AltaGuy has a magnetic personality and exudes positive energy, which is infectious to those around him. He has an unparalleled ability to communicate with people, whether he is speaking to a room of three or an arena of 30,000.
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: At le pub...
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Roughly equal numbers of democrats and republicans are anti-gmo. Republicans are much more likely to not believe in vaccinations, and 20 times as likely as democrats to not believe in climate change.
The anti-science fringe left cannot be held up as a counterweight to roughly 100M republicans when it comes to denying science.
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A deference which, on the part of the left in general (though I can't say if that's true of you), is highly selective. The left certainly doesn't demonstrate a pragmatic deference to those who understand science when it comes to GMO foods, for example.
Ehh, the anti-GMO stuff is starting to pick up steam on the right as well, much like the anti-vaxx movement. There's a really weird crossover between the anti-science, anti-government conspiracy loons, and the anti-science, anti-corporations conspiracy loons. I think it might be the common ground they find in both being completely ####ing nuts.
A deference which, on the part of the left in general (though I can't say if that's true of you), is highly selective. The left certainly doesn't demonstrate a pragmatic deference to those who understand science when it comes to GMO foods, for example.
Or nuclear power, leading to the ironic situation of greens trying to shutdown nuclear plants only for them to be replaced by natural gas, or coal and increased CO2 emissions.
And then there aren't any deference from environmental groups to electricity generation and grid experts, who demand unbridled expansion of solar and wind, leading to increased electricity costs and reduced reliability.
Or nuclear power, leading to the ironic situation of greens trying to shutdown nuclear plants only for them to be replaced by natural gas, or coal and increased CO2 emissions.
And then there aren't any deference from environmental groups to electricity generation and grid experts, who demand unbridled expansion of solar and wind, leading to increased electricity costs and reduced reliability.
ON the last statement, having recently heard from several utilities dealing with the duck curve from renewables (most output during non-peak times causing utilities to suck up the excess etc), more and more consumers do not concern themselves with small increases in electricity cost or potential reduced reliability. They are legitimately finding that consumers will pay more for carbon free energy. It isn't just the "greens". People are actually concerned about the environment and are willing to have some personal pain to help address it.
That isn't to say something doesn't need to be done with regards to load levelling/following as it certainly does, just that you can no longer paint this as "greens" and "activists".
Another thing is that in North America in particular, the nuclear industry has done an absolutely horrendous job of explaining nuclear power, radiation etc. There are several studies that show how educating the public with non-biased facts reverses the belief about nuclear power. The industry has done a horrible job from the outset in technology selection. The industry also can no longer build a reactor on time or on budget....not even close and this is a major issue for every stakeholder. The industry is finally admitting these things instead of burying their heads in the sand. Is it too late?
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They are legitimately finding that consumers will pay more for carbon free energy. It isn't just the "greens". People are actually concerned about the environment and are willing to have some personal pain to help address it.
Perhaps a small increase but looking at the outcry over increased electricity costs in Ontario, I'm not sure that this pain threshold is all that high in Canada. And if things got as bad as South Australia where it's more than 30c/kWh and rising even while the grid has suffered major events, I think we'll have riots.
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Perhaps a small increase but looking at the outcry over increased electricity costs in Ontario, I'm not sure that this pain threshold is all that high in Canada. And if things got as bad as South Australia where it's more than 30c/kWh and rising even while the grid has suffered major events, I think we'll have riots.
I'm based in the US so my info does indeed stem from discussions and presentations made by the utilities down here.
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This graph illustrates the change in global surface temperature relative to 1951-1980 average temperatures. Sixteen of the 17 warmest years in the 136-year record all have occurred since 2001, with the exception of 1998. The year 2016 ranks as the warmest on record.
This paper assesses whether ExxonMobil Corporation has in the past misled the general public about climate change. We present an empirical document-by-document textual content analysis and comparison of 187 climate change communications from ExxonMobil, including peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed publications, internal company documents, and paid, editorial-style advertisements ('advertorials') in The New York Times. We examine whether these communications sent consistent messages about the state of climate science and its implications—specifically, we compare their positions on climate change as real, human-caused, serious, and solvable. In all four cases, we find that as documents become more publicly accessible, they increasingly communicate doubt. This discrepancy is most pronounced between advertorials and all other documents. For example, accounting for expressions of reasonable doubt, 83% of peer-reviewed papers and 80% of internal documents acknowledge that climate change is real and human-caused, yet only 12% of advertorials do so, with 81% instead expressing doubt. We conclude that ExxonMobil contributed to advancing climate science—by way of its scientists' academic publications—but promoted doubt about it in advertorials. Given this discrepancy, we conclude that ExxonMobil misled the public. Our content analysis also examines ExxonMobil's discussion of the risks of stranded fossil fuel assets. We find the topic discussed and sometimes quantified in 24 documents of various types, but absent from advertorials. Finally, based on the available documents, we outline ExxonMobil's strategic approach to climate change research and communication, which helps to contextualize our findings.
