canada will never escape its destiny- petroleum production from oil sand.



trying to ramrod green measures down people's throats and businesses won't change that.

I see your point, but its a little off. We also export electricity, cars, gems, wood, etc. I read somewhere that Oil is about 19% of the total export which is really significant, but I think if Oil were to crash even harder than it has already, things would rebound sooner or later.

canada has the biggest proven oil reserves on the planet. oil sand production is profitable at current prices and some say even lower. this world won't be forced off the oil teet, we're going to suck it dry. that's human nature. too many products, people, places and things inextricably tied to oil.

provincial government officials(actually just one guy, if i understand correctly, the minister of green shit) trying to usurp that are only going to make fat cats fatter and poor people more poor. taking folks off natural gas and requiring them to use electricity is truly myopic.

Sigh.

Here we go with whole NASA thing again. NASA should stick to what it is supposed to do - launch shit into space. It's pretty sad that American astronauts have to hitch a ride on Russian rockets to get into space yet NASA has no trouble convincing people like you that CO2 is evil and a 1 degree temperature increase is going to kill us all. Talk about losing focus.

What of the damage caused by the fossil fuel industry? Is it really any worse than the damage caused by the lithium mining industry? The molybdenum mining industry? The rare earth mineral mining industry? The palm oil industry? The wind turbine industry?

Here you go - enjoy being a "green" hypocrite:
The Worst Place on Earth

Do you enjoy living a comfortable modern life? If so then thank the fossil fuel industry because a your comfortable modern life is not possible without it. If you think it is go for it.

I have taken issue with you before about talking down to people. Don't do it. Don't tell me to do research as if to imply that you are better or smarter than me. Don't tell me that "Methane" is also a greenhouse gas and plants don't like it much. You insult me more by taking me for an idiot with comments like that than I have ever insulted you with "name calling". And don't capitalize methane.

I have been following and researching this topic for 25+ years. I was once exactly like you and it is through my own research that I came to see things differently. Maybe you should do some research outside of NASA and the NOAA. "But don't search for things that serve your conceived notions first". Try looking for the real cost of a world without fossil fuels, the mass starvation, the freezing in the cold, the lighting of rooms by candle light. (Oops sorry - candles are not permitted because they emit CO2). Is it really humanity you care about or only your own sense of virtue?

And I never said going green is a problem. I said cutting CO2 is not going green. CO2 is green. Period.

As for what Ontario should do instead? Honestly, Ontario should be building new nuclear or hydroelectric power plants instead of bird and bat chopping wind farms. They should be trying to provide electricity as cheaply as possible to promote economic growth and paying down the provincial debt. And they should stop worrying about the mythological "carbon footrptint".

FYI - debt servicing in Ontario now consumes almost 10% of the annual budget - $11 billion a year. It is the fastest growing budget item outpacing both health and education. And this is at low interest rates. A rise in interest rates will be catastrophic.

Do you honestly think that broke ass people living in a broke ass province will be able to afford electric cars, electric heat, carbon taxes or even basic electricity? Only wealthy people can afford to be "green". Poor people cannot.

Lastly if you can't see that this whole thing is politically dictated then there is no hope for you. Your best bet is to go work for NASA and become another one of the hapless drones that dare not speak out against the mandated dogma for fear of losing your cushy pay check.




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Climate change is real and picking up pace. The debate is over what's causing it and whether we can stop or slow it down.

Nasa's ability to "launch shit into space" means that Satellites can give us views of the earth that we normally do not see. All of those instruments can measure the earth and its atmosphere and changes over time that show us in detail what is going on. Nasa hasn't lost any focus. Your tax dollars are paying for the information they are gathering. You can debate it if you want, but you shouldn't ignore it or dismiss it.


Seriously?

http://cdn.earthporm.com/wp-content/...nge-7__880.jpg http://greenbuzzz.com/wp-content/upl...il_Spill_1.jpg.

Google is your friend.




Of course there are some environmental costs to all types of energy gathering, but those types need to be explored because the cost of fossil fuels is extremely high. The price you pay at the pump for gasoline is not the full cost.

But since you bring it up, Yes fossil fuels are worse than wind. A Single wind turbine can produce 750 kW that can power over 200-300 homes. All with no air emissions, no fuel to mine, no fuel to transport, no fuel to store, no cooling water, and no waste.


I never said that fossil fuels need to be completely removed. No one thinks that. What needs to be done is to have fossil fuels be used more cleanly and more efficiently. Using fossil fuels to heat homes and power cars is inefficient and wasteful, that's all.

