Posts Tagged ‘Canada’

Great Lakes ice cover approaching highest levels for twenty years

February 8, 2014

The Great Lakes ice cover on 7th February had reached 78% and will continue increasing in the coming days – at least until the 3rd week of February (Source: NOAA).

Gl Ice 7th February 2014 NOAA

Gl Ice 7th February 2014 NOAA

Having a high ice cover is apparently a “good thing” . Jeff Masters writes:

The increased ice coverage on the Great Lakes this winter is good news for water levels on the lakes, which are still struggling to recover from some record lows recorded at this time last year. During January 2013, water levels on Lake Michigan and Lake Huron fell to their all-time lowest values since record keeping began in 1918, 29 inches below the long-term average. While the water levels recovered substantially during 2013, which was one of the wettest years in Michigan’s history, water levels were still a foot below average at the beginning of 2014. The above average ice cover this winter will reduce evaporation from the Great Lakes, keeping water loss lower than in recent winters. 

I suppose one can have too much of a good thing and that being completely frozen for too long a time is not a “good thing”.

Historically the ice cover is approaching the highest levels seen for over 20 years. (From Canadian Ice Service)

Great Lakes Ice february 4th 2014 - Canadian Ice Service

Great Lakes Ice february 4th 2014 – Canadian Ice Service

If there is a global warming (or global cooling) signal in this chart – I can’t see it. The natural variations are of an amplitude which hides any such signal – if it exists. Whenever weather observations – however extreme – are still within the envelope of what has been observed before it only shows that such observations are not unprecedented and must be taken as to be within natural variations. And if what is observed has also been observed before the industrial revolution – say 200 years ago – then industrialisation cannot be blamed.

Meteorologist Mark Torregrossa writes:

Ice continued to build this past week on the Great Lakes due to the cold air and temperatures staying below freezing, and Lake Superior’s new record shows it.

The lake is 92 percent frozen, toppling a 20-year-old record of 91 percent set on Feb. 5, 1994. That statistic helped total Great Lakes ice cover soar, and we can expect to see more form in coming days.

The air temperatures this past week averaged around five degrees below normal for the Great Lakes area. This amount of deviation from normal means it was a fairly cold week.

….. 

Lake Superior

Lake Superior is almost frozen over as of yesterday February 5, 2014. Lake Superior is 92 percent covered with ice now. The ice has increased rapidly in the past week, from 76 percent ice cover on January 30, 2014. The high resolution satellite picture from February 3, 2014 shows all of the ice cover on Lake Superior. The current ice cover on Lake Superior is the highest amount ever for February 5. In 1994, Lake Superior was reportedly 91 percent covered in ice.

Lake Michigan

Lake Michigan is now 51 percent covered with ice, as opposed to 42 percent at this time last week. Coyotes were seen walking on the ice just offshore of Chicago this week. This makes us wonder if the lakes freeze over totally, will animals from Canada be able to cross over Lake Huron or Lake Superior, and enter Michigan. It is thought that this is how the last wolverine spotted in Michigan made it into Michigan. Lake Michigan has been covered with more ice on this date in the past. In 1977 and 1996, Lake Michigan was up to 74 percent ice covered.

Lake Huron

Ice cover on Lake Huron rocketed up an additional 14 percent this week, climbing to a total ice cover of 86 percent. If the ice continues to build at that rate in this next week, Lake Huron could be almost frozen over, or frozen over by the end of next week. People ice fishing are reporting 24 inches of ice on Saginaw Bay near Bay City. Lake Huron has been as much at 95 percent covered in ice on this date back in 1981 and 1994.

Lake Erie

Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, with an average depth of 62 feet and a maximum depth of 210 feet. It also has the least volume of any Great Lake, with 116 cubic miles of water. So it should come as no surprise that Lake Erie currently has the highest percentage of ice cover. Lake Erie is 96 percent covered with ice. Last week at this time Lake Erie had 94 percent ice cover. Erie was entirely ice covered on February 5, 1996.

Lake Ontario

Lake Ontario is an interesting lake. It is the smallest Great Lake when it comes to surface area, but actually holds more than three times the amount of water when compared to Lake Erie. The average depth of Lake Ontario is 283 feet, making it the second deepest Great Lake behind Lake Superior. The deepest spot in Lake Ontario is 802 feet. The ice cover on Lake Ontario is the lowest of any of the Great Lakes, with only 32 percent covered in ice. Last week at this time, Lake Ontario had 27 percent ice cover. Lake Ontario has been covered with as much as 79 percent ice up to this point in the winter in 1994.

