climate, photos, miscellany
Earlier, I wrote about whether the phrase ‘greenhouse gas pollution’ is accurate, and whether it might be useful for building political will to do something about climate change. The phrase is accurate – CO2 is an unwanted by-product of various processes and it does harm to people all over the world – and it may [...]
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A pattern seems to have developed in the legislative politics of a certain northern country. The people in power boast that they are going to do something dramatic but somewhat foolhardy: “Watch! I am going to hammer this tent peg up your nose!” or “Let’s make the census optional!” or “Let’s throw people in jail [...]
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The Conservative government is proposing a new law that would require internet service providers to monitor and record what Canadians do online, and to provide that information to the authorities without a warrant. As well as being an obvious violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (§8 “Everyone has the right to be secure [...]
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From Daniel Yergin’s The Quest: To demonstrate environmental sensitivity [at the negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol], the Japanese organizers turned down the heating in the conference center. But this created a new problem as Kyoto in December was cold. To compensate, the Japanese decided to distribute blankets to the delegates. But they did not have [...]
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Back in 2010, I described what I called the ‘first rule of the internet‘: Against a sophisticated attacker, nothing connected to the internet is secure. To this, I feel like I should add a second item: Everything is internet now. While there were once large numbers of electronic systems entirely disconnected from the internet, nowadays [...]
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XKCD is right, this is worth a look today: List of common misconceptions From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Note: Nero didn’t fiddle while Rome burned. The ancient Greeks knew that the Earth was spherical, and how large it was. Napoleon was not short. He was slightly taller than the average Frenchman. The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t [...]
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One classic mistake made by cartoon supervillains concerns the complicated piece of machinery that is inevitably at the heart of their secret plan. It might be a time travel device of some sort, or a machine that strips the opposing superhero of their power, or a key part of a world domination scheme. As a [...]
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The combination of grossly insufficient sleep and mild snowfall has produced a morning of havoc. My normally-hour-and-a-half commute became two and a half hours, with people crammed cheek-by-jowl in a streetcar with totally fogged windows, lurching among confused drivers. Then, I forgot my (quite durable and expensive) umbrella somewhere on the subway or in a [...]
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Henry Shue has written convincingly about the moral importance of the rich giving up luxuries for the sake of fighting climate change, before the poor are asked to give up necessities. As he explains it, even in an emergency you sell the jewelry before you sell the blankets. The ultimate example of luxury emissions is [...]
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Since the 2008 credit crunch, the governments of the world have been obsessed with economic conditions: trying to find ways to increase growth, improve the stability of the financial system, and cut unemployment. All other societal projects have taken a back seat. Given reasonable concerns about the economic future of the world, it seems like [...]
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Keep carbon underground. Help stop the Northern Gateway oil sands pipeline.
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Content copyright Milan Ilnyckyj (2003-2012). May be used non-commercially with attribution. For more details see this page.