Co-authored with David Suzuki of the David Suzuki Foundation
When it comes to the recent 2010 Winter Olympics, the United States and Canada have much to be proud of. Each ranked first in a medal category with Canada winning 14 gold medals and the U.S. securing 15 silver medals. This is an impressive but unsurprising performance for two of the top three economies in the Western Hemisphere. (Snowless Brazil won no medals.) Less impressive is that the U.S. and Canada are peak performers in the category of climate change causation. These two have done little to reduce their high scores in per capita emissions. Both rank in the world's top 10 emitters at nearly 20 tons per person per year. Compare this with China's 4 tons per person and India's 1 ton per person.
For the U.S. and Canada, or any country, to continue participating in the Winter Olympics, they must commit to a greener performance -- a reality brought into question by Vancouver's lack of snow, which was a consequence of a changing climate. The reality is that while Olympic competitiveness is a priority for both nations, green competitiveness is not.
In the U.S., despite the House passing a climate change bill in 2009, which includes a cap-and-trade component to control pollution by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of pollutants, and despite the good work of Senators such as Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the Senate is poised to unravel gains made by the House. This unraveling reflects public sentiment: Americans are cooling on the concept of climate change. According to a poll conducted by Yale and George Mason universities in early 2010, only 57 percent of Americans believe climate change is happening, compared with 71 percent in October 2008.
In Canada, similar trends exist and, much as in the Olympics, the world is watching. BBC News' recent survey shows Canada's image in the world deteriorating sharply in the last year, due largely to the country's environmental policies. Yet unlike Americans, who increasingly rank climate near the bottom of policy concerns, a 2010 poll commissioned by the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute found that Canadians see the climate as a greater threat than terrorism. Forty-nine percent point to climate change as the main threat; only 28 percent identified terrorism. This threat assessment has yet to materialize into climate change prevention: Only one in five Canadians say they are doing as much as they can to reduce their impact on climate change, according to a survey by the World Wildlife Fund in March.
The U.S. and Canada's lackluster support for tackling climate change made waves at Copenhagen's climate conversation in December, which suffered from a lack of leadership from many of the top 10 Olympic medal holders. Meanwhile, every academy or society of top scientists in the industrialized world, from the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S. to the Royal Societies in London and Canada, has warned that human-induced climate change is real and represents a monumental threat to society.
It is remarkable that we use economic arguments to justify our inaction. The threat of climate change is not unlike the threat of war; yet, we don't decry spending tens of billions annually to protect our homeland. We don't complain about spending tens of thousands each year to insure against theft, fire or earthquake. Failure to address the issue will destroy the global economy, costing more than both world wars. Sir Nicholas Stern, former senior economist with the World Bank, suggests the cost of acting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will be 2 percent to 3 percent of annual gross domestic product. Surely investing in green energy and jobs is a hedge against uncertainty and a huge potential disaster.
How to motivate gold-medaling, then, in the sport of going green? In rallying Olympian behavior, the proof must be in the pudding. Imagine the U.S. and Canada as athletes in training for a competition. As the coach, you would want to expose your athlete to few toxins, little risk and no harm, and you want to harness the natural physical assets of the athlete, with little reliance on outside supplements.
The analogy to green performance is hardly a stretch of the imagination: The U.S. and Canada are unfit athletes. We are hardly harnessing our renewable natural resources -- wind and solar -- which could provide enough energy to power the entire continent. We are exposing ourselves to incredible risk by relying on foreign fossil fuels from unstable governments. We continue to belch carbon dioxide into the air, which slowly eats away at the health of our citizens.
As Vancouver's Olympic medalists make their rounds in our respective countries, securing endorsements, giving speeches and receiving the accolades they deserve, we must not lose sight of the potential of global sportsmanship in going green, nor must we forget the fact that the Winter Olympics, like the one in near-snowless Vancouver, may soon be our last if we fail to act fast. It is time to start training. For the earth and its athletes, it may be our most important competition ever.
Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) is a member of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition. David Suzuki, co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation, is an award-winning scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster.
Insinuating that Canadians may be wasteful on a personal or community level or don't care is disingenuous and reflects poorly on the discussion of global emissions. As for David Suzuki , he is beloved by many Canadians - specifically those who watch CBC - nuff said.
Although not yet widely believed by scientists, water can replace oil as fuel.
Future cars might become substantial power plants when suitably parked, ending any need to build coal or nuclear plants and demonstrating far less expensive alternatives to fossil fuel. Eventually, automobiles may pay for themselves.
See Running on Water at: http://www.aesopinstitute.org
To learn more about water as fuel, visit the website of parallel technology developer, BlackLight Power.