 

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Posted in Climate, Weather, Winter | 1 Comment »

Canada used indigenous children to “study” malnutrition

July 28, 2013

Yet another depressing story of how, in the name of “science”, the “establishment” made use of less “worthy” populations to carry out medical experiments.

This time in Canada from 1942 -1952.

There was no difference of principle and only one of degree between the medical experiments carried out in Nazi Germany and those carried out on native or disadvantaged populations in Australia, Canada, and the USA (among many other countries).

We may like to think that it does not happen any more. I am not so sure. The real story of Haiti and its cholera and the use of cheap, untested vaccines is yet to be told Similarly, some of the stories about the intentional “creation” of new strains of influenza and the subsequent discovery and dissemination of new vaccines for their cure may never ever become public.

Mosby, I. Social History 46, 145–172 (2013). Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942–1952

Abstract: Between 1942 and 1952, some of Canada’s leading nutrition experts, in cooperation with various federal departments, conducted an unprecedented series of nutritional studies of Aboriginal communities and residential schools. The most ambitious and perhaps best known of these was the 1947–1948 James Bay Survey of the Attawapiskat and Rupert’s House Cree First Nations. Less well known were two separate long-term studies that went so far as to include controlled experiments conducted, apparently without the subjects’ informed consent or knowledge, on malnourished Aboriginal populations in Northern Manitoba and, later, in six Indian residential schools. This article explores these studies and experiments, in part to provide a narrative record of a largely unexamined episode of exploitation and neglect by the Canadian government. At the same time, it situates these studies within the context of broader federal policies governing the lives of Aboriginal peoples, a shifting Canadian consensus concerning the science of nutrition, and changing attitudes towards the ethics of biomedical experimentation on human beings during a period that encompassed, among other things, the establishment of the Nuremberg Code of experimental research ethics.

Nature also reports:

Canadian government scientists used malnourished native populations as unwitting subjects in experiments conducted in the 1940s and 1950s to test nutritional interventions. The tests, many of which involved children at state-funded residential schools, had been largely forgotten until they were described earlier this month in the journal Social History by Ian Mosby, who studies the history of food and nutrition at the University of Guelph in Canada.

The work began in 1942, when government scientists visited several native communities in northern Manitoba and discovered widespread hunger and malnutrition. “Their immediate response was to study the problem by testing nutritional supplements,” says Mosby. From a group of 300 malnourished people selected for the tests, 125 were given vitamin supplements, and the rest served as ‘untreated’ controls. ….

Nancy Walton, a medical ethicist at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario, and former chairwoman of the university’s research-ethics board, says that such a project would never be allowed today, “but in the context of that time, it’s unfortunately not surprising”. Awareness of the need for informed consent in human studies was growing — informed consent was a central tenet of the Nuremberg Code, developed in the late 1940s — but the idea had not yet been adopted around the world.

“It’s not just bad ethics, it’s bad science,” Walton says of the Canadian government research. “They didn’t appear to try and prove or disprove any hypothesis that I can see, or make any statistical correlations.”

Indeed, says Mosby, very little of value came out of the research. He found no evidence that the northern Manitoba study was completed or published. The school experiments were presented at conferences and published, but they led to no important advances in nutritional science or improvements in conditions at the schools. “They mostly just confirmed what they already knew,” Mosby says. ….

 

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Fawcett charged with animal cruelty after mass slaughter of huskies

April 21, 2012

Back in February last year the story of the massacre of up to 100 huskies in British Columbia came to light. Apparently the dogs which had been used for taking tourists on sled rides had been killed by Robert Fawcett because the number of tourists had reduced drastically after the 2010 Winter Olympics. Fifty-six dogs were dug up in a mass grave near Whistler after information leaked out in January 2011 that Fawcett had been getting workers compensation for “post traumatic stress” following his killing of the dogs. Now 14 months after the massacre  The BBC reports that the dog-killer has finally been charged with animal cruelty.

A man who admitted killing more than 50 dogs in the western Canadian province of British Columbia has been charged with animal cruelty. Robert Fawcett ran a company offering dog-sled tours but its business slumped after the 2010 Winter Olympics.

He killed the huskies by shooting them or slitting their throats.

