Year: 2009

Rethinking Green: Save the Environment: Don’t Take Transit

“Although it is charging more than ever, getting heftier federal, provincial and municipal subsidies than at any time in its history, although fuelling a car is pricier; and though its customer base has never been larger or keener to reduce its carbon footprint, the TTC, the largest system in the country, is struggling as much as ever to stem its losses. If this is the future of public transit, it does not look bright.”

Featured News

Transformers: More than Meets the Eye

The path to net zero, based on the much disputed belief that carbon dioxide is a pollution, is more steep and impractical than most people realize. Replacing fossil fuels with clean electricity will require much more power generation and a greatly upgraded grid to...

A Dose Of Skepticism Is Healthy: I’m perfectly willing to trust the climate experts. But isn’t doubt an integral part of serious research?

In any case, aren’t doubt and skepticism an integral part of serious research? Science evolves by trial and error, and there’s always a new discovery that challenges accepted theories. Whether or not the gloom-and-doom scenarios are probable, it would certainly be good for humanity and for Mother Earth to find alternative ways to provide cleaner energy. But the findings of the UN panel would be more convincing if they had rested on an open scientific debate.

The Gas Of Life: Western CO2 emissions increase plant yields in the Third World. So why are they asking for reparations?

At Copenhagen, Third World countries are demanding hundreds of billions of dollars in reparations from the West for the consequences of the West’s fossil fuel burning, among them droughts and crop failures. Third World countries have it backwards. The West’s CO2 emissions have been increasing crop yields while helping to ease the Third World’s water shortages. Rather than plead for reparations, Third World governments should offer a paean to Providence.