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Exciting that Red Deer may take the lead in Solar Power discussions on March 6 2017

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10 minute read

I am excited to hear that the city of Red Deer is considering a plan to retrofit homes to solar energy. To fully outfit a home with solar energy would cost 25,000 dollars and at 3% interest it would cost $242 per month for 10 years. The city would consider loaning the money, putting a lien on your home, and collect it back through property taxes, for example. The debt stays with the home. Your electric bills go down, your property value goes up.
The city puts in utilities sidewalks etc. that we all pay for through our property taxes. New builds would be less expensive and would be easier and the city should consider the option at all times.
Another benefit to the city as a whole would be eco-friendly, would create jobs and could take advantage of economy of scale. Taking the lead in this could push other levels of governments to participate. I am glad to see the city addressing this issue on March 6 2017. I would suggest everyone offer communication to our city. You could e-mail legislative [email protected]

Past blogs are included;
May I ask a stupid question or 2 or 3 or 11?
I hear a lot about solar panels, solar power, solar heating, and passive solar heating.
Solar panels produce electricity and could charge batteries for later use or to keep batteries charged. Electric cars and busses run on batteries that get recharged, after use, when they are plugged in. Why do we not see solar panels on electric cars and busses? You plug them in power supplies that are often times coal generated to charge up your batteries. Would the solar panels on the cars and busses lessen the time and power requirements? A bus can be 40 feet long and over 8 feet wide, offering a large roof area for solar panels.
We talk about solar panels being less efficient in the cold, under snow and ice. Why not incorporate solar heating panels to keep your solar panels warm, and ice and snow free?
Could we put a magnifying glass or lens in front of a solar panel to increase light intensity?
What about a mirror behind the solar panel?
How about a parabolic mirror?
What is that, you ask?
A parabolic mirror is a curved mirror, like a satellite dish.
According to Wikipedia;
“The parabolic reflector functions due to the geometric properties of the paraboloidal shape: any incoming ray that is parallel to the axis of the dish will be reflected to a central point, or “focus”. Because many types of energy can be reflected in this way, parabolic reflectors can be used to collect and concentrate energy entering the reflector at a particular angle.”
We have all seen satellite dishes being used for tv signals focused on receiver so why not use a polished reflective satellite dish to focus sunlight on a solar receiver, possibly a solar panel or a solar sphere? Like the TV dishes they started huge and got smaller and more efficient.
Could we not place a magnifying lens in front, and also incorporate passive solar heating for year round use? Could we not use a portion of the power created to ensure optimal aiming?
Solar panels are getting more powerful, more efficient and less expensive. Instead of spending billions on big projects could we not focus on smaller ones?
These may be stupid questions, but I just had to ask.

