Fact Checker Nazis

 

I generally find most of the various Fact Checker sites pretty informative, but one recent situation left me wondering if one "Fact Checker" outfit was using not-very-intelligent AI to flag posts or if they were just using people with no social awareness and possibly no sense of humour.

It went like this.  I saw, and posted, this meme, along with the caption "Welcome to Texas - Home of the American Taliban".

Most people I know will recognize the literary reference to The Handmaid's Tale.  If you don't get it, best to stop reading this now, get a copy of Margaret Atwood's book and learn about it.

In any case, within hours, the Fact Checker vigilanties had flagged the meme as "False", stating that the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders had, in fact, NOT changed uniforms.  Well, Duh... was my response.

Full rationalization here....

Definition of a meme:  an amusing or interesting item, often humorous, not necessarily factual.  

As for Texas (soon to be followed by Florida, according to some)....Do a Google search for "Texas the American Taliban".  I did, and immediately (thanks Google) received dozens of articles saying exactly the same thing.  A selection:

With Texas' Abortion Ban, Who are We to Judge the Taliban?

Texas Abortion Ban Prompts Taliban Comparisons

And in the pages of Salon, Texas Lawmaker Mocked for Odd Comparison.

Even Amazon had an appropriately designed mug.

I only wish the pseudo-boffins at Fact Check were even half as vigilant about flagging false information about the supposed dangers of vaccines, how COVID is no worse than the flu, that climate change is a hoax....  Flagging those posts would perhaps give them something useful to do.

Counting the Lies - Just for the Record

 

One of the more notable features of Donald Trump's presidency were the egregious lies that he told, and repeated, again and again.

The Washington Post kept track.

For the record, here it is:

In 4 years, President Trump made 30,573 False or Misleading Claims.

I guess we can call them "Alternate Facts"....

Book Review - Climate Wars

 

Climate Wars

By Gwynne Dyer

Gwynne Dyer is a long-time analyst of the geopolitical world.  Here he turns his attention to what some have described as human-kind's existential crisis, climate change.

Mr Dyer writes of a time in the near future as climate change ushers in world conditions that challenge our very survival.  

The book was written in 2009, which makes reading it now all the more timely.  We've had 14 years to solve this problem.  How have we done?

Presidential Review

 

As with most parts of history, a complete perspective on the Donald Trump presidency will take years to fully develop.  In fact, if polls are to be believed, and if enough Americans remain sufficiently deluded to vote for Trump again, this part of history might not be over yet.

However, the Pew Research Center published a study based on their research during Trump's presidency.  It was published at the end of January 2021, and it only recently came to my attention.  

How America Changed During the Donald Trump Presidency

It's a pretty reasonable accounting, based on survey data conducted by Pew, and covers such topics as 

• Partisan divides
• Dearth of shared facts and information
• Concerns over Democracy
• Racial Inequality
• The Public Health and Economic Crisis

Worth a serious read.  To varying extents, these issues have appeared elsewhere.  Useful to compare with the American experience.  My partisan opinion goes more in this direction when summarizing Trump's time in office:

Perspectives on Forest Fires

 

For some unknown reason, I was absent-mindedly wandering through an old edition (July 13th, 2023) of The Valley Voice a few days ago, and came across another "Voice from the Valley", written by one of the local sages.  Should you wish to see what attracted my attention, you can see it here, on page 4, where it's called "Wildfires".

So far as I can tell, the writer seems to be upset that forest fires have been renamed "wildfires", a term he believes is only used to scare us all.  And, of course, scaring all of us is part of the "climate change agenda", presumably being pushed by radical environmentalists, the WEF, Bill Gates, the UN, the WHO and possibly even the NHL.  I jest, of course, but the number of vocal conspiracy-minded individuals seems to have mushroomed recently.  I think COVID-19 pushed some people over the edge.  But I digress.

I just finished reading Fire Weather - The Making a Beast.

A good bit of this story describes the May 2016 fire that destroyed a few thousand homes in Fort McMurray and forced the evacuation of close to 90,000 people.  Total cost has been estimated at close to $10 billion.  In addition to destroying 2400 homes and other buildings, the fire burned 1.5 million acres and wasn't declared completely out until early August the following year.

One thing that struck me (among a list of many) were descriptions of houses being completely consumed by fire in around 5 minutes, start to finish.  The speed and ferocity of this fire's advance was startling to everyone there to witness it (mostly professional firefighters).  As the author points out, this is the way fires behave now, more like a wild beast than what we were used to.

