It’s funny now everywhere you go, everything you see, somehow is associated to global warming and the environment. I’m not saying you should recycle or take care of the environment or anything like that, but don’t you realize that it’s your government that’s creating all this to drive the price of your living up so they can make more and more and more money? It’s really simple to see. There’s no such thing as global warming. Nova Scotia was under KM’s of ICE during the ice age. Anyone would like to input as to how we Miraculously made it out of that Ice age?
If you are into astrology, you’ll realize that stars get larger with time and finally explode. Our sun is no exception. I know that all these chemicals that we spew into the atmosphere don’t really help, but there were no humans and factories and cars back during the ice age, would anyone like to explain global warming then that got us out of the ice age? maybe we dug our way out or something! Stop believing all that crap and wake up! Everything is going up in price because of this crap. Grocery stores now decided to take plastic bags out and MAKE YOU BUY the alternative, shouldn’t they offer the alternative for free if it’s really about the environment. Dalhousie University decided not to use treys to avoid using soap and water to be environmentally friendly, Freg off you cheap bastards, how am I going to carry my food to my table, juggle it or pile it up over my head? Does that even make sense to anyone! If environmentally friendly is the way to go, why does it cost an arm and a leg to install solar panels? it all comes down to the money, I only wish more people would actually wake up and realize that!
This article appears in May 8-14, 2008.
I think somewhere there is an intelligent, reasonable (albeit WRONG) argument to counter the results of climate change studies and research.I don’t think this is it.
If stores are truly environmentally friendly, they will boycott companies such as Coca-Cola, :)! http://www.adbusters.org/home/
hmmph, this was certainly thought provoking. Its one of them things that really, there is no concrete way to prove this global warming thing and freezing thing, because we werent here to accurately record what life was like PRE Ice age. Like one thing that is not really heard is the time it took for the ice to freeze over the earth. Was it something that took hundreds if not thousands of years? If that is the case, is it melting at the same rate it froze? I have no clue where to get this info.
I find people who argue like this amusing. Yes climate change happens and is natural. It also can happen fast enough to wipe out a wide variety of species. There are plenty of fossils in the ground to lend evidence to this.The problem with our burning of fossil fuels is that we may artificially accelerate the process so quickly we kill ourselves off. It doesn’t even have to be us that gets immediately killed off. We just have to knock off our food sources, and bam we starve to death.I never argue for stopping global warming, that’s like trying to keep the sun from rising above the horizon. We can only hope to not accelerate it so quickly we put ourselves into a premature extinction.
Yup, and give the creatures we haven’t been able to obliterate into extinction a fighting chance once we’re gone… my money’s on the otters…
I’m sure Al Gore and his cronies who worked so hard to make climate change a public issue wouldn’t appreciate what’s written here at all. Especially when you consider the number of scientific minds involved with the conclusions drawn from ancient ice samples, etc. And never mind the world community of scientists and climatologists who are crying for urgent action right now. If you like to believe what’s happening here is the result of a natural process you go ahead and stick your head back in the sand while the rest of us learn from publications like ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.Considering Al Gore, an American politician, was first to ring the bell in the international community, how could the global warming issue be an invention of our government to fuck over Canadians for money? Doesn’t quite add up, does it?It’s true, all things in nature have a cycle and that includes the demise of entire species but it has been made very clear human beings have poisoned and polluted this planet. Now you’re shocked and shaken we’ve learned of permanent global repercussions. I understand your natural tendency to deny the truth. Now go rent the rent the movie, lose your apathy, gain some fear like the rest of us and do your part to spread the word to conserve.
