The Signs Are Everywhere

It is only the ideologically blind who refuse to see the signs. Whether we live on the West Coast, Central Canada, or the East Coast, we are being affected by climate change, More protracted droughts. More wildfires. More oppressive heatwaves. Or unseasonably cool conditions.

Of protracted winters I will not even speak.

So what is to be done about the obdurate climate-change denier? Other than ignoring them, we can confront them with the facts they so willfully dismiss. We do that by first recognizing their sleazy and unscientific tactics. Here is how we do it:

One of the deniers' favorite strategies is to invoke fake experts.

Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming. This has been found independently in a number of studies, including surveys of Earth scientists, analysis of public statements about climate change and analysis of peer-reviewed scientific papers. How might one cast doubt on the overwhelming scientific consensus? One technique is the use of fake experts.

We see this in online petitions such as the Global Warming Petition Project, which features more than 31,000 scientists claiming humans aren't disrupting our climate. How can there be 97% consensus when 31,000 scientists disagree? It turns out 99.9% of the petition's signatories aren't climate scientists. They include computer scientists, mechanical engineers and medical scientists but few climate scientists. The Global Warming Petition Project is fake experts in bulk.

More to come.

From The Heartland

When moral imperatives and climate change denial meet head on, you know who feels they occupy the higher ground when The Heartland Institute is involved. The following video captures their reaction to the upcoming encyclical by Pope Francis on climate change. My favorite comment is made by the gentleman who just can't find it in his heart to forgive the Church its mistreatment of Galileo. I guess some folks just have very long memories:

Canada's Outlier Status

Well, this is bauble budget day, the day the Harper regime makes its big pre-election push to convince us that all is right with the world, and that our natural selfishness is something we should revel in, not revolt against. It is a day in which further plundering of the federal coffers is presented as a triumph of respect for all "hardworking Canadians" who deserve to keep more of their "hard-earned money." It is a day in which the collective needs of the country and the world are ignored.

Fortunately, not everyone is so easily distracted by the promise of shiny new things. One such individual is Omar Aziz, who, writing about climate change, says that Canada, under Stephen Harper,

is an international pariah. Among rich world countries, Canada is the largest per-capita emitter of GHGs, according to the World Resources Institute. The advocacy group Climate Action Network ranks Canada’s climate strategy as the fourth-worst in the world, ahead of only Iran, Kazakhstan, and Saudi Arabia.

There seems to be no prospect of improvement on this sorry record:

Ottawa will fail to meet the emission targets it pledged at the Copenhagen conference in 2009, just as it failed to meet the UN’s March 31 deadline to submit its emission targets ahead of the upcoming climate change conference in December.

Increasingly, our country is becoming an international pariah:

Having met U.S. President Barack Obama’s Envoy for Climate Change, I am certain that Washington is taking the Paris negotiations very seriously. Canada, meanwhile, looks like it will show up to the Paris conference with almost nothing to offer but talking points, despite the fact that Canadians consume more energy per capita than Indians, Chinese or Americans. This is both a shame and a sham.

Compounding Canada's inexcusable inaction is the heavy hand of Harper censorship:

Ninety per cent of government scientists feel that they are not allowed to speak to the media about their research; almost as many fear retaliation if they do. If you are wondering why climate change reporting in Canada has been so vacuous over the last few years, it is because new rules put in place by Stephen Harper in 2007 limit what Environment Canada scientists can say. The position of National Science Advisor was eliminated in 2008. It should come as no surprise then that media coverage of climate change has been reduced by 80 per cent. If the brilliant government scientists working on this issue are muzzled, the public has little access to the very people it should be hearing from.

Mind you, that hardly excuses the ignorance that many embrace on this subject, given the wealth of information that is available literally at our fingertips. If we are oblivious to the coming peril, it is by our own choice.

The heavy lifting being done by other provinces and countries puts the Harper inaction to shame:

British Columbia has put in place a carbon tax, Quebec has a cap-and-trade system, Ontario announced a similar policy earlier this month, and Alberta has an imperfect but necessary regulatory scheme. The European Union has an ambitious emissions trading program and the United States and China signed a major climate accord last year. China is also piloting seven cap-and-trade programs, including one in Shanghai.