So our local sage might believe that forest fires have been renamed just to scare us, but my observation, having read Vaillant's book, would be that our forest fires (aka: wildfires) ARE something to be VERY worried about, even scared, and maybe that's what it will take to prod us into the changes necessary to avoid worse in the future.

I wonder what the residents of West Kelowna thought as last summer's "wildfires" swept down form the hills and raged through their neighbourhoods.  Did they think "wildfire" was just a scare tactic?

Our local sage goes on to rail against the hated Carbon Tax, insisting that it's ineffective, a cash grab by government, unnecessary....you get the picture.

(For those who might have forgotten, the Carbon Tax wasn't brought in to "save the planet".  It was brought in partly to act as an incentive - financial - for people to make different energy choices.  It was also brought in as a tax on pollution, since fossil fuel burning has been polluting the atmosphere for free for decades.  In fact, the taxpayer supports billions in $$ of subsidies to the fossil fuel industry each year, just so they can keep doing what they've always done).

Danielle, of course, is still looking for arsonists.

Our local sage mentions a number of things that aren't quite the way he describes them.  For instance, Germany dismantling a wind farm to make way for more coal mining.  What he neglects to mention is that the wind farm in question had been in use since 2001, the turbines are much smaller and less efficient than current models and despite plans to phase out coal-fired power generation by 2030, there are still concerns with adequate power supply, especially in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.  This isn't happening because renewables aren't working or because climate change isn't real, as our sage tries to infer.  Two stories here in the interests of promoting more informed discussion - more easily available on the Google Machine.

Wind Farm in Germany Being Dismantled

Sweden to build 10 new nuclear reactors

Of course, this is what governments often do.  Here in Canada, despite all the nice-sounding talk, REAL action to address climate change has been tepid, at best.  

I hear talk that the next Federal Election will be a Climate Change Election.  I'm beginning to believe that will mark a turning point.  Either we will DO something or we will kick the can down the road another few years, by which time it will be even more difficult (and expensive)  to change our current trajectory.

As for Fire Weather?  Find the book and read it.  It will be well worth your time.  And if it doesn't make you afraid of your next forest fire experience, I will be very surprised.

[Update:  In an exchange on that anti-social platform run by Meta, one commenter responded to my post by name calling - socialist, communist - and pointing the finger of blame everywhere except at the very activities that contributed to making the Fort McMurray fire what it was - CO2 emissions from the oil and gas industry which are directly linked to a warmer climate which, as expected, is making forests hotter and dryer than usual, especially for that time of year.  Mr A.B. Woodpile (clearly not his real name - I often find these people don't have the guts to do anything other than hide behind fake identities) apparently doesn't realize that taxpayers paying billions in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry and paying for abandoned well cleanup, messes left behind by oil and gas companies, is a classic example of socialism.

Mr Woodpile also claimed that the then-Premier, Rachel Notley, refused industry help in creating fire breaks so it was HER fault that the fire entered Ft McMurray.  The facts are that over 500 hectares of fire breaks WERE constructed in an attempt to stop the fire.  They didn't work.  The fire also jumped the Athabasca River, and thus gained access to the city, at a point where the river was close to half a kilometer wide.  This is the nature of more and more of our fires these days.  And we know why.

As an aside, during last summer's fires in the Okanagan, the West Kelowna fire jumped Okanagan Lake.  In Ft McMurray, spot fires were starting kilometers ahead of where the fire front actually was.

One other thing I discovered while looking for information related to the Ft McMurray fire.  Apparently Russia offered some of its huge fire-fighting airplanes which they use there.  The Federal government turned them down.  Why?  This was a massive fire with smoke plumes reaching up into the stratosphere.  So, very limited visibility, combined with pilots unfamiliar with the terrain.  It's a known fact that aerial accidents are the main causes of death during fire fighting operations.  It was deemed unsafe to add massive planes with unfamiliar pilots whose English language skills would likely not be that great, to an already dangerous situation in difficult terrain and conditions.

I understand that Mr Woodpile is bitter and angry, but his anger is misplaced and poorly informed.  As Jim Prentice said some years ago, look in the mirror for the source of your perceived problems.]

Book Review - The Petroleum Papers

 

The Petroleum Papers - Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change

by Geoff Dembicki

I had good intentions, but as my father used to say, "The Road to Hell is Paved With Good Intentions".  

While reading this most interesting and informative book, I made many bookmarks, but, in the end, there were just too many.  It's a borrowed library book and people are waiting to read it.  So, in the interests of getting the book back so others can read it, I'm linking this post to a review article that appeared over a year ago.

The Petroleum Papers by Geoff Dembicki.  A non-fiction book about the role of the oil and gas industry in the climate crisis.

