Stephen Owens

Voted. Municipal elections are important. Ottawa usually comes up with a discouraging result but unjustifiable optimism runs strong.

The next time a leader thinks ‘snap election’ I hope the alternative also occurs to them. ‘Wait. I could try two years of good governance and give people a reason to vote for me! If I get a no confidence motion on a popular policy I’ll run on that.’

NEW BRIGHT SPOTS: Even on 100% gas power, heat pumps cut emissions by ~48% and EVs by about half. The authors of an “electrification doesn’t cut emissions” paper made a series of compounding mistakes and used misleading assumptions. Here's why. janrosenow.substack.com/p/heat-pumps...

Freeland: “The President is destroying the US market. In fact, your stock market is performing worse than the stock markets in Europe or Canada”

CANADA 🇨🇦 FOR THE WIN How about the Canadian women’s rugby team. Another triumphant victory over England. Incredible scenes in Ottawa. It’s the first time since 2016 that the English rugby women have lost back-to-back matches. www.cbc.ca/sports/rugby...

JUST POSTED: A Russian energy giant has secretly moved to acquire a position in a massive Alaska gas project. Its part of talks between Witkoff/Kushner & Putin. But CEO of US company resigns after learning of Russian money in the project. A wowzer of a story. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/23/u...

Why yes some of us Canadians are crazy, why do you ask? (And also awesome!) I btw would not swim in water below about 25c, nor dive off anything higher than my knees, so she has me beat by…uhhh…a lot.

Kudos to NBC New York for saying it without equivocation: "The US is to blame for the world falling behind in the fight against climate change."

💯

An excellent and fact filled article on how we should respond to homelessness.

Ottawa is gorgeous at this time of year and we’ve had some special days lately.

Are we now immune to actual results or does $80 billion lost still have the ability to shock? I’m shocked but I’m old.

28-24 - we’re so close, but still a lot of work to do…

Can our health ministers ever focus on reform, not just money? At their meeting last week, health leaders talked about a lot of things, but committed to almost nothing as the system crumbles around them, by @picardonhealth.bsky.social www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/0fc7a92... via @theglobeandmail.com

Can't help thinking if this was a car factory, a gas field or even a data centre it would be seen as a much bigger story. www.businessgreen.com/news/4537511...

💯

It’s a two-way race, with eight days to go. Among undecided voters, 61% say they won’t vote for Mark Sutcliffe. I’m working to earn those votes and deliver buses that run on time, affordable housing and a city that works.

Of respect back. Which is to say something like - let me be clear, we obviously take these costs into account because clearly the sun doesn’t always shine. Not to score points but because I don’t owe respect back to someone who treats me, my status, and my knowledge, with such little.

A gorgeous fall day in Ottawa.

Wow! One of ours and our boys’ favourites to read aloud. Worth celebrating this bastion of wisdom and wit.

These fucking people. If you want to save humanity, save it *here* and *now*. Bezos could easily move the needle on climate change if he wanted to try.

Zelensky: "When our strikes reached Yandex’s data centers, it suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social media platforms. A lot of people noticed it. There was less hate, less division, and fewer provocations. Because there were fewer bots. It’s pretty clear where those bots were."

When Ukraine destroys Russian data centers, hoards of aggressive right-wing bots disappear & the internet becomes friendlier. So much of politics is driven by the internet & so much of the internet is driven by Russians who want to hurt us. Shouldn’t we do something about that, given that we know it

New: AI data centers’ indirect water use - water consumed by power plants to generate electricity for power-hungry server farms - is magnitudes larger than the facilities’ onsite water consumption and is largely undisclosed. Free link. With @mchediak.bsky.social www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

I will not only be relieved but truly *ecstatic* to be wrong, if more and better studies soon start showing that AI actually improves learning and cognitive motivation. But so far they all show the opposite, and that is consistent with the evidence that I and other educators are seeing on the ground

Time for 2026 updates to my annual “opinions about solar” thread, now with storage. If you like these, you might like edition 2 of my book, Solar Power Finance Without The Jargon. A 30% discount code WSQ0437 is valid on publisher website til end of Nov 2026. www.worldscientific.com/worldscibook...

READ: “If bike lanes were actually removed today, the premier would lose his scapegoat. How would he then explain worsening motor traffic congestion – an outcome that’s virtually assured given a growing population and his measures to induce driving by making it cheaper…” Via @spacing.bsky.social

Behold, a column by the @theglobeandmail.com's Tony Keller that cries out for a debunking. Allow me. 🧵 www.theglobeandmail.com/business/com...

“Under no circumstance do I support separation of this province from Canada,” he said. “So, we just decided we’re not going to do this.” Separatist event in Banff organized by UCP CA president gets cancelled by owners of venue. #abpoli #ableg #cdnpoli www.rmoutlook.com/canmore/canm...

I’m thinking that economics and numeracy education is lacking in this country.

💯

This is better energy journalism than you'll see in most Canadian newspapers today -- and certainly anything coming out of Postmedia in Alberta. I've yet to see any of the talking heads and industry spokespeople actually confront it. energi.media/markham-on-e...

Albertans deserve a different vision of the province and country's energy future than the one-sided one their government is trying to feed them. Instead, we get this:

Yeah, this. 💯

Over the ten years, Premier Smith claims Alberta faced a hostile federal government, oil and gas production doubled, and Ottawa poured tens of billions into energy infrastructure. The tolerance of her big lie is almost as remarkable as the lie itself. https://ow.ly/Fl7950ZRRaq

Round two of the world's first industrial electrification auction opens in December. €1bn to electrify process heat, 3/4 of EU industrial emissions. Winners get a fixed premium per tonne of CO2 avoided for up to five years, funded by ETS revenues. climate.ec.europa.eu/news-other-r...

“from a business perspective… SMRs are not economic or commercially feasible at present or in the near future. The capital costs are high, the timelines are long and uncertain, and technology and supply chains lack maturity.” And yet Ontario is buying the fantasy.

Thoughtful article from UBC computer science and medicine professor Raymond Ng that questions the need for so many new AI data centres. He argues they should be built only when they meet an actual public interest need, not solely to enrich companies. 🎁

📣Big news! The Federal Court ruled in our favour in the climate accountability case 🎉 In June @environmentaldefence.ca teamed up with three youth and @cape-acme.bsky.social to take the federal government to court over their lack of a credible plan to meet the legally binding 2030 climate target 1/

🚨 Don't believe separatists lies.👇 ZERO evidence immigrants: - increase crime (on the contrary) - hurt healthcare system (on the contrary) - hurt education system (on the contrary) - etc etc. This noise nothing more than divisive hate-mongering. thewalrus.ca/albertas-sep... via @thewalrus.ca

Great start, hope the momentum keeps building.

💯

🧵New: Last month, researchers found 50 paid ads on Meta’s platforms that included AI-generated child sexual abuse. Meta said most of these ran before it rolled out new moderation AI. Since then, Meta has ran another 250+ of these ads. One used an image of a minor from a European royal family

Wow. I cannot say enough good things about this thread and the research in it. So happy I ditched my prime account over a year ago and have not bought from Amazon since if the product is available anywhere else.

Emergency personnel responded with several semis of macaroni and tanker trucks of water.