Aziz notes the irony of a federal regime so obsessed with security that it ignores the threats posed by climate change:

Climate change is not simply an environmental concern; it is a national security concern, which is precisely what the Pentagon now calls it.

The effects of climate change will permanently damage wildlife, agriculture, oceans, coastal inhabitants, transportation systems, disease prevention efforts, food and water supplies, public health, and nearly every facet of modern life. The poor and disadvantaged will face the harshest consequences, both in rich countries and in developing ones.

Back in 2009, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called climate change the greatest challenge facing the world. Nothing has changed in the intervening six years other than even more egregious contempt for action from a federal government locked in an ideology for which we, our children and our grandchildren will pay a very grievous price.

Could It Be A Virus?

Stupidity, it has been said, is contagious, and one has to wonder whether a particularly virulent virus is running through the Conservative tent these days. First there was Ontario Progressive Conservative MPP Rick Nicholls suggesting that evolution shouldn't be taught in schools, as he doesn't believe in it. Now comes word of similar sentiments on the part of one of his federal cousins, B.C. Conservative MP James Lunney.

Coming to the defense of his fellow fundamentalist, Lunney tweeted:

"[Just] stop calling #evolution fact!" tweeted Lunney, who said he had no problem calling it a "theory."

A man clearly comfortable in his own skin and not afraid to parade his profound ignorance, Lunney made this statement to the House in 2009:

"Any scientist who declares that the theory of evolution is a fact has already abandoned the foundations of science. For science establishes fact through the study of things observable and reproducible. Since origins can neither be reproduced nor observed, they remain the realm of hypothesis," he said then.

"The evolutionist may disagree, but neither can produce Darwin as a witness to prove his point. The evolutionist may genuinely see his ancestor in a monkey, but many modern scientists interpret the same evidence in favour of creation and a Creator."

Like many of his benighted ilk, Lunney is also deeply suspicious of claims made about climate change:

Last year he tweeted "Science settled? Think again!" and posted a link to an article by a University of Guelph economist who is one of the signatories of a declaration disputing climate change.

But wait! As they say, there's more!

As reported last year in The Huffington Post, Linney signed An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming:

"We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history."

The declaration went on to say,

We deny that carbon dioxide—essential to all plant growth—is a pollutant. Reducing greenhouse gases cannot achieve significant reductions in future global temperatures, and the costs of the policies would far exceed the benefits."

Oh, and one more thing. Lunney's disdain for science extends to vaccines with this discredited notion:

In a 2004 speech in the House of Commons, Lunney cited figures he said showed a tenfold increase in the incidence of autism and said Canada should explore a link to vaccines.

It is said that people get the government they deserve. Somehow, I can't help but think that the residents of Nanaimo—Alberni deserve much, much better than what this man has to offer.

Why Has Accepting Scientific Fact Become A Matter Of Choice?

Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean. They speak different languages and use different powers of the brain.

-Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership

As the quotation above suggests, the schism between scientific fact and religious belief is, in fact, one that shouldn't exist. Yet, given the kinds of absolutist thinking that permeate the world today, demagogues and zealots suggest the two are mutually exclusive, an invalid proposition if one's belief in transcendent truth manages to rise above seeing the narratives of the world's religions as literal truths.

It is always unseemly when people parade and exult in their intellectual limitations, often presenting them as virtues. For example, in Ontario, people like Progressive Conservative MPP Rick Nicholls has suggested that evolution should not be taught in schools, as he doesn't believe in it.

Sadly, such benighted positions, masquerading as informed opinion, do a disservice both to science and religion, not to mention public discourse in general. And it seems to be spreading, despite the fact that we live in an age unprecedented in its access to knowledge. Consider the almost religious fervour with which people disavow climate change, despite these facts:

The debate over climate change is over. The U.N.‘s Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report, written by 800 scientists from 80 countries, that summarized the findings of more than 30,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers and concluded: “Human influence on the climate system is clear; the more we disrupt our climate, the more we risk severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts; and we have the means to limit climate change and build a more prosperous, sustainable future.”

