News roundup, 28 July 2026

- For the second time this year, shots were fired at the US Consulate in Toronto on Monday morning. Police are seeking a vehicle with no license plates that fled the scene at speeds of up to 140 km/h; they abandoned the chase due to safety concerns and did not have aerial support at the time. The coverage on the radio seems to be trying to tie this to two attacks on Jewish-owned bakeries; while they acknowledge that no actual evidence has been found to tie these events together, they keep talking about them in the same breath as if to imply otherwise. That's not to say they couldn't be connected, of course. In any case, nobody was injured in any of these events.

- Ukraine's latest efforts in the war against Russia have targeted warehouses owned by the Russian online retailer Wildberries. The company is the largest of its type in the country, described as "the Amazon of Russia" by some. As every real time strategy player knows, targeting civilian infrastructure to damage the enemy's economy can be quite effective, but it's frowned on under the rules of war. However, Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelenskyy argues that the facilities targeted supplied gear to the Russian military, making them legitimate military targets.

- Manitoba Hydro's CEO, Allan Danroth, argued before the Public Utilities Board that three proposed gas turbines that would be built in Brandon are "absolutely necessary" to ensure that there is sufficient supply over the coming years. Danroth says that Hydro doesn't have the time to build enough nuclear capacity to cover the potential shortfall; that much is no doubt true (nuclear takes forever to construct) but he also claims that a combination of wind, solar, and battery storage wouldn't do an adequate job, and that the only alternative to building the turbines is buying electricity from neighbouring jurisdictions, which is expected to become more difficult in the coming years as well (presumably because of crypto and data centres, though he doesn't say that. In any case, some dispute whether he's up to speed on renewables; a lawyer with the Public Interest Law Centre called into question the cost projections used, given that batteries are getting cheaper while turbines are getting more expensive. Given that Danroth's past resume includes working for private energy companies, it's possible that he's not impartial on the matter.

- A vehicle was driven through a park full of pedestrians in the Toronto suburb of Ajax earlier this month. The vehicle fled the scene but later returned to the park and was driven across a pedestrian bridge. Durham Regional Police later found the vehicle and attempted to box it in; the driver fled but collided with another vehicle and was apprehended. Nobody was hurt; a 23 year old man from Aurora was arrested.

- Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke apparently thinks your vote should be weighted based on how much income tax you pay - and that people whose income is below the tax threshold, as well as people on a locked-in pension, shouldn't get to vote at all. Such beliefs are probably fairly common among billionaires like Lütke, but they usually don't say them out loud.

News roundup, 13 May 2026

- A man walked onto an active runway at Denver International Airport and into the path of a Frontier Airlines Airbus A321 on its takeoff roll in an apparent suicide. Unfortunately he was sucked into one of the engines. The cockpit and cabin immediately filled with smoke, and the pilots successfully aborted the takeoff. The ensuing evacuation of the 231 passengers and crew, however, was chaotic; not only were passengers wasting time trying to get their stuff, but three passengers jumped onto a slide before it had properly inflated, putting it out of commission (and hopefully injuring themselves in the process). Juan Browne (blancolirio), besides praising the pilots and strongly condemning the behaviour of the passengers, reports that the entire fan on the front of that engine was gone, and raises the possibility that this might have released oil that could have gone into the bleed air system, causing the smoke issue. If so it's fortunate that the crew were able to abort the takeoff; exposure to that stuff is potentially fatal.

- Another passenger from that Dutch plague ship in the Atlantic appears to be close to death. The passenger, a French woman, is said to be in the "final stage of supportive care"; the outbreak has already killed three people. The ship has now been fully evacuated and is on its way back to the Netherlands to be disinfected.

- A report the from International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) concludes that the cost of battery storage has dropped by 90% since 2010, making solar and wind cost competitive with fossil fuels. Parts of Europe are already seeing drops in their electricity prices as a result.

- Residents of the Rural Municipality of Ritchot, Manitoba are up in arms about plans from a Las Vegas based company, Jet.AI, in collaboration with Vancouver-based Consensus Core, to build a data centre north of the community of Île des Chênes. The provincial government is aware of the plan but has not yet made a decision on the matter.

- A 35 year old fugitive from Greenbriar, Tennessee was arrested in Winnipeg on child sex abuse charges. The man had somehow slipped across the border, possibly through farm fields, and potentially carrying several firearms, although the guns weren't in his possession when he was caught. He was captured after getting caught speeding.

- A Winnipeg funeral home owner, who has announced his intention to run for mayor, has been accused of sexual harassment by a former employee. Mike Vogiatzakis of Voyage Funeral Homes claims that this was a disgruntled employee who only made the allegations after being fired, but then he would, wouldn't he. More info about the allegations may be found here. Even if the claims are false, he's someone that thoughtful voters will hopefully stay far away from; he's already been spreading far-right conspiracy theories about the "15 minute city", and folks here allege that he has gang connections as well.

