Try Letting the People Win Some Times.

An item on the CBC web site suggests that Mr. Trudeau may appoint Chrystia Freeland to a new portfolio, perhaps deputy minister.

Trudeau is being advised to leverage Freeland's star power and place her in a role that will focus on domestic concerns. 

One option that has been discussed is naming her minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, making the restoration of national unity a focus of her mandate.

Mr. Trudeau's concern about the health of national unity is genuine but Chrystia Freeland is a poor vehicle to achieve that essential goal no matter how her mandate is framed or what powers she's given. That's a fast track to failure.

What we need is democratic restoration. Our's is a rotten system when a minority of voters, of those still willing to turn out to vote, can, by a margin of 34 to 38 per cent, determine who shall govern the rest and whether that will be by a minority or a majority. That's a formula for disaffection, division and the defeat of the very democracy we supposedly cherish and vow to uphold.

When fewer than 40 per cent can impose majority rule on the other 60 per cent, that's democracy in decay. It's rancid. It's rotten. In the long run it's ruinous. You cannot have democracy and yet so ruthlessly undermine it.

What can it be but arrogant to imagine that we can restore and build what had been such a great nation as ours in this way?

Roger Stone,a Man of Deep Convictions. Seven So Far.

Trump dirty trickster, Roger Stone, guilty of witness tampering, lying to Congress and obstruction of justice. Stone was convicted on all seven charges.

Enjoy the Greybar Hotel, Roger. I'm sure your new friends will give you lots of compliments on the Nixon tattoo.

That's Where the Donald Got the Hair

Voila! Donald Trump's hair stylist.

aka Wayne Cochran and the CC Riders

Some Clouds Do Have a - BOOM - Silver Lining

Military ordinance, such as bombs, rockets or mines, doesn't like climate change. In the really hot regions, it can be an explosive situation. They're called UEMS, unplanned explosions at munitions sites. From Scientific American:

If exposed to extreme temperatures and humidity for long enough, a munition can become unstable and may even more or less strip itself apart. The wood in antipersonnel stake mines rots; rubber and plastic in plastic mines can shatter in the unrelenting sun. Without regular monitoring, heated explosive materials within munitions can force their way through seals and filler plugs, a shell casing’s weakest points. Nitroglycerin becomes so sensitive when it absorbs moisture that even a slight shake can set it off. White phosphorus melts into a liquid at 44 degrees C and can crack a munition’s outer casing as it expands and contracts with the temperature. When explosives leak out, some react with impurities in the air to form dangerously volatile crystals on the exterior that can explode with friction or motion. “The physical effect of abnormally high temperatures is that a high level of stress occurs between components because of the different expansion rates of the individual materials,” says John Montgomery, chief technical adviser for explosive ordnance disposal at the Halo Trust, a land-mine-clearance nonprofit organization.

Mortar shells, rockets and artillery rounds are particularly vulnerable because they are powered by propellants that make them liable to launch at the slightest provocation. Chemical stabilizers prevent self-ignition. But for every five-degree-C increase above its ideal storage temperature, the stabilizer depletes by a factor of 1.7, according to the Halo Trust. That depletion accelerates if munitions are exposed to a wide temperature swing over the course of the day. Eventually, there is no more stabilizer—and as a consequence, sometimes no more munitions site either. Most of Cyprus lost electricity in July 2011 when the nation’s principal power station was taken out by 98 shipping containers full of confiscated Iranian munitions that exploded after cooking for months under the Mediterranean sun, eroding their propellants.

Higher temperatures also raise the risk of handling errors by fatigued armorers. From chaotic conflict zones to the best-equipped NATO-standard storage facilities, soldiers say summer is when explosive accidents peak because of a combination of foggy decision-making and more sensitive munitions, both caused by extreme heat. “In the military, everything is more difficult when it’s summer,” says an Iraqi artillery officer who gives his name as Ali. “And now summer never ends.”

Priorities - An Already Faltering Petro-Economy or Future Survival. One Must Yield.

There's an anecdote often attributed to Winston Churchill that goes like this:

“Churchill: "Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?" Socialite: "My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose... we would have to discuss terms, of course... " 

Churchill: "Would you sleep with me for five pounds?" 

Socialite: "Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!" 

Churchill: "Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price”

What's our price? What is Canada's price to abandon the fossil energy economy, especially coal and bitumen?