Is it time to have or implement a National Electrical Strategy?
I live in Red Deer, a small city in Central Alberta. My electrical bill last month was $95.
The average household, according to Google, in Canada uses 972 KWHs monthly, but I used 848 KWHs last month, so if I had been an average user then my bill would have been $109.
My electrical bill shows that my electrical use cost only $32.40 while administration cost $6.99, distribution cost $25.90 transmission fees cost $23.86, include access fees, rate riders and balancing pool allocations and GST and my bill came to $95.
Talk of carbon taxes, green energy would increase my energy costs. Fine, increasing my energy costs by 10% would mean an increase of only $3.24 because all the other charges should not go up. Changing fuel or supply should not affect administrators, power lines, poles or switches.
I started requesting electric bills from homes in other parts of Alberta and the costs varied from 3.75/ kwh to 5.99/kwh and the other costs varied in name and amount for varying total costs per kwh from 11.7 to 15.75/kwh. So at 848 kwh my bill would go from $95 up to $133.56 depending on location.
Alberta is deregulated and you have options of providers. Floating and fixed rates, but the other fees are always added.
A home in Vancouver showed an average 11.37/kwh so my bill would be $96.50, very similar to my Alberta bill. Vancouver is vastly different and denser market. Vancouver has 5,249 people per km. or 2100 homes per square km.
Alberta has a population of 4,252,879 people in 640,081.87 sq. kms. For a density of 6.7 people per square km. or 2.7 homes per square km. So you would think that the costs would be astronomically higher to compensate for the vast distances, and the increased wiring, poles, and installation of such, but apparently not.
So I thought about Ontario. Population of 13,982.984 in 908,607 square kms of land. 15.4 people or 6.2 homes per square kms. More than twice the density of Alberta. The transmission and distribution costs should be equal to or less than sparsely populated Alberta. I started requesting power bills from home owners in Ontario, especially in rural Ontario.
The first bill came from Winchester, 40 kms. from Ottawa. It showed a monthly usage of 661.24 KWHs. Energy costs varied from 8.7/kwh of low peak to 18/kwh during high peak for energy cost of $79.06. Add in delivery charge of $65.41, regulatory fees and HST and the bill comes to $164.96. Or 25/kwh. My current bill would now be $211.55 if I lived in Winchester.
The second bill came from a family outside Chesterville. It showed higher usage, perhaps because of location, age of appliances or lifestyle. Energy use of 1281 KWHs for a bill of $278.93 or 22/kwh. My bill would then be $184.65 if I lived outside Chesterville.
Albertans get their power from natural gas (44%), coal (39%) and even hydro (6%) while Ontario get their power from Nuclear, (66%) and Hydro (22%) But in Alberta, we are expecting increases in our power bills due to carbon taxes, green initiatives and the new power lines being built to the southern border. Paid for by current users to provide power south of the border. Ontario has some similar changes and challenges ahead to incur expectations of increased costs. Is this proper?
Alberta is only 70% the size of Ontario, our population is only 30% of Ontario, yet Alberta power bills are substantially lower. Capitalists will tell you that larger markets like Ontario, means lower costs, as one would also expect with increased density as in this case, Ontario.
Alberta deregulated the electrical sector increasing competition. Would that help or exasperate the problem in Ontario? Should the vast majority of urban homes subsidize the rural users? Should a standard rate be applied to all in Ontario?
To recap with averages of 972 KWHs per home per month it would cost $110.61 in Vancouver B.C., $108.90 in Red Deer Ab., $242.48 in Winchester Ont. And $211.65 in Chesterville Ont. Definitely not a level playing field, is it?
Is it time for the Federal Government to create a National Electrical Strategy? We could at least study on it.
What do you think?

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Despite claims of 215 ‘unmarked graves,’ no bodies have been found at Canadian residential school

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Over 100 churches have been burned or vandalized since the Trudeau government and mainstream media promulgated, without any physical evidence, the narrative that mass ‘unmarked graves’ had been discovered at Kamloops Indian Residential School.

Canada’s Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations has confirmed it has spent millions searching for “unmarked graves” at a now-closed residential school once run by the Catholic Church, despite the fact that no human remains have been found.

In total, some $7.9 million was earmarked for a search of unmarked Indian Residential School graves in Kamloops, British Columbia. According to the spokeswoman for the Crown-Indigenous Relations, Carolane Gratton, the community got the money “for field work, records searches and to secure the Residential School grounds.”

“Details of initiatives taken by Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation are best directed to the community,” noted Gratton. 

To date, the Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations has not given a financial accounting under the Access To Information Act as to where the money went. According to the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation, it “continues to grieve children that are in our care and are focused on the scientific work that needs to be done,” but made no mention of the $7.9 million. 

In 2021 and 2022, the mainstream media ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some of the schools. 

The Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation was more or less the reason there was a large international outcry in 2021, when it claimed it had found 215 “unmarked graves” of kids at the Kamloops Residential School. The claims of remains, however, were not backed by physical evidence, but were rather disturbances in the soil picked up by ground-penetrating radar. 

