Dead Ducks at Syncrude: Trash News?

Today, the Globe and Mail carries Dead ducks a boon for oil-sands opponents. The story is the ongoing coverage about 500 Mallard ducks that landed in a Syncrude tailings pond where over 99% of them died. This is top news; Google counts 325 articles today!

The articles focus on the size of the catastrophe, pointing out that it surely derails a "$25-million, three-year public relations campaign the Alberta government recently launched to brand Alberta and persuade domestic and international critics that production in the province's oil sands is environmentally friendly." Often used terms include "toxic", "oil-soaked", "record number of deaths", etc.

These articles are trash. The ones I read do not educate anyone about anything. We can't understand the magnitude of what happened from the content of these articles. Let's analyse some numbers:

So if 500 dead ducks constitutes and environmental emergency then what does an annual hunt of over 75,000? That must be an absolute devastation for the news writers and environmentalists there were quoted. Of course, when you look at the numbes you would have to disagree. 500 ducks out of that many millions is of absolutely no consequence to the population.

How about all those toxicity terms? The truth is, those tailings ponds only contain run-off from what is already in the ground. The oil sands are dug up, heated and the oil extracted in a mostly mechanical way. It certainly isn't as bad as metal extraction where the waste products are sometimes very nasty, for example the cyanide used to seperate gold. There isn't anything radioactive about it. The pond is simply where the oily water is held until most of the fine dirt settles and then the rest is buried, like it was before. So the tailings pond is a hazard but it isn't a wholesale toxic death pit.

Now, the newspapers and environmentalists run away with this story of 500 dead ducks and explode it as widely as possible. Many neglect to give perspective to the story, not provide any educational value. The probable result is that the stories will simply hurt the reputations of the oil sands producers, in a false way. The oil industry deserves to have some environmental stains on it, but not for this. In addition, who cares? Not so much the oil companies. You'll grumble about the Mallards while you fill up your SUV or ride your bike. Nobody will switch from SUV to bike or vice versa over this. People just have something to be passionate and intellectual about during their watercooler conversations.

Newspapers are becoming more uninteresting and not worth reading to me. When I see a story like this I spend much more time on it than just reading time. It stays in my mind because it seems important. Something that I should have an opinion about. Then I am driven to do a check because I don't like to take opinions that have been given to me, rather I like my own geniune opinions to agree or disagree with others. Finally, of course, when I find out that the issue is trivial I become disappointed that someone tricked me into chasing something useless.

Here is the real story in a quick bite:

500 ducks died in a Syncrude tailings pond. The pond should have had measure on it to prevent environmental damage. In fact, Syncrude even has the technology in air cannons designed to scare the birds away. They should have had these cannons deployed. For this, Syncrude should be fined heavily so they don't forget to do it again. In fact, I think the oilsands should pay for a dedicated wildlife officer to keep an eye out for these types of things.

The 500 specific ducks probably died very unhappily. Ducks contaminated with oil die because their feathers don't keep the water off anymore and they become cold. Ducks try to take the oil off with their beaks ingesting some in the process. Just a little bit of oil will kill a bird through hypothermia, and lots of oil will poison the bird. Either way it is an unpleasant and unnatural death.

Luckily the population of ducks was not harmed and the 500 lost ducks will not put a damper on next year's hunting season when over 100X that number of ducks will be shot.