Canadian climate journalist Geoff Dembicki wrote an opinion piece published by the New York Times almost six years ago. Canada’s Perverse Climate Change Policy: Gas Up. It was subtitled: Pushing toward the worst scenario despite better options for the future of the environment.
Last month, to protest the start of the Canadian government putting a price on carbon emissions, right-leaning politicians across the country posted photographs of themselves on Twitter resolutely filling up their S.U.V.s, minivans and pickup trucks with gasoline.
The next day, federal scientists announced that climate change is warming Canada twice as fast as the rest of the world. The findings in their terrifying report on April 1 help to explain the ocean acidification that’s threatening killer whales, why pine beetles are chewing a path of destruction through North America’s boreal forest, the disappearance of sea ice that has supported Inuit communities for millenniums and the exposure of millions of Canadians every day to ticks carrying Lyme disease.
Mr. Dembicki wrote that Canadian politicians were “recklessly blazing a path toward unprecedented climate change.”
People in Canada’s governments try to convince us they are acting on climate change while they spend billions of dollars — actually tens of billions — to prop up the oil and gas industry.
Potential clean energy solutions are ignored or treated as unimportant.
Categories: Climate Change, Energy
in-sights.ca 
In the past, scientists were not only ignored, but persecuted and prosecuted for discoveries that did not align with the aims and beliefs of the church and/or the government. Many died by the sword for their attempts to enlighten.
Today, the questions of whether the Earth is the centre of the Universe, revolves around the Sun or vice versa, and is round or flat have been resolved. In most of the populace at least. Some of the ideas coming from our immediate east and south might contradict that belief.
The question now is not the shape of the Earth, or how, where, or whether it orbits, but whether it will continue as a habitat to support life. And scientists with the answers are still being largely ignored. How long before they too are persecuted and prosecuted? Think that’s far fetched?
In the country to our immediate south the outgoing President just felt it necessary to issue a pardon to protect a famous scientist from criminal prosecution by the incoming regime for nothing more than attempting to save as many lives as possible from a lethal pandemic.
The incoming President and his regime are openly moving to withdraw their country from any organizations battling climate change, and proudly vowing to “Drill, Baby, Drill!”. Climate scientists there will soon be looking for cover, when they should be given a front seat and an ear.
Here at home, the federal Official Opposition party is sloganeering on dumping measures to fight climate change, and candidates for the leadership of the current governing party all say they will discard the existing tax on carbon. Nebulous promises to replace it abound.
When we should be seeing concerted efforts everywhere we look to reduce fossil fuel use, we instead are seeing concerted efforts to increase its use. Two things are enjoying an increase in concerted government effort however. Lip service and denigration of climate science.
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And today some say the Northern Gateway pipeline project should be revived. Even Grand Chief Stewart Phillip agrees with that idea, because “it was a different world” when he was against it.
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The different world may be that Chief Phillip’s wife is now an NDP Cabinet Minister and the family enjoys benefits worth more than $200,000 a year and a pension that could be worth seven figures. In politics, you either support the team completely or you’re out.
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I didn’t know that. Makes sense.
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A by-product of repeated COVID-19 infections?
“COVID-19 severity is related to poor executive function in people with post-COVID conditions” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10026205/
“Greater executive dysfunction in patients post-COVID-19 compared to those not infected” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0889159123002374
“Executive deficits after SARS-CoV-2 infection: A cross-sectional population study” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666354624001352
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Why have mainstream analysts gotten their predictions about conventional coal, gas, nuclear, and hydro power energy assets so wrong . . . skating to where the puck has been?
A large and rapidly-expanding global financial bubble now exists around conventional coal, gas, nuclear, and hydro power energy assets.
Click to access Rethinking-Energy-LCOE.pdf
The above “Rethinking Energy” report is based on analyses of the reality of fast-paced, technology disruption S-curves. (Executive Summary pp.6-7)
“Mainstream LCOE (levelized cost of electricity) analyses artificially understate the cost of electricity of prospective coal, gas, nuclear, and hydro power plants based on false assumptions about their potential to continue selling a fixed and high percentage of their electricity output in the decades ahead. This assumption has been false for at least ten years.” (since about 2011).
“Mainstream analysts produce linear, mechanistic, and siloed forecasts that ignore systems complexity and thus consistently underplay the speed and extent of technological disruption – for example solar PV, electric vehicles, and smartphone adoption.”
“The rates at which conventional power plants are utilized will continue to decrease as competitive pressure from near-zero marginal cost solar photovoltaic and onshore wind power, and battery energy storage continue to grow exponentially worldwide.”
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In line with the findings of this report, BC Hydro’s recent “Call For Power” RFP resulted in 21 proposals. The proposals received included 15 wind, 4 solar, 1 biomass, and 1 hydro.
The lone hydro proposal involves rehabilitating the Anyox Dam, completed in the 1920s and Canada’s largest concrete dam structure until after World War II. The abandoned structure is apparently sound, and likely explains why this proposal is still viable given the nature of its competition.
As for the financial bubble existing around conventional power installations as detailed in this report, here in BC we are the proud owners of a large one and have little choice but to keep blowing into it thanks to the lack of foresight of successive governments.
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