It is called willful ignorance, most distasteful in an otherwise intelligent individual.

One of the largest challenges we face is the constant erosion of aesthetic expectations.  I sit here in middle age, aghast at the degradation I have seen in my short lifetime.  People younger than me never even saw it before we logged off the Pacific Northwest, before we built out the strip malls, before the fisheries started to collapse.  They have no reference point to know or value the beauty that I remember, and my recollections begin in the early 1970s when the accelerated decline had been well underway for some time.

Anthropogenic climate change may or may not turn out to be significant, but the dystopian cesspool we are creating is very, very real.

I don't think I need any more degrees. And I clearly state when I don't know the conclusion, which you would be able to tell if you read any of my numerous posts today. So how about you fuck off instead?

Come on, Canada's not that bad yet.

Since the beginning of the oil sands development, there have been several leaks into the Athabasca River polluting it with oil and tailing pond water. The close proximity of the tailing ponds to the river drastically increases the likelihood of contamination due to ground water leakages. In 1997, Suncor admitted that their tailing ponds had been leaking 1,600 cubic metres (57,000 cu ft) of toxic water into the river a day. This water contains naphthenic acid, trace metals such as mercury and other pollutants. The Athabasca River is the largest freshwater delta in the world but with Suncor and Syncrude leaking tail ponds the amount of polluted water will exceed 1 billion cubic meters by 2020.

Natural toxicants derived from bitumen in Northern Alberta pose potential ecological and human health risks to northerners living in the area. Oil sands development contributes arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel and other metal elements toxic at low concentrations to the tributaries and rivers of the Athabasca