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Post by nautonnier on Sept 27, 2012 20:30:43 GMT
Though things are a bit more expensive in the UK the size and type (and cooking) of the steak at home compared to 'out' means you can feed at least 3 for the price of one meal out? I know there are overheads but it's the same for the butcher who I can buy my 2kg of steak from (as opposed to a 10oz at the restaurant) so what of the poor farmer at the beginning of the chain??? Maybe if I could take my own steak and wine I'd be able to afford to go out more??? Which is why when I lived in rural areas of Wales and in Scotland, I used to deal direct with farmers and cut out the multiple middlemen. Both the farmer and I won on that deal. You do need a good sized chest freezer though.
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Post by sigurdur on Sept 28, 2012 2:19:38 GMT
It is hard to understand folks who don't have a freezer of size. It evens out the costs of food very easily. You can freeze garden fresh foods, my wife does it. And when meat is lower in price, you can buy a whole animal.
A good freezer will be paid for in short order with proper management.
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Post by icefisher on Sept 28, 2012 17:28:55 GMT
It is hard to understand folks who don't have a freezer of size. It evens out the costs of food very easily. You can freeze garden fresh foods, my wife does it. And when meat is lower in price, you can buy a whole animal. A good freezer will be paid for in short order with proper management. Your mileage on that is going to vary. If you live out in the sticks no question that a freezer is a good investment. Just the price of gas to town demands some decent food storage. My grandparents lived on a farm and bought or grew in bulk. National market chains, unions, and huge food markups makes a freezer a good deal for folks who live in small towns. However, in big cities where market competition is far greater, particularly in ethnic markets, you can often save a large amount of money by using the markets to serve as your freezer. But it often entails going to markets that don't speak a lot of English as the major chain/national union markets or even higher mark up local 7-eleven-type stores can make a big freezer investment worthwhile. I have a large freezer in the big city but mostly because I am a hunter/fisherman. Savings on market goods alone would not make it worthwhile. The big advantage of living in the big city is you do far better shopping if you make the effort to do so and you don't need to buy in bulk. A good sized refrigerator with some decent freezer space is sufficient for most. I buy a lot from the big chain stores as they give a lot of discounts to compete for customers. If you shop several chains there is not much you can't get at a discount. And in general the ethnic stores operate on lower overheads and survive because they are ethnic. Its fairly easy when you have the 3 major chain stores, Safeway, Ralphs, Albertsons, then the discounts, Costco, Walmart, Sams Club, a couple of discount chains, and about a half dozen ethnic markets all within a circle of about 5 miles radius. I keep a sizeable amount of food on hand for potential disaster but here in the event of a disaster you will likely lose the freezer food unless you have the space for self sufficient power and fuel storage which in the city for most folks probably poses greater risk than the comfort it can bring. And of course now here in California they are trying rolling blackouts as a way to reduce carbon emissions. In a disaster I will be eating canned goods, rice and beans.
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Post by codetalker on Sept 30, 2012 0:19:59 GMT
Below is an interesting post by a professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington. He suggests the PNW might be in for a La Nada winter. La Nada? I've never heard of La Nada. Oh, well I've learned something new. If you want to see his graphs follow this link: cliffmass.blogspot.com/ Briefly I think frozen meat sucks and lettuce doesn't freeze at all well so I wonder which method works best to avoid freezer burn? Freezer paper, Ziploc bags or vacuum bags? Anyway... Here's his post. The Winter Forecast and a Wimply El Nino The main tool used by meteorologists to predict the nature of the weather months ahead is the correlation of the temperature of the tropical Pacific ocean surface and the atmospheric circulation around the globe. To put it another way, meteorologists use the correlation of the El Nino and La Nina cycle (called ENSO-El Nino Southern Oscillation in the business) with midlatititude weather. This correlation is not perfect, but it is the most potent tool we have for predicting a few months ahead. As with any good tool, you need to know how to use it, as well as its limitations. One key rule is: don't make your winter predictions too early! A lot of research, including that of UW's Todd Mitchell, have shown that one really needs to wait until very late summer to have real skill for predicting the character of the upcoming winter. Thus, I like to wait until late September: by this time we can have high confidence that we have a handle on the general nature of El Nino/La Nina for the winter months. So I feel comfortable giving you a prediction at this point. A second thing to keep in mind is that this tool is imperfect, explaining perhaps a third to a half of the winter variability. OK, enough caveats and warnings. Let