Global warming occurred BEFORE the last ice age too…it is one of the initial signs that the Earth is entering into the pre-stages of the next ice age, which by the way occur in 40k and 100k cycles with the most recent being just 11k years ago. This is nothing new and what the EXPERTS say is that we have accelerated the cycles…which would certainly seem to be true what with it already starting after only 11 thousand years (next to the earliest and shortest cycle of 40 thousand years).Don’t believe me? here read this and before you start saying oh it’s from an internet site…read the references at the bottom and try and tell me you are smarter and more knowledgeable than those people …or that all those people just have to be wrong. Several Grocery stores offered the bags for next to nothing for quite some time before upping the price, if you didn’t stock up then it’s kind of your own fault.Oh and you talk of the price of things going up and how trays have been removed to save costs and the envronment? If DAL had to buy and install solar panels to supply power for all those brats (oops I mean future community and nation leaders….sigh) then the cost of your lunch would go up! Oh and for your information your comment about carrying your food on your head for the 15 meters to your seat is kind of offensive when you think about all of the poor women and girls in Africa that have to walk KILOMETERS with 30 pound jugs of water and food on their heads (yes they still do that in many places).I agree that our government has been directly complicit with large corporations but for the degradation of our very way of life, they expect North Americans to pay the most for everything in order to offset costs in developing nations…not to mention they have been so slow in tightening the laws for polluters almost to the point of gross negligence to the public. It was the Fed’s job to ensure the public is protected from corporate abuse…they are clearly NOT doing their job.
Oops here’s the link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
OP, you need and astronomy lesson. That’s ASTRONOMY. ASTROLOGY is a bogus pseudoscience which postulates that the positions of the stars in the sky at the moment of your birth govern your fate for the rest of your life. ASTRONOMERS, not astrologers, can predict fairly accuratly when, and whether, a given star will go supernova, which I think is the phenomenon you’re referring to. All stars do NOT go supernova. In fact, only a small percentage of stars do so. Most stars end their lives as our sun will: they consume their combustible fuel, growing in size but decreasing in temperature. They become red giants. Once their fuel is exhausted, they collapse and become white dwarves. They do not explode. They just go pfft and the fire goes out. White dwarves do not undergo fusion reactions. They glow because of residual heat. Eventually they cool off and become black dwarves. This is what will happen to our sun, in about 4 or 5 billion years. It seems neccessary to point out to you that the “chemicals we spew into the air” will have absolutely no effect on this process whatsoever, since the sun is OUTSIDE OUR ATMOSPHERE. I could give you a lesson on glaciation too, but it’s actually quite a bit more complex than the evolution of stars, so I’ll leave you to google it yourself. Suffice it to say that Nova Scotia was never under several KM of ice during the most recent ice age. It was under a few dozen meters during the height of the glaciation. Now, needless to say, your ignorance of the topics you’re invoking to support your argument does not enhance your credibility. You have no information, and no knowlege. You have nothing but opinion, and you know what they say about opinions. I guess that’s why spouting uninformed opinions is called “talking out of your ass”.
whew. Now that I’ve had my little rant, the OP has started an interesting discussion. It’s true that the global warming issue isn’t black and white. It’s true that climate change is a normal phenomenon. So are we speeding it up? And if we are, so what? It would happen anyway, albeit a few thousand years later. Is there some advantage to us as a species to delay the next glaciation as long as possible? Now before anybody flames my ass off, I’m not saying we shouldn’t be concerned about global warming. I’m just playing devils advocate and asking questions that need to be answered.
Well, regardless of the cause (which is us) climate change is resulting in more severe weather which is causing loss of human and animal life, destruction of ecosystems, impacting the world food supply and a lot of other things that directly impact our lives. It is happening. Now, do we sit with our thumbs up our ass and watch the world cook, or do we try and do something about it? Profits and lives are at stake here, so all the capitalists and hippies should agree on this issue. IF we are the cause of climate change and we have identified the cause to be increased greenhouse gas emissions, we should be moving to eliminate their production or we should be developing technology to reverse their effect (atmospheric scrubbers). If we are not the cause, global warming is still a threat and we need to act to either prevent it (weather machines?) or adapt to it (extreme weather resistant buildings, more secure food supply).Either way, we cannot afford to ignore the problem. And for the record, the scientific community is fairly certain and in good agreement that the last 100 years of human history is responsible for the rapid and dramatic changes to global weather patterns.
