Amazing photo of damaged cars

There is an extraordinary photo on the Internet of cars stacked on top of each other in Valencia, Spain, after the catastrophic flash floods there.

I have no idea how such a thing could happen, but I'm pretty sure it's not a doctored image. Amazing.

And, in case you were wondering, the weird m, destructive weather that hit Spain, and that dropped a year's worth of rain in just a few hours was due to a phenomenon called DANA - Depression Aislada en Niveles Altas, or isolated depression at high levels.

Why the Washington Post is "choosing" not to endorse a presidental candidate

While one multibillionaire, Elon Musk, continues to make a fool of himself appearing as a trained pet at Donald Trump's rallies, another multibillionaire, Jeff Bezos, has waded into the fray too, although he has tried his best to hide it.

The Washington Post has decided, for the first time in 30 years, not to endorse one or other of the US presidential candidates. But this wasn't an editorial decision, it was a decision handed down by the paper's new owner, one Jeff Bezos.

According to sources within the newspaper, an endorsement for Kamala Harris had been written and drafted ready, but was put on hold at the last minute and not published. Some.staffers and reporters have laid the blame squarely at Bezos' feet, and many others are disgusted at this "stab in the back", this "insult" to staff and readers.

Essentially, this was Bezos bottling out. His companies have billions of dollars worth of contracts with the federal government, and he does not want to be accused of partisanship, particularly if a certain vindictive ex-president wins the race. Trump's disgraceful behaviour has been effective once again, and he will see this as an invitation to further intimidate the US press in the future.

UPDATE

A very similar thing seems to have happened at the Los Angeles Times, as billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong overruled an editorial intention to endorse Kamala Harris.

This time, though, according to the owner's activist daughter at least, the reasoning was different, and clearer. It was over Harris's continued support and arming of Israel. Probably also at the back if his mind, though, was the figure of a vindictive, avenging Trump.

Either way, this is not how things are supposed to work on a free and open country.

First Nations childcare deal creating divisions among Indigenous bands

The Assembly of First Nations has voted to reject a huge $47.8 billion childcare agreement with the Canadian federal government.

267 of the 414 chiefs represented at the meeting (64%) voted against the offer, presumably on the grounds that they think they can get more. That's a lot of money to turn down. The money is to allow First Nations to set up and run their own child welfare service.

The debate has turned quite acrimonious, setting band against band, with some chiefs vowing to cut ties with those who are refusing the deal, and going it alone. As one chief opined, "I will not gamble with $47.8 billion that could change the lives of our future generations because my ego tells me I can do better". Ouch.

And gambling is right. Any day now could see a snap election, and then it won't be the free-spending Liberals in power, but the stingy Conservatives. If I were them, I'd take the money and run.

Xi and Putin's new world order dance routine

What's with the weird pose by Chinese President Xi and Russian President Putin at a photo op at the BRICS summit at Kazan recently?

As Putin outlined his "vision of a new democratic world order" [sic] to the expander BRICS delegates, this photo really stands out to me. Was it just coincidence that they were both digging in their jacket pockets at the same time? Was it part of a dance routine? A nod to Napoleon Bonaparte? Is it maybe some new kind of salute? Will we all have do this in the new world order? I'd like to know.

Ontario medical school announcement addresses a non-existent problem

The Ford government made a big splashy campaign-style announcement yesterday that it would be slashing the number of out-of-province students attending Ontario's six medical schools, with 95% of the spots being reserved for Ontario students.

This is clearly Doug Ford jumping on the runaway bandwagon of Pierre Poilievre's anti-immigrant sentiment. Ford said in the announcement that he had been told that 18% of Ontario's college and university students were international students, although it later transpired that that figure relates to graduate students, and is anyway nothing to do with medical sudents in particular.

The thing is, only 0.3% of undergraduate medical students in Ontario are actually international students. This amounts to all of 11 students out of 3,732 in the academic year 2022-23, and three of those were from the US. This number for 2023-24 was down to 10. Three of the six Ontario medical schools had no foreign students at all.

Granted, about 12% of medical school students were from other Canadian provinces, and this would be capped at 5% under Ford's new rules, but I'm not sure that is what Ford's supporters would have gleaned from the announcement (nor am I sure that is a problem that necessarily needs fixing).

