Departing from the highly compelling and science-based arguments (“consensus! you’re an idiot!”) usually offered towards dissenters, global warming … er… “climate change” theologists are now demanding they be silenced. Or else;
In light of the adverse impacts still resulting from your corporations activities, we must request that ExxonMobil end any further financial assistance or other support to groups or individuals whose public advocacy has contributed to the small, but unfortunately effective, climate change denial myth. Further, we believe ExxonMobil should take additional steps to improve the public debate, and consequently the reputation of the United States. We would recommend that ExxonMobil publicly acknowledge both the reality of climate change and the role of humans in causing or exacerbating it. Second, ExxonMobil should repudiate its climate change denial campaign and make public its funding history. Finally, we believe that there would be a benefit to the United States if one of the world’s largest carbon emitters headquartered here devoted at least some of the money it has invested in climate change denial pseudo-science to global remediation efforts. We believe this would be especially important in the developing world, where the disastrous effects of global climate change are likely to have their most immediate and calamitous impacts.
The Wall Street Journal response to Senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe is scathing;
Let’s compare the balance of forces: on one side, CEI; on the other, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, the U.N. and EU, Hollywood, Al Gore, and every politically correct journalist in the country. We’ll grant that’s a fair intellectual fight. But if the Senators are so afraid that a handful of policy wonks at a single small think-tank are in danger of winning this debate, they must not have much confidence in the merits of their own case.
The letter is so over-the-top that we also wonder if Mr. Rockefeller in particular has even read it. (He and Ms. Snowe didn’t return our call.) The Senator hails from coal-producing West Virginia, where people know something about carbon emissions. Come to think of it, Mr. Rockefeller owes his own vast wealth to something other than non-carbon energy. But perhaps it’s easier to be carbon free when your fortune comes from a trust fund.
The letter is of a piece with what has become a campaign of intimidation against any global warming dissent. Not only is everyone supposed to concede that the planet has been warming–as it has–but we are all supposed to salute and agree that human beings are the definitive cause, that the magnitude of the warming will be disastrous and its effects catastrophic, that such problems as AIDS and poverty are less urgent, and that economic planners must therefore impose vast new regulatory burdens on everyone around the world. Exxon is being targeted in this letter and other ways because it is one of the few companies that still thinks some debate on these questions is valuable.
Every dogma has its day, and we’ve lived long enough to see more than one “consensus” blown apart within a few years of “everyone knowing” it was true. In recent decades environmentalists have been wrong about almost every other apocalyptic claim they’ve made: global famine, overpopulation, natural resource exhaustion, the evils of pesticides, global cooling, and so on. Perhaps it’s useful to have a few folks outside the “consensus” asking questions before we commit several trillion dollars to any problem.
Imagine if this letter had been sent by someone in the Bush Administration trying to enforce the opposite conclusion? The left would be howling about “censorship.” That’s exactly what did happen earlier this year after James Hansen, the NASA scientist and global warming evangelist, complained that a lowly 24-year-old press aide had tried to limit his media access. The entire episode was preposterous because Mr. Hansen is one of the most publicized scientists in the world, but the press aide was nonetheless sacked.
Via Daimnation.
That article from the WSJ….Double Plus Good
Well, that sure would be a hoot if Gerbil Warmenization was debunked in the mainstream right around the time Dion brings Harper down.
What the chattering classes forget, and continually have to relearn, is that science is a self correcting discipline. Every theory is open to correction or outright dismissal.
Science is indeed a discipline; and, it must be fallible, that is, open to disproof.
But the climate evangelists don’t treat their view as scientific – even though they claim that it is ‘supported by 100% mainstream scientists’. They view it as The Absolute Truth – which immediately removes its conclusions from the scientific realm and moves them into religious, faith-based dogma.
Then, they treat everyone who disagrees as heretics – and the froth and fury at their heresy becomes a feverish scream.
I’ve been called every name in the book because I reject the Global Warming apocalpytic scenario, an ideology that is fundamentalist and medieval in its axioms and fervour (sin of mankind, apocalyptic result).
Id vote for global warming anytime I could if I thought for one second that a government could change the weather.
