Is Oil Predicting a Recession?
The price of oil has dropped almost $20 a barrel in the last three months.
With the crisis in the Middle East you would think oil prices would be rising. Economist Hubert Marleau has this take: “Global demand has slumped, especially in China. The global energy bill as a percentage of world GDP is presently only 2.71%, compared to a September high of 3.28%. While there are pundits who blame the steadily ratched up production of U.S. oil, this thesis does not hold much water. More importantly, demand for petroleum-driven lubricant, which is used to grease industrial activity, is falling everywhere, from Europe to the US to China to India. Like copper, lubricant closely mirrors global business activity.”
The Economies of the Middle East
Carbon Worries by Country
Deadly Storms: Only Two Made CNN… and None Were in Florida
The World’s Number One Private Plane
Is it this?
No, it’s this:
The Cessna 172. The four seater plane was first sold in 1956 for $8,895, according to Simpleflying.com. Since then Cessna has produced 45,000 of them. A new 172 today costs $400,000, though you might find a used one for as little as $40,000. The cruising speed of a 172 is 122 knots, which equates to 226 km/hr or 140 mphover the ground. While the big jet above can fly the 2,233 kilometres from Montreal to Florida in four hours, the Cessna 172 will take two days with at least two stops to refuel, depending on the headwinds. Faster than driving. And about $1,000 in fuel.
Where The American Rich Vacation
The Milk Heavy Stars of The Royal Winter Fair
The full udders of prize Jersey cows ready to go into the show ring this weekend at the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto, the largest agricultural fair in Canada. Animals come from across Canada to compete for money, ribbons and bargain rights. Next to the giant black and white Holsteins the Jersey is number two dairy cow at The Royal.
Jersey cows are making a comeback in Canada, especially in Quebec, as people drink less milk and eat more fat-filled things, including ice cream and yoghurt. Butter is used a lot more once it got around that margarine is probably worse for you than the real thing.
Jersey cows are prized for the high-fat content in their milk, which is used to make butter and cheese. The small brown-coloured cows come from Jersey in the Channel Islands.
"People are eating their milk," says Jean-Marc Pellerin, National Fieldman (yes, that's his title) for Jersey Canada. He travels across the country cataloguing jersey herds and helping farmers with Jersey cattle.
In the last ten years, the number of Jerseys has doubled in Canada. More than 12,000 Jersey calves were registered in Canada last year, the greatest number since 1963. Two-thirds of the new growth was in Quebec over the last ten years.
It isn't just the higher fat content that accounts for the growing popularity of the Jerseys. They are two-thirds the size of the giant black and white Holstein cows that dominate milk production in Canada.
The Martin family has been milking Jersey cows since 1908 at Elmsmead farm in Frost Village, a tiny hamlet in Quebec's Eastern Townships near the border with Vermont. For many years it was unusual to see Jersey cows in the field; farmers preferred the giant black and white Holstein who produce oceans of milk.
"When I started milking, there were only 30 or 40 Jersey herds in Quebec, now there are more than 600 with Jerseys," says Pierre Martin, who is retiring from milking. Standing beside a line of Jerseys in his barn, he explains that it isn't only the fat in their milk that is making them popular.
"A Jersey cow weighs 450 kilograms. A Holstein cow is 700 kilograms. So they are a lot easier to handle, and you get more value from what you feed them," says Pierre.
"A Jersey will average 25 litres a day at 5.5% fat, while a Holstein gives 35 litres with anywhere from 3.6% to 4% fat."
Who would have thought that one type of cow polluted less than another?
"Making the same amount of cheese from Jersey milk versus Holstein produces 20% less greenhouse gas," says Jean-Marc Pellerin. "Because it takes 11% less land, 32% less water and less feed, so there's not as much manure and less transportation cost. The milk is more concentrated, so you don't need as much volume either. Jerseys have the highest fat and protein components in their milk."
Environmental rules are another reason for the growth of Jersey herds, especially in Quebec. There is now a law about how much phosphorous can be put on fields when sprayed with manure, a cheap natural fertilizer but one that contains a lot of phosphorous. Jerseys produce 55% less phosphorous than larger dairy breeds.
There are more women farmers than there used to be, according to Jean-Marc of Jersey Canada, and they prefer Jerseys.
"They are friendly and smaller and easier to handle," says Jean-Marc. As a result, farmers who are starting out not only need less acreage to carry Jerseys, but the barn can be smaller than if they were housing Holsteins. "Lower feed costs and the efficiency of the breed helps farmers."
It's a subjective thing, but Jerseys much more beautiful than other dairy breeds, with their eyes that stick out, giving them a more curious, human look.
Europe at the Start of the Modern Age
Forty-two years before Columbus. Spain, still ridding itself of the Moors, set to become the richest country in Europe. Prussia in its birth stage; Lithuania nothing like today and Russia in the womb. The red line in Ireland is The Pale.
