Never underestimate the ability of humans to overestimate their own intelligence. - moi

2025.04.04 If the polar air caps won't stay at the poles, we're heading for a new level of climate volatility.

'Major disruption' has caused Arctic polar vortex to slide off North Pole, scientists say (LiveScience)

2025.04.04 Sometime in the past month, the AESO dropped their 2024 annual report onto their website without any announcement.

I wonder what it was they didn't want Albertans or the world to know.
I mean, if I managed to drop the average price of electricity for my customers by 53% in a year, I would be announcing that with a flourish of trumpets and fireworks, not hiding the numbers. Right?
The biggest part of the savings came from the crash in natural gas prices, but the 27% increase in wind generation capacity and 10% increase in solar generation capacity aren't to be sneezed at either.
Maybe they just don't want to talk about the outages back in January and April 2024 when their much-vaunted natural gas generation didn't show up for work because it was cold outside. Cold, in Alberata, in the winter. Who knew?
I see they're still trying to hide that the grid stayed up because of renewables (including imports from Manitoba (via Saskatchewan), BC and Montana) and battery storage when natural gas plants failed. The hero in this story is renewables: low-cost electricity that is more reliable than their natural gas fleet.
AESO 2024 Annual Market Statistics - March 2025 (AESO)

2025.04.03 Rules don't apply to oil and gas sector in Canada. How about no new pipelijes until fossil foolers clean up the abandoned pipes?

[BC] Provincial agency exempted oil and gas giant from rules for timely pipeline deactivation (Times Colonist)

2025.04.03 The 2024 tally is about $11 billion higher than 2023. Industry profits were also up. Think there's a connection?

This isn't a fledgling sector that needs an incubator.
Feds supported fossil fuel sector to the tune of nearly $30 billion last year (National Observer)

2025.04.02 Actually, it's the U.S.-owned Postmedia group, posing as being Canadian, which is wrong on this one.

EDITORIAL: Carney’s wrong on pipeline law (Postmedia)
IF the oil industry thinks there is a market for western oil and gas in eastern Canada, then they should stop whining and with the program to build it. Themselves. Not another TMX paid for by taxpayers exclusively for export markets and fattening oil industry profits and no benefits to Canadian consumers. And they can't even keep the TMX running at capacity. So they don't need more oil pipeline capacity now. West coast LNG is just coming online now, so they don't need more gas pipeline capacity either, and they certainly won't have enough to justify a big pipe eastward. Trump may be saying drill, baby, drill, but the Permian field is depleting hard now, so where will the U.S. be drilling? Alaska? That's not going to get to eastern Canada.
Nope, it's not time for another taxpayer-funded pipeline from Alberta to anywhere. For energy security in eastern Canada, it's time to shift to homegrown energy. Biofuel (wood waste, canola, algae ...) and electricity from renewable sources, including energy storage in hydro reservoirs, like wind, solar and geothermal. Shift to electrical energy for building heating (heat pumps are amazing), transportation (road, rail, inland waterways), steel-making and other big energy makers, just like most aluminum smelting is done with electricity today.
However, if the fossil foolers want to keep their pipeline fever dreams alive in Canada, it's time for them to act like private sector investors the pretend to be and put the money up themselves with no taxpayer bailouts or loan guarantees or carriage subsidies or other subsidies.

2025.04.01 Fossil fuels sector pranks Canadians, who celebrate the end of climate change action by its federal government (end of 'carbon tax') like it's a win.

Calgarians celebrate end of consumer carbon tax: "It's a nice change"
The world is experiencing record heat - this is why it's about to get worse (Canadian Press)
What they actually 'won' is higher costs for housing, insurance, environmental damage ... and lower future incomes.
Average person will be 40% poorer if world warms by 4C, new research shows
Congratulations, you just gave up the one way you could have been paid to make the planet survivable through your own actions. Instead, you just signed up for the oil industry / Conservative Party of Canada plan of life-long indentureship to oil profiteers, and you're not going to keep lower prices for long - the oil industry will gouge you harder now.