At the last iceage the glaciers stopped at the Black Hills of South Dakota. Except for a possible open corridor down through the “bad boy” province (unproven or temporary at best) the rest of this place was buried in a mile of ice.
Oh, Kate. Don’t you know that BigCityLib has already done a “smackdown” on anyone who’s a Climate Change Denier? In fact, many smackdowns, the latest of which is this?
Yes, that’s right. According to such luminaries as BCL, the very letter you’ve quoted couldn’t possibly even be written by advocates of the anthropogenic global warming theory, ’cause, y’know, they’re all so full of truthiness ‘n stuff.
Or something. I always get truthiness confused with certain bodily excretions.
“Moral clarity”, good Lord how I do love catch phrases. Listening to those yahoos is akin to taking swimming lessons from Ted Kennedy.
I fail to see how a heavily polluting corporation that spends money on denying their pollution is bad for humans, has people defending a “moral highground”. It’s mind boggling really what I see people here defending as if they enjoy pollution more than life itself.
You drive, don’t you Saskboy?
Eh… and you also realize that CO2 isn’t a pollutant?
If you want to have your eyes openned about “climate change” and “greenhouse gasses” watch this lecture.These are hard facts not science by concensus.
http://www.oism.org/oism/s32p686.htm
Saskboy,
It is about freedom, not freedom to pollute or not pollute (apologies to Kate just keeping consistent with the nomenclature), it is about the freedom to dissent and be wrong or right.
If the science bears it out then AGW will win the day, we will develop a political consensus around it, as we did with CFC’s, and take action. The lack of action has more to do with the lack of consensus.
There are legitimate alternative theories, solar forcing, and more importantly it isnt clear that C02 is the main cause even if it is AGW….maybe it is methane, maybe it is water vapour (which screws up hydrogen cars doesnt it)
The point is muzzling alternative theories, even if they are wrong, is the true path to disaster.
For those who opposed the Iraq war wasnt this exactly the argument. Had there not been a predetermined conclusion and more honest analysis then the US wouldnt have gone in?
So if that argument works for that situation why wouldnt it also work for alternative theories or opposition to AGW theories?
Unless it is “religon” and there is another agenda…..then muzzling opposition makes perfect sense.
Hey, if Saskboy et al want us to go back to living in caves etc..fine. No more heated homes, no more coal generated electricity to run their esspresso machines, no gas for their 1969 VW van, and David Suzuki and Al Gore will have to adjust to travelling by foot. Just don’t expect me to be giving you any of my wooly mammoth meat. And the Libs will be crying as their girlfriends ditch them in favor of conservatives with guns that can “bring home the bacon”. Bring on the stone age…yet another era where conservatives will prove to be superior.
“Hey wanna buy some carbon credits?”
Holes show in Dion’s plan
Dion has stuck with this plan, even though the Liberal government’s own consultants warned that major emitters would hoard the credits and wait until the price rose, at which point they’d make a killing at the expense of the taxpayer.
A self fulfilling prophesy?
But the EU scheme suffered a major blow in April and May when it emerged that companies were issued with more allowances than they needed, a serious problem in a market that depends on the scarcity of allowances for its existence. The European Commission has promised a much tighter cap on emissions in the second phase of the scheme, from 2008 to 2012.
Quite the opposite johnboy, I want us to use technology more, not go back to caves. Stop equating efficiency with cave-living. Exxon wants us to STAY in caves, metaphorically speaking, because that’s how they see themselves making the most money.
That’s one reason I’m proud to help write Off The Grid, and will keep looking for technology and techniques to help people increase Canada’s and their own energy and resources independence.
==
“You drive, don’t you Saskboy?
Posted by: Kate at December 5, 2006 10:25 AM
Eh… and you also realize that CO2 isn’t a pollutant?”
