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Guten tag, eh?

He might be overstating things somewhat, but here's a link for Canada:

https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/energy...

The government has suggested they want to build several small reactors by 2020. No, they are not currently being built, so he's wrong about that, but there's definitely interest in it, and plans to move forward with it.

Canada uses mostly hydroelectric and a significant amount of nuclear locally (and has local uranium), along with a scattering of renewables. Fossil fuels were about 22% of Canada's energy sources. Despite Canada having very large oil reserves, hence Canada's export economy being driven by oil prices. Citation: https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/sites/...

I'm less familiar with Australia's energy mix, but this site suggests it's surprisingly dependent on fossils: https://industry.gov.au/Office...

I'm also not familiar with how much local non-renewables there are in Australia, but I would say based on this that generally Canada seems to have lower dependence on externally-sourced energy resources.

Canada exports a lot more food than it imports, and basically always has. A significant stat is that Canada has about 0.5% the world population and produces about 1.5% of the world's food.

Canada in general is an exporter of raw materials. The US is traditionally an exporter of manufactured materials -- they have resources themselves, but mostly not quite as much as Canada except for arable land (but including potable water); they make up for it in ever-increasing manufacturing capacity despite a lot of boo-hooing about the decline of the manufacturing industry.

The amount of arable land in Canada is not to be underestimated. The high level of freshwater means land can be pretty damn productive even in a shorter growing season.

I suppose it depends on your definition of "superpower." From the wikipedia article, Canada's GDP is 10th in the world, and 15th per capita (nominal). It's a first world nation with a very high HDI. It's also a member of the G7 nations, which represent 64% of the world's wealth.

I think one thing people overlook is that Canada has a massive treasure trove of natural resources and a very good setup for a modern economy (good income equality, good infrastructure). This combined with a high rate of immigration means the population is growing and companies will flourish (ideally). But, you never know. Resources are 20% of the GDP of Canada (http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/publications/key-facts/16013) so if that all went away at once it'd be a huge problem. I doubt it would go down like that though.

Citation on the mines causing radioactive contamination?

Ask and ye shall receive. http://www.nti.org/analysis/ar...

http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/energy/...

http://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/tex...

http://cumulis.epa.gov/supercp...

http://thestarphoenix.com/busi...

http://masecoalition.org/navaj...

http://worstpolluted.org/proje...

http://technology.infomine.com...

http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...

http://forgottennavajopeople.o...

http://www.sric.org/uranium/do...

https://www.researchgate.net/p...

http://nuclear-news.net/2011/0...

http://thestarphoenix.com/busi...

Way to misunderstand it.

Consider your post is the clueless ones and mods have sent it from 0 to +3, well...

Engine Block heaters, heat the engine block, they do not heat the interior of the car. When you have an eletric car, they heat the seats, not the air. It uses less power.

All heaters help, which is why I said block/interior. Even a block heater will help the usual warming system deliver warmer air much faster, interior heaters warm the entire interior and there's the "full package" that does both. And the last car I saw without electric heating in the seats was in the 90s, still doesn't change that windows fog up, your hands get cold and so on. This "seat only" warming is a power saving measure since using power for heating steals range. How comfy do you really think it is to have one hot side - your backside - and one cold side?

ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) vehicles rely on the engine running, even if it's electric HVAC. Electric cars, especially late model ones have entirely eletric HVAC.

*facepalm* Take a look at DEFA warmup, ZeroStart or any other of a ton of integrated or not so integrated solutions to do what you say they don't. Do you live in California or something? The exact same kind of pre-heating solutions have existed for decades.

But in the end, it's never about heating the car, it's about how inefficient it is to maintain a stable temperature. If you can start the car and not turn the heat/cooling on you get better milage... even in a ICE vehicle.

That is blatantly false:

At -20C, the use of a block heater can improve overall fuel economy by as much as 10 percent. In a test program conducted by Environment Canada, a vehicle sitting at -25C was warmed using a block heater and then driven over a simulated urban driving cycle. This resulted in a 25 percent reduction in fuel consumption compared to cold-starting the vehicle and driving it over the same route

For the metric and Google-impaired, -20C and -25C is -4F and -13F respectively.

