Thread by @youseepeeYYC

A blanket of smoke is covering #Alberta today.

Climate change events like this are becoming more frequent. So here is a short thread on air quality.

#cdnpoli #ableg #abpoli
cbc.ca/news/canada/ed…

Right now there are air quality advisories across the province.

Health Canada uses a 1-10 scale where 1 is nice clean air and 10 is a like a #Conservative government in your lungs.

Alberta uses the same scale.

airquality.alberta.ca/map/🔗

#ableg #cdnpoli #absmoke

A 1-10 scale is beautiful in it’s simplicity, but it also fails to communicate what’s really going ok with air pollution.

canada.ca/en/environment…🔗

@environmentca does offer explanations for these numbers, but you have to go looking for them.

The most prevalent pollutant by mass is particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, roughly 50 times smaller than a grain of sand. Its prevalence is one reason health authorities issue air quality warnings using PM2.5 as the metric.

#absmoke
theconversation.com/whats-in-wildf…

What does that smoke do to human bodies?

“There is another reason PM2.5 is used to make health recommendations: It defines the cutoff for particles that can travel deep into the lungs and cause the most damage.”

calhospital.org/sites/main/fil…📚(.pdf)

#absmoke #ClimateCrisis #yeg #yyc

It’s for reasons like this that on smokey, polluted days, I don’t go to @environmentca’s websites to find out if we’re having a 9, 10, or 10+ lung damage day.

I tend to use aqicn.org, which uses data from local stations but shows the data better.

Here’s the image for #RedDeer from 7am this morning.

PM2.5 was 231 parts per million.

Other pollutants are also shown in PPM, along with other conditions like humidity and wind.

There’s even map to scroll on if you want to see a nearby station.

aqicn.org/city/canada/al…😷

So the data is out there; it isn’t terribly difficult to understand; why is the government hiding the actual PPM values of pollutants like PM2.5 behind a simplified 1-10 scale instead of just telling you what the concentration of pollutants is?

#cdnpoli

alberta.ca/about-the-air-…

…Because Conservatives don’t want you to have that information.

Okay, I don’t have a direct connection between the party of climate-denial and this specific 1-10 pollution scale, but stay with me and I’ll explain, briefly, why this messaging seems familiar.

#ClimateCrisis

The Harper Government—which both @erinotoole and @jkenney were a part of—was notorious for unravelling environmental protection, defunding science monitoring, & muzzling scientists.

Voting Conservative has consequences.

#ableg #cdnpoli #ClimateAction
canadians.org/analysis/100-m…

One of their changes made was to rename the website where we go find out if it’ll rain tomorrow.

The word “environment” was stripped from the @environmentca site, and advertisements for the old “economic action plan” were plastered everywhere. #cdnpoli

cbc.ca/news/politics/…

How we talk about things matters. People don’t tend to think much about words they never hear.

That’s why in communication what goes unsaid is often almost as important as what gets said.

thestar.com/edmonton/2019/…🔗

The human mind is funny. We use language to structure our thoughts. It is very difficult to think around an idea that we haven’t built vocabulary for.

That’s part of why controlling education is so important for zealots like @jkenney. #abed #abpoli
#UCPcorruption

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https://twitter.com/youseepeeyyc/status/1365159253690830848

#Conservatives corrupting census data during the was another example of this sort of thing. Without the vocabulary of up-to-date stats, quantifying & discussing the damage done by the Harper Government.

#cdnpoli #ableg #ClimateCrisis #ClimateAction

huffingtonpost.ca/murtaza-haider…

To get back to our thesis here: access to straightforward information about pressing matters in order to make informed decisions—from covid to climate change.

Putting up barriers to access that data can be harmful.

It can allow misinformation to capture the narrative. #cdnpoli

We already know that air pollution is extremely bad for your health.

Governments spent decades fighting tobacco lobbyists to reduce the rate of smoking in the general population.

We know that fossil fuel lobbyists are not above using misinformation…

npr.org/sections/healt…

So while it’s great that there are dozens (hundreds?) of air quality stations across the country, a 1-10 scale doesn’t match the international standard of just telling people the PPM of PM2.5 on a given day.

We need honest data.

#cdnpoli #cdnmedia #ClimateCrisis

Here are the screen shots from this morning for the pollution levels in #yeg and #yhx from aqicn.org.

People in #Edmonton and #MedicineHat, you deserve to know how climate denial political parties affect your health.

#ableg #abpoli #ClimateCrisis #absmoke

Here are the screen shots from this morning for the pollution levels in #yyc and #yql from aqicn.org.

If you’re in #Calgary or #Lethbridge, you deserve to know how climate denial political parties affect your health.

#ableg #abpoli #ClimateCrisis #absmoke

We’re almost done this thread about air pollution and how we think and talk about it.

I want to highlight a comment made by @crystal_suisho here about how learning other languages helps people be able to think about issues that affect society. 💯agree!

https://twitter.com/crystal_suisho/status/1416839642502995974?s=21

To add to @crystal_suisho’s comment, it is incredibly important to normalize not only the language surrounding important issues like the #ClimateCrisis, systemic racism, crony capitalism, and reconciliation for indigenous peoples.

Let’s end the thread here.

If you enjoyed reading this then you might also appreciate this thread on thinking critically about the media.

#cdnmedia #cdnpoli

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https://twitter.com/youseepeeYYC/status/1364680295673331712

If you’re interested in systemic #racism, I put together this thread showing how police treat visible minorities in #Canada.

Spoiler alert: it isn’t pretty.

#DefundThePolice #skpoli #ableg

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https://twitter.com/youseepeeyyc/status/1384690643809669121

If you are concerned about the #ClimateCrisis, then you probably understand that the corporations who got rich destroying the planet aren’t willing to let go of their position or their power.

Here’s how the @NHL teams in #Alberta oppose taking action on climate change.

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https://twitter.com/youseepeeYYC/status/1340409590299516928