Eon, you have called me several names in this thread alone, and I have called you no names at all. You and I are having a discussion about your original post. You stated your opinion that you strongly disagree with Ontario's decision to move forward to reduce emissions, and called it suicide. You even named me in your original post, and challenging me to lend my comments on your topic, so here I am.

I am offering my opinion too, which you have invited by posting, which I am allowed to give. I feel strongly about my opinion just as you feel strongly about yours, but it doesn't mean that it should devolve into a fight my friend.


As I said earlier, there will always be a place for gas, oil, coal, and fossil fuels. My... point... my... reason for arguing I guess you could say, is that I love technology, and because of that, I think there is always a better way to do things - a more efficient way. That's all dude - there's no need to get so upset all the time.

The problem isn't CO2. It's too much CO2.

And original post highlighted "phasing out natural gas for heating". It has its advantages over coal, but it still emits sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide which contribute to acid rain and ground level ozone. Natural gas | Energy | Climate change | Science & policy | Energy | Issues

Guess what - I agree with you here. Ontario and other places should build NEW Nuclear power plants. Nuclear is surprisingly clean. Hopefully they can build the newest, next-technology plants. I forget what they are called (it's 2:50am and I'm dead tired) but yes, Nuclear.

(See? We can agree on something)

I'm sure you are right.

Eon, look. THere's no reason to insult me, at least on this. I am trying to have a conversation with you. The whole issue is complicated and there are millions of things that come into play on both sides. You have your opinions and I have mine and thats cool for the both of us. I think maybe the difference though, is that I am more optimistic about things in general. I will always look at things that interest me and wonder how they can be made to be better.

You named me in your OP and here I am, giving you my opinion. If your original reason for placing my name in your post was just to fight, then thats too bad and I've wasted my time. Hopefully I'm wrong about that. Maybe your next post will answer that question.

Cheers.

from my understanding, that part of the country had a heavy dependence on coalfired plants.. if i recall correctly, the specific province had just banned the use in the past year or so?

it seems like this initiative is meant to build up infrastructure in different industries to make up for the loss?

too many countries are getting ahead via sustainable energy anyway

Very little media coverage of this besides the Globe and Mail.

wind is over rated. i am originally from chatham kent which has the most wind turbines anywhere in canada and i'd say a good 40% of the time they aren't even moving. not to mention there is a ton of waste and energy used by countries who do not use green power in making these huge things. on top of all that you have the issue with stray electricity which is very dangerous and will become more of an issue as time goes on and the lines eventually rot. also, the idea that the turbines push warm air down making the average temperature even higher...you can go on and on. its not ideal, its far from perfect and in my opinion the current way its done will be antiquated in 10-15 years from now making all those turbines essentially obsolete.

if ontario wants everyone to use electric they need to reduce rates to pre 2006 levels but of course that will never happen. rates will only continue to rise as there is so much work that still needs to be done to the infrastructure to prevent another 2003 blackout from happening aside from pockets needing to be filled.

Follow the money...it is the root.

They should have never pushed this renewable energy until they had the capability of storing it. As it is now they have so much excess power they have to pay Quebec and the US to take it. Or pay wind turbine owners to turn them off. What a joke.

That sounds about right. I don't know for sure but I think I read that the average time a turbine generates electricity is only around 35%.

You probably can't be perfectly green to make these things. You need steel, plastic, etc to build it, you need diesel-powered land equipment like tractors to dig, plant, etc. But then again that is short-term.

What is stray electricity? I never heard that term before.

Ontario pays more for electricity than any other location in North America. That's so crazy. I hope someone finds a way to reduce the cost.

Bingo.

Ontario projects steady rise in electricity costs for next 20 years


From the comments for that article:


But hey, we are all supposed to feel good about it because it's "green".



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Wind Power in Ontario

Last Hour's Output
128 MW at 8:00 a.m.

This Hour's Forecast
178 MW at 9:00 a.m.



.

Well, that settles it then. You've executed the script perfectly. Well done.

But in reality nothing is "causing" climate change because climate change is a feature of the planet and not a symptom of something. The idiots that push this nonsense have co-opted the term for a natural feature of the planet and turned it into a propaganda mechanism. They've actually got the ignorant masses believing that this is something that can and should be stopped. They might as well say that we have to stop the tides because they flood coastlines all around the world twice a day.





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To make it really a libby dreamland they need to import at least a couple of million poor sweet immigrants from the middle east. That will really make all the hippies cheer, proud of being such a progressive and tolerant community. The first few weeks. Until jewish shops are getting smashed into pieces *, rocks and fires obliterate cars * and women get group molested *.



*) all actual results of Europes mass immigration / country destruction plan of the past 50 years.

check this shit out, was gonna post a thread about it, but forgot,

these guys are moving forward on a 50Mw storage solution. this scales!

