[Lanny_MacDonald]

Originally Posted by Bingo

Electricity is primarily driven by the burning of the cleanest of the fossil fuels ... natural gas.

Not true. It is dependent on where you are as to what the primary driver for power generation is. Even in natural gas rich In Alberta, coal is still the primary driver (48.3% of electricity generated comes from goal). In Manitoba it is hydro (91%), Ontario it is nuclear (51%), in Quebec it is hydro (96.7%), and in Newfoundland it is hydro (87%). Same thing here in the US. Coal is the primary fuel in the east, and hydro is the primary source in the west. It is dependent upon what resources you have available, and which ones are cheapest to invest in. It is the development and construction costs of infrastructure to develop other generation methods that scare people off of other methods. Expectations are a quick ROI, which is not always possible. Sometimes you have to invest long term and wait for the payoff. To think otherwise would be foolish.

There are wind and water driven electrical sources, but to this day the primary driver is still natural gas.

Not true, but I can understand why you would think that. You're imbedded in the O&G sector and probably hear that all day.

So you can envision all you like, but invention is the key to make this clean, and until that happens people are seriously whistling in the wind (bad pun) when it comes to alternate fuels for energy.

That is actually incorrect again. Implementation is the key. The technologies already exist, it is just a matter of finding the intestinal fortitude to implementing them. But with the shortsightedness of most people, and the demands of instant ROI, it is unlikely that anything happens without the government mandating it. With lobbiests running Washington, and having a much greater impact on Canadian politics, it is unlikely we will see the political pressure to fund and implement these types of projects any time soon. To think otherwise would be foolish.

The best alternative available is nukes, but the NIMBY (not in my back yard) crowd keeps that on the outskirts and without a great deal of opportunity to take a foot hold.

When you consider the expanses of North America, and the isolated locations that could be used for nuclear power generation, NIMBY goes out the window. There are plenty of options available, but the problem is still cost and implementation. The reason there are not more nuclear plants in the United States is not fear, it is red tape. The application and approval process takes 20 years to complete. That is before construction, which can take as long as 8 years. Who in their right mind is going to get involved in that? Bureacracy holds that back more than anything, and that scares off the investors required to make those plants spring to life. To think otherwise would be foolish.

Beyond that ... don't fool yourself, there have been plenty of sources citing a huge amount of pressure on the grant side to come up with man made causes for global warming. That in itself doen't make the science itself wrong, I myself am far from deciding at all what the cause is, but there are plenty of insidious angles on both sides of the fence.

To only see it one way is foolish.

Yes, of course, you have the only unobstructed view on all of of this, and the rest of us are just foolish people who really don't have any idea as to what is going on. We are incapable of seeing both sides of arguments because of our biases, but you don't have those to clog the filter; you are bias free. For anyone to consider the information they have researched to be accurate is simply foolish. We should all continue to be skeptics with a right leaning fence post jammed in our butts and never make a decision, no matter how hot Rome gets and how close those flames come to the bottom of out togas.



All kidding aside, you are right, that we should keep an open mind to all sides of an argument, but only to a point. The comes a time when further discussion becomes useless and waiting becomes an exercise in futility. You know, kind of like the Iginla apologists who continually tell you that the real Iginla is about to show up... and its been two years of waiting. Sometimes you have to make a hard decision and take a stand on an issue, choosing a side. It doesn't mean you stop listening to the other side of the argument, it just takes more evidence for that argument to become convincing.

This is where we are in the global warming debate IMO. There is just so much more imperical evidence to suggest that we humans are impacting our environment that I think it is foolish to ignore that data. Sure, there are some interesting theories from the other side of the fence that we should continue to study, but that does not mean we should not act now on what we already know. Seriously, what have we got to lose if we clean up our act and clean up our environment? Money? Oh no, what are we going to do if we lose money!?!?! Make more of it.

Now what happens if we don't clean up our environment? At minium, the air quality continues to deteriorate and we expose ourselves to dangerous polutants which cause health problems (which is 100% proven). At worst we set in action an series of actions that could destroy our biosphere and make it inhabitable for not only our species, but the majority of living organisms on the planet. Which is more important? Rich guys losing money, or leaving a clean environment for your children and grand children to inherit and hopefully have a long and healthy life of their own? I think the answer is obvious, and to see it any other way is foolish.