Either way, none of this is going to address in any meaningful way Ontario's housing crises or the family medicine doctors shortage (which in fact, might get slightly worse as a result of this announcement). What we really need is more medical schools, and more money pumped into the training system (although, to be fair, two new medical schools, at Toronto Metropolitan University amd York University, have been separately announced).

 But, anyway, Ford got some useful sound-bites and media coverage out of it.

How many Russians are dying in Ukraine, and how do Russians feel about it?

While the US election and the ongoing Israeli war against the Arab world sucks up all the oxygen in the world news, it's sometimes hard to remember that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is also still going on in the background.

Now almost three years old, that war has settled into something of a stalemate, although in recent weeks and months Russia has started to make more progress, even if painfully slowly. The map of Russian gains in Ukraine does not seem to have changed a whole lot over the last couple of years but, while a year ago Ukraine seemed to be clawing back small parcels of territory, today the small gains are mainly going Russia's way.

But what really stuck me listening to one of the Economist's excellent briefings on the situation in Ukraine was the statistic that Russia is losing 1,200 soldiers a day for the bare metres of land they have been able to gain. That's staggering figure. The Guardian's figure is around 1,000 in Russian losses each day, but the shock remains. Estimates of total deaths throughout the war are in the range of 115,000 to 160,000, which means that current losses are higher than ever.

Now, sure, Russia is a big country with a population of around 144 millon, but that is still a lot of bad news arriving into the country each and every day, and it makes you wonder how long the Russian people can stomach it, for the sake of Valdimir Putin's personal legacy (and little else). 

For now, Russia is managing to find replacements for the thousands dying on the front lines by basically throwing money at it: the upfront payment for new recruits is now up to 3 million roubles (about C$42,000), and the monthly minimum wage is up to the equivalent of C$3,150, about four times the average salary in Russia. Plus, of course, they are sending in North Korean troops.

But already, Russians are much less gung-ho about the war than they were. Contrary to official polls in Russia, some independent polling has shown that as many as 84% want Russia to concentrate more on domestic affairs rather than on a useless war, and 63%  want to see a peace treaty with mutual concessions. Not that they have much control over the country's policies...

Many Arab-Americans will vote for Trump (don't ask me why)

More bizarro stuff from America. A YouGov poll of Arab-Americans shows that that demographic intends to turn out in force for the upcoming presidential elections, and that they are likely to vote in slightly greater numbers for Donald Trump than for Kamala Harris. They also apparently consider the situation in the Middle East to be more important than any domestic issues like the economy, immigration, affordability, etc.

It seems that they are so cross with Joe Biden and the Democrats for continuing to support and arm Israel in the Gaza/Lebanon conflict that they will vote for literally anyone else. So, they would vote for Donald Trump, who is even more pro-Israel than Kamala Harris, and who is campaigning on a promise of mass deportations of immigrants living in the USA.

Here's a quote from a Muslim iman at a Trump rally in Novi, Michigan: "We as Muslims stand with President Trump because he promises peace not war". It's mind-boggling stuff. Are they really that naive and uninformed?

Look at it another way, if you like: if you don't like Kamala Harris' policies on Israel, she is a reasonable person and she MAY be open to change; Donald Trump, on the other hand, will NOT change.

There are many things about this election that seem to us outsIders to make absolutely no sense, but this is a real headscratcher. Now, maybe these people are just grandstanding for the sake of the poll in an attempt to shake up the Democrats' policies, and maybe wiser heads will prevail on the day. But don't count on it.

Why would Transnistria even bother seceding from Moldova?

As the little East European country of Moldova goes to the polls in a general election in which the pro-Europe incumbent party is hoping to consolidate power and make membership of the EU a reality, it is fighting against Russian electoral meddling and disinformation. Like Russia doesn't have anything better to do right now...

One of the hot issues in Moldova is the would-be breakaway region of Transnistria, a tiny isolated sliver of land on the Moldovan border with Ukraine. It has remained defiantly pro-Russian, even as Moldova, like most of the rest of the region, looks westward toward Europe as a way of extricating itself from Russian dominance. It usually hosts some 1,500 Russian troops, and remains a persistent thorn in Moldova's side.

