as these are viewed as an increasingly important part of the world’s oil reserves at a time of rising energy prices and insatiable demand.

The tar sands in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan are the third largest reserve in the world and contain 97 percent of Canada’s reserves. Some speculate that Canada has been drawing heavily on the tar sands, and overlooking the environmental impact, as a way to “cushion the Canadian economy from shocks in global energy prices.”

Tar Sands Development Has Made Wildlife Ponds As Polluted As Urban Ones

The title of the study is “Legacy of a half century of Athabasca oil sands development recorded by lake ecosystems.” Based on the dirty evidence in once pristine lakes, that “legacy” is one we don’t want.

Indeed, the scientists’ long-term findings are all the more crucial as the tar sands industry has contended that pollution is “natural.” PAHs can be found in coal, crude oil, petroleum and in products made from fossil fuels, such as creosote and asphalt; they can also be released into the air when fossil fuels and organic matter are burned and are produced by volcanoes and forest fires.

But the researchers found, since 1978 (when large-scale production of tar sands got underway), that the levels of PAH deposits have been “steadily rising” from what they had been at for centuries. As the study simply states,

Because of the striking increase in PAHs, elevated primary production, and zooplankton changes, these oil sands lake ecosystems have entered new ecological states completely distinct from those of previous centuries.

“We’re not saying these are poisonous ponds. But it’s going to get worse. It’s not too late but the trend is not looking good,” as the study’s lead author, John P. Smol, a professor of biology at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, said in the New York Times. The wildlife ponds have become as contaminated as those in urban areas, he also noted.

The results of the Canadian scientists’ study make it even more clear why we need to stop the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline which is to transport oil down through the western U.S. to refineries along the Gulf Coast. Who knows what damage the pipeline could do to so many lakes, ponds and other freshwater sources; to our flora and fauna, to us?

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It’s official: the wildfires that destroyed hundreds of homes and scorched 9.2 million acres, the Great Drought that covered 61.8 percent of the contiguous U.S. in July, making it the largest since the Dust Bowl drought of December 1939, and heat damages causing shriveled crops across the farm belt at an estimated cost of $35 billion, are all connected.

All these weather events in the U.S. this past year add up to one thing: 2012 was the hottest year ever recorded in the U.S.

According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the year’s average temperature of 55.3 degrees Fahrenheit across the Lower 48 was more than 3.2 degrees warmer than the average for the 20th century. It was also a full degree higher than the previous record, set in 1998.

A climate scientist explains the significance of that one degree. From The New York Times:

“The heat was remarkable,” said Jake Crouch, a scientist with the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., which released the official climate compilation on Tuesday. “It was prolonged. That we beat the record by one degree is quite a big deal.”

Yes, a very big deal. NOAA reported that every state in the contiguous United States saw above-average temperatures in 2012, with 19 of them setting annual records of their own.

Here are a few examples: Lamar, CO, hit 112 degrees on June 27; Greenville, S.C. saw 107 degrees on July 1; and Nashville, TN, hit 109 degrees on June 29.

But it’s not just the U.S. that’s experiencing extreme heat.

Bush fires have been raging across some of the most populous parts of Australia recently, gaining such power that the government has had to change its forecast maps: they’ve added new shades of purple when the heat gets to 130 degrees.

The New York Times explains:

Four months of record-breaking temperatures stretching back to September 2012 have produced what the government says are “catastrophic” fire conditions along the eastern and southeastern coasts of the country, where the majority of Australians live.

Data analyzed on Wednesday by the government Bureau of Meteorology indicated that national heat records had again been set. The average temperature across the country on Tuesday was the highest since statistics began being kept in 1911, at 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), exceeding a mark set only the day before. Meteorologists have had to add two new color bands to their forecast maps, extending their range up to 129 degrees Fahrenheit.

You probably remember those wildfires in Russia in 2010? And the Costa del Sol fires in southern Spain last summer? The list goes on.

Global Warming

Many scientists are now convinced that global warming is to blame for this catastrophic rise in temperatures. From The National Geographic:

Recent heat waves that have triggered wildfires, droughts, and heat-related deaths in the United States and around the globe “almost certainly would not have occurred” without global warming—and will become more routine in coming years, NASA climate scientist James Hansen says.

A new study examining six decades of global temperature data concludes that a sharp increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers can only be the result of human-caused global warming. (See an interactive map of global warming effects.)

“We have shown … that the climate dice are now loaded—and that a new category of extreme climate events is occurring with increasing frequency,” study co-author Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, said in an email.

What can be done?

As more and more studies emerge showing a direct causal connection between global warming and extreme weather, we can hope that governments will take seriously the task of slowing or even halting climate change. They need to stop subsidizing fossil fuels, collect taxes from oil companies, and make much bigger strides towards clean, sustainable energy.

Individually, we can take small steps like turning off lights and reducing water usage, but it is at the government level that the real changes must happen.

We must demand change, whether by being active Care2 members and supporting organizations that are challenging the big corporations, or by speaking up whenever we can about the importance of this vital issue.

The world is getting hotter. Are we going to sit back and watch it burn up?

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