2025.04.01 No joke, despite the publication date. Why are taxpayers filling fossil fuel industry coffers?

Subsidizing fossil fuels: The problem with fossil fuel subsidies (Castanet) (column 1 of 3)
(In case you care about your personal budget, $52 billion in subsidies in 2023 was $1300 each, or over $5,000 for a family of four - after taxes - in just one year. Good thing the government gave that to the oil industry, and not you - right?

2025.03.30 It's only about food, and having enough to feed North Americans, so what Britney Spears is wearing is certainly more newsworthy.

'Sobering statistic:' One-fifth of pollinators in North America at extinction risk (Canadian Press)

2025.03.28 Even after we melt all the glaciers, sea level rise will continue as water expands as it warms.

Weatherwatch: warmer water drives higher-than-expected rise in sea level (The Guardian)

2025.03.28 Kingston ON making progress: City GHG emissions have dropped 19% from 2018 to 2023, while population grew.

Climate change actions the key to Kingston's future (Whig Standard)

2025.03.27 Imagine what a story Canada could tell if our largest emitter - fossil fuels production - could take emissions seriously.

Canada's greenhouse gas emissions edge down in 2023, among lowest totals since 1990s (Canadian Press)
The government information release
Spoiler: of the total 694 MT reported, 208 MT came from oil and gas production, and 157 MT came from transportation (which is primarily burning fossil fuels), and 85 MT came from buildings, which would include space and water heating using fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels production and transportation (mostly fossil fuels) accounted for 365 MT, or 53% of the total.
Really looks like the wrong time to remove the price from GHG emissions. We should be accelerating the transition off fossil fuel dependency. More renewable energy, more storage, more EVs (there are brands other than Tesla).

2025.03.27 Another Trump (47) / Project 2025 legacy our children and grandchildren will suffer. It won't respect borders.

US could see return of acid rain due to Trump's rollbacks, says scientist who discovered it (The Guardian)

2025.03.25 If we just install enough low-cost renewable energy - with storage - we can dispense with a lot of fossil fuel use

Geothermal & Heat Pumps Are Quietly Undermining Fossil Industrial Heat (CleanTechnica)

2025.03.25 Same old methane emissions playbook: they're too small to be worth measuring, until we actually measure them.

Methane emissions from Queensland mine may be gross underestimates, UN research finds (The Guardian)

2025.03.24 Recharged using solar panels, and cutting previous transit time in half, with renewable electricity in the parking lots for EV charging.

Germany's first fully electric ferry offers carbon neutral service (seaWORK.com)

2025.03.20 Energy East and GNL Quebec were never about supplying the eastern Canadian markets; they were about exports.

Energy East, GNL Quebec could have diverted billions in Canadian energy to other markets: report (CTV News)

In the current CAPP-induced pipeline fever, it's worth remembering the point was never to supply 'the eastern bastards' with low cost Canadian oil or natural gas. It was about getting oil to the Irving refinery to supply the established U.S. market for refined oil products.

However, if the fossil fuel industry wants to pay for a pipeline itself, there are Canadian markets worth exploring, such as going north of Lake Superior for security purposes and supplying natural gas to the Ontario Ring of Fire, and displacing fracked U.S. gas in southern Ontario. Perhaps even an LNG terminal on the St.Lawrence in Eastern Ontario (assuming Quebec sticks to its no pipelines stance).Canadian taxpayers should not pay for another unacknowledged gift to Alberta like the TMX pipeline (swelling the profits of foreign oil companies) now well over $50,000,000,000.00. If the majority of Canadians are going to pay for another inter-provincial energy project that won't be functional before 2040, in needs to be forward looking. That means affordable renewable energy, storage and a secure, inter-provincial transmission network designed for the consequences of climate change like extreme temperatures, floods, wildfires, avalanches, tornadoes and hurricanes and other infrastructure like roads, rail lines and airports being damaged beyond immediate use.