Transnistria wants to be independent of Moldova. It even went to war over it briefly in 1992, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It has its own constitution, flag, national anthem, and coat of arms. But pretty much nobody considers it an independent state (apart possibly from Russia), and it is internationally recognized as just another part of Moldova. Moldova has warned, though, that if Russia defeats and annexes Ukraine, little Transnistria is likely to be the next Ukraine, which would give it a platform to invade Moldova.

The thing that gets me, though, is that Transnistria is TINY. It has a population of about 400,000 and an area of around 4,000 square kilometres. That makes it significantly smaller than the city of Toronto and MUCH less populated. It would be the equivalent of, say, the city of Saskatoon wanting to secede from Canada.

It's not even THAT Russian. Ethnically, it's population is split about evenly between Russians, Ukrainians and Moldovan/Romanians, although almost half have duel Russian citizenship. 

So, why would it be so vociferous about wanting to split from Moldova? Does it really want to declare its vassalage to Russia, after all that went down during its time in the USSR? Maybe Moldova is not the best state to belong to, but it can't possibly be worse than being an entirely insignificant part of the Russian Empire. The whole thing seems bizarre to me.

UPDATE

Well, Moldova barely managed to avoid a very awkward situation by narrowly voting to continue its commitment to joining the EU, by a 50.46% to 49.54% margin in a referendum, alongside the elections, which were so close they are going to a second round of voting next month.

UPDATE UPDATE

And let's not forget that neighbouring Georgia is also going through a similar existential election, which is also effectively a referendum on whether the country should cleave closer to Europe or fall back into Russia's orbit. Four out of five Georgians apparently support joining the EU, but the increasingly authoritarian and divisive incumbent president has tried to frame the election as a choice between peace with Russia and war with Russia, a framing that is particularly poignant since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE

Well, Georgia has gone over to the dark side, as it gave a decisive electoral victory to the ruling, Russia-appeasing "Georgian Dream" party. And it wasn't even that close, although there are multiple allegations of vote buying, voter intimidation and ballot stuffing.

Higher electricity production and costs in pursuit of an AI delusion

If, like me, younare deeply suspicious of artificial intelligence (AI) and the current infatuation with it, you might have read the latest news from Ontario's power system operator with some alarm and despondency.

AI is the flavour of the year this year. It is an ingredient in pretty much everything, even things that might seem to have no relationship with information technology. I'm pretty sure that some of the things that claim to be "AI-enhanced" or whatever are actually just using regular old fashioned computer analysis, not actually machine learning, but still...

In fact, AI, in the face of all the claims and ambitions for it, seems to me to be somewhat underperforming. It hasn't revolutionized healthcare; it hasn't cured world poverty; it hasn't really done much at all in concrete terms. Like 5G cell service, AI is a technology that is being pursued at breakneck speed, without a whole lot of compelling reason, largely just because it's there and it's trendy.

As we have come to understand too, AI is also a huge power hog. All those data centres, all that computing power, all the cooling requirements, they require an unprecedented amount of electricity.

Now, Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) has issued a report saying that it expects electricity demand in the province to grow by 75% by 2050. Industrial electricity demand is predicted to rise by 58% by 2035. I'm not sure we should necessarily believe self-serving predictions from the supply industry itself, but it is clear that some level of demand increase is to be expected.

Now, to be fair, this is not just as a result of Ontario's AI ambitions. It is also a result of the general electrification of life, from electric cars to heat pumps. But AI considerations are front and centre of the report.

All that, in itself, is not necessarily such a bad thing. The problem arises in that Premier Doug Ford and his current crop of Conservative lackeys can not be relied on to make sensible decisions about energy production in the province. Ford has a record of favouring gas and nuclear plants, despite the fact that water, wind, solar and battery storage are much cheaper, faster, and cleaner options these days. But logic, clear thinking and progressive ideas are not Ford's strong suits. 

So, we, the taxpayers, could be saddled with decades of higher costs and polluted air as a result of AI pretensions that amount to little more than jumping on the bandwagon and a bad case of FOMO.

Supply management system is inherently wasteful

If, like me, Canada's dairy supply management system - which is designed to control output of dairy products, keep prices stable and, theoretically at least, protect Canadian farmers' jobs - makes little or no sense, then you might be further bewildered by the news, based on the Dairy Farmers of Canada's own figures, that 7% of all milk produced is dumped, unceremoniously thrown away, as a result of the system.