However because of the heat generated by the engine being added to the heat generated by driving and the ambient heat, electric cars will perform poorer in hot environments because the parts get hotter and can't be cooled as effectively.In a ICE, the thermal limit is higher, but even regular ICE vehicles will suffer in a desert.

Deserts are kinda the opposite end of the scale here. In cold weather, ICE cars perform weak and electrics worse. And yes, electrics like Nissan Leaf use an electric heater to heat the battery when it's too cold. Tesla doesn't, which makes it sluggish the first minutes in the cold. And heating the interior will use electric power that could have been used for range in both. In ICE cars it'll just sap a little of the battery that'll recharge as you drive, in EVs it's a real drain.

Fine.

Child Protective Services

And yes, Alberta really is in Canada.

A big one that is missing is AECL, or the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.

Back in 2011 they sold off most of it to SNC-Lavalin. For 15 Million. They might as well sold it for 1$ dollar.

Hundreds of engineers and nuclear scientists.

Official:
http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/media-room/news-release/2011/57/2138
CBC:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2011/06/29/aecl-sale.html

In case you are wondering who SNC-Lavalin is, Google them and see how many scandals they have been in the last few years, most of them to do with corruption and governments.

Ironically some of the scandals were in India, and guess where we sold most of our Candu reactors over the years.... India!

Anyway this isn't about Lavalin, its about Harper basically dumping our national atomic R&D. Remember Chalk River and the international shortage of radiological isotopes for medical use because it had to shut down? Yeah we kept the liability of that, but are not doing any research or design as to how to replace those 50+ year old facilities.

And on the tinfoil hat side of things: Despite what all the touchy feelies might think, we need atomic energy for our electric grids. Guess what the only replacement is for those things? Solar, wind, puppies, and positive thinking? Nope. Oil and Gas. Funny that. Alberta should like that.

This isn't really news, Canada has large diamond depots in the far north as well. Most are in production now, we've got several others that were discovered under the permafrost as well but they're not being mined. They're even larger than the ~28million metric ton Victor Pit open mine.

There are diamond reserves in the older regions of Africa and North America. It is not surprising that there are diamonds in the centre of Asia as well. The geology is similar. Basically what you need is an area with very old rock that hasn't been hugely disturbed by geological processes. The Canadian Shield contains 3 to 4 billion year old rock, and I believe there are also areas with similar rocks in both central Africa and central Asia. Diamonds can be found in areas with rocks with ages more than 2.5 billion years. I think this is because the kimberlite pipes that bring them to the surface only happened that long ago, though I'm not absolutely sure of this. Once deposited by those pipes, the diamonds remain at or near the surface, where they can be mined.

Doubt is fine, you can question any number of studies for a huge variety of reasons. Unfortunately, after an all-too-brief search, I can only find results and not the studies themselves. However, perhaps seeing results from Canada, which is not quite as famous for politicized science as the US and unknown nerds, will provide a little more confidence to an event that, to me, is basic physics.

When parachutists are in free fall, their speed increases until they reach a terminal velocity due (largely) to air resistance. The actual speed is determined by body shape and positioning, materials, air density, and other factors, but I think we can safely ignore those in this case. When first jumping out, a skydiver accelerates at the speed of gravity (9.75 m/s/s, 32 ft/sec/sec). The faster they go, though, the more wind resistance they experience, until the wind resistance is as strong as the pull of gravity and they fall no faster--they've reached terminal velocity. This is also why some cars are designed to lower wind resistance, and why some trucks have a big louver above the cab to smooth the air flow around the container. Now obviously cars are not falling down, but you could say they're falling sideways. And as they fall sideways faster, as their speed increases, they encounter higher wind resistance, requiring more force to match the resistance (e.g. stick your hand out the window, at 10 mph you can barely feel wind resistance, but stick it out at 85 mph and you definitely will). This time, though, the (terminal) velocity is determined by wind resistance and the engine's output (your foot on the accelerator), instead of wind resistance and gravity.

That is done today. It is is called "Differential GPS" (DGPS) and "Real-Time Kinematics" (RTK). However, it's much more than just averaging - there are more complex mathematics involved to remove the errors common to both sets of measurements. RTK is done all the time in surveying and can achieve centimeter level accuracy in real-time. http://www.geod.nrcan.gc.ca/edu/rtk_e.php

In the case of the internet, the sources and destinations of data are spread thinly over a ~10,000,000 sq km area.

