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Bob McDonald: Closure of polar lab a blow to Canada's scientific reputation
Shutting down the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Lab (PEARL) will make the world's climate models less precise
The announcement this week that the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Lab (PEARL) in Canada's High Arctic will be closed has once again lowered this country's environmental reputation on the world scene. This is ironic because, also this week, Canada's highest scientific prize, The Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal, was awarded to a scientist who studies climate change.
It's clear that our scientific community appreciates the importance of studying the Earth's changing climate, but the government does not.
PEARL is a unique monitoring station situated at Eureka, 80 degrees north latitude, about 1,100 km from the Pole.
It is one of only three stations in the world that keep track of activities in the atmosphere around the Pole; the other two are operated by Russia and Denmark. Just last year, the international network found a record loss of ozone over the Arctic.
When PEARL closes, one third of the data from the High Arctic will be gone, making the climate models less precise.
One of the scientists who relies on data from PEARL is Dr. Richard Peltier from the University of Toronto, winner of this year's Herzberg Award. As you will hear this week on Quirks & Quarks, Dr. Peltier develops models of the Earth's systems to not only understand changes in the past, but to try to provide indicators of what's to come.
But any model is only as good as the real data that backs it up.
In other words, models have to be checked against reality to make sure they reflect the way nature works; otherwise, they are just elaborate guesswork. That validation has to come from instruments out in the field, such as PEARL, that track the atmosphere year-round.
When PEARL closes, one third of the data from the High Arctic will be gone, making the climate models less precise.
This is all coming at a time when changes in the Arctic are happening more quickly than anywhere else on the planet. And changes up North mean changes for the rest of the country as well.
The huge mass of cold air around the top of the planet affects the jet stream, which guides weather systems, which affect rainfall distribution, which affects growing seasons, crop productivity, droughts and floods — the list goes on because everything in the environment is connected to everything else.
Closing our scientific outposts is essentially blinding not only our own scientists, but others around the world, too, because climate science knows no boundaries.
The cost of running PEARL is about $1.5 million per year. That may sound like a lot, but when you consider the government has spent about $1.5 billion on submarines that still don't work a decade after we bought them, it's not a lot of money. Especially when you consider the returns.
Canada has some of the top scientists in the world. They were part of the IPCC team that won the Nobel Prize for climate science in 2007. They are our eyes on the planet — eyes that need to be wide open in order to make important decisions about how we use energy, water and food in the future.
Turning a blind eye to their view is dangerous denial.
It's akin to the captain of the Titanic, after the ship hit the iceberg, saying, "We're not looking at the hole in the hull; let's focus on what's for dinner."


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Did A GOP Plot Cut Gas Prices?
Daniel Gross doesn't have much of a reputation as a friend of the Bush administration. So it's refreshing to see Gross debunking the latest anti-Bush conspiracy. You know, the one where Goldman Sachs and the Bush administration have pushed down the price of gasoline in order to save the GOP congressional majority in the midterm elections. This never made much sense to anyone who understands the markets in oil and gasoline pricing, much less anyone who has spent any time talking to Goldman bankers about politics. (Hint: Goldman is not a rightwing hothouse.)
Anyway, here's Gross's takedown of the great gasoline conspiracy.
So, was this engineered by Henry Paulson and Goldman Sachs? It's doubtful, although Goldman hasn't done much to dispel questions. The bank hasn't offered a good reason as to why it decided to reduce the overall weighting of gasoline in the index this summer. Still, the company is hardly a Republican redoubt. There are likely as many Kerry supporters as Bush supporters in the firm's upper ranks. And if Goldman was trying to manipulate the market for political reasons, it certainly picked an awfully transparent way of doing it. It publicly announced the contours of the changes in advance and gave investors and traders time to plot strategies surrounding the move.
More broadly, though, commodity markets have shown themselves to be beyond the control of presidents, the Saudis, or even Henry Paulson and Goldman Sachs. The world is an increasingly connected, complicated, and volatile place, which makes the prices for commodities that fuel the global economy dependent on a growing range of factors. At root, gasoline is getting cheaper largely because the thing you need to make it—crude oil—has been getting cheaper. And Goldman actually slightly increased the weighting of crude oil in the overall index this summer.
Closer to home, there was plenty of activity in August and September—beyond Goldman's index maneuvers—that helped push market and retail prices of energy lower. They include: a growing sense that the U.S. economy, the largest user of oil on the planet, has been slowing rapidly and might be headed toward a recession; a shift in the mix of the U.S. car fleet away from trucks and SUVs and toward smaller vehicles; a potential big find in the Gulf of Mexico; a growing boomlet in ethanol and alternative energy; a bust of a hurricane season; and the blowup of a gigantic hedge fund with huge positions in natural gas.
So, the recent fall in energy prices is almost certainly not a Bush conspiracy, just a bit of electoral good luck.
It's also kind of a strange conspiracy for the left to be raising. If voters discovered that the Republicans were engineering a reduction in gas prices, do you think that they would turn against the GOP? Not likely. They'd probably say, "Hey! Those guys are finally doing something that helps me out. If they can reduce the price of gas, they've got my vote." So the more popular the conspiracy theory gets, the more popular the Republicans will be.
The Oil Conspiracy [Slate]

subset: commoncrawl


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Fundamental analysis is one of the keys to success in the financial markets, and cryptomontages are no exception. Here are some useful tips.
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Fundamental analysis is a methodology used to attempt to predict the medium- and long-term behaviour of a specific asset. When it comes to cryptomonies, certain issues have to be taken into consideration to make the analysis as accurate as possible.
One of these questions is the fact that cryptomonies are born from specific technological projects and therefore we can define, according to certain parameters, if the cryptomonies at some point are undervalued and therefore their price will tend to rise in the future, or if not they are overvalued and will tend to devalue over time.
From what approach should fundamental analysis in cryptomonics be taken?
There are two approaches to fundamental analysis which seek to make accurate predictions by segmenting information into strata which can range from macro to micro or from micro to macro.
Top-Down Approach
In the first approach, known as Top Down, the macroeconomic aspects are first analysed, i.e. the state of the world economy and the different factors affecting it.
In a second stage, the economic situation of the company's country of origin and the countries in which it is present are analysed. In the case of Bitcoin, for example, which has a strong presence in Asian countries, the economic aspects of these countries greatly affect its behaviour. Finally, the company as such, its actions and finally the most promising sectors are analysed to find the best options for investment.
Buttom-up approach
Depending on your preferences, this might be a better approach to investing in Bitcoin. This approach seeks to do the exact opposite of the previous approach. In this case, you prioritise asset-specific research, then scale up to the economic situation of the country where it is located, and finally the state of the world economy and how the latter might affect the behaviour of the cryptomoney.
What tools do you use in the fundamental analysis of cryptomon currencies?
In the fundamental analysis it is possible to use different tools, which will give you certain clues that you can use to finally predict which movements the value of the asset is likely to show, and you will be able to define in which cryptomone currency you should invest.
You can use the periodic financial statements, financial ratios, the valuation of the companies that issue the asset, economic forecasts, general economic information, that is to say, important news and events and basically any information that is capable of modifying the value of the asset and, therefore, that can be decisive for the path you will choose in the investment.
The fundamental analysis in the cryptomonies is a good technique to make holding, since it allows to estimate prices in the long term, for example, for three months or for a year, since it takes different factors that could lead the asset to a determined price.
In any case, checking events with historical technical analysis can help to verify whether there are similar precedents that have triggered specific reactions in the value of an asset. However, this is not 100% effective, especially with cryptomonies that have greater volatility and the tendency to create value bubbles.