A Background You Can Stand On

It comes as no surprise to most people, tar (oil) sand boosters or boo-ers alike, that tar sand strip mining increases water pollution in the mined region. The same is often said about the sites of uranium mines too, but this article focuses on tar sand pollution.

Governments in Canada are desperately trying to pull the wool over peoples’ eyes, and they might succeed. There are swarms of loyal monkeys pounding at a million keyboards in Canada, libeling the people responsible for the most believable research around tar sand mines and untapped bitumen deposits. I became curious why one of the monkeys commenting on the CBC.ca story mentioned David Schindler as a source of biased research.

Not being a servant monkey of the Conservative Party or Small Dead Animals crowd, I did a Google search to learn about this scientist who the right wing are vilifying. It turns out Schindler’s not famous for biased research (big surprise eh?), but he is famous for identifying well known water based pollutants as the cause of serious environmental degradation in other Canadian bodies of water. Do acid rain and phosphates sound familiar? They were among the last pollutants that Canadians gave enough of a damn about to actually make an effort to reduce through legislation.

No wonder the servant monkeys are working overtime to keep Schindler’s work out of the eyes of Canadians.

From NSERC page on Schindler:
Responsible for major advances in our understanding of the effects of phosphorous and acid rain on lake chemistry and organisms. This research was influential in leading to restrictions in phosphorous content in detergents and changes in air quality legislation in Canada, the United States and the European Economic Community. More recently, he has made important advances in our understanding of the effects of global warming and of increased ultraviolet radiation (from stratospheric ozone depletion) on boreal lakes.

Astroids and Mice

There’s a significant possibility of an asteroid hitting the Earth in 172 years from now. There’s also an unknown level of possibility around an asteroid hitting us today, tomorrow, or in 72 years. If we’d spend more time defending against the threats that don’t care about politics or resources (infectious disease and space objects), then we’d have a safer time in the universe.

The latest modeling can’t predict if the asteroid will hit us or not in 172 years, because there is a rotation of the asteroid that makes its precise orbit incalculable without more precise data and models. As time passes, we will hopefully be able to reduce the risk to 0% through clever intervention at the asteroid site.

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Fake scientists, by the way, have come together to state their dislike of mice.

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The NOAA provides 10 further points of evidence that the Earth’s climate is warming, and has been for decades.

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Meanwhile, Alberta and federal Conservatives strive to dupe American politicians into accepting that tar sand processing isn’t dirtier than fighting wars in the Middle East for oil.

Chinese oil problems continue too. People are cleaning up oil in a river, with their bare hands!

Talking to a Climate Change Skeptic

You now have an easy way to tell people on Twitter about scientific data that points to the existence of human caused climate change.

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This is scarier than terrorism. It’s absolutely terrifying that someone would get kicked off a plane for watching a video. And it happened IN CANADA on Air Canada! Also in Canada was a strip search of an innocent woman using a payphone at an airport. In the search, she was mocked by an official.

Spaced Out

The Canadian government spent half a million dollars on trying to make tasty space-worthy food, and came up with off-the-shelf beef jerky? Duh! The commenter in the article who suggested bison is “gourmet” really ought to study history a little. Buffalo jerky (pemmican) is probably Canada’s oldest known food.

Improving Emergency Alerts

It has concerned me for a number of years how unprepared Regina is for another tornado. A few pass the city every year it seems, yet there’s no siren system for those who don’t have a radio or TV on at the time a storm is set to come through. There’s no guarantee the radio or TV will broadcast an alert in time, or that Environment Canada has the ability to warn Saskatchewanians in a timely way either. How do they do things in Tornado Alley, USA? Surely there are some affordable systems that work in small urban settings?

The UofR is testing some sort of alert system for the Green. Other outdoor spaces in the city should have an early warning system too.

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Civilization is also unprepared for a large solar storm. We’ve built our devices and economies around the expectation that ground threats to telecommunication are as bad as it gets. That’s not true, there’s a threat from space, and more specifically the Sun. It’s quite possible that dozens of satellites essential to telecommunications could go off in a day, and take months to replace. Could the Internet handle the rerouting? Possibly, but you may be without TV stations for a few days or weeks, or longer, and GPS functioning could diminish, or cell phone towers may need repair, etc.

