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It totally makes sense that as the ice is reduced and thins, it will break apart more and start moving around.>

Barber and the scientists were still on the Amundsen, the ice breaker was tasked with rescuing fishers on four fishing vessels from La Scie Harbour that were stuck in sea ice off Newfoundland's Baie Verte Peninsula.

But, within sight of the boats, the Amundsen was called off from helping after it was discovered the ice was two metres thick - too strong for it to get through. U of M climate change study postponed due to climate change

2 meters boy that's some thick ass ice multi-year ice

http://abcnews.go.com/US/dulle...
http://www.winnipegfreepress.c...
http://www.cp24.com/news/porte...
http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

It doesn't matter where the smoke appeared to come from. Abundance of caution.

This is gaining traction here in Canada as well. Apparently enough so that they're telling the tax auditors at the CRA(think IRS for Americans) to get the papers, and find out who's cheating at it Apparently the largest bank in Canada(RBC) has been caught up in in it as well. And the minister responsible for the CRA is demanding that there be an offical investigation and review of the entire tax code, though what I heard earlier there are members within the Liberal Party(party in power), trying to stop that from happening. There's also apparently stuff relating directly to some members of the current party in power here in Canada and off-shoring, and people are now getting right pissed. Comment sections in general are completely rabid in terms of this going on here. Can't forget either that Canada currently has a serious problem with countries trying or successfully using real estate here in Canada for tax washing. One of the reasons why Vancouver and Toronto housing prices have continued to become insanely overpriced. Something that the average canuck has been complaining about for ~6 years now.

This is gaining traction here in Canada as well. Apparently enough so that they're telling the tax auditors at the CRA(think IRS for Americans) to get the papers, and find out who's cheating at it Apparently the largest bank in Canada(RBC) has been caught up in in it as well. And the minister responsible for the CRA is demanding that there be an offical investigation and review of the entire tax code, though what I heard earlier there are members within the Liberal Party(party in power), trying to stop that from happening. There's also apparently stuff relating directly to some members of the current party in power here in Canada and off-shoring, and people are now getting right pissed. Comment sections in general are completely rabid in terms of this going on here. Can't forget either that Canada currently has a serious problem with countries trying or successfully using real estate here in Canada for tax washing. One of the reasons why Vancouver and Toronto housing prices have continued to become insanely overpriced. Something that the average canuck has been complaining about for ~6 years now.

"The public has often a hard time understanding research and its relevance to society"

What, you mean those dimwitted philistines don't understand or appreciate
Romantic Comedies Encourage Unrealistic Expectations: http://www.foxnews.com/story/2...

Study Shows Rich People Cheat and Lie: http://www.phillymag.com/news/...

Interacting with women generally makes men stupid: https://www.psychologytoday.co...

Cats Usually Do Land On Their Feet: http://www.improbable.com/airc...

Literacy Improves Your Chances at a Happy and Successful Life: http://www.winnipegfreepress.c...

Horses prefer bananas over carrots: https://www.smartpakequine.com...

Not to mention how many times we've been told things like 'eggs are bad for you' 'eggs are good for you' and reversed. ...yeah, I'm astonished people don't always take "science" seriously.

This is all new, I post it only because I just read about it the other day in the local paper. The emphasis with this stuff is on inexpensive, but it's from a guy with a good track record at other local tech companies.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.c...
Here's a snippet:
Smart homes from smart guy
High prices inspired entrepreneur's firm
By: Martin Cash
One of Winnipeg's newest startups can thank sticker shock for its existence.
Salman Qureshi was building a home three years ago in St. Norbert and asked about adding some smart-home features to the project. The answer startled him. And then inspired him.
"I wasn't thinking about anything fancy, just some networking so I wouldn't have to worry about wireless issues," said Qureshi, 44, the former head of product development and manufacturing at Monteris Medical.
"I got a quote for a few thousand dollars. It was unbelievable (how expensive it was)."
It was at that point the seed of the idea was planted in the back of his mind for an all-in-one smart-home device.

http://media.winnipegfreepress...

Try biking in that crap.

My city's water supply comes from Shoal Lake, via a near 100 year old aqueduct. There are local reservoirs to store some in case of disruption.

http://www.ryerson.ca/~amacken...

Of course the native bands that live there are not really happy about the whole thing.....

http://www.winnipegfreepress.c...

I rather expect a lot of them piss in the water quite purposely every day, and people here know it.

It is an act of symbolism, but it does not stop normal people from drinking the water.