Since 2012, between 6.8 and 10 billion litres of raw milk, representing about 7% of total production, and worth at least $6.7 billion, has just been tipped down the drain, ostensibly to avoid "costly surpluses" as the Canadian Dairy Commission says. That would be enough to supply over 4 million people annually. 

The disposed milk, which is in fact a costly surplus however you slice it, also led to the release of 8.4 million tonnes of greenhouse gases (equivalent to the emissions of about 350,000 has-powered cars).

Part of the reason for this dumping is that quotas have not been properly adjusted to the changing diets of many Canadians today, who may drink less milk or prefer plant-based alternatives.

And yet, here we have Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet arm-twisting the Liberal government into protecting the controversial supply management system during international trade negotiations, effectively setting it in stone. Most of our trade partners, not to mention our own agricultural sector, hate the system, which they see as indefensible government meddling, possibly even illegal under international trade rules. Several of our "allies" have taken offence at it, and New Zealand is currently taking Canada to court over it. And yet we still have it, and some are even looking to strengthen it.

Reflections on conservatism

A good part of the ideology of Conservatism revolves around resisting change. The name itself tells you that - it's nothing to do with  conserving nature or biodiversity or anything as positive as that; it's about conserving the past. 

A few snippets from current and recent political campaigns makes this painfully obvious, and gives an idea of what more thoughtful progressive parties are up against.

Take the Trump campaign in America, for instance. Here's a typical quote from a Trump supporter: "It's slowly slipping away from us. Anyone that's a Trump supporter wants an old America back, the best America back." Here's another (in reference to electic cars): "I don't trust them. I want it to be the way it always was, with a good old-fashioned car." As though nothing has improved over the life of this 82- year old Michigan voter...

Canada's Pierre Poilievre, with his particular penchant for overstatement and exaggeration (for political effect), is only evoking the conservative hankering for "the good old days" when he calls the country's carbon tax an "existential threat to our economy and our way of life", that will surely lead to "mass hunger and malnutrition", even, somehow, to "nuclear winter". I would assume that he doesn't actually believe this stuff, but he knows that it will appeal to his change-resistant political base.

"Traditional family values" is also a recurrent conservative article of faith, although many conservatives might be hard-pressed  to say what exactly that means. In practice, it seems to mean opposition to expressions of individuality in sexuality (even though individualism is supposed to another core conservative tenet) and to anything vaguely connected to LGBTQ issues, trans rights, a liberal sex education, and support for what have become known recently as "parents' rights" or "parental rights" (the right to force kids to follow parent's rules and values).

The largely Conservative-led Brexit movement in the UK also relied on a hankering for a return to the old glory days of a resplendant British Empire (like cutting ties with all of Europe was somehow going to achieve that!), with slogans like "we want our country back", "take back control", "make Britain white again", etc. Most of it was disingenuous, misleading and hopelessly idealistic, but it deliberately and shamelessly leveraged a (largely spurious) nostalgia for better past times. It also demonstrated how Conservatives ARE actually willing to change things, but only in the service of undoing progressive advances and returning to more old-fashioned ways of doing things.

Anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe is just another example of this denial of change. White Europeans in France Germany, Austria, Italy and many other places see their countries changing, and one of the most obvious manifestations of that is the colour of people's faces and the language they speak. Thus, the burgeoning hard- right parties are openly (and quite successfully) running on platforms of drastic immigration reforms and even the repatriation of existing immigrants. This, regardless of the fact that much of their economies, and much of their ability to weather turbulent economic times, relies on immigrant labour, particularly as birth rates in western countries continues to tank and populations skew ever older. *Sigh*

Change is sometimes hard, granted. But burying your head in the sand and pretending that the past was better than the present, or some envisioned future, is surely a poor response. That way, we would still have slavery, capital punishment, hymns instead of pop music, a coal-dominated power system, and unadulterated patriarchy. Change - constant change, even - is hard but necessary. Just don't expect a Conservative government of any stripe to provide that.

Chronic medical conditions set to explode in coming years

There's a rather extraordinary chart in today's paper showing the expected growth of chronic medical conditions in Ontario over the next 20 years.

So, everything is going up. But over twenty years, with the population expected to continue increasing dramatically and the average age of the population also continuing its upward trend, maybe you would expect everything to go up. What's extraordinary is the AMOUNT certain conditions are expected to increase by. 