I suppose that depends who must pay. At the moment that's not us so much as people in other lands who never are included in the conversation when unprincipled people of power - Jason Kenney, Andrew Scheer, Preston Manning, Scott Moe, Stephen Harper and, yes, Justin Trudeau rise to the defence of Canada's highest carbon, most toxic fossil fuels.

There are people today who are dying from the impacts of our global, carbon-fueled climate crisis. They're dying. They're being forced from their ancestral homelands, their historic ways of life no longer viable. They're being thrust into resource wars, wars of survival. Even the lucky ones are having their lives truncated, abbreviated by lethal heat waves, crop failures and famine, new contagious diseases, severe weather events or the particulate aftermath of our petro-economies.

The climate crisis will determine the lifelong health of today’s children, doctors have warned, noting that global heating was already causing harm. 

Children are especially vulnerable and the global team of researchers say rising temperatures mean the bacteria causing deadly diarrhoea will thrive while poorer crop yields could lead to more malnutrition. 

The annual Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change tracks the impacts of global heating on health. As well as children, older people are particularly vulnerable to heatwaves since they are less able to regulate their temperature and fluid balance. 

The authors found that 220 million more people over 65 were exposed to heatwaves in 2018 compared with 2000. Europe, the report said, was especially at risk, due to its high number of older citizens living in large, hot, cities.

The 2019 report, coinciding with wildfires raging in Australia, also found that human exposure to fires had doubled since 2000. Wildfires not only cause deaths and health damage but had significant economic and social impacts. 

Nick Watts, executive director of the Lancet Countdown, said: “Children’s bodies and immune systems are still developing, leaving them more susceptible to disease and environmental pollutants. The damage done in early childhood lasts a lifetime. Without immediate action from all countries climate change will come to define the health of an entire generation.”

The study tracks 41 indicators including the spread of infectious diseases. It was found that, spurred on by global heating, the ability of dengue fever to be transmitted by mosquitoes in 2017 was at the second highest level recorded since 1950, while nine of the 10 most suitable years for transmission had happened since 2000. “Dengue is the most rapidly expanding infection around the world,” said Watts. “It is called breakbone fever because it is incredibly painful.”

The report also found 2018 was the second most suitable year on record for the spread of the cholera bacteria, which cause much of the diarrhoeal disease and wound infections around the globe. Watts said the first native cases of tick-borne encephalitis in the UK were recorded in October. “This is a disease we know is moving as a result of climate change.” 

The report said infants were worst hit by malnutrition, and that, as temperatures have risen, the capability of many cereal crops to deliver full yields has fallen in the last 30 years.

Do you imagine that when Justin Trudeau sits down with Andrew Scheer or Jason Kenney their conversation turns to dengue fever or cholera or diarrhoeal epidemics. Do they explore the countless millions of children whose immune systems are being permanently compromised, their life expectancy shortened for many, extinguished for some by our petro-economy? Of course not. Those people are never part of their deadly equation. They're collateral damage, what the petro-economy treats as "externalities" that are to be kept off the books. How obscene is it that we neither acknowledge them nor our contribution to their ordeal?

There was a time when Canada was widely seen as a force for good, an honest broker, a peace maker and a peace keeper. Our current prime minister's father tried to bridge the divide between rich and poor, north and south. Those days are over. We are not that Canada any longer. We still cling to that tattered conceit but we're lying to ourselves.

The Tories set us on a new course, one in which you no longer spoke truth to power but, instead, spoke on behalf of power. Four years of Liberal government show that's not changing.

We have established what we are.

The Cult

Critics of the Republican Party are increasingly depicting the GOP as a "cult." It's no longer the party of Lincoln. It's the cult of Donald J. Trump.

In today's Guardian, columnist Richard Wolffe explores one of the cult's High Priests, Devin Nunes.

If you were on trial on national television, facing the possible loss of your job and the probable loss of what remains of your reputation, you might not place your fate in the hands of Devin Nunes. 

Nunes is a one-time dairy farmer who now milks the bursting udders of an entire herd of conspiracy-minded cows. 

...Less the cream of the cream, Nunes is more like the curd of the absurd. This sadly is the bovine bedlam we’re all committed to for the next 12 months of American politics. 

It’s a place where the best defense of Trump exhorting a foreign leader is that he was somehow rooting out corruption; where he was supposedly investigating foreign interference in the 2016 election when he was bribing a foreign government to interfere in the 2020 election; where the FBI and CIA have undermined themselves; and where the Democrats have been colluding with the Russians. 

