“Crypto mining has been described as running your car in neutral all day so it can solve crossword puzzles in exchange for an occasional coupon that’s mostly useful for buying heroin online.” – Vice
Terry Etam
Etam: Voters Will Need to Decide If Our Energy System Remains Affordable and Reliable, or Descends Into Chaos
Nassim Taleb, if you’ve never read his stuff, is an odd and fascinating character; a writer with towering intellect, vast wealth, and an odd sort of humanistic humility, yet at the same time he provides a reliably volcanic reaction to pomposity or ineptitude....
Etam: Hey Look, Solutions To All The World’s Big Problems With Napkins To Prove It! Now Send Money
Sheesh, what’s with all the drama? The news is full of bad-news stories about doom and gloom; can’t everyone see we just need to roll up our sleeves and get to work? Most of this stuff isn’t even all that hard! We can solve the world’s obesity/health problem in...
Etam: The Beatings will Continue until Morale Improves
There’s positive energy out there, and there’s negative energy, and life is better wrapped in one rather than the other. I get it. I’ve absorbed the cliches and motivational posters; stay away from toxicity and life goes much easier. The energy world has for a...
Featured News
There’s Nothing Fair About Canadian Health Care
For the past 14 years, Vancouver surgeon Dr. Brian Day has led the charge for health-care reform, pushing for the right of patients to pay for private care if their health and well-being are threatened as a result of waiting in a stagnant and overburdened public...
Transformers: More than Meets the Eye
The path to net zero, based on the much disputed belief that carbon dioxide is a pollution, is more steep and impractical than most people realize. Replacing fossil fuels with clean electricity will require much more power generation and a greatly upgraded grid to...
Etam: If China is Picking Our Politicians can We at Least get Them to Teach Us About Industrial Policy?
There is something really crappy and dumb going on with Canadian industrial policy. Maybe you’ve figured it out. I sure haven’t. In the spirit of “the more minds working on it the better”, here are some low-lights to get everyone’s brains working on it before...
Etam: When Science gets Mugged for the Media – a Case Study
I walked past a truck in a parking lot the other day and I figured out what’s wrong with everybody. It was a good-looking new semi-small one, and, walking with my head down, watching for ice and muttering as usual, I almost walked into the side of it. There, staring...
Etam: Energy Should not be Controversial; How did this Happen?
Are you familiar with Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto-whiz kid that started crypto-exchange FTX, the 30-year-old worth $30 billion, some were hailing as the new Warren Buffett? His empire is now a pile of rubble, and against all legal advice he’s been delightfully...
Etam: Open letter to Californians: A high-utility-bill explanation, and a path to a smarter energy future
Dear Californians, I just love your state. It has everything. It is home to Bugs Bunny, sourdough bread, Silicon Valley, Death Valley, the Valley, Redwood forests, deserts, ski resorts, endless beaches, the accidental Salton Sea, a vast movie industry, a vast porn...
Etam: 2023 Energy Predictions?
Happy New Year all, though 2023 is well underway. Type A’s have buttoned down 2023’s goals and are doubtlessly already pursuing them with a vengeance. (Us) Type B’s are now wandering aimlessly around gyms, rationalizing abandoned resolutions, and annoying the regulars...
Etam: Wealthy Californians “Just Stop Oil” Campaign – Popular in Europe; has Anyone asked, say, Bangladesh?
“Kindly let me help you or you will drown said the monkey putting the fish safely up a tree.” – Alan Watts That’s a quasi-parable about how ignorance can maim helpfulness, turning well-being into harm, through pure innocence. But…that parable assumes the...
A Year of LNG Royalties/Taxes from a Single Pipeline Could Pay for …
Sitting on top of one of the world’s largest and richest natural resource warehouses is turning into quite a disconcerting distraction. While much of Canada’s population – the heavily urban part for whom “rural” means Whistler, Muskoka, or Mont Tremblant – likes to...
Etam: BRICS Starts Sidestepping the Tragedy of Western Energy Policy
As I spent a summer avoiding energy discussions wherever possible (harder than normal; funny how 15 years of energy policy calamity was uninteresting until record utility bills scorched J. Q. Public’s eyeballs), the lazy days in the sun brought some needed clarity...
Etam: A Good News Energy Story Amid the Carnage
It’s not even Stampede yet – and it looks like it will be a good old-fashioned free-for-all – and I’ve already encountered a fascinating drunken goofball at the top of his game. Nothing unusual there, I suppose, except that this encounter actually had an interesting...