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Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach was in Washington, DC today hyping his province's vast reserves of oil-soaked tar sands.

Not everyone was applauding Stelmach, and rightly so.

According to news reports, [6] Stelmach, "bemoaned what he termed the myth that the environmental cost of the oilsands is too high, saying calls from 'some quarters' to slow or stop production doesn't make sense."

Here's a few of the supposedly "mythical" facts about the Alberta tar sands:

• Tar Sands operations could eventually cover 149,000 square kilometers of pristine forest - that's an area roughly the size of Florida.

   

• Each day the tar sands use 600 million cubic feet of natural gas to, in effect, melt the tarry sludge into a usable form - that's enough natural gas to heat more than 3 million Canadian homes.

   

• Producing a barrel of oil from the tar sands produces three times more greenhouse gas than a barrel of conventional oil.

   

• Tar sands operations use about the same amount of freshwater in a year that the entire City of Calgary uses (population 1 million) - 90% of this freshwater ends up in toxic tailing ponds.

   

• Toxic tailing ponds already cover more than 50 square kilometers and are considered to be one of largest man-made structures in the world.

It appears that Premier Stelmach is living in his own little fantasy world.

I would suggest that instead of bird-dogging the Premier in a polar bear costume, a mythical beast like a unicorn or a minotaur might be a little more appropriate.

(High resolution event photos are attached. Credited to Oil Change International. [7] Location: Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington DC).