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Westhill Consulting & Employment How to Give Yourself the Best Possible Chance of Landing A Job?
Keep At It
It can be disheartening when you’re looking for a job and nothing seems to come up of. The first thing to remember is that climbing a career ladder is tough and you’ll be up against some stiff competition. Companies can only see a limited number of people during their recruitment process so are often very picky when it comes to who gets to the interview stage. You need to bear this in mind and don’t give up when it seems like you’re just not getting anywhere at all.
Instead make sure that you look in different places for job adverts and keep applying for any that peak your interest. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket and apply for one job at a time – get your application out there to as many companies as possible in order to give yourself the best possible chance of being successful.
Think Outside The Box
Sometimes you need to take the initiative and contact a company, even if they aren’t advertising jobs. It’s not recommended that you simply spam every company in your local area with letters, but if there is a company that you would love to work for – why not let them know? Companies generally like people that are passionate about a brand or product, so if they can see this passion in you then you never know they might give you a chance.
Sometimes the initial offer will be a work experience opportunity, but you should grab this with both hands if you can because you never know what this will lead to.
Brush Up Your CV
Before you start applying for jobs you need to make sure that your CV is on-point. Don’t just assume that because it was good enough a few years ago that it is good enough now, because trends change. It is a good idea to contact a local recruitment agency and ask them what they look for in a decent CV. You’ll also find loads of information on this online. It might not be necessary to start your CV from scratch, but you’ll probably need to make a few tweaks to the layout to make it perfect.
It goes without saying that your CV should have no spelling errors and be grammatically correct. Generally speaking your CV should be 2 pages long, with your work history and experience at the top of this. Remember that recruiters usually have lots of CV’s to read through; you don’t want to give them any excuse not to read yours.
Think about the layout of it – you want it to look crisp and easy to read. They will usually skim read a bunch of CV’s to see how they match and then spend longer reading the ones that they liked and thought suitable. A messy layout could mean that they dismiss you and your CV at the first stage and of course this is something that you want to avoid.
Interview Techniques
If you get through to the interview stage then firstly give yourself a massive pat on the back. We have seen how tough the world of recruitment is, so to get to this stage should be seen as a massive positive.
There are loads of places you can get interview hints and tips, so there is no need to go into one unprepared. One of the best pieces of advice that can be given to you about interviews is to make sure that you are organized and prepared. Don’t assume you can just read up on the company the night before – this will just leave you feeling stressed and anxious, which is not the best approach for a job interview.
Read up about the company before you go and write down a couple of questions that you would like to ask them. This could be to do with the company, its growth, its plans or even specific to the job role you are applying for. It is important that you show an interest, so asking questions is essential.
You also need to think about what they are likely to ask you – prepare answers for questions about your strengths, weaknesses and experience. You’ll usually be allowed to take interview notes in with you so have buzz words written down to remind you of your answers. Interviewers will generally allow for nerves but you still need to come across as confident as you can.
Remember, as well as assessing your suitability for the job role they’re also looking at how you are going to fit in with a team. They want someone that is out-going, friendly and confident so that they don’t have to worry about how you are going to fit in with the people you are working with. Even if you’re shaking on the inside, try and project positivity and confidence as much as possible.
Sealing The Deal
End the interview on a high note so that you feel positive. Ask them when you’re likely to hear from them and encourage them to contact you should they have any more questions that they want to ask you.
Remember, just because you have had a good interview that doesn’t mean you should give up looking. If you miss a couple of day’s job hunting, you could miss out on your dream job. Instead, keep at it and carry on applying for jobs until you land your dream job role!
Global Issue and a Transdisciplinary Challenge: New Book Sheds Light On the Energy Poor
Fires, Fuel, and the Fate of 3 Billion: The State of the Energy Impoverished aims to raise awareness of energy poverty and household air pollution
Close to 3 billion people in the developing world rely on biomass combustion — burning fires in rudimentary stoves — for cooking and heating needs. As a result, 4 million people die each year, and the large amount of black soot created has a staggering negative impact not only on health, but also on climate and advancement of the poor.
