I was reading a Canadian Trivia book by Pat Hancock (my son's book lol) and came across an interesting page. We are being inundated every day with talk of climate change and how man is causing it, how the changes taking place now are coming faster than 'ever before' and therefore man must be the root of the problem. Blah Blah Blah. When it stopped getting warmer and instead got cooler, the key phrase Global Warming turned into Climate Change and there are several other renditions, depending who you speak to. Since it has been cooler in my region for awhile, people are saying it's still caused by man and it's enough to make my head spin.
Well according to this book, in 1816 they had what they called a Year Without A Summer because it snowed in June July and August that year. Freezing Arctic winds destroyed crops and froze leaves in eastern Canada in July. In August there was a deadly frost and another major snowstorm. It had snowed in June as well. It was a very bad crop year... well that was in 1816 so who the heck was at fault for that one? We didnt have cars, factories belching fumes, etc... so how did the weather change so quickly and harshly out of the blue like that?
Well I looked it up and surprise surprise, it seems likely due to a volcanic eruption that occurred in 1815 which caused havoc around the world for a couple of years. Europe Canada and the US all experienced varying levels of famine due to crop death. Even waterfowl were killed when their ponds froze up for the summer. Events like this have happened periodically over time with a natural explanation - but now we are told the changes are man's fault. There have been ice ages and warming periods consistently but that was all natural or perhaps caused by a cosmic event. Now it's man. I don't understand why we are supposed to sit here and put up with that.
But whatever - here is something else I often hear people talking about 'free energy'. Many seem to hope to clear out reliance on oil gas and coal because they think it will save them some money and don't really care about if it's better for the environment or not. They talk about the money side. Well do they think our cities and towns will suddenly pop up some wind turbines and our bills will cheaper? What a joke! The turbines will have to be purchased and constructed, new equipment put in place to transfer the energy to wherever it is needed, then transferred to our homes, maintenance, renewal, upkeep, paying all the associated workers and transport and distribution costs... for all we know it could even cost MORE. We have no way of knowing, but do you really think it's going to be LESS? Come on! I am already paying an extra monthly fee on my utility bill for a wind farm that isn't even constructed yet! They don't even know for sure where they are going to put it but my city started tagging on an extra fee (small, but it still adds up over time). If each house is paying $3 a month, that's over $60,000 a month being collected by my city right now for a wind farm that doesn't even exist! Think about it! It irks me to no-end. I also saw on the news recently a large solar panel field in Ontario that currently can power a few thousand homes. It's huge but only has enough for a very small town, or rather, a village. How much land area for crops, parks, animals, etc could be taken up if the projects are expanded? All of this for 'saving the environment'?? Are you kidding me?
I also hear over the years how people complain about the price of gasoline and say 'it's a conspiracy' ALL the time... well do they think there is never going to be a 'conspiracy' with energy companies transferring 'clean energy'? Come on! It drives me crazy. There are natural gas wells ALL over the place where I live, thousands of them, and you can't even see them unless you look really close. A small well just has a little red fence around it in the middle of the fields and you don't even notice them. I don't think the same can be said about wind turbines and solar power fields. It's mental people. It really is!
An oil well might look like a terrible mess while they are working on it, but after they are finished with it, they can put it all back and plant new trees and grass and you would never know 10 years later that something so messy and ugly had ever occupied that space. Can the same be said about wind turbines and solar fields? They have to stay there permanently. Forever. The only way they will be moved is if they decide the wind isn't efficient enough there and they try a new spot. Imagine how many of those things will need to be put up in order for us to continue our current way of living. It's astonishing when you think about it. A small nat gas well can power MANY homes (each is diff depending on the output from the well so I can't just give you a magic figure), but you would need an army of wind turbines to match that one well's output. How can we justify doing that and saying it would be good for the environment? We still have to dig up the earth to install cables and power transfer lines all over the place, we still have to use steel, cement, gasoline, batteries, diesel fuel, etc in the transport construction and transportation of these things... how many will there be? I don't understand how people with half a brain can't envision this and just blindly go along. They know nothing about the oil and gas industry, nothing about coal production, yet they have an opinion on it. They don't take the time to look into it and see how far we have advanced since the beginning and how much better we are at doing things right, and how we are constantly working to improve even more - but they have a negative opinion about it. And they will still turn on their electric items, power up their laptops, get on their blackberrys and iphones and slam down the industry. Pathetic!
Free energy???? The next time someone spouts off about switching to free energy ask them to prove their convinction by offering you a free lunch.
ReplyDeleteSee how long that lasts.
Sheesh.
Very well said!