According to forecasts, Ontario's population is expected to increase by about 39% over the next 23 years, which gives us a pretty good benchmarks against which to compare other forecasts. According to the Dalla Lana School of Public Health report, though, Renal Failure is expected to increase by an astounding 361.5%, Hearing Loss by 224.1%, Osteoporosis by 123.5%, Cancer by 120.6%, Dementia by 119.4%, Diabetes by 119.7%, etc, etc. 

These are huge increases which will put our already ailing healthcare system into a cardiac arrest of its own. These figures are just for Ontario, but you can expect the rest of the country to go along the same lines. 

And what's with the Renal Failure stat? What are we doing to our kidneys that will lead to such an explosion of failures in the next twenty years? Well, Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is apparently largely caused by other chronic contitions, like diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity, all of which are also on the increase. But 361.5%? Yow!

Is the end of truth the end of democracy?

Here's just one example among very many of the post-truth world we live in today.

At a boat parade in Jupiter, Florida, in support of Donald Trump (yes, I know, a boat parade!), some of the boats were openly displaying swastikas and neo-Nazi insignia and changing racist slogans. When there was an outcry from Democrats about it, Trump campaign officials merely claimed, with no evidence offered or attempted, that it was a "false flag event" by "liberal activists". 

This, in spite of the positive identifications of known members of the Order of the Black Sun and the Goyim Defense League (yes, these are the names of real neo-Nazi organizations!)

This kind of spurious but effective shut-down has now become the first line of defence and attack, almost a knee-jerk reaction to any potential set-back. There is no longer any attempt at making the argument convincing, or at least partially true. It is enough to provide social media with an alternative talking point, and to parry and negate any potential political damage.

So, if all that's needed to shut down a legitimate protest is a barefaced, unfounded lie, then what is the value - what is the point - of any protest, any debate? Given that the majority of Trump's election campaign at this point is based on random unsubstantiated claims and outright lies, often, it seems, conjured on the spur of the moment, what is the point of even trying to refute them?

Trump's supporters will apparently believe pretty much anything he tells them, either out of ignorance or out of willful suspension of disbelief, there seems to be no legitimate way he can be stopped from lying. Many other populists, from Netanyahu to Orbán to Erdoğan to Modi to Poilievre, have taken this approach, often with great success. Most of them have taken their lead from Trump, who has single-handledly moved the Overton window on what is considered politically acceptable. 

Another corollary of this epidemic of lies is that people who tell the truth are often not believed, because the automatic assumption is that they are just lying. So, when Kamala Harris corrects Trump's wild assertions about a tanking US economy, pointing out (correctly) that the American economy has never been stronger - inflation is down, consumer demand is strong, employment and wages are up, new business starts are up, stock markets are in record territory, etc, etc, a booming economy by any definition - Trump supporters just ignore it as more partisan extreme-left lies, because that's what Trump has told them to think. So, a huge proportion of voters are not even looking at the whole picture, content to muddle along in their town little silo.

Is this, then, the end of democracy as we know it? If voters are not basing their decisions on reality, what value does an election actually hold? If Trump wins because he is a better liar, should it even count?

Another bizarre Trump town hall

Donald Trump's presidential campaign just jeeps getting weirder. At a town hall event in Oaks, Pennsylvania (no, I've never heard of it either), a couple of audience members fainted due to excessive heat in the hall. Trump too was clearly feeling the heat but, rather than cancelling the whole thing, he decided to turn it into a rather listless dance party, calling for music to be played for the final 40 minutes of the meeting.

"Who the hell wants more questions?", he quipped, "Let's just listen to music". And he proceeded to do just that, requesting a bizarre mix of music to be played instead, ranging from "Ave Maria" to a medley of songs by artists who have specifically called him out for using their music for his own political purposes, including Sinéad O'Connor and Guns n Roses.

Throughout, Trump stood there, bobbing his head, swaying gently, occasionally doing his familiar grandad dance. Many among the bemused audience started to leave, but the old guy seemed to be enjoying himself.

A Trump spokesperson commented on Twitter (sorry, X) that "something very special is happening in Pennsylvania". Well, he certainly got that right.

Support for Trump increases in Canada - wait, what?

Canadians regularly poo-poo Americans and their creepy love affair with Donald Trump. We often smugly assure ourselves that it could never happen here. I do it regularly in these very posts.

