Andrew MacDougall

People might laugh but indoor air quality in rinks is generally terrible, and hockey kids get asthma at disproportionate rates. Electric Zambonis really are an important innovation.

People used to say, with great confidence, that variable renewables could never safely provide more than 5% of grid power. That estimate has crept up ever since, though the "great confidence" part never wavers.

Anyway, about China ...

Electricity is about to become the new base currency and China figured it out As we accelerate into an all-electric, all-digital age, the ultimate representation of productive capacity becomes the kilowatt-hour (kWh).

Oh boy definitely some Technocracy vibes here. Might be time to brush up on mid 20th century science cults.

electrek.co/2025/11/21/e...

And there goes short haul trucking. Another ‘hard to mitigate’ sector that turned out not to be hard to mitigate.

Why We Are Better Off Than a Century Ago Our ancestors built grand public systems to conquer hunger, thirst, darkness, and squalor. That progress can be lost if we forget it.

For a yr, I've been working on a series for The New Atlantis about the vast systems that underlie our lives. Our ancestors built them up over decades to fend off hunger, thirst, darkness and disease. But too few of us know about them—and they're all at risk. The conclusion is now available online:

The energy poverty trap Will more oil and gas production in Canada help alleviate energy poverty in the developing world? Of course not — but that hasn't prevented Danielle Smith and other industry champions from pretending ...

Fossil fuel enthusiasts keep arguing that we need to increase our exports of LNG and oil to address energy poverty in the developing world.

I call bullshit — and I bring my receipts. #abpoli #cdnpoli

www.nationalobserver.com/2025/11/25/o...

Q Anon may just have been the single greatest success in the history of Nigerian financial fraud.

Ontario students have occasionally taken advantage of this to skip out on their non academic graduation requirements.

We Just assume that at absolute minimum you got a 70 average and completed 5 university prep courses you probably graduated.

Since less than half our students are from Nova Scotia the admission’s office has a hard job. 13 inconsistent education systems just in Canada.

We have no actual requirement to finish high school, just required corses with minimum mark thresholds and minimum required overall averages for each program.

I think this is a left over from Ontario’s grade 13, where we would admit Ontarian students who had only completed grade 12.

Also most Canadian Universities de facto make admission decisions based on grade 11 marks. Admissions opens in September and most students have applied before January exams.
Offers go out ASAP as to not loose students.

We had provincial exams in Nova Scotia grade 12 but our teachers marked them, then our names were cut off and they were sent to the province to be regraded for statistics. So they were not really standardized exams.

Not really comparable to SATs or let alone the standardized test used in China.

I'm really glad renewable technology development doesn't depend on the COP negotiations.

Petrostates, fossil fuel companies, and their lackeys can sabotage diplomacy, but it's becoming increasingly transparent what they do is simply evil, while we will ditch fossil fuels anyway.

The method of dealing with no standardization is not having very selective universities, then let students rise or flunk out based on how well they do in their selected topic at university.

Canadian Universities do not, and have never used standardized tests for entry. So we just built systems to deal with these kinds of problems.

I did not take a single standardized test between grade 6 and completing my PhD.

The missing heritability question is now (mostly) answered Not with a bang but with a whimper

I wrote a little bit about the "missing heritability" question and several recent studies that have brought it to a close. A short 🧵

Bruce MacKinnon: Budget vote risks rousing voter anger Bruce MacKinnon's cartoon for The Chronicle Herald

www.saltwire.com/nova-scotia/...
#Canada #cdnpoli #Budget2025 #ConfidenceVote
#PierrePoilievre #DonDavies #yvesfrancoisblanchet

The North American #petrostate bubble is so weird. Even the classic Middle Eastern autocratic petrostates don’t construct weird alternative realities to justify fossil fuels, they actively & transparently follow the money wherever it flows, including into the clean energy transition.

EV sales *still* have not fallen, cooled, slowed or slumped. Media is lying to you. After two years of headlines begging for failure, EV sales keep defying false media narratives that they are dropping, and continue to rise.

electrek.co/2025/11/12/e...

Time series of annual GISTEMP data from 1880 onwards with an estimate for 2025 based on Jan-Oct data showing that it will be cooler than 2024, but probably a little warmer than 2023.

Now that the Sept and Oct data are (belatedly) in, it looks like 2025 will be the second warmest year in the record (~80% probability). The last three years are in a class of their own.

No emission peak this year. Emissions up in China, US and EU. Land use change emissions are down.

NEW: Global fossil fuel use will peak before 2030 – unless 'stated policies' are abandoned

Contra some terrible news coverage, IEA World Energy Outlook shows coal near peak, oil peaking by 2030 & gas by 2035 (see chart)

What's going on? 🧵 + cool charts

www.carbonbrief.org/iea-fossil-f...

I think, of all the slides in this report, this is the most important -- it's really worth examining closely. This illustrates why the triumph of electrotechnical is inevitable.

I’m Canadian. But yes Oil and Gas have too much power here too, balanced somewhat by Hydro-Quebec and BC hydro.

The conservative premier of my province is obsessed with building enormous off shore wind farms.

archive.ph/202511071241...

Yeah definitely a weird choice. I think they were trying to give a sense of how much energy needed 2 TWh is. But a rough conversion to megatons of TNT is a choice.

China’s clean-energy revolution will reshape markets and politics The world’s biggest manufacturer now has an interest in the world decarbonising

"China is now making more money from exporting green technology than America makes from exporting fossil fuels. "

www.economist.com/leaders/2025...

Nothing says “we’re ready for an election” like multiple members of your party defecting or resigning in a week. /s

From The Archives: Dick Cheney Vice Presidential Library Opens In Pitch-Dark, Sulfurous Underground Cave

From The Archives:

Dick Cheney Vice Presidential Library Opens In Pitch-Dark, Sulfurous Underground Cave https://theonion.com/dick-cheney-vice-presidential-library-opens-in-pitch-da-1819574915/

China Agrees To Purchase 11 U.S. Soybeans SEOUL—In a historic trade agreement that President Donald Trump touted as a major win for an American farmer, China reportedly agreed Thursday to purchase 11 U.S. soybeans. “I am extremely honored tha...

China Agrees To Purchase 11 U.S. Soybeans