It’s an issue that has weighed heavily on Gautam N. Yadama, PhD, professor and director of international programs at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, who has spent much of his academic career researching communities that are dependent on forests for livelihoods in India, Nepal and Bhutan.
This fall, Yadama and photographer Mark Katzman are taking that issue to a broader audience with the publication of Fires, Fuel and the Fate of 3 Billion: The State of the Energy Impoverished (Oxford University Press 2013), a 152-page collection of photos and essays that tell an eye-opening, insightful story about energy access in the rural villages of India, where the hunt for safe, affordable energy is often a matter of life or death.
“This book represents a call for transdisciplinary action on the problem of household air pollution that is really about much more than cookstoves,” Yadama said. “It’s about understanding gender inequalities; it’s about understanding the vulnerability of poor populations and communities to climate change; it’s about understanding ecosystems and how livelihoods within those ecosystems are connected. And then, understanding ways to sustain clean energy systems in these complicated lives of the very poor.”
“At multiple levels, this book will help raise awareness of this global challenge and the need for transdisciplinary research and interventions to overcome this wicked problem,” he said.
It’s an issue gaining momentum on an international level as well. Last month, Yadama was in New York at the third anniversary event of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, where it was announced that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will chair the alliance’s Leadership Council.
Kandeh Yumkella, PhD, special representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations’ Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) initiative, wrote the foreword for the book. At the Global Alliance event, Yumkella referred to the book as highlighting the central issues of the energy poor from health to climate.
Yadama said the book would not have been possible without the input of WUSTL colleagues Tiffany Knight, PhD, associate professor of biology in Arts & Sciences; Pratim Biswas, PhD, chair of the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science and the Lucy and Stanley Lopata Professor; Brent Williams, PhD, the Raymond R. Tucker Distinguished I-CARES Career Development Assistant Professor; Mario Castro, MD, professor of medicine and of pediatrics at the School of Medicine; and graduate student Nishesh Chalise.
“The Foundation for Ecological Security in India was absolutely essential for getting this work done on the ground in rural India,” he said.
Yadama and Katzman traveled through seven states of India in 2011 and 2012 to come up with the photographs and stories in the book. Fires, Fuel and the Fate of 3 Billion examines the complex nexus of issues at play in the developing world’s use of crude cookstoves — factors such as poverty, energy, environment and gender inequality — and melds them with succinct prose, scientific synthesis and unforgettable images of communities in rural India.
Yadama, who also is a faculty scholar at WUSTL’s Institute for Public Health, continues to teach and conduct research at Washington University.
“The book is based on research we’re doing across multiple disciplines at the university, such as aerosol science in the School of Engineering & Applied Science; pulmonary science at the School of Medicine; and system science from the social system design lab at the Brown School,” he said.
“The book captures the elements that have been important in this transdisciplinary research, made possible by several pilot grants to our team from the McDonnell Academy Global Energy and Environment Partnership and the Institute for Public Health,” Yadama said. “The book itself has been made possible by generous support from Charoen Pokphand Group, Indonesia and Washington University.”
“We will be taking forward some of the ideas in the book through simulations of uptake of clean-energy systems in rural India to reduce household air pollution and improve health. This work has just begun, with support from the Institute of Clinical and Transnational Sciences at Washington University.”
Juan Carlos: Spanish monarch struggling to revive a tarnished crown
FT.com - The King of Spain could not have wished for a better occasion, or more loyal company, to mark his return to public life on Monday. Surrounded by the gilded splendour of the throne room in Madrid’s royal palace, Juan Carlos was presiding over the traditional New Year ceremony to honour Spain’s armed forces.
Facing him below the glittering chandeliers stood the country’s senior military officers, chests loaded with medals, along with the prime minister, cabinet members and army veterans. Amid the polished boots and purple sashes, there was not a republican in sight.