- South Korea's military is looking at using robots in some non-combat roles (e.g. reconnaissance and logistics) to make up for declining enlistment due to the country's low birthrate. 

News roundup, 8 May 2026

- Elections Alberta has issued cease and desist letters to everyone known to have accessed a database compiled by the secessionist Centurion Project, which created it from illegally obtained voter lists. The lists were identified as having been legitimately issued to the Republican Party of Alberta; registered parties are legally entitled to the lists, but aren't supposed to share them. The lists were traced to the party via an interesting trick - the lists issued to each party are "salted" with a number of fake entries, and different fakes are used for each party. The potential impact on high profile individuals - such as former premier Jason Kenney who, while reliably rightwing by most standards, regularly gets death threats from extremists. And that's not even considering other criminal uses - stalking, robbery, hate crimes, etc. Meanwhile the NDP say they have obtained video evidence of two high ranking UCP members (president Rob Smith and caucus director Arundeep Sandhu) attending a Centurion meeting.

- Amsterdam's municipal government has banned public advertising of fossil fuels as well as meat. This is certainly a good move, though I'd throw airline and cruise ads into the mix as air travel is up there with meat as far as drivers of climate change go.

- The US Department of Homeland Security demanded that Google hand over information about a Canadian who has not set foot in the US in more than a decade after he criticized the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Information requested included location data and activity logs. Presumably the US authorities already know he hasn't been across the border recently, so I have to wonder if maybe they were really trying to find information on somebody else (e.g. to keep someone out of the US, or take them into custody on arrival, because they'd interacted with him).

- Air Canada is ending four seasonal routes to the American sunbelt early due to fuel prices. They currently still plan to reopen the routes on schedule in the fall, but we'll have to see how that goes.

- Manitoba has declared a public health emergency due to the high incidence of HIV in the province. The infection rate is 19.5 cases per 100,000 residents, compared to the national average of 5.5, according to chief medical officer of health Dr. Brent Roussin. He says that part of the purpose of the declaration is as an "awareness tool", however it does open more options for testing. 

- Meta is threatening to cut New Mexico off from Facebook and Instagram if prosecutors in an upcoming trial for "public nuisance" get what they are requesting. The company has already been hit with $375 million in civil penalties after it came out that they knowingly harmed kids' mental health and failed to report sexual exploitation of children that occurred on their platforms. In the nuisance trial, the prosecution is asking for the court to order the company to not allow sexual exploitation of kids, not make their apps addictive, and improve age verification. Meta claims that complying with this will be unfeasible and that they'll have no choice to leave. I do hope the court calls their bluff.

- For some unknown reason (at least none that OpenAI made public) several iterations of ChatGPT had a bizarre predilection for mentioning goblins without the subject having been brought up by the user. It also would insert unprompted references to various other creatures, both real and imaginary. This was eventually patched with a general instruction to "Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user’s query". If this actually was spontaneous, this is both impressive and unsettling. I wouldn't put it past the company to have set this up by design, though, just to get people talking.

- David Attenborough turns 100 today. 

News roundup, 6 May 2026

- Longtime Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour has been appointed as Canada's next governor general. Hard not to approve of the choice, not only because of her competence but because it's something of a statement in this geopolitical context to choose someone who served as an international war crimes prosecutor.

- Governments of numerous countries including Brazil, Canada, Germany, and Nigeria are sending representatives to discuss how to go about actually phasing out fossil fuels rather than setting warming targets by consensus and letting everyone figure out on their own how to do it, which has been the standard approach by the UN. Now it's easy to be a bit cynical about a bunch of elite types flying down to Colombia, mostly in gas-guzzling business jets, to discuss climate solutions, but such are the realities of diplomacy for the time being. Notably absent from the conference are the US, China, and the Gulf states, which is a positive development on all counts.

- A new paper suggests that even in the best-case scenario, New Orleans is not going to be one of those places that survives climate change. One of the authors says that "Even if you stopped climate change today, New Orleans’s days are still numbered". The city may find itself surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico by 2100; the paper's authors recommend that efforts be made to start relocating its residents now. This concept, known as "managed retreat", has come up a lot in the last while. Naturally, a lot of people are not comfortable with the idea for a lot of reasons, but I don't see how it will be possible to avoid some kind of retreat, managed or otherwise, in a lot of places around the world.

- Reform UK has vowed to put migrant detention centres in ridings that elect Green MPs if they win the next general election. This is kind of ironic given that the kind of climate policy advocated by that lot (i.e. "let it burn" in every sense of the phrase) will inevitably lead to huge amounts of migration.