Well, no.

The population is not even remotely close to evenly distributed. In fact, if you look at a map it's fairly clear that it's not necessary to provide wireless service to the vast majority of that land area. Put differently -- yes, Canada is really big but most of it is virtually uninhabited. For the most part, the white areas on that map have no meaningful mobile phone coverage.

Claiming that Canada's low population density is somehow an excuse for extremely high mobile phone rates is a very simplistic excuse. When you consider the area where anyone would actually consider providing coverage, the effective population density is probably not significantly lower than most other developed countries (although 30 seconds of googling couldn't provide me with hard numbers on this, ymmv).

Houses don't bear their load evenly across the entire floor.

re-enforced floating slabs are quite popular for new homes (where I'm from in Australia at least), and also apparently seem to fair well in earthquakes
http://www.earthquakescanada.nrcan.gc.ca/info-gen/prepare-preparer/eqresist-eng.php#The_Site_Factor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shallow_foundation

as for piers or stumps, i agree that shock absorbers (hydraulic or pneumatic) are definitely the way to go

Kids today may not know this, but the former Soviet Union launched a series of radar satellites that were powered by full fission reactors (not just RTGs). At the end of their service life they were designed to eject the reactor cores and boost them into a higher parking orbit.

Most of the time it worked, and those spent reactor cores are still up there with all of the other space debris. However there were a few notable failures, including the 1978 uncontrolled re-entry of Kosmos 954 which sprayed radioactive contamination across a large stretch of northern Canada. It was just luck that it came down there rather than over a more populated section of the planet.

A) I assume you turn the heat on well before the outdoor temperature gets that low. Most people do.
B) You failed to address the inefficiencies involved in electricity generation versus on-site combustion
C) Not all heat pumps vent to outside air. Some use ground loops.
D) When used in heating mode, heat pumps are pretty much always more efficient than resistive heating, because you keep the waste heat as well as the transferred heat. That is, as long as you can keep the collector from frosting.

Wathcing over our planet tutorial at the Canadian Centre for Remote Sensing http://www.ccrs.nrcan.gc.ca/resource/tutor/planet/index_e.php

Saskatchewan is a little odd in this respect. Physically, the line between mountain time and central time goes through the province or the province is entirely in mountain time, depending on who's drawing the lines (as you can see here). The government decided back in the 60s to have the entire province on Central time. This has the result of having most/all of the province on DST all year.

While it is a factor, it isn't the sole cause. The Canadian Government issued a ton of grants and a lot of material was published. From people I knew that worked directly on those papers, they said the general problem was global warming and warmer winters coupled with other factors as you have mentioned (forests of the same age, lack of fires, etc.).

Here is a list of the publications:
http://mpb.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/archive/projects/completed_e.html

What do you mean by "was" the way to go? AFAIK electric heating is still the cheapest solution in Quebec.

Do you want to compare bills? It's nowhere near equal.
http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/residential/personal/compare-heating-costs.cfm?attr=4#changeSource

Gaz Mets' last bill was 28.3 cents per cubic meter (including the 4% "green fund"), for 37.3 mJ of energy in each cubic meter.

Hydro quebec rate D (domestic) is 7.5 cents/kwh. for 3.6 mJ of energy.

In other words, the same 37.3 mJ would have cost almost 80 cents, not 28.3 cents.

Hydro can be cheaper IF:

1. You use a heat pump, so you get more than 3,400 btus per kw/h, (the temp is above -12C);
2. A comparable gas furnace is old and inefficient.

But for a straight-up resistive (baseboard) heating system. you're paying more. Lots more.

And it gets worse if you suck lots of juice, because you'll pay higher Hydro rates.

It's a reasonable hypothesis. There is a track of age-progressive volcanism from the Columbia River Basalts to the Snake River Plain, leading up to Yellowstone today. I know there are legitimate questions about it, but it's certainly a coincidence in timing and location if the Columbia River Basalts *don't* have something to do with the hotspot that is now thought to be beneath Yellowstone. Geologists would have to come up with some other explanation for the large amount of melt generated in the mantle to produce the Columbia River Basalts.