The ceremony ended as it does every year, with throaty cries of “Viva España!” led by the king himself. Yet there seemed nothing vivacious about the man at the centre of attention. Juan Carlos, 76, had arrived on crutches, shuffling uneasily, his face reddened and blotchy. He delivered his speech in halting tones, faltering over words and gasping for breath. It came as a stark reminder that the king is an old man. He had not appeared in public since a hip operation in November, the latest in a series of small but persistent health problems.
It was hard to look at Spain’s ageing monarch and not read more into his stumbling performance than the simple advance of time. Just a day before the ceremony, a Spanish paper had released a poll showing just how far Juan Carlos has fallen in the estimation of his subjects. Almost two-thirds said they wanted him to abdicate in favour of his son, Crown Prince Felipe; more than 40 per cent said they wanted Spain to be a republic.
On Tuesday, the royal house suffered a fresh humbling: Princess Cristina, the king’s younger daughter, was formally declared a suspect in a criminal probe into her husband’s alleged shady dealings. The investigating judge said she may have committed money laundering and tax fraud, and called her in to testify in court on March 8. Another bad day for the Bourbons looms.
The monarch has faced testing times before. He showed acute political judgment along with remarkable personal bravery, traits rarely demanded from a modern monarch, in the early stages of his reign, as he helped steer Spain from dictatorship to democracy. In 1981 he intervened decisively to squash an attempted military coup, earning the gratitude and respect even of diehard republicans on the left. Paul Preston, the historian of Spain and biographer of the king, argues that without Juan Carlos, it is hard to see how Spain could have ended the dictatorship of Francisco Franco “without another civil war”.
Compared with the drama of those days and the hardship of his early life, the king’s current problems may seem trivial. But modern royals need at least a degree of popular respect if they are to survive. The ridicule and open hostility that often greets Juan Carlos’s tribe today – the royals have repeatedly been booed at public functions – would pose an existential threat to any monarchy. Spain’s royal house, however, is more vulnerable than most.
Born in exile in Rome in 1938, Juan Carlos had a lonely, unhappy childhood, scarred by his family’s failure to reclaim the throne. It was a quest that led his father to commit an act of cold regal realpolitik, when he handed his 10-year-old son over to Franco to be groomed as the dictator’s heir. Raised amid ageing aristocrats in Madrid, frequently called in for political lectures from Franco, Juan Carlos passed a joyless adolescence. He finally assumed the throne on 22 November 1975, two days after Franco’s death.
What sustained him during his early life was an overwhelming sense of duty to his family, and a burning desire to see the Bourbons restored to the throne. It was the same motivation that convinced Juan Carlos to break with Francoism – and to help steer Spain towards democracy. “He realised that the only way to survive on the throne was to not do what Franco wanted, and aim for a constitutional monarchy,” says Professor Preston.
His role in Spain’s transition made him a hero, which in turn made it easy for Spaniards to overlook his foibles – such as the fondness for shooting at bears and his friendship with authoritarian leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
His standing finally plummeted, along with that of all other post-Franco institutions, during the recent economic crisis. “The king is seen as the founding father of the current system,” says Charles Powell, a Madrid-based historian and royal biographer. When that system failed to prevent the crisis, leaving Spain with record unemployment, the king was unable to escape the public wrath. In the eyes of many younger people, who have no memory of the transition, he is simply part of the nexus of political and financial power that pushed the country towards the economic abyss.
His image took a further knock when it was revealed that he went on a luxurious elephant-hunting trip at the height of the financial crisis. Just weeks before his ill-judged holiday, the king had remarked that he was so worried about the nation’s unemployed that he could not sleep.
Looming behind these recent woes is a deeper problem for Spain’s royal house. The Bourbons may be an ancient family, but their grip on the throne is far more tenuous than may appear: no reigning Spanish king has passed on the crown to his offspring since 1885; the monarch’s father never had the crown, and his grandfather died in exile. What the Bourbons lack is that aura of timeless, inevitable continuity that is the very essence of royalty.
