The Murgatroyd Blog

Watching Paint Dry in Iowa

2012-01-03T20:13:00.002-07:00

I painted a small watercolour and am now watching it dry. Sorry, no. I am watching CNN and the results of the Iowa caucuses come in. Maybe I was right the first time.

What a dull election this is going to be. We have forty four weeks of numbing bullshit to get through before the actual election. Unless something remarkable happens, Obama will secure a second term, even though he does not deserve one and the Republican party will make gains in congress, further stifling real change and growth for some time.

Gone are real politics. You remember. There were real issues in which true ideological and moral differences were debated. When policy mattered. When true choices were not between who flip-flopped more or who is more entertaining, but on issues.

Character features a lot in the commentaries. But this is a spill-over from Entertainment Tonight and Dancing with the Stars. Kennedy was a character and it was well known around the media that he was “putting it about” (as we Brits say) – did it matter? Nixon was a character first time around and while this played out second term, everything he did was a straight line from his well known past. Bush II was a well known dumball, but he got elected once and was judged the winner first time around. Carter..well I think the point is clear. Right now, character plays second fiddle to anyone with courage, determination and policy.

By policy I don’t mean intention or a general desire. I mean an action plan. Obama won a Nobel Prize for having intention. Means nothing. What the world needs is someone with policies, courage, conviction and determination.

I don’t see anyone on either