Attempting to counter student and celebrity demonstrations against the Tar Sands pipelines, Canadian politicians and bureaucrats have descended on Washington to blow some smoke about bitumen, the world’s dirtiest oil. While it is well-known that Alberta’s junk crude — which is 5 times as expensive to refine as quality oil, and uses 20% of Canada’s natural gas consumption in the process — is one of the planet’s leading contributors to climate change, the poohbahs of the petro state of Canada have pulled out all stops in extolling its virtues. As Andrew Nikiforuk reports, it’s as though this magical elixir could transform the world, which, in a sense, it has.