Tag Archives: climate crisis

Switch to Wind, Water, Solar, and Save Billions

Posted on by John Klein

“$2B saved since Ukraine war

Wind and solar power plants generated 46.3 terawatt-hours of electricity between May 1, 2021 and April 30, 2022, the data [in Turkey] showed.

“Without these power plants, underutilized gas-fired plants or coal power plants relying on imports would have had to run in order to compensate for them,” the report added.

“Assuming that all 46.3 TWh power was generated by gas-fired plants, this would mean wind and solar power replaced $7 billion extra gas imports during that 12-month period.””

Plague Update: What Does COVID Do Anyway?

Posted on by John Klein

COVID-19 a thrombotic disease that can be caught again, and again, and again if the first bouts are survived, and isn’t confined to a “season” because it’s so much more contagious than influenza. It has multiple waves that sweep through a community each year. Governments are using ‘magical words’ to convince people there’s a “mild”, “new normal” that is acceptable and survivable so the people will willingly return to economic activity compatible with consumptive capitalism. That locust-style capitalism also happens to be ending our habitat’s economic viability and then our survivability sometime this decade or the next.

@nytimes

“The coronavirus has become more adept at reinfecting people as Omicron and its many descendants seem to have evolved to partially dodge immunity. Waves of infections two, maybe three times a year may be the future of Covid-19, some scientists now fear.”

SaskPower: A Job Half Done

Posted on by John Klein

…is as good as none.

If you’re impressed by SaskPower’s objective to reduce emissions by only half, by 2030, you’re setting the bar way too low. A big reason Saskatchewan is among the world’s worst per-capita polluters is because our electricity is a large lignite coal and fossil/natural gas component. The electricity utility crown corp has been testing solar since at least Y2K when it installed panels on the Sask. Science Centre, yet 22 years later it still has drivel like this on its website:

The federal Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault says the latest IPCC report from the UN is “sobering”, and fossil fuel companies “cannot do business as usual”, but SaskPower is sticking with its goal from half a decade ago, while it’s actually lost ground on its aim to be 50% renewable, and only “40% less emitting by 2030”. Despite putting a new 200MW wind farm online near Assiniboia, and adding a little 10MW utility solar to the mix soon, it’s added or is adding over 700MW of fossil fuel generating power since 2019.

““Right now, SaskPower is on track to reduce our carbon emissions more than 50 per cent below our 2005 levels by 2030 and we’re looking to get to net-zero emissions by 2050,” Joel Cherry, spokesperson for SaskPower said in an interview Monday.”

I don’t see how that is possible to claim given the numbers I’m seeing. This is not a sprint you want to leave 90% of the work to the last 10 metres.

Yet here’s their homepage claim:

“Renewable Power

IN SASKATCHEWAN

We’re on our way to reducing our emissions by half.
Find out how we’re getting there and the projects underway.”

Plague Update: BA.2 Taking Over

Posted on by John Klein

Our society has entered the phase of the pandemic where most people are trying to pretend that everything is normal, and there’s nothing dangerous about eating in restaurants or sending kids to school. It reminds me of the climate crisis, how we’ll still fly domestically, and buy SUVs, despite the poles of the Earth hitting record temperatures 30 and 40 degrees above seasonal averages.

Saskatoon was out of ambulances yesterday? Has that ever happened before?

The latest widespread Omicron variant is in Saskatchewan in a big, and growing way. Many people who are required to wear masks still keep them below their nose or even their mouth, pretending they’re a fashion statement instead of a medical device to keep others (and themselves) more safe. Few people I see in any given day are wearing N95 or well fitting masks, mostly it’s fashionable cloth ones, or loosely fitting black or blue medical masks.

Plague Update: Clearly Political

Posted on by John Klein

There’s a wind blowing in Canada, and it’s blowing away from public health measures that have kept most Canadians healthy and safe from the pandemic crisis primary driver, the SARS-CoV2 virus. Somewhere between 1010 Saskatchewanians and about 4000 have perished in the last 2 years from the virus, while more than a tenth of the population has directly experienced infection.

With the world not rising to the occasion, and failing to equitably produce and distribute vaccines to all people, variants have arisen and shaken the resolve of public officials and the public at large. I had several anti-waxxers on Saturday questioning me specifically about why I’d want a vaccine that wasn’t “100% effective”. They didn’t seem educated enough to have ever heard that perfect is the enemy of good.

“Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.” — Confucius, [1]

So, we have Dr. Tam and others saying that we’ll have to pretend the crisis is over and accept routine crippling sickness spreading through our air(ports) and beyond.

“For better or for worse, this is what’s going to happen across the whole country,” said Dr. Alexander Wong, an infectious diseases physician at Regina General Hospital and associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan. 

“The question is, why are we in such a rush to do all of this? It’s clearly political.”