There have been questions about the nature of hotspots generally for long time (some people question whether they really exist -- hotspots certainly are hard to image geophysically), but the fact that *something* seems to leave a trail of volcanic centers across both continents and ocean floor that varies in age along the track is pretty consistent with something unusual happening in the mantle underneath. A good example is the trail of kimberlite pipes across northern Ontario (the ones east of Timmins), intrusives in southern Québec (the Monteregian Hills), the intrusives in the White Mountains in Vermont & New Hampshire, and then the New England Seamounts offshore, until the trail hops across the spreading ridge to the African side of the plate. That's a pretty persistent trail of volcanism, and there are plenty of other examples, some of which are also associated with flood basalt volcanism like the Columbia River Plateau.

"You don't have to be really patient... plates move at 2-10 cm/year so you'd start getting GPS data within 2-5 years"

It's faster than that. A few days/weeks of monitoring with the right equipment is sufficient at a given station (these are *not* handheld GPS units!), allowing the motion of entire regions to be studied from many points in a year or two of fieldwork moving the stations around. And many regions now have permanently mounted GPS networks to monitor continuously. A couple of years of continuous data is sufficient to get great detail and precision. That allows geologists to study not only the motion of entire plates, but the details of deformation of mountain ranges at the plate boundaries and the effects of individual earthquakes -- essentially real-time monitoring of the motion of the Earth's surface at millimetre precision. Here are a few papers [PDF].

If you want to know how fast you are moving at your own location with respect to a given reference frame try this, which is derived from current whole-Earth models of plate motion. Please note that it probably won't be accurate in areas with complex deformation near plate boundaries (it models the plates as rigid), but if you're within the plate somewhere it will be a reasonable approximation.

One of the coolest analogies of scale ever: the plates move at about the same rate that your fingernails grow.

How about Natural Resources Canada's Earthquake page?

It's in part of Canada that is prone to earthquakes, extending roughly along the Ottawa and St. Lawrence River Valleys. The increased activity along here is related to two factors: 1) this is an old "suture" where pieces of continents were accreted onto the rest of North America a long time ago (the later half of the Paleozoic) culminating in the building of the Appalachian Mountain system (the Appalachian Orogeny); 2) the suture stopped being an active plate boundary after the continental pieces were fused onto the continent, but crustal stress still occurs because of the relatively "recent" melting of the continental ice sheets ~10k years ago. The weight of the couple kilometres of ice during the glaciation depressed the crust, and much of central Canada has been experiencing isostatic rebound (i.e. rising back up again) ever since the weight was removed. That process slowly deforms the crust, and when the stress gets too great the rock moves, generating earthquakes. The stress tends to get released along old zones of crustal weakness (i.e. #1).

This seismic hazard map by the Geological Survey of Canada shows the increased risk along the St. Lawrence River rather nicely. More details here.

Having said all that, the level of activity in this part of Canada pales in comparison to earthquakes in the area of an active plate boundary, such as California, where the deformation rates are higher, the earthquakes more frequent, and often higher magnitude. It means that building codes along the St. Lawrence-Ottawa River Valleys are fairly strict when it comes to earthquake resistance, just in case, but a significant earthquake is still outside most people's everyday experience. I'm sure people are freaking out (I'm ~1000km away, so I felt nothing).

It's in part of Canada that is prone to earthquakes, extending roughly along the Ottawa and St. Lawrence River Valleys. The increased activity along here is related to two factors: 1) this is an old "suture" where pieces of continents were accreted onto the rest of North America a long time ago (the later half of the Paleozoic) culminating in the building of the Appalachian Mountain system (the Appalachian Orogeny); 2) the suture stopped being an active plate boundary after the continental pieces were fused onto the continent, but crustal stress still occurs because of the relatively "recent" melting of the continental ice sheets ~10k years ago. The weight of the couple kilometres of ice during the glaciation depressed the crust, and much of central Canada has been experiencing isostatic rebound (i.e. rising back up again) ever since the weight was removed. That process slowly deforms the crust, and when the stress gets too great the rock moves, generating earthquakes. The stress tends to get released along old zones of crustal weakness (i.e. #1).