- The US National Transportation Safety Board has released the findings from their part of the investigation into the crash of a China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737 in 2022 which killed 132 people. The NTSB was involved in the investigation as the home country of the manufacturer; they reported that the engines were suddenly shut down, and that this looked like a deliberate act of murder-suicide by one of the pilots. If so it would be far from the first time that something like this has happened - see for example this, this, and this, and probably also this. China's own Civil Aviation Administration has yet to make a ruling on the cause of the crash, which makes me wonder if they suspect a political motive, or if they just don't want their citizens thinking too much about why a highly skilled professional would just decide to kill himself and take a planeload of people with him.

- Health officials now suspect human-to-human transmission of hantavirus in the fatal outbreak on a cruise ship in the Atlantic, but are quick to say (perhaps at the urging of the cruise industry) that they don't think it's a big concern.

- A Toronto woman is seeking an exemption to the restrictions in MAID legislation in order to get herself put to sleep for mental health disorders; the legislation specifically disqualifies patients whose only major health issues are psychiatric. This is a highly contentious issue; on the one hand, organizations like Dying With Dignity Canada are calling for it to be allowed, while on the other side some argue that the very conditions often complicate the matter of informed consent.

- A new viral fad has groups of young people arranging a time to get out of their mums' basements and conduct what twenty years ago would probably have been called a flash mob but is now called a speedrun (named, of course, after a term from the video game community) in which they try to get into Scientology facilities and film themselves. Most recently this happened in Vancouver on the weekend; up to 300 people apparently showed up. A 16 year old was arrested at the scene but later released with no charges. Some people say they know more about the motives for this stunt/protest, but are reluctant to speak on the record due to Scientology's famously litigious nature.

News roundup, 10 April 2026

- Several anonymous sources interviewed for an upcoming book report that in a series of Situation Room meetings earlier this year, various Trump advisors dropped hints that going to war with Iran would be a bad idea - but none of them except JD Vance pressed the issue. You know it's a mess when JD freaking Vance is the voice of reason.

- The American Automotive Policy Council, which represents the US automakers, is concerned about new EU vehicle safety standards that could limit the importation of gigantic pickup trucks. Andrew Puzder, the US ambassador to the EU, suggests that this could breach the spirit of a trade deal with the US that the EU has signed but has not yet ratified.

- People who have worked with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman say that he barely knows how to code and has a "surprisingly shallow" knowledge of how AI actually works. Then again, to do what he does you don't have to know how it works. You don't even have to know if it works, so long as you have plausible deniability about what you know or don't know when you issue an IPO. You just have to know how to sell stuff, and evidently Altman is very good at that.

- Conservative-turned-Liberal MP Marilyn Gladu was welcomed with open arms at the Liberal party convention in Montreal. When Mark Carney was asked about her rather sketchy past (which includes opposition to abortion, opposition to bans on conversion therapy, and support for the Freedom Convoy and other antivaxxers), he stated that Gladu has agreed to vote with the government on those issues. I guess she's flexible, if nothing else. Perhaps Gladu believed, rightly or wrongly, that she had to take such positions to run for office in a place like Sarnia even if she didn't actually believe in them. I'm guessing that she doesn't intend to run again and wants to end her career on the winning side. 

- Solar farms in the UK generated a record 14.1 gigawatts of power on Monday. That's pretty impressive for a country that's not exactly known for being sunny.

- Representatives of 85 countries will be meeting in Colombia at the end of this month for the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels. Unlike UN-run climate summits, this will be governed by majority vote rather than consensus, preventing a small number of countries from sabotaging plans like Saudi Arabia and other petrostates did at COP30. The countries plan on putting together a workable plan for the transition; what could be promising is the fact that put together, the countries participating have enough economic heft to force investors to reconsider whether it's still worth investing in new fossil fuel reserves.

News roundup, 20 Aug 2025

- US Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra called Canada's second thoughts about whether to go all in on Lockheed-Martin's F-35 fighter are "an irritant that makes it harder to get to a [trade] agreement". More ominously, there are suggestions that Saab, say, might not be able to sell aircraft to Canada if the US doesn't want them to - many of the components in the Gripen fighter are American in origin, so in theory all they'd have to say is "Nice export permits you've got. It would be a shame if something happened to them". If I were in Mark Carney's position I'd be calling their bluff on that. If the Yanks were forced to show their true colours, they'd quickly find that their defense contractors are getting fewer and fewer new foreign orders for components.