That was of course after the liberals were telling everyone that the total cost was going to be dirt cheap. And more recently with the destruction of said data, the RCMP is lying through it's teeth. What burns my ass on the entire thing is that the registry did nothing. Except as a feel-good project for anti-gun nuts. Well that and allowing the RCMP to break into houses in High River, gets even more interesting when you find out that they targeted houses, and broke into where firearms were stored.

If you think that, you underestimate the ability of government to fuck over your rights to give the appearance of being tough on [your group of do-no-gooders here]

Out here in Canada, several provinces have highly excessive traffic laws. It's entirely possible to be fined up to $5000, lose your license and have doubled insurance and licensing rates for the next decade when you get the license back in a year. Of course, you won't need your license because you'll have lost your job that you can no longer get to, your home that you can no longer make mortgage payments on, your ability to be with family and friends, your ability to have a life, all because ... uh, your tires spun in the wet or needed to get to a specific hospital to save your newborn child's life when the ambulance wasn't an option (seriously read that, officers Retard and Bumblefuck nearly committed murder to enforce traffic law).

Yeah, that's totally fair and reasonable. Be careful what you wish for.

Obviously nobody sent him the memo where Canadian scientists and public servants have to get approval for talking to the media or even giving evidence to members of Parliament. All these pictures and videos - oh boy is he ever going to get it when he gets back to CSA HQ.

You do realize that some of the best grain growing areas in North America are in the Peace Region of northern Alberta? It's situated about 500 miles north of the US border.

West of Ontario it's not all trees, rocks, and water.

Even in the Canadian Sheild there are pockets of amazing top soil that are currently unusable because the growing season is too short, such as the Clay Belt in the Cochrane District of Ontario.

The shift northward is happening. Ontario and Manitoba are having record corn harvests. The corn belt has shifted.

Like a typical American, you repeat ingrained patriotic rhetoric about the US being a beacon of "free speech". You do realize that you don't even have free speech in your own country, right? I have more than once seen people denied entry into your country because they expressed views that were unwelcome. Americans think they are a beacon of free speech, but their leaders are afraid of it.

For what it's worth, I've also seen the same thing happen here in Canada.

Primary grade teachers are commonly weak on math skills.

http://kathyandcalvin.com/national-math-panel-releases-preliminary-report

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/teachers-math-skills-alarmingly-weak-129577963.html

While there is wide opposition to the bill in Canada, including every province's privacy commissioner, the federal government's privacy commissioner, and many people across party lines, with a majority in parliament the conservatives will ram this law through faster than Justice Minister Vic Toews (pronounced taze... like tazer) ramming a mistress. They have a track record of cutting off debate they don't like. Meanwhile, the government currently has the ability to get access to this information, as long as they first obtain a warrant from a judge.

This is the government that shut down the federal gun registry and eliminated the long form census based on privacy concerns. The hypocrisy is not surprising considering it is well known the publicly 'devout' Christian justice minister (and unofficial "Minister of Family Values") introducing the bill is divorced as a result of keeping a decades younger mistress with whom he fathered a child and at least one documented case of conflict of interest. Needless to say, the various privacy commissioners and opposition Members of Parliament are not amused at being classified as pedophiles (since they are against the government on this one), and several have stated this: ' "Apparently, if you care about civil liberties in this country you obviously side with child pornographers, murderers," she (Green party Leader Elizabeth May) said.'

So non-Canadians understand, in the Canadian system of government, the leader of a party has final say on who can run for the party in each riding (district in American vernacular). And he/she has the ability to kick elected members out of the party. If you aren't in a party the rules allow you almost no right to speak in the house in order to give your opinion, or ask questions of the government in question period. In other words, you have little ability to represent your riding. You must vote as you are told or be ostracized. And any party member who works with you will face the same penalty. This means that since the conservatives have a majority in the house and the senate, this law will be passed regardless on how Canadians feel about it. Personally I think the Canadian system is flawed and only avoided these kinds of issues by luck in the past. Now that parties are exploiting these democratic inadequacies, the whole thing is going downhill fast.

How many trucks carrying Safe Driving instruction manuals crashed?
And the bird deaths are still happening: thousands of birds wash up along Georgian Bay

Manitoba Hydro is looking at spending 2 to 4 billion on a new HVDC line to the north in the next couple years. The idea being that they'll turn around and sell all that extra capacity to the US as premium renewable power.

health insurance raises cost and/or lowers the quality of health care immensely

Canadians live longer and healthier lives, on average, than Americans, at a fraction of the cost.

police services mostly devoted to drug enforcement and harassing the population about petty things

Possession of small (personal, a few grams or so) amounts of marijuana isn't criminal here. If you're driving your car and the cops stop you, they just take it away; the penalty for having it is less than having open liquor in the car.