ReplyDeleteTJS
The reason they slam the oil industry is because it is politically correct and it makes them look good or feel good....it's all about them. These foolish people should do some research but that is too much trouble and their minds have been made up so there is no changing them. Did you know that one 42 gallon barrel of oil produces 19.4 gallons of gasoline. The rest (over half) is used to make over 6000 items including clothes, shampoos, health products, lipstick, hair colouring, bandaids, eye glasses, soft contact lenses, vitamin capsules, upholstery, artificial limbs, heart valves, water pipes, cortisone, ballons, anesthetics, guitar strings, shoes and many, many more things including the covers on their laptops, blackberries and cellphones etc. They are such hypocrites
ReplyDeleteGood post!
ReplyDeleteWell sites aren't messy and ugly though. Not to me. They get muddy when its wet like any construction site, but its all neat and orderly. They run like clocks and visit places that people will never go. A drilling rig is as cool as an airplane or a submarine.
Thanks for the comments. I think I am preaching to the choir for most of my blog visitors but hey you never know when someone who was on the fence might stumble across these posts and start thinking a little differently (or rather, just plain start thinking!).
ReplyDeleteHere is something to add to the "free energy" comments: People often speak of how the air is just there for us to use, as is the sun. Well guess what? Dear Mother Earth gave us oil too! It's a natural substance. And while no, it's not 'renewable', wind and solar energy are not a given source 24-7 either. Clouds, lack of wind, night time, etc all affect the energy output from turbines and solar panels. We are at the mercy of the earth while using those energy sources. But oil is natural too! We didn't create it, we just figured out many ways to use it. So I can't stand it when people go on about free energy, earth's energy bounty, etc when oil is a nice little present that earth created for us as well. And there is a HELL of a lot more of it available than many would lead us to believe, and we are discovering more all the time and finding new ways to get at it. Who the heck knows how much is really out there, but the media and certain groups of people lead us to believe we are on the fast track to tapping it out, when we are not.
As for the 'mess' I used those words because that is what we keep getting shown... horrible messes at the oil sands for example. But we aren't shown pictures of how horrible it was before they decided to try to get that oil out of the sand, in some places it was already leaking out into the river. It was a gooey icky mess and I have family up there, and they talk of how some of the boreal forest was more like a disgusting swamp with stunted trees and virtually no wildlife due to the oil getting so close to the surface. I'd hate to see those areas now if someone hadn't figured out how to purge it from the sand and try to get things back to normal. But we don't see that - we get shown the ground torn to pieces by equipment and they try to make us hate it!
Wind generators tend to break down easily. Wind farm companies often get the tax breaks and subsidies, take their profits, then leave the broken, rusting wind turbines to clutter the landscape.
ReplyDeleteThe Obama Pelosi government is trying to drive the costs of using fossil fuels so high, that no one will be able to afford to operate large refineries or coal power plants.
Sure, China will still buy the oil sands, shale oil, coal, and any other form of fossil fuel even if the Obama Pelosi US commits energy suicide, but having a failed state along its southern border will not be good for Canada.
Good post Kez.. the problem with current political reaction to science is it STARTS with a point of view and then looks to find evidence to confirm it.
ReplyDeleteEvent the so-called "vindication" of the climate-gate affair made it very clear that the closed attitude of the scientist in question, Phil Jones, was less than open and candid about allowing for review if his research. In other words, rather than being somewhat detached, he became an advocate and a "protector" of his finditions.. which is hardly conducive to helping create trust in an area of science which is so subject to challenge and question.
Another thing I notice is that if you support the oil/gas/coal industries, others assume you are against wind and solar energy. I'm not against it, I think we should always try to find new and improved ways to do things. But I AM against shoving it down people's throats. I have lived in rural mountain towns where we had to pay through the nose to get electricity power sent to us. My utility bills were enormous. It sucked... a newer way to grab some power sounded like a great idea at the time, in hopes of lowering the bills because the wind farm was only a half hour away.
ReplyDeleteWell guess what? The bills for people in those towns have NOT dropped even though the windfarm has been up and running (and being added to all the time) for over 8 years. I know this because I moved to that area of south western alberta before my daughter was born, and she will be turning 8 tomorrow. The utility bills are the same or higher from when I lived there. I asked her father and my friends that live out there... So where is their big deal? Where is their big break in costs? Um... no where to be seen. But the landscape is now peppered with various types of wind turbines and the formerly beautiful view of the mountains along the highway are now filled with spinning (and many times NOT spinning) turbine arms. It's very odd. In another 10 years or so, those turbines will be put out of service based on the current 'life expectancy'... so what exactly did it do for the people of the region?
I agree that something like a volcanic eruption can have an enormous impact on weather.
ReplyDeleteHere is some more info on what happened in 1816:
http://www.earthfacts.net/weather/1816-the-year-without-a-summer/
However, in that case the weather returned to normal after a couple of years.
Climate change refers to a slow, gradual change in the Earth's average temperature over a long period of time.