The star facts, interesting, the comment that we were only under a few meters, compared to km, i am guessing that was said for effect, and doesnt make an ounce of difference.The one thing that is funny is that people are going to argue, is that we are speeding up or not speeding up the process, welll is the thing, how can any one say with any assurity? There is no way of having concrete proof that we are speeding it up by 1-1000 years. It is only speculation.
Well, regardless of the cause (which is us) climate change is resulting in more severe weather which is causing loss of human and animal life, destruction of ecosystems, impacting the world food supply and a lot of other things that directly impact our lives. It is happening. Now, do we sit with our thumbs up our ass and watch the world cook, or do we try and do something about it? Profits and lives are at stake here, so all the capitalists and hippies should agree on this issue. IF we are the cause of climate change and we have identified the cause to be increased greenhouse gas emissions, we should be moving to eliminate their production or we should be developing technology to reverse their effect (atmospheric scrubbers). If we are not the cause, global warming is still a threat and we need to act to either prevent it (weather machines?) or adapt to it (extreme weather resistant buildings, more secure food supply).Either way, we cannot afford to ignore the problem. And for the record, the scientific community is fairly certain and in good agreement that the last 100 years of human history is responsible for the rapid and dramatic changes to global weather patterns.
Well Homie, fossil records, geology, and ice core samples tell us pretty accurately what the cycles were in the past. It is clear that the cycle is moving faster now and that correlates strongly with the increased use of fossil fuels. Given the catastrophic consequences of climate change, it would be silly of us not to follow the scientific evidence and act accordingly by trying to reduce or reverse the changes we appear to have made. For anyone who thinks we don’t do enough to make a difference to the planet, remember the ozone layer, that had that big hole in it in the 80’s because we were using all those CFCs, and then we stopped using CFCs, and then the hole got a lot smaller?If we can nearly destroy the planet in 80 years without even trying, think of how much we could accomplish if we actually tried to fix it?
i understand how this and that…. but why isnt there more being put into the fact that this melt was inevitable. I understand it quite a few things about this, but there is no concrete proof (all them fossil records, geology, and ice core samples tell us pretty accurately) can narrow it down to within 500 years…. i give it that. However they can only tell things like the rate the ice receeded and shit like that. There is no real reason to know if the speed all that took place was the same is now. It can only be speculation. They can guess and use the facts from fossils and what not to guess, but how many times have you seen one factoid get brought to light, just to have someone come up with another discovery that discounts the previous one. We really have no proof if this receding ice age is comparble to the rate of freezing because one thing HAD to have happened, any facts about the speed and rate of the time it took to freeze everything, would have been destroyed as the ice receded….. thusly leaving things to speculation. Dont get me wrong, i think we should clean up the earth. I am just a bit confused how these things can be said with no accurate recordings of the previous ice age.
The only point of the ice comment, Homie, was to illustrate that the OP is ill informed.I agree with you, Miles, that ignoring the problem is not an option. The reason I raised those questions is because I think people need to ask themselves, WHY is it important that we do something? The reality of climate change is not in dispute. Whether or not human activity is responsible for it has no impact on the fact that it is happening. But why should we try to stop it? Why should we try to slow it down? It’s a natural phenomenon, even if we did accelerate it. These are the question that are being asked by the anti-environment camp, and they need to be answered.Unfortunately, “because we’re destroying ecosystems, wiping out species, etc” are not answers that carry much weight with people who don’t care about anything but their own comforts. And those people, I’m sorry to say, are the majority. I heard a speaker on CBC radio a couple of weeks ago. I wish I could remember her name. She put a different spin on the global warming issue for me. She said something to the effect that, the animals don’t care if we save them. The earth doesn’t care if we save it. We will undoubtedly wipe out some species, maybe even most species. And then new species will rise up to take their place, species that are adapted to survive in the poisoned environment we’ve created. The earth will recover, as it always has. Unfortunately for us, this renewed earth may not be a hospitable environment for humans. Unfortunately for us, one of the species we may wipe out is ourselves. Only when we learn to see the situation as one in which our own survival is at stake, only then will we take action.
