Author Archives: Blair

Why the modern environmental movement must abandon its traditional left-right rubric

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Blair

On the event of Earth Day I spent some time thinking about the state of the environmental movement in Canada. As my regular readers know, I have written a lot of posts about the environmental movement including observations from a … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change Politics | 7 Comments

On "An Ecomodernist Manifesto", Mannsplaining and irony blindness in climate science

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Blair

A very interesting document, An Ecomodernist Manifesto, came out this week. For those of you not familiar with the Manifesto, it represents an attempt by a number of pragmatic environmental scientists, economists and policy experts (http://www.ecomodernism.org/) to put the planet’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change, Climate Change Politics, Environmentalism and Ecomodernism | 13 Comments

Where the new Pembina Report misses the mark on Energy East

Posted on April 14, 2015 by Blair

Numerous people have sent me links to the Pembina Institute report: “Crafting an Effective Canadian Energy Strategy: “How Energy East and the oilsands affect climate and energy objectives”. Having quickly read the report I must admit to being a bit … Continue reading →

Posted in Canadian Politics, Energy East, Pipelines | 5 Comments

More on Oil Spills: Some Toxicological Calculations and What if it were Dilbit?

Posted on April 11, 2015 by Blair

I have been asked a number of questions, both on Twitter and via email, regarding my post on the English Bay fuel spill and so I have written up this follow-up to my last post. In particular, I was asked … Continue reading →

Posted in Chemistry and Toxicology, Oil Sands, Pipelines | 7 Comments

A non-specialist’s guide to how spilled hydrocarbons react in water

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Blair

After the spill today in English Bay (at the Port of Vancouver) I have been asked by numerous people to explain what happens when petroleum hydrocarbons spill into water. Anyone with an internet connection can get any number of descriptions … Continue reading →

Posted in Chemistry and Toxicology, Oil Sands, Pipelines | 4 Comments

Starting a Dialogue – Can we really get to a "fossil fuel-free BC"?

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Blair

I have written a lot of posts in the last four months discussing and describing issues to consider in the fields of energy, renewable energy and pipelines. Based on the feedback, many of those posts have been viewed as being … Continue reading →

Posted in Fossil Fuel Free Future | 28 Comments

When peer-review is not enough – On estimates of avian deaths attributable to coal and nuclear facilities

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Blair

This afternoon I was directed (via a tweet from Dr. Judith Curry) to a recent article in the New Yorker by Jonathan Franzen, titled: “Carbon Capture: Has climate change made it harder for people to care about conservation?” The article … Continue reading →

Posted in Renewable Energy | 5 Comments

So Whatever Happened to the Environmental Moderates and Pragmatists?

Posted on April 1, 2015 by Blair

As I noted in my throwback post, the Ensia article about how Environmental activism needs “good cops” and “bad cops” really brought back a lot of memories. But one thing it also caused me to do is to look back … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change Politics, Environmentalism and Ecomodernism | 3 Comments

Environmentalism and Pragmatism, the two aren’t mutually exclusive – A blast from my past

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Blair

I was reading an interesting article at Ensia the other day about how Environmental activism needs “good cops” and “bad cops” and I could not help but have a mighty case of déjà vu. The reason for my vision was … Continue reading →

Posted in Environmentalism and Ecomodernism | 10 Comments

On “soft climate denial”, regionally-appropriate renewables and marginalizing potential allies in the climate change debate

Posted on March 26, 2015 by Blair

While reading my Twitter feed I was recently introduced to a brand new label in the climate change discussion: “soft climate denial/denier”. The label, based on my admittedly limited research, appears to have been introduced to our lexicon by a … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change Politics | 11 Comments