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...
Co-writer Liam Ostrowski
If headlines and political proclamations are any indication, Canadians are upset about current grocery prices. One recent article by the BBC highlighted examples of high prices in Canada versus similar items in the United Kingdom and United States from specific grocers.
While the focus of the BBC article was on anger toward Canadian grocer Loblaws and concerns of lack of competition, the article’s content begs a wider look at grocery prices in recent years.
We start...
The plastics sector is under attack on many levels, and much of the criticism is centred on misunderstandings related to recycling.
We are told that plastic recycling rates are too low because they are hard to recycle, and that we need new technologies to solve the problem. I often see the claim that we need recycling to solve waste and litter problems.
However, as explained in my Plastics Paradox book, most of what we have been...
Giving credit where credit is due right up front – this article is based largely on a recent report by University of Manitoba Emeritus Professor and energy guru Vaclav Smil – “Halfway between Kyoto and 2050: Zero Carbon is a Highly Unlikely Outcome”, published by Canada’s Fraser Institute.
Some people use the term “guru” lightly, but I do not; Professor Smil has spent a long and illustrious academic career researching and writing about energy and...
Many people in high-income nations believe that climate change is the defining issue of our time. There is no arguing that it is incredibly important – because regardless of arguments over how much climate is changing and what influences it may actually exert, government policy and social movements inspired by climate-change concerns affect us all.
This situation was illustrated graphically in a recent BBC interview with Dr. Irfaan Ali, President of Guyana, where immense oil reserves have been discovered recently.
He explained that even...
Many people in high-income nations (and few in lower-income nations) are concerned about emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), particularly carbon dioxide (CO2), and their effects on climate. Behind the media furore and polarized sniping, there are legitimate concerns and scientific discussions around GHGs and their environmental impacts. The precautionary principle says that the less stuff humanity introduces to upset Earth’s ecological balances, the better – so it’s safe to say that reducing anthropogenic (human-made)...