Relying on actual industry documents, the author shows how industry scientists knew decades ago what pollution from the ol industry would do to the environment and, specifically, the global climate.  Industry executives knew and they hid that knowledge from the public and mounted a campaign to sow the seeds of doubt about what was being learned about climate change.  There is a very clear parallel between what the oil industry has been doing and what the tobacco industry did years ago as knowledge was developed about the links between smoking and cancer.  

In 1997, one tobacco company finally admitted that smoking caused cancer.  That was the beginning of the end of the lies and deception.  The same thing is starting to happen with the oil and gas industry as various legal actions are being taken against the companies that promoted lies and misinformation.

Recent stories have highlighted the issue, like this one in Scientific American:  Exxon Knew About Climate Change Almost 40 Years Ago.

The world is changing.  While not all the news is encouraging, the trend seems clear.  Canada, as the fourth largest oil and gas producer in the world, has a responsibility to address climate change.  We can't hide behind the excuse that there are only 40 million of us and we're not significant.  We are NOT on track to reduce our emissions as governments have promised.  We can do better.

This book will help people understand why and what we are fighting.

Post Mortem on an E-bike motor

 Sometime around mid-summer, my partner's e-bike motor failed.  Given that this was during prime biking season and therefore somewhat of a crisis, I just order a replacement and switched the insides, setting the old motor aside for inspection later.

This past week, I took a morning and investigated a bit further.

I started by removing the drive gear.  Only three little screws.  Then I hooked up the puller to remove the rotor.  This part was easy to get off but there are strong magnetic fields here and it's not possible to pull if off by hand.

Once off, it only took a few minutes inspecting to see what had happened.  For some reason (to be determined later) the rotor rubbed against some of the windings on the stator and shorted them out.  Wear marks were clearly visible and some of the wires had the insulation worn off.

Next steps are to figure out why the rotor rubbed against those coils AND what can be done to rehabilitate the motor.  The rotor sits on a bearing that is visible in the picture.  I don't know if there is anything that keeps that bearing in that position or not.  I'm also thinking that I might be able to paint something on the worn wires that would sort of restore them to original condition, but that's for another day.

E-Bike Repairs - Hub Motor Hall Sensors

One of the apparent "benefits" of owning an e-bike is the opportunity to learn as much as you might care to know about e-bike electronics.  There are plenty of regular bike things to deal with - tires, tubes, bearings, chains, brakes and such, but the electronics of e-bikes adds a whole new level of complexity.

We've been having a few issues recently and mine began a week or so ago while out on a ride.  A sudden decrease in power accompanied by a noise that reminded me of a cold or dry bearing.  I've heard them before in old cars coming from the inside fan when it's really cold.

I ended up replacing the clutch/planetary gear assembly in my bike which might have solved the problem (that's another story), but I wanted to learn how to test Hall Effect sensors because someone had mentioned that they could cause problems and I wanted to know what to expect.

I managed to find this video which explain what Hall sensors do.  Many e-bike motors have 3 (sometimes 4) of these sensors which are used to detect a moving magnetic field and send that information to the bike's controller.  The video explained how to test these sensors very nicely.  I used the procedure near the end of the video because I had an old motor that I could practice on.

This shows the motor and the circuit board the sensors are attached to.  Note the coloured wires in the middle.  These supply power (+5v red), ground (black) and the 3 Hall sensor output wires (blue, green and yellow).  There is a fourth wire coming from another Hall sensor that I believe has something to do with speed measurement.

I set up my test equipment the way the video described, complete with a 10K ohm resistor, tack soldered the power leads from an old USB cable to the circuit board and proceeded to test.  As the video described, as I moved the inner part of the motor so that the sensors were moved past the outer ring of magnets, the output voltage from each sensor changed from +5v to 0v and back.  This change indicated that the sensor was good.  This particular motor was replaced because it had other problems.  It appears the Hall sensors were fine.  I haven't yet figured out what the original problem was.  

This photo shows the power supply I used, an old USB cable (red is +5v and white was 0v) and a wall charger.  I also made a quick circuit diagram from the video to remind me of the proper connections.

More ebike discussions likely to come.

Wingnut in Alberta - Part III

Colour me unsurprised.

 

Danielle Smith has declared that a renewable-powered electrical grid by 2035 is "fantasy thinking".

The full story appeared here:  Alberta premier tells climate conference renewable powered grid by 2035 "fantasy thinking".