That's pretty interesting but what is the net effect on the price of energy derived from these things when you factor in the energy cost of pulling them uphill?



.

ARES’ cost is approximately 60% of an equivalent power pumped - hydro facility.

ARES has the lowest annualized capacity cost per kW of comparable
technologies.

an ARES facility is able perform a round-trip regulation Reg-Up/Reg-Down command at over an 86% operating efficiency.


Electricity and Power Storage - Ares North America

do you use this Handbook yourself?

Electricity boss emailed climate change skeptic book to hundreds - abc.net.au

'Electricity boss emailed climate change skeptic book to hundreds'

Here is some more:

Kevin Libin: Ontario?s big, green assisted economic suicide plan

The mind - it boggles. These people seem to be prepared to start us down a Venezuelan style collapse of the economy. And all to try and get rid of a gas that greens the planet.

:Oh crap



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Are you suggesting we do nothing and head even faster for Armageddon?

We can slow it down. Mass population reductions say one child per couple for the next 200 years. Including families in the less educated parts of the world. Less food aid to poor countries, if their piece of dirt can't support them. Tough.

Petrol and other fuels double in price. This would have to include most consumables so we slow down on the production of everything and live a simpler life.

Back in the real world none of that will be done until it's too late and people will be screaming why wasn't it done.

The first commodity shortage that will hit the West. Will be water. The Third World is already finding it scarcer.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics...vilization.jpg

And before you say "It's happened before and we're still here."

http://energyskeptic.com/wp-content/...ut-history.jpg

99.999% of Humans are fucked if we don't go back the kind of existence the Earth can sustain during hard times. Climate change killed the Neanderthals and a lot of other species, a million Humans got through it.

An interesting read:

The Fable of a Stable Climate



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good points markham. ontario would be better served to implement population control instead of freezing to death little old ladies.

Nice chart. Notice that each of the previous four interglacials were warmer than we are now.

I am not saying we do nothing. I am saying we stop spending trillions trying to reduce to CO2 because CO2 is not the problem. Period.

Those triilions of dollars could be better spent addressing real problems. But nope, the real problems will continue and we will have wasted trillions of dollars and ruined all of our economies and have nothing to show for it.

Brilliant plan.


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the most ironic thing about this...its not going to reduce usage of natural gas. since ontario uses natural gas as backup for electricity more gas plants will need to be built to support more usage of electricity.

Man made pollution is contributing. For every one scientist who denies that there are 50 who say otherwise.

The debate should be moving on to, can we slow it down without going back to the Stone Age existence, can we prepare for it with science to produce more food and water to save more than 1 person in every 100,000?

The Third World is fucked. Even the Second World will find it tough. America won't be able to grow enough crops and find enough water to feed the 324,118,787 people it has.

Maybe a few of the youngest here will see the start. By 2500. The world will be a very different place. Simply because 7,432,663,275 are consuming the resources of a planet incapable of sustaining that number. When the climate change reaches its peak, the Earth may only be capable of sustaining a few million. Unless there are radical plans put into place.

And we don't have WW3.

So keep arguing about whether you should burn less gas or coal. It keeps the plabs away from the real debate.

Without Africa, Asia, Americas and Europe joining in. It's pointless.

No dude. Ontario is being reamed with extremely high electric bills. Going green is a good thing, but what has to be done is to find a way to lower the cost for you. No one will want to go green and pay so much for it.


There is lots of evidence from places such as Nasa, that this is not true.

I will prove it to you.

Earlier you said that plants love CO2, right? Right. This is true. Trees and other plants absorb CO2, where it gets pushed into the ground over time. Right on this so far, right? Right.

Oil is made up mostly of plant life. Yes it contains dinosaur bits but its mostly plants over millions of years. When we burn oil, that CO2 gets released back into the atmosphere.

Still right? Ok.

The problem we have today, put simply is this : Too much CO2, and not enough trees and plans to soak it all up. We are producing more CO2 than the earth's natural ability to absorb it. It is an imbalance. Right here is the basic, main issue my friend.

There are plenty of ways to store energy now. You can store it in batteries, and other methods.

That is really cool! Smart thinking.


D'oh! Hahahaha... nice find.

So you are saying that climate change is not a natural and continuous process of earth? Seriously? If you say you are serious to that I will put you on ignore and never address you again because you are beyond hope.


There you go talking down again and speaking to me like I'm a two year old. Do you talk to people like this in real life? If so do you get punched in the face a lot?

Anyways, you prove nothing and that is not the main issue. The main issue is that releasing that CO2 back into the atmosphere, where all of it used to be, is harmless and is not causing any of the problems that people claim it is. 8000ppm or more of CO2 were in the air at one time and the only thing that happened was that life flourished and thrived. What the hell do you have against thriving life?