Scientists understandably have a hard time accepting fractional Hydrogen, the basis of this radically new energy.
Laboratories should repeat the fractional Hydrogen experiments published by Rowan University and successfully repeated by GEN3 Partners, who advise Fortune 100 firms.
National labs in both countries should perform the experiments as well as design their own.
As technology using water as fuel is demonstrated and reaches the market, it will become increasingly difficult to ridicule, ignore or deny.
Following the Pearl Harbor attack, within a few months a bomber rolled off an assembly line every 59 minutes.
These radically new technologies are much simpler and inherently cost-competitive.
Let's have an all out effort to develop them without delay!
There will be widespread support to end the rising price of imported oil.
Surprisingly rapid reduction in the need for fossil fuel can be led by consumer demand.
Apparently, according to the wording and avatar, you are Mark Goldes (Marketing Officer at Chava Energy) who has been a busy camper on the blogosphere, putting the same inane comments elsewhere. Busy setting up websites like the dead www.energyblogs.com.
However, there are some blogs you or Roarty (creator of the junk blog www.scienceblog.com) have not commented yet. I will not give the URL's (you need to do the work), here are some unanswered comments:
Comment 1: I can't help but chuckle at them using NMR to back up their claims. Our understanding of NMR is heavily dependent upon quantum mechanics...which according to the blacklight theory is incorrect? Little bit of cognitive dissonance anyone?
Comment 2: OK. There are quite a few issues here. First off, they claim the smaller electron radius of a hydrino hydride gives GREATER chemical shielding. So why is it deshielded relative to "normal" hydride? Article (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja062419g) giving some NMR data for an iridium hydride.
I'm continually amazed at the profusion of snake oil in what should be a relatively simple discussion...
The simple truth is that we have available technology to "fractionate" water into its H2 and O2 components... we all did the same experiment in HS Chemistry; it's called electrolysis. Direct current pushed through an electrolyte solution will generate hydrogen and oxygen with just over 80% efficiency using current commercially-available tech; advances in PEM tech promise to improve that efficiency to over 90%, should we one day find the need. Historically, we simply haven't found an application for a commercially-viable method of converting hydrogen back into energy very efficiently.
Two years ago I submitted a patent application for a process to simply burn H2 and O2, generating a motive body of steam capable of driving a very conventional steam turbine generator system. The application will come up for review by the USPTO in December, 2011. We are now fully capable of storing off-peak wind power in the form of bulk gasses, and regenerating that power during peak-demand and "rolling brownout" periods using 200-year-old conventional steam turbine tech.
More information is available at deeskwared@att.net if you care to explore...
Sell your contraption at QVC or Home Shopping Network. They have a lot more credibility than you and I know they will take no nonsense from you.
Revolutionary energy technologies, such as fractional Hydrogen and Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (Cold Fusion) do not fit long accepted paradigms. And they threaten to disrupt powerful people who have vested interests to protect. Those who think people like friedfish make sense, might want to review websites such as http://www.LENR-CANR.org
There can be found an up-to-date snapshot of the hard to accept new science that has emerged from a tabletop demonstration of a nuclear reaction that threatened to topple the careers of a galaxy of hot fusion scientists - who have spent billions of taxpayer dollars with no product and zero contribution to energy production.
Probing the fringes of science is an inherently risky enterprise.
In a world hurting for a strong economy, the nice surprise is that nothing less is likely to provide practical paths to power production that need no fossil fuels.
Mistakes and an excess of optimism come with the territory. So do remarkable discoveries and persistent people.
As new technologies reach the market this and similar attacks will inevitably reflect badly on their originators.
Until that occurs, they are to be expected.
Let's face it....most Canadians are in favour of global warming!
Canada's inaction on climate change legislation is due to a number of rather unfortunate and troubling factors. I remember vividly, the previous general election in Canada had then-Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion attempting to make climate change and green initiatives front and center.
Then the economy blew up. That, probably more than anything, distracts people from other concerns. Dion's green message gradually become less and less marketable and Stephen Harper again was given a minority government, one that he continues to bully his meek opponents into submission. Dion was quietly replaced with Michael Ignatieff. Harper's Environment Ministers Rona Ambrose and John Baird have only attempted to water down expectations and provide excuses why Kyoto targets were unmatchable.
Harper is one of George Bush's neocon disciples. The last thing he'd do is enact proper climate change legislation.
In the US, as I'm sure you've had to deal with Mike, are paid climate deniers such as Sen. James Inhofe, who are undoubtedly well compensated by the oil lobby to block any strong climate change legislation.
It's an uphill battle against special interests, one that requires public support to succeed. We need messengers like you and Dr. Suzuki, Rep. Honda. Keep it up.