Frankly, the notion that we can keep on with business as usual is fantasy thinking, but we all know that Denielle doesn't believe that climate change is a real issue, just like Danielle doesn't believe that special practices need to be adopted for some viruses, instead believing that "Albertans view viruses differently than other Canadians".  What malarky.

First, even the Feds (remember the Feds?  That level of government that Danielle and her supporters love to hate?) have identified 2050 as their target date for a renewable powered grid.  I'm not sure where Danielle got that 2035 timeline.  Not that significant achievements by 2035 wouldn't be great to see, but that's another discussion.

Second, Danielle has claimed that 2035 is unrealistic "fantasy thinking", but has she even tried just to see what could be accomplished by then?  Last I heard, she shut down most renewable energy projects for 3 years.  How about encouraging rooftop solar?  How about prodding your electric utilities to start working on this "smart grid" that we know will be needed as we move to more decentralized energy sources?  How about encouraging more wind power on some of those foothills ridges that I know Alberta has available, or perhaps on some of those vast stretches of Alberta grasslands?  Has Danielle tried ANY of those?  Not that I'm aware of.  Why would a premier in climate change denial, one who believes the only reason there were so many forest fires last spring in Alberta was because of arsonists, try ANY of those things?

Third, even the International Energy Agency has suggested that peak fossil fuel use could be only a few short years away.  Danielle, of course, dismisses any such suggestions as "fake news".  I'd suggest that her position is a good example of fantasy thinking.  After all....

The International Energy Agency has 31 member countries and works with groups such as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the G20 and the United Nations in researching its reports, which make headlines around the world. [quoted from the article linked to above].

Danielle, of course, prefers to "get her information from private-sector analysts."  Yes, I can imagine who those might be.  The same people whispering in her ear about arsonists and discriminated-against anti-vaxxers.

What I see in a 2050 target date is simply the opportunity to kick the can down the road a ways because it allows you plenty of time to avoid facing the problem.  After all, by 2050, Danielle will be 25 years older (I'm approximating - it's not my lack of math skills), she will unlikely be Premier by then so it won't be HER problem.  It will be our kids' problem.  Our grandchildren will have to deal with the fallout of current inaction.  Why the hell should SHE care?

This is what happens when you have a wingnut in the Premier's office.

COVID - Nearly 4 Years On

 

I don't care what the experts say.  I'm convinced that COVID is more than a respiratory disease.  In fact, I'm certain the virus completely destroyed all vestiges of sanity in some people.

Case in point: Here we are, nearly 4 years after the beginning of the COVID pandemic and yet another deluded rant appears in the pages of the local rag (aka: The Valley Voice on page 5).  It goes by the title of "Open Letter to PM Trudeau et al".   I'm open to alternate theories as to why these people persist in their delusions and fantasies, but if anyone wants to convince me, they're gonna have to bring proof of actual functioning neural networks.

The World Health Organization, that UN agency that some people love to hate, comes in for the author's scorn and a dose of his special nonsense.

He mentions "International Health Regulations".  Never mind the fact that these have been in place for almost 2 decades and relate almost entirely to reporting and transparency and health documents for international travel.  The notion that the WHO and its IHRs will "...cost [Canada] our sovereignty over its health..." is laughable.

Readers need to remember that the WHO is an agency of the United Nations.  How well or poorly either entity operates is a direct function of how cooperative member nations are (or are not) prepared to be.  In the early weeks of the pandemic, China was NOT cooperative, resulting in more trouble than there needed to be.  And the fact that China's official COVID deaths seem low can be attributed to months and months of very strict lockdowns.

The author goes on to claim that the absence of vaccines didn't disadvantage countries in Africa because, he believes, death rates there were far lower than in North America and Europe.

You would think that people, like the author of this drivel, would occasionally stumble across some verifiable facts, like this one from Boston University:  Morgue Data Reveal Africa's High COVID Death Toll.

"The fact that the majority of COVID-19 deaths (more than 80 percent) occurred in the community—where cause of death surveillance is completely absent—“shows how easy it is to fall into the trap of misconstruing the ‘absence of evidence’ as ‘evidence of absence,’” 

Countries in Africa, for example, did NOT do better.  They did far worse and, sadly, most of how they did went unreported and unrecorded.  The fact is, countries like these are very poor and they mostly all lack any semblance of a functioning medical/public health system.

The author mentions "drugs with good safety records" as being available before the vaccines came online.  I'd hazard a guess he's thinking of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ, which is NOT recommended as a treatment for COVID), or perhaps Ivermectin, an anti-parasite drug that is also NOT recommended as a treatment for COVID.  That last article goes on to say:

"Other groups who were more likely to take these drugs were those who reported they trusted social media, those who scored higher on the American Conspiracy Thinking Scale as well people who said they trusted former President Trump.