I don’t drive in order to pollute Kate, I drive to get from A to B. I unfortunately don’t have the ideal vehicle class I want (who does right, unless they are rich or can build their own?), because Exxon is part of the societal movement to keep better technology that relies less on their polluting product, out of the hands of average consumers with limited influence – like I. There’s NO difference between making a plug-in hybrid, and a combustion engine vehicle, yet the obviously inferior product remains on the market past the point the new one is tested and known to everyone. There are obvious forces holding back progress, and it’s important we ask why it’s hard to get technology that is better than what the big guys decide we want. Vehicles are a means of transporting mass from point A to point B, using energy. If you spend more on energy than you have to on creating the vehicle and operating/maintaining it, then you and the whole system loses, because energy is money/what-people-want-to-have-more-of. Pollution increases the cost of the system, because it’s an unwanted byproduct put into a random place the operator doesn’t want it to go – and it takes energy to put the byproduct back into the ideal place (like deep underground, or inside plants we don’t eat).
And Kate, you do realize that burning gasoline creates more than just CO2 as a polluting by-product. I know you don’t think CO2 is a pollutant, but I’d be interested to hear what you have to say about the OTHER pollutants from combustion that we could reduce by going to better technology.
I have to ask johnboy and all, who is actually being anti-technology in this discussion? I’d put it to you, “Bring on the stone age..” answers who actualy doesn’t care if we move backwards.
My long career in the private sector of earth science brought me into constant contact with the reality of the cyclic nature of earth’s history. Most of the earth scientists that I personally know believe the same as I do: that the present trend toward a warming cycle is a long way from being proven as being caused by the activities of man. The history of the earth, exhibited quite well within the geologic column, shows cyclic change to be the norn, not the exception. Essentially all of that cyclic change predates man’s appearance upon earth.
So much for the *concensus* from the scientific community. They certainly haven’t asked ALL of us.
The above referrenced letter is appalling. Apparently to dissent could become dangerous to your economic health. In fact, it implies that the time is running out for when any dissent will be tolerated.
This amounts to nothing more than Global Warming Jihadism. ‘You either believe in it, and cease dissent, or else we will come after you!’
What can we expect next? Videos of masked GW terrorists cutting in two kidnapped Exxon-Mobile credit cards?
saskboy – your argument focuses on one cause of Evil – Exxon. That reductionism moves your perspective out of empirical reasoning and into demonization – which is faith-based and rejects both data and reason.
You assign a Will to Power to Exxon, an agent with a Will to Keep Better Technology out of the hands of the hapless citizens. Rubbish. Better technology is constantly being explored – read the science and engineering journals – but, moving the science from the theoretical to the applied isn’t one-two-three.
It can be extremely difficult and, not merely costly -which would make the resultant product available only for the Elite Class (which you disdain) – but it requires testing and above all, new products don’t exist ‘all by themselves’. They must operate within a supportive infrastructure – which can manufacture the parts, supply the energy requirements for these new energy types..and so on.
But your simplistic reductionism of causality to Exxon and those types – is akin to Satanism – where you put all the blame on an Evil Agent with the Will to Power and Do Harm.
Naive. But, I suppose it’s emotionally satisfying.
Moronic and paranoid conspiracy theory rears its head again:
“Exxon is part of the societal movement to keep better technology that relies less on their polluting product, out of the hands of average consumers with limited influence”
Hey saskboy, did you know that ExxonMobil isn’t even in the top ten oil companies in the world? It’s tiny compared to the state-owned oil companies. You didn’t know that, did you?
This is also an amazing statement, indicative of profound ignorance, it’s like something someone really stoned on pot would say:
“There’s NO difference between making a plug-in hybrid, and a combustion engine vehicle”
Hey Saskboy, that plug in the front of your car doesn’t classify it as a “plug-in hybrid”. Doh!
I see saskboy is a respected and linked to blogger in the lefty internet blog circuit, they’ve kind of got a Special Olympics sort of thing going.
Anon, in that case, what are the material differences between the two engines, holding back a wider rollout?
ET, as if you’d want to discuss data or reason with me, we both know I’d wipe the floor with your efforts, because there’s just no way you can justify wasting energy if you want a lot of people to be wealthy. Exxon’s motives are profit, not the energy efficiency of society’s transportation system. Put that data in your pipe and smoke on it a while.
Trains, trucks and planes need fuel. They travel long distances.
Urban commuters need energy efficient, less polluting vehicles.