The money given to the First Nation was done so to find the “heartbreaking truth” of the residential school system, according to a 2022 Indian Residential School Sites: Unmarked Burials department briefing note.  

“Our thoughts are with survivors, their families and communities as the heartbreaking truth about Residential Schools’ unmarked burials continues to be unveiled,” read the note.  

“Funding is available to support communities, survivors and their families on their healing journey through researching, locating and memorializing those children who died while attending Indian Residential Schools.” 

While there were indeed some Catholics who committed serious abuses against native children, the past wrongs led to widespread anti-Catholic sentiment, which boiled over in the summer of 2021 after the discovery of the 215 so-called “unmarked” graves in Kamloops.

While some children did die at the once-mandatory boarding schools, evidence has revealed that many of the children tragically passed away as a result of unsanitary conditions due to the federal government, not the Catholic Church, failing to properly fund the system.   

No human remains have been found 

Soon after the Kamloops announcement in 2021, other regions claimed the presence of “unmarked graves,” which prompted Canada’s House of Commons under Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, with the help of all other parties including the Conservatives, to declare the residential school program a “genocide” despite the lack of evidence.

The reality is that to date, no human remains have been found at the Kamloops site or other sites.

In fact, in August 2023, the Pine Creek Residential School, located in Pine Creek, Manitoba, underwent a four-week excavation and yielded no remains. 

The excavation was led by a First Nation’s tribe called Minegoziibe Ashinabe, and came after a total of 14 abnormalities were found at the former school by ground-penetrating radar.  

There have been other excavations conducted at residential schools that have likewise turned up no human remains.  

Since the spring of 2021, over 100 churches, mostly Catholic, have been burned or vandalized across Canada. The attacks on the churches came shortly after the “unmarked graves” narrative began.

Despite the church burnings, the federal government under Trudeau has done nothing substantial to bring those responsible to justice or to stem the root cause of the burnings. 

“I think Canadians have seen with horror those unmarked graves across the country and realize that what happened decades ago isn’t part of our history, it is an irrefutable part of our present,” Trudeau had earlier remarked to reporters.  

The unmarked graves controversy also spurred a Senate committee in 2023 to claim that anyone who questions the graves is engaged in “Residential School denialism.” 

“Denialism serves to distract people from the horrific consequences of Residential Schools and the realities of missing children, burials and unmarked graves,” said a Senate Indigenous peoples committee report titled Honouring The Children Who Never Came Home.  

The Senate committee report said that the Canadian government should “take every action necessary to combat the rise of Residential School denialism.” 

Jordan Peterson tells Pope Francis to ‘take note’ 

Responding to reports about the Trudeau government spending nearly $8 million without finding a single body, renowned anti-woke Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson took a shot at Pope Francis.

“Pope Francis take note @Pontifex,” wrote Peterson on X (formerly Twitter) last Thursday. 

Peterson’s remarks likely came in light of the fact that Francis visited Canada in the summer of 2022 for the purpose of apologizing for churchmen’s role in the operation of the residential school program.  

During his July 2022 trip, Francis visited First Nations in Alberta and Quebec. While in Quebec, he seemed to join in on a pagan “smudging” ritual before giving a lengthy speech where he conveyed “deep shame and sorrow” for the role played by Catholic Church members in government-funded residential school abuses.  

While Francis seemed to go along with the mainstream narrative regarding residential schools, others have spoken out.

Last year, retired Bishop of Calgary, Frederick Henry, blasted the blatant “lie” that thousands of missing indigenous children who attended residential schools run by the Catholic Church were somehow “clandestinely” murdered by “Catholic priests and nuns.”

The founder of the National Post, Conrad Black, also made similar statements as Henry in an opinion piece for his former paper, calling the entire narrative a “fraud.” 