So I am the one who originally posted this, and now that i got your attention, I’d like to say that I meant Astronomy and not Astrology. Mistake, sue me for it! We all know the difference between the 2 and based on the comment, i would have assumed everyone know what i was talking about, and certainly it wasn’t telling the future of your fate based on the starts.Christopher, I don’t live in Africa, if there are treys available, i’d like to use them!Kay, regarding your comment: “Considering Al Gore, an American politician, was first to ring the bell in the international community, how could the global warming issue be an invention of our government to fuck over Canadians for money? Doesn’t quite add up, does it?” As far as i know, Canada is the closest ally to the US that if it wasn’t for shame, we would be counted as a state belonging to the US. I personally do, you should too. There are a lot of reasons around you to prove that. Everything that belongs to Canada, goes to US. I have no idea where in my original post i mentioned that we’re not speeding it up. We are.Herb, Coca Cola is the last one you need to worry about. Power companies are the most influential. You’re not in your car 24/7, not are you purchasing coca cola products every 2 minutes, but i guarantee you that there’s a light but and a fridge constantly running 24/7 in your household.The Homie, there is a way, the fact that there was an ice age is proof enough, i wasn’t arguing what caused the ice age, i was arguing the fact that we came out of it, and we didn’t come out of it using car fumes and fossil fuels.John, once again as i previously said, i never argued the fact that we’re not speeding it up, in fact i actually said “I know that all these chemicals that we spew into the atmosphere don’t really help,” meaning that i believe that we’re not helping the environment, we haven’t been for more than 100 years dude!Also someone mentioned about grocery stores offering them for next to nothing, you still had to pay for them right? regardless of how much. I don’t know of any place actually that offered those replacement bags for less than a $1, none the less, even if it was 5 cents, and they pocket it, that’s where the wrong is. Us as consumers are being taken advantage of because of this whole global warming issue and supposedly unnatural phenomenon that we created. I argue that we didn’t create global warming, but i don’t argue that we’re not speeding it up. I agree that we’re somewhat influencing it as humans. We were under ice, regardless of the amount of ice, we were still burried in ice and that just didn’t disappear into thin air out of the blue. It disappeared due to climate change and global warming. If there was no such thing as global warming back then, we’d still be under ice.Miranda, I believe you mentioned this: “They become red giants. Once their fuel is exhausted, they collapse and become white dwarves. They do not explode. They just go pfft and the fire goes out. White dwarves do not undergo fusion reactions. They glow because of residual heat. Eventually they cool off and become black dwarves. This is what will happen to our sun, in about 4 or 5 billion years.” I wonder what will happen to earth when that happens to the sun. Has it maybe occurred to anyone that whatever we’re experiencing now is the start of that process? I mean the sun does have a gravitational pull and that’s why we’re still orbiting it and not floating into outer space. The larger it grows, the stronger it’s effects on our earth will be. Climate change is one of them. As far as i research is that the reason we live on this earth is due to our distance from the sun. The closer we are, the hotter we get, the farther we are, the colder we get. We’re getting hotter. We’re not helping the atmosphere, So really we’re not protecting ourselves from what’s coming.Everyone here is arguing the fact that us humans are causing this effect of global warming where clearly you can see by research that climate change is a constant phenomenon. It keeps happening. The point i was getting at is that our governments and big corporations created a scare to make money. Someone once mentioned this to me: “When you blame others, you give up your power to change.” All our governments did was blame us, along side larger corps, so that we can feel bad, and go out and spend more money. They never actually said we’ll change things. How the hell, as people in NS, are we going to fine Nova Scotia power, and enforce them to move to alternative energy resources such as wind and solar power, if we already elected politicians to do that? Isn’t that the reason we are democratic and we vote? Or is democracy about stealing from the people and lining you’re pockets with it? So far I have no seen any change, and honestly speaking, if voting and democracy changed anything, they would make it illegal. Think about it. Nova scotia has been under the same democratic regime for years, I lived in NS for 15 years, and i have yet to see any changes being implemented. they have meetings every monday or tuesday nights or what have you, to discuss how to establish a walking trail, whether to pave it or just leave it as crusher dust. What the hell!!! Are you kidding me. With more pressing matters at hand, like the depression we’re about to go into, and you’re sitting there discuss a trail? How about discussing helping the farmers and offer incentives to create green houses so we can grow our crops here rather than import everything. How about nationalizing the oil and giving it to the people before shipping it all to the US as if it belongs to them, so that things wouldn’t cost soooo much to ship from one province to another, like meats! Oh i guess these issues are way too serious for anyone to look at. I guess they really succeeded in creating this whole global warming and blaming you the common person, that you believed that YOU’RE responsible, to the extent that you turned a blind eye to our government and the large corporations they run and how they steel from you!
