latest stories:   Melting bitumen in place is less unsightly
than mining tar sands, but increasing efficiency, lowering costs
and--perhaps most importantly—minimizing greenhouse gas
emissions remain challenges  © David Biello  CONKLIN,
Alberta—The challenge of pulling oil from sand near here has
typically required scraping away the boreal forest and
underlying peat to expose the tar sand deposits below. The
thickened sand is scooped out, then boiled to separate out the
bitumen, with the leftover contaminated water and muck dumped in
vast holding ponds the size of small lakes. From orbit the
enormous strip mines and tailings lakes created by this process
stand out, like a spreading sore—a scar on the planet evidencing
the American thirst for oil. But the future of this Canadian
province's oil sands leaves less of a visible mark, as can be
seen near this town that is not so much a community as an
intersection of roads that lead to camps for oil sands workers.
That means fewer strip mines, tailings lakes and eve