Dear Editor,
Reading the June 24, 2021 editorial titled, “Not an island”, pg. 4, left me unable to withhold comment.
The greatest driver of corporate interests away from Alberta’s oil sands is the draconian legislative measures which have been taken by the Federal Liberal Government.
Trudeau couldn’t wait to sign Canada on to the Paris Accord but it wasn’t to save the world from some 30 year window to escape irreversible global warming. Rather it was with the intent of undermining and destroying Alberta’s energy industry.
This includes holding the oil sand’s culpable for downstream CO2 creation. And all for the purpose of perpetuating Quebec’s hydroelectric industry and at the same time maintaining the ‘economic center of gravity within the confines of Central Canada.
To those of us who witnessed the resentment against Alberta, held by Pierre Trudeau, it is not hard to see that nothing has changed in regard to “Trudeau The Younger”.
Investors and financial Institutions are in fact the ones who are “reacting” to the anti-oil sands stance taken by our illustrious Prime Minister.
Irregardless, the turbo-charged transitional shift in energy production will not be politically or financially driven. When the rubber meets the road it will be the long-proven, understood and inescapable realities of thermodynamics which eventually halts any such transitional shift and will dictate the need for the continuation of petroleum energy production.
Non-cost-effective wind turbines will never be able to power agricultural food production, transportation of commodities including food, major construction projects, air and sea travel.
The sea of eagle whacking wind turbines presently littering the landscape cannot even provide more than a tiny fraction of demand upon the electrical grid.
The very notion of a national fleet of electric vehicles is utterly ludicrous to anyone with even a mediocre knowledge of thermodynamics and energy engineering.
Our children and children’s children are going to pay a bitter price for this national decision-making based upon ignorance of thermodynamics and what will eventually come to be known, not as the Great Reset, but as the Great Dumbing Down.
Henry Ford was dead-right when he scrapped the electric car shortly after the turn of the Twentieth Century. It was impractical then and will remain so.
Lithium-Ion batteries will never be a cost-effective, practical or safe means of carrying onboard energy. Furthermore, the lithium and cobalt mining process is much further from being “green” than oil ever was.
As I write, the outdoor temperature is approaching 37°C. Owners of electric vehicles are being asked very nicely to please wait until evening to charge their cars up. Yes, it’s going to be hot and I suspect that future summers are going to get even warmer because I’m quite sure there was no one around keeping world temperature records during the last interglacial period.
The world’s ice will eventually be gone as we move deeper into the interglacial. We know it was gone during the last one.
I suggest we save electrical resources for powering air conditioning systems and maybe do some reading up on thermodynamics and its implications for energy.
The books, written over many decades of the industrial revolution are thick and heavy so lay in a good supply of coffee.
Lee Hudson
Calgary, Alta.
