I probably owe environmentalists an apology as I am as interested in clean air etc. as anyone. It is only when some people become very militant and unreasonable in their expectations, that I tend to speak out of turn. Attempts to reverse man's ill effects on mother nature have to be workable enough so as to not wreck the economy, for example.

Referring to the oil sands, there is no doubt that the heat and toxic chemicals are a constant source of global warming. Whether this is equivalent to or worse than the warming by the sun's stormy explosions and consequent overheating of the earth or not has never been determined. There is certainly Arctic ice core evidence that showed "natural" global warming periods some 750 years ago, i.e. before the industrial revolution. I might add that water vapour, not carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas.

There is a small oil company that bought patents to upgrade thick, toxic, gooey oil much more efficiently than the present system that consists of carbon removal. With their system of hydrogen addition a barrel of tar sands oil for example can yield 102 barrels versus 80 by present day refineries, and does so with almost complete removal of sulphur; sulphur dioxide is a very toxic gas to humans.

The problem is it is so expensive to modify an oil refinery there is no incentive for those big companies to implement any changes. There has not been a new refinery built in the US for the last 30 years! This company does have a contract with the Chinese to upgrade a heavy oil refinery but lack their 60 million share.