me give you the story! For the last two years we have been in a La Nina situation (colder than normal central and eastern tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures), which is generally associated with greater mountain snowpack, colder temperatures, and increased chances of lowland snow, particularly after Jan 1. And generally it delivered---Cascade snowpacks have been high and our last two springs were dismally cool and wet. But this year La Nina has collapsed and the tropical Pacific has warmed, leading to a weak El Nino. This graph shows the sea surface temperature anomalies (differences from climatology, blue colder than normal, orange is warmer) for several tropical Pacific regions (the Nino 3.4 region is the most used) since October 2011. We have a pretty wimpy El Nino at this point (anomalies only about .5C) and lately it has weakened substantially. At this point in time, we would expect this winter to be an El Nino one, simply on the basis of persistence---since it takes a while for the ocean temperatures to shift. But we have more sophisticated tools. First, there are a series of models--some statistical, some simulating the ocean/atmosphere system--that provide a forecast of what is happening over the tropical Pacific. Here is a nice collection that I accessed on the NOAA Climate Prediction Center website. Most of the models suggest a slight warming (increase in El Nino) this fall, followed by a slow weakening. The definition of El Nino requires that the warm anomaly be at least .5C and we are just over that now and slide below it next Spring. If the anomaly is between plus or minor .5C of normal then we are in a neutral or "La Nada" year. The National Weather Service also runs their global coupled atmosphere/ocean model (the CFS) out many months. Here is what it is showing. Same wimpy, marginal El Nino, and on the verge of being a La Nada year. But this El Nino/ENSO stuff is interesting perhaps, but what you REALLY want to know is what we expect for the upcoming winter, right? First, the bottom line. El Nino years tend to produce Northwest winters that are warmer than normal, drier than normal, with less than normal mountain snowpack and a lower probability of lowland snow. They tend to be less stormy here, with more of the action going into California. The greatest impacts are generally after January and the strength of the effect is dependent on the warmth of the tropical Pacific. The following graphics illustrate the impact across the U.S. of El Nino's during January though March. The first shows preciptation--a really modest decline over the NW and an increase over the southwest U.S. For temperature, warming over the northern tier of states. The issue, of course, is that this is looks like a very weak El Nino at this point and the impacts will be thus attenuated. The result: less signal and thus less forecasting skill. We could easily be a near neutral situation (La Nada) the end of the winter, and those can be interesting periods, since the biggest of the big events (floods, windstorms, even snowstorms) tend to occur in neutral years. So keep your eyes on the tropical Pacific temperatures--perhaps our models will be wrong.
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Post by nautonnier on Oct 4, 2012 11:54:38 GMT
It is hard to understand folks who don't have a freezer of size. It evens out the costs of food very easily. You can freeze garden fresh foods, my wife does it. And when meat is lower in price, you can buy a whole animal. A good freezer will be paid for in short order with proper management. Your mileage on that is going to vary. If you live out in the sticks no question that a freezer is a good investment. Just the price of gas to town demands some decent food storage. My grandparents lived on a farm and bought or grew in bulk. National market chains, unions, and huge food markups makes a freezer a good deal for folks who live in small towns. However, in big cities where market competition is far greater, particularly in ethnic markets, you can often save a large amount of money by using the markets to serve as your freezer. The real problem is that the markets and shops in a big city hold at most 3 days food supply. A relatively minor emergency and that all disappears in 6 hours of panic buying. Then the problems start. If you live in hurricane or earthquake prone areas then you will be used to keeping a week or so's supply of food. It is starting to look like large freezers or dry food stores will become a necessity. I have already started purchasing extra dried items to increase stocks. Note that the USA no longer keeps a grain reserve - this is so hedge funds (and farmers) can make more money on 'futures'. Sounds good until the weather does not cooperate. In the US there was drought in Europe floods. It was reported today that supermarket chains in UK were for the first time having to external source vegetables and fruit and millers are finding stocks of wheat are low and expensive. The idea always was that in the good years you stored for the bad years; that seems to have been forgotten by hedge funds and bankers. Globally we are in for a rather uncomfortable time.
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Post by trbixler on Oct 4, 2012 13:03:29 GMT
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Post by sigurdur on Oct 4, 2012 13:15:08 GMT
nautonnier I have been saying for years that we need a reserve for the staple grains. This has fallen on deaf ears as folks memories are short.