Some believe the monarchy will end with Juan Carlos; others hope that Felipe, a diligent prince who enjoys broad popularity, will be able to revive the royal fortunes. Palace officials say the king himself has been saddened by recent events, but that he is determined to recuperate the crown’s lost prestige himself. Juan Carlos will know what is at stake: not just his own legacy, but the survival of the throne he sacrificed so much to reclaim.
What You Need to Know About IPO Investments - Westhill Consulting Jakarta
Westhill Consulting is a market leader in the Financial Services category. Here is a guide to Initial Public Offerings (IPO's) intended to simplify the jargon and remove the fear that IPO's involve higher risk as compared to usual investments.
Westhill Consulting is a reputable investment advisory firm based in Jakarta Indonesia, dedicated to providing you the most advantageous investments based on how you want your portfolio managed for the private middle market.
You might be wondering how you can increase the profits you make from your market investing strategies. If you're searching for the most profitable forms of investing that are available today, you should definitely investigate the possibilities of using Initial Public Offering (IPO) investments.
A simple description of an IPO includes the fact that you're buying a business that is just entering the open marketplace. The moment the IPO is released to the public is the first time anyone has the ability to buy the company openly, and this will surely give you a good idea on where the stock itself resides when it comes to the value of the offering. You can wage it is preparing for a large rise in its value because they are just releasing their stock to the public.
Though most of the Initial Public Offering stocks skyrocket after they are first released, you must keep in mind that they are hardly a definite investment. Because of this, there are several factors you must definitely examine before you place your capital into this type of investment.
One of the first factors you must take into consideration before investing into the stock you are interested in is the basic fact that once the stock is available on the market you can't guess if there will be a great deal demand or a total lack.
Because of this, you must do your best to ascertain every bit of information available about the company before making a purchase.
As you comb the market for the best IPOs available today, you must consider the fact that IPOs are usually offered only to the market when a company plans on expansion. There are other instances where companies only want to increase their ability to borrow capital, but IPOs are mostly released to increase the amount of funds they have available for expansion plans.
It may look like a company which is preparing to expand is a sure bet on the stock market. However, that is not really the case. IPO stocks are usually considered as high-risk investments. That is why if you want to secure your investments to a degree, you must explore the overall performance of the company's operations in the long run.
When you have analyzed the essentials of the company you are interested on, you must also try to guess where the capital generated from the IPO will be used by the company. If you think the company's only choice is to put their capital into expansion activities, you can be sure that the stock value will increase over time because of the expanding capabilities of the business operation. As you examine the essentials of the company and estimate where the capital will be going once the IPO is sold to the public, you can make a reasonable evaluation of how the stocks are going to fare in the future. Being one of the top advisory firms in the industry, we gain the confidence of our clients by acting with integrity on all our business decisions.
Westhill Consulting practices a specific valuation procedure to determine how much a profitable business is worth and determine possible market opportunities.
http://www.westhillconsulting.com
Best travel tips ever
Avoid baggage blues
If you're like me, you believe that there are two kinds of airline bags: carried on, and lost. And while the airlines are doing a better job with baggage these days, I still don't check bags on domestic flights. I FedEx them or UPS them (or there are 15 other courier services that will do this job). And for $40 to $50 -- not much more than what the airlines want to charge you for losing your bags or making you wait endlessly at baggage claim -- yours get picked up from your home or office and will be waiting for you in your hotel room by 10:30 the next morning. (Smart travelers send luggage two to three days ahead and get a big discount on shipping. Same thing for the way back home -- because who cares if your dirty laundry arrives three days after you do?)
Pick the farm-team airports
Unless I'm flying long-haul international nonstop, I try to forget O'Hare, J.F.K., San Francisco, and Boston. Instead, in good weather or bad, I head from, to, or through Milwaukee, Islip, Oakland, and Providence. Those are the alternative airports that function so much better than their huge counterparts. San Francisco is often weather challenged, with low fog -- not so Oakland. Milwaukee is actually Chicago's third (and secret) airport. Just look in the parking lot: A third of the cars have Illinois plates, which tells you everything you need to know. Providence allows you to avoid the congestion and delays of Logan, and last but never least is the often forgotten gem of MacArthur airport in Islip, N.Y. These airports have better parking and fewer delays, and maybe it's just me, but people yell a lot less there. I save time, I often save money, and I almost always save stress.
