THURSDAY, JULY 26, 201 2 | WWW.PGCITIZEN.CA 17 Get slightly skewed with Jack Knox, only in Tuesday's Citizen SUBMITTED PHOTO Classic Spiderman has experienced a resurgence in the last two decades. Friendly neighbourhood Spiderman The Art of Spider-Man Classic By Chris Arrant This great book is for fans and newbies alike, documenting the history of the Spider-Man comic and its associated art, decade-by-decade from the 1960s, its resurgence in the 1990s to the present. The book contains marvelous descriptions of the artists and teams of creative people who adapted Spider-Man and added to the vision. There are also genuine revelations for the Canadian reader, as I did not realize that the 1980s were Spider-Man’s most controversial decade, starting with John Romita’s drawings through to the brief tenure of Canadian comic icon Todd McFarlane. There are also wonderful pictures and panels of the Rogues Gallery, a compendium of Spider-Man’s greatest foes and their foibles, the demise of some of his girlfriends, and ending with several pages of the top 40 greatest Spider-Man cover art. All in all, this series of Marvel’s greatest comics is a wonderful addition to any bookshelf and can be easily found for free at your friendly neighbourhood library. — Reviewed by Allan Wilson, chief librarian of the Prince George Public Library The Enpipe Line by Various Contributors The Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline is a controversial proposal. If built, this pipeline would carry bitumen (a form of oil) from the Alberta tar sands to Kitimat. From Kitimat, oil would be shipped via supertankers, along BC’s coastline and on to China. On one side of the argument, pipeline supporters argue that this pipeline would create much needed jobs for Canadians. On the other side, opponents counter that the few hundred permanent jobs created by the pipeline are not worth the thousands of current BC tourism and fisheries jobs that would be jeopardized in the event of an oil spill in this region. In The Enpipe Line: 70,000+ kilometres of poetry written in resistance to the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines proposal, numerous contributors share their objections and fears regarding Enbridge’s proposed pipeline, via poetry and prose. Contributors come from locations and walks of life: from environmentalists, to professors, artists, to children, from right here in Prince George to halfway around the world. But one thing they all have in common is love for the beauty of BC’s coast, along with a strong opposition to the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline. Citing over 800 oil spills by Enbridge in the past decade, opponents of this pipeline fear that it would only be a matter of time until a spill devastated the waters, livelihoods, and ways of life of countless BC residents. In the book’s Forward, Chief Jackie Thomas of Saik’uz Nation says, “Enbridge has spills all over North America.. .We refuse to be next.” A Canadian fisherman, Ron Fowler, says, “If we get an oil spill anywhere in these waters, it would wipe out every fishery we have: shellfish, salmon, herring, and the plankton that they feed on.” Many others share these sentiments. The Enpipe Line project is a largely local effort. Many contributors are local scholars, writers, and activists, such as UNBC professor Robert Budde. The project itself was officially launched November 2010 in Prince George. Though originating locally, contributors to The Enpipe Line come from all over the world, showing the strong global passion and support for British Columbia’s unique and beautiful wilderness. The books editor’s were flooded with responses to their call for submissions, and they ended up more than quadrupling the anticipated size of this collection. The Enpipe Line is a must read for anyone interested in the Enbridge pipeline issue, as well as for readers who enjoy poetry and/or the works of local authors. — Reviewed by: Teresa DeReis, readers advisor at the Prince George Public Library I I Wacky weather and a crazy climate A colleague and I recently went to Quesnel to play golf. Looking at the Weather Network the day before, they were calling for temperatures of 18C, one to five mm of rain, and a chance of thunderstorms. Not the most promising forecast if you are planning on a round or two. In the morning, the Weather Network was still calling for rain with a chance of thunderstorms. However, we have lived in the north long enough to know that a weather forecast doesn’t necessarily describe what the weather will be. Indeed, most of us have probably experienced - on more than one occasion - the frustration of listening to a forecast promising glorious weather only to have it rain cats and dogs. Or postponed plans because of a promise of miserable weather only to have it turn out to be a glorious day. I can’t say that our day of golf was a glorious day weather-wise but it certainly wasn’t as bad as the forecast. We got rained on for the first three holes and a very light sprinkle - one where you can count the individual drops - just after lunch. But there were no thunderstorms and certainly not 5 mm of rain. It even got quite warm, TODD WHITCOMBE reaching 22C by mid-afternoon as we headed home. I mention all of this as a backdrop to highlight the distinction between weather and climate. The two are not the same. Weather is what meteorologists and television weather people deal with on a daily basis. It is the thing that we all like to complain about. Climate, on the other hand, is a long term annual cycle of temperatures, precipitation, winds, and other factors. Climate is the long view. The one that we, with our limited life spans, have trouble seeing or understanding. As such, climate change is a slow creep barely measureable over time. In this regard, Gwynne Dyer’s recent column sort of mixed up weather and climate. Not totally but his discussion of the weather this summer - the excessively hot temperatures in the U.S. Mid-west and East Coast and the rain pouring down in England - are not climate. They are weather. They are the day-to-day or even monthly variations in the local weather of a region, albeit one as large as the U.S. Midwest. But next year, the Midwest might have an exceptionally cold summer with temperatures hovering below the seasonal norms. And the problem with saying that this summer’s heat wave is a result of climate change is that it leaves little explanation for the cold the following year other than that climate change is not occurring. It certainly opens the doors to climate change deniers to assert that there have been