BIG Exclusives

I have studied, written, and talked a lot about energy over the past few years – articles in BIG Media and elsewhere, countless presentations in classrooms, on webinars, to conference delegates, plus podcasts and radio interviews. Together with a great expert team and support from the University of Alberta and Canadian Society for Evolving Energy, I have created a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) called “21st Century Energy Transition – How do we Make it...

Some people are convinced we live in a time of unprecedented and existential crises. Many of their feelings are magnified in today’s social and mainstream media, where activists urge political leaders and society to take drastic and immediate action to address the perceived problems. To them, we (society/government) know what to do, so we just have to “get on with it”. And often, if we don’t just get on with it, they accuse industry and...

Headlining this week’s climate change and emissions reduction news is the Canadian government’s next step in its crusade against big emitting industries, especially the fossil fuel sector – a “hard cap” on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Of course, this will be interpreted as a cap on production by most in a hydrocarbon resource industry that provides more than 80% of the world's energy. A hard cap on emissions and therefore on the sector that drives a...

As we enter the mid-2020s, public discourse and government policy in rich nations focus intensively on climate. The idea that we live in a time of “climate crisis” garners more and more attention, fueled by publicity around every bad weather event and dire pronouncements of ever-more intense and frequent storms, floods, droughts, and other calamities to come. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human activities – primarily carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) – are blamed...

There has been a lot written about the push to reach net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by the year 2050. Despite the simple fact that emissions continue to rise year after year, many people continue to insist that humanity can abruptly turn a corner to achieve the net-zero target (Halfway between Kyoto and ‘Net Zero by 2050’, how are we doing?). Why is that? Why do some people think that profound change is just around...

Although I haven’t seen it myself, it is reported that there is an exhibit at CERN dedicated to Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. One of the items on exhibit is a computer server that was the first to host the internet. A hand-written sticker on the side says: “Do not power down”. With these four little words, Berners-Lee may have doomed the human race. Science fiction perpetuates a cliché fear amongst humans...

  When I graduated from university and started my job at Shell Canada as an interpreter, I was trained on the basics of the petroleum system. To clarify, an “interpreter” in this context does not mean that I was hired to translate Greek to English. I do speak Seismic quite fluently, though, and my role as an interpreter was to translate sounds of a different type – the mysterious sound waves contained in seismic data...

In an article published last month (https://big-media.ca/pipe-problems-a-detailed-examination-of-what-lies-beneath-us/), I outlined issues with municipal infrastructure and focused on city pipes. In my Canadian home city of Calgary, things had improved since the break in a major water main curtailed water use in the city for most of June: The water main break was repaired Five additional spots on the same main line were pre-emptively replaced Water restrictions were gradually relaxed as volumes ramped up to near-normal...

Many important issues in the news today are built around technical information, particularly in scientific and engineering fields. Subjects such as resource exploitation, energy generation, and climate and weather are of interest to many people – but most of us do not have the technical background to understand their inner workings. So we turn to trusted experts to tell us what is important, and to help us figure out what we should believe and...

I would like to talk about some things that lie under our feet. These are things that are good for our health and our communities, and they serve us well. These are things to which we generally do not pay attention … until something bad happens. I am talking about the pipes and mains that provide us clean water, remove our wastewater, and deliver us natural gas for fuel. They are essential parts of city...