‘Not your usual rabble-rousers’: Inside the growing calls among MPs for Justin Trudeau to step down
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I’ve got a couple of pieces to start The Buzz this Saturday morning addressing climate and the first one is pretty alarming.
It’s from The Guardian:
Earth’s ‘vital signs’ show humanity’s future in balance, say climate experts
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The second piece comes from someone I have a lot of time for, a climate scientist, who chooses her words carefully and never loses her sense of optimism while still fully understanding the dangers that exist.
She’s been on my podcast, The Bridge, in the past. Katharine Hayhoe is a Canadian working in Texas and has a fabulous weekly newsletter you should subscribe to if you’re interested. Here’s this week’s:
The escalating human cost of a warming world
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Final word on climate and it comes thanks to the BBC.
Throughout this past week news organizations around the world tried to outdo each other with ways to describe what was about to happen in Florida. No description was out of order it seems.
Well, maybe one. Because no one came close to what the BBC was suggesting when it was detailing its own worldwide weather forecasts. Like 14,000 mile per hour winds in London, and 400-degree temperatures in New York.
“Oops,” said the BBC, “we had a weather app problem.” I guess so.
Here at home, this has been another ugly week in the House of Commons with dirt being hurled back and forth across the stretch of green carpet that separates the government and the opposition.
Gone are the days when both sides had no trouble jousting but there was a limit and laughing usually took over. I can remember even the likes of John Diefenbaker and Pierre Trudeau finger-pointing one moment and then crossing the floor to backslap the next. Pierre Poilievre says that era is a thing of the past and what we see now is more reflective of the way the country feels. Maybe he’s right.
This week’s fights were over the tense issue of Middle East politics and in particular the first anniversary of the October 7th attacks. Paul Wells has a classic Wells analysis in his latest Substack of what happened when the House gathered to remember:
Poilievre's Oct 7 poem
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Someone else I’ve come to admire for analysis is Tom Mulcair.
The former Quebec Liberal cabinet minister and federal NDP leader had a pretty successful political career (although the end wasn’t pretty). Now, among other things, he writes and broadcasts political commentary for CTV. And his segments are well worth following even when you disagree.
This week the focus is on how the Conservatives are trying to go after every possible Liberal who might go for Justin Trudeau’s job if, well you know:
Tom Mulcair: Conservatives continue to attack Trudeau's potential successors
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Nobel prizes don’t grow on trees yet every few years it seems someone from Canada rises to the top in their field and finds they’re on their way to Oslo for a presentation.
This year a Nobel prize for physics will be hung around the neck of the University of Toronto’s Geoffrey Hinton. The professor is called a lot of things, like the “Godfather of AI” for one. But Digital Technology expert Don Lenihan has another, “His Own Harshest Critic”:
A Very Canadian Nobel Prize: Why Geoffrey Hinton Is His Own Harshest Critic
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For the last twenty years or so, we’ve been used to seeing articles about how advancements in medical science were translating into a significant advancement in life expectancy. In fact, there was talk of the old, “we can live forever” dream. Well at least somewhere in the 120-150 year range.
Maybe not. Associated Press has found a researcher who says it’s time to be a lot more realistic about just how long you’re going to be around:
Don’t expect human life expectancy to grow much more, researcher says
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If you’re flying across the Atlantic to London, how fast do you want to get there?
How about an hour? That’s what they’re talking about now, so buckle up:
Hypersonic jet that can reach speeds of 3,600mph to take test flight in 2025
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Who knew? French fries are in trouble.
Seriously. Even McDonald’s is thinking of cutting back. What happened?
America’s french fry king sounds an alarm
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