Nunes led the herd in arguing that this is a victimless crime – the Ukraine president got his stupid missiles anyhow. In fact Nunes was really arguing that impeachment is the criminal victimization of a poor helpless crusader for truth, justice and good government, who happens to live in the people’s house on Pennsylvania Avenue. 

By some miracle of telekinesis, Nunes’s brain created a White House video featuring our humble hero, who insisted that his own impeachment wasn’t all it seemed on live television. 

“What’s going on now is the single greatest scam in the history of American politics,” said the real estate guy who is something of an expert in scams.

...“It’s all very simple,” said our very simple president. “They’re trying to stop me because I’m fighting for you.”  

This may come as news for anyone who is not circling the barnyard. Trump was apparently fighting for regular Americans when he was extorting the Ukraine president to smear Joe Biden.

Trump and Nunes are obviously hoping that voters cannot see through the fog on this farm. These hearings are so darn complicated and foreign, maybe Americans will never remember whether four legs are good or bad. 

This is the latest in a long line of so-called defense strategies that have run the gamut from unlikely to unbelievable. First came the wild fabrications: Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, was supposedly perfect, and the whistleblower doesn’t exist.  

Then came the wild conspiracies: the Democrats were themselves fabricating evidence in secret hearings that somehow included Republicans. We spent an epoch or two debating Latin tit-for-tats. Now we have arrived at the stage of debate that involves hurling turds at a wall in the hope of finding something adhesive.

But what is a cult? What common threads run through the Branch Davidians, the Peoples Temple, the Manson Family, the Moonies, Heaven's Gate, and now the GOP and the Cult of Maga. From the International Cultic Studies Association:

The group claims to pursue lofty goals (e.g., salvation, bringing enlightenment to the world for the sake of peace, or solutions to specific world problems and injustices), sometimes through violent means. But a close look at the group’s accomplishments will invariably show that these publicly proclaimed goals are not reached, or that they mask less noble goals, such as amassing monetary wealth, gaining power and control over the followers, and feeding the leader’s need for adulation. Followers support and promote the leader’s self-aggrandizement in part because they perceive themselves as gaining prestige in the group for their righteous devotion and service to the leader. 

The defining characteristic of leaders of cultic groups is their need for adoration and for the continual buttressing of their delusional sense of omnipotence and infallibility. The leaders use all the means at their disposal—intimidation, seduction, systems of reward and punishment—to enforce the followers’ dependence on them. These leaders present themselves as fully realized or otherwise highly spiritual beings who have attained all that they need, or who have transcended need. Followers are typically persuaded to believe that their spiritual and material needs can only be met through total compliance with the leader’s demands, whether the demands be for work, money, sex, or recruitment of more followers.

Trump and his MAGA cult, public and Congressional, certainly fit that bill.

You Don't Have to Like Hillary to Know She's Right

Hillary Clinton brought a warning to an audience in London today - Britain is at risk of succumbing to authoritarianism and fascism.

Speaking to an audience in London, Clinton said she took “very seriously” the fact that significant numbers of female MPs had opted not to run again for parliament in the coming election, in many cases citing online intimidation and threats against their safety. 

“When I heard about all these people, particularly the women, who weren’t going to run again [as MPs], and they attributed it to the threats they are going to face, that is not only a threat to individuals, that is a threat to democracies,” she said.

“If people are intimidated out of running for office in a democracy because of these hatemongers on the left or the right … that is the path [to] authoritarianism, that is the path [to] fascism.”

While we have fanciful notions that Britain stood alone against the Nazis as the rest of Europe yielded to Hitler, there were several prominent Brits, including royalty, who actually supported fascism. There have always been some who have flirted with authoritarianism, especially in the runup to WWII. Then King Edward, who abdicated to marry "that Wallis woman," American divorcee Wallis Simpson, was rather sympathetic to Hitler.

Trump "We're Keeping the Oil."

Turkish president Recep Erdogan seems to have received a warm welcome to the White House from his American counterpart, Donnie Trump. During the obligatory joint press conference Trump addressed the purpose of American troops remaining in Syria.



Is America out to seize Syrian oil? Having abandoned the Kurds is it now trying to prevent them from getting control of that oil? Has he cut some side deal with Erdogan?

That's the nature of Thug Life - nothing is ever really as it seems.

What? Labour Costs are Causing Foreign Companies to Leave China.

