Hey Canada! Do you want nuclear radiation in your food?

Doug Ford.

The name brings fear to the minds of many people in Ontario.

Doug Ford is the Premier of Ontario, and he is a jerk. A real nasty jerk. He wants to dump nuclear waste in Bruce County, close to the town of Teeswater. The Teeswater River (and the underground aquifer beneath the region) supplies the drinking water to:

• Tens of thousands of people.
• Dairy cows.
• Water for agricultural farming (corn, potatoes, soy beans and more).
• Water for Aquafina bottled water.
• Cattle, pigs, turkeys and chickens. Bruce County is the Beef Capital of North America, but it also produces a lot of other meat products.

If you live Ontario you've eaten food many times from Bruce County. Guaranteed. You've drank the milk. You've eaten the cheese. You've eaten beef, pork, turkey and chicken. You've eaten the corn, the potatoes, the soy products. You've drank Aquafina water.

Even if you are a vegan and don't eat milk and dairy, you should still care where your soy products and other vegetables are grown and where your bottled water comes from.

And that is why you should care.

If you care about what you eat, then you should protect what you eat. Learn more at:

https://www.protectsouthbruce-nodgr.org/

If you care write to Doug Ford. Tweet him. Phone him and leave an angry voicemail.

Share this post. Copy/paste it to other websites. Share it on Facebook. Share it on Twitter. Share the memes below.

Show that you care about your food and where it comes from.

Protect your food and your health from Doug Ford.

Stupid People at Work

ENVIRONMENT - Ever had an argument with a stupid person?

You know, the kind of people who ignore the laws of physics?

For this example I am referring to people who ignore the laws of thermodynamics... and in particular greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases trap heat inside the earth's atmosphere. Its a proven fact.

Its a bit like ignoring other laws of physics... like gravity! Laws of motion, acceleration, relativity, quantum laws, electromagnetic laws, etc.

Thus when arguing with a stupid person who refuses to acknowledge the laws of thermodynamics and how greenhouse gases can be a frustrating task. The stupid person you are arguing with lacks the basic knowledge to make a coherent argument. Instead they use half logic, make up numbers, use information that is besides the point.

I recently had an argument with a deranged man named Willie McDonald from Houston, Texas. He kept fussing and claiming sun irradiation was the cause of global warming. He used made up numbers and links to conspiracy theory websites.

Sun irradiation (heat) has gone up 0.05% per decade since 1980 during quiet sunspot activity. So approximately 0.15%. The heat from the sun does fluctuate from time to time, but 0.15% is not enough to explain the temperature increases and global warming on Earth. Its too small a number. (Note, this increase is only a measurement during quiet sunspot activity... and thus is besides the point and further made irrelevant when you consider that the Earth's atmosphere both deflects and traps heat.)

Especially when you ignore how greenhouse gases work.

The Earth absorbs heat from the sun, yes, but the Earth also gives off heat back into space. The amount of heat given off into space depends on the percentage of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere.

The Earth's atmosphere also reflects heat. Thus the Earth's contained heat remains a relative constant, and the Earth's atmosphere is the single biggest contributor to global warming.

Greenhouse gases work like insulation. Once the heat gets inside the Earth's atmosphere it becomes more difficult for heat to escape. If you fill a box with greenhouse gases and provide a heat source, the box will heat up easily. If you fill it up with regular air, the box will still heat up, but it will give off heat more.

The primary greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. How well these trap heat are even measurable. See the IPCC list of greenhouse gases for more details.

And so forth...

Try explaining all this to a stupid person (especially a conspiracy theorist) who refuses to admit that the Laws of Physics are called LAWS for a reason.

I blame the education system in North America. In this particular case, the man Willie McDonald from Texas has been failed by whatever passes for "science" in Texas high schools.

Worse, these uneducated morons cloud up poorly researched journalism and TV programs with their theories about the 'real cause of global warming', or worse, they deny that global warming and climate change are even happening.

It makes me wonder if and when the worst effects of climate change comes to pass what society will do with these morons. I think they will likely either learn to shut their mouths and follow sheepishly along, or somebody else will shut it for them...

