- We are aware that anecdotes are not great evidence. But one of us happened to be driving on a major highway through northern Toronto (Canada’s largest city) a couple of weeks back and got an external temperature reading of 40C. But the official high for that day was just 34. Large amounts of asphalt, cement and engines distort readings. So beware of monitoring stations in urban areas, especially at airports. (The same person also routinely drives from a rural setting into Ottawa and even if it’s late afternoon with temperatures falling, it’s always a degree or two hotter when they arrive than when they leave. Try it yourself wherever you live.)
- From the “hidden in plain sight” file, Jesse Kline in the National Post writes about how Canada’s Natural Governing Party is rediscovering the importance of natural resources to our economy, or should be. He describes a number of failed interventions like “innovation-investment and super-cluster programs” and a “Canada Growth Fund” that would only fund emissions reductions, multi-billion-dollar state programs that produced only debt, frustration, and regulations. And then he observes that, as is generally known nowadays, our productivity, income growth and well-being crashed. “Despite the massive public investments that fell from the Trudeau money tree over the past decade, Canada’s per capita GDP growth lagged well behind the OECD average in every year between 2015 and 2024, according to World Bank data, while the government’s own figures show that GHG emissions declined by a measly 6.6 per cent between 2015 and 2023.” So if you want a “demonstration project” for the Green New World, well, there it sits, brown, red and ugly.
- When we’re promised a green energy transition, we’re alternatively told we won’t have to make any lifestyle sacrifices and that we didn’t really want what we’re giving up anyway. So we were intrigued to be teased to an article “I’m a microbiologist. Here’s how often you should really wash your bedding”. Obviously the message was going to be that we don’t do it nearly often enough and are wallowing in filth, partly because microbiologists feel about cleanliness the way dentists do about flossing (four times a day is barely adequate) and partly because… but why dwell on our laundry habits? The article complained that “just 28 per cent of Brits wash their sheets once a week” and we think most of that 28 per cent are totally lying and the rest are obsessives. But the point is, the obsessive author says do sheets and pillowcases “Weekly, or every three to four days if you’ve been ill, sweat heavily, or share your bed with pets.” And at “60°C or higher”. Which is going to use a lot of energy, now isn’t it?
- We were also struck by an article about how Canada’s David Suzuki Foundation, green do-gooder supreme, “has repeatedly used false and alarmist imagery to exaggerate the ecological impacts of natural gas development in northeastern British Columbia, a new complaint to Canada’s Competition Bureau alleges.” Specifically, they use an older aerial image of Wyoming to denigrate natural gas in BC today even after being told of the error. But what struck us was a throwaway line that the foundation “raised $12.1 million in Canadian donations” last year and has some $22.5 million in reserve. Yet they pose as David confronting the skeptical Goliath of, well, people like us.
- Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse (and public policy, like golf and life generally, is never so bad that it can’t) MAGA types want to hold hearings on geoengineering conspiracy theories in the wake of those Texas floods. Not to rebut them, apparently. To indulge in them. No. Stop. It was bad enough already.
- A Bloomberg Green story warns that while Chinese workers are meant to get some sort of “heat wave allowance” or “danger money” if required to work “for hours in extreme heat conditions” which apparently means over 35C, it doesn’t actually happen. Which might alert some to the lack of rule of law in China. But one of us recalls being told by his father that in one of his first jobs, at a factory, he was given salt pills when it became unpleasantly hot. So apparently there was temperature back in the 1940s. And yes, at 95 it is getting hot. Not unprecedentedly. Just hot.
- While fuming over the endless “scorching” and “soaring” rhetoric of journalists regarding summer warmth, we were also annoyed by “Heatwave could lead to over 350 excess deaths across UK, experts warn”. And not just the vacant “experts warn or “could” treated as news. Also the failure of the body count to soar. Where are the scorching reels of yesterweek, when “Experts warn nearly 600 could die in England and Wales during the heatwave, as temperatures soar to 34C”? Think of it. 250 lives saved. Or else these aren’t really precise numbers, just people hollering the same mindless monotonous slogans over and over.
- Also unoriginal to the point of being misleading is “Experts link the rising frequency and intensity of these heatwaves to climate change, warning that such extreme weather events are becoming increasingly common across Europe's southern region.” Why? Because it immediately continued “‘Extreme heat is no longer a rare event – it has become the new normal,’ tweeted UN Secretary-General António Guterres from Seville, Spain, where temperatures were expected to hit 42°C on Monday afternoon.” And tweets from a politician are not “experts say”… or worse, nowadays they are.
See Comments 
Tidbits
23 Jul 2025 | News Roundup