fire departments mostly serve insurance companies

This one I just don't get. It doesn't matter if you have insurance or not, the fire department will still try to save your house when it catches fire. They don't discriminate.

curb-side trash removal only begrudgingly provided, with new restrictions constantly added

Actually, garbage collection has been improving. In my city, for example, the province improved recycling pickup a few years back so that it didn't have to be sorted (which greatly increased the number of recycling boxes I see at the curb), and they're taking pickup efficiency and environmental concern seriously

labor regulation supports busting unions

Not sure what you mean on this one.

environmental regulation a bureaucracy that will issue a waiver to destroy any feature of the environment you please

Funny when you consider that Canada was the first nation in the world to take action against BPA. Canada has historically been shown to be among the leaders in environmental concerns.

judicial services a pretense to cover widespread injustice.

And yet, according to studies, Canada had the 11th fairest judicial system in the world as of 2003, above the UK and the USA.

And all of these wonderful services are delivered with the utmost dishonesty at the bargain price of 3x what they should cost!

Says who? We pay 10% more in taxes than across the border, but I'd say we get more than 10% more. A national broadcaster, large government subsidies for universities, and a complete healthcare program to name a few.

Segways aren't legal to drive everywhere. As far as I know, bicycles are legal nearly everywhere (with some restrictions of course).

From my linked article:

City and provincial officials in Winnipeg say Segways do not meet Canadian motor vehicle standards for use on roadways. But because they are motorized, they are also not allowed on sidewalks, unless they are somehow deemed to be a "mobility vehicle" for a person needing mobility assistance.

...fears of television cameras to capture speeders is apparently the gateway to the downfall of western civilization and liberal/libertarian ideals. gee, maybe its just to catch speeders?

That's a laughably naive supposition. The first mistake you make is assuming the speed has been set for the sake of safety, and not to catch 'speeders' as a profit-generating exercise. There have been numerous stories about places where traffic lights are set up so more people will run the red and get ticketed. There's also this story. Note the 20-fold increase in tickets year-over-year. Living in the area, I can assure you it wasn't because everyone decided it was time to start speeding. As noted in the article, there were an obscene number handed out in off-hours construction zones where the speed was reduced at all times, rather than using the reduced speed while passing workers sign. Both signs can be found in this pdf link.

Thank you, captain obvious. Now consider you have a battery (fossil fuel) at point A powering a load (a house, for example) at point B. What happens when you add another battery in parallel (say a solar panel on the roof of said house) also at point B. What happens to the current between points A and B? Hint: it does not increase...

This is a common misconception about how the grid works. People think the generators are batteries waiting to be used, and all we have to do is turn a light on.

Wrong.

The grid is a complex machine that anticipates when you are going to turn the light on, and attempts to start a generator at the same time so that they can produce the electricity you need, when you need it. For example, here is Ontario's guess about how much power they will need today.

The problem is the generators can take a while to start. Take for example a steam powered turbine. The operator assumes (from past history) that by 3pm 10MW will be required by the grid and so in anticipation of that, he starts burning more fuel at 2:30 to heat more water.

However, at 3pm when he is burning enough fuel to produce 10MW, the wind in the area changes direction, and those wonderfully green wind generators now put out an extra 3MW. The total power being generated is 13MW, however, the demand is only for 10MW. For sake of the argument, it will take 1/2hr (in my example) for the turbine to slow down to 7MW (due to built up energy in the boiler - nuclear is even slower to react). There is an excess of 3MW on the grid that MUST be consumed or bad things will happen. By the way, this is why Manitoba Hydro can offer such great rates to the locals. They purchase cheep excess power from the states all night, then sell expensive power during the day. (Thank you, btw. As a result its cheaper for me to heat my house in -30C with electricity then natural gas.)

Here's where the thin wire problem starts to come into effect. Next door, they have hydro power, which can very quickly be dialed down and they would be glad to purchase the 3MW of excess power we have (since its excess, the market price will be low). The line connecting us can handle 5MW. However, there is currently (sorry) 4MW already flowing from us to them. Adding the 3MW puts us over the 5MW limit and again bad things happen.

The only option left is for the wind mills to feather their blades and reduce production. The steam turbine keeps burning the fossil fuels. All because we could not export our excess.

Check out the story here.

A nice little 3.5 year IT boondoggle that cost a cool $70 million and cost one board member of 19 years his job. It all just came to light last month. It made some pretty big headlines around these parts as well.

I was asked to review this title for the Winnipeg Free Press.

Link to scanned copy of review.

Its Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. You can try to find it at www.winnipegfreepress.com but this might have been before their online site really came up, and I'm unsure of how much they have archived.