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Brownstone Institute

Medical Elites’ Disgrace Over Ivermectin

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From the Brownstone Institute

BY David GortlerDAVID GORTLER 

In the wake of the FDA settling a lawsuit brought against it for wantonly and aggressively smearing ivermectin, the agency has deleted its postings. That’s good, but we shouldn’t forget how egregiously it mischaracterized the drug, ignored copious evidence in its favor, and portrayed its proponents as dangerous crackpots.

About 30 months ago, America’s FDA was publishing articles with headlines like this: “Should I take ivermectin to treat COVID?” Answer: No. The agency also told Americans not to use ivermectin to prevent Covid. Then, in what became known as its infamous “horse tweet,” the FDA even patronizingly told Americans: “Seriously, y’all. stop it.

Prescribers who advocated for alternate treatments like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine were mocked online by America’s “trusted journalists” as being part of a “right-wing conspiracy” and labeled “hucksters.” Those who didn’t demure to the Covid mRNA or other Big Pharma treatment narratives were banned, fired, and spoken harshly about around the world and into the reaches of the stratosphere in what seemed like coordinated messaging.

Many clinicians lost their jobs – at best. At worst, their reputations, practices, finances, and careers were shattered. If that was not bad enough, after losing their jobs, state medical and pharmacy boards initiated legal proceedings against their licensure, singling out their “off-label” Covid treatments, despite other off-label treatments being a near-ubiquitous component of pharmacy and medical practice.

A screenshot of a social media post Description automatically generated

Within days of FDA’s initial postings above, the American Pharmacist’s Association (APhA) the American Society of Health System Pharmacists (ASHP), and the American Medical Association (AMA) all collaborated to release a joint press release condemning doctors who prescribed ivermectin to treat Covid, but it appears that these organizations, instead of actually performing independent analysis of primary literature data, blindly regurgitated FDA, CDC, and NIH plus other government and Big Pharma talking points “strongly opposing” ivermectin use.

For generations and especially during the Covid pandemic, professionals depended on these “elite” medical groups. Some of them have existed for around 170 years and have around $150 million to $1.2 billion in assets, so they clearly had the history, personnel, and wherewithal to objectively examine published data. Even beyond that, the AMA has several floors in a skyscraper in Chicago and the APhA’s Constitution Avenue’s “landmark headquarters” is so luxuriant that it is advertised and utilized as a wedding venue.

Of course, that extravagance was paid for by millions of pharmacists, physicians, and benefactors who expected these organizations to act as a checksum and ensure excellent clinical practice standards. These medical organizations have a duty to honor their histories, responsibilities, and ethical duties to better the human condition through verified scientific evidence. Instead, they appeared to outrageously abandon their obligations from their lofty positions of respect, comfort, money, and power.

APhA, ASHP, and AMA Clinical Declarations Now Indefensible:

On March 22, the FDA rightly acquiesced and agreed to remove their anti-ivermectin postings due to 1) a lawsuit filed against them and 2) the impossible task of having to defend themselves with an overwhelming amount of data disagreeing with not only dispensing medical recommendations, but the published data backing their Covid-19 use (e.g., see below).

With that gone, the APhA, ASHP, and AMA assertions suddenly have no leg upon which to stand.

Several non-FDA links within their press releases have (unsurprisingly) also quietly vanished with no explanation. NIH references are slated to be shut down, on top of multiple FDA and CDC links already no longer working.

Ivermectin Mechanism of Action, History and Evidence:

The broad antiviral mechanism of action of ivermectin is complicated and may partially involve blocking the uptake of viral proteins, but the bottom line is that it has been shown to yield positive results in a variety of published results for Covid-19. Had APhA, ASHP, and AMA pharmacists and physicians independently examined the data, (as I, just one drug-safety analyst without fancy headquarters, have done) rather than simply parroting now-deleted narratives of others, they would have learned that ivermectin works as an antiviral.

It has an extensively proven track record of being not just safe – but astonishingly safe for a variety of viral diseases. This is not breaking or fringe science; it has been known for years. Ivermectin is such a safe and effective drug that back in 2015 it was the first drug for infectious disease associated with a Nobel Prize in 60 years.