- Some AI experts fear that the US power grid, in contrast to China's, is not robust enough to handle the massive energy demands of artificial intelligence. Fortunately, most of the massive amount of new generating capacity in China is solar; unfortunately, there's still a great deal of existing fossil fuel infrastructure in the country. Even more unfortunately, the current American regime will probably try to make up the difference by building new coal and natural gas plants (or nuclear, if we're lucky).

- A 40 year old man in Vernon, Connecticut had to be rescued from a tubular slide in a playground after becoming stuck inside. Authorities had to cut through the slide in order to get him out.

- The commissioner of Greater London's Metropolitan Police has made a specific order that beat cops assigned to the Notting Hill Carnival are not allowed to dance while on duty at the event. The official reason is a fear that dancing officers won't be sufficiently alert to signs of trouble, but Guardian columnist Hugh Muir suspects that the real reason is that someone might take a picture of an officer dancing, and if the police look too friendly and human, the rightwing press would see them as woke. 

- A Florida man has been convicted of second-degree murder after fatally stabbing his friend in a dispute over Donald Trump's financial acumen. The victim and the attacker were at a gathering at a residence in the small city of Arcadia. The victim had apparently made a remark about Trump having gone bankrupt (which, spoiler alert, he's done a few times) and in the ensuing dispute the other chap stabbed him with a kitchen knife.

- In other Florida news, a 71 year old woman in Wakulla County has been charged with several crimes after holding a family at gunpoint because she didn't believe the kids belonged to the father. The article doesn't say anything about the victims other than saying it was a father with two daughters under 13, but I'd wager donuts to dollars that the father is black and the daughters are sufficiently light-skinned to pass as white.

News roundup, 26 June 2025

- Banks in the US have been reversing decisions made during the Biden administration and reinvesting in fossil fuels. Notably, this is disproportionately an American trend; most of the banks offering financing in this sector are US-based, suggesting that these moves may be motivated by other considerations than the objective quality of those investments. Perhaps the fact that states like West Virginia and Texas are actively punishing institutions for divesting from the sector has something to do with it.

- The Trump regime's "One Big Beautiful Bill" includes a provision that charges a tax on investment income paid to residents of countries that the US considers to have "unfair or discriminatory" taxes, such as Canada's digital services tax. Of course, this has the potential to cause investors from such countries to invest elsewhere, potentially driving millions in investments out of the US.

- The proposal to put a build a migrant detention centre in the Everglades, dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz", is going ahead; construction on the facility has begun at an old airport despite concerns from environmentalists as well as human rights activists.

- Hedge funds are buying subrogation claims from insurers, often at steep discounts, in the hope of profiting in the event that the fires are deemed to have been caused by Southern California Edison's equipment. California has a fund in place to pay out such claims and protect utilities from bankruptcy; essentially the state is getting all the downsides of public ownership with none of the upsides.

- Geoffrey Hinton, a Canadian AI researcher who won the Nobel Prize in physics for work on neural networks, is warning that Canada needs to regulate the technology more stringently. He will be meeting with AI and digital innovation minister Evan Solomon to discuss the matter but there is a lot of resistance to the idea, and Solomon himself has said that he has no plans to reintroduce legislation that died on the order paper when the last election was called.

News roundup, 24 Jan 2025

- Solar power generated 11% of all electricity in the European Union in 2024, having overtaken coal's 10%. Wind power (17%), exceeded natural gas (16%) for the second year in a row, and gas experienced its fifth year of decline. The combined output of solar, wind, and hydroelectricity now accounts for 47% of the federation's power grid. Besides the obvious climate benefits, this saved the bloc €59 billion in fossil fuel imports last year (and no doubt is making the Russians very angry indeed).

- A judge has temporarily blocked Donald Trump's executive order in which he tried to do away with birthright citizenship. Judge John C. Coughenour (who ironically received his first judicial appointment from Ronald Reagan) characterized the order as "blatantly unconstitutional", saying "I've been on the bench for four decades, I can't remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is". Of course, Trump will no doubt direct the Justice Department to appeal until they get a judge that he appointed during his last presidential term...

- The National Institutes of Health cancelled numerous scientific meetings that had been scheduled, with little explanation. The meetings, called "study sections", are supposed to be held on a regular basis to help plan where to focus scientific research for the greatest benefit. Of course, stuff like that is seen as un-American by the MAGA crowd, so it's no great surprise that the Trump administration is doing away with them. Neither is the fact that Trump has withdrawn from the World Health Organization; MAGA also believe that "international" is a four letter word.

- The Conservative opposition in BC seems to be siding with Danielle Smith against Premier David Eby (and every other premier in the country, even Saskatchewan's Scott Moe) on the matter of how to handle the threat of massive tariffs being placed on Canadian exports to the US. Party leader John Rustad attacked Eby for his support of retaliatory tariffs, saying that he was being "too combative" and would "expand" the trade war just by talking about it. One thing that is worthy of note - because of the way pipelines are routed through the US, the Americans could potentially retaliate against any escalation by cutting off the supply of Alberta oil to eastern Canada. Stuff like this is probably why Doug Ford wants to get an election out of the way before major economic disruption occurs.

