tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7560032271749992180.post312546215087658320..comments2024-01-26T09:10:10.248-07:00Comments on Trey Capnerhurst's Blog: A Repudiation of Treehugger's Fort Mac article: What's really going on up there?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15626580781769379881noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7560032271749992180.post-70736519836564144902012-10-09T12:32:18.880-06:002012-10-09T12:32:18.880-06:00From a comment in today's G&M, which I tru...From a comment in today's G&M, which I truly hope the commenter will forgive me for reposting:<br /> <br />kiwehtin<br /> <br />8:02 AM on October 9, 2012<br /><br /> <br />Bitumen IS tar, mineral tar. Bitumen is the Latin word for tar, quite simply. And the Latin term, just like the English one, originally meant the substance manufactured from the cooked sap of trees (in this case the birch, 'betula'), and then got transferred to mineral tar. Like oil (oleum in Latin, elaia in Greek) originally meant the edible viscous fluid expelled from olives (oliva, elaion) that could also be burned and later got transferred (with a prefix Erd-, aard-, petro- etc. meaning 'earth', 'rock' and the like in European languages) to a non-edible but still burnable viscous mineral liquid extracted from the ground.<br /> <br />In an important geological report for the Alberta government from the early 1970s which evaluated the deposits' potential, the geologists consistently referred to the deposits as bituminous sands or tar sands, but *not once* as so-called "oil sands". In the media prior to this past decade, they were *only* called "tar sands", as they *still are* outside Canada. That is simply the correct English term. When I first read/heard reports about "Alberta oil sands" in the media this decade, I was puzzled because I had never heard about these before; I assumed these must be something different from the Athabasca tar sands that were so much in the news in the 1970s and 1980s. I did some research and found out to my surprise that these so-called "Alberta oil sands" *were* the Athabasca tar sands near Fort McMurray!<br /> <br />"Oil sands" is nothing but dishonest, politically correct, marketing spin Newspeak. You can see the unambiguous marketing spin — not only in the way the industry and the in hock Alberta government have substituted the word that describes the eventual refined derivative ("oil", i.e. petroleum to be strictly accurate) for what is actually in the deposits (tar, or bitumen if you want to use the technical equivalent that means exactly the same thing whether bio-derived or mineral) — but also in the way they substitute "Alberta" for marketing purposes for "Athabasca", which accurately describes the region where the deposits are found.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15626580781769379881noreply@blogger.com