Documentary On Global Dimming and Global Warming

[puckstopshere]

Scary!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8RyNSzQDaU

[pierrelebel]

According to our Prime Minister, Mr Harper, there is no scientific evidence of global warming. It is a plot from the left.

Copy of a letter he wrote a while back:

We’re gearing up for the biggest struggle our party has faced since you entrusted me with the leadership. I’m talking about the “battle of Kyoto” — our campaign to block the job-killing, economy-destroying Kyoto Accord.
It would take more than one letter to explain what’s wrong with Kyoto, but here are a few facts about this so-called “Accord”:

• It’s based on tentative and contradictory scientific evidence about climate trends.
• It focuses on carbon dioxide, which is essential to life, rather than upon pollutants.
• Canada is the only country in the world required to make significant cuts in emissions. Third World countries are exempt, the Europeans get credit for shutting down inefficient Soviet-era industries, and no country in the Western hemisphere except Canada is signing.
• Implementing Kyoto will cripple the oil and gas industry, which is essential to the economies of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia.
• As the effects trickle through other industries, workers and consumers everywhere in Canada will lose. THERE ARE NO CANADIAN WINNERS UNDER THE KYOTO ACCORD.
• The only winners will be countries such as Russia, India, and China, from which Canada will have to buy “emissions credits.” Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.
• On top of all this, Kyoto will not even reduce greenhouse gases. By encouraging transfer of industrial production to Third World countries where emissions standards are more relaxed, it will almost certainly increase emissions on a global scale

http://www.one-blue-marble.com/harper-and-climate-change.html

[puckstopshere]

Personally, I think that Kyoto was highly flawed and that it was one of the few times Harper may have been right.

What kind of agreement allows major polluters to buy "credits" so they can continue polluting?  Seems ludicrous to me.

The idea of setting targets was a good one.  However, targets need to be realistic and enforceable.  What good is a target

if it bankrupts a country that is trying to achieve it?

An agreement needs to be created that will truly address the main polluters of this world - without allowing them to buy their way out of it.  To me, Kyoto was not the right agreement.

[valve37]

Bring out the horses and buggies and put away your fire breathing gas guzzling combustion engine vehicles, return to the stone age, do something to help curb so called global warming.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm

[prior-of-verity*shake-hands-with-your-devil]

The world will learn, eventually. It will be too late and all the skeptics will be long gone, but it won't matter to them anymore than it does now. History will write how foolish and greedy we were.

[art-in-the-making]

Bring out the horses and buggies

Actually, a far more sustainable and planet-friendly lifestyle can be achieved with far less, or hardly any, inconvenience. In fact, it could be more convenient.

People forget that many of the traits of our civilization have been devised or adopted to create maximum profit for minimal effort, or, best case scenario, to create jobs ~perhaps.

i.e. - public transport systems were poorly developed in North America, mostly because the automobile was ultimately the most profitable profit vehicle to serve the auto, steel and oil industries.

Demand is "created" more than it is self-generating. This type of thing: 🙂  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCnRzIFfh_c

What is the deal with never having a subway stop at an airport in Canada? Compare it to Amsterdam where you don't even leave the airport to board the subway... For some reason, our airports go the extra mile to build miles and miles of parking lots. Half the time it takes you longer to walk to your car than it does to get downtown in many countries!

Or, how about installing geothermal heating in Canadian homes? This would reduce our energy consumption in the blink of an eye. As this slowly unfolds, the dynamics at play are fascinating. Oil and gas industries, provincial governments (who love selling fracking licences for $100s of millions), economic interests, unions, small geothermal contractors, electric and gas utilities... all sort of doing lip service to geothermal to a lesser or greater degree - but mostly they are just waffling - because none of these players would really benefit from the arrival of an easy-to-install geothermal heating solution in the marketplace...

Or, how about this idea: upgrade Canada's tourist infrastructure to keep more Canadians vacationing at home and bring more foreign tourists here. Presently Canadians are spending about $40 Bil a year on international travel. Keep Canadian vacation $s in the country and possibly cut back on some of those long haul flights, perhaps get more people seeing our country by train. (btw, our incoming tourism receipts are approx. $20 Bil - so we have a $20 Bil annual deficit in that area.)

Oh yeah, and how about "big box stores"? I have been interested to note that occasionally I will go to a local old fashioned hardware store that is about the size of a coffee shop, that usually seems to have whatever I need at the time. So, why do we heat these friggin big box stores?? 

But, all these things mentioned, probably the larger amounts of energy savings could be realized by systematic changes to our small picture habits. Hanging up jeans to dry instead of drying them in the machine, stuff like that, etc etc. No sweat off anyone's back! No horse and buggy for poor Valve! 

[puckstopshere]

The Netherlands is one of my favorite places.  If I were to move to Europe, that would be my destination.

The train system is fantastic (as it is everywhere in Europe).  If you look at a map of the bicycle paths/lanes

in Holland, you will be amazed.  The bicycle is king of the road.  In the next couple of years, I plan to spend

a few months biking around the country. 

Many of the bikes in Holland are old and have one speed.  They cost about $30 to $50.  Once they buy one, the

locals usually spend more than that on a lock.  Bikes are regularly stolen and stripped for parts - what they don't

use ends up in a canal.  I saw a few people with expensive bikes - they are always taken indoors - never left

outside. 

We in Canada have a long way to go.  Our bike lanes are slowly being constructed or painted in.  Our public

transit rarely meets the needs of its riders.  Here in London, most buses end up at one spot downtown, no

matter where their route starts or finishes.  This is highly inefficient.  If I want to go across the North end of

London, I don't want to go downtown.  Buses here stop at midnight and don't run until the morning rush hour. 

If you work on a weekend, don't count on a bus.  If you are lucky, they start running at 8 or 9 am.   Want to take

a bus home from the bar at closing time - forget about it.  They are all back in the barn. 

Train service is abysmal.  The only real service is between Toronto, Montreal and Quebec City.  Here in Southern

Ontario, passenger train service is becoming rare or non-existent.

If Canada wants to reduce auto use, we need to start providing top notch service that meets the needs of the people.

I regularly spend a couple of bucks to go downtown - rather than pay ten to park.  If we want more people to use

buses and trains, we need to get serious.

[puckstopshere]

P.S.  Well written post, Art!

[art-in-the-making]

thanks, Puck!

Yeah I love Holland too. On my bucket list is to go to Maastricht (I think that's the spot) and experience biking through four(?) countries in one day!

[dipmicro]

Humanitarians will probably disagree, but from ecosystem point of view, issue is self-correcting. Democracy is not the best political system to keep the planet from disaster since people are programmed to keep increasing their energy needs and voted officials will always do everything to please the majority of voters - a.k.a. allowing them to keep increasing their energy footprint. North Korea has very low energy footprint. So we, as species, either need genetical modification on a global scale or totalitarian system to keep the planet healthy.

[puckstopshere]

and voted officials will always do everything to please the majority of voter

You should let Harper in on this.  He certainly doesn't seem to be aware of it.

Never fear, though.  An election will be happening in the future.

Almost time for the traditional doling out of goodies to the masses to try and buy our votes.

Who cares if it is money we don't have and will only increase the debt.