- Trump is vowing to "demand" that the Federal Reserve drop interest rates immediately. Of course, the independence of the central bank is ensured by actual legislation; that said, Trump's puppets have control of both houses of Congress as well as the Supreme Court, so he will be able to get it done eventually if his attention can focus on the matter long enough. Or maybe it's just another of his hollow threats to distract the public's attention from what he and his cronies actually doing.

- CNN has announced that they will be laying off around 200 people, representing about 6% of their staff. NBC are also expected to announce some layoffs soon, albeit a smaller number. This is not expected to affect too many recognizable figures, who are mostly under contract, but a lot of the most important work in a big news organization is by researchers and fact checkers, and I wouldn't be surprised if people like that account for a lot of the layoffs. Pity, because they're needed more than ever.

- A sociology professor from the University of New Brunswick was scheduled to speak at the Washington, DC launch of his new book The End of College Football, but learned that he was barred from the US as he attempted to board his flight. He believes the ban was motivated by his pro-Palestinian comments.

- Some Facebook and Instagram users, both in the US and abroad, are finding that their accounts are spontaneously following Trump's and Vance's accounts. Some are even finding themselves unable to unfollow the accounts. This is not universal; it hasn't happened to me, for instance (perhaps they're worried that I'm going to blog about it).

News roundup, 6 June 2024

- UN secretary general Antonio Guterres is urging countries around the world to ban fossil fuel advertising, drawing analogies with the bans on tobacco advertising in many countries.

A report from Canada's National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) on foreign interference in Canadian politics alleges that several MPs, not named in the report, were "semi-witting or witting" participants in said interference. The chance of their identities becoming known does not appear to be high. Andrew Coyne suspects that both Liberal and opposition MPs are involved, pointing out that the Tories waited until it was clear the MPs would not be named before making an empty demand in Parliament for their names to be released.

- The cost of the proposed widening of the residential part of Kenaston Boulevard in Winnipeg has been estimated at $586 million at a minimum. A substantial part of the cost would be in the expropriation of a number of properties. One can't help but wonder if there isn't a better use for that money.

- The controlled entrances at Manitoba's Liquor Marts have, not surprisingly, been extremely effective at curbing thefts. Other retailers, however, are reluctant to follow suit, for fear of losing market share to competitors who don't.

- The superintendent of Mountain View School Division in western Manitoba was fired in a special board meeting on Friday. In response, three long-serving trustees resigned in protest. The chair of the board says this was because the superintendent had proposed a change to his salary and that his contract was expiring in June, however the Manitoba Metis Federation believe that the real reason was that he had permitted Dauphin's Pride Parade to use a school as a starting point; the board chair denies this.

- Siemens Mobility has developed a dual mode electric locomotive, capable of running either on battery power or from overhead wires. This makes the elimination of diesel trains a realistic possibility in many places.

- The popularity of diamonds has declined markedly in recent years. Competition from synthetic diamonds (which, as a bonus, can be counted on not to be "blood diamonds"), as well as shifting consumer preferences and declining marriage rates, are cited as factors.

News roundup, 28 May 2024

- The IDF bombed a refugee camp in Rafah, killing at least 45 people. They then followed it up by hitting the city's hospitals. The camp was not in one of the places where civilians had been ordered to evacuate, and was full of people who had been forced out of other parts of Gaza. One has to say that when you herd people into a small part of their homeland, and then bomb that area, the optics are very bad.

- The US House of Representatives committee on energy and commerce has requested a briefing from their National Intelligence Director Avril Haines regarding the firing of two Chinese-born scientists from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.

- Parks Canada is sticking to their guns regarding the recreational watercraft ban at Clear Lake in the hope of nipping an outbreak of zebra mussels in the bud. I have to respectfully disagree with the provincial government here; while a unilateral decision might seem heavy handed, you need to be heavy handed when dealing with something like this if you want any chance of stopping the spread. I do agree that measures should be taken to help businesses harmed by the decision, though.

- A Canadian senator has introduced a bill, known as the Climate-Aligned Finance Act, which would force financial institutions as well as pension funds to move their investments out of emissions-intensive sectors of the economy. In addition it would require lending to fossil fuel companies to be treated as higher risk. The bill is not expected to pass; nonetheless, the mere fact that it's being discussed is sending the likes of the Canadian Bankers' Association into conniptions. Now what did Ken Livingstone say about bankers again?

