deGrasse Tyson & Nye on Climate Change

[Devils'Advocate]

The two most known scientists have both come out swinging this week on climate change:

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Cosmos:
http://www.motherjones.com/environme...g-earth-carbon

Bill Nye on Crossfire:
http://crossfire.blogs.cnn.com/2014/...ity-right-now/

And yet:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/clim...ions-1.2634167

[OldDutch]

Nm

[DownInFlames]

I'm against solar energy because it won't make the payments on my Audi.

[Muta]

Careful, DA... renewable energy is a dangerous term in these here parts, I reckon. The only thing green around here is money!

[Rathji]

I love me some renewable energy, even if my paycheck is cosigned by the oil in this province.

I don't get why anyone would fight against it. Even if your entire livelihood depends on oil pumping from the ground and being burned, its not like any alternatives will become cheaper in our lifetimes. Even if they do, oil would still be used for a long time afterwards.

I want my energy to be cheaper that I used to power my computer and fridge and I don't want to pay so much to heat my house. I want a Mr Fusion on my car and I want to be able to recharge my cell phone by having me flip it over in the sun.

If the oil economy dies out, something will replace it. If I still need to work at that time, and can't do it in Alberta, I move somewhere else, where they got off their butts early on and committed to new technology, and didn't hide their head in the sand like an obsolete giant.

[ken0042]

Number one excuse why I haven't gone solar- Enmax doesn't allow it without paying a huge cost and signing a commitment of over a decade. https://www.enmax.com/home/renewable...s-and-benefits

Compare that to Ontario (Which already uses hydro for a significant amout of their power.)
http://pure-energies.com/free-solar/

You guys know that I am far from being an environmentalist. Even from a "give a hoot- don't pollute" perspective it makes sense to use solar power.

[T@T]

Pretty much everyone on CP doesn't have a thing to worry about when it comes to climate change, unless of course they worry for their kids or future kids to be.

[Kavvy]

Originally Posted by ken0042

Number one excuse why I haven't gone solar- Enmax doesn't allow it without paying a huge cost and signing a commitment of over a decade.

You guys know that I am far from being an environmentalist. Even from a "give a hoot- don't pollute" perspective it makes sense to use solar power.

So this pretty much nails it on the head. You want to make change -hit peoples wallets

I am not proposing this, but you want people to turn off their laptops when they leave home - tax electricity rates more. You want people to support expensive green energy - give home owners larger then market value kickbacks for every electron they put back into the grid. You want me to bike to work - make my round trip of 25km cost more than $2.30 in gas cost. People will only change every so slightly without money to influence them.

The argument isn't if we can turn off fossil fuels, it is how much can we offset them with other sources (at least for a long time).


Climate change or not - I don't think ANYONE thinks that dumping pollution into the environment is a good thing, it just a function of how much we are willing to pay to mitigate it.

[Devils'Advocate]

Do you mean like a carbon tax? Like the Liberals in the past have proposed?

Or the Green Party carbon tax:
http://www.greenparty.ca/policy/carbontaxplan

[ken0042]

Originally Posted by Kavvy

So this pretty much nails it on the head. You want to make change -hit peoples wallets

Actually my point was more about how a gov't company is making it cost prohibitive to make an environmental decision. I'm not in favour of adding a lot of extra taxes and fees, as those can often be misused. There are also enough people who make enough money to not care that the price of gas has gone up.

However if you tell people they can have solar panels installed for free, and will get a cheque every year for a few hundred dollars- you will get people coming on board.

If you are going to start taxing things do something like taxing incandescent bulbs, and use that fund to have a rebate on LED bulbs. So now a "60 watt" bulb costs $3 for incandescent, and $2 for LED. Instead of the current 50¢ for incandescent and $10 for LED. (Obviously that math needs tweaking.)

Make it easy, and I'll do it. I used to rarely recycle. Then the blue carts arrived and it's just second nature now.

[Fozzie_DeBear]

Albertan's need to remember Peter Lougheed's philosophy that we need to turn our non-renewable resource (hydrocarbons) into a renewable resource (a ton of cash in our Heritage Fund, a diversified economy).

The Oil and Gas sector has a best before date, a date when essentially that sector is unprofitable...we need to use innovation to 1) push that date back (by making the oilsands as cheap and clean as we can) and 2) by transforming the capabilities of the current energy sector into non-oil and gas sectors and are profitable.

Personally, I like the idea of taking Alberta's talents in:
-Mega project management
-Drilling
-Understanding in-situ steam and thermal processes

And seeing if we can't make large scale geothermal energy economic

It took 50 years of (haphazard) research to get Oilsands technologies where they needed to be...and a lot of Alberta Government money...money that was VERY well invested, in my opinion (the Energy companies would have taken a looong time to get to SAGD etc on their own).

So to me, Climate Change is a bit of red herring (not that it isn't real..it is)...but in Alberta its a very important economic argument that gets us to the same place...what are we going to do when markets won't buy our oil?

PS This is one of the reasons why the Wildrose fiscal austerity mantra is really dangerous to Alberta...we HAVE to be entrepreneurial and expect our Government to be as well. The Alberta economy of 2060 depends upon Government/Univeristy/Industry projects we need to plan now...

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by Kavvy

So this pretty much nails it on the head. You want to make change -hit peoples wallets

I am not proposing this, but you want people to turn off their laptops when they leave home - tax electricity rates more. You want people to support expensive green energy - give home owners larger then market value kickbacks for every electron they put back into the grid. You want me to bike to work - make my round trip of 25km cost more than $2.30 in gas cost. People will only change every so slightly without money to influence them.

