30 Fairmont Park Lane S
Lethbridge, AB T1K 7H7
Phone: (403) 328-1704
Thursday, December 12, 2013
The Editor
The Lethbridge Herald
P.O. Box 670
Lethbridge, AB, T1J 3Z7
Re: Time to get moving on energy alternatives
Dear Editor,
Mark Goettel makes a stirring case for public subsidies to support wind and solar energy deployment.
His case would be much stronger if not predicated on a need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions as a means of avoiding “climate change”. The fundamental issue was and is that rising atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide could result in harmful greenhouse gas induced warming. In fact, contrary to expectations of many climate scientists, it appears that warming has essentially halted over the past dozen years or so.
A vast army of climate change cheerleaders has managed to morph the warming issue into blaming carbon dioxide emissions for many loosely connected climate issues from warming to cooling, to droughts and floods, to cyclones and tsunamis, and on & on. Climate science is done no favours by this kind of speculation - often fuelled by some kind of financial opportunism, By way of example, my house insurance provider advised my rates would increase because of climate change and the resultant floods in Alberta. This is just self-serving balderdash.
All life, including human society, is dependent on energy. The stored fossil fuel energy humans currently thrive on will eventually become scarce. If we don’t develop effective alternatives a day of reckoning will arrive. Fortunately, we have developed vast knowledge of the role, and sources, of energy over the past two or three hundred years. We now know of techniques at the atomic scale which have the potential to provide energy to support abundant life on earth for as long as we need imagine.
Turning that energy knowledge into practical every day energy supply technology is the highest order of priority. With such bountiful energy in hand we can possibly even manage aspects of our planet and solar system which affect climate should that be needed.
Yours truly,
Duane Pendergast