- The troubles at the Food Fare on Portage Avenue seem to be escalating, as cars belonging to the store's co-owner and a relative were torched in the store parking lot. The people seen lighting the fire in the surveillance video had apparently been kicked out of the store for shoplifting the previous day.

- The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT), the provincial police watchdog, recommended that three Lethbridge police officers involved in spying on an NDP MLA should face criminal charges, however provincial prosecutors have declined to take up the case.

- A company run by former Tory cabinet minister Kevin Klein is buying three newspapers, including the Winnipeg Sun, from Postmedia.

- The Beautiful Plains School Division in southwestern Manitoba is suing a Carberry woman for defamation after the woman made multiple allegations on social media about teachers at the schools her children attend.

- Upon seeing a distraught man walking along Highway 407 in Brampton, two drivers for Purolator put on their four-ways and drove slowly behind him to keep him from getting run over. Hopefully he'll eventually be thankful rather than angry that they foiled his apparent suicide attempt. 

News roundup, 27 March 2024

 - The Manitoba government is reviewing a contract signed by the previous government in August with a staffing agency that was supposed to bring 150 doctors to the province. So far the agency has recruited none at all.

- This year is not expected to be a bad year as far as flooding in Manitoba. Wildfires, though, may be another story.

- The latest Abacus poll indicates that former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi is the most favoured candidate for the Alberta NDP leadership, but even under his leadership the party would have a hard time winning an election. Because Albertans gonna Alberta I guess.

- A report from Environmental Defence has concluded that the Trudeau government is still subsidizing fossil fuels with billions of dollars. It's kind of a mystery; the kind of people who they're trying to win over aren't going to vote Liberal no matter what, because of their irrational hatred of everything Trudeau and the Liberals represent. And by doing this they're giving sensible, rational Canadians a good reason to hate them.

- The University of Winnipeg had to cancel classes Monday and is still struggling, after what was described as a "cyber incident" shut down the school's networks. Apparently professors have forgotten how to deliver a lecture without computers.

- Across the country, school attendance has failed to recover to pre-pandemic levels. The long term impact of this remains to be seen. Meanwhile in Manitoba drug-related deaths have skyrocketed since 2020 as well.

- A Toronto woman has been charged with multiple offenses, including criminal negligence causing bodily harm, after her dog, which was unlawfully off leash in a playground, attacked a child and caused injuries described as "life-altering". She allegedly then attempted to flee the scene rather than render assistance; what makes this especially galling is that she and her partner have been in trouble before over the same issue.

- Two men charged in the human smuggling case that led to an Indian family freezing to death on the Manitoba-Minnesota border have pleaded not guilty.

News roundup, 5 Feb 2024

- Some good news - the International Energy Agency (IEA) and others are forecasting that carbon emissions from electricity generation are likely to peak this year. This would be a welcome development for sure, as it gives hope that overall emissions could start falling, though there's a long way to go.

- That said, one of the hardest problems to solve is air travel. When people are polled about whether they favour "doing whatever it takes" to address climate change, some 80% of people favour action in the abstract, but when something specific is mentioned support decreases. In particular, any mention in the question about a "ban", "phaseout", or "mandate" triggers something in people's reptilian brains, and when the thing for which these measures are proposed is leisure travel, the problem is doubly hard. When philosopher Agnes Collard wrote an article last year entitled "The Case Against Travel" (which, incidentally, does not focus on the environmental consequences but simply whether travel accomplishes what people think it's "supposed" to accomplish in terms of personal growth) the Reddit community responded with fierce resistance (including a lot of ad homenim remarks like "The author has convinced me that I would not enjoy traveling with them").

- Also disconcerting is the power of the fossil fuel industry to get the sheeple to oppose green energy projects. At least 15% of counties in the US, many of them in the most productive areas for solar and wind, have banned or restricted such projects.

- Another issue - the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, aka the Jones Act, requires any domestic marine transport in the US to use US ships - and the US doesn't have the specialized ships used to build offshore wind farms efficiently, so the parts have to be hauled out on ordinary barges, adding costs and complexity to the process.

- A check of old documents has found that fossil fuel companies knew that climate change could eventually be a problem as far back as 1954. If nothing else, this might be useful in court to support litigation against those companies.

- Publicly available AI chatbots have "guardrails" in place to prevent people from getting the wrong sort of information from the services (e.g. information on bomb-making). Interestingly, though, these can sometimes be evaded by the use of obscure languages (such as Scots Gaelic or Zulu) because the chatbots have not been properly trained on those languages. Apparently you don't need to even speak the language, just put your question into Google Translate and put the output of that into the chatbot. Ironically, AIs not meant for the public, in wargame simulations, seem a bit too keen to recommend bombing.