This seismic hazard map by the Geological Survey of Canada shows the increased risk along the St. Lawrence River rather nicely. More details here.

Having said all that, the level of activity in this part of Canada pales in comparison to earthquakes in the area of an active plate boundary, such as California, where the deformation rates are higher, the earthquakes more frequent, and often higher magnitude. It means that building codes along the St. Lawrence-Ottawa River Valleys are fairly strict when it comes to earthquake resistance, just in case, but a significant earthquake is still outside most people's everyday experience. I'm sure people are freaking out (I'm ~1000km away, so I felt nothing).

but the government also says that modern cars only need 20 seconds to warm up to a usable temperature in the winter

Twenty seconds to circulate the oil, not warm up the engine (or entire car.) Here in Canada the government recommends using a block heater to warm the oil. The most effective way to warm up the engine and car (and use less fuel) is to the the engine run for thirty seconds and drive it.

Another nuclear accident not involving US weapons was the failed Soviet spy satellite Cosmos 954 which smeared a nuclear reactor core over a large part of northern Canada in 1978.

This was one of a family of satellites. Several reactor cores are still up in orbit, for now...

And yes, these are true reactors not just RTGs.

If you're curious, here's some info on the magnetic declination in Canada. Scroll down for images. Last time I checked there was a significant change in declination from one year to the next. Government of Canada

Wow. Thats enough to give me serious doubts about relying on a magnetic compass in the bush.

If you're curious, here's some info on the magnetic declination in Canada. Scroll down for images. Last time I checked there was a significant change in declination from one year to the next. Government of Canada

You might want to go read about heat pumps. What the article describes is perfectly possible, using heat pumps for heating and cooling is very common in temperate climates.

Without getting into tit-for-tat, it's all personal experience. I'll add though that this is what a climate-zone is: http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/maps/environment/forest/forestcanada/planthardi Individually, I could say "yeah, that's probably just a local effect." Together, all these anecdotes put together, I have to say "hmm, something's odd." Maybe other people have some anecdotes here too.

There seems to be a large number of people here who think there's a bias towards a global warming conspiracy. That somehow there's political and financial wealth to be made by spreading lies about this stuff. I don't understand how that could be the case. Just to be clear, I don't think there's any conspiracy at all. None.

Big money stands behind the business-as-usual angle. Why? They're making big money. Is that a conspiracy? No. Car companies want less regulation about cars, oil companies want less regulation over oil, this is not conspiracy, these are the personal interests of individual market leaders.

So who's standing behind the let's-change-business-as-usual angle? Critics seem to be torn. It's either politicians and scientists with a messiah complex, or a leftie government tax grab. Maybe it's both.

They're pretty wicked accusations, and up until the CRU information was released, there really wasn't much merit to the idea. I don't think a lot of people have gone 180 over the results though. Critics are congratulating themselves, and climate change scientists and activists are saying "WTF?"

As for the actual deception of the CRU, I can't find a lot of good info about what was said. The "hack" was filtered, insteaad of putting the whole of the emails up on bittorrent, it seems information was cherry-picked. Go check the Pirate Bay http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5172267/Leaked_Hadley_CRU_Emails._PST_(Outlook)_Format.. This is 4MB... that's not a lot of data. It's hard for me to understand what was omitted.

The critics seem to be saying that it looks like some guys have some tree-ring-thickness to temperature data which correlates up until the 1960s. After over 100 years of correlation, the tree ring data diverges from the instrumental data. Trees aren't growing as fast. Not sure why.

This is the instrumental temperature record: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

This is the tree ring data laid over top: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

In the last graph, you can see that the data stops around 1960. There's divergence there and the temperature may have dropped.

Think about that. What did the programmer do to make the tree-data fit the measurement data? Correct me if I'm wrong, but he changed the tree-ring information after 1960.

I think the question should be "why does the tree-ring data correlate with the measured temperature data between 1880 and 1960, and then suddenly diverge?" and not into accusations of lies, messiah complexes and funding grabs.

My personal experiences... they're anecdotes. They're in line with the instrumental data. The instrumental data is NOT in question, if you doubt it, I'm sure you can find microfilms of temperature reports in newspapers going back to the 1800s. Our temperature increases are looking pretty remarkable. What does it mean?