The facts show:
Exxon Mobil is the most profitable corporation on earth. They could afford to HELP make their product less polluting, or help the useless Big 3 make more efficient engines.
Their PR campaigns are not unlike Big Tobacco (remember light cigarettes being promoted as ‘better’ for you? i know a ton of people who used to smoke more of the lights than they would regular strength.) Let’s face it, oil companies don’t give a damn about anything but profit.
Smog and industrial pollution make many cities in China, not to mention Toronto, quite revolting to visit compared to our prairie skies.
While Kyoto is a silly Chairman Mo/UN program that doesn’t work, and global warming can’t be tied to carbon emissions (yet), defending pollution and environmental destruction will not preserve our western wilderness.
Obviously, the oilsands resource is the big item here. The world needs the resource, but we are RESPONSIBLE for what gets left behind.
Let’s continue to develop the resource, find ways to reduce ALL pollutants getting into the atmosphere and groundwater, and continue to enjoy life in the greatest place on earth.
TexasC, wouldn’t it be nice if it did mean that, though? What are the forces holding back that kind of progress, and is Kate a part of that force by denying that climate change exists, and quibbling with me about what tailpipe/smokestack emissions are real “pollution” or not. If I wanted red herring, I’d pull it from the overfished ocean, I don’t want to see it all over the Internet thank you very much.
“I don’t drive in order to pollute Kate, I drive to get from A to B.”
No company or individual has pollution as their goal. You pollute to maintain your chosen lifestyle, no different than any other individual or corporation. Some of us make a choice to do what we can to minimize the pollution we create, but most of us will not sacrifice much our lifestyle to do so.
If you believe hybrids are the answer (or a part of it) then you better purchase one and work hard to convince as many as you can that that is the way to go. You see, one of the strongest “obvious forces holding back progress” is the consumer. If consumers want it, the auto makers will give it to us. However hybrid doesn’t always mean efficiency – a hybrid Highlander is downright thirsty compared to a conventional Yaris (this is one of the big reasons I’d oppose special benefits (like car pool lane access) or tax credits based on hybrid technology).
AS far as your lamentation that the “ideal vehicle class” is untenable for all but the wealthy, I’d say the afore mentioned Yaris is a great environmental choice, or perhaps the Smart car – both of which are available at the very low-end of new car prices (though the latter is a couple bucks more). The more the market moves in this direction, the more low-cost fuel efficient vehicles will be available.
I think it is unfair to single out Exxon as they support masterpiece theater on PBS.
Are the know it all global warming prophets the same ones who 15 years ago were predicting the onset of an ice age?
Preventing Global warming seems a bit like King Canute on the beach.
Clean air seems to me a more pratical target.
Also the earth was apparently warmer back in the 1500’s than it is today but we don’t like to talk about that because it messes up the graph.
Forest Miner, that’s what I’m saying too. Even IF (and for the sake of Kate’s argument I’ll conceed for the moment that CO2 isn’t causing “pollution” or “climate change”), there are still benefits for everyone, if Exxon works at reducing the amount of oil burned in combustion engines. But who in their right mind with a straight face can say that Exxon isn’t part of an effort to keep the status quo where they make more money than Jesus (as Family Guy Peter put it)? Liars or shareholders, that’s who.
Ian, LOL@ first point, good joke.
==
Denis “If consumers want it, the auto makers will give it to us.”
That’s where I think your logic (which is how things should work in the free market) falls down in reality. It’s like saying Communism is the best political system – it ignores what happens in real life.
There are all sorts of products on the market with “features” that the consumer doesn’t demand, yet there are enough of them buying them because there IS NO REALISTIC alternative. Who in the right mind buys an MP3 player with DRM? No consumer wants DRM, it’s completely forced on us from the top down. It’s the same thing in the Big Oil/Auto market, they are parasites able to exploit us with their product – Big Auto doesn’t have to invest in new equipment for better technology and makes more money, and Big Oil doesn’t have to sell less gas – they both win, and we all lose!
And these eco-wackos as well as HOT AIR AL GORE can do this from the comfort of their airconditions building and chuffer driver limos while using hour of kilowatts of electricity what a bunch of green eletist snobs
Saskboy:
It’s refreshing that you support nuclear power so much. Don’t you?