It’s happened on a “small” scale before, and will likely happen again in our lifetime on a larger scale.

Remember “Climategate”? ; And Twitter Glossary

My letter to the Wall Street Journal’s editors:

“The WSJ’s continues to publish misinformation about climate change. Normally this accusation would be gravely accepted by the WSJ’s editor(s), but after such dishonesty or willful blindness to the truth, the editor(s) hardly seem to care about truth and justice any longer.”

(via @RepowerAmerica {Whose website unhelpfully says that a postal code needs 5 numbers})

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And you could be forgiven if you’ve never heard of “Climategate”, when emails were stolen from prominent scientists, as an effort to find a supposed conspiracy among scientists to falsely present evidence around the earth’s greenhouse effect and pollution levels.

Many people in the world are unfamiliar with commonplace buzzwords on the Internet. The Times gives a guide for those Facebook has left behind.

I’ve published glossaries for Twitter previously, explaining the following:

Tweet = a 140 character (maximum) comment made on the Twitter user’s website, which their ‘Followers’ can easily find and read.

Followers = any Twitter user that keeps track of a specific Twitter user’s account. Followers are the first people to see what you Tweet on Twitter. They are similar to “friends” on Facebook.

RT = ReTweet – which means to resend a comment made by someone else using Twitter, so that your followers see the Tweet you read and liked.

#tag = a “Hashtag” – which means other people can search for a ‘tagged’ subject on the Twitter website. The symbol ‘#’ is followed by a word which the writer is classifying the comment under.

@username = a Twitter user’s name on the Twitter website. Comments with a user’s name preceded by ‘@’, can be quickly seen by the ‘@username’ mentioned user.

Autoclave This

Will the autoclave for sterilizing surgical equipment become out of date? This machine might have a thing to say about it. And even more interesting, you may be able to remove problem bacteria or bugs right from your skin without injuring it! The possibilities are exciting.

Science Related Party Tricks

My favourite party tricks involve juggling and knives, not seen here though.

Solution to Energy Problem

The_Gospel_of_Green

I’ve had this CBC video on my “to watch” radar for quite some time, but haven’t got to it yet. It’s about how Germany has created a green economy through simple legislative changes. Could it happen here in Saskatchewan? It must!

The Liberal supported NDP climate change action bill has a long way to go before it starts to make a difference in how much pollution we see and breathe in our air.

Boobquake Meme Meter

-(Religious people can be responsible for a lot of the world’s crackpot ideas like earthquakes are caused by men being corrupted by immodestly dressed women. The book in the photo is an example of science being corrupted by Ray Comfort.)

All told, I think Boobquake 2010 fell flat today. I hope Jen doesn’t regret later in life that her 15 minutes of Internet fame came from a joke about breasts. I’m guessing she won’t, as I don’t regret my fame coming from putting a foil hat on my cat’s head.

I’m surprised that by 8 PM on Monday that #Boobquake is not trending on Twitter. It’s a worldwide phenomenon.

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The travels of the Interwebs revealed this study from 1992 about sex attitudes amongst people in libraries.

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Read about marketing from a person who has his own radio show dedicated to it.

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And this sports story is sad and funny. It’s sad because he quite possibly accidentally ruined his reputation. And it’s funny because of how he did it, and how he’s quoted as describing it!

Merritt, who is also the world champion at 400 metres, said in a statement via his lawyer that he was “deeply sorry” at failing three doping controls for the banned substance DHEA.

The 23-year-old American, who faces a two-year ban, said: “To know that I’ve tested positive as a result of a product that I used for personal reasons is extremely difficult to wrap my hands around.

Uh, I think the expression is “wrap my head around“, unless you’re uh, talking about wrapping your hands around something. I wonder what could be now difficult to wrap your hands around? I guess the drugs worked. Yes folks, we started this blog post with boobs, and now there’s a penis joke. I am not really in Kindergarten.