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We spent most of our first afternoon walking over to the Museum of Vancouver and, after looking at the exhibits, walking back for coffee, near our hotel.

The Museum explains that this was/is aboriginal land and shows how sophisticated the inhabitants were, with some very finely crafted stone tools.
In a later gallery we learn that Vancouver, like Sydney went through planning protests to arrive at today's very liveable compromise.

The following day we took a bus trip into the suburbs only to be deterred from going further by the first heavy rain they had had for some time. We even encountered a camera-crew filming the rain for the local news.

When the rain stopped, we hopped off the bus, down by the bay, and walked to a coffee shop where horse drawn wagons carried people around the park, before another long walk back.

 
To call Vancouver the Paris of North America would be to insult Vancouver.  We were most impressed.

On our final day here we picked up a (pre-ordered from OZ) car to drive across the Rockies to Calgary. On the way we would collect our friends Brian and Kat, so we needed plenty of luggage space.

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Travel

Europe 2022 - Part 1

 

 

In July and August 2022 Wendy and I travelled to Europe and to the United Kingdom (no longer in Europe - at least politically).

This, our first European trip since the Covid-19 pandemic, began in Berlin to visit my daughter Emily, her Partner Guido, and their children, Leander and Tilda, our grandchildren there.

Part 1 of this report touches on places in Germany then on a Baltic Cruise, landing in: Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Sweden and the Netherlands. Part 2 takes place in northern France; and Part 3, to come later, in England and Scotland.

Read more: Europe 2022 - Part 1

Fiction, Recollections & News

Dune: Part Two

Back in 2021 I went to see the first installment of ‘DUNE’ and was slightly 'put out' to discover that it ended half way through the (first) book.

It was the second big-screen attempt to make a movie of the book, if you don’t count the first ‘Star Wars’, that borrows shamelessly from Frank Herbert’s Si-Fi classic, and I thought it a lot better.

Now the long-awaited second part has been released.

 

Directed by Denis Villeneuve
Screenplay by Denis Villeneuve, Jon Spaihts
Based on Dune by Frank Herbert
Starring Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler' Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista
Christopher Walken, Léa Seydoux, Souheila Yacoub, Stellan Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling, Javier Bardem
Cinematography Greig Fraser, Edited by Joe Walker
Music by Hans Zimmer
Running time 165 minutes

 

 

Read more: Dune: Part Two

Opinions and Philosophy

Carbon Capture and Storage

 

 

(Carbon Sequestration)

 

 

The following abbreviated paper is extracted from a longer, wider-ranging, paper with reference to energy policy in New South Wales and Australia, that was written in 2008. 
This extract relates solely to CCS.
The original paper that is critical of some 2008 policy initiatives intended to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions can still be read in full on this website:
Read here...

 

 

 


Carbon Sequestration Source: Wikimedia Commons

 

This illustration shows the two principal categories of Carbon Capture and Storage (Carbon Sequestration) - methods of disposing of carbon dioxide (CO2) so that it doesn't enter the atmosphere.  Sequestering it underground is known as Geosequestration while artificially accelerating natural biological absorption is Biosequestration.

There is a third alternative of deep ocean sequestration but this is highly problematic as one of the adverse impacts of rising CO2 is ocean acidification - already impacting fisheries. 

This paper examines both Geosequestration and Biosequestration and concludes that while Biosequestration has longer term potential Geosequestration on sufficient scale to make a difference is impractical.

Read more: Carbon Capture and Storage

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