If you want to significantly reduce fossil fuel usage, the only viable answer (other than the as-yet unavailable Dilithium Crystals) is nuclear…Or park your car and turn off the lights and furnace.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Fuzzy wishful thinking will not keep your house warm tonight. “Off the Grid” is great stuff, I have friends who live like that. But they still put gas in their Chevy, and the factories that supplied the modern materials for their off-the-grid home are on-the-grid in a big way.
Ergo: pro-nuclear, eh?
Mark Twain once said that when you find yourself on the side of the majority, that is the time to pause and reflect.
Reflect perhaps on the nature of regimes that stifle debate.
saskboy – don’t get into simplistic puffed up displays (eg, your juvenile claim that “we both know I’d wipe the floor with your efforts”). We don’t both know. You have tried data or reason.
Again – your reductionism of causality of energy use problems to The Greed of Exxon is naive and simplistic. Your reduction and personification of a corporation to a person, giving it the emotions of greed – is illogical.
Your lack of data to show how alternatives to oil already exist, have been moved from the research papers and the testing labs into the applied area of manufacturing and marketing – shows that your claims are pure rhetoric and faith-based.
“It’s refreshing that you support nuclear power so much. Don’t you?”
Yes I do, I realize the energy has to come from some where, and besides the wind and sun, nuclear is the most efficient and mass producible means to create power for our grid. It’s not perfect, but if it’s done carefully, and the waste is either shot successfully into the sun [which we can’t do yet], or buried deep into a place without much volcanic activity or underground water to move radioactive particles into our ecosystem, it’s much better than coal which SK uses now.
As I’ve heard, part of the reason we don’t go nuclear in the land of uranium, is that we don’t have a large enough load to justify it. If more people were plugging in their cars for fuel, I’d guess we’d have closer to the load that justifies a plant for the prairies.
ET, anyone who’s read me in the past (aside from you maybe) knows that I’ve refuted your most recent claims. So please don’t attempt to waste my time by having me repeat myself. Instead I encourage you to save your energy, and/or read Off The Grid for some real world technologies that reduce energy consumption in ways that we know are less efficient than they have to be.
See my reply to Denis about why Exxon has “greed” as you call it.
The thing is, “big oil” has no part in the development or sale of automobiles. Your DRM/MP3 player analogy falls short because there is not any type of proprietary “big oil” gas formulation that requires a certain design of engine. The gas from the local pump will work as well in a hybrid Prius as it will in a conventional Yaris or even in a decades old domestic. There is nothing the gas companies are doing that forces the auto makers to develop their engines in any specific way (except that they must run on gas or diesel).
I would also ask, if there is some collusion between “big oil” and “big auto” why have we seen such a variety of hybrid vehicles coming to market? Is “big auto” spending millions or billions in R&D and production re-tooling as some sort of smoke screen?
The fact is, when it comes down to it consumers have many choices available to them which can greatly help them reduce their consumption of gasoline. This is the crux of it, simply put most individuals simply haven’t made that choice.
A huge, hUGE change has taken place in the It-Is-Mans-Fault global warmming- no climate change- no climate injustice debate thing.
During the last year on many, many threads like this, the alarmists are becoming fewer and farther between. Why ? Because their arguments have been exposed for what they are, a Hoax. Read, Al Gore.
Some of the Media hasn’t caught on yet (do not want to) because the media is an ass.
It really is a case of the Hippy Crowd losers realizing they have opted-out, poted-out and flunked-out and are desparate. Cult-like clinging to a myth, gone too far down the path and do not want to eat the inevitable humble pie. Not to mention losing their cushy jobs and pensions.
And, as in all cults, the Climate-Alarmists want all debate to end because they know they will lose. Did you ever see the leaders of End-of-the-World cults allow their followers to engage the outside world ??
The contrast in the whole Kyoto Hoax debate is best seen by the principles of two Canadians. Seek out their comments, their policies, but most importantly their track record. Have they talked the talk or actually walked the walk.