Why? Because if the worst does come to pass we're talking about rising sea levels, flooded coastal cities, droughts, desertification of the wheat belt, shortages of food and clean water, wars over food and resources. By that time the patience of people will be worn thin. Naysayer politicians will be beaten bloody in the streets by angry hordes and the non-famous naysayers will suddenly lose their tongues.

I think there will come a time when the effects of climate change become so dire that people will have lost their patience with leaders, oil executives and the coal industry. There will be no more room for arguments about the effects of climate change and what is causing it. The effects will be violent and bloody.

Why will it be bloody? Because stupid people don't have the patience to learn from their mistakes. They answer with action.

The social effects of climate change in the USA will be like watching a Jerry Springer episode. Stupid people killing other stupid people.

The smart people, like Noah and his Ark, will have foreseen what is coming and all moved further inland and found arable land unaffected by climate change or rising sea levels.

FYI: Land in Detroit is really cheap right now.

Wind Power at Work

TECHNOLOGY - There's nothing men love more (with the exception of their love of women) than a great piece of engineering.

Between fast cars, airplanes, ships, rockets, architecture, computers, bicycles, motorcycles or anything else we can build with our hands there is a lot to admire. I think it comes down to a male drive to build and create. We can't make babies like women can, so we satisfy our creative urges with something else.

And our desire to build and create isn't limited to just what we can build ourselves, we also recognize and respect the things other people build and say "Hey, thats a really big engine you got there! How many horsepower does it have?"

Typical men, we love things that are bigger, stronger, more powerful.

This fascination also extends to gadgets for some men, whom have an obsession with their BlackBerries, their iPhones and whatever other gizmos they can afford and brag about.

Its a bit like having a supermodel trophy wife. Men love to brag in general.

But how do we fuel all of this technology? Electricity usually. With the exception of automotives that run on gasoline, diesel/bio-diesel or hydrogen power, everything else with so much as an electric switch needs an ample supply of electrical power... but how we produce that electricity is limited...

COAL POWER - About 40% of the electricity produced in North America comes from burning coal. It is the cheapest source of energy, but accounts for 35% of the greenhouse gas emissions.

NUCLEAR POWER - The cleaner alternative to coal, but the price of building nuclear power plants is always way more than originally predicted and ends up costing significantly more than anticipated (so much so that nuclear power has NEVER even been profitable and has always resulted in local governments being burdened with the financial cost). Nuclear also has waste left over which has to be dumped somewhere, regularly in war-torn and piracy-infected Somalia, resulting in skyrocketing cancer rates in that country.

SOLAR POWER - Suffers from a reputation of low reliability, but is technically cheaper than nuclear power. See Solar Power becoming Profitable.

HYDROGEN POWER - If there were more rivers that we could build dams on we would, but the ecological effects on the fish limits the number of dams that can be built. Dam construction has reached a plateau.

WIND POWER - More reliable and more efficient than solar power, wind power is old technology that has been upgraded with new lightweight materials and more efficient designs. So much so that wind turbines have become the darling of the energy industry...

In January 2010 Samsung announced a $7 billion deal to build wind turbines in Ontario. See: 16,000 new Samsung jobs in Ontario for more details.

Now the Danish company Vestas, the world's largest maker of wind turbines, is also thinking of setting up shop in Ontario. Officials from Vestas are currently in Ontario looking for land in Hamilton, Niagara, Kingston and Belleville to purchase, both for manufacturing and also to house the wind turbines they plan to build. Toronto-based Trillium Power Co. is currently bidding to become the exclusive supplier from the 740 wind turbines Vestas currently plans to build, and hopefully gives them the inside track to hundreds of more turbines in the future.

"Without a doubt the future of electricity in Ontario will be wind power," says one industry insider.

The Ontario government is also pushing hard to attract more green jobs to the province, and has become a mecca for wind power companies in North America. One third of Canadians live in the province, one sixth in the Toronto region alone. That is a lot of consumers who need electricity and Ontarians have made it clear they want to get rid of the old coal plants, but without building any nuclear plants which always go billions of dollars over budget.