- A passenger on a bus in Winnipeg demanded that the driver divert from the scheduled route to drop him off at a location he considered more convenient from him, and viciously attacked the driver when his request was denied.

News roundup, 31 Jan 2024

- Much of western Canada is seeing record high temperatures for this time of year, a far cry from the polar vortex of a couple of weeks ago. This is especially true in BC; West Vancouver recorded a high of 18.2°C yesterday.

- With drought conditions in much of Alberta, several municipalities are prohibiting the fossil fuel industry from using municipal water, at least until the province decides to intervene.

- The Conservative Party of Canada is reporting that 2023 was one of their best fundraising years ever. They collected over $35 million, a record for a non-election year. This is unfortunately not surprising; people want the Liberals gone (for a mix of good and bad reasons) and think the Conservatives will be an improvement (almost entirely for bad reasons). Interestingly, though, the use of the Emergencies Act to take down the "Freedom Convoy" is not one of them; even after the recent court decision, more Canadians approve of the use of the Act than not.

- The Manitoba government plans to roll out Canada's most comprehensive school meal program in the fall. Everybody seems to approve except the Conservatives (surprise surprise).

- The City of Greater Sudbury has been scammed out of over $1.5 million by imposters posing as a project manager for a construction company that had a contract with the city. Stuff like that has happened before, but usually to smaller municipalities, rather than a medium-sized city.

- Boris Nadezhdin, a fierce critic of the war in Ukraine, is running in Russia's presidential election. I do hope he carries a Geiger counter with him at all times and stays away from windows.

- Following the allegations of UNRWA staff being involved on the attack on Israel in October, many donor countries have cut off funds for the organization, leaving ordinary Palestinians high and dry.

- Liberal MP Ben Carr says that it would be desirable for Benjamin Netanyahu to leave office. No doubt it would, but you know what they say about wishes and horses.

- Arij Al Khafagi, the nursing student suspended by the University of Manitoba over social media posts that some people claimed to be antisemitic, has been reinstated after the panel investigating her case concluded that her posts did not constitute discrimination.

- A man in Pennsylvania apparently beheaded his father, who he considered a "traitor" because he'd worked for the federal government, then waved the head around on his YouTube channel during an unhinged rightwing rant.

Can "enhanced geothermal" solve our energy problems?

Most Manitobans are familiar with geothermal energy in its mild form, the "heat pumps" used for heating and cooling buildings. What fewer people realize is that if you drill deep enough, it gets hot enough to boil water, which can be used to spin turbines and thus drive generators. The Guardian's Damian Carrington thinks it offers all the benefits of nuclear fission, without the problems:

By mass, 99.9% of the Earth is hotter than 100C. That means that not far below our feet is the power to boil unlimited water and generate clean, renewable energy. Is the UK throwing all it can at this extraordinary opportunity? Of course not, who do you think we are? Germans?

That contrasts strikingly with the more glamorous sister of deep geothermal energy, nuclear power. Both ultimately tap the heat generated by the decay of radioactive elements. Geothermal plants send water down holes to bring to the surface the heat from natural radioactive decay deep in the mantle. Nuclear power mines the radionucleides, concentrates them, sends them critical and then wonders what to do with the leftover mess - not very elegant by comparison.

The coalition government has pledged that nuclear power will receive no taxpayer subsidies. But it can receive financial support by other means which are subsidies in all but name.

So what support is there for deep geothermal projects? Nothing. As Tim Smit - founder of the Eden project where one of just two projects in the UK is sited - put it last night at a Renewable Energy Association event in Westminster: "I'd like the same 'lack of support' the government is giving to nuclear."

Geothermal energy has been tapped in the UK since Roman times, via the hot springs at Bath and elsewhere. Shallow geothermal projects - such as ground source heat pumps - are slowly growing. But even Decc's own and very conservative estimate is that deep geothermal - a few kilometres down - could provide 10% of the UK's electricity.

And how! It runs 24 hours a day, so perfect for baseload. The water circulates in a closed-loop, so it's clean and sustainable. It is virtually zero carbon and the plants have a small surface footprint, so it's pretty NIMBY-proof.

Sounds like a great idea. Carrington isn't the first to suggest this either (I heard Gwynne Dyer advocating it on the radio several years back, for instance). Of course, it's not entirely trouble-free; there is some evidence linking deep geothermal systems to earthquakes in some cases, and I also wonder about localized problems from the release of subterranean gases (such as sulphur dioxide) when you drill several kilometres into the ground. Still, it's worth looking very seriously at this as an alternative to coal and natural gas (and eventually fission).

Swedish city eliminates use of fossil fuels for heating

Kristianstad is almost as big as Brantford, and Sweden is not exactly a warm climate. If it's possible there, it should be possible almost anywhere:

When this city vowed a decade ago to wean itself from fossil fuels, it was a lofty aspiration, like zero deaths from traffic accidents or the elimination of childhood obesity.

