Feds cut funding to key science facility

captain morgan

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Sounds to me as if the Harpy gov't is not much different than aPAULing Martin's. Make cuts in important areas and leave the bureacracy, administration, overlapping and useless programs alone.


What percentage of the electorate do the gvt scientists comprise?.. That seems to be the standard MO of any party when contemplating cuts to budgets.
 

L Gilbert

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What percentage of the electorate do the gvt scientists comprise?.. That seems to be the standard MO of any party when contemplating cuts to budgets.
Not much I would suspect. Harpy seems to be anti-science and has been from day 1. I remember a while back he cut grants for scientific endeavors and then turned around and started federal ads touting tourism in Canada. Are service industry jobs that important that they can over-ride scientific achievements that create technological advancements and the like?
 

petros

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None of the unemployed in Eureka can be trained to maintain a remote sensing station?


Eureka, Nunavut - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 

earth_as_one

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No one lives in Eureka, permanently. Eight people are posted at Eureka and they do a tour of duty. In other words, everyone in Eureka is there to do a job. When their tour of duty ends or if their job is eliminated, the person returns south.

Eureka: At its peak, in the 1970s, there were at least fifteen staff on site; in 2005, it reported a permanent population of zero with at least 8 staff on a continuous rotational basis.


I spent a year at Mould Bay on Prince Patrick Island Nunavut a sister site to Eureka. Like Eureka it is also a High Arctic Weather Station . Mould Bay had a population of 12 when I was there. I was the station electronics tech. The rest of the population was two heavy equipment operators/mechanics, a cook, an Officer in Charge (OIC) and the rest were Meteorological Techs.

Running these sites are expensive, but they do establish Canadian sovereignty in this area and provide some benefit to science. Today, satellites can collect most of the same information that is collected by weather balloons at these remote locations. Ozone sounding being an exception.

The Eureka site is important because of the Skull Point satellite down link which provides a feed to the Canadian military listening post in Alert. (Alert's existence isn't classified, but what they do there is)

I agree with cutting unnecessary costs. Cutting PEARL won't shut down Eureka. Abandoning the site would significantly increase the time to repair the satellite down link at Skull Point in the event of an equipment malfunction. Mind you the same problem exists with all the unmanned repeater stations between Skull Point, Eureka and Alert, which can and do fail occasionally. Most weather stuff in Eureka can be automated or replaced by satellite data except the ozone sounding. But that operation (ozone sounding) could be done at Alert. It makes sense to consolidate these sites as much as possible rather than trying to maintain them all. But if you don't use it, you risk loosing it. Denmark had as good a claim on these northerly islands as Canada did, until we established these expensive outposts. Danish explorers were the second people to travel to these lands after the Inuit/Thule peoples. Shutting down these remote outposts risks our claims to this region and all the resources. (Gas, oil, diamonds, zinc, ....)

BTW, I was also posted in Resolute Bay and I was one of the last people to visit Isachsen, Nunavut during a fuel lift about 5 years after it was abandoned. I was sent to retrieve some spare parts.

I was re-assigned to Churchill Manitoba after satellite links replaced the Low Frequency Teletype. I also ran the HAM radio station VE8MC in Mould Bay for a year.
 
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petros

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You need a manned one or an unmanned one with a sat up-link? You keep going on about how tech will save the universe so why not let it happen?
 

mentalfloss

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You need a manned one or an unmanned one with a sat up-link? You keep going on about how tech will save the universe so why not let it happen?
....

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.
 

Tonington

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None of the unemployed in Eureka can be trained to maintain a remote sensing station?

Who is unemployed at Eureka? The people who work at PEARL normally are living at the Eureka station...
Under normal circumstances personnel live at the Eureka weather station, which has more spacious accommodation and other facilities, and travel to the observatory along the purpose-built road that is passable for practically the entire year.
You can train just about anybody to use something like a PCR machine, doesn't mean they will produce good results though. You should have at least a strong background in biochemistry and molecular biology. There's a difference between knowledge, and following a recipe. :roll:
 

petros

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You can train just about anybody to use something like a PCR machine, doesn't mean they will produce good results though. You should have at least a strong background in biochemistry and molecular biology. There's a difference between knowledge, and following a recipe. :roll:
A pinch of this and a dash of that? Load of malarky. Get with the tech.
 

Tonington

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Load of malarky.

Yeah right. Biotech firms make money, they wouldn't hire you to run a piece of equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, the product of which makes them millions of dollars.

If you think there isn't a difference between tacit knowledge and following a recipe, then you have major problems.
 

earth_as_one

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Who is unemployed at Eureka? The people who work at PEARL normally are living at the Eureka station...
Under normal circumstances personnel live at the Eureka weather station, which has more spacious accommodation and other facilities, and travel to the observatory along the purpose-built road that is passable for practically the entire year.
You can train just about anybody to use something like a PCR machine, doesn't mean they will produce good results though. You should have at least a strong background in biochemistry and molecular biology. There's a difference between knowledge, and following a recipe. :roll:

Not true. I worked at a similar site. We lived in a dorm, we had a dinning room area and a clubhouse with a pool tables, weights and a bar. We also had a library, movies and video games. Boredom and isolation fever were potential problems. Some people also drank excessively and gambled.

You don't need a rocket scientist to launch a weather balloon. You could probably learn how to do that in about a day. In my day the met techs had to interpret results and send out a report. But now that's all automated now along with the balloon launching. The weather stations are all automated too.

I'm sure someone could design a system to automatically launch ozone sounders and the results could be received by satellite. The scientists shouldn't have to travel to Eureka to get the data or launch balloons. Or maybe we could use unmanned aircraft or drones.
 

Tonington

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You don't need a rocket scientist to launch a weather balloon.

Where did I say you did? Hmmm, I didn't.

I said you need people who know what they're doing. If a new project comes along, it matters a great deal if the people operating the equipment know something about what they are going to be measuring, and the capacities of the equipment they're using.

I'm sure someone could design a system to automatically launch ozone sounders and the results could be received by satellite.

How about the aerosol mass spectrometer? Or the Fourier transform infrared spectrometers? There is far more than just weather balloons up there.
http://www.candac.ca/candac/Instruments/instrumentsinventory.php?type=Inventory
 

petros

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Yeah right. Biotech firms make money, they wouldn't hire you to run a piece of equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, the product of which makes them millions of dollars.

If you think there isn't a difference between tacit knowledge and following a recipe, then you have major problems.
They are doing biology up there or monitoring tthe atmosphere with equip that can be operated remotely?
 

mentalfloss

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They are doing biology up there or monitoring tthe atmosphere with equip that can be operated remotely?

They need the station there so no: remote operation is not feasible.

I think I've said this a bajillion times squared in this thread, so I don't know why you have such a problem with reading comprehension.