The Great Cloud Conspiracy

Posted on 2019-07-03 by arjaybe

Credit Craig Sunter – CC-BY


In the past week I’ve had a couple of visits from people who saw a link from another site to a post here. Being curious I backtracked them and found myself reading about the Great Cloud Conspiracy. Apparently when the International Cloud Atlas released a new edition with some added cloud types it meant that they were actually new clouds that didn’t use to exist. And of course that means that someone, probably the government, had done something that caused them to appear. Something about chemtrails? Note that my posts were linked to as a form of validation for their theories. In one case the author of the conspiracy post simply cut-and-pasted my post right off the screen. Any reasonable person who reads my posts will realize that I don’t subscribe to the conspiracy theories they’re supposed to support.

To be misunderstood is bad enough. To then be used as back-up for some wingnut’s conspiracy theory is going too far.

rjb

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Volunteers

Posted on 2019-07-01 by arjaybe

“Volunteer Appreciation Event 2010 067”by thewomensmuseum is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

I think we should reward volunteers for all the good they do. Here is a copy of an email I sent to my MP toward that end.

Richard Cannings
MP, South Okanagan — West Kootenay

Dear Mr Cannings

Canada depends on volunteers. Many of the services we depend on would not be available or would be too expensive without them. We don’t do much for them in return. We might tell them how great they are and buy them lunch once a year, but we don’t give them anything tangible.

I would like to suggest a way that the country, and all of us collectively, can reward our volunteers. We can donate to the Canada Pension Plan in their name. Ideally we could make contributions commensurate with the value of the work they do; with what we would otherwise pay a person to do that work. More pragmatically we could tie the contributions to the minimum wage. Whatever method we choose, we would be rewarding them with a little extra income in their retirement.

Let’s tell our volunteers how much we really appreciate them.

Jim Bowering

If we’re going to use volunteers to do things we would otherwise have to pay people to do, the least we can do is thank them in a tangible way.

rjb

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More Drought

Posted on 2019-06-26 by arjaybe

“Enchanted Light | New Mexico” by Jim Crotty is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0


Droughtman is strangely quiet these days. It has been cool and cloudy and is forecast for more of the same, with the possibility of precipitation, and he hasn’t said anything snide about it. It might have something to do with the latest information from our water management people. They have raised the drought level to 3, very dry. Although that would normally trigger Droughtman to sneer at them and point out that there’s still water in the big lakes, they also mentioned that Okanagan Lake, the biggest, is low. His go-to proof that he knows more than they do has let him down, and he has gone quiet. In addition, the upper-elevation reservoirs, which Droughtman had failed to consider in his earlier claims, have failed to fill this year.

All this is giving water utilities cause for concern. Their supplies look as if they might not meet demand, so they are replacing voluntary measures with restrictions on their customers’ use of water. So far it’s just for outdoor use, such as watering lawns and gardens on a strict schedule, but if it continues dry the restrictions will escalate. Already the lakes are low, as are the reservoirs and some wells, and even with the cooler and damper weather recently, we’re well below average for precipitation. It could be that all this information has been enough to quiet even Droughtman.

Time will tell, I guess.

rjb

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