It's looking like an NDP victory

Pictures are worth 1000 words:

https://www.macleans.ca/politics/the-macleans-pollara-ontario-election-poll-the-ndp-lead-keeps-growing/ 

Clearly the PCs have, once again, managed to lose the lead by making poor decisions - in this case the choice of Doug Ford as leader. Many voters, especially women, desperately do NOT want as our Premier by saying no to 'Trump Light'. Not only that, the voters are, this election, putting 100% of their vote criteria as 'leader popularity' {likeability/credibility}, as this quote so well puts it:

"The main trend in voter support over the course of the campaign has been that “vote intentions are aligning almost perfectly with leader positives,” Guy said. At the beginning of the campaign, respondents’ appreciation of Horwath was higher than their intention to vote NDP. Their opinion of Ford and Wynne was lower than their intention to vote PC or Liberal. Since then, voting intention has shifted to match opinions of the leaders. “Very little else is penetrating, including whatever issues are in the news cycles,” Guy said." [from same article as graph]

This is an unfortunate development. It means that individual candidates, platforms, economic realities/business associations and the track record of any party no longer matter. In other words, we are back to the bad old days of leader worship - this is a very dangerous path for democracies. We see this trend around the world where ' a strong man/woman' is in charge to 'firmly set things right'. yuk. Life is too complicated these days for such simplifications.

The only good news I see so far is that Mike Schreiner, our GPO leader, is in lead in Guelph, and thus stands a good chance of being the first Green MPP in Ontario ! https://www.guelphmercury.com/news-story/8630991-greens-lead-in-guelph-poll/ 

Next posting: Welcome to the Nani State: Cradle to Grave you are now being taken care of by your best friend - the government

The Metaphor of the Truck & SUVs

It turns out that Canadians have fallen 'in love' with trucks & SUVs, just like our American friends.
To understand that this is a sad state of affairs it helps to know how this started, as described in the book "It's the crude dude" by Linda McQuaig. She described how car makers pressured Washington car makers in the 1970s to exempt truck from the new uni-body crumple zone regulations and  fuel efficiency standards because they were such a small par of the market. It turns out that because truck were made on old fashion body on frame construction they had a much higher profit margin than small fuel efficient cars that had to compete with cheap Japanese cars. So presto! SUVs were invented as being in the 'truck' category for one simple reason - increased profit margins. The companies then advertised this category like crazy and now everybody 'needs' an SUV, as you can see from the graph below.



The problem is that they, like a truck, are overkill for a driver in suburbia and much less fuel efficient than a car. So, while I think my many friends with trucks and SUVs are good people, I also do not think they have any right to complain about high gas prices or claim that they are doing their best to not pollute. Instead they should, now that electric cars are a reality, wait a couple of years for electric car prices to decrease, and buy one, for instance, the Chevy Bolt [which I own] - which can drive 400 km on a single charge! The cost per km to drive is 1/10 of an SUV/truck PLUS you do not contribute to climate change.

graph https://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/the-most-important-economic-charts-to-watch-in-2018/ 

Excperts from the Greely Debate

Here is my 5 minute intro from the Greely Debate today, just in case you were not there....

Hello, I’m Gord Kubanek, happily married and the proud father to 3 lovely daughters living in Kars. I’ve been a Chemical Engineer, a HS physics teacher and now I’m a beekeeper on the board of the Canadian branch of the Club of Rome, an environmental think tank.  I’d like to highlight two issues in crises: our unsustainable provincial debt and a changed climate that is already hurting people. They are linked in this way - both exist because we have put off making tough choices today by having a party at our children’s expense.

This has us brought us to the point where we now owe over 311 billion $, the largest sub-sovereign debt in the world. As for the environment, in Ontario a record 70% of the bees died this past winter.

the green party knows that only creating policies that create long term solutions to our problems is sustainable or makes sense. For example, the liberals cut your hydro bill by 25% - but did you know that they did this with borrowed money? that you will have to pay back at least an extra 21 billion in interest charges because of these ‘savings’? instead the greens will create a Green Building Program. I was talking yesterday with a neighbour about this and she told me that when she reinsulated her home’s roof and walls and put in new windows her winter heating bills went from $1200 to $300 per month – now that’s the way to really save you money!