Deutche Welle reports that a surprising number of German companies are shifting all or part of their Chinese operations elsewhere. A transformation under way in China is making other, lower-wage countries much more attractive.

Nearly a quarter of German companies operating in China are planning to relocate all or part of their business out of the Asian country, according to a study released Tuesday by the German Chamber of Commerce in China.

The annual survey of 526 member firms in China found that 23% of them have either already decided to withdraw production capacity from the country or are considering it. A third of those companies have planned to leave China entirely. 

The rest say they will transfer part of their business and production overseas, largely to lower-cost countries in Asia. 

Operating costs in China have been rising as the country seeks to rebalance its economy from an export and investment-led model to one driven by services and consumer spending.

Photo - Chinese workers man the line at a VW plant in Shanghai.

International Energy Agency Sees Encouraging Signs on Climate Change but Too Little, Too Late.

The International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook 2019 sees renewable energy and electric vehicles coming on stream much faster than predicted but not nearly fast enough.

The New York Times summarizes the 810-page IEA report.

Since last year, the agency has significantly increased its future projections for offshore wind farms, solar installations and battery-powered cars, both because these technologies keep getting cheaper and because countries like India keep ramping up their clean-energy targets. 

But the report also issues a stark warning on climate change, estimating that the energy policies countries currently have on their books could cause global greenhouse gas emissions to continue rising for the next 20 years. One reason: The world’s appetite for energy keeps surging, and the rise of renewables so far hasn’t been fast enough to satisfy all that extra demand. The result: fossil fuels use, particularly natural gas, keeps growing to supply the rest. 

“Without new policies in place, the world will miss its climate goals by a very large margin,” said Fatih Birol, the agency’s executive director.

"The world urgently needs to put a laser-like focus on bringing down global emissions. This calls for a grand coalition encompassing governments, investors, companies and everyone else who is committed to tackling climate change."

Today's Deep Thought

What's Our Policy to Avert Epidemics?

Beijing hospitals are treating two people for plague. It's not the bubonic plague. It is the much deadlier pneumonic plague.

Plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and can arise in three forms – a lung infection, known as pneumonic plague; a blood infection, known as septicemic plague; and a form that affects the lymph nodes, called bubonic plague. 

The latter form is perhaps the most famous, and was behind several pandemics including the Black Death of the late middle ages, which is estimated to have killed up to 60% of the European population. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US, plague typically spreads to humans who have handled an infected animal or who have been bitten by a flea hosted by an infected animal. However, in the case of pneumonic plague it can be spread when an infected person coughs. Pneumonic plague is highly contagious and is fatal if not treated quickly with antibiotics.

Venice Has a Water Problem

The city of canals and gondolas is no stranger to seasonal flooding but even Venice is not immune to sea level rise.  The city is now taking the brunt of the highest tides it has seen in 50 years and climate change is said to be the cause.

The mayor of Venice is poised to declare a state of emergency after the city was hit by the highest tide in more than 50 years, with another surge expected to cause further widespread flooding and destruction on Wednesday. 

Flooding in the lagoon city reached its second-highest level ever in the wake of the aqua alta, or high waters, which reached 1.87 metres late on Tuesday night amid heavy rain, just short of the record 1.94 metres (78 in) recorded in 1966. 

More than 85% of Venice was flooded, authorities said, including the historic basilica and many of its squares and alleyways. While the water level dropped slightly on Wednesday morning, a further torrent of water, whipped up by high winds, is forecast to sweep in later in the day, reaching a level of 1.60 metres.

Compounding the city's problems is ongoing subsidence, just over 9 inches in the past century. With sea levels expected to continue rising for centuries even as historic Venice sinks, it is going to take some creative genius to save the lagoon city. A 2 metre tide would submerge 90 per cent of the city.

St Mark’s Square was submerged by more than one metre of water, while the adjacent St Mark’s Basilica was flooded for the sixth time in 1,200 years – but the fourth in the last two decades. The last occasion, in November 2018, caused an estimated €2.2m (£1.9m) of damage

Canadian Exceptionalism

There are some 180 countries but Canada is one of just three.  We are rated one of three countries "least likely" to meet our GHG emissions targets. Way to go, Canada.

The G20 nations account for 85 per cent of global economic activity and in 2018 produced 80 per cent of all greenhouse-gas emissions, which accumulate in the atmosphere and trap heat. 