Like the facts that make evolution irrefutable, the facts of climate change are treated by some as optional, a matter of belief, based on all kinds of specious reasoning, including religious ones such as asserting that God is in control of the planet. Perhaps people take living in a supposedly democratic age as license to suggest that any view is valid. Perhaps the right wing, emboldened by their ability to stir up emotion and hysteria, and enjoying so much influence in North America, feel that they have the politicians cowed. Perhaps the truly rational see little profit in getting down to their level to dispute with them. Perhaps it is because the uninformed and unsophisticated comprise such a large part of our population and show no interest in learning how to think critically, dismissing those who do as elitist leftists and alarmists.

I really have no answers here, but to countenance ignorance in any form, in my view, is to abdicate our responsibilities as both human beings and as citizens, and these are obligations we cannot afford to shirk.

Are Americans Ever Embarrassed?

I know I would be if this kind of regular and much-watched commentary portrayed my nation as so egregiously stupid:

David Bellamy Being Humiliated By George Monbiot Over Climate Change

The willfully ignorant will be offended, the critical thinker gratified, by this video:

If We Want To Save The Planet...

We have to be prepared to leave most of the world's fossil fuels in the ground. So says a new published report.



Expect none of us, neither our political 'leaders' nor our fellow citizens, to rise to the occasion.

The Fearless Pope Francis

Yesterday, The Mound of Sound had a post on the role that Pope Francis is playing in the climate change debate. Given his growing moral authority and extensive popularity throughout the world, those with vested interests in retaining the status quo that is destroying the earth, and their aiders and abettors, (Stephen Harper et alia), have, I think, much to fear.

Here is a video well-worth watching from Democracy Now! that discusses Pope Francis and the encyclical he is slated to release in March on climate change. It is so refreshing to see a pontiff who is doing what we should all be doing: comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.

No Surprises Here: The Fraser Institute Shows Its Biased Incompetence

Of course, right-wing groups like the Fraser Institute never let facts and data get in the way of a rabid ideology:

This Explains A Lot

The above picture helps to illustrate why industrialized nations seem so cavalier about climate change. Click here for details.

Meanwhile, Stephen Harper's climate soul mate, Australia's Tony Abbott, has just extended a giant middle finger to the world's developing countries:

Australia is resisting a last-ditch push by the US, France and other European countries for G20 leaders at next week’s meeting in Brisbane to back contributions to the Green Climate Fund.

The Green Climate Fund aims to help poorer countries cut their emissions and prepare for the impact of climate change, and is seen as critical to securing developing-nation support for a successful deal on reducing emissions at the United Nations meeting in Paris next year.

Such stellar leadership. Such monumental selfishness. Such compelling reasons to despair.

The Big Mac VS The Whopper

Clearly, based upon the shameful falsehoods she uttered at yesterday's U.N. climate summit about Canada being a “global clean energy leader” doing “its part” to cut carbon emissions that warm the earth, Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq's preference is clear.

Tory Hot Air Worsens Climate Change

Watch this video and you'll know what I mean:

No Surprise Here- An Update

Tuesday's post discussed the apparent disappearance of a committee made up of representatives from Environment Canada, the Alberta government and oil and gas companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the tarsands. Investigative reporter Mike De Souza provides important new information about this committee on his website.

Putting the heat on Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq in the House of Commons, NDP environment critic Megan Leslie suggested it is time for the Harper regime to stop stalling:

“After seven years of the government’s broken promises to introduce greenhouse gas rules for the oil and gas sector Canadians are still waiting,” Leslie said.

“Now we hear that Environment Canada has stopped talking to the industry and the Alberta government altogether. In fact, the (federal) government-led committee hasn’t met since March 2013. When will this government quit stalling and when will we see the regulations?”

Of course, as is standard operating procedure for this government, Aglukkaq did not answer, preferring to mouth platitudes about what a great job the government is doing in reducing emissions in this country:

“We have taken action on some of the largest sources of emissions in this country, the transportation and the electricity-generation sector” ... “I’m also looking forward to taking part in the UN climate summit in New York next week to speak to Canada’s record in taking action on climate change.”