This approach actually makes a lot of economic sense, and especially for Canadian taxpayers.
There is an alternative to trying to pipeline our way out of Trump's crisis - Canada should invest in green infrastructure, energy and transportation to help people today and to build a better future. (Policy Options 2025.03.24)
And if Trump's plan is to drive renewables investment out of the U.S., Canada should welcome those investors here to build a stronger, sustainable economy based on lower-cost, domestically produced, local energy creating jobs across the country.
Clean Energy Investors Can Take Their Money Anywhere (CleanTechnica 2025.03.24)
Locally produced renewable energy is the right call. (Winnipeg Free Press 2025.03.25)
Eastern Canada needs electricity to run industry and households. Heat energy can be from heat pumps as easily as it is from fracked natural gas imported from the U.S. into Ontario. Vehicles can run on electricity instead of gasoline and diesel, at much lower cost of operation. We have the technology available now. The transition makes simple economic and financial sense, even before we get the end-fossil-subsidies dividend as taxpayers. And, as an added bonus, we will reduce air, water, soil and noise pollution, and maybe beat climate change back enough that our grandkids might get to live on a survivable planet (that's this one; any other proposition is fantasy).

2025.03.20 Speaking of EV battery second life and recycling ...

Dead EV batteries get 15-year life boost with Nissan-Stena recycling breakthrough (Interesting Engineering)

2025.03.20 Even including the resources consumed in battery production, on average, Canadian EVs have up to 77% lower emissions than fossil fuel models

EVs have lower lifetime emissions than gas cars: study
And there is no recycling or second life for GHG emissions from vehicle tailpipes

2025.03.20 As I started saying decades ago, EVs are the Killer App for Smart Grids. Now, if only we had smart managers running utilities ...

Dutch EV charging trial shows peak congestion shift potential (Smart Energy International)

2025.03.19 Chinese researchers found a way to extract all the lithium from a dead battery for reuse.

Nearly 100% Of Lithium Recycled In Latest EV Battery Breakthrough (Inside EVs)

2025.03.18 For those of you who can't wait 10 minutes for an EV to recharge, BYD has now hit the 5-minute mark. Now, what's your next "an EV won't work for me issue"?

If it's about "all those batteries going to landfill" or "there's not enough lithium", see the item above.
BYD's New 'Megawatt' EV Charging Is So Fast It Makes Gas Irrelevant (Inside EVs)

2025.03.14 Serving up beef with a side of disinformation since 1989 - the U.S. beef industry

The American beef Industry understood its climate impact decades ago (Inside Climate news)

2025.03.14 Another view of what climate change looks like in the early stages

U.S. insurance giant seeks 22% premium hike for homeowners after LA fires (National Observer)

2025.03.14 Implementing BIPV on new builds would reduce costs by making the PV part of the roof structure, and provide revenue.

Covering every roof with solar could supply 2/3 of global electricity - study (electrek)

2025.03.14 Will NASA be disbanded before it can provide its next annual report?

NASA Reports Sea Levels Rose by 'Unexpected' Amount in Earth's Hottest Year (sciencealert)

2025.03.12 Grid defection. A for-profit utility will never get this account now.

Business owner refuses power company's $200,000 demand: 'I can figure that out' (TCD)

2025.03.12 The UK closes its last coal-fired power station.

Analysis: UK emissions fall 3.6% in 2024 as coal use drops to lowest since 1666 (CarbonBrief)

2025.03.12 Electricity which happens to be cheap, fast to deploy (months), zero-emissions, massively scalable, and avoids U.S. tariff tantrums.

So, why does Doug Ford hate it? Is it because he has a side deal with purveyors of non-existent nuclear reactors and U.S. based fossil natural gas? It's the best explanation I have, because his approach to the electricity file is screwing Ontario taxpayers and ratepayers.
Ontario doesn't need much additional storage for this, as we have massive hydro reservoirs for storage. The exception is Ottawa and eastern Ontario which OPG has ignored for decades, and needs more generation or transmission capacity or both. But adding renewables like wind and solar and battery storage could overcome all that at a lower cost than more nukes with no waste disposal plan or GHG-emitting, imported natural gas.
Ontario, please purchase the lowest-cost electricity (National Observer)

2025.03.11 Now, if provincial premiers, Canada could accelerate zero-GHG, zero-fuel-cost, non-tariffed electricity generation.

The world regulated sulfur in ship fuels - and the lightning stopped (The Conversation)

2025.03.10 Now, if provincial premiers, Canada could accelerate zero-GHG, zero-fuel-cost, non-tariffed electricity generation.