People who reported receiving their information from sources like CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and Facebook were also more likely to say they had received a non-evidence-based treatment.

“In general, cable news sources regardless of perspective were associated with increased odds for both non–evidence based and FDA-approved antiviral treatment. Facebook did not follow this pattern: odds of non evidence based but not FDA-approved treatment were markedly greater with Facebook as a news source,” the researchers found."

Which brings us to more data.  From WorldOMeters comes an extensive list of COVID information, from which I selected 4 countries, sorting for deaths per million population.  This is what I found:

•  USA # 15 at 3520 deaths/million
• UK # 18 at 3354 deaths/million
• Sweden # 44 at 2439 deaths/million
• Canada # 82 at 1405 deaths/million

These are ALL developed countries with roughly similar access to advanced medical treatments, vaccines (eventually), expert knowledge, public health agencies...all the advantages.  So why the disparities?  The USA had 2.5 times the death rate as did Canada.  Sweden, that poster child nation for people who were upset about the various public health actions taken here in Canada rather than doing basically nothing, had almost twice the death rate we had here in Canada.

Why the differences?  I'm going to suggest something really, really simple.  Canada had (at least in the beginning) politicians who deferred to Public Health experts, federally and provincially.  Canadians are, by and large, a well-educated population with a relatively decent level of trust in our medical establishment and those running Public Health agencies.  In the USA, they had Trump.  Do I REALLY need to say more?  Well, perhaps one more thing....in Sweden, a decision was made early on to take very little direct public health action.  This was a conscious decision that the country later regretted, but by then it was too late.

Now, of course, we here in Canada have a political party lead by PP (aka: Skippy) who welcomed the so-called Freedom Convoy to Ottawa, Alberta has an avowed anti-vaxxer as Premier now and we STILL have publications like the Valley Voice giving column inches to idiots ranting from their rabbit holes.

This morning I just booked my next COVID shot.  I know Natural Selection is a slow, imperfect way of removing unfit (for whatever reasons) individuals from a population, but I've seen the data of COVID deaths which compare unvaccinated with vaccinated.  It's very clear which group I want to be in.  I'm thinking that absence of functional neural networks will be a disadvantage to future survival.  So far, the data seems to correlate well with my hypothesis.

Energy Options - Cost Comparisons

 Lots of talk about possible nuclear plants, more gas-fired power plants, solar farms, wind farms....  But how does the cost of each option compare?

In a study prepared by the Ontario Clean Air Alliance and released at the end of February, 2023, several options were considered.  They are discussed briefly in this report:

Ontario's Electricity Options: A Cost Comparison

The main take-home message from this study can be seen in this chart.

Global Warming - A Graphic

 Over the years, I've been attracted by "cartoons" from XKCD.

Here is one that shows global warming graphically.

A Timeline of Earth's Average Temperature Since the Last Ice Age Glaciation

Wingnut in Alberta - Part II

 The spring and summer of 2023 saw an "unprecedented" number of intense wildfires, literally around the world.  Northern Alberta, Greece, Italy, Spain and here in BC.  The only reason Australia isn't in that list is because it was winter down under.  But summer there is coming.

[As an aside, I'm not sure how many more seasons we need of "unprecedented" fires, or "unprecedented" floods, before more people are persuaded that whatever we're getting isn't just "the climate doing what it always does" but that there's something behind all this unprecedentedness.  Something like AGW, for instance, but I digress, again...]

A good many fires are started by humans, mostly by carelessness.  Abandoned campfires, forestry operations, ATV use....  A small number are caused by arson.  In fact, the RCMP caught one person in Northern Alberta who had been setting fires.

According to the BC Wildfire Service, most forest fires in BC are caused by lightning, and that fits with an article (noted below) from the Fraser Valley Current where it was observed that BC's fires tend to be in mid-summer, when lightning tends to be the main cause.  Alberta's fires tend to be earlier in the season when recreational causes (ie: human) are more prevalent.

The pretty charts and graphs above are courtesy of a substantial article that appeared in the Fraser Valley Current on August 3, 2023.  It's a well written piece, and I'd highly recommend taking the time to read it.  Now, if it were only possible to persuade Danielle to read it....

The arson conspiracies are mostly groundless. Every year, some wildfires have been deliberately set. But there’s nothing new in that, and those blazes tend to be a very small proportion of all wildfires. There is also no indication that arsons are on the rise in any way or responsible for the largest fires.