Another travel story?… Jakarta travel tips | Travel adventure
Crown Capital Securities LLC Management
Crown Capital Securities LLC Management
About Crown Capital Securities, L.P.
Crown Capital Securities, L.P. is a registered broker/dealer which provides a complete range of financial services and quality investments to independent securities representatives, serving investors throughout the country. These investment professionals are able to offer their clients a wide selection of approved, non-proprietary products. This complete selection gives people all the choices they need to meet their goals of preserving capital, generating income and accumulating wealth to finance education, caregiving, travel and retirement.
Crown Capital Securities, L.P. is an independent member firm of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). Headquartered in Orange, California, the management group at Crown Capital is led by Darol and Phyllis Paulsen, an executive team with 60 years’ experience in securities and financial services.
All Crown Capital representatives are independent business persons in their own communities -- not employees of a mega-firm owned and operated by strangers in a remote location. As owners and managers of local financial services businesses, these representatives make a long-term investment in their community and are focused on building lasting relationships with their clients. In our experience, clients prefer the level of service they receive through this structure over that given them by Wall Street firms.
Crown Capital has no proprietary products to sell or sales quotas for its representatives. This allows its representatives to make honest and appropriate investment recommendations based strictly on client needs and product performance. High performance, credibility and dependability -- that's how Crown Capital representatives help clients make excellent financial plans and sound investment decisions at fair and competitive fees and commissions.
Clients choose from a vast array of investment products, including full service stock trading, tax-free municipal bonds, U.S. government and agency securities, corporate bonds, unit investment trusts, certificates of deposit, money market accounts, mutual funds, insurance products, fixed and variable annuities, direct investments, options and margin accounts.
Investment representatives are supported by a strong home office staff, with the experience and expertise necessary to identify and service the highest quality investment opportunities. This support is enhanced by Crown Capital's relationship with Pershing, LLC.
Transactions are cleared through Pershing, LLC, a subsidiary of the Bank of New York and a member of BNY Securities Group, with almost 60 years of experience.
You've worked hard for your money. Now, you want your money to work just as hard for you. That's why you should demand the utmost from your investment advisor. When you choose a Crown Capital representative, you are choosing an experienced professional dedicated to making your money work for you without taking unnecessary risks.
Perhaps most important, you are choosing a solid, value-based, complete financial services firm that can provide you all the strength, professional expertise and research capability of any Wall Street firm. One that is genuinely concerned about your financial well-being and ultimate investment success. One that avoids short-term aggressive strategies in favor of long-term capital appreciation. Crown Capital offers all these benefits and more.
Source:
http://cmsfinancial.com/about-crown-capital
Ombygning gruppen Shearin
Et hus for at tilføje værdi til det er en måde at udnytte ens ejendom, især i vores nuværende flygtige økonomiske betingelser. Man er ikke kun at få en højere værdi fra sælger det, men også at få et større lån ud af det til forretningsformål eller til andre udgifter. En stor bonus, selvfølgelig, er der tilfredshed og glæden ved at leve i et bedre eller endda luksuriøst renoveret hjem.
Cindy Shearin deler sin ombygninger projekter på sin blog gennem videopræsentationer af før løbende efter art. Og det virker lige så godt eller endda mere end ethvert hjem-visning besøg til en faktiske hjem kan.
Brug high-definition Videografi og effektiv time-lapse fotografering, tager Cindy os gennem tiden som sin gruppe går gennem ombygning projekter af prime egenskaber i South Bay, Los Angeles, CA. Det er klart for enhver, der har set på disse videoer, et nedslidt hus med nok investering, kan slås rundt for at blive en tiltalende nye ejendom værd sælger eller bor i igen.
