Position:  44 54.900 N  062 31.509 W  -  Alongside Sheet Harbor Fishing Co-op wharf

This morning we moved from the public wharf to the Fishing Co-op wharf to top up our water tanks, it also had the advantage of being closer to town which allowed us to more easily refuel and re-provision with fresh supplies.  This afternoon I completed a couple of boat chores and now Paul is making a pizza for dinner.  Favorable winds are forecast for tomorrow.  The plan is to get a good night’s sleep then get underway early tomorrow.  The people here at the Fishing Co-op have been incredibly friendly, we have been made to feel very welcome, exceeding the warm sunshine we have enjoyed over the past two days.

Science 21 April 2006:
Vol. 312. no. 5772, p. 351

News of the Week

CLIMATOLOGY:
Latest Forecast: Stand By for a Warmer, But Not Scorching, World

Richard A. Kerr

Two new studies that combine independent lines of evidence agree that climate sensitivity--how much a given increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide will warm the world--is at least moderately strong, making a really scorching warming appear unlikely but reinforcing the likelihood that continued emissions will fuel a substantial warming in this century.

Economics: the human science which studies the relationship between scarce resources and the various uses which compete for these resources.

A price mechanism is a system where the economic decisions in the economy are reached through the workings of the market: changes in the relative scarcity of goods and services are reflected in changes in prices and these price changes produce incentives for producers to reallocate available resources towards reducing market shortages and surpluses.

Science 7 April 2006:

Vol. 312, no. 5770

No Pain, No Gain

Societal behaviour is complex and multifaceted. One complicated question is the conditions under which we cooperate with others for mutual gain.  Experimental results using a public goods game suggest that the threat of costly punishment of free-riders by altruistically minded souls suffices to maintain group-wide compliance. Gurerk et al. (p. 108; see the Perspective by Henrich) show that if allowed to choose freely, individuals first elect to join a sanction-free game where punishment is not permitted.  As successive rounds are played, they come to appreciate that cooperation yields greater rewards, so they switch to the sanctioning regime where punishment (which makes free-riding costly) is allowed and themselves become active monitors of compliance.

The Washington Post  February 18, 2006

Glaciers melting twice as fast as feared, study finds

By Shankar Vedantam in Washington

GREENLAND'S glaciers are melting into the sea twice as quickly as previously believed, the result of a warming trend that renders obsolete predictions of how quickly the oceans will rise over the next century, scientists said.

The new data comes from satellite imagery and gives fresh urgency to worries about the role of human activity in global warming. The Greenland data is mirrored by findings from Bolivia to the Himalayas, scientists said, noting a rise in sea levels threatens widespread flooding and severe storm damage in low-lying areas worldwide.

"This study underscores the need to take swift, meaningful actions at home and abroad to address climate change," said Vicki Arroyo, a director at the Pew Centre on Global Climate Change.