In Canada, arsonists are almost never to blame for the most-serious fires, which tend to be sparked in remote areas either by accident or by lightning. (Although some have recklessly speculated the 2021 Lytton fire was caused by church-burning arsonists, a 2022 report—or any familiarity of the town, direction of wind, location of churches, and burn patterns—reveals the illogic of the speculation.)

Flannigan said arson ignitions in Canada comprise between 1% and 3% of fire starts. When arson does cause fires, it’s often in urban areas—like several that broke out last year in Mission—where they are quickly extinguished before they can grow too large.

Unsurprisingly, Danielle doesn't believe ANY that.  She has brought in arson investigators to get to the bottom of what she is certain are all those fires that have been caused by arsonists.  It's certainly an easier target for finger pointing if you can't accept that decades of fossil fuel burning have released a mega-gazillion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere that have caused the planet to warm up, making all these fires easier to start (by lightning) and to burn more intensely, no matter how many millions of $$ you throw at them (over $700M in BC so far this year).

“I think you’re watching, as I am, the number of stories about arson,” she responded. “I’m very concerned that there are arsonists.”  Toronto Star, June 8, 2023

Cartoon credit: Graeme McKay - Hamilton Spectator

Danielle is nothing if not a conspiracy theorist and a big supporter of burning even more fossil fuels, so it's somewhat understandable that such views would be entrenched in her psyche.  Danielle is also a person who seemingly has no filters at all, especially what we colloquially call bullshit filters (in polite company, let's refer to them as analytical filters).  This was noted in an article appearing in the Globe & Mail on May 16, 2023, as follows:

It would be easy to dismiss the many odd things that come out of Danielle Smith’s mouth as the product of a disordered mind. Easy, and accurate.

The past week alone has provided several examples. Equating the vaccine-compliant majority with Hitler’s followers; suggesting police officers who enforced public-health orders should face criminal charges; calling for doctors to be removed from decision-making roles in the next pandemic, in favour of the military; all on top of her previous musings about ivermectin, the World Economic Forum, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and of course, Alberta sovereignty: she appears to have no analytical filter of any kind, but rather functions as a sort of ideological magpie, lining her nest with whatever shiny objects she happens across, without further examination.

Even The Beaverton weighed in on Danielle's comments.

“Trees that got vaccinated to protect their fellow trees from disease are actually Nazis,” Smith explained. “A lot of people are saying these fires are caused by nature, but I think it’s pretty clear that the fire is simply a reaction to the fascist vaccine mandates placed on all these trees by the federal government.” 

Many fans of Danielle Smith’s leadership have echoed Smith’s views on the connection between vaccines and wildfires, some believing that this wildfire is simply a reaction to the vaccine, some saying that the wildfire was lit by the government merely to force trees to get vaccinated to become slaves, and others that the fire was born out of a lab in China and not a real fire. (The Beaverton, May 10, 2023

I have made a pact to stay away from Twitter (currently known as X), but I did read this comment:

“Pointing fingers at fake causes for political gain is an insult to the people who have lost their homes, the firefighters trying to stop those wildfires, and all affected by the smoke and other secondary effects.” (Post of uncertain origin (to me) on Twitter, currently known as X)

I did find some reassurance that at least some people think Danielle is nuts.  Take this letter that appeared last June 10th, 2023 in the Edmonton Journal:

As our eyes water, our children cough and we swelter under unseasonably warm weather and hazy skies, our premier’s plan for dealing with this phenomena is to bring in arson investigators. 

Apparently, one of the root causes of the fires that have currently devastated an area the size of Switzerland in Canada and have resulted in death and destruction in recent years in Portugal, Australia, California, Russia, is obvious: individuals with malicious intent. 

For those of us who are in constant amazement at how poorly informed our premier is, it should come as no surprise that in a 2020 column she perpetuated the claim that the Australian fires that killed and destroyed in a wide swath of that country were deliberately set by arsonists. The fact that this was disinformation spread online by climate change deniers and that it was quickly and authoritatively put to rest by Australian police and fire authorities doesn’t seem to have changed Ms. Smith’s mind. 

Why let facts about an inconvenient truth get in the way of an opportunity to project blame onto individuals and give the appearance of decisive, if ineffective action. Going after an international cabal of pyromaniacs and reckless campers is so much more satisfying and less messy than confronting the impact our energy choices have had on the global environment. 

Anthony McClellan, Edmonton

This is what happens when you have a wingnut in the Premier's office.

