Articles by John McGrath

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.

Not well

The Fraser Institute, the Canadian version of ... I dunno, maybe the Heritage Institute, or a low-budget Cato, has had its response to the upcoming IPCC report leaked. Desmogblog has the details.

Apparently, the scientific consensus is "political." Stephen Colbert is right: the facts have a liberal bias.

Of course, I'd like to know how I, a mere dirty hippie, have provoked this response from big business.

Expressing energy in terms of oil is misleading

Pardon my smugness -- it comes from being raised in a land that uses the metric system. So this idea that's been making the rounds -- expressing energy content in "cubic miles of oil" -- don't impress me much. Why not cubic cubits?

Fortunately, someone's done the heavy lifting of criticizing this idea a bit more thoroughly:

How’s things up in Canada, eh?

From the fascinating world of Canadian politics: Stéphane Dion gave his first major policy speech as Liberal leader yesterday. How'd it go?