Over the past month I have been updating the family cabin. After seventy years it seemed like it might be time. Single pane windows were replaced with double pane windows that don’t distort the view. Insulation and plastic were added to cut down on the cool breeze blowing through the floorboards and concrete siding replaces cedar shingles. Not only will the cabin be warmer, but it might not burn down so readily when somebody “overachieves” on a controlled burn..The cabin changes necessitated tearing out ceilings and roofing. This allowed a glimpse into a previous time. The cabin was built by hand with no access to power tools, power not being available and power tools not yet invented. The craftsmanship I observed was remarkably good and all done with hand saws and hammers. No wonder the original structure was only four hundred square feet to accommodate two families with five kids between them. Even the biffy was well built but in this, I am going from memory..“Why didn’t they build a bigger cabin?” I wondered. The windows that I removed had come from my family home which housed two adults, four children, and a single bathroom in under one thousand square feet. Why so small? It was so small because every piece of wood was cut with a handsaw..There's a metaphor here. If we continue to allow the purveyors of net-zero nonsense to get away with their arm waving to justify destroying our energy-based civilization, then we will be back to hand saws and hammers. In that world you can kiss goodbye to bathrooms big enough to swallow my cabin. You will learn to build a fire to heat the water necessary to fill the hot water bottle required to make your bed warm enough to enter at night. You will learn firsthand of the insulating properties of built-up frost on the inside walls of your teeny house. A smart phone and computer? Be serious and get used to a slide ruler and writing letters. When the world actually went crazy from climate change in the Dust Bowl 1930’s, my grandfather converted his car to a carriage and joined the Bennet Buggy gang. He had horses. Who is going to pull your car?.“But I think a simpler life is what we need,” you say. You say that because you know nothing of this simpler life. Have your bath every Saturday night in a tub located in the middle of the kitchen floor, the water heated over a wood stove or fireplace. Will there be energy to power the pumps that provide water to your taps and vacate the toilet when you flush? Try the outdoor commode at minus thirty-five degrees and tell me again about the pleasures of the “simpler life”..Working on the cabin took me back to the “simpler life” of my childhood and I want none of it. But if I keep my mouth shut when the narcissistic infants that purport to run this country blather on about the necessity of net zero, then I will soon be getting a whole lot of that life and that makes me cranky. If nothing else, it is time for the “just follow the science” crowd to start producing some science..For example, why is CO2 a pollutant and where is the science that proves that it is the thermostat of the universe? I don’t want to hear about climate models because I too have built models and know that you can make them give you any answer you want. No one, not even the model builders, seriously believes that they can model a natural system as complex as climate to make accurate predictions of average temperature decades from now. And what is an “average temperature” anyway? How is that marvel of integrative summation carried out?.We are giving billions of dollars in tax subsidies for large corporations to research and build battery plants in Canada. I would like to know about the shareholders of these companies (and whether anybody in the government bought the cheap stock.) I would like a reasonable answer to why wind and solar power need endless subsidies if they are so competitively cheap? If electric cars are the way to go, then won’t the decision to buy one be an easy one for me to make? Why must I be bribed with my own money?.It is my intention to spend some time on this topic because if our “tower climber extraordinaire” environment minister intends to usher me into a small, unheated one room building for fifteen minutes every morning I first want some answers to my questions..From 2015 to 2020, Murray Lytle PhD. P.Eng, was a Member of the National Energy Board.
Over the past month I have been updating the family cabin. After seventy years it seemed like it might be time. Single pane windows were replaced with double pane windows that don’t distort the view. Insulation and plastic were added to cut down on the cool breeze blowing through the floorboards and concrete siding replaces cedar shingles. Not only will the cabin be warmer, but it might not burn down so readily when somebody “overachieves” on a controlled burn..The cabin changes necessitated tearing out ceilings and roofing. This allowed a glimpse into a previous time. The cabin was built by hand with no access to power tools, power not being available and power tools not yet invented. The craftsmanship I observed was remarkably good and all done with hand saws and hammers. No wonder the original structure was only four hundred square feet to accommodate two families with five kids between them. Even the biffy was well built but in this, I am going from memory..“Why didn’t they build a bigger cabin?” I wondered. The windows that I removed had come from my family home which housed two adults, four children, and a single bathroom in under one thousand square feet. Why so small? It was so small because every piece of wood was cut with a handsaw..There's a metaphor here. If we continue to allow the purveyors of net-zero nonsense to get away with their arm waving to justify destroying our energy-based civilization, then we will be back to hand saws and hammers. In that world you can kiss goodbye to bathrooms big enough to swallow my cabin. You will learn to build a fire to heat the water necessary to fill the hot water bottle required to make your bed warm enough to enter at night. You will learn firsthand of the insulating properties of built-up frost on the inside walls of your teeny house. A smart phone and computer? Be serious and get used to a slide ruler and writing letters. When the world actually went crazy from climate change in the Dust Bowl 1930’s, my grandfather converted his car to a carriage and joined the Bennet Buggy gang. He had horses. Who is going to pull your car?.“But I think a simpler life is what we need,” you say. You say that because you know nothing of this simpler life. Have your bath every Saturday night in a tub located in the middle of the kitchen floor, the water heated over a wood stove or fireplace. Will there be energy to power the pumps that provide water to your taps and vacate the toilet when you flush? Try the outdoor commode at minus thirty-five degrees and tell me again about the pleasures of the “simpler life”..Working on the cabin took me back to the “simpler life” of my childhood and I want none of it. But if I keep my mouth shut when the narcissistic infants that purport to run this country blather on about the necessity of net zero, then I will soon be getting a whole lot of that life and that makes me cranky. If nothing else, it is time for the “just follow the science” crowd to start producing some science..For example, why is CO2 a pollutant and where is the science that proves that it is the thermostat of the universe? I don’t want to hear about climate models because I too have built models and know that you can make them give you any answer you want. No one, not even the model builders, seriously believes that they can model a natural system as complex as climate to make accurate predictions of average temperature decades from now. And what is an “average temperature” anyway? How is that marvel of integrative summation carried out?.We are giving billions of dollars in tax subsidies for large corporations to research and build battery plants in Canada. I would like to know about the shareholders of these companies (and whether anybody in the government bought the cheap stock.) I would like a reasonable answer to why wind and solar power need endless subsidies if they are so competitively cheap? If electric cars are the way to go, then won’t the decision to buy one be an easy one for me to make? Why must I be bribed with my own money?.It is my intention to spend some time on this topic because if our “tower climber extraordinaire” environment minister intends to usher me into a small, unheated one room building for fifteen minutes every morning I first want some answers to my questions..From 2015 to 2020, Murray Lytle PhD. P.Eng, was a Member of the National Energy Board.