When you live up north, DST doesn't really matter. It's more of a nuisance than anything.

In the winter, everyone wakes up in the dark, goes to work in the dark, then goes home in the dark. In the summer, everyone wakes up in the sun and most go to bed when it's still daylight.

Does it matter if the sun sets at 11 pm instead of 10 pm? No.

But where DST is particularly annoying is in October, where it has the effect of robbing the morning daylight when everyone is waking up for another month. If it were kept between the equinoxes it wouldn't be as irritating. But it's also pointless, because in less than a month the day will end an hour later anyway.

It does have a better argument in mid latitude countries like the US.

While the classification of cattle is in hot dispute, they are either a species or subspecies that have no other purpose than to be meat. For more thousands of years than you can keep in your "enlightened" brain, they have been selectively bread for traits that make them utterly incapable of existing in any sort of unproitected wild setting.

Maybe some breeds where the mothering instinct has been bred out. But I live not far from an area where cows are left to roam in the woods also inhabited by bears and they do fine or the ranchers wouldn't do it. They can live just like wild horses do.

In a combined cycle natural gas power plant, the gas is first burned in a turbine, then the waste heat is used to boil water, getting efficiency of 60% in modern designs. Coal just straight boils water. It shouldn't be difficult to tack on one or two appropriately sized turbines to a coal power plant and reuse the same heat-to-boil components, as a turbine needs only about the same space as an intercity bus. Or a plant could straight flare natural gas into the chamber, which although very inefficient compared to a combined cycle plant, would be inexpensive to add to an existing coal fired plant.

Even in typical winter temperatures of -30C (-22F), there aren't many heat pumps that will run, let alone be more efficient than resistive heating. Most will add resistive heat strips to supplement their heating ability below about -20C (-4F).

I've not heard of any that will work in extreme temperatures below -40.

Many heat pumps now work efficiently down to about -20C (-4F). The technology has improved. They're great in climates that have mild winters.

And they make more sense than an air conditioner, even if backup heat is required in climates with cold winters.

I'm not a fan of any fuel that takes cropland to burn in engines. That includes corn or sugar beets grown purely to make ethanol. It makes more sense to use that land to grow food.

Hydrogen generation has the advantage of needing little space, next to ocean water. The world is likely going to need it for desalination anyway as fresh water gets more scarce with melting glaciers, other forms of climate change, and increasing population.

Hydrogen also "burns" completely cleanly in a fuel cell, with no nitrogen oxide production as happens in combustion engines.

Yes, using hydrogen where batteries don't (yet) make sense is does involve considerable expense. Bio-diesel from waste is a good transitional strategy, as is replacing coal with natural gas.

As long as the hydrogen comes from natural gas, and the resulting carbon dioxide isn't sequestered in some way, you are correct, it doesn't reduce carbon dioxide emissions at all.

Right now hydrogen as a fuel is still the learning and experimenting stage, so the source of the hydrogen doesn't matter much.

I'm not a huge proponent of hydrogen and it was only recently that I began to understand why there is interest in it at all.

Yes, for small vehicles, with low energy requirements like cars, the weight of hydrogen containment outweighs any density benefits. Battery cars already work well in most situations.

But for large vehicles, the containment weight is less of a percentage of the weight of the stored hydrogen.

Converting accomplishes two things. One, it builds the infrastructure around hydrogen, should a different source of production be found. For instance, the high temperatures in molten salt reactors could generate sufficient heat for solid oxide electrolyzer cells to operate effectively. Two, it's much easier to capture carbon dioxide from a single source.

Hydrogen has about one hundred times the mass-based energy density of batteries, and about triple that of gasoline. Using hydrogen as a fuel makes sense where weight matters. The first hydrogen powered plane is flying. It also makes sense to use hydrogen in remote areas where it's not economic to run power lines, or where it's not practical to build nuclear to keep the heat and lights on during the dark winter months, places currently electrified with diesel.

The first hydrogen-powered locomotive is already moving freight around Calgary. Most lithium battery chemistries require heating to work half the year (except lithium titanate, which has low energy density). To replace the 20,000 liters of diesel carried by a typical North American locomotive, it would require about 15 rail cars of batteries, or about a third of the hauling capacity of the locomotive. Locomotives are never run to empty, but neither would the batteries be. North American railroads frequently run away from power infrastructure, plus adding catenary wires would require massive tunnel and bridge reconstruction throughout the continent, or a largely new fleet of railcars with diminished capacity, either of which would cost well into the tens of trillions of dollars.

A simpler solution is a tax on beef consumption to encourage alternatives, rather than bureaucratic micromanagement of farms and imports. A consumption tax would affect local production and imports equally.

Beef is already a very efficient animal. Alternatives like bison and yak (both delicious) require a lot more feed to produce the same amount of meat. Which animal do you suggest as an alternative?

Sentiment analysis had buzz nearly two decades ago. Does anyone believe the internet panopticons haven't been doing sentiment analysis at least since then?

It's not just very overweight people that don't fit. It's also people who are broad and/or tall. Even at my slimmest I'm still 23" wide at the shoulders. Average seats are 17 wide now, which I fit into, but I'm occupying both arm rests.

Oh, and US corporate taxes are 18% and the net corporate tax rate in Canada is closer to 10%, depending on the province.

Canadian federal tax is 15%, on top of the provincial/territorial tax between 8% and 16%, making the tax rate 23% to 31%.

But I don't know if you could reasonably get enough current from overhead lines.

Easily. BC Rail had an electrified subdivision, Tumbler Ridge, that used 6000 HP GMD GF6C locomotives with a 50 kV catenary system. They initially ran 4 of those per unit train of approximately 100 cars of coal, at grades up to 1.2% while loaded.

highly radioactive element uranium

Most uranium is only mildly radioactive. With a half life of 4.5 billion years, Uranium-238, which makes up over 99% occurring in nature, decays very slowly.

This new isotope is highly radioactive, but most uranium is not.

Where I live, about sixty days per year have night time temperatures between -30 and -35C. Another sixty have night temperatures below -20.

I haven't heard of any going to -35, only -30, so that is news to me. I'm glad to hear the technology is progressing!