The poor Power Factor rating of CFLs means that the power grid must provide more energy to start them. The consumer may save money at home, but unless the power factor of CFLs can be improved, the electrical grid itself will have to be upgraded if we all switch to CFLs.

But there's no "if" because governments have already legislated the elimination of incandescent bulbs!

An explanation of the power factor (search for the heading "Power
Factor and Switching")
http://irc.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/pubs/cp/lig3_e.html

More summaries of problems:
http://www.cours.polymtl.ca/inf1040/2008automne/Olivier_CanadianReviewDec2007.pdf
http://sound.westhost.com/articles/incandescent.htm

Current research:
http://qnc.queensu.ca/story_loader.php?id=49db90a6e3e3d

Search for "power factor":
http://www.bchydro.com/powersmart/technology_tips/buying_guides/lighting/compact_fluorescent_lamps.html

Here, you'll see that the "requirement" for "Energy Star" labelling is
a power factor of only 0.50!
http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/residential/business/manufacturers/specifications/compact-flour.cfm?attr=12

"Human creation of CO2 through fossil fuel consumption is minimal compared to that created by the ecosystem."

Surely you have some references for that because otherwise it could be a "anything you say on the Internet is true" moment. Or maybe an "anything you say on the Internet is true if you CAPITALIZE your VERBS and NOUNS."

Maybe it's true by overall mass, but here's a reference to ponder: http://fire.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/research/climate_change/carbon_e.htm
Energy sector beating out forest fires for carbon production doesn't sound like 'minimal'.

Doesn't look like a circle to me... http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/geomag/nmp/long_mvt_nmp_e.php

VLBI is 51 years old (it actually started in the late 1960's) but it is high quality eVLBI that is basically a product of our century (made possible by all of that nice optical fiber criss-crossing our planet).

Think about what you typed. VLBI is 51 years old... started in late 1960's. You're sort of right, but it reads wrong.

Let us assume January 1, 1965 is the start of the "late" 1960's (being the latter half). That would give us 2009-1965 = 44. I'm not sure if I suck at math, but from what I can tell 44 != 51.

Did a little reading, the first use of VLBI started in '67, so it's only 42 years old, the technique that led to VLBI, using "closure phase" during interferometric observations, was first demonstrated by Roger Jennison 51 years ago.

VLBI is 51 years old (it actually started in the late 1960's) but it is high quality eVLBI that is basically a product of our century (made possible by all of that nice optical fiber criss-crossing our planet).

I can't say for certain, but I suspect your town got taken for a ride - or the astronomers managed to get you to pay for better lighting. Here's a point reference (from http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/publications/equipment/lighting/section3.cfm?attr=0) which puts LED around 20-40 lumens per watt (commercial stuff; there's development which has it closer to 75), vs LPS at 100 to 180 lumens per watt. So chances are you're fixtures are throwing out a lot less light (which is typical) to save the energy.

Now, on the astronomy side, it's a big win - LPS has a shitty spectrum and intereferes mightily with any night viewing which doesn't require that illumination.

Don't feel bad, though. My town would eat it up, too - they're a bunch of hippies. I'd be happy for the darker skies, even if it cost a bit more. But it's not going to get you brighter roads for less money - the physics just isn't on LED's side.

I have heard reports that some falls are hot when found, although many are cold. If they are big enough to still be supersonic near the ground, they are likely to land hot.

If I found a fresh fall, I would try and put it in a sterile container with tongs or something so I didn't touch it with my bare skin. The Tahish lake fall in my opinion was handled just about perfectly - never touched by hand, and placed immediately in a freezer.

Never mind that the GOP considers Canadian conservatives to be too liberal for their taste.

I often see this sort of comparison between political parties in different countries. There is some merit to the comparison, but I think it's important to take into account that successful political parties don't set their platform based on pure ideology, but they also take into account the current status quo. Thus since Canada has more social programs than the US, it is natural to expect that mainstream Canadian political parties appear to the left of those in the US. If in some strange situation the GOP were to try to expand into Canada, I would expect them to have a platform much closer to the Canadian mainstream than their policies in the US.