Once again people are mad because we have to start paying for things. For the past couple of decades we in the developed capitalist countries have been living the life of luxury (yes even the poorest of us) and paying next to nothing for everything. We needed everything to be cheaper and more plentiful and made from innovative materials. So we built factories, and consumed loads of fuel and made millions of plastic toys for kids of all ages. And for years we thought nothing of it so we just threw our garbage in the ocean, and burned it and buried it and thought, Hey, the Earth has been around for a long time, it can handle whatever we throw at it. Just don’t make me pay more for anything and I’ll be happy. And our population soared, and we learned that people in developing nations, and poor parts of our country didn’t have enough food, so we thought, hey, we’re awesome, we can help them too, so we figured out ways to start shipping food and toys to every inch of the globe, using up more fuel, and wasting more and more, but we thought we were helping.But do you kow what happens when we keep feeding the rats in the lab more and more food? They multiply. So now we have billions more people, all wasting more and more resources so that we can have cheap toys, and food for all.Wait, what’s that? The Earth can’t handle all of this? Well shit.So now we have to make up for all those years we lived like pigs rolling in cheap shit and not caring about the smell. Because we have to change now, and it’s going to cost a lot of money to do so. And it’s costing EVERYONE, not just governments and corporations, but everyone. We all ruined the environment, now we all have to pay to fix it. So suck it up, spend $5 on reusable bags, buy your own tray and bring it to lunch with you every day then wash it yourself. Don’t buy cheap shit and then throw it out when it breaks, buy locally grown food. Do your part and pay your share or shut up and get off our planet.
OK Coyotex. I think I see what you’re saying. Big business is taking advantage of the global warming threat to make a buck, and you find that offensive. Governments are talking a good game about fighting global warming, but carefully avoid doing anything to piss off the corporations that bankroll them. Am I reading you correctly?
Yeah, environmentalism is trendy, so people are trying to turn a buck on it. But it’s trendy because people have been working hard for decades to make people wake up to the fact that we are abusing our planet and it is having dramatic effects. To address some of the questions posted….first, if climate change is natural why should we stop/slow it, even if we are responsible? Well, for the most purely selfish reasons, we are not in a position to survive climate change without catastrophic loss of life, property and profit. Who can be for that? It is going to affect everyone, rich and poor alike. We cannot ignore the issue and survive. We either have to change the climate, or invest in infrastructure that will withstand climate change, or parish and see what things look like after the dust settles. Continuing blindly on is NOT a solution. Second, to address the science nay-sayers, your “facts” are wrong. We are not closer to the sun, the sun is not bigger, that is not why the globe is warming. It is almost certainly the result of human activity, and if that is the case, we are stupid for not responding to that. Also, if we are responsible for accelerating climate change, do we not have an obligation to clean up our own mess?