It sure as heck isn’t a very rational, or scientific approach to getting our lives back to an old normal where the biggest reason people would be uncomfortable about going to a restaurant was the tab at the end of the night, instead of the dread of life crippling/ending infection discovered days later. Then, watching that infection spread through your family and friends…

I see this as analogous to how we handle the climate crisis also, with politics, but not science informing those political decisions. Experts explain how masses of ice poised to swamp every global coastal city are on the knife’s edge, and municipal, provincial, and federal politicians still want to build more fossil fuel pipelines and highways. Just keep piling those straws onto our camel’s back, it’s worked so far.

Why Is The SaskParty Lying About Well Cleanups?

Posted on by John Klein

Here’s the scale of the problem:

So, why is the Saskatchewan Party lying about where the bulk of the cleanup money is coming from?

Why are they lying about the cost? Oh, right, the corporate donations that would be illegal in other parts of Canada.

I guess Moe is going to be cutting @JustinTrudeau‘s government a big fat refund cheque with their claim here contradicting how much they wanted for well cleanup.

SaskPower’s War On Solar

Posted on by John Klein

SaskPower told me last decade that their Y2K test of solar panel technology at the time convinced them there was no utility future for solar. Never mind that the tech was already more than a decade old at that point, and costs had dropped while efficiency of the panels had risen significantly.

Over 4 years ago they promised to build a 10MW array of solar panels. They’ve yet to deliver. Instead, they dealt a body blow to the solar installer industry in the province by cancelling Net Metering and replacing it later with Net Billing. This is in large part to the governing party of Saskatchewan taking corporate donations that would be illegal in the rest of Canada.

The Crown utility has lied about solar technology on Twitter even. They can’t be trusted, and that’s a damn shame, because we could be at a near 100% solar grid by now if we started building 6 years ago like I and others proposed.

Saskatchewan Party Produces Pollution

Posted on by John Klein

Back in 2012, there was a problem:

Provincial water too polluted, says research

Back then, the SaskParty was promising to address climate change with a plan that included a 20% emissions cut below 2006 pollution levels, by last year, 2020. They soon deleted that target.

Then this happened, and continues to happen:

Sask. leads country in per capita greenhouse gas emissions

“Provincial environment minister says climate plan needs time to work”

No! It doesn’t. When we give the SaskParty time for their plans to work, they make emissions worse, not better. And they promote their failed Environment Ministers to party leader too.

Other jurisdictions are too Canadian/polite to give us the F grade our Petrostate deserves.

https://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/provincial/environment/ghg-emissions.aspx

Co-op Refinery VOC emissions 10x higher than average of other refineries

Sour gas emissions at refinery ‘problematically high’ says expert

That’s from back in 2015, and my understanding is that it’s been addressed to some degree. For the latest be sure to follow an expert like Prof. Eaton.

Anti-carbon tax Government attacks hundreds of EV owners with a new tax

Posted on by John Klein

Saskatchewan Government will start charging EV owners $150 a year. The Minister who removed the EV incentive almost a decade ago took his next job as Canada’s top oil and gas lobbyist. If that doesn’t scream Conflict of Interest, what does?

This is an “anti-#carbontax“, as it encourages people to stay away from a zero emission technology without directly regulating against them, and without collecting sufficient money to make a solid impact on most consumers. It’s still worth getting an EV, and gas burners will be mostly gone by the end of the decade, but the Sask Petrostate Party will still implement this unpopular tax to give a figurative middle finger to the hundreds of families who’ve decided to move on to better technology and leave oil in the dust.

SGI is sending back money, but the government is collecting over half of it back from anyone smart enough to choose a zero emission vehicle (that the federal government offers $5000 off to buy). It’s a cash grab by the desperate Sask Party. It sucks to live in a Petrostate some (most) days.

Conservatives Reject Reality

Posted on by John Klein

Sucks to be a country where the Official Opposition party rejects longstanding science that a grade school kid can understand. For ideological and economic reasons, the Conservative Party of Canada won’t accept that air pollution is bad. They won’t even accept that it’s air pollution, instead, the veg-heads erroneously call excess carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion “plant food”. And this is the party that was in charge of Canada between 2006 and 2015. Horrible.

Conservative Party members reject policy to recognize that ‘climate change is real’

On Saturday, Conservative Party delegates voted by a margin of 54% to 46% to reject a policy that would add the statement “climate change is real” to the party’s policy book, and recognize that “Canadian businesses classified as highly polluting need to take more responsibility.” The vote came just hours after Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole told delegates that the party “cannot ignore the reality of climate change.””

With how terrible the Conservatives are, the Liberals’ lacklustre, and even bad, management of the climate crisis has been getting a pass. Should Trudeau’s minority government fall during the pandemic, there’s a chance that the anti-science, racist CPC could come to power again, so I get why partisan Liberals are nervous. It’s not like there’s anything concrete for them to point to 5 years into their mandate to do far more, when their hero bought a pipeline, and has yet to build a solar or other renewable power grid where Canada still pollutes with coal burning. Emissions are up, not down.

And the carbon tax fight the ridiculously Conservative SK Government is leading the charge in, goes to the Supreme Court next week. Will the top court side with the stupid people who don’t care if the world burns?