other anomalous years and this could just be another. Weather is so variable and a single year can stand out for a number of reasons. This is why the long view is necessary. Is it notable that temperatures reached absurd highs in St. Louis? Absolutely. But what is more important is that the past decade represent some of the hottest average surface temperature years on record. The long term view is that the Earth’s average surface temperature is slowly and steadily climbing. It is up about 0.8C over the past century. And if the past ten years are any indication, it is continuing to increase. This increasing temperature affects local climates - where the weather is dependent upon all of the atmospheric variables in the region plus those in adjacent regions and even those a fair distance away. Climate change perturbs weather patterns. Everything changes everything. And we can have a year of wacky weather. Maybe more to the point, though, is that there is little in the way of predictive power with regard to the weather. It is a bit like the stock market. I can say, with a fair degree of certainty that the value of the Dow will continue to increase over time. What I can’t say is that it will definitely increase tomorrow or the next day. Nor can I be certain that it will even increase over the next year. However, over time, with the way that our economic structure is set up, it is almost certain that the Dow will increase with time. And it is equally certain, that with the way our present economy is set up, the average global surface temperature will continue to climb leading to climate change. We might have good years, we might have bad, but over time -with the long view - we will see the results of our actions on the atmosphere. Giffords tours European physics lab John HEILPRIN The Associated Press GENEVA — Former U.S. congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords toured the European particle physics laboratory Wednesday, cheerfully facing reporters but saying little during her first trip abroad since being shot in the head last year. Giffords was accompanying her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, on a visit to the European Center for Nuclear Research, two days after she rode a cable car up into the French Alps. The lab, known as CERN, had assembled a $2 billion cosmic ray detector that Kelly and his team carried to the International Space Station in May 2011. That mission came just months after Giffords, a lawmaker from Arizona, was shot by a gunman in a Jan. 8, 2011, rampage that killed six and wounded 13 outside a Tucson supermarket. Since then, Giffords has undergone intensive therapy and made dramatic progress, but she also decided to leave her seat in Congress to focus on her recovery. During a press conference Wednesday, Kelly joined CERN officials and four other astronauts in recalling the delicate task of installing the seven-ton Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the space station so that it can scan the universe for signs ofdarkmatter and antimatter. Kelly commanded the mission, which was the final flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour. Nobel Laureate Samuel Ting, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the principal investigator for the CERN-based project, said the detector is functioning perfectly and an international team of 600 scientists has collected data from 18 billion cosmic rays. Realor not? Business In The Black JENNIFER BRANDLE-MCCALL One hundred per cent real stuff is hard to find these days. Take fruit juice for example, more often than not it is cranberry cocktail or fruit punch drink, which are just code words for artificially flavoured or from concentrate with a bunch of number three red dye and other stuff added. My kids have become conditioned to a world where nothing is as it seems. The question I don't remember asking my folks but one I hear incessantly from my four and seven-year-old girls is, "Mom, is this real?" "Is Katy Perry real?" "Is this ice-cream real?" "Are those fingernails real?" You can't blame them really, particularly when they are continually shocked by things like 3-D movies, edible worms, and snow falling out of the sky on a July day at Disneyworld. The line between real and fake is like a well-worn pair of socks growing thinner every day. And the phenomena has tainted business as well, so much so that, as consumers, we are quite comfortable with several degrees of separation between us and the processed items and distantly provided services we enjoy. Mechanically separated chicken nuggets pressed into dinosaur shapes are a miraculous example of unreal food. Or how about ebooks ordered online through an anonymous website where, not only will you never have to converse with a real sales person or librarian, you never have to go out into the real world to make the purchase. Unreal right? I strongly believe that real experiences, ones that have a greater degree of depth and impact, must involve real people and real products and services sourced closer to home. That's where small business plays a big role. By shopping at the stores in your neighbourhood and utilizing the services delivered by local professionals, your complete experience will: • be more memorable as all your senses will be engaged • more impactful as your dollars will go towards supporting the great people who choose to live in your community, volunteer at your kid's school, donate money for uniforms to your hockey team. • be healthier because there is a better chance the products have been made with local ingredients and you will have real people to answer your specific questions who can understand your local perspective. We can also consider relationships through a similar lens. There is still a need for face-to-face networking and business development to compliment efforts to connect through social media/email/and the Internet. There is a reason that, after 100 years, a chamber of commerce still exists in Prince George. In part, it is because we offer our members the opportunity to connect directly in person with other business people who can help them grow and succeed. These real-ationships are irreplaceable and absolutely necessary in order to build a healthy business environment. And while I'm all for trying new things and engaging with technology in moderate doses, I will take a challenging conversation face-to-face with a real business colleague sipping a cup of real coffee with real cream on a really comfy sofa over an on-line chat with a LinkedIn contact any day. Until then, stay in the black and keep coming back.