Her er en mini realityshow værd at se og værdsætte af boligejere. Ens ejendom kan være en kilde til kontanter, hvis man er modig nok til at overveje remodellering. At tage et lån at gøre en ombygninger projekt kan der foretages en mindre skræmmende opgave ved hjælp af fast ejendom eksperter som Cindy Shearin. Og det gode ved det er, at selv om processen er stadig i gang, de kan endda sætte din ejendom i deres programoversigter som en projekt-i-øje.
Nogen planer om at forfølge en ombygninger projekt skal ved hjælp af designere og ingeniører, der vil give idéer til nogen bestemt egenskab mens du overvejer de optimale omkostninger for projektet. Ejere, der vil genbruge egenskaben vil, selvfølgelig, foreslå deres egne ideer om, hvordan de ønsker den ombygning vil ske. Den primære ting at overveje er, at ejendommen ikke vil tjene tilbage de penge, put i processen. Derfor skal man iagttage finansiel disciplin og personlige tilbageholdenhed.
Ombygning er ikke et simpelt valg at gøre. Det er en alvorlig sag.
The Blue Crown Capital Management Specialists: Ten worst states for mortgage fraud
10. New York
MFI: 98
2010 population: 19,378,102
Percentage of homeowners: 54.5
New York also ranked No. 4 on the 2012 Collusion Indicator Index. (The CII is based on factors, including cohabitation and shared assets, that make collusion possible or likely. The factors are particularly relevant when a property has been transferred at a loss.)
9. Georgia
MFI: 106
2010 population: 9,687,653
Percentage of homeowners: 67.1
The state's MFI fell 27 percent between 2011 and 2012. Georgia also ranked No. 9 of the 10 states with the largest percentages of properties in default, at 2.94 percent, though that was down from 4.32 percent in 2011.
8. Michigan
MFI: 110
2010 population: 9,883,640
Percentage of homeowners: 74.5
Michigan posted a significant drop—just over 40 percent—in MFI between 2011 and 2012.
7. California
MFI: 116
2010 population: 37,253,956
Percentage of homeowners: 56.1
Two of the metro areas with the highest number of mortgage fraud suspicious activity reports were in the Golden State: San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, at 12.1 percent, and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, at 6.4 percent.
6. New Jersey
MFI: 120
2010 population: 8,791,894
Percentage of homeowners: 66.5
New Jersey is the only state making the Worst 10 on all three NexisLexis mortgage fraud indexes: It also ranks No. 7 on the CII for properties with a sale price decrease of 50 percent to 95 percent, and it's No. 6 on the default index.
5. Illinois
MFI: 150
2010 population: 12,830,632
Percentage of homeowners: 68.8
The state also had the second-largest percentage of mortgage defaults last year.
4. Delaware
MFI: 165
2010 population: 897,934
Percentage of homeowners: 74.7
This is the state's first appearance on this Worst 10 list. It also ranks high on the CII.
3. Arizona
MFI: 174
2010 population: 6,392,017
Percentage of homeowners: 66.6
The state was also third on in 2011; it ranked No. 2 in 2010.
2. Nevada
MFI: 280
2010 population: 2,700,551
Percentage of homeowners: 59.7
Nevada was also No. 4 last year among the 10 states with the largest percentage of properties in default, though the number decreased dramatically—to 4.13 percent from a high of 14.94 percent in 2009.
1. Florida
MFI: 805
2010 population: 18,801,310
Percentage of homeowners: 69.3
With its long history of real estate fraud, Florida has ranked No. 1 for mortgage fraud investigations for five years. It's also first for properties in default. Still, defaults fell to 5.42 percent last year from a high of 13.42 percent in 2009.
read more: http://www.bluecrowncapital.com
Climate change could spawn more frequent El Ninos
Some of the worst El Niños, the infamous climate patterns that shake up weather around the world, could double in frequency in upcoming decades due to global warming, says a new study out Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
During an El Niño, water temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean tend to be warmer-than-average for an extended period of time – typically at least three to five months. This warm water brings about significant changes in global weather patterns.