Essay of the Week
It’s not often, but I sometimes write obituaries of someone I know. In this case I didn’t know the man but his brother. The Globe ran this in 2012.
The civil servant and the sea
Peter Underwood was an environmentalist and senior civil servant in Nova Scotia and the longest serving deputy minister in the history of the province. Over his long career he monitored the Georges Bank fishing agreement and helped resolve the boundary dispute over the French-owned islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
His entire work life involved oceans, either in research or the law. Even his off hours involved the sea, as he spent as much time as he could sailing.
He was born in Greensboro, N.C., on March 13, 1952, to Charles and Margaret Underwood, and died in Halifax on March 26 of brain cancer at the age of 60. After earning a bachelor of science at Dalhousie he went on to a masters degree in marine environmental studies from the State University of New York. One of his first research jobs was as the oceanographer on an environmental assessment of the health of plankton in Davis Strait, the body of water between Greenland and Baffin Island. The trips to the cold, stormy seas were sometimes on small fishing boats chartered for the job and his family says he remembered some of those voyages as pretty wild.
He helped pay his way through Dalhousie law school by working for the federal government as a monitor on foreign fishing vessels, making sure they obeyed Canadian laws. He practised law in Halifax for a short time, but his legal and scientific background made him an ideal candidate to work at the highest levels of government in the maritime province of Nova Scotia.
Among his many assignments, Underwood was particularly proud of representing Nova Scotia at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. He was involved in other international conferences and negotiations, always representing Nova Scotia's interests.
"Peter was a multitalented person, and he had more varied interests that anyone I knew. He was always enthusiastic and never acquired the cynicism that long time government employees sometimes do," said Phillip Saunders, a friend from university days and the former dean of the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University.
His friends and family say in spite of his idealism about the ocean and the environment, he lived in the real world and knew he had to find ways to protect the environment while promoting economic growth.
"He was committed to the environment and sustainability, but in a practical and realistic way," said Saunders.
Underwood was a proponent of fish farming, tidal power and sensible but effective environmental rules set by government. He was the driving force behind the overhaul of Nova Scotia's Environment Act.
He was one of the founders of the Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment in 1988. The Gulf of Maine, which includes the Bay of Fundy, is bordered by Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. It covers 93,000 square kilometres of ocean and 12,000 kilometres of coastline.
The council deals with issues such as water quality, habitat restoration and fisheries. For Underwood, working on the formation of the cross border council brought together both his scientific and legal background.
"He was a lawyer who had done research on the ocean environment earlier in his career so he was instrumental in drawing up the original agreement and continued to work on new plans for more than a decade," said David Keeley, a former official with the state of Maine who also helped found the group.
He remembers Underwood as an outgoing man who after the official meetings were over would bring out his fiddle to entertain the group.
"He was musical on top of his other talents," said Keeley. "He was energetic and committed to issues related to Nova Scotia's environment."
Underwood also represented the interests of Nova Scotia and Canada in other international agreements. One was the ongoing monitoring of the agreement on the boundaries of the Georges Bank fishing ground, an area of the ocean that straddled the Gulf of Maine.
He went to Paris in the early 1990s to help negotiate fishing boundaries around Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. There was a long simmering dispute between Canada and France over the extent of the offshore boundaries and fishing rights belonging to the tiny islands near Newfoundland, ceded to France as part of the Treaty of Paris of 1763. The dispute was settled in Canada's favour.
The tiny islands of Saint-Pierre et Miquelon off the coast of Newfoundland. As French as France, the 6,008 residents send one Senator and one member of the National Assembly to Paris.
When he wasn't working on laws dealing with the ocean, he was sailing in the Atlantic in his 30-foot sloop. For many years he could sail right from his own dock on the Northwest Arm of Halifax. His boat was a classic Roué, built in Lunenburg and named for William Roué, designer of the famous Bluenose. Underwood sailed for six to seven months of the year and spent many hours maintaining his 60-year-old wooden sailboat.
"He was happiest on the water," said his wife, Mary Jane McGinty.
Until he became ill at the start of this year, Underwood was working on a merger of the Nova Scotia Agricultural College with his alma mater, Dalhousie.
Although a man of strong opinions, he worked under Liberal, Conservative and NDP governments, knowing that in the Canadian political system the minister is the elected head of the department and the deputy minister is the permanent civil servant running that department.
"He absolutely refused to be partisan and he refused to bend to a partisan issue," said his wife. "His job was to remind the ministers to respect the needs of all their stakeholders, not just their constituents."
That didn't stop one of his former ministers, Conservative MLA Chris d'Entremont, from criticizing Underwood in May of 2010. At the time the former minister of Agriculture and Fisheries said while Underwood was highly qualified he didn't have a defined role in a new post. It was a partisan controversy that quickly blew over.
Underwood leaves his wife and sons Jonathan and Charles.