That eerie hissing you hear may well be the air beginning to seep out of the green energy bubble. The sound is similar to the pfffffft and sshhhhsssssp noises we heard in the early days of the dot.com bubble collapse or the subprime mortgage meltdown. If you can’t hear it, you are not alone.
While investment analysts are telling their clients to get out of solar power firms and warning about the continuing risks in wind and bioenergy schemes, Ottawa and the provinces are on a mad populist stampede to throw billions of dollars at the green energy monster. The politicians don’t seem to be keeping up with the trends. “Don’t try to catch a falling knife,” warned J.P. Morgan this week in a report that told investors the market continues to fall out of the solar panel module market. It downgraded a bunch of solar companies that have already been in a tailspin since the fist signs of a solar crash back in 2008.
Other alternative energy sectors are hitting walls. Jurisdictions with wind power regimes face continuing issues related to the fact that the wind often doesn’t blow much, turning investments in wind farms into cash-draining albatrosses. In Ontario, the 1,100 megawatts of built wind turbine capacity are often running a few megawatts at a time, and even on the best of days have trouble producing 150 megawatts.
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The problem Terry is ignoring is that we are dealing with a religion. This global warming religion has not gone through an enlightenment. And like some other ancient religions dogging us, this one does not separate church and state; they are one and the same.
For example Elizabeth May has an article on the NP editorial page, the same NP as Terry’s article (fair and balanced?), where she spouts her religious dogma: “Based on Antarctic ice-core data, science that no one has disputed, the atmosphere now contains more than 30% more carbon dioxide than at any time in the last million years.” She’s wrong, the fact is that CO2 levels have been higher and might even be healthier for us. The issue is the speed of the current CO2 rise that might be a problem. If we could get away from the religious dogma we might be able to use reason to determine what to do.
This isn’t just going away. The Green Party gets 10% of the vote, the Dippers and the Marxists in Duceppe’s Bloc plus even some Liberals and Conservatives, all add up to over half the population still buying into the religion. So politically we can’t just ignore this, nor should we. The speed of CO2 rising might be a serious problem.
‘Climate science, let’s follow the money’
http://www.winnipegsun.com/comment/columnists/lorrie_goldstein/2010/03/10/13184896.html
We’re going to kill ourselves with pollution long before we die of heat exposure. But then again, nobody’s going to get rich fixing problems like this so why bother.
http://www.winnipegsun.com/news/columnists/tom_brodbeck/2010/03/10/13187361.html
I agree Nom … the issue is now the rise in CO2 and it no longer matters how or who is causing it. Governments are caught in a bind really not knowing which way to go as much as many of us on the right would like to see a major withdrawal from the green religion. Suzuki has a regular column in our local paper and he is no longer mentioning AGW but is concentrating on “eco” issues instead, still trying to drive the issue.
WCT, Conservatives should own the podium on “eco” issues in terms of cleaning up the environment. Then we should try and deal with CO2 separately.
Who doesn’t want a clean environment? But the best way to destroy the environment is to allow “central planners” dominate world governments. Just look at the environmental mess left by the Soviet Socialists.
It takes a lot of wealth to keep the environment clean and conservatism/capitalism is the way to assure that happens.
On the other hand, C02 discussions have been taken over by zealots with a “plan” for us. Having allowed the Fruit Fly and others like him dominate the discussion is like Scientologists covering the scandals of the Church of Scientology.
The solution is for Parliament to appoint a multi-partisan group of scientists and put them on YouTube once a month to inform taxpayers just where there is consensus and where there isn’t. We do not want to spend billions where there is no consensus.