British Columbia’s criminal justice branch said that Mr Fawcett – who ran Howling Dog Tours – faces one count of “causing unnecessary pain and suffering” to dozens of sled dogs in April 2010. He is due to appear in court next month.

The killings became public after Mr Fawcett won a compensation award for post-traumatic stress as a result of the killings. ..


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Polar bear populations in Canada have increased and are getting to be a menace

December 18, 2011

Far from being a species endangered by the politically correct and alarmist view of man made global warming, their numbers are increasing and in some areas of Canada their populations have doubled. They are more frequently having litters of 3 rather than 2 cubs and are ranging further South than they usually do. Easy pickings in town garbage is irresistible and they and are even becoming a menace in some towns.

A male polar bear

Canada’s growing polar bear population ‘becoming a problem,’ locals say

…. Despite those problems, the PBSG said it is optimistic that “humans can mitigate the effects of global warming and other threats to the polar bears.”

Not so fast.

According to a U.S. Senate and Public Works Committee report, the “alarm about the future of polar bear decline is based on speculative computer model predictions many decades in the future. Those predictions are being “challenged by scientists and forecasting experts,” said the report.

Those challenges, supported by facts on the ground, including observations from Inuit hunters in the region, haven’t stopped climate fear-mongers at the U.S. Geological Survey from proclaiming that future sea ice conditions “will result in the loss of approximately two-thirds of the world’s current polar bear population by the mid 21st century.”

Such sky-is-falling rhetoric brings smiles to the Inuit population of Canada’s Nunavut Territory. They, too, know how to count, and they claim the bear population is stable or on the rise in their own backyard. Polar bears may be on the decline in some areas, but during their frequent visits to Inuit towns and outposts they rarely decline an easy meal from the local dump or a poorly secured garbage can.

Harry Flaherty, chair of the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board in the capital of Iqaluit, says the polar bear population in the region, along the Davis Strait, has doubled during the past 10 years. He questions the official figures, which are based to a large extent on helicopter surveys.

“Scientists do a quick study one to two weeks in a helicopter, and don’t see all the polar bears. We’re getting totally different stories [about the bear numbers] on a daily basis from hunters and harvesters on the ground,” he says. ….

Dr. Mitchell Taylor, a biologist who has been researching polar bear populations in Canada’s Nunavut Territory for 35 years, seems to agree. “The study estimates from the Iqaluit area agree with those of local hunters, although the accuracy of the counts is doubtful in some areas,” he says. ….. 

The on-the-ground reports, if accurate, seem to contradict the official story of the beleaguered polar bear. According to the standard theory, warmer temperatures (caused by human CO2 emissions) are shrinking the ice floe, the polar bear’s main hunting ground, forcing populations to compete for a diminishing food supply. Warmer temperatures also are to blame for the loss of thicker “multi-year ice.”

Flaherty and many others disagree with the official story. “We are aware there are changes in the weather, but it is not affecting the daily life of the animals,” he says. “Polar bears hunt in the floe-edge areas, on newly formed ice, and in the fiords in search of baby seals. They don’t hunt in the glaciers [areas of multi-year ice].

“We’re not seeing negative effects on the polar bear population from so-called climate change and receding ice,” he says. He is convinced that some scientists are deliberately “using the polar bear issue to scare people” about global warming, a view widely shared by many Nunavut locals. ….. 

Read the article

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Zu Guttenberg starts his public comeback

November 20, 2011

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg is serving his self-imposed 2 year exile on the other side of the Atlantic. But he is beginning the process of his own rehabilitation in the public eye. He seems to have subtly changed his look – probably part of a determined effort to create a new “cleaner” image.

Deutsche Welle:

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg

Guttenberg's developed a new look, sans glasses and hair gel: Deutsche Welle

Germany’s disgraced former Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg has returned to the political stage, albeit far away in Canada. After the dodgy doctorate debacle, is this the first sign of a comeback? …

Guttenberg, sporting a new look at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada, was referred to as “the honorable Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, distinguished statesman, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)” when introduced to the audience of some 300 people. Guttenberg moved to the US with his family in the summer, and works at CSIS, a think tank based in Washington.

….. Guttenberg’s doctoral title has since been revoked by the University of Bayreuth, and he may yet face trial on charges of violations of copyright law in writing his thesis. The former defense minister did not speak to journalists on the sidelines of the forum.

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Posted in Academic misconduct, Ethics, Germany, Politics | 5 Comments »

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