The argument isn't if we can turn off fossil fuels, it is how much can we offset them with other sources (at least for a long time).


Climate change or not - I don't think ANYONE thinks that dumping pollution into the environment is a good thing, it just a function of how much we are willing to pay to mitigate it.

Maybe we should start hitting people in their wallets by charging and enforcing higher royalty rates and ending subsidization of the industry.

Build the cost of oil and gas production in the price, instead of externalizing that cost on society.

If it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander, right?

[Coach]

Originally Posted by Fozzie_DeBear

Albertan's need to remember Peter Lougheed's philosophy that we need to turn our non-renewable resource (hydrocarbons) into a renewable resource (a ton of cash in our Heritage Fund, a diversified economy).

The Oil and Gas sector has a best before date, a date when essentially that sector is unprofitable...we need to use innovation to 1) push that date back (by making the oilsands as cheap and clean as we can) and 2) by transforming the capabilities of the current energy sector into non-oil and gas sectors and are profitable.

Personally, I like the idea of taking Alberta's talents in:
-Mega project management
-Drilling
-Understanding in-situ steam and thermal processes

And seeing if we can't make large scale geothermal energy economic

It took 50 years of (haphazard) research to get Oilsands technologies where they needed to be...and a lot of Alberta Government money...money that was VERY well invested, in my opinion (the Energy companies would have taken a looong time to get to SAGD etc on their own).

So to me, Climate Change is a bit of red herring (not that it isn't real..it is)...but in Alberta its a very important economic argument that gets us to the same place...what are we going to do when markets won't buy our oil?

PS This is one of the reasons why the Wildrose fiscal austerity mantra is really dangerous to Alberta...we HAVE to be entrepreneurial and expect our Government to be as well. The Alberta economy of 2060 depends upon Government/Univeristy/Industry projects we need to plan now...

I agree with everything accept for this. What has been done in the oil sands is very commendable for how clean and efficient they have been able to make it, but IMO it is time to begin the process of moving on. No more subsidies or investments into innovation for the oil industry, that funding needs to be pulled and put into innovating renewable energies ASAP. There is IMO no point to continue giving oil companies the means to continue bringing in top talent to figure out better ways of getting oil out of the ground. If the same type of investment was made in geothermal/solar/nuclear years ago we would probably already be there.

You can't tell me that we can drill straight down thousands of feet, then curve the drill like a straw, shoot high-pressured water to crack the rock and bring the oil to the surface, not to mention doing the same thing in the middle of the ocean, and that solar is not feesible. It's not feesible because the focus has not been on it, when it should have been for many years now.

[northcrunk]

This thread..........

[Table 5]

I generally put climate-change deniers in the same group as the anti-vax crowd, or the anti-evolution crowd... people I just don't need to waste time associating with.

But with a lot of Albertans, usually people are smart enough to know better, but don't want to disrupt the sweet paycheck so I think everyone here just tries to ignore it. Which I can understand from a practical level.

However, I always keep hoping Alberta will find a way to use all that amazingly smart and educated workforce and try to channel it into building up next-wave energy tech of the future. I'd love to see us slowly become the Silicon Valley of energy, and maybe in a generation or two, be able to phase out oil without much of a blip.

Clearly there's just too much easy money in the traditional fields to make it worthwhile right now. There has to be some more positive incentive...but it doesn't seem like it will ever come from the provincial government.

[Coach]

Originally Posted by northcrunk

This thread..........

Because people want to find ways to move away from an energy source that is inevitably going to be depleted and is invasive for the planet to one of the many renewable options that we have discovered, but to which we have not properly allocated resources?

[Erick Estrada]

How about that black bear attack in the oilsands?

[northcrunk]

Originally Posted by Table 5

I generally put climate-change deniers in the same group as the anti-vax crowd, or the anti-evolution crowd... people I just don't need to waste time associating with.

But with a lot of Albertans, usually people are smart enough to know better, but don't want to disrupt the sweet paycheck so I think everyone here just tries to ignore it. Which I can understand from a practical level.

However, I always keep hoping Alberta will find a way to use all that amazingly smart and educated workforce and try to channel it into building up next-wave energy tech of the future. I'd love to see us slowly become the Silicon Valley of energy, and maybe in a generation or two, be able to phase out oil without much of a blip.

Clearly there's just too much easy money in the traditional fields to make it worthwhile right now. There has to be some more positive incentive...but it doesn't seem like it will ever come from the provincial government.

We don't need to raise taxes to control our environmental footprint. The company I'm at now actually takes off-gas from upgraders and turns it into usable spec products. In a few years most of all that carbon coming off oil sands upgraders will be turned into plastic removing it completly from the atmosphere. To me this is a better way to do things responsibly than all the "raise gas tax to make people use less oil" crowd.

Oil companies now always talk about having a "social licence" to operate because nobody wants to be the ones getting flack and losing money because of spills or neglegence.

What you said about the Silicon Valley of energy is correct. If we can utilize new technologies to take emmisions out of the air and turn them into usable products Alberta will lead the way for the industry and could export its expertise elsewhere.

[Coach]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

How about that black bear attack in the oilsands?

?

http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthread.php?t=137101

[troutman]

The Utter Predictability of Climate Change Denial
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astro...iers_deny.html

The Heat Is On: In the U.S., Climate Change Is Here and Now and the Future
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astro...arming_on.html

The U.S. Global Change Research Program released its third National Climate Assessment today. This report is a huge and staggeringly comprehensive overview of climate change and its effects on the United States.