Even if human-accelerated climate change were not a proven phenomenon (which it is), we are still on a very destructive path. We’ve allowed ourselves to become extremely reliant on very fragile things, without which (at this point) we are in big, big trouble, and we’ve been very reckless with these things. Throw in the insane overpopulation of the planet, and we have a recipe for very real hardship should something like oil or flour or rice or honeybees (or a million other things we don’t even realize right now how much we rely on) be suddenly not so easy to find.Whether the scientist can prove with exquisite precision the rate a which he ice receded after the ice age could very well be moot in the not too distant future.PS It sucks ass that businesses exploit things like this for profit, but the very nature of business IS the exploitation of things for profit. I really don’t see them standing up and becoming responsible; it’s counter to every principle on which they stand.
Oh, and FYI CoyoteX, check out ScotianWindfields and the new Tidal test projects if you are interested in some of the alternate energy Nova Scotia is investing in…we have a long way to go for sure, but there is some progress being made.
CoyoteX: When the sun goes through it’s final stages what they theorize will happen is that it will expand many times it’s own size when it starts to consume other fuel sources within itself and in that expansion…it will envelope the Earth and burn it barren before receding again…the Earth will apparently be a life-less ball of rock orbiting a dead star. Kinda bleak eh?
Sad, except that we probably have about 5 billion years to find a new home before that happens. But I suspect we will be too busy flying around in our skycars complainig about the price of antimatter to notice.
I would like to say to anyone that uses AL GORE as a reference to stop and give your head a shake. The man rails against global warming and carbon emissions while constantly fyling around the world in a private jet and living in a mansion that, even if it has all sorts of environmentally green and efficient technologies, still uses as much power as several family homes. So fuck him. Also, maybe I’m a cynic, but I think he’s positioning himself for another presidential run a term or two down the road.While I’m ranting, I say fuck worrying about global warming; I have more selfish reason for reducing emissions, I don’t like spewing poisons into the air I need to breathe. If it also happens to stop global warming, if it is for real, than that’s a happy bonus. I’ve seen some research supporting it, and some refuting it, but the weather is a dynamic system, so it’s hard to show any sort of cause and effect. I think to be successful, “green” products have to also be finiancially attractive. It’s like biodiesel; it doesn’t do us much good to save have an alternative fuel if all the food we eat doubles in price because of the amount of farmland being devoted to staples like wheat. Or hybrids; a well designed small combustion engine will get better mileage than most of these hybrids because of all the extra weight they’re carrying. I agree with the OP, a lot of companies are just selling products as green, when they aren’t really, and using the label to make kizzash.
One other thing, a lot of products are cheap because the life cycle isn’t considered. I think there should be a some sort of surtax to prevent companies from putting something small like an SD card in an 8×10 plastic packaging. If you considered how much it costs to recycle all that, it gives you a better idea of the true cost of the whirlygig. That just drives me crazy.On a somewhat amusing note, that tool that’s been advertised to cut through that hard plastic packaging also comes in a hard plastic packaging.
People Are Stupid, you’re displaying the exact mentality i’m disputing. Blaming the people. You started off on the right note : “We had electric cars, they were killed off, see “Who Killed The Electric Car””, which means yes our governments and corporations they support are causing this. But when you sit there claiming, without fact mind you, that it’s the people that refuse to do anything, that’s where i disagree with you. I can change all the light bulbs in my house to energy efficient ones. What impact does that have? Nothing if our power supplier still uses 85% coal. When i don’t want to buy an SUV or a Station wagon as a fuel efficient car, I have no choice but to drive a normal 4 cyl car that’s not as fuel efficient. I still believe Hybrids are a joke! They’re the biggest scam. Same goes for our so called “Ecology Action Centre”. When i asked what pointers they have for someone who’s willing to completely go off-grid and go all green, they had no idea how to answer that question, nor were they willing to answer it. they said the best way was to be a tie in with NS POWER, where you input power into the grid but don’t get credit for it. Yes the more you input into the grid, the less your power bill will be. If you input more than what your power bill is, you receive 0 credits. The minute you go over, they start charging you, even though they owe you tonnes of money. How am i supposed to believe that the EAC wasn’t put in place by NS POWER after they tried to feed me that crap. I have close friends who are actually quite well off and blessed in the bank if you know what i mean. They drive SUV’s, they would change in a heart beat to an electric car if it wasn’t an SUV, because they don’t see the purpose of using an SUV as a fuel efficient mode of transportation. So there goes your theory about rich people. We do think long term since i’m already stocking up on food. God knows in a couple of years we’ll find it here since our governments aren’t willing to change.No matter what anyone says, it’s all about money. Sometimes i actually doubt that any of these politicians get elected. I think they just place themselves there!