Wingnut in Alberta - Part I

 For months now, I've been thinking of writing a post about that wingnut in the Premier's office in Edmonton.  Every time I see some outrageous story with her at the center, like the last one about the E-coli outbreak in Calgary, I think of writing down something about it, if just for the chance to rant.  But wait, the MOST recent one was Danielle's assertion that Alberta could start its own pension plan with half of the money from the CPP.  Very few days pass without hearing something completely insane from Alberta's dear leader.

How about I start with Danielle's latest "plan"?  The notion that Alberta will withdraw from the national CPP and bring in an Alberta Pension Plan, complete with bonuses for retiring workers and higher pensions.

The story is still unfolding, but it seems to be a repeat of a theme: Alberta is unappreciated.   Alberta pays too much for too little.  Alberta would be better on its own.  Alberta has grievances and nobody else cares enough to listen.  And if this sounds familiar, just remember, it is.  It's all about "me", just like the so-called "Freedom Convoy" clowns.  "I'm" unhappy.  "I" don't want to wear a mask.  "I don't want to limit my social contacts just so others won't get sick.  And "I" certainly don't want someone else telling "me" what to do.

The "plan", such as it is, seems to involve Alberta demanding over half of the total assets of the Canada Pension Plan, around $334 Billion,and bringing in an Alberta Pension Plan.  Polls indicate Albertans are wary of this, as they should be.  How does a politician woo the wary?  With money, of course.  As an article from the CBC noted:

Dramatically slashed premiums! Larger paycheques! Higher benefits for seniors! Maybe a $10,000 bonus for retirees!

One has to ask: what kind of fantasy world does Danielle live in?

Just before the CPP/APP announcement (or was it just Danielle's stream-of-consciousness thinking?), the news was all about an E.coli outbreak in a number of Calgary daycares.  I don't know how many people (Albertans especially) have made the connections here, but to my mind, this is a Public Health issue.  And Alberta's last Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Dr Hinshaw, was summarily fired by Danielle almost as soon as she became Premier.  Why did Danielle fire the CMO?  Because COVID restrictions and vaccine mandates (even as anemic as they were)...  Y'know, the very Public Health measures intended to reduce the numbers of sick and very sick people and reduce the impact on hospitals (not to mention other businesses), nevermind the ultimate goal of keeping people from dying.   And remember that, in Alberta, the Cabinet made the ultimate decisions about all of these practices.  This is a good example of politicians trying to manage things in which they have NO expertise.  It's a good example of how something that should be a medical issue can be politicized.  Once again, look at what happened during COVID.  Masks, vaccines, distancing, staying home, ivermectin (horse dewormer, remember?)....  ALL of these became toxic topics because politicians decided they needed to coddle some loony part of their base.

We asked survey respondents to evaluate four organizations that were important to the pandemic response, scoring them on a scale from one (poor) to 10 (excellent). They gave each a passing grade, but not a strong positive endorsement. Alberta Health Services and the Chief Medical Officer of Health scored highest, while the provincial and federal governments fared worse. (The Conversation, March 22, 2023)

But I digress.  The E.coli outbreak.  This is what happens when a Public Health Department is being run by a well-intentioned medical person but one who has NO training in the communication and management practices needed to run something like Public Health.  This is what happens when politicians create a culture of interference and second-guessing in issues that they don't understand.  Public Health ends up not doing the surveillance and enforcement that it needs to do.  Eventually, people get sick.  Some people die.  In this case, it was kids - toddlers - getting sick.  Some very sick.  Quite a few hospitalized.  Some on dialysis because of kidney damage.

And it took DAYS for the interim CMO of Health to make a public appearance and even longer for Danielle to show up making consoling and concerning noises ("we will get to the bottom of this").  It seemed like a variation on the "thoughts and prayers" message that we're used to seeing from American politicians after the most recent shoot-up at some elementary school.  Kids died and the best you can do is wring your hands?

“I’m heartbroken by what these family families are going through,” Smith said in announcing the province will give families $2,000 for each child who became sick.

One has to wonder....if one of these kids dies,  will that be worth more?

Secondary cases of E.coli have been appearing.  These are people infected from other people, not from the original source (believed to be a kitchen).  A simple message reminding exposed people to avoid contact with others (sound familiar - social distancing during COVID?  Limiting contacts?).  But that would be telling people what to do, wouldn't it?

Albertans should the OUTRAGED.  The UCP (United Conservative Party) was SO concerned about upsetting some of its libertarian base that, during COVID, some of its actions could best be described as anemic and often canceled far too soon.  Even with those half-hearted, watered down attempts at pandemic management, the person at the "buck stops here end" of the decision-making process, a certain Jason Kenney, was unceremoniously dumped by UCP luminaries and a true wingnut installed in the Premier's Office, one who really wouldn't upset that libertarian base.