While I have stacks of electronic files and printed materials, dog-eared and food/drink-stained, there is a most elegantly presented meta-analysis website designed by some brainy and web-savvy scientists detailing over 100 studies from over 1,000 different scientists, involving over 140,000 patients in 29 countries describing the benefit and safety of ivermectin for Covid-19 treatment. It actually appears to be more extensive than Cochrane’s outdated review of ivermectin which only examined 14 trials – and excluded seven of them from consideration.

A close-up of a blue sign Description automatically generated

According to these data, consisting of smaller international publications that include real-world findings and small observational studies, ivermectin shows a statistically significant lower Covid-19 risk as detailed in the image above.

The less-positive findings associated with late treatment/viral clearance/hospitalization data cohort were associated with delayed administration. That is because any late-state use of antiviral pharmacology tends to be ineffective after hundreds of millions of viral replications have taken place – whether it’s cold sores, influenza, AIDS, or Covid-19.

ASHP, APhA, and AMA Press Releases Contradict Available Data and Clinical Practice Standards:

When the FDA scolded Americans not to use ivermectin for Covid-19, on April 25, 2021, there were 43 different published manuscripts showing its potential benefit. Around three months later, on August 21, the FDA released its infamous horse/cow tweet which implied that ivermectin was only for animals, not humans. This “doubling down” occurred as an additional 20 studies had subsequently been written detailing additional benefits for Covid-19. See the timeline below:

In the picture shown above, the BLUE circles shown are studies which detail positive ivermectin study findings and the RED circles are negative. Negative data exists, but the positive ivermectin findings outnumber them both in study quantity and study size (illustrated by the circle sizes), according to meta analysis data published at: c19ivm.org

Multiple APhA/ASHP/AMA statements ignored published scientific and clinical evidence. Specifically, statements declaring the: “Use of ivermectin for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 has been demonstrated to be harmful to patients” (bold emphasis theirs) are objectively inaccurate. I do not know on what basis those statements were made. The recommendation to healthcare professionals to …counsel patients against use of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19, including emphasizing the potentially toxic effects of this drug” represents a departure from pharmacist and physician practice standards.

The absurdity of the latter statement is quite outrageous. Pharmacists and physicians know that all drugs have “…potentially toxic effects” so if they applied the standard of “emphasizing potentially toxic effects” while discussing every prescribed medication, few if any patients would ever take any of their medications. The APhA/ASHP/AMA discriminatory hostility towards ivermectin was not only clinically unjustified and irresponsible; it was – as far as I know – without precedent.

These anti-ivermectin talking points also benefited new Big Pharma product advancement including the rebounding, overpriced taxpayer-funded boondoggle of Paxlovid and Remdesivir, such a “safe and effective” drug that hospitals had to be heavily incentivized (i.e., bribed) to entice nurses, physicians, and hospital administrators to promote its use with a staggering 20% “bonus” on the entire hospital bill paid by our federal government. Remdesivir quickly earned the sardonic nickname of “run-death-is-near” by American Frontline Nurses and others, due to serious questions about its clinical benefit.

Why were federal agencies’ and professional organizations’ talking points against ivermectin not backed by independent, original APhA/ASHP/AMA data examinations? That question needs to be thoroughly probed with regard to potential regulatory capture within these groups.

Both then and now, those FDA webpages, postings, and tweets were not just biased. They were irresponsible in their denigrating ivermectin as an off-label treatment, which is why they are now gone.

The question is, who was worse? The FDA for overstepping its congressional authority in not just making medical recommendations, but making recommendations ignoring data, or the servile “independent” elite professional organizations exuberantly echoing a narrative?