And this is hardly a time for obfuscation and misdirection:

Environment Canada estimated earlier this year that greenhouse gas emissions from the oilsands increased by 307 per cent between 1990 and 2012. The carbon emissions were projected to grow a further 61 per cent before the end of the decade.

A clue as to why the committee's work suddenly ceased may be found here:

Behind closed doors, internal records obtained by Greenpeace Canada through provincial freedom of information legislation revealed that industry lobbyists rejected proposals from the Alberta government to introduce tough rules, and instead suggested delaying action to allow for more “study, analysis and consultation.”

Concludes Keith Stewart, a Toronto-based climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace Canada:

“This is what happens when a government opens the doors wide to the oil industry and shuts out everyone else ... The upstream oil and gas industry is now the biggest carbon polluter in the country precisely because the Harper government gives in every time they cry poor. Meanwhile, the public foots the ever-rising bill for climate disasters while the oil companies post record profits.”

It seems safe to conclude that this is yet more evidence that Stephen Harper is not here for us.

Meet The Newest Inductee Into Harper's Enemies List

Warning to Harper Conservatives: If you see this man, do not approach. He is considered armed with charisma and passion for the environment that could be very dangerous to your leader.

Last known Canadian sighting: Fort McMurray.

Known Associates: Environmental radicals.

Here is an example of DiCaprio's attempts at subverting the Canadian economy:



And please remember:

No Surprise Here - Part Two

Given Stephen Harper's most recent demonstrated indifference to climate change, I report the following with no surprise, only a degree of tired resignation:

Environment Canada appears to have quietly ended key discussions that were intended to tackle carbon pollution from the oil and gas industry.

A committee made up of representatives from Environment Canada, the Alberta government and oil and gas companies was created in the fall of 2011 to develop options to reduce industrial greenhouse gases from the oilsands sector, the country’s fastest growing source of carbon emissions.

But the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), which was part of the committee, says it stopped getting invitations to meetings in 2013.

“We have no knowledge of the group having met since March 2013,” said Alex Ferguson, the vice-president of policy and performance at the association, which represents Canadian oil and gas companies, in an email to the Star.

The most discouraging aspect of the report is this:

The Harper government has estimated it won’t achieve the prime minister’s international climate change commitment to reduce emissions by 2020, mainly because of rising pollution from the oil and gas sector.

While most Canadian industries have reduced their carbon footprints, the oilsands sector has moved in the opposite direction increasing its emissions by 307 per cent between 1990 and 2012, Environment Canada estimated in a report submitted to the United Nations earlier this year.

Once again, under this administration Canada is proving to be one of the West's most egregious climate-change outliers. It is not a distinction any of us should take pride in.

On Harper's True Loyalties

In response to yesterday's post about Stephen Harper's boycott of a major climate change summit hosted by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in New York on September 23, Anon wrote the following, and offered this video which, I think you will agree, is a most appropriate choice:

Harper, early on, seemed to care about human rights and UN initiatives:

"'I think Canadians want us to promote our trade relations worldwide, and we do that, but I don't think Canadians want us to sell out important Canadian values,' Harper said.

Chinese President Hu Jintao won't meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Hanoi, which is being seen by some as a snub over Canada's criticism of China's human rights record. 'They don't want us to sell that out to the almighty dollar.'"

After that crazy talk, I think Harper's sponsors sat him down in a boardroom in Calgary and explained the facts of life to him. The fact that he always was, and always would be, an Imperial Oil mail room clerk. I imagine that meeting would have gone something like this:

No Surprise Here

Rather typical, wouldn't you say?

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is hosting a major climate summit in New York on September 23, “to mobilize political will” towards reducing global emissions.

U.S. President Barack Obama will be attending, as will U.K. Prime Minster David Cameron.

In fact, 125 heads of state will be there.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, however, will not.

And please remember:


This message not brought to you by the Committee to Re-elect Stephen Harper.