Well first off as it's presented it's taking from corporations on one hand and giving it back as personal tax cuts.. basically raising corporate taxes via the back door. Who will end up paying for the higher corporate taxes? The consumers.

The Liberals don't talk about it a lot, but if you look at page 4 of their costing document, you'll note that under the Green Shift column, they have $8.5 billion in corporate tax cuts. The $1.2 billion corporate tax increase in the "Tax Changes" column appears to come from the ending of oil sands tax subsidies.

As for passing costs on to the consumer, this is to be expected to some extent. Where economically sound, companies will reduce energy consumption to reduce costs from the carbon tax. Otherwise they will in many cases pass the cost on to the consumer. This in turn discourages consumption of products that require emitting a lot of greenhouse gases in order to produce. The very progressive personal income tax cuts are intended to offset the increased costs felt by the consumer.

What happens if you can't afford to make the needed improvements?

The EnerGuide for Houses program was started by the previous Liberal government, canceled by the Conservatives, then relaunched under a new name, ecoENERGY Retrofit. It provides up to $5000 for homeowners who retrofit their homes to save energy. It looks like the current Liberal platform doubles that amount. The platform also includes interest-free "Green Mortgage" loans of up to $10k for what looks like the same sort of retrofits.

There was a ~10 year study on a single forest plot about 40 years ago. Those researches concluded that after 150 years a forest becomes carbon neutral. This study has been the guiding wisdom ever since.

Last week, a new study was published: Old-growth forests as global carbon sinks. Nature 455, 213-215 (September 11, 2008). It examined 519 forest plots around the world ranging in age from 50 to 800 years and found that most of them are carbon sinks. The analysis of a single forest should not have been generalized to all forests. Your assumptions are founded on information that is now outdated based on this new, more general, study.

1. Where are the trees putting the carbon? (Gaining additional wood weight I assume... but when they die and fall over, all the carbon is released again by bacteria.)

While carbon is stored in wood mass, a majority of the carbon is actually stored in the soil. http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/news/473 (I can't find any scientific article that supports your assertion that all the carbon is "released by bacteria")

2. How fast are they sequestering it, compared to the rate at which a clearcut/replant forest would do so?

According to this study, 60% faster than a plantation forest. http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/37839 A huge amount of carbon is released when a primary forest is clear cut. Logging primary forests releases ~40% of their stored carbon. Source: Green Carbon: The role of natural forests in carbon storage. ANU E Press (July 2008).

The lumber industry is greedy, remember? They want to grow the greatest amount of wood in the fastest possible time. They therefore are perfectly motivated to maximize carbon sequestration. And the way that they do it is: for most species, clearcut once every 25-50 years and then replant.

Your argument is flawed by assuming that plantation forests absorb more carbon than old growth forests. This assumption is not supported by current research. Additionally, it takes 5-20 years before newly planted forest begins to absorb more carbon than it emits. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080910133934.htm

Sorry, all you have to do is look at Canadian broadband to understand that land area or distance don't really have an effect on what a country can provide.

I know nothing of Canadian broadband, but looking at a population density map of Canada shows that there's a huge chunk of nothern Canada with next to no population. Would anyone living in that northern wilderness have high speed DSL or Cable?

I tried a few casual google searches for a ratio of population related to land-area for the US and Canada and didn't come up with much. But I'd be interested in seeing the numbers if you cut Alaska out of the US, and take the unpopulated north out of Canada.

But anyways, I'm not sure where you're going with your statement that I should look at Canadian broadband. Do you have the majority of your population with 8+Mb/sec internet access or something?

Google on arctic seismic survey. It produced 53,700 hits for me. The Canadians and Russians have been busy up there for many years. Canadian efforts are coordinated through the Polar Continental Shelf Project. http://polar.nrcan.gc.ca/index_e.php They have done extensive seismic, geological and hydrographic work. In fact, the Canadian high arctic is largely populated by small groups of government scientists.

We all know that Santa Claus lives at the North pole. But there's a big difference between precise north and magnetic north, and it's never been made clear which one Santa occupies. While magnetic north has actually passed through Canada and also is predicted to move around true north and towards Siberia anyways.