our friends the NDP, who many of you confuse the Greens with when you think we are ideologically left, when we are in fact more like the red tories of old – socially progressive but fiscally conservative, they have not seen a government program they don’t love, whether it is almost free day care or free drugs for everyone,  hike hospital spending by 5.3 per cent annually and buy back the majority stake of Hydro One that Wynne sold off. While I laud their sincerity and well meaning intentions, the fact is that nothing in life is free. If they want these new programs, something else has to go. In Ontario we must learn to live within both our environmental and economic limits.  the sad fact is that Ontario ,because we already have the world’s largest sub sovereign debt – at $25,000 for every man, woman and child, has had Moodies rating agency downgrade our provincial debt to ‘negative” from “stable” this past march. Interest payments on our debt are already the 4^th largest line item in our budget at almost 9% - imagine what is going to happen when interest rates rise – which they inevitably will. On the other hand We greens, looking at the economy just like any environment in which disasters happen, employ the latest  methods from cognitive science called a ‘pre-mortem’ –  in which a project team imagines that a project has failed, and then works backward to determine what potentially could lead to the failure of the project. We Greens take our debt to future generations  seriously enough that we will refocus our health care system to be preventative and more home care based because these approaches are a more economical way to improve the lives all people in Ontario

as for our MPP in waiting, Goldie, I want to congratulate her on speaking her mind when she said this on twitter and something similar on Reddit:

Goldie, thank you, as you said on Reddit: ‘The myth that conservatism and the environment don’t’ mix is just that – a myth”. I couldn’t agree more.

I also congratulate you on your statement of march 31 of this year when you said to Ottawa Life magazine: “I am opposed to government giving handouts.”.I am sure that means that you will have to then have to bravely disagree with your leader who wants to keep the Pickering Nuclear plant open, although it is slated for closure this year, because he wants to save government jobs – this is clearly not a true conservative approach because Pickering is the oldest and least efficient plant in North American whose power is 50% more expensive to produce than down the road at Darlington. you also been quoted as saying that you are a strong believer in the free market – and once again I agree with your statement  – so I am sure that once again you will have to respectfully disagree with your leader who clearly does not share your belief in the free market when he promises to reduce the provincial sales tax on gas by 4.3 cents because the world price for oil is too high. Instead of subsidy the Greens will use money from a carbon tax to make all homes, business and transportation more efficient and thus less costly. this not only creates a cleaner environment, but creates many good jobs and saves everybody money into the future, not just today.

let’s be honest folks, all 3 main parties are trying to buy your votes –the Liberals promise free child care, the NDP free pharmacare, the PCs a subsided cut at the gas pumps of almost4.3 cents while balancing the budget at the same time – we all know that’s impossible, so who is kidding who? Quite frankly, the only party who has a credible platform that is achievable without creating debt that our children and grand children will have pay off is the Green Party.

My beekeeper-teacher life

How that the very enjoyable Greely debate is over here is an insight into my other life as a beekeeper and teacher. In the photo below, taken 2 days ago, I am doing a presentation on bees to a grade 2 class on bees. The purpose of this picture is make one point clear: I walk the talk. Everything I say, I do. That means I drive an electric car, heat my home using geothermal energy and do not fly. "Anthropomorphic Climate Change" is real and in the 2020's going to change your life in a big way.
Being a beekeeper keeps me grounded in the reality of how humans are damaging the environment but also gives me great hope because anything problem we make we can, one we acknowledge it, then fix. {mind you, only after quite a bit of pain and suffering}

Now that the Greely Debate is Over... back to Bees!

Bees are the perfect 'canary in the coal mine' - they tell us clearly that we are doing ourselves in. Of course, being 'civilized' - we find a technical solution to what is actually a social problem. But read this below because it gives you a sense how big a deal this really is.

Developing Artificial Bees to Replace the Real Thing

As global bee populations decline, researchers at Manchester University are creating tiny, agile “microrobots” that can fly and jump like bees and spiders, and could potentially replace the real thing.

by:  RP Siegel Electronics & Test Sustainability, Electronics & Test May 18, 2018

 
 
 

“Smaller is stronger,” according to Dr. Mostafa Nabawy, an aerospace engineer at Manchester University. Nabawy has been exploring just how small a self-propelled flying machine can be. In his microsystems lab, Nabawy has built prototypes of artificial bees, weighing as little as 1.5 grams, including the battery. The goal is to make a robotic bee that can fly independently, under control, for an extended period of time.

Yes, it sounds like something straight out of an episode of Black Mirror. But according to United Nations reports, bee populations are declining globally due to a variety of factors including pesticide use, invasive species, diseases, and climate change. With recent declines in pollinator populations, artificial bees could offer a substitute as effective as living pollinators and will not succumb to chemical pesticides.

Manchester University researchers believe microbots that mimic  the behavior of bees could potentially take over for their real life  counterparts as global bee populations  dwindle. (Image source: University of Manchester)

“We started learning from flying insects, in terms of the aerodynamics of the wings, their shapes, how they move them, and how the different shapes generate forces,” Nabawy told Design News. “The problem with [wing] flapping at this tiny scale is that it is very energy-demanding, so power sources become a big problem for us.”