If not for us the earth would continue to sequester CO2 until there was not enough left for plants to photosynthesize and most life on earth would end. We are still actually uncomfortably close to that threshold - 150ppm. And because CO2 will continue to be sequestered deep in the oceans we will have to keep releasing CO2 from bio-matter and fossil fuels just to keep levels up high to ensure vigourous plant growth.

Again there is no such thing as too much CO2 in this context.

You need to go study some geology and paleoclimate.



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No that is not at all what I said, and that is not at all what Nasa says.

http://climate.nasa.gov/
Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet: Carbon Dioxide
http://climate.nasa.gov/causes/



No dude, I promise I am not talking down to you. You have insulted me plenty in this thread, but I have not tried to insult you back or talk down to you. What I was trying to do was establish an agreement baseline, that is all.

But Eon, you are forgetting a couple of things.

Let's say that you are right, and we are putting the CO2 back into the air, where it "used to be".

What you are forgetting is:

There are less trees and green plants than there used to be. Deforestation has slowed down the earth ability to absorb all that CO2.

Next, we are putting more CO2 into the air faster than it has ever been done before, naturally.

We know this is a fact because we can measure the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses. We know they rise high into the atmosphere, and we know they reflect heat. We can see the evidence of this by the rising average temperature of the earth.

The earth has been alive and well for a long time, but that's not the point. The point is to make our time on this planet as healthy and beautiful as it can be, and that we leave it this way for our kids and grand kids.

This idea should not be so hard to grasp or hard to do. All it takes is a minor shift in the way we use energy, thats all.


The ocean is a whole other can of worms. The oceans have become much more acidic over the past 100 years or so thanks to increased CO2. The extra CO2 is not just warming the planet, its killing the oceans. And the warming of the oceans, while related, is a whole other problem.

What a mess.


Same to you.

its stray voltage actually. check out this video if you like. gives a quick summary of what it is and whats going on with it.

Wind Rush: Stray Voltage? - Doc Zone

Deforestation is the problem. Not CO2. Stop cutting down forests to plant crops to be used as biofuels to reduce CO2.

I can't understand how a supposedly intelligent guy like yourself does not see the lunacy inherent in some of the positions you support.

Not true at all.

CO2 does not have an infinite capacity to absorb and re-emit radiation. It has already maxed out the amount it can absorb. Adding more to the atmosphere will have zero effect.


Yes lets leave them with destroyed economies, unreliable and unnafordable energy and no chance for a financially secure and stable future because we destroyed all of that trying to get rid of a harmless trace gas.

Makes sense.


The oceans are not acidic they are alkaline. A slight decrease in alkalinity does not make them acidic. And no CO2 is not killing the oceans. And if the oceans are warming as much as you say then they will be out-gassing CO2 and not absorbing it. In fact the oceans may very well the source of much of the "excess" CO2 you worry about since it has been proven then rising CO2 follows rising temperatures, not the other way around.


I have studied geology and climate - in university. And I've been closely following both sides of this debate since then - not just one side like yourself.


Anyways, I am done with this topic with you. It's a waste of time and I don't have time to waste. You can get the last word in if you like but I'm certain it will just be more of the same.

This thread was supposed to be about the suicidal economic policy on Ontario based on bad science and not the bad science itself.



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This guy is trolling for sure..... Him and the Republican, climate change deniers ...

Please tell that to the Ontario government so they can stop paying other provinces and the US to take our excess power. That is entirely the problem. The Ontario grid has no way of storing any energy generated by wind or solar. If they generate too much they have to find ways of getting rid of it, or by paying wind turbine owners to idle their turbines. If their system could store it we probably wouldn't be in such a mess.

In fact I haven't heard any plans from the government on if they're even looking into implementing storage methods. At this point they're just happy to continue increasing our rates to pay for their broken system.

Exactly.

And still I see convoys of flatbed trucks hauling wind turbine tower segments outta Port Weller where they're being mass-produced. They've built a massive production facility along the Welland Canal near Lock 1. And the turbines are blocking out the sky just to the immediate west of us along Lake Erie. Too many to count.

And they all look like this right?

http://www.connectpositronic.com/wp-...51-664x456.jpg

Big business decided to use that design. Huge poles and generators way at the top and really only work best when wind blows in 2 specific directions.

Think of a blender and shape of it. Twist the blades from top to bottom and then make that 20 feet tall. Put the generator at the bottom. Fucker would collect wind from every direction and access to the power supply is on ground level. Nah... they won't do that because too much money is in developing those airplane propellers.

Could take 10% of energy reserve for the canooks and make it 50% in a jiffy.