I don't know if Maple MAGA will ever accept that climate change is real, but apparently trying to deal with its implications - like dry forests with pine beetles -- just drives them around the bend.
(My apologies for the screenshots - these BlueSky posts won't embed)
MAGA Maple Karen strikes again! What a goof! 🪶🙄🇨🇦 www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
— Blackfoot Niitsítapi 🪶🇨🇦🇺🇸🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️💙🌎🐝 (@thoughtsnations.bsky.social) August 12, 2025 at 7:23 PM
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Newfoundland and Labrador Public Safety Minister on the spread of wildfire misinformation: "There are people who have subverted this exercise for their own gain. Interestingly enough, from my previous experience, is pretty much the same list of suspects from the COVID trolls." #cdnpoli
— Scott Robertson (@sarobertson.bsky.social) August 12, 2025 at 7:55 PM
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I found a couple of interesting commentaries from Nova Scotians that saw some merit, or at least some explanation, for both sides of this debate:the same people who say walking doesn't cause fires are the ones who said the convoy trucks didn't cause any inconvenience to anyone or any businesses in Ottawa
— Bruce Anderson (@bruceanderson) August 11, 2025
Michelle Stirling / Sorry No More - Exposing the Bitter Roots of 'Sugarcane'
Nova Scotia’s Fire Ban – Overreach or Wide Awake after Jasper’s MegafireRukhsana Sukhan / Adventures of Bad Hijabi
Statistical History of Arson in the Woods and Wildfires on Private Property
...Most people on X who were outraged also made claims that they were experienced hikers and would never cause a fire. Of course, how do you monitor everyone who might want to hike as to whether or not they are responsible citizens? Likewise, Nova Scotia has seen a huge boom in population, meaning that newcomers may simply have no idea that a cigarette or fireworks can literally light the woods on fire.
... the greater problem would be trying to evacuate people from wooded hiking trails. In Jasper, there is one remarkable rescue story where an 18-year-old woman, a Jasper resident, who knew a particular trail very well, led a party of 16 campers out of danger, in the dark as ash rained down upon them. Everyone managed to get out safely. Without her, the story might have had a grim ending.
Imagine Nova Scotia’s extensive trail system filled with tourists and local hikers. Perhaps thousands of people scattered all over the trail system. How would you alert them and evacuate them in case of a wildfire? As we saw in Jasper, the Park initially thought they would have a few days before the wildfire reached the townsite, but the wind picked up and firebrands flew far ahead of the main body of the wildfire; flaming pine cones like little fire bombs were said to have been raining down, cast kilometers away.
What kind of search and rescue resources would you have to deploy, while at the same time taking human resources and equipment like helicopters, away from the need to fight the wildfire?
What would be the final tally, the scope of tragedy, and horrible liability if people were trapped in the woods?...
Clowns to the Left, Jokers to the Right
voice of reason where art thou? will rational in-the-middle people please stand up?
...The recent draconian restrictions coming out of the maritimes have highlighted the divide we face in Canada when it comes to political discourse. The online echo chamber culture has diminished if not destroyed our capacity to debate like mature adults. How can we move forward as a country when we devolve into political warfare about benign stuff like forest management?...
Arno Kopecky / The Walrus
Polar Vortex and Firenado: Hard-Core Jargon Has Taken Over ForecastsBoth our climate and our politics are getting more nasty, brutish and short.
As climate gets weird, so does language
...for all its diversity, this new climate vocabulary evokes a common set of attributes: acceleration, intensity, violence. A lurch to extremes. The word “change” is too ambivalent for something that so often leads to calamity, and so “climate change” is itself giving way to “climate crisis” or “climate emergency” instead.
It all goes well beyond weather. Geopolitical storms are intensifying too. On every scale, society is being pulled to extremes by forces beyond our control. “Global weirding” captures our cultural climate as well as the atmospheric one. Is that a coincidence? Should we be surprised that, as the atmosphere heats up, so do human relations? These tempests are familiar, and we have names for them already: disinformation, tyranny, collateral damage. But those twentieth-century terms don’t quite apprehend the modern variants we’re dealing with today. Hence tweaks and updates: Deepfake. Broligarchy. Polycrisis.
New circumstances require new vocabulary. We have to know how old threats have evolved and why—if we want to overcome them. That’s why the language matters....
4 comments:
Decades of libertarian inculcation has made us worse than ever at dealing with collective action problems. These are situations in which all individuals would be better off cooperating but fail to do so because conflicting interests discourage joint action.
The tech bros in charge of the social media platforms monetize heightened conflict, as the posts you've highlighted illustrate. Social media is making us more susceptible to scams, conspiracies and outright nonsense, and less able to cooperate right when we need it most.
Canada's digital tax was a good first step, but given the harm being caused and the profits involved, more aggressive action needs to be taken. Just as drugs need to be authorized as safe before being marketed, maybe the SM platforms should be required to submit their algorithms for safety approval.
I grew up in a world where "publishers" of all sorts (books, newspapers, tv stations, movie makers) were actually proud of their roles as arbiters, where they saw themselves as responsible for what they published. So it is startling to see our social media giants so determined to avoid any responsibility for what is published on their platforms. I'm not sure whether any law will work to change that but I agree we do need to try.
Yes, I agree, Cathie, the social media giants want to disappear into the background as mere "platforms," leaving content creators responsible for what they produce. But it's the algorithms that decide whether content gets promoted or disappears. And the social media giants don't want anyone looking under the algorithm hood lest that reveal what they're up to.
BLG was also onto something yesterday when he bemoaned the death of well-funded investigative journalism. The private sector has basically abandoned the field, and even the CBC has replaced most of that with rage-bait designed to drive clicks. Newspapers brought us the first world war and radio the second, television brought us Vietnam and Shock-and-Awe, but getting accurate information on current conflicts through social and modern corporate media is hopeless.
OT but : Trump's recent bribes for chip trade with China sorta reminds me of the JWR /SNC Lavolin scuffle.
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