Available documents show a discrepancy between what ExxonMobil's scientists and executives discussed about climate change privately and in academic circles and what it presented to the general public. The company's peer-reviewed, non-peer-reviewed, and internal communications consistently tracked evolving climate science: broadly acknowledging that AGW is real, human-caused, serious, and solvable, while identifying reasonable uncertainties that most climate scientists readily acknowledged at that time. In contrast, ExxonMobil's advertorials in the NYT overwhelmingly emphasized only the uncertainties, promoting a narrative inconsistent with the views of most climate scientists, including ExxonMobil's own. This is characteristic of what Freudenberg et al term the Scientific Certainty Argumentation Method (SCAM)—a tactic for undermining public understanding of scientific knowledge [57, 58]. Likewise, the company's peer-reviewed, non-peer-reviewed, and internal documents acknowledge the risks of stranded assets, whereas their advertorials do not. In light of these findings, we judge that ExxonMobil's AGW communications were misleading; we are not in a position to judge whether they violated any laws.
This graph illustrates the change in global surface temperature relative to 1951-1980 average temperatures. Sixteen of the 17 warmest years in the 136-year record all have occurred since 2001, with the exception of 1998. The year 2016 ranks as the warmest on record.
I don't want to start any of these circular arguments but there's a whopping 2.5 billion more humans on the earth today compared to 1986. Population growth is playing a role in this as well.
I don't want to start any of these circular arguments but there's a whopping 2.5 billion more humans on the earth today compared to 1986. Population growth is playing a role in this as well.
Because more humans on Earth plus more intensive COČ production equals worsening climate change
I don't want to start any of these circular arguments but there's a whopping 2.5 billion more humans on the earth today compared to 1986. Population growth is playing a role in this as well.
Possible, but the huge climate change came after 1990 or so, in 1900 there were only 1.5 billion people, by 1990 population grew by almost 4 more billion with little change in global climate.
Looking at the heat maps it seems like it's the extreme northern hemisphere that's changing the most with little change in the south, maybe it's a runaway effect from the Arctic ice melt that may not be able to be stopped.
I don't want to start any of these circular arguments but there's a whopping 2.5 billion more humans on the earth today compared to 1986. Population growth is playing a role in this as well.
More humans = more human activities for sure. More cars, more houses, more food being grown and shipped around the world, etc.
Though this made me thing of just the heat output of humans, out of curiosity... if we assume that all the food a person eats is converted to energy and radiated out as heat, humans would be about the same as a 100W light bulb. 2.5 billion humans, 250 billion W. Calgary is 825 million square meters, not sure how much solar irradiance it gets but lets say it gets 1000W/m2, which is about the max on earth, so Calgary is 825 billion W. So 2.5 billion humans heat output is like adding 3.3 times the area of Calgary to the area of the earth. Well actually twice that since only half the earth is facing the sun.
That's like 0.001%? That's more than I would have thought.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
Because more humans on Earth plus more intensive COČ production equals worsening climate change
So in other words we have a population issue. We cutting down on green house gas emissions isn't going to amount to a lot if other parts of the world continue to reproduce like crazy.
Last edited by Erick Estrada; 08-27-2017 at 09:09 AM.
So in other words we have a population issue. We cutting down on green house gas emissions isn't going to amount to a lot if other parts of the world continue to reproduce like crazy.
That's strange logic. Is climate change a uniquely Canadian problem? Everyone must do their part. It's not a population problem, it's merely one factor
So in other words we have a population issue. We cutting down on green house gas emissions isn't going to amount to a lot if other parts of the world continue to reproduce like crazy.
Yeah, it's kind of funny how over-population is never talked about when discussing emissions. In addition to having these accords like Kyoto to reduce emissions they should have agreements to reduce populations by 10% by 2030 (or something reasonable). Canada would accomplish it easier than others since without immigration our population would naturally drop on it's own.
If all energy came from carbon neutral or near neutral sources it wouldn't be a problem.
Even if that were true we'd still be generating huge amounts of trash, industrial waste etc. and continue to remove plant matter to make way for infrastructure.