Canada deploys 314 MW of solar in 2024 (PV magazine)

2025.03.10 Climate change could make the upper atmosphere less stable, affecting the orbits of satellites, more space debris

Climate change could even make Earth's orbit a mess: study (Global News)

2025.03.10 Yes, that Texas. Oil and gas country. But they know a good deal when they see one. No tariffs on wind and sunlight.

Renewables Set New Records In Texas (CleanTechnica)
But if the fossils in the Texas state legislature get their way, taxpayers will once again subsidize the oil and gas industry to increase pollution.

2025.03.07 While Canada appears wedded to making the same hydrogen mistakes, again and again, Europe embraces the winning solution - electric buses

The End of Diesel: Europe's Buses Are Going Fully Electric - Fast (CleanTechnica)

2025.03.07 It would appear the U.S. economy is so bad, that the U.S. government now has to renege on past international financial commitments.

US exits fund that compensates poorer countries for global heating (The Guardian)

2025.03.07 Assuming you trust any voluntary carbon credits model, this initiative should also improved indoor air quality.

Global Carbon Standards Body ICVCM Approves Three Clean Cookstove Methods

2025.03.06 If we work together, we can accomplish big things.

Top scientists confirm Antarctica's ozone hole is actually recovering and could completely disappear (UNILAD)

2025.03.06 Sure, keep talking about climate change to piss off Trump, but do we really care about keeping a livable planet?

World must stick to climate goals despite US, UK envoy says (Reuters)

2025.03.03 Parts of EU flirt with free electricity due to renewables,

U.S. consumers will see record prices due to dependence on nuclear, coal, natural gas and tariffed imports from Canada.
Northwest Europe Power Prices Plunge Below Zero on Strong Solar Output (Oilprice.com)

2025.03.02 This is also climate change.

Wildfire season is changing in Canada - posing even greater risks to the nation’s communities and ecosystems (The Conversation)

2025.03.02 Wind turbines don't have to be big, they just have to be installed where wind blows, and storage can be implemented.

North America's largest wind turbines head for construction in Nova Scotia (National Observer)
If NS installs enough wind power WITH STORAGE to make it dispatchable power, it could end its reliance on imported coal and reduce its GHG emissions by kilotonnes CO2e annually.

2025.03.02 Let me help. No, nuclear fission SMRs won't be ready before 2040, but they will produce nuclear waste.

NB Power CEO now 'unsure' if first SMR will be ready by 'late 2030s' (Telegraph-Journal)
What you need to know is that SMRs ("Small Modular Reactors") are not small (typically around 300 MW or about half the size of a Pickering reactor, not 'modular' as they have to be assembled on-site, and none of the candidates are even close to prototype stage yet (the first design in Canada is strictly just on 'paper' so far, and has just begun review by the CNSC). Canada has never built a fission power reactor in under a decade, let alone commissioned one and licensed it for operation, even starting from a previously built model. By comparison, a photovoltaic array could be in operation in months, and big wind turbines within a year of approvals. Oh right, I missed the years it will take to get provincial and community approvals for a new, unproven nuclear fission reactor. 2040? Try 2050.

2025.03.01 Not new tech. MEC (in Canada) has been using this since 2016 (https://takeactionburlington.ca/2016/07/05/mec-burlington-wins-the-mayors-green-business-award/)

These buildings use batteries made of ice to stay cool and save money (MSN)

2025.03.01 Another, lower cost source for lithium. EV batteries keep getting better and less expensive.

Scientists discover innovative method to extract critical material from salt water - and it could make electric cars more affordable (Yahoo)

Past blog pages:
2019: May    June    July    August    September    October    November    December   
2020: January    February    March    April    May    June    July [COVID gap]
2021: [COVID gap] October-December
2022: January-February    March    April    May-August    September    October    November-December
2023: January    February    March-April    May-July    August-September    October-November    December
2024: January    February    March    April    May    June    July    August    September    October    November    December   
2025: January    February   

You can find many earlier postings (going back to year 2000) related to climate change at:
Keith's List Archive and
the Sustainable Biofuel List Mail Archive.

I present a lot of information in this blog and on this website. If you need some help sorting through the noise level and getting a forward-looking, proactive approach to climate change for your business, I can do that work for you via my consulting business. Contact