But then Trump-Lite, in the form of Pierre Poilievre, turns up, and all bets are off. And now, an Environics poll has looked at Canadians' attitudes to Trump, and it is shocking to see just how those attitudes have changed in the four years since 2020.

Canadians are still MUCH more likely to prefer Democratic nominee Kamala Harris to Donald Trump, by a landslide margin of 60% to 21%. So, things haven't got THAT bad. But that 21% was 15% back in 2020, and the support for the Democrats was 67% not 60% (with Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee). So, there has been a significant shift.

Perhaps even more worrying is the breakdown of that Canadian support for Trump. It's no surprise that Conservatives are much more likely to prefer Trump than Liberals, NDP or Bloc Québécois (44%, compared to 8%, 6% and 7% respectively), and support for Kamala Harris is, unexpectedly, centred on progressive Canadians (Bloc 89%, Liberals 85%, NDP 82%, compared to a measly 36% among Conservatives).

But it is notable that support for Trump is much higher among younger Canadians: 28% for 18-34 year olds and 27% among 35-54 years olds, compared to just 13% among those over 55 (the cohort in which I am proud to number myself). I don't know any of these people, and neither does my 29-year old university-educated daughter, but clearly they exist.

Even more stark is the gender split, with 36% of Canadian men between 18-34 years old preferring Trump to Harris. That 36% was just 24% among the same demographic (young men) in 2020. Combine that with Canadian party affiliation, and we see that 48% of young male Conservatives would support Donald Trump, a truly scary statistic.

Call it the Poilievre Effect, put it down to discontent with prices and the housing situation. Explain it however you like, but it is a real thing. If Donald Trump were running in Canada today, he would still lose embarrassingly, but his star would appear to be in the ascendancy.

What really caused the Liberals' slide from grace?

Jeffrey Simpson's analysis of "the long slide of the Trudeau Liberals", which he neatly categorizes under "the four i's" - incumbency, inflation, immigration and identity - is interesting enough as far as it goes, but simplistic and insufficient.

A simple thought experiment suffices to refute much of it. Imagine if, instead of Justin Trudeau and the Liberals, Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives had been in power for the last nine years.

They would still be suffering from the incumbency curse - few governments survive more than three consecutive elections, and none since the very different world of more than a century ago. The longer you stay in power, the more people you upset: that's just the way it is, across the globe.

The spike in inflation is not a specifically Canadian thing, and not controllable by individal governments. Pretty much every country in the world has been affected by inflation in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and other geopolitical vagaries. Poilievre and the Conservatives would have been affected by it too, and any protestations that the Liberals made it worse than it should have been is little more than political grandstanding.

Immigration is a big one in the list of four factors, and who would have expected that just a few short years ago, when Canadians were unreservedly pro-immigration (I have my own views on that too). Inflation has also been a strong determinant on this issue, and it can be argued that the Liberals dropped the ball to some extent by poor regulation of immigration policies. But if Poilievre had been in charge, it's quite possible that he would have pushed things too far in the other direction: we NEED immigration to keep our economy afloat, that much is incontrovertible, although the exact level needed is a tough call.

And finally, by "identity", Mr. Simpson means that the Liberals used to be the party of patriotism. I think it's many years since the Conservatives donned that mantle. But, anyway, I'm not wholly convinced that patriotism is a huge vote-winner in Canada, nor that the Trudeau Liberals have been specifically instrumental in abandoning it.

Anyway, an interesting piece. I'm just not sure I go along with most of it.

Some long-held scientific truths are being challenged

An interesting article in today's Globe and Mail describes how some long-held scientific beliefs, particularly in the human fields of psychology, sociology and economics, are being challenged, and successfully.

For example, if has long been held that making more money does not in fact make people any happier. This is supposed to be scientifically proven, and the paper's principal author, Daniel Kahneman, went on to earn a Nobel Prize and a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work. But a young fellow at the University of Pennsylvania published a paper in 2021 refuting that finding, and explaining why. So, it turns out that, generally speaking, more money does indeed make you more happy. Which is kind of what I always thought...

Other long-held scientific theories are also starting to topple. For example, the idea that forcing yourself to smile (e.g. by biting on a pen top) actually makes you feel better and happier - more recent data suggests that any such effect is negligible and not significant. 

