Unfortunately, the preponderance of science, regulation and money is betting against Mario's outmoded beliefs. I think president Bush forgot to send Mario a personal memo that he too now accepts global warming as fact. Unfortunately, he has shown no leadership qualities in coming up with strategies on how to fight it. Fortunately, regardless of who replaces him, we can expect dramatic changes in US policy in a few months from now. But, why wait for this unpopular US administration to act? America's most populous states, covering over 50% of the US population have already passed legislation mandating a switch to clean energy sources - typically in the range of 20% of total capacity by 2020. This itself is a source of great opportunity for clean-tech companies around the globe. Besides the US, the EU, and specially Germany have been making a monumental push into clean energy. Germany for example by itself now accounts for around 50% of the world's solar energy production. These factors have contributed to the clean energy sector having an annual compounded growth rate of between 30-70% for the last decade. Recession? What recession? If you wish to ignore the science of global warming that is not a big deal. If you wish to ignore the money that is being made in this sector, stupid you. When one looks at specific energy sources, Geo-thermal, thermal solar and wind are pretty much competitive to fossil fuel based electricity sources. Longer term, we can expect photo-voltaics to become the pre-eminent source of energy as a result of continued cost reductions via large scale production, higher conversion efficiencies via technological improvements as well as higher costs for fossil fuels due to inevitable imposition of some form of carbon taxes that will become necessary to capture the hidden costs of these fuels. Another clean(er) energy source is cellusoic ethanol and should not be confused with the US Administrations misguided Ethanol fuels program- more on that below. Nuclear, though carbon free in theory, is not clean tech not until it figures out how to handle the issue of radioactive waste disposal. Over the past few years, a large chunk of the world's VC money and definitely the largest share in Silicon Valley, has not been going into IT or bio-tech, but into clean energy. Mario blindly bleats out the US administration's rhetoric that China and India are not doing enough to address their carbon footprints. This is false. First of all, both nations have pledged to meet the same per capita emissions standards that will be established by the developed nations. Currently, they are far below these levels, which is why Kyoto does not even apply to them. Secondly, like many US states as well as many in the EU, India and China are also targeting around 20% of their electricity production from clean sources by the year 2020. Furthermore, they are backing it up with hard money. The result is a huge explosion in clean energy investment in these countries. Suzlon - an Indian company is amongst the top 4 largest wind energy companies in the world. In the solar space, we are seeing massive ramp ups by Signet Solar and Moser Baer. Signet for example, is setting up a 500MW/yr solar plant in Chennai, which is one of the largest in the world. It is interesting that while the ignorants in the global cooling camp have failed to see the writing on the wall, even some oil producing nations are accepting a post carbon future as fate accompli. The UAE for example, is building a whole new zero carbon city in Masdar. Maybe this is just an attempt at green washing itself to improve its image, but what cannot be denied is that it will make significant investments in carbon sequestering technology that will enable it to convert its "dirty fossil" fuels to clean H2 based fuels. Whether this makes economic sense is still TBD, but the fact that a major oil producing nation is experimenting with a post carbon future is very notable by itself. It is not that the current US administration is not interested in investing in energy - it just seems to have an abhorrence for clean energy for ideological or political reasons. For example, it recently pledged to veto a house/senate bill that would have eliminated $18 billion in subsidies for the oil companies. Likewise, in an era of high commodity prices, it has pushed through an inane Ethanol fuel program, which amounts to a large subsidy for Agribusiness for producing high cost corn ethanol, while ignoring the fact that significantly greener and cheaper sugar cane based ethanol can be obtained from Brazil. It seems that the US administration has no issues in supporting undesirable regimes in countries like Chavezs Venezuela by freely importing their oil, but has issues in importing ethanol from friendly nations like Brazil just because it would hurt some powerful industrial lobby in the US. One reason why food prices have been going up around the world is because US farmers have been switching production from food grains to corn for fuel, thanks to large and very expensive federal government subsidies here. In Indias case, some work is also going into bio-fuels (Jathopra), but for it to be really competitive (in India or anywhere else in the world for that matter), progress needs to be made in industrial scale cellusoic production technology.
Marlon Mario Goveia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: The Navhind Times article is obviously bogus from two opposing points of view. From my side this is a one-sided biased article from a publication that has censored any mention of the scientific opposing point of view. Based on Santosh's posts he should consider it worthless because it was not written by a scientist but by a news reporter who is also an ideologue. > However, here is some information based on which YOU can quiz Drs. Rosario-Gomes and Goes. > Since you live in Toronto, let's start with the letter written to your Prime Minister by sixty scientists who were not afraid to list their names: > http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/canadianPMletter06.html > More importantly, ask them if they believe that the Kyoto Protocols, in which every less developed country including India and China is exempted from the requirements, will do anything to change whatever is going on other than cause massive economic disruption in the western economies. >