The [Climate Transparency] report says about half the G20 members – 19 countries with advanced economies plus the European Union collectively – are on track to meet their current targets for cutting emissions by 2030 but those targets are much too mild. If every G20 member does not drastically scale up its targets, the G20 overall will produce more emissions in 2030 than it does today, Climate Transparency said. 

Canada, South Korea and Australia are the farthest from meeting targets to cut emissions in line with their Paris Agreement commitments, but those commitments are nowhere close to enough, the report says. Canada’s per-capita emissions, the greenhouse gases it releases divided by the number of people who live here, are the second highest in the G20, behind only Australia.

Of course, promises are always relative. If Canada was already a low emitter - as our government claims - it really wouldn't matter much if we didn't come through with our promises.

But Canada isn't a low emitter. We're a big emitter. We're in the top ten for overall emissions and, once the Justin Trudeau Memorial Pipeline, comes on stream we're expected to leap two, maybe three spots on that ranking. Speaking of threes, we're also in the top three for per capita emissions.

We see cutting emissions as a mortal threat to our economy and, in Canada, the economy shall always trump the global environment, the climate emergency proclamation notwithstanding.

Oh yeah, one other thing. The "targets" we're expected to miss - badly? Those were set by Stephen Harper.

What's Going On In Our Waters? The Coastal Climate Crisis.

Until a couple of years ago coastal British Columbia had masses of purple starfish. Then something wiped them out.

Sea star wasting disease hit hard and fast. The disease arrived on the central coast of British Columbia in 2015 and rapidly killed 96 percent of the sunflower sea stars in the region. The disease exacted a similar toll on a range of other sea star species along the northeast Pacific coast. Jenn Burt, a doctoral candidate at Simon Fraser University and a Hakai Institute scholar,* was shocked by the carnage she witnessed. 

“When we showed up in the summer of 2015 to do our annual surveys, there were melted sea stars everywhere,” says Burt. “You would be literally swimming on a transect line and you’d come across single sea star arms.”

...Sea otters selectively hunt the largest sea urchins. Sea stars, however, go after the small and medium ones. In the absence of sea stars, Burt saw a proliferation of smaller urchins. These urchins, now unrestrained by predation, ate away at the kelp. As a result, the kelp forests suffered. With the SSWD epidemic, the annual survival rate of small and medium sea urchins increased by 166 percent. The density of affected kelp forests, meanwhile, declined by 30 percent.

It has been reported in recent months that Vancouver Island's kelp forests are coming under attack by massive numbers of urchins.

Tens of millions of voracious purple sea urchins that have already chomped their way through towering underwater kelp forests in California are spreading north to Oregon, sending the delicate marine ecosystem off the shore into such disarray that other critical species are starving to death. It's similar to what has been reported in B.C. 

A recent count found 350 million purple sea urchins on one Oregon reef alone — a more than 10,000 per cent increase since 2014. And in northern California, 90 per cent of the giant bull kelp forests have been devoured by the urchins, perhaps never to return. 

Vast "urchin barrens" — stretches of denuded seafloor dotted with nothing but hundreds of the spiny orbs — have spread to coastal Oregon, where kelp forests were once so thick it was impossible to navigate some areas by boat.

Now the climate crisis is believed to be the main cause of a deadly virus sweeping through sea mammals - sea lions, seals and otters - in the North Pacific.

A lethal virus that killed tens of thousands of harbor seals in the northern Atlantic in 2002 suddenly spread to sea lions, seals and otters in the northern Pacific Ocean two years later, confusing scientists, as NBC News reported. 

How could the pathogen that causes a measles-like disease in marine mammals that had only been found on the Atlantic coasts suddenly have spread to the Pacific? 

"We didn't understand how a virus from the Atlantic ended up in these sea otters. It's not a species that ranges widely," said Tracey Goldstein, a scientist at the University of California Davis who investigates how pathogens move through marine ecosystems, as National Geographic reported. 

Goldstein and her colleagues looked at 15 years of data and realized that the spike in the virus was commensurate with Arctic sea ice loss. The data, published in a new study in the journal Scientific Reports, finds that the loss of Arctic sea ice allowed otters and other mammals to move west and spread the virus. The study shows that global heating is opening new avenues for diseases to spread, as National Geographic reported. 

"The loss of sea ice is leading marine wildlife to seek and forage in new habitats and removing that physical barrier, allowing for new pathways for them to move," said Goldstein in a press release. "As animals move and come in contact with other species, they carry opportunities to introduce and transmit new infectious disease, with potentially devastating impacts."