While Harper Fiddles, Canada Burns

There have been so many developments on the climate front of late that, collectively, give us a pretty stark warning and yet the media, the public and our political leadership are tuning out. We seem to be culturally embracing a sort of Andean fatalism that seems to precede abrupt civilizational decline. Perhaps we’re hampered by the fact that it’s a moving target that repeatedly exceeds our ‘worst case scenarios’. Far from being pessimists we constantly underestimate the onset of climate change even as severe events increase in frequency, intensity and duration. Maybe that’s why Harper (and his rivals) aren’t coming forward with any meaningful responses. They’re all avowed fossil fuelers and, having staked out that turf, any significant reduction in Canada’s GHG emissions would have to be borne by every other sector of the economy and the Canadian people. Who would risk the public wrath when pretending to act and doing nothing remains an option? There’s a rank and dangerous cowardice that runs through the Conservatives, the Liberals and the New Democrats alike. God save the Queen. The Canadian people can fend for themselves.


The other day came news of a mysterious crater in Siberia that Russian scientists determined was caused, not by a meteorite, but by an eruption of subsurface gas released by thawing permafrost – a global warming event. We’ve known for several years that the ancient permafrost that girds the high north was “perma” no more. The tundra was drying out, catching fire, and exposing the permafrost below that it once shielded. The permafrost was a sink for massive quantities of the potent greenhouse gas, methane, or, as the energy industry calls it, natural gas.

On the heels of the Russian crater story comes a report from Climate Central about fires spreading unchecked across the Northwest Territories.

“The amount of acres burned in the Northwest Territories is six times greater than the 25-year average to-date according to data from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center.

“Boreal forests like those in the Northwest Territories are burning at rates "unprecedented" in the past 10,000 years according to the authors of a study put out last year. The northern reaches of the globe are warming at twice the rate as areas closer to the equator, and those hotter conditions are contributing to more widespread burns.

“The combined boreal forests of Canada, Europe, Russia and Alaska, account for 30 percent of the world’s carbon stored in land, carbon that's taken up to centuries to store. Forest fires like those currently raging in the Northwest Territories, as well as ones in 2012 and 2013 in Russia, can release that stored carbon into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming. Warmer temperatures can in turn create a feedback loop, priming forests for wildfires that release more carbon into the atmosphere and cause more warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's landmark climate report released earlier this year indicates that for every 1.8°F rise in temperatures, wildfire activity is expected to double.”

The Climate Central report indicates that the massive amounts of airborne soot from these forest and tundra fires could accelerate the melting of the Greenland ice sheet far faster than we had ever imagined, perhaps by the end of this century. Ice, being white, reflects most solar energy back into space. Soot, being black, absorbs the solar energy and it passes into the ice beneath, causing melting. The melt run-off should wash away the soot except that these fires just keep adding more soot. And, of course, the fires that generate the soot also release ever more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Forest fires release the CO2 from the trees. Tundra fires release CO2 and expose the permafrost below that releases methane.

As for the Greenland ice sheet and the prospect of losing all or most of it by the end of this century, here’s what you need to bear in mind. When that ice sheet is gone, and it will eventually, it will create 23-feet of sea level rise. You’ve probably seen plenty of graphics of what three or four feet of sea level rise will mean around the world. The reality is that we tend to build our major cities where there’s navigable water. In Canada that’s Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. With Lake Ontario at 75 metres above sea level, Toronto should be safe from inundation but Montreal, on the St. Lawrence and at 6 metres is vulnerable and, as for Vancouver, well let’s just say that False Creek, Coal Harbour and Burrard Inlet will be a whole lot bigger and the Lower Mainland an awful lot smaller.

So, with the prospect of runaway climate change steadily worsening, with major population centres and critical infrastructure at increasing risk, surely this must be at the very top of our Lord and Master’s priority list, right? What’s that, no? His priority is flogging as much of the world’s highest-carbon oil as quickly as he can push through the pipelines and supertanker ports to carry it, really? Surely the opposition parties are going to shut this down as soon as the voting public gives Harper the boot, right? Wrong? Oh dear. Maybe it’s time to caulk the dinghy.


MoS, the Disaffected Lib.

The Lethal Dysfunction Of The Far Right: A Mound of Sound Guest Post

Problem: you're already getting hammered by early-onset climate change. Solution: deny it's happening, look the other way, think happy thoughts.