But here's the thing... despite what naysayers say about wind power, I actually admire wind turbines for their technological achievement. I think its a brilliant piece of engineering. True, it may not have the zing and radioactive kewlness that nuclear power has...

If I was a finance or business consultant in Toronto I'd be really tempted to tell my customers to invest in Vestas, Samsung and any other wind turbine company. I think there's unlimited money to be made in the wind power industry.

Do we really need more proof of global warming?

ENVIRONMENT - This a little off topic but I will to relate it how men and women think...

I got this amusing photo in my email today with the caption "Proof of Global Warming" and after laughing I thought to myself do we really need more proof beyond that which we already have?

I mean seriously. 100% of scientists agree that global warming and climate change is real and its happening around us. The only naysayers are people who don't even work as scientists but are "science advisors" for conservative politicians and the oil/coal industries. No REAL scientist has ever come out with proof global warming doesn't exist.

Who are you going to believe? Rush Limbaugh and his cronies? Or the scientific community with degrees and PhDs and the actual data on rising global temperatures?

For fun I did some Google image searches for words like global warming proof and global warming before after to see what came up. There is a lot of images available, some jokes, but most of them serious.

But do we (men and women) need visual proof? Or do we need to wait until global warming effects us personally before we realize its real?

The oil/coal industries know global warming is real, but they're refusing to acknowledge it and they are determined to keep the public ignorant or at least skeptical enough so that politicians won't do anything about it that might hurt their industries.

That much will be pretty obvious to anyone who reads a newspaper and can read between the lines.

But what about the rest of the population? The people who don't read newspapers, who aren't very intellectual or scientific in their reasoning and instead think this is all "natural" or god is doing it to punish the world?

After all god drowned the world once, what is to stop him from burning it the second time around?

But if we ignore god, then its Mother Nature isn't it? The Great Flood, Ice Ages, Global Warming... that sounds like Mother Nature's department doesn't it?

We all know Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and Mother Nature don't exist, but the concept is still the same... nature is doing this, but its not very natural this time around.

And is it really so hard to think humans have the ability to change the temperature of the world around us? We've overrun this planet. There are is 6.7 billion of us and in 2008 we pumped an extra 33,534,965,760 metric tons of carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas which causes temperatures to go up) into the atmosphere.

And the silly thing about CO2 is that the more there is, the more effective it is at raising temperatures. In the last hundred years CO2 levels have gone up from 290 ppm to 405 ppm. That is a 40% increase and is entirely man made.

The point is that greenhouse gases, global warming and climate change are all scientifically proven. Its the naysayers and skeptics (whom have no scientific background) who have managed to sway the ignorant.

According to a 2005 Gallup poll only 69% of Americans realize that global warming is real. More so there is a gender gap between men and women. 81% of American women know that global warming is real, whereas only 57% of men have clued in on this fact.

So why is it that men are less accepting of scientific evidence? Is it because men are more stubborn? Do they think they know better? Is it because men are less likely to have a college or university education? Maybe.

But an interesting factor is when you compare Republican men/women to Democrat men/women. Republican women are almost twice as likely to realize global warming is real when compared to Republican men, whereas Democratic men and women are on equal ground.

This tells you something very important. The naysayers are almost exclusively all white conservative men. Maybe they've been reading too many pamphlets from the oil industry. These are the kind of men who are still convinced smoking and guns don't kill people and they will argue until they are blue in the face to defend their right to be lazy and pollute as much as they want to.

I've met people like that. The only way they will ever change their minds is if Global Warming effects them personally. Only then will they see the proof in front of them. Until then they will continue to do as they please.

Lets pretend for a moment that we live to see the northern polar ice caps melt and the sea levels rise enough to flood Manhattan island. Would that be proof enough? I'll bet that even then there will be ignorant people who are still naysaying, saying its just a freak of nature rather than humans meddling with nature.

Hopefully by then politicians learn its time to just IGNORE THE SKEPTICS.