The most recent official tally of numbers and causes of death in Alberta (2021) is available publicly, and the trends are alarming. I must admit I got a sinking feeling when I saw the data reveal a large increase in the 2021 death rates over 2020, which were already the highest in the past 20 years.
Things did not go in the right direction, despite government-mandated pandemic interventions (e.g., social distancing, masking, business closures) and...
Adequate, affordable, and available energy lies at the centre of modern human existence.
Energy for food, shelter, warmth, and transportation enables long, healthy and productive lives. Yet many in our society have lost sight of this fundamental truth, caught up in a blinkered focus on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. As a result, people and industries in many high-income nations are experiencing energy shortages, or are paying so much for energy that they cannot...
In the past month, I have attended two scientific conferences, each addressing a key component of humanity’s transition to more complex and diverse energy systems.
The North American Helium Conference, hosted by the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists in Denver, brought together helium explorers from Canada and the United States to talk about finding and developing new sources of helium in secure domestic markets. The Atlantic Canada Carbon Neutrality Forum in Halifax explored how to...
ChatGPT has a “mind” of its own, with apparently strong opinions about climate change, as you can see from its Shakespearean-style lament below.
My contribution to the literary composition of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot was the simple prompt, “Write a poem about climate change in the style of Shakespeare.” The reason for the rhyme was research for Part 2 in my series of articles on AI (AI: Where are we and where are we...
Part 2: The state of the art
It is difficult to assess the “state of the art” when it comes to artificial intelligence because in the time it has taken you to read this sentence, AI has advanced. Unlike any other scientific endeavour that humans have undertaken – which tend to progress relatively systematically with the occasional breakthrough – AI is in a period of mind-blowing, unpredictable change.
I recently asked an audience of about 50...
Last November 29, a series of three earthquakes shook the Peace River area in northern Alberta. The biggest shock measured 5.59 magnitude – a modest quake by many standards, but one of the largest ever recorded in normally quiet Alberta, Canada. There were no injuries reported, in part due to the remote location.
Of course, people wanted to know – why did these events happen? Were they natural or human-made? Were they isolated occurrences, or...
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago is one of the great tragedies of the 21st century – millions of lives lost or disrupted, untold destruction, and economic upset throughout the world.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) tells us that one of the terrible outcomes of the invasion and subsequent war was to create a global energy crisis (Where things stand in the global energy crisis one year on). In this commentary, IEA...
There is so much written about humanity’s energy transition in the 21st century, and many of these articles, blogs, and studies are informative, examining different aspects of incredibly complex energy projects and processes around the world. But others are thinly veiled advocacy pieces, pushing viewpoints motivated by the authors’ interests. And, of course, in this era in which anyone can air their views online without oversight, there is a great deal of misinformation floating...
A recent studyclaimed that the best protection against COVID-19 illness comes from a combination of a full series of COVID-19 vaccination and prior infection with SARS-CoV-2.
Analysing data from 26 previously published studies, the authors claim that this “hybrid immunity” is a clear indication of the need for continued vaccination – even among people who have had COVID-19 and recovered. Those with hybrid immunity were reported to have above 95% protection against severe disease and...
There is so much talk about energy today – and it’s about time, because energy is a critically important issue that deeply affects the life of every human in the world today. We use energy in everything we do, and a life without modern energy is a life of deprivation.
But, you might say, “we have been talking intensively about energy for decades now, so what do you mean, ‘it’s about time’?”
I mean that, no,...