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Post by codetalker on Oct 5, 2012 14:02:08 GMT
Trbixler: Not just the plains, but also near my little community, where a weather station on Wunderground, 20 minutes North of Seattle, is currently reading 32.4 degree at 7 AM. I don't need to mention Seattle is close to the water right?
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Post by AstroMet on Oct 7, 2012 1:02:53 GMT
Your mileage on that is going to vary. If you live out in the sticks no question that a freezer is a good investment. Just the price of gas to town demands some decent food storage. My grandparents lived on a farm and bought or grew in bulk. National market chains, unions, and huge food markups makes a freezer a good deal for folks who live in small towns. However, in big cities where market competition is far greater, particularly in ethnic markets, you can often save a large amount of money by using the markets to serve as your freezer. The real problem is that the markets and shops in a big city hold at most 3 days food supply. A relatively minor emergency and that all disappears in 6 hours of panic buying. Then the problems start. If you live in hurricane or earthquake prone areas then you will be used to keeping a week or so's supply of food. It is starting to look like large freezers or dry food stores will become a necessity. I have already started purchasing extra dried items to increase stocks. Note that the USA no longer keeps a grain reserve - this is so hedge funds (and farmers) can make more money on 'futures'. Sounds good until the weather does not cooperate. In the US there was drought in Europe floods. It was reported today that supermarket chains in UK were for the first time having to external source vegetables and fruit and millers are finding stocks of wheat are low and expensive. The idea always was that in the good years you stored for the bad years; that seems to have been forgotten by hedge funds and bankers. Globally we are in for a rather uncomfortable time. And that has been my forecast for years now. One of the major problems has been that many of the so-called 'forecasters' fail in properly advising nations, governments and populations well enough in advance so that adjustments and preparations can be made to account for climate/weather conditions over the medium to longer-range. Too much money is spent by these forecasters using faulty models who end up guessing (often always wrong) what the seasonal climate will be in any year. As a result, for instance, by not listening to my long-range forecast for the drought I foresaw, the majority of this year's corn crop is lost. Most American and Russian farmers were induced to plant record crops and now we have this: World Food Prices Rise, Stay Close To Crisis Levels: FAO
Reuters, Saturday 6 Oct 2012 -- World food prices rose in September and are seen remaining close to levels reached during the 2008 food crisis, the United Nations' food agency said on Thursday, while cutting its forecast for global cereal output.
The worst drought in more than 50 years in the United States sent corn and soybean prices to record highs over the summer, and, coupled with drought in Russia and other Black Sea exporting countries, raised fears of a renewed crisis.
Grains prices have retreated in recent weeks due to rapid harvest progress and concerns about weak demand in a slowing global economy.
But the FAO Food Price Index, which measures monthly price changes for a food basket of cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat and sugar, rose to an average of 216 points in September after remaining stable at 213 points in August, the FAO said in its monthly update.
The rise reflected mainly higher dairy and meat prices, with more contained increases for cereals, it said.
"Prices are remaining high... prices are sustained, it's highly unlikely we will see a normalization of prices anytime soon," FAO senior economist Abdolreza Abbassian told Reuters in a telephone interview.
He added however that it was not clear whether the small increase in September meant prices were now on an upward trend, but he expected volatility in markets could intensify in coming months.
FAO's index is below a peak of 238 points hit in February 2011, when high food prices helped drive the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, but current levels are very close to those seen in 2008 which sparked riots in poor countries.
The Rome-based agency said it had cut its 2012 world cereals output forecast by 0.4 percent to 2.286 billion metric tonnes (2.519 billion tons) from a previous estimate of 2.295 billion tonnes, mainly due to a smaller maize crop in central and southeastern parts of Europe, where yields have been hit by prolonged dry conditions.
Despite the rise in food prices, the United States Mission to the UN Agencies in Rome released a statement on Thursday saying it had agreed with other countries that a meeting of the emergency Rapid Response Forum under the G20 agriculture body AMIS was not necessary at the moment.
"Agricultural commodity markets are functioning," the mission said.
Abbassian said a ministerial meeting that goes beyond the G20 to discuss food prices was still planned for Oct 16.
French President Francois Hollande has launched a global campaign to win support for strategic stocks of agricultural commodities, but EU development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said this week that was not the best way to tame food prices, advising a focus on agricultural investment to boost production.