So, the question is; what's so trollish about this parent?

"What really puzzles me is how clean the water is. It is covered with what would make a dirty mud if it ever melted together. Also on earth, you never have clean water if you have flash floods like what you see as a result of a volcanic eruption or meteroid impact. You only have clean water/ice in snow and still lakes/oceans."

Firstly, we don't really know how "clean" it is. It could have plenty of dissolved salts in it, for example. This will be determined as the experiments proceed.

Secondly, if you examine ordinary permafrost on Earth, it is quite common for the subsurface ice to segregate into fairly pure ice structures. As the ice crystals grow in the ground they can displace the surrounding sediment and remain relatively pure. This is known as "massive ice" versus the "interstitial ice" that occurs between sediment grains (both commonly occur together in permafrost areas). Refer to these pictures of permafrost exposed in Tuktoyaktuk for some examples of massive ice in the ground.

I finally settled for a couple twisty bulbs, but I'm not too happy about it because they contain mercury

Oh, please. There's more mercury in your watch battery than in the CFL. And it's not like its posing any actual danger to you. The mercury isn't released into the air when the CFL is broken. If it does break, you can clean it up with a vacuum and a pair of rubber gloves, just like a non-CFL. No need to call in a hazmat team.

Unless you're going to get down on the floor and lick up the broken CFL, it doesn't pose much a risk to you.

Environmentally, the tiny bit of mercury is far outweighed by the massive energy usage and packaging savings the CFL gives you over its life time. The CFL can either be disposed of with your paints and batteries (ie: safely), or some places even have CFL recycling programs to reclaim the materials.

Take a gander at the Natural Resources Canada FAQ about CFLs. It includes a link to a health study about the effects of CFL's mercury.

I finally settled for a couple twisty bulbs, but I'm not too happy about it because they contain mercury

Oh, please. There's more mercury in your watch battery than in the CFL. And it's not like its posing any actual danger to you. The mercury isn't released into the air when the CFL is broken. If it does break, you can clean it up with a vacuum and a pair of rubber gloves, just like a non-CFL. No need to call in a hazmat team.

Unless you're going to get down on the floor and lick up the broken CFL, it doesn't pose much a risk to you.

Environmentally, the tiny bit of mercury is far outweighed by the massive energy usage and packaging savings the CFL gives you over its life time. The CFL can either be disposed of with your paints and batteries (ie: safely), or some places even have CFL recycling programs to reclaim the materials.

Take a gander at the Natural Resources Canada FAQ about CFLs. It includes a link to a health study about the effects of CFL's mercury.

I live about an hour north of Nanaimo, and I just told a bunch of my co-workers about the characterization of Nanaimo as a "coal mining town", which caused a pretty good round of laughter. Vancouver Island coal mining has been nearly dead for about a half a century.

The economy here is doing fairly well, considering that coastal BC seems to be one of the few places in North America where real estate is not plummetting, but I don't think they'll be making any man-made islands soon, especially since we have no shortage of natural ones.

Very interesting first-hand account of the radiological cleanup of the crash of a Soviet spy satellite in Canada: http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/gamma/ml_e.php

The Canadians had a Nova minicomputer which was subjected to conditions that it was never designed for. They programmed it by editing memory locations by hand... Not with the front-panel switches, even though Nova had those.

http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/energystar/english/consumers/questions-answers.cfm#mercury

there is less mercury in a cfl than there is in a watch battery.

OK, first of all, those Canadian idling costs are inflated by the fact that much of the idling is not _waste_ -- much of it is intended to keep the passengers warm.

Second, the claim is that by eliminating 5 minutes per day per car of idling, 4500 tonnes of green house gases would be saved per day. But the total emissions per day just for cars are 133,150 tonnes. It's easy to make absolute numbers look big.

http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/corporate/statistics/neud/dpa/tablestrends2/tran_ca_30_e_1.cfm?attr=0

Same goes for the energy star light bulb bit. Except they're being even sneakier, and comparing the energy savings over the life of the bulb (supposedly several years) to 1-year consumption figures -- you can see this by noting they claim $600 million in energy savings if every household used one such bulb, and that each bulb saves $30 over its lifetime. That works out to 200 million households, which is about right.