The devastation of local otter populations and the starfish could explain the attack by urchins on our kelp forests. Otters feed on the urchins, keeping their populations under control and thereby safeguarding the kelp from their main predator.

This past week the New York Times reported on a contagious form of cancer attacking shellfish. The article claims the cancer is believed to have originated in bay mussels from British Columbia.  This cancer virus has now been found in mussels and clams in South America and in blue mussels in France. No one seems to know how this ends, what's next. All I know is that the federal Pacific headquarters of Fisheries and Oceans is in no rush to return my calls.

So what is Mr. Trudeau's Liberal government doing about this? Apparently nothing beyond squabbling with a gaggle of dryland premiers about a hopelessly gestural carbon tax as he falls even further behind meeting Stephen Harper's emissions targets.

We know salmon stocks are in decline. We know the orca can't find enough food and are at risk. Ottawa's response - let's build a new pipeline and launch an armada of supertankers onto the BC coast.

The study adds to a growing body of research signaling trouble for marine mammals, including an increase in marine heat waves that deplete their food supply and an increase in toxic algal blooms that can infect fish with a toxin that causes brain damage in marine mammals, as NBC News reported. 

"When we see these changes happening in animals, we can't ignore them, because the impacts on people and the planet are not far behind," said Elizabeth VanWormer, the study's lead author, as NBC News reported. "This shows how interconnected these things are — the health of people, animals and the planet."

Starfish, mussels, clams, otters, seals and sea lions all form links in the marine ecosystem. That ecosystem is now breaking down. No one knows how this ends.

This is coming on hard and fast and Ottawa is asleep at the switch. The message is clear. When climate change comes hammering on your door, you are on your own.

The Brits Banned Fracking. Not Ottawa, And It's Ruining the Atmosphere.

A study out of Cornell has found that the fracking boom in the US and Canada is the chief culprit in the large spike in atmospheric methane levels.

Professor Robert Howarth examined hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, over the past several decades, noting the fracking boom that has taken place since the first years of the 21st century. Between 2005 and 2015, fracking went from producing 31 billion cubic meters of shale gas per year to producing 435 billion cubic meters. 

Nearly 90 percent of that fracking took place in the U.S., while about 10 percent was done in Canada.

...In addition to being the second-biggest contributor to the climate crisis after carbon dioxide, methane has been known to cause and exacerbate health issues for people who live in areas where large amounts of the gas is present in the environment. 

Chest pains, bronchitis, emphysema and asthma can all be caused or worsened by high levels of methane. The process of fracking has also been linked to pollution in drinking water.

Of course these are treated as "fugitive emissions" and therefore kept off Canada's emissions books. The Trudeau government is a big fan of LNG.  So too is our NDP government.

Yeah, A Tanker-Free Zone. Except When Ottawa Says Otherwise.

Ottawa needs to leave the safety of the west coast to the grownups. Ottawa's department of fisheries and oceans seems intent on wreaking as much havoc in the Pacific as it caused the eastern provinces when their once fabled cod stocks collapsed.

Out this way, DFO seems to work for the commercial fishing fleet. Maybe it's just the Trudeau government. Doesn't matter. They approve fish farms that spread disease into the wild salmon stocks. They allow overfishing of the coastal herring that feed the wild salmon. Salmon stocks are in decline. DFO looks the other way and the commercial fleet has at them. The orca are starving from the lack of salmon. Now we have to learn from the New York Times that some species of shellfish out here have developed a contagious form of cancer.
Call DFO, they don't even return their messages.

Ottawa promised a tanker free zone along the north coast. Except for the exceptions.


10,000 Ton Texas Tanker traveling the B.C. Coast from Ingmar Lee on Vimeo.

When "Worst Case" Becomes Your New Normal

How did scientists get climate change so wrong? The question is asked in today's New York Times. Things are happening today that just ten or fifteen years ago scientists were warning might - worst case scenario - but just might happen by the end of this century if we didn't change our ways.

Had a scientist in the early 1990s suggested that within 25 years a single heat wave would measurably raise sea levels, at an estimated two one-hundredths of an inch, bake the Arctic and produce Sahara-like temperatures in Paris and Berlin, the prediction would have been dismissed as alarmist. But many worst-case scenarios from that time are now realities.

