This and that for your Sunday reading. – Dhruv Khullar writes about the likelihood that a continued lack of public health measures will push the vast majority of people toward multiple COVID-19 reinfections, including ones which may not show up on less-sensitive tests. And Carolyn Barber discusses how decision-making around
Continue readingTag: climate crisis
Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Switch to Wind, Water, Solar, and Save Billions
“$2B saved since Ukraine war Wind and solar power plants generated 46.3 terawatt-hours of electricity between May 1, 2021 and April 30, 2022, the data [in Turkey] showed. “Without these power plants, underutilized gas-fired plants or coal power plants relying on imports would have had to run in order to
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Plague Update: What Does COVID Do Anyway?
COVID-19 a thrombotic disease that can be caught again, and again, and again if the first bouts are survived, and isn’t confined to a “season” because it’s so much more contagious than influenza. It has multiple waves that sweep through a community each year. Governments are using ‘magical words’ to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Abdullah Shihipar discusses why there’s every reason to resist the pressure from self-serving politicians and business groups to succumb to COVID-19. Hannah Flynn discusses the long-term brain injuries traceable to long COVID in primates. And Steve Schering examines the hospitalization rates for children
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: SaskPower: A Job Half Done
…is as good as none. If you’re impressed by SaskPower’s objective to reduce emissions by only half, by 2030, you’re setting the bar way too low. A big reason Saskatchewan is among the world’s worst per-capita polluters is because our electricity is a large lignite coal and fossil/natural gas component.
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Plague Update: BA.2 Taking Over
Our society has entered the phase of the pandemic where most people are trying to pretend that everything is normal, and there’s nothing dangerous about eating in restaurants or sending kids to school. It reminds me of the climate crisis, how we’ll still fly domestically, and buy SUVs, despite the
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Plague Update: Clearly Political
There’s a wind blowing in Canada, and it’s blowing away from public health measures that have kept most Canadians healthy and safe from the pandemic’s primary driver, the SARS-CoV2 virus. Somewhere between 1010 Saskatchewanians and about 4000 have perished in the last 2 years from the virus, while more than
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Miquel Oliu-Barton et al. study the effects of different government approaches to COVID-19 – and find that elimination strategies have produced far superior outcomes to attempts to live with uncontrolled community spread. And Andre Picard begs us to stop repeating our mistakes in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Zak Vescera reports on the Moe government’s full awareness that their elimination of public health measures would produce exactly the spike in cases and calamity for Saskatchewan’s health-care system that have developed this fall. And Allison Bamford reports on the warnings from doctors
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Evening Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Doug Cuthand highlights how we can’t afford to let our guard down against the dangers of COVID-19, while Allysha Howse notes that a full-on lockdown may be approaching if Ontario (and other provinces) can’t change course in a hurry. The Leader-Post and Star
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Why Is The SaskParty Lying About Well Cleanups?
Here’s the scale of the problem: "Remediation of thousands of orphaned oil&gas wells and the eventual “clean-up” of the oilsands mines& tailings ponds -estimated by the Alberta Energy Regulator to be as high as $260B or equivalent to all of the royalty revenue paid by the industry to Alberta from
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: SaskPower’s War On Solar
Today the utility described the home generation of 16MW of solar and wind power as "insignificant." The clear message: solar and solar customers are a problem to be managed. Not an opportunity. 3/3 #RenewableElectricity #skpoli — David Kyle (@DavidKyleSK) June 25, 2021 SaskPower told me last decade that their Y2K
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Saskatchewan Party Produces Pollution
Back in 2012, there was a problem: Provincial water too polluted, says research Back then, the SaskParty was promising to address climate change with a plan that included a 20% emissions cut below 2006 pollution levels, by last year, 2020. They soon deleted that target. Then this happened, and continues
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Anti-carbon tax Government attacks hundreds of EV owners with a new tax
Saskatchewan Government will start charging EV owners $150 a year. The Minister who removed the EV incentive almost a decade ago took his next job as Canada’s top oil and gas lobbyist. If that doesn’t scream Conflict of Interest, what does? This is an “anti-#carbontax“, as it encourages people to
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Conservatives Reject Reality
Sucks to be a country where the Official Opposition party rejects longstanding science that a grade school kid can understand. For ideological and economic reasons, the Conservative Party of Canada won’t accept that air pollution is bad. They won’t even accept that it’s air pollution, instead, the veg-heads erroneously call
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Use the war room to educate Albertans?
In December 2019, the Alberta government launched the Canadian Energy Centre. The new UCP government had fulfilled its election promise of an energy “war room” that would “fight fake news and share the truth about Alberta’s resource sector and energy issues.” The promise has turned out to be a huge
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Right Wing Media in Australia Gets Slapped
Former PM lays out more truth than Newscorp toadies can handle: Watch this remarkable confrontation between a former Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and Paul Kelly, editor-at-large for one of Murdoch's key properties, The Australian. The subject is climate change and the Murdoch empire's disastrous legacy. pic.twitter.com/30OU2uo9XG — Jay Rosen
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Plague Update: More Infections and Elections
The news around the world has been more awful than usual, with the President of the USA purportedly getting over his COVID-19 infection, while on dexamethasone (a powerful, potentially mind altering steroid) threatening to kiss guys in the crowd of his maskless rally. This is astonishing. Almost every state that’s
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Plague Update: Fixation on Ventilators morphs into Ventilation
“There’s no perfectly ‘safe’ level of ventilation because we don’t actually know what ‘safe’ is, since we don’t know how much exposure leads to transmission,” Angela Rasmussen, a Columbia University virologist,” That is from an article recommended by a virologist studying airborne diseases. The result is predictable: Stay Home to
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Plague Update: Death For Dollars
The reckless and callous Sask Party prepares on Monday to start the calculated risk AKA killing process. Because golf is literally more important than some guy’s grandma, amirite? More than 400 sick health care workers in the biggest city west of our capital city. No biggie, I guess?#SlowMoe has killed
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