The most powerful El Niños – such as the ones that developed in 1982-83 and 1997-98 – are forecast to occur once every 10 years throughout the rest of this century, according to study lead author Wenju Cai of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia's national science agency. Over the past 100 years or so, however these "extreme" El Niños occurred only once every 20 years, he said.
This means that the extreme weather events fueled by El Niños – such as droughts and wildfires in Australia, floods in South America and powerful rainstorms along the U.S. West Coast – will occur more often.
The most recent El Niño ended in 2010.
The research results came from an aggregation of 20 climate models, which were used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.
The models found that this doubling of extreme El Niño episodes is caused by increased surface warming of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean because of climate change. This area of the ocean warms faster than the surrounding waters, the researchers found.
But Cai acknowledges those findings stand in contrast.to previous studies that found no solid consensus on how El Niños will change because of global warming.
"The question of how global warming will change the frequency of extreme El Niño events has challenged scientists for more than 20 years," said study co-author Mike McPhaden of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "This research is the first comprehensive examination of the issue to produce robust and convincing results."
"It looks like a solid study," said meteorologist Michael Mann of Penn State University, who was not involved in the research. "The authors appear to provide reasonably convincing evidence that El Niño events are likely to become more extreme as the climate continues to warm, in turn implying greater future regional climate/weather extremes than past studies."
However, another expert, senior scientist Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo, said that some aspects of the study are not really new, although it is cast in a new way. He notes that there remain issues in how well models simulate El Niño events, which means uncertainty remains on just how El Niño and the climate of the tropical Pacific will actually change.
He suggests that a way forward is to also look at the atmospheric component of El Niño and how that is changing.
"Even if the projection for this increased frequency of extreme El Ninos is correct, there will still be extended periods of infrequent and weak El Ninos, such as has been experienced since the late 1990s (since the last big event of 1997-98)," said Lisa Goddard, director of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society with Columbia University.
"This is likely the result of decadal variability, which is something the climate community is actively researching at present," she added.
A separate study published in Nature Climate Change in 2013 found that El Niños appeared to occur a lot more than normal over the last 50 years, just as temperatures worldwide rose because of global warming, also suggesting a connection.
Gold mines output set to reach record
Output from the world's gold mines is set to hit record highs this year, disappointing bulls who are impatiently waiting for production cuts following this year's 24 percent plunge in prices. Some gold miners have felt the squeeze of lower prices this year, and a number, including Canada's Kinross and Russia's Polymetal, suspended marginal mines and projects after a dramatic first-half price drop.
But as prices fall, others are actually increasing output to maintain revenue and profit levels. In some cases, they are targeting higher grade ore to keep marginal mines operating and generating cash, at the expense of future production. Furthermore, several large projects put into motion during gold's 12-year rally, which took it as high as $1,920 an ounce in 2011, are coming to fruition.
"Our expectation is that we're going to see a fresh record high in gold mining output this year," GFMS analyst William Tankard said. "What we're seeing is an ongoing response not to the slide in prices, but the decade-long stretch of fairly heavy capital investment into the mining industry that preceded it." The world's top three gold miners - Barrick Gold, Newmont Mining and AngloGold Ashanti - all reported higher production in the most recent quarter.
For some marginal mines, firms are planning to tap better grades up front, a practice known as high-grading, which often comes at the expense of shortening the life of a project and giving up lower grade ore that could have been economic later. African Barrick Gold, for example, re-engineered its lowest grade and highest cost mine, Buzwagi, to tap higher grades and move less material, hoping to ensure the operation generates cash.
"In the short term, when they have got flexibility, you can see companies changing the ore mix to keep themselves operating," Nomura analyst Tyler Broda said. During the boom years, the cost of gold mining soared. But this year the average cost of producing an ounce of gold is already showing signs of retreating, according to metals consultancy Thomson Reuters GFMS.
For more info:
http://www.goodreads.com/group/105028-tana-goldfields-united-kingdom/comments/20834715-coconut-butterz
http://www.design21sdn.com/organizations/1144/posts/25103
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