Coyotex: If your facts are correct about NS Power tie-ins…that is absolutely disgusting and outrageous. If they proposed something like that to me directly…I would flat out tell them to fuck off and that I would rather waste my free off grid energy.
Christopher, yes man why do you think i’m so pissed and i think this whole global warming thing is made-up?Honestly, NS power will want you to tie-in. What they do is they actually count the Kwh you input into the grid and offset your bill with it, until it’s $0. After you reach the $0 mark, you stop receiving credits. So say throughout the summer you have $0 bill, and a month in the winter you had to raise the heat due to weather and that spiked you bill. All the power you put into the grid throughout the summer becomes theirs and the minute you start using more than what you’re inputing, they start charging you and forget the 4 months that you input more than you used. They pretty much swallow it! Now that’s a huge rip off, and Ecology Action Centre supports it!
NS power buys power from windfarms….they should pay individuals too. Coyotex, did you hear this from NSPower or EAC, and how long ago. Again, if you are interested in alternative energy, check out some of the wind farm developers, they are always looking for land to set up windmills on, and might pay you for the energy you produce so they can sell it to NS power. I am unclear on the facts right now, but I know some people involved in wind power and that is the type of arrangement that I believe can be made. Global warming is real, and businesses are eagre to profit from the hysteria surrounding it. The danger is real, but the publicity and profiteering skew the reality. Don’t let your disgust with government and business close your eyes to the scientific truth of the matter.The choices you make do impact the environment, government policy and corporate profit. It just takes a lot of people all thinking along the same lines to make the changes happen. Saying “screw it” and writing everything off as a conspiracy only exacerbates the problem.
Miles, from both. It’s listed on NS Power website. That’s why a lot of people opt out of doing that. At the same time, it costs an arm and a leg to get off grid. The most research that was done and the most recent ECA meeting i attended was mid april 2008, they provided the same exact information i just stated. Even though NS Power is buying power from wind farms, they’re still using over 80% coal power. My Electrical instructor works with NS Power. He provided the info.
Yeah, NSP is being a douche then. I know they are pretty resistent to getting off coal, but obviously they know the good PR associated with being green. If you check out their website where they talk about their energy sources, coal is listed last (after wind and tidal) but is the major source of their power. Doesn’t mean there is a conspiracy, they probably just don’t want to invest in the infrastructure needed to start up new power projects. They are letting outside companies do it for them and sell them the electricity for NSP to distribute. Maybe someday, the province will take away NSPs monopoly and let people buy directly from the windfarmers.
That’s just stupid. If you are putting energy back into the grid, you should get paid for that. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works in other provinces. Although with all the extra surcharges and everything else that’s on your bill, it’d be hard to actually start making money.There are lots of relatively simple technologies that you can do to cut down on energy use. A lot of these do however need to be part of the design and building process of the house. Things like passive solar energy, green roofs, and good insulation make a big difference. Solar panels are good but pretty inefficient (10% ish). Wind farms are good if they are located in the spot, but then people complain because they’re kind of loud and affect the skyline (seriously, that shut down a major windfarm project on the Niagara escarpment).I think what needs to happen is a complete shift in how cities are being planned. You want to cut down on car emissions? Too easy, encourage higher density building like apartments and condos near the city core. The big reason that everyone has a car is because with how cities sprawl, you pretty much need a vehicle to get around. Plan the city to reduce sprawl, and we’ll benefit in other ways, like reduced costs for new infrastructure, as well as upkeep. I’m encouraged by what I see happening now, with all the new buildings going up. You just need to find a happy medium between developement and keeping the heritage, which I think they can do if they stick to the new plan that was announced about a month ago.I think the best way to get everyone on board with any sort of green technology is by making it benefit their pocketbook.