Dr. Patrick Moore
greenspirit.com
co-founder of Greenpeace International
And
Dr. David Suzuki
davidsuzuki.org/
The Suzuki Foundation
One of the above was partly resposible for the DDT ban. DDT, when used properly, is safe. However, the Ban itself killed millions of people during the last few decades.
One of the above is largely credited with reversing the Ban and many African Nations are now saving their children from a brutal death due to malaria.
Saskboy, your comments re: what about real pollution identify the problem. You are right, CO2 and real pollutants are emitted by internal combustion engines, particularly carbon monoxide (CO). Therein lies the contradiction of Kyoto. We are facing catastrophic consequences if WE don’t do something about human-induced warming. That is, the ones that caused it. It isn’t quite as bad a problem for China, India etal to modernize using the same resources we used, ie oil. Instead of going after the real pollution problem and the threat to the environment, CO proliferation (and deforestation too), we are focussing on CO2, essentially taking our eye off the ball. Let’s develop transition technologies, understanding it may take 50 years to get off oil. Instead, we let the victimed third world pollute away, making precisely the same mistakes we in the developed world did. We should focus on pollution with the side benefit of reducing emissions. I will support any politician who can put a workable plan together, provided we are prepared to share our energy technology with the Kyoto-emempt countries.
The Boxer is off her chain.
Katrina is on Boxer’s *hit list, too.
Ass Press aids/abet with mucho coverage.
It’s over.
…-
AP Interview: Boxer says no to further environmental rollbacks
ap on Daily Comet ^ | 12/5/06 | John Heilprin – AP
Environmental rollbacks from the Bush administration “in the dead of the night” are history, the Senate’s incoming environment chairwoman said Tuesday.
“That’s over. We are going to bring these things into the light. ” Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said in a wide-ranging interview laying out her agenda with The Associated Press. She cited concerns about a host of new Bush administration rules on air, land and water quality.
“Some of the things are so outrageous that when they hit the light of day, you’ll see people back off,” she said. “And that’s something I do, and I will do. The oversight function of this committee is going to be very important to me.”
Boxer, who takes over the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in January, anticipates fireworks as early as Wednesday when the outgoing chairman, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., holds a last hearing portraying the news media as fanning global warming alarmism.
Her first hearing next month will focus on ways to address global warming, including her goal of imposing the nation’s first mandatory caps on carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
“This is a potential crisis of a magnitude we’ve never seen,” Boxer said.
Several world leaders have called Boxer expressing their hope for a new day in U.S. environmental policy, she said, adding that “we want to send a signal to the world.”
To help pay for Superfund sites that are the nation’s worst contaminated, Boxer said she will push to reinstate a special tax on oil and chemical industries and other businesses. Congress that levy expire in 1995.
She also plans to hold field hearings in Louisiana on the environmental effects of Hurricane Katrina.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1748795/posts
Shamrock, I don’t think the Conservatives are that party to put together a plan, it just isn’t on their radar to do so.
==
“if there is some collusion between “big oil” and “big auto” why have we seen such a variety of hybrid vehicles coming to market?”
Because in places like Japan, and Europe where the automakers have done differently from GM and Ford, consumers have better access to efficient vehicles. (And gasoline costs much more than it does in North America.) It’s inefficient to make vehicles overseas and float them and spare parts over here when we could be making our own. If we were at war with Japan or Germany, there’s no way we’d settle for them having superior energy saving equipment for so much longer than we do. We don’t have the leadership to say “Us too!”
saskboy – you are making claims on this blog, and I think you’ll have to refute them or prove them, on this blog.
Your answer to Denis about Exxon ‘greed’ is inadequate and illogical. You claim that the reason we don’t have alternative energy systems is because the ‘Big Oil’ companies are greedy and want to sell their oil. Your data base and logical error is that you are assuming that the innovative product comes from the old product. That’s false.
For example, newspapers and television didn’t develop the prime competitor to themselves – the Internet.
Libraries didn’t develop the computer.
Electricity wasn’t developed first as a source of energy.
etc, etc.
