Water Issues

January 22nd, 2010

The controversial Red Chris mine will go ahead.  The Red Chris mine is exempt from the recent decision by the Supreme Court of Canada which says that the federal government requires environmental studies on mining projects.
The question is, what about the other projects in the area known as the Sacred Headwaters?  This area is at [...]

Continue reading about BC using rivers and lakes as tailing ponds

January 4th, 2010

The city of Sa’na inYemen could be the first capital city in the world to run out of water.  Why?
Lack of rainfall and wasteful irrigation practices are some of the factors to blame.  Others blame the lack of action on the country’s addiction to chewing qat leaves (also known as gat).  The qat trees are [...]

Continue reading about Who is drinking Yemen Dry?

January 2nd, 2010

The Mackenzie Gas Pipeline project has been given a stamp of approval by the Joint Review Panel.  The plan is to drill for natural gas at the delta where the Mackenzie River, the longest river in North America, drains into the Arctic Ocean.  This area is a huge estuary that provides vital habitat for migrating [...]

Continue reading about Mackenzie River Gas Pipeline approved

It’s hard to believe, but over 100 million years ago there was an inland sea in Alberta.  Streams flowed into the inland sea bringing with them sand and mud.   Over millions of years, the sediments were covered by other sediments and compacted.  It is believed the oil came from the southern portion of the Alberta [...]

Continue reading about How to extract oil from sand – the Alberta Tar Sands story

Consider when you turn to Google or some other search engine and enter in something – your computer is getting that information from a server somewhere …out there… on a server farm.  Yes, that’s right, a wide open area in some building somewhere is a collection of servers all running feverishly.
The North Carolina Sierra Club [...]

Continue reading about Monster internet server farms gobble energy

December 3rd, 2009

Las Vegas has been on the edge of running out of water for the past few years. Pat Mulroy, the person in charge of the Southern Nevada Water Authority has some grandiose plans for piping in water or trading water rights.  One of the things that struck me as strange is how little Las [...]

Continue reading about Las Vegas is losing at the water game

July 22nd, 2009

It’s hard to imagine especially in the summertime, when people flock to lakesides everywhere across the country to swim and enjoy the coolness of water, but the federal government thinks that we Canadians don’t really need so many lakes.  Did you know that Fisheries and Oceans  allows the mining industry to use lakes as tailing [...]

Continue reading about A lake as a dumping ground for mines?

Just as nations around the world are thinking about moving freighters through the Northwest Passage in the Arctic, 50 years ago marked the first freighter to ever go through the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Fifty years ago the St. Lawrence-FDR Power Project changed the visual landscape of   the St. Lawrence River through a series of locks and [...]

Continue reading about St. Lawrence – from River to Seaway overnight

April 22nd, 2009

A short while ago, the federal government of Canada passed a budget package filled with all sorts of acts and bills that had nothing to do with stimulating the economy, but politicians wanted it done and the budget passed.  In the meantime, some of us said, “what’s this business about losing our right to paddle?”
The [...]

Continue reading about Public Hearings re Navigable Waters Act

April 5th, 2009

Just when you thought now is the time to buy that house on the beach, now that real estate is more affordable, you might want to think again.  A giant iceberg the size of Jamaica could be headed your way.
It seems that an ice bridge in Antartica has broken away.  According to scientists, this ice [...]

Continue reading about Where did my beach house go?