Confused about diluted bitumen, the stuff Ottawa and Alberta are so determined to push through British Columbia? It’s not easy to find balanced information on dilbit so it was great to find a “Dilbit Primer” published by Inside Climate News. The primer doesn’t answer every question and is remarkably candid
Continue readingAuthor: The Mound of Sound
The Disaffected Lib: Dumb Shit Dies
Some people don’t deserve to live. Michael Bayless was one of them. The 33-year old from Indiana died when his 3-year old son squeezed the trigger on his dad’s loaded handgun. A family friend is reported to have said Bayless was warned to keep the gun in a safe place.
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Mountie Monty Off the Hook
Recently resigned RCMP coporal Monty Robinson will serve no time for killing a young motorcyclist, Orion Hutchinson in Delta, B.C. in 2008. Evidence revealed Robinson was driving home from a party where he’d downed five beers. After hitting Hutchinson, Robinson fled the scene of the accident for his nearby home
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Why Buy Obsolete Warplanes?
The F-35 is about one thing, stealth. This light attack bomber sacrifices everything for that one quality, stealth. It sacrifices payload and range, two pretty important abilities for a penetration bomber intended to attack important targets in heavily defended enemy airspace. It also sacrifices every quality that makes a great
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: He’s Back. Stevie Boy’s BFF, Bruce Carson, Charged with Fraud
I’ve been wondering what rock Harper aide Bruce Carson has been hiding under of late. Bruce Carson, 66, has been charged with one count of what’s formally referred to as influence peddling, RCMP said Friday. He served as Harper’s chief policy analyst and fixer from 2006 to 2008 and returned
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: American Olympic Hero on "Mitt the Twit" Romney
Nine-time gold medalist Carl Lewis had a pithy comment on Mitt Romney. “I swear, sometimes I think some Americans shouldn’t leave the country. Are you kidding me? Stay home if you don’t know what to say.” At least Mitt didn’t tell the Brits that their trees were just the right
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: And We’re Fueling China for What Exactly?
Stevie Boy Harper is dead keen on exporting Athabasca bitumen to China, just as much and as fast as he can. But why is Steve suddenly so fond of China, except perhaps for the way it might let Canada game the U.S. on bitumen prices? It wasn’t long ago that
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: About That Link Between CO2 and Warming
A team of Australian and Danish researchers has shown that CO2 was more instrumental in ending the last ice age than previously believed. The scientists examined ancient air trapped in Antarctic ice. ”The results show that the temperature rise and the CO2 increase were much closer than what was believed
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Climate Skeptics Really Are the Tin Foil Hat Brigade
New research confirms the nutjob factor is alive and well among those who refuse to accept the reality of global warming. People who endorsed conspiracy theories such as “9/11 was an inside job” and “the moon landings were faked”, were also more likely to reject established scientific facts about climate
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The SEC Weighs in on Climate Change
Climate change is a fact and, according to the powerful U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, it’s a material fact that companies must disclose to their investors in SEC filings. Agribusiness has obvious climate change vulnerabilities, everything from floods and droughts to pests. This vulnerability to climate change impacts now has
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: A Common Sense Admiral
Jonathan Greenert says he supports the F-35 light strike bomber but the man does have reservations. Admiral Greenert has whipped up a storm by saying that advantages from America’s prized stealth technology will be “difficult to maintain”. The other side’s sensors, he argues, may operate at lower electromagnetic frequencies than stealth
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: This Is Greatness
Since I was 14, maybe 15, this was my favourite band. 40-years later it still is. This was probably this band at it’s peak – 1978. Magic.
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The Northern Gateway Liability Trap
A major part of Harper’s perfidy lies in the way the Northern Gateway is structured with liability cut-outs to let the major players escape liability. IslandTides.com has an eye-opening feature on how coastal B.C. is being hung out to dry. In another column, retired CBC journo Patrick Brown outlines the
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: What’s Up? Flash Floods, That’s What.
From Britain to Africa, America to China and Russia, India to Canada, no corner of the world seems immune to flash flooding. Is global warming the culprit? In most cases, probably. We done gone and broke the hydrological cycle. How we broke it is as easy to understand as it
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Are You Part of the Problem?
Chris Hedges’ latest column for TruthDig explores how western society has degenerated into myopic careerism in which facts and reality are impertinences. David Lloyd George, who was the British prime minister during the Passchendaele campaign, wrote in his memoirs: “[Before the battle of Passchendaele] the Tanks Corps Staff prepared maps
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Oh Those Wacky Conservatives
From McClatchey Newspapers
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Harper Ditches the Snitches
Why has Stevie Boy Harper gutted fisheries and marine protection services and staff, leaving the British Columbia coast seriously unprotected, just as he’s pushing through the greatest environmental threat our coast has ever seen? Firing monitoring and research staff, entire departments, at Fisheries and Oceans. Relocating the west coast oil
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Bitumen’s Oh So Dirty Little Secrets
There are some things that never come up when discussing the Athabasca Tar Sands or shipping bitumen to China. The difference between bitumen and conventional oil never comes up. Bitumen isn’t oil. In it’s processed, or upgraded, form its a sludge that has to be diluted and heated in order
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Are We Going This Alone?
Will British Columbians stand alone against Alberta’s bitumen pipelines? What I’m reading is that the populations of other provinces seem to support the Northern Gateway and Kinder-Morgan pipeline/bitumen-supertanker initiatives. And that’s certainly the way Ottawa and Alberta are attacking British Columbia. Our unelected, unelectable and outgoing premier, Christie Clark, isn’t
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: How to Fight Climate Change Deniers
Our problem coping with climate change skeptics could be solved, perhaps, by bringing them out in the open – the lot of them, all at once. Climate change science mainly goes in one direction. Whether the discipline is geology, biology, botany, atmospherics, hydrology, glaciology, epidemiology, oceanography, chemistry, you name it,
Continue reading