New systems are not developed by old systems; that’s a basic principle, not only biologically, but also, cognitively. A new system will develop in ‘bits and pieces’, moving out from a theoretical exploration which may have a completely different focus on what might eventually be its applied uses. You’ll see that in a lot of medical, physical, chemical research. The people who move the theory from its first theoretical to various applied usages will, in most cases, not be the same person and often don’t know each other – and so on. It takes years – and tests – and lots of input from different fields.
But, the innovative product doesn’t emerge out of the old – it moves in from the margins, from the periphery..and will, if it is viable, gradually take over the field from the old product. That’s how it works.
Therefore, your anger at Exxon for ‘not developing a different energy system’ is illogical. They aren’t the ones to do it; the innovation comes from the periphery – and moves into a centralist domination. IF, it’s viable.
It’s easy to be emotional and in a state of rage and assign blame to The Satan (whoever is defined as such). But, it’s illogical.
Nuclear… Guess what? The world’s consuming 500,000 pounds of uranium every day, right now. Anyone who thinks nuclear power is the magic solution had better consider the necessary uranium mining proliferation and the inevitable scarcity of the resource.
I wonder if the environmental-activists have informed Jack Layton on their plans to destroy GM, Ford and Chrysler ????
~~~ $ FOUR MILLION, KATE !!! ~~
Saskboy:
Good. As I see it, we’re not being creative enough yet with regard to the nuclear power debate.
Some thoughts:
“Not big enough load” – This is based on erroneous assumptions that all nuclear power can only be produced by huge CANDU type plants. We should design and build small, pre-fuelled, “pocket reactors” whose components could be mass produced and shipped in containers to anywhere. Canada (and Sask.) is in a unique position to do this. We build ’em, fuel ’em, lease ’em, and replace them when they’re spent. Big battery. Single units for small third-world applications, string ’em together in series for big cities.
What about that horrible nuclear waste?
All the nuclear waste produced in Canada over the decades fits into what is essentially a large swimming pool. Build a few more swimming pools. Or put it back into the mine it came out of. All of which is much better than the huge piles of poisonous (and mildly radioactive) coal ash around Estevan.
We don’t want to throw it away. When the petroleum industry was in its infancy, one of the waste products of coal-oil production was gasoline-they burned it off as a by-product. As technology goes forward, we’ll likely find a good use for the stuff…In the meantime, cast it into concrete blocks, stack it up in any unused piece of desert, and put a fence around it, just like you do with any dangerous substance you don’t want to eat or sleep with.
Weapons proliferation? BS. Too many people have visions of mushroom clouds dancing in their heads as soon as you mention the word “nuclear”. Turning spent CANDU type rods into weapons-grade stuff is virtually impossible. It would take the resources of a national government- and those governments that want to, already are, without the help of a bunch of spent fuel rods sitting in a swimming pool in Ontario.
Sure, most of us would like to see a wholesale reduction in our carbon-fueled society. But, NOT until the alternatives appear.
Exxon is not your enemy. Anti-nuke liberals and ignorant enviromentalists are. We could have been using clean, locally produced energy years ago if not for them.
Sorry about the rant, Kate. 😉
Saskboy. With respect, my central argument – CO proliferation bigger problem, is precisely what the Conservatives are proposing, along with realistic Kyoto-type programs. Don’t expect the MSM to tell you this, they would prefer the Dion (8 years)did nothing, but neither did the Conservatives (9 months). Maybe it’s the Liberals who are wanting here – after all they’ve made no progress on CO2 emissions or pollution, other than decleare CO2 a pollutant (O look! Problem solved!)
I almost gagged when I read the original letter and came across the words, “climate change denial confederacy” to describe skeptics of the global warming claims.
“Confederacy???”
What kind of images are they trying to dredge up here? Is it just me or is there an implied link between those who challenge global warming theorists and those who were against freeing the slaves?
“We don’t have the leadership to say “Us too!””
Who is “we”? Should the government dictate to industry which technologies must be developed & pursued? Or maybe they should simply bend us lowly tax-payers over the oil barrel like the European states and jack taxes until we make the “correct” choice of automobile en masse?