I've been working on a new long-range forecasting company based on my astronomic forecasting. We will begin operations officially in 2013. That is one of the reasons why I haven't been posting as much over the last few months. These next few years are critical to world food production, but many forecasters are to blame, including the major institutions, NOAA/NWS and climate centers which have been run by the AGW climate change ideologues who do NOT forecast climate anywhere near as accurately. Into next year and beyond, expect food price shocks, higher prices and riots overseas because of the losses from this year's drought. The harvest for this year is more or less lost from the lack of precipitation, the heat waves I forecasted and the drought. Anyone reading this wants to buy canned foods now, stock and store them for next year because food prices will rise, and then remain high in 2013-2014.
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Post by nautonnier on Oct 7, 2012 13:51:13 GMT
You have some more support from another quarter - Joe Bastardi is (and has been) forecasting a significant drop in temperatures back to those in the 1970s. www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/combination-of-factors-could-m/36990His focus is the USA but it would look like this is actually the return of a different weather pattern that has not pertained in the 'satellite era' so all the experts who have ~ 30 years of observations are going to be a little non-plussed that their rules of thumb --- sorry--- algorithms do not appear to work. Indeed - I think we are in that state now given the continual lack of 'skill' in the longer term forecasts. The tide is turning and the current forecasters have only ever seen an incoming tide.
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Post by codetalker on Oct 11, 2012 15:08:53 GMT
News item: Long time retiring Washington State Congressman Norm D. warned America is vulnerable to a cyber attack. D. is a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and ranking member of the Defense Subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations. Chatter has been why would he speak out and does he have something to gain in his afterlife after Congress. Is this a plug for his next gig or is it a real concern? If an attack did come one could be sure it wouldn't be launched during the balmy pleasant days of Summer but rather during the bleak Winter of our Discontent.
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Post by sigurdur on Oct 12, 2012 0:46:53 GMT
I am not too worried about a cyber attack. I know there are countries, including the USA, that has a large amount of resources devoted to doing so.
However, there IS life without the internet for a few days.
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Post by codetalker on Oct 12, 2012 3:54:43 GMT
I agree life without the internet would be ok
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Post by nautonnier on Oct 12, 2012 12:11:38 GMT
This is a kind of cyberattack on a thread on weather forecast. However, the real problem is that a lot of the US infrastructure is controlled by insecure electronics that can be accessed over the internet. Many of the controls have default passwords that have not been altered. So if you want all the water pumps and drainage and sewage controls to crash (already been done in one area by hackers switching a pump on and off repeatedly) or the power grid to be taken off line etc etc. There are a lot of 'engineers' who have zero knowledge and less care about cyber-security so leave all the default settings on electronic servos and controls attached to the internet. Because of this the infrastructure of the US is literally available to be taken down. This is not using sophisticated built in trap doors just leaving electronics with the default 'admin' user-id with password 'password' etc. After all who would want to get into water treatment plant's sluice gate control? "IN 1996, a hacker seized control of an Australian water treatment plant's SCADA facility. The resulting security breach led to millions of gallons of raw sewage being dumped onto a resort hotel's grounds for three months. That a single person can cause such damage is a worry."www.iebmedia.com/index.php?id=8368&parentid=63&themeid=275&hft=67&showdetail=true&bb=1&PHPSESSID=1r4p89kag8lhginhfnqgs9qjm0This is more than losing access to favorite websites.
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Post by sigurdur on Oct 12, 2012 18:00:31 GMT
I called Minnkota today to see what they thought of a security threat. Minnkota is the supplier of wholesale power, a co-op per se.
Slowly climbing the ladder till I got to the Teck folks. Their statement was that nothing is imune from a well planned cyber attack. However, they have taken all prudent precautions to avoid a reg cyber attack. The one IT guy stated that a normal hacker would never be able to penetrate. Someone with super computers tho, it is virtually impossable to stop those as they can generate so many random numbers, strings, etc that they can bring down a server in short order.
What Minnkota has done is go to radio control. They still use computers, but have tried to make a dual loop is what the IT guy was saying. So that if the computers became corrupt, the radio reporting etc would take over so that any outage would be short lived.
The thing that he emphasized is that two attempts, and the system is suppose to go on alert and report a potential hacker.
I think steps are being taken, and from what he stated, no one is immune from a concerted effort via cyber attack.
It has warmed up and I have to get back to work outside. Was fun investigating this tho.
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