Canada loves curling so in honor of Kevin Martin’s gold medal rink here are a couple of curling videos.

Some of the world’s best beer commercials win Eddies!

The Weakerthans – Tournament of Hearts (thanks Ray!)

The Hoser Nation is very happy tonight!

Scientists working with large digital data sets are often able to reason that a subset of data points are incorrect. Sometimes this is the case as there are many potential error sources (data entry, transposed figures, conversion errors, faulty sensors etc.). An adjustment can often be applied to the “raw” data that will remove or smooth obviously troublesome data. An “adjusted” data set is used in the subsequent interpretation.

In other cases scientists may introduce their human biases through statistical modifications. This appears to be the case with the data from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) according to a paper by Edward R. Long, Ph.D.

Long extracted the temperature records from rural stations and compared them to the data from urban stations. The graph below shows a warming trend in the urban data that is not observed in the rural data.

Urban heating or the heat island effect is well-documented. Cities become warmer as they grow in size. There is less vegetation and there are more artificial heat absorbing surfaces. A warming in urban temperature records would be expected during the post-war urbanization of the US and that is what the data show. The rural data does not show the same warming trend. Rather than correcting for urban heating, the NCDC …has taken liberty to alter the actual rural measured values.

In other words the NCDC “adjusted” data set is biased towards warming from the urban heat island effect. A different approach would be to adjust the urban data to reflect the trends in the rural data… but that wouldn’t show a warming trend.

Long’s conclusion is an important one…

This suggests the consequence of the NCDC’s protocol for adjusting the data is to cause historical data to take on the time-line characteristics of urban data. The consequence intended or not, is to report a false rate of temperature increase for the Contiguous U. S.

Anthony Watts of wattsupwiththat.com has been documenting actual temperature stations through his surfacestations.org project. His paper Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable? doesn’t mince words.

The conclusion is inescapable: The U.S. temperature record is unreliable. And since the U.S. record is thought to be “the best in the world,” it follows that the global database is likely similarly compromised and unreliable.

Volumes of peer-reviewed scientific papers have been based this “adjusted” data set so don’t look for this type of work to immediately become part of the scientific consensus.

Here is some interesting background including the “professional discourtesy” (most people would use harsher language) that Anthony Watts encountered.

It is my contention that Watts is one of a new breed of gentleman scientists. The underdog will prevail.

On the other hand, given the Ludwig’s health concerns over the drilling of the well it is ironic that Josh was intent on getting as close as he could to get photos.

Speakers will include Tom MacNeill (49 North Resources), David Franklin (Sprott Asset Management), Dr. Michael Berry (Morning Notes), Michael Levy (MoneyTalks), Jim Letourneau (Big Picture Speculator), The Coffin Brothers (HRA Analyst), Victor Goncalves (Equities & Economics Report), John Kaiser (Bottom Fishing Report), and Jeret Bode (MGI Securities)

Click here for more info

ERCB Staff Review and Analysis of the incident described it as follows:

The steam release occurred near the heel of the first well pair in pad 204 (well pair 204- I1P1), and caused a surface disturbance about 125 metres (m) by 75 m, with rock projectiles travelling up to 300 m horizontally from the main crater and a plume of dust about 1 kilometre long stretching to the southwest of the release point. There was no loss of life or injury, and there were no harmful gaseous emissions.

Thank goodness!

A Total spokesperson stated that said the pilot was producing 3,500 barrels per day when it was suspended last spring, far short of its 10,000 bpd goal (Calgary Herald).

The bottom line is that “more steam!” is not always the correct approach to getting heavy oil out of the ground.

There are interesting photos in the ERCB reports about the incident.  Click here for the details.

Click here to download the report

Questerre believes Quebec’s Utica shale could contain more than 20 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas – far higher than gas estimates in Canada’s Mackenzie Delta.(Globe and Mail)

Having a giant source of natural gas lying between Montreal and Quebec City is a major paradigm shift for Canada’s energy supply. The Mackenzie Valley pipeline is a $16.2 billion project. Do we need it?

The average gain for the junior companies involved with this play was 39% yesterday.

CLICK HERE -  to download a PDF SNAPSHOT listing the St. Lawrence Lowlands juniors, their charts, and links to corporate websites.