Like I said earlier, the consumers have the choices available to reduce their usage of gasoline. Trends in the industry seem to indicate that the market is indeed moving in a more fuel efficient direction. However we are not going to eliminate the desire by some to have their Expedition, Charger or whatever other flavour of politically incorrect “gas guzzler” they choose. I guess you’ll just have to work harder with them to remove Exxon’s mind meld and free those poor souls so they can make the choice you deem best for them.
The bottom line is consumer choice exists and their demands drive the market.
“They aren’t the ones to do it; the innovation comes from the periphery – and moves into a centralist domination. ”
ET, that’s a fair enough perspective. Then why defend them, when your argument shows that their interest is NOT in finding a solution to a problem they enable?
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“CO proliferation bigger problem, is precisely what the Conservatives are proposing, along with realistic Kyoto-type programs. Don’t expect the MSM to tell you this, they would prefer the Dion (8 years)did nothing, but neither did the Conservatives (9 months). Maybe it’s the Liberals who are wanting here – after all they’ve made no progress on CO2 emissions or pollution, other than decleare CO2 a pollutant (O look! Problem solved!)”
Maybe you didn’t mean that? You just said Conservatives proposing that CO is a problem is a solution, but Liberals proposing that CO2 is a problem, isn’t a solution.
Neither is a solution, they are only hypothesis. There’s no action from either of them.
Let’s say for the sake of your intended point, the Conservatives intend to take action on CO & other emissions that poison things. They aren’t packaging their solution in a way that people interested in the environment, accept as a solution. The Liberals had better packaging, but still no action. If the Conservatives want Canadians to get behind their “action” on pollution control, stop missing committee meetings (I’m looking at you Rona), and get an environment minister that can speak without checking first with Stephen H.
Shamrock wrote:
“…support any politician who can put a workable plan together,…”
Would not this be a definition of an oxymoron?
Then Barbara Boxer claims:
‘Her first hearing next month will focus on ways to address global warming, including her goal of imposing the nation’s first mandatory caps on carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases.’
I can hardly wait to see how she plans to legislate a cap on the next major burp from Mt. Saint Helens. Of course a little resurgence at Yellowstone would make all that a mute point, wouldn’t it.
“Who is “we”? Should the government dictate to industry which technologies must be developed & pursued?”
Essentially, the short answer is yes. Countries at war have governments that dictate to industry what they will do to be most efficient, and for the good of the country. And I needn’t remind a person reading SDA that Canada is at war in Afghanistan, and the USA in Iraq/Afghanistan 😉 What good is government if it doesn’t work to ensure its citizens are safe, and healthy, along with being as free as competing countries allow us to be?
Question;
Which countries have a better track record on the environment,
USSR, Russia, Eastern Block
OR
North America
So why do the our Hippy Socialists want Socialistic-Kyoto-Style so called solutions ???? With the UN and Koffi Annan running the show ?? Go figure.
In times of disaster (Tsunami, financial, Balkans, ect) which countries provided the most help(per capita). ??
Ukraine
France
Sweden
Canada
Russia
Brazil
USA
Iran
China
I see saskboy is still living in mis moms basement and buying everything the eco-terrorist feeed him. What a dolt!!!!!
“Essentially, the short answer is yes. Countries at war have governments that dictate to industry what they will do to be most efficient, and for the good of the country.”
I see 2 problems with this suggestion.
The first is this would likely stifle innovation rather than encourage it. For example, if the government mandated the auto makers to develop & build cost-competitive hybrids where would the incentive be to continue improving the efficiency of conventional automobiles like the Yaris, Jetta TDI or the Smart car? Likewise if the focus was on 40 mpg or lower, why improve the efficiency of minivans or other vehicles families with more than 2 or 3 kids need? To cover all the areas of fuel efficiency technology that are possible, the government mandate would have to be so broad to be meaningless or so narrow that good, fuel saving alternatives fall to the wayside.
The second problem is assuming the government did force the automakers to focus on the technology it deemed best, you still have to make the consumers buy it. Unless we are reduced to a government mandated selection of “acceptable” cars, people are free to purchase what they desire. As I said earlier, we do not lack from a choice of fuel efficient cars we lack from wide scale adoption of fuel efficient cars.