It sounds ridiculously dysfunctional and it is but that is the approach being taken by governments, state and municipal, in parts of the American south.

Take North Carolina, for example, where the uber-rightwing state legislature has found a solution to scientific projections of at least a metre of sea-level rise this century - pass legislation banning any mention of that.

And then there's posh Miami, Florida where real estate prices are sky high and still climbing. Miami now floods regularly and there's nothing anyone can do about it. The problem is that the city is very low-lying and it sits atop a dome of porous limestone through which rising sea water passes virtually unobstructed. Seawalls and dikes don't work here because sea water simply comes up from underneath. The city already stands defenceless against seasonal high tides and regular storm surges.

Philip Stoddard is particularly well-placed to judge what is happening in Miami. Tall, thin, with a dry sense of humour, he is a politician, having won two successive elections to be mayor of South Miami, and a scientist, a biology professor at Florida International University.

"The thing about Miami is that, when it goes, it will all be gone," says Stoddard. Nor will south Florida have to wait that long for the devastation to come. Long before the seas have risen a further three or four feet, there will be irreversible breakdowns in society, he says. "Another foot of sea level rise will be enough to bring salt water into our freshwater supplies and our sewage system. Those services will be lost when that happens."

"You won't be able to flush away your sewage and taps will no longer provide homes with fresh water. Then you will find you will no longer be able to get flood insurance for your home. Land and property values will plummet and people will start to leave. Places like South Miami will no longer be able to raise enough taxes to run our neighbourhoods. Where will we find the money to fund police to protect us or fire services to tackle house fires? Will there even be enough water pressure for their fire hoses? It takes us into all sorts of post-apocalyptic scenarios. It makes one thing clear though: mayhem is coming."

Yes, mayhem is coming. So how are Florida's rightwing leaders responding?

"...what really surprises visitors and observers is the city's response, or to be more accurate, its almost total lack of reaction. The local population is steadily increasing; land prices continue to surge; and building is progressing at a generous pace. ...signs of construction - new shopping malls, cranes towering over new condominiums and scaffolding enclosing freshly built apartment blocks - could be seen across the city, its backers apparently oblivious of scientists' warnings that the foundations of their buildings may be awash very soon.

"Not that they're alone. Most of Florida's senior politicians - in particular Senator Marco Rubio, former governor Jeb Bush and current governor, Rick Scott, all Republican climate-change deniers - have refused to act or respond to warnings ...or to give media interviews to explain their stance, though Rubio, a Republican party star and possible 2016 presidential contender, has made his views clear in speeches. 'I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it. I do not believe the laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it, except it will destroy our economy.'"

Miami, in fact the entire state of Florida, is an invaluable object lesson, a miners' canary to demonstrate rightwing dysfunction at work in the fight against climate change. It's one but just one of several spots in the US expected to be particularly hard hit by global warming. Another is the American southwest from California through to Texas.

In already hot and dry Phoenix, Arizona, they're being warned to expect 10-degrees Fahrenheit warming this century. That translates from an average summer high temperature of 104 soaring to Kuwait City temperatures of 114F. In a region already severely water stressed, heating on this scale could undermine the major cities.

"Climate Central used the IPCC predictions - which generally estimate that summer high temperatures will be seven to ten degrees higher by 2100 - to make an interactive map to compare the current temperatures with cities that already experience those temperatures. For example, Sacramento will feel more like Tucson in the summer. Boston will feel like Miami. And Austin, where the average summer high is currently about 94 degrees, is projected to be more like Gilbert, which has an average summer high of nearly 104 degrees.

Meanwhile, on the clean, renewable energy front, Aviation Week has recently published several articles about space solar power (SSP). The idea is to capture solar energy in near-Earth space, convert it to microwaves and them beam the energy down to power grids on the surface.

“Space solar power has as a concept never been more appealing and more promising than it is right now,” says John Mankins, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory veteran who spent a decade as manager of advanced concepts studies at NASA headquarters. “The new technical architecture, which exploits all of the technological advances of the past 30 years in terrestrial technology—electronics, robotics, materials—makes the approach to space solar power both affordable and scalable.”


Maybe, maybe not. At the very least, though, it's a technology worth exploring.