Almost all human beings wonder, at one time or another, whether they will be prejudicially misjudged based on some readily observable aspect of themselves – based on a group identity. The identity could be predicated on skin colour, ethnicity, gender, nationality, sexual preference, religion, height, weight – and we could be looked upon with disfavour based on a stereotype.
This concern can create anxiety and stress, and may lead to heightened feelings of persecution, failure...
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...
Social justice aims to make the world a better place and bring about a fairer set of outcomes. However, we argue from principle that some of the ideas of social justice are destructive to these ends. Trying to make a better world and lifting people up is to be celebrated, but in this article we examine two concepts in social justice that are more likely to bring people down, distract, and increase social division...
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...
