Articles by John McGrath

Funny stuff

As the environment becomes a more potent political issue here in Canada, the denialists are coming out of the woodwork. Funny-man Linwood Barclay, in the Toronto Star, has a pair of columns this week about Al Gore's carbon-spewing ways and the importance of a second opinion, respectively.

Gore waits for the lights to change. Then, when he gets his walk signal, he proceeds across Park, strolling past dozens of idling cars and taxis and trucks that have been brought to a halt. How many tonnes of greenhouse gas were spilled into the atmosphere, just so Al Gore could cross the street?

Expressing energy consumption

A while back, I mentioned this idea of expressing energy consumption in "cubic miles of oil." I was not impressed. I feel better now that Engineer-Poet has expressed (far more intelligently) his own dissatisfaction:

Skills shortage in Alberta

From the unfolding saga of "how Canada can suck ever more oil from the ground" we get this little news item:

Canada and Mexico should accelerate efforts to import temporary Mexican energy workers to alleviate the skills shortage in Alberta and other provinces as oil sands development ramps up, top North American CEOs will recommend today.

The question is, what kind of geoengineering?

Gwynne Dyer writes of James Lovelock:

If we overwhelm the natural systems that keep the climate stable, Lovelock predicted, then we would "wake up one morning to find that [we] had the permanent lifelong job of planetary maintenance engineer ... The ceaseless intricate task of keeping all the global cycles in balance would be ours. Then at last we should be riding that strange contraption, the 'spaceship Earth', and whatever tamed and domesticated biosphere remained would indeed be our 'life support system'."

I have a nasty feeling that we are almost there.

So do I.