...A recent essay in Scientific American argued that scientists “tend to underestimate the severity of threats and the rapidity with which they might unfold” and said one of the reasons was “the perceived need for consensus.” This has had severe consequences, diluting what should have been a sense of urgency and vastly understating the looming costs of adaptation and dislocation as the planet continues to warm.

The NYT article sets out a litany of bad calls, stretching from one pole to the other and everything in between. Even as the powerful denounced them as "alarmists," the scientific community continued to grievously err on the side of understatement, bordering on unfounded optimism.

The harm they caused by refusing to speak candidly, truthfully, is that they provided the cover the political caste needed to do as little as possible to thwart or adapt to severe climate change impacts.

 Our own prime minister is still working off targets set by Stephen Harper and we're not even on course to meet those. Canadians I meet don't know that Canada with our minuscule 0.5 per cent of the global population is in the Top Ten overall greenhouse gas emitters. They don't know we're in the Top Three per capita emitters. When the feds get the Justin Trudeau Memorial Pipeline operational, Canada is expected to move up three spots on the Top Ten list.

When a nation with barely one half of one per cent of the global population makes it into the Top Ten overall greenhouse gas emitters, worse than 170 other countries, and your government says it doesn't matter, we're small potatoes, what we do doesn't matter, then what anybody, any nation does really doesn't matter, does it?

If the Trump administration has its way, even the revised worst-case scenarios may turn out to be too rosy. In late August, the administration announced a plan to roll back regulations intended to limit methane emissions resulting from oil and gas exploration, despite opposition from some of the largest companies subject to those regulations. More recently, its actions approached the surreal as the Justice Department opened an antitrust investigationinto those auto companies that have agreed in principle to abide by higher gas mileage standards required by California. The administration also formally revoked a waiver allowing California to set stricter limits on tailpipe emissions than the federal government. 

Even if scientists end up having lowballed their latest assessments of the consequences of the greenhouse gases we continue to emit into the atmosphere, their predictions are dire enough. But the Trump administration has made its posture toward climate change abundantly clear: Bring it on! 

It’s already here. And it is going to get worse. A lot worse.

You Feelin' Like You Need a Laugh?

When I "cut the cable" I lost my connection to CBC's 22 Minutes. I still haven't worked out what to do with that but I have reconnected with 22 Minutes. The satire is pretty awesome, enough to make any Canuck proud. Here, a few.




No harm meant, Maxime. Maybe a bit.


Then, for your nightcap, this. I think it will outlive us all.

Has DFO Screwed Up Again?

Have BC mussels developed a form of contagious cancer?

The New York Times is reporting on research out of Columbia University that traced the cancer back to Bay mussels from British Columbia and has since spread to shellfish in South America and Europe.

Humans have spread a contagious form of cancer around the world. 

Researchers reported on Tuesday that the cancer, which invades mussels, has spread across the Equator. Originating in one species in the Northern Hemisphere, the cancer has established itself in another species in the Southern Hemisphere. 

“There’s no natural explanation for how that happened without human help,” said Michael Metzger, a biologist at the Pacific Northwest Research Institute in Seattle and a co-author of the report, published in the journal eLife.

While working as a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University, Dr. Metzger discovered that four species of shellfish — including soft-shell clams and bay mussels — had transmissible cancers of their own. It was the first time anyone had discovered contagious cancer in aquatic animals.

Dr. Metzger and his colleagues suspect that sick shellfish release cancer cells. The cells float along the currents until they are sucked up by healthy animals as they filter seawater for food. In one case, the researchers found, the cancer cells had moved from one species of shellfish into another. 

Nicolas Bierne, a geneticist at the University of Montpellier in France who studies blue mussels, realized that this finding perhaps held the solution to a mystery that he had been struggling with. 

Analyzing the DNA from blue mussels in France, he and his colleagues had discovered some genetic markers that looked as if they belonged to another species: bay mussels. He might have expected such a result if these species interbred — but bay mussels don’t even live in French waters.

Being fond of our local shellfish I called the seafood shop at the nearby fishing port. They've heard nothing. Seeking assurance I then called the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans at their Vancouver headquarters. Those who read this blog know the esteem in which I hold DFO.

The fellow I spoke with had heard nothing about it but he put me on to someone else's voicemail. I'm not holding my breath while I await their callback.

If this is a health hazard that DFO has overlooked that could be the final straw. It's time that British Columbia put an end to Ottawa's incompetence and reclaimed jurisdiction over our own fisheries.