The Manchester University lab has conducted exhaustive studies on tiny actuators, including piezoelectric, DC motors, and other hybrid actuators. By testing the artificial bees by constraining them in space and measuring forces, Nabawy found that the actuator could provide enough force to move the wings, and the battery enough energy to keep it operating for up to five minutes.

https://www.designnews.com/electronics-test/developing-artificial-bees-replace-real-thing/90175855858781?ADTRK=UBM&elq_mid=4331&elq_cid=143564  

Climate Cliff, Fiscal Cliff

http://kiplyall.blogspot.ca/2012/12/cartoon-climate-cliff.html 

.  I’d like to focus on two issues in crises: our unsustainable provincial debt and a changed climate that is already hurting people. They are linked in this way - both exist because we have put off making tough choices today by having a party at our children’s expense.

This has us brought us to the point where we now owe over 311 billion $, the largest sub-sovereign debt in the world. As for the environment, in Ontario a record 70% of the bees died this past winter.

Clearly the evidence tells us that we have exceeded both our economic and our environmental limits. What we need to do instead is to work within our limits to focus on developing an economy that values quality over quantity -  I challenge you to be part of the solution to these and other challenges we all face by voting for the Green party June 7.

If you were put on trial

If you were put on trial for `Crimes Against Humanity`for what you did to combat Climate Change 

would you be found guilty or innocent ?

Did you try your VERY BEST to reduce your carbon footprint?

Click here to read a short story where the author imagines it is 2035 and you are on trial....

Better, Not More

My Personal Campaign Slogan:  Better, Not More

As an Engineer I know that there always an optimum solution for any problem - specifically, as shown above, the better answer does not come from more but rather the right amount of input. In the graph above you see your performance improving until you are the optimal amount of training and then your performance declines, not in spite of your extra effort but because of it.

I believe that many of our problems in Government are like that. We throw more more money at problems assuming that things will improve and sadly find out that while sometimes that does work other times it does not. 

Secondly, given that we always have limited resources - time, people, money, etc. it seems sensible make the tough decisions about these limited resources so that we can optimize our efforts to get the maximum result for the people of Ontario.

In other words, always creating more and more helpful government programs may not be the answer because of the graph above and by spreading government efforts too thin in trying to be all things to all people we end up doing nothing too helpful for anybody. You can already see this attitude in play in this election: the Liberals and NDP think that spending more will make things better while the PCs think tax cuts will achieve the same result. What if they are both wrong?

What if instead of more spending or more tax cuts we figure out the optimal spending of our very limited resources by bravely admitting that while the Government does serve an vital role in all things within the public domain that there are private issues that have to be dealt with privately? This perspective will force us to ask tough questions like this; if we want free medication for all the people of Ontario what other program that the government is doing needs to be cut? While I personally think this program could be a great idea I also know that with the Green philosophy of sustainability that Ontario's huge debt will come back to haunt us in a very bad way and that putting that burden onto my children is ethically wrong and financial suicide.

So, let's not get trapped in left or right wing ideological traps, rather, let's use the brains and talent of the many smart people around us to find ways to allow ALL people have the opportunity they deserve to live a life of joy, but doing so with smart and optimal solutions that are within our limits to deliver over the long haul.

Don't Mow Your Dandelions - Save them for the Bees!

Don't Mow Your Dandelions - Save them for the Bees!

I sure thought so. I even tweeted a pic about it last year, and that's when the comments started pouring in.

"Don't mow the dandelions," someone said.

"It's the bees first food after a long winter," another added.

And with that, I got in touch with the Halifax Honeybee society.

Is mowing away dandelions really that bad?

"They may not be the preference for them if they were given other flowers but there are so many dandelions right now that I see my bees coming in ladened with yellow pollen," urban beekeeper Roger Croll tells me.

"It's most crucial in the spring because the bees are really hungry," urban beekeeper Tara Lapointe adds.

"This is the most difficult time for them because they've eaten through a lot of their stores of honey."

Bees start to become more active around 10 degrees Celsius, which means they're looking for food.

So if your lawn is crawling with dandelions, it's OK if you keep them for awhile. The bees will thank you.

from https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/spring-mow-lawn-lawn-care-dandelions-benefits-keep-dandelions-and-save-bees/101118/ 

I hope that together we learn a lot about the issues and how we can make a better life

for all those who live in Ontario - that includes all our non-voting friends the plants, animals, river and lakes that make our wondourful lives possible!