Prescient or not, here is an excerpt of the expert panel congressional testimony to the Covid Select House Oversight Committee, explaining the FDA’s disparaging ivermectin versus promoting mRNA injections using an automobile analogy, delivered just one day prior to the FDA’s yielding to physicians’ lawsuit to remove its postings denigrating ivermectin:

Heritage Foundation on X: ““To the countries, physicians, & pharmacists who prescribed ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, I would like to tell you right now, you were right.” Dr. Gortler obliterated the “science” Americans were expected to believe about COVID treatments and the COVID vaccine in Congress… https://t.co/UJInVqdSdb” / X (twitter.com)

Despite FDA Settlement and Data Abundance, the Press is Still Anti-Ivermectin

Even after the FDA’s about-face, on March 26, 2024, a Los Angeles Times journalist published a column calling the removal of FDA tweets “groundless” unilaterally declaring ivermectin is still “conclusively shown to be useless against COVID-19,” comparing ivermectin to “snake oil,” and describing those who advocate for it as “purveyors of useless but lucrative nostrums” …whatever that means. (Regarding the ‘lucrative’ claim, it is worth noting that since ivermectin is generic and inexpensively available, it is not ‘lucrative’ to anyone.) It also referenced ivermectin lacking “scientific validation,” even though the above-cited data abundantly indicates otherwise.

Regarding the FDA’s choice to settle its lawsuit disparaging ivermectin, the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research leadership isn’t “shooting itself in the foot” as the Times says. It seems that the FDA is indirectly attempting to prevent further embarrassment likely because it now realizes that its ivermectin assertions were wrong and outdated with every passing day. But where does that leave the APhA, ASHP, or AMA who heavily relied on these now deleted FDA links in their press releases?

The APhA, ASHP, AMA Response to the FDA’s Removal of Postings Used in Press Releases? An Embarrassing Silence:

Over a month later, and as of this publication date, none of these organizations have a single thing to say about their previous press releases quoting the now-removed FDA articles and tweets. In fact, here is an indication of their concerns: one week after the FDA acquiesced to remove its postings in ivermectin, APhA’s newly elected speaker chair and pharmacist Mary Klein is “happy danc[ing]” and giving her official acceptance speech wearing Mickey Mouse ears. ASHP’s (A/K/A “#MedicationExperts”) still shows its official page with clinicians wearing ineffective, unnecessary surgical masks despite the pandemic having ended well over a year ago and Cochrane reviews indicating that this sort of masking is almost certainly ineffective. AMA officials are making multiple posts on transgender issues and declaring climate change a public health crisis, – all while fully ignoring its impactful, incorrect, inappropriate statements on ivermectin.

Take a look:

The APhA, ASHP, and AMA have remained conspicuously silent on this topic while focusing their newsfeeds on everything but. To this day, their press releases remain online, with multiple dead links to government agencies. In blindly backing incorrect narratives pointing to removed web pages, they are now all alone in their ivermectin declarations.

Bottom line: ivermectin was and is safe, and more than likely effective for Covid when timed and dosed correctly, and under medical supervision, despite what was declared by organizations and federal officials. In fact, ivermectin’s general antiviral activity might even be helpful for bird flu (avian influenza) in animals and humans, in lieu of another novel adverse-event-ridden “warp speed” mRNA “vaccine” with an endless boondoggle of boosters.

The past and current record on ivermectin needs to be set straight. We know there is an important (but untransparent) list of who is responsible for misrepresenting published data, but will anyone be held accountable?

DISCLAIMER:  Do NOT discontinue or initiate taking ANY drug without first discussing it with a pharmacist or physician you know and trust. 

Author

  • David Gortler

    Dr. David Gortler, a 2023 Brownstone Fellow, is a pharmacologist, pharmacist, research scientist and a former member of the FDA Senior Executive Leadership Team who served as senior advisor to the FDA Commissioner on matters of: FDA regulatory affairs, drug safety and FDA science policy. He is a former Yale University and Georgetown University didactic professor of pharmacology and biotechnology, with over a decade of academic pedagogy and bench research, as part of his nearly two decades of experience in drug development. He also serves as a scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center

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