PETE!!!.. THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH!!!Finally some sense into what I have been trying to say. I may have not been the best presenting my idea or debate, but Pete hit the nail on the head. If the earth is in such dire need to be saved or if global warming is so bad as they say that we’ll be dying soon, I believe by now we would have had electric cars and what have you. My personal thought jives with Pete’s and i think a problem does exist, but our governments and corps make it sound so sever so that we’re too scared to not do anything about it and start purchasing all this stuff that doesn’t make any change, like expensive gas, or cars that run on bio-fuel that are way over priced. I love those FAT SUV’s that are bio-diesel! A SUBURBAN, what good is that, it’s still huge and devours fuel like there’s no tomorrow. Hybrid was the biggest joke ever. It only uses electricity when you’re idling, how about the rest of the trip? What happens to the environment and global warming then? How often do you sit there idling for that car to actually make a lick of difference? or are you just trying to make the hybrid such a fad to make so much money? And why is it only SUV’s and not anything esle lke a hatchback or something smaller and an SUV? Of course SUV’s are over $30K. You can get a hatchback now for less than $15K. Imagine a Hybrid less than $15K. Show me one and I’ll buy it. Now after all this, is it really about Global warming and the destruction of the environment, or is it just money, like the terror threat is?!
We had electric cars, they were killed off, see “Who Killed The Electric Car”.With hybrid cars the problem lies partly with the manufacturers of cars and partly with the consumers. If companies decide to only make fuel efficient hybrid small cars, then all the masses of people who are now obsessed with giant SUV’s are still causing a huge problem. So they make SUV’s which aren’t the best option, but at least it’s better to drive a hybrid SUV than a non Hybrid one.The other problem? All the people who have the power and money to do something that really helps Global Warming are currently of the age that it probably wont directly affect them in their lifetime. It will affect their kids if they have them, and the future generations, but they don’t care, they just want to make as much money as they can right now. Even if they have kids, they think money can solve anything, so if global warming happens, their kids will have enough money to buy their way out of it. So they’ll keep polluting, and keep driving SUV’s and not caring about the future because right now they’re happy and that’s all that matters.The biggest problem? People don’t think long term anymore, and fail to see the bigger picture. Like Pete mentioned about the SD cards, if you had to pay for the recycling of the package out of your pocket, it would cost you more for the cheaper card than for the more expensive one in a smaller cardboard package. Or taking electric cars for example. It might cost you more initally for the electric car than for the oil one, but if you factor in what you’ll be paying for in the long run of the oil car (all the maintenence and product for the engine, the environmental impact of the fumes and fuel consumed, etc) the electric car is a bargain. We really need a way to show the total cost of a product including envionmental impact fees, medical and dental costs for unhealthy foods, and shipping costs on every item we buy, so we can see how much it’s really costing, even if it’s not directly out of pocket.
“No matter what anyone says, it’s all about money”That’s exactly it. It is all about the money, but not just for corporations, but for regular people like you Coyotex. You just proved that you are not into being green to save the enviornment, but to save yourself money. If you really wanted to help, you wouldn’t care that once you had all the power you needed, that you got in a green minded way, that NS power used the rest to power other things, and didn’t pay you for it. Personally if I could power my own home using alternative methods, and had enough left over to help NS power use less coal, I’d be all for it.You want to make money off the power that you’ve generated, you don’t want to help.