In the same way, it turns out that: listening to Mozart doesn't actually make you smarter, despite some "scientific" evidence that assures us it does; posing as Superman doesn't actually make you behave more confidently; your ability to resist eating a marshmallow (delayed gratification) as a kid does not lead to success as an adult; etc.

If the results of a scientific experiment cannot be repeated and validated, then it's no longer good or definitive science. Some of the disproven spurious science was merely the result of innocent mistakes or sloppy methodology; some of the data may have been deliberately manipulated. Either way, if the results cannot be replicated, the science cannot stand.

The article, however, encourages the authors of two contradictory papers  on a subject to collaborate - "adversarial collaboration", in the jargon - rather then just butting heads, becoming sworn enemies, and never speaking to each other ever again. That way, the issue can be resolved once and for all, and better science can emerge.

Do we need a new Category 6 for unprecedented hurricanes?

As Hurricane Milton barrels toward the Gulf Coast of Florida, it has picked up speed with unprecedented rapidity (there's that "unprecedented" word again), growing from a Category 2 to Category 5 hurricane in just a few hours as it passes over the (unprecedented) warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

In fact, there is now talk of the need to establish a new category, Category 6. Currently, Category 5 is the highest level, and is defined by winds of over 156 mph (251 kph), i.e. 157 mph to infinity. Milton is currently expected to reach wind speeds of over 180 mph (290 kph). If it surpasses 192 mph (309 kph), it will be in the rarefied company of just 5 hurricanes and typhoon since 1980.

Would there be any real point in establishing a new Category 6? Possibly not. Some say that wind speeds alone do not convey the possible destructive effects of storm surge and inland flooding (some of the worst damage from the recent Hurricane Helene occurred when it had already been downgraded to a tropical storm).

Would it be a useful tool for conveying the possibly severity of the storm to an increasingly blasé populace? Maybe.

LNG is (much) worse for the environment than we thought

A new peer-reviewed study has definitively put paid to the convenient fiction employed by fossil fuel proponents that liquid natural gas (LNG) is a "good thing", because it represents a "brdge fuel" that will allow us to gradually wean ourselves (and other countries) off "dirty fuels" like coal and oil.

It's a fiction you hear often, particularly from Western Canada and the oil states of the US and the Middle East. It never did ring true to me, and now we have some strong evidence to the contrary.

The long-awaited Cornell University study, published in the Energy Science and Engineering journal, actually concludes that LNG is even worse than coal as regards climate change. 33% worse in fact, in terms of its 20-year global warming potential. Even over 100 years (which downplays the warming potential of methane, and might be considered a more "forgiving" scale), LNG's carbon footprint still exceeds that of coal. 

Part of the reason for this is that LNG needs to be supercooled to convert it to to liquid form, and then transported in large tankers to market.

So, whatever British Columbia and Alberta might tell you, LNG is not a climate solution, nor even a temporary bridge fuel. It is a dangerous distraction from serious climate action, and should not be given preferential treatment.

Israel's offensive approach to international relations

As usual, Israel's reaction to UN chief António Guterres failure to do exactly what Israel wants is excessive, combative and tone-deaf.

It seems that Guterres did not condemn Iran strongly enough or quickly enough (he actually did condemn it the next day, as it happens). But Israel's Foreign Minister Israel Katz summarily declared Guterres persona non grata, banning the top diplomat from visiting Israel, and saying that "anyone who cannot unequivocably Iran's heinous attacks on Israel, as nearly all the countries of the world has done, does not deserve to set foot on Israeli soil".

Israel has never been a big fan of the UN, which has regularly castigated it for its illegal occupation of parts of Palestine and its apartheid treatment of Palestinians. As always, it calls any  criticism of the state of Israel "antisemitism", even when it's not, because it (quite rightly) sees that as the quickest and easiest way to shut down the conversation and get what it wants. 

Israel is a very young state, but that is no reason to use childish temper tantrums as a political tactic. Right now, you'd think that it needs all the support it can get, but accommodation and compromise is not the Israeli way. Its allegations of antisemitism and prejudice are, by and large, red herrings.

Given its approach to foreign relations, it's no big surprise that Israel has so few friends, and what friends it does have are grudging ones, largely due to the threats of being labelled antisemitic.