Author: Kate

The New Fracking

Microwave technology;

Developed by Qmast LLC, microwave technology is used for the extraction of oil shale, which is different from shale oil. Oil shale is found in rock formations that contain kerogen. One of the current extraction methods of kerogen has been strip mining because these are shallow formations. The extracted rock is then crushed and heated to high temperatures to liquefy the oil.
Qmast’s method concentrates a microwave beam equivalent to about 500 household microwaves to heat up an area that reaches approximately 80 feet from the wellbore. The crude oil then flows freely to the wellbore.

h/t Gagnon

4\/\/Kw4Rd!

Inside job: A cynic might conclude that all the sudden hoopla about Russian hacking is meant to distract from what DHS was doing.

DHS Says Georgia Hack May Have Been Rogue Employee: Officials tell members of Congress the attack on state firewall could have been inside job.

The Great Unhinging continues…


I’m old enough to remember when it was Trump who was going to start WWIII. Oh well! Scramble the bombers, President Obama.

Climate Disruption: “We Were Promised There Would Be No Math”

The Trump transition team has issued a list of 74 questions for the Energy Department

The questionnaire requests a list of those individuals who have taken part in international climate talks over the past five years and “which programs within DOE are essential to meeting the goals of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan.”
[…] The document spanned a broad area of Energy Department activities, including its loan program, its technology research program, responses to Congress, estimates of offshore wind and cleanup of uranium at a site once used by the military for weapons research.
One question zeroed in on the issue of the “social cost of carbon,” a way of calculating the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions. The transition team asked for a list of department employees or contractors who attended interagency meetings, the dates of the meetings, and e-mails and other materials associated with them.
Another question appeared to delve deeply into the mechanisms behind scientific tools called “integrated assessment models,” which scientists use to forecast future changes to the climate and energy system. It also asked what the Energy Department considers to be “the proper equilibrium climate sensitivity,” which is a way researchers calculate how much the planet will eventually warm, depending upon the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere.
“My guess is that they’re trying to undermine the credibility of the science that DOE has produced, particularly in the field of climate science,” said Rob Jackson, a Stanford climate and energy researcher.

With physics.

Life is more than politics

So Ron James the comedian came to Ottawa and I interviewed him for my radio show on Newstalk 580 CFRA – you can listen live M-F from 7-10 ET.
Anyway, some conservative types told me they were not happy that I interviewed him because he didn’t like Stephen Harper.
Well frankly, we didn’t talk politics. He mentioned Trump once an I kept going on about comedy and mental health.
I think Ron is hilarious and at his best when touching on those parts of life we all relate to.
And he was in town to promote a comedy festival in Ottawa that raises money for mental health. So screw politics for a few minutes.
http://bit.ly/2hgMaaH

Was There Nothing That Obama Couldn’t Do?


The story’s behind the WaPo paywall, but if you hit the ‘Esc’ key repeatedly as it loads, you can usually grab the page.

Opioid deaths continued to surge in 2015, surpassing 30,000 for the first time in recent history, according to CDC data released Thursday.
That marks an increase of nearly 5,000 deaths from 2014. Deaths involving powerful synthetic opiates, like fentanyl, rose by nearly 75 percent from 2014 to 2015.
Heroin deaths spiked too, rising by more than 2,000 cases. For the first time since at least the late 1990s, there were more deaths due to heroin than to traditional opioid painkillers, like hydrocodone and oxycodone.
“The epidemic of deaths involving opioids continues to worsen,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden in a statement. “Prescription opioid misuse and use of heroin and illicitly manufactured fentanyl are intertwined and deeply troubling problems.”
In the CDC’s opioid death data, deaths may involve more than one individual drug category, so numbers in the chart above aren’t mutually exclusive. Many opioid fatalities involve a combination of drugs, often multiple types of opioids, or opioids in conjunction with other sedative substances like alcohol.
In a grim milestone, more people died from heroin-related causes than from gun homicides in 2015. As recently as 2007, gun homicides outnumbered heroin deaths by more than 5 to 1.

Say It Isn’t So, Joe!


Stephane Dion threatens to “use economic levers to push Trump on climate change”. So… a pair of vaguely effeminate French Canadian men are going to put the screws to an alpha male billionaire American President?
Maybe something was lost in the English-to-English translation.
Morning update: “Heading into the mtg with PM/Premiers. I will NOT be signing any agreement that imposes a carbon tax on Saskatchewan”

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