We live in a second carbon period. Carbon dioxide is the main force driving global warming just as it did in the first carbon period 359 million years ago. When the CO2 level rose and fell in the first carbon period, so did the temperature. Our climbing CO2 is stimulating plant growth. That could increase […]
Category: Fossil fuels
Global warming denial burdens world with catastrophe
Global warming denial—the work of ignorance, wishful thinking, demagoguery, and heedless self-interest—spreads global catastrophe. A writer in a letter in the Toronto Star asserts that “…climate change has absolutely nothing to do with carbon emissions… climate change is not about science but rather about the politics of social engineering and wealth transfer.” It is this, […]
The failed life of Donald Trump
Donald Trump (presidential portrait, cropped). Intelligence is one thing. Wisdom is something else entirely. Saddest are those with a plethora of intelligence and a paucity of wisdom—or even common sense. They are doomed to failed, unhappy, and often destructive lives. The greatest and most destructive failures combine intelligence with unwisdom, wealth, and power. We are […]
SS Manhattan signals an open Northwest Passage
All photos by author As the ice continues to shrink, the 2017 sailing season could see a record number of vessels transiting the fabled Canadian Northwest Passage. The first vessel has already left port. An ancient resuscitated icebreaker is on a 23,000-kilometre, 150-day voyage from Toronto to Victoria to help mark Canada’s 150th birthday. A giant […]
In 19th century child labour, boys as young as eight toiled in Canada’s coal mines
In dangerous and dirty child labour, boys as young as eight years, toiling in the nineteenth-century coal mines of mines coal mines of Nova Scotia and British Columbia, were portrayed as happy and carefree. The hours were frequently long and the work was often heavy. Nova Scotia set the first minimum age requirement at […]
Darwin’s missing evolution link discovered in Ontario
Following is an excerpt from my current work in progress, Fossil Fire: A social history of the Fuels that empower and imperil. A discussion of fossil fuels should start with a discussion of fossils. To begin at the beginning, we need to go back billions of years in search of the missing fossils […]