But Kristianstad has already crossed a crucial threshold: the city and surrounding county, with a population of 80,000, essentially use no oil, natural gas or coal to heat homes and businesses, even during the long frigid winters. It is a complete reversal from 20 years ago, when all of their heat came from fossil fuels.

But this area in southern Sweden, best known as the home of Absolut vodka, has not generally substituted solar panels or wind turbines for the traditional fuels it has forsaken. Instead, as befits a region that is an epicenter of farming and food processing, it generates energy from a motley assortment of ingredients like potato peels, manure, used cooking oil, stale cookies and pig intestines.

A hulking 10-year-old plant on the outskirts of Kristianstad uses a biological process to transform the detritus into biogas, a form of methane. That gas is burned to create heat and electricity, or is refined as a fuel for cars.

From the New York Times.

More international shame for Canada, courtesy of you-know-who

When you have a dirty but lucrative product, it's apparently not enough to fail to sufficiently regulate it; you have to lobby other countries to stop them from using cleaner alternatives:

Three major departments in the federal government have been actively co-ordinating a communications strategy with Alberta and its fossil-fuel industry to fight international global-warming policies that “target” oilsands production, newly released federal documents reveal.

The documents, obtained by Postmedia News, suggest that Environment Canada, Natural Resources Canada as well as the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, have collaborated on an “advocacy strategy” in the U.S. to promote the oilsands and discourage environmental-protection policies.

From the Montreal Gazette. Anyone still think Harper's government has any legitimacy?

"Top kill" fails to stop gusher

The situation isn't getting any better:

With BP declaring failure in its latest attempt to stop the uncontrolled gusher feeding the worst oil spill in U.S. history, the company is turning to yet another mix of risky undersea robot maneuvers and longshot odds to plug the blown-out well.

Six weeks after the catastrophe began, oil giant BP PLC is still casting about for at least a temporary fix to the spewing well underneath the Gulf of Mexico that's fouling beaches, wildlife and marshland.

A relief well that's currently being drilled — which is supposed to be a better long-term solution — won't be done for at least two months. That would be in the middle of the Atlantic hurricane season, which begins Tuesday.

President Barack Obama said it is “as enraging as it is heartbreaking” that the most ambitious bid yet for a temporary solution failed.

BP said Saturday that the procedure known as the “top kill” failed after engineers tried for three days to overwhelm the crippled well with heavy drilling mud and junk 5,000 feet underwater.

From the Globe. Of course, it will stop eventually, but what will be left of the Gulf's rich biota by that time?

Did BP have advance warning of trouble?

There are reports (h/t oddlots at iTulip) to the effect that Schlumberger Ltd, a respected international consulting firm, warned BP about incorrect procedures shortly before the accident, only to have them ignored. How much of this is accurate is unclear. It is known that Schlumberger staff left the rig only a few hours before the explosion, but there are inconsistencies -- the Reuters story states that they left on a BP helicopter, while the stories making the stronger claims say that the Schlumberger folks, after their advice was allegedly ignored by BP, ordered in one of their helicopters after BP told them to wait for the next scheduled flight. Whatever the case, it's being taken seriously by some, as evidenced by the relative performance of BP's and Schlumberger's stocks:


No surprise here; the possible implications of this could be very unpleasant for BP. It's worth noting, of course, that stories aren't always true, even if you do see them on the Internet; we'll have to see where this goes.

The oil spill could be about to worsten dramatically

As bad as the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is already, US authorities are looking at the possibility that it could become far worse:

A confidential government report on the unfolding spill disaster in the Gulf makes clear the Coast Guard now fears the well could become an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf.

"The following is not public," reads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Emergency Response document dated April 28. "Two additional release points were found today in the tangled riser. If the riser pipe deteriorates further, the flow could become unchecked resulting in a release volume an order of magnitude higher than previously thought."

****

The worst-case scenario for the broken and leaking well pouring oil into the Gulf of Mexico would be the loss of the wellhead and kinked piping currently restricting the flow to 5,000 barrels -- or 210,000 gallons -- per day.

If the wellhead is lost, oil could leave the well at a much greater rate.

Source (h/t Rajiv in this iTulip thread). If that happens, this could have effects that reach far from the source of the problem. For instance, further down in the same thread, we_are_toast posted the following:

You people across the pond better get your paper towels ready. If the riser pipe fails and it takes 90 days to drill a relief well, you're in for a big surprise.

Yikes. And for further emphasis, a couple of posts down we have this:

As others in the thread have pointed out, this could be the oil industry's Chernobyl.