To come back to the E.coli outbreak.  This is what can happen when you have an avowed anti-vaxxer as Premier, one who is quite comfortable eviscerating Public Health in the interests of not upsetting some "Freedom-loving" nutcases who might have to wear a mask in a grocery store for 15 minutes.  Who is comfortable firing a trained and experienced CMO of Health.  Who will intercede with Justice officials in an attempt to set aside a case involving a pastor who refused to follow Public Health orders during a pandemic.  A Premier who said, quite clearly, that she felt some of the most persecuted people she'd ever seen were those who refused to get vaccinated.

This is what can happen.  And now it has.  Fortunately, none of the toddlers have died, so far.

This is what happens when you have a wingnut in the Premier's office.

The Costs of Doing Nothing

 A recurring theme one sees these days is that switching to renewable sources of energy or adapting to the changes we're already seeing will be too expensive.

Other than a few quick comments, we can dispense with arguments about whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas or whether the planet is warming.  These issues were settled decades ago.

The greenhouse effect was first described in 1824, although it wasn't given that name at the time.  That came later.  To quote from Wikipedia:

The existence of the greenhouse effect, while not named as such, was proposed as early as 1824 by Joseph Fourier.^[12] The argument and the evidence were further strengthened by Claude Pouillet in 1827 and 1838. In 1856 Eunice Newton Foote demonstrated that the warming effect of the sun is greater for air with water vapour than for dry air, and the effect is even greater with carbon dioxide. She concluded that "An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature..."^[13][14]

 We will see some claiming that CO2 is essential, that plants need it, and so on.  Like many fairy tales, there are some grains of truth in what they say.  Without CO2, Earth would be too cold for us and many other organisms.  Plants do absorb CO2 to make carbohydrates.  Unfortunately, that glosses over more important truths.  This article from NOAA covers most of the important bits.  Atmospheric CO2 is increasing, rapidly.  That increase can be linked to increasing CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels.  The amount of CO2 in our atmosphere is higher than it's ever been for the past 3 million years.  Global temperatures are rising as a consequence.

We can see what's happening.  This past summer, many parts of the world experienced devastating, very intense, forest fires.  In recent times, various parts have experienced unprecedented floods, some are already experiencing sea level rise, Arctic sea ice cover in summer is decreasing, some Antarctic ice shelves are disintegrating. deserts are increasing.  The Gobi and Sahara Deserts are both increasing in size.  These are facts.

As of a month or so ago, BC had spent over $500 million fighting forest fires.  In 2021, it was over $700 million.

Europe generally (especially Spain, Greece and France) has seen forest fire costs exceed $ billion Euros (that's about C$5.7 billion) so far this year.

In the USA, the cost of fighting forest fires in 2022 was US$3.7 Billion.

That article goes on to note:

For instance, a study by University College London stated in the report showed that California’s 2018 wildfires alone cost the U.S. a whopping $148.5 billion. Capital losses and health costs within the state amounted to $59.9 billion. 

The True Cost of Wildfires is discussed in this article.

It's important to note that climate change doesn't "cause" the fires.  It just makes conditions more conducive to fire starts and more intense fires.  Warmer weather and droughts increase tree mortality, adding to the problem.

Climate change has been a key factor in increasing the state’s risk for wildfire. Hotter temperatures create drier conditions, exacerbate drought, and make fires easier to spread and harder to put out.

I'm going to pretty much ignore silly claims that "most of the forest fires" were caused by arsonists, even if Alberta Premier Danielle claims that they were.  There is NO evidence to support such a claim.  Danielle has made other silly (and dangerous) claims.  Albertans are paying the cost of those silly claims, as recent e-coli outbreaks in Calgary make very clear.  That's a story for another post.

Smoke from this summer's forest fires in Canada made its way across North America, all the way to the East Coast.  It is estimated that 8 million people die from air pollution globally each year.  Forest fires are only one part of that pollution, but they are a significant part.

And, of course, fires add to CO2 emissions, which adds to warming, and so on.  Fires also reduce the size of our forests, reducing the ability to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.

In our area, it's been true for some time that domestic fire insurance policies are not available from at least some insurers during the summer.  That added risk for some people is also an added cost, it just isn't easy to quantify.  Also in our area, vocal conspiracists have disrupted discussions about bringing in Climate Action Plans, even as massive fires burn in our province.

Despite these and other costs, there are arguments that adaptation and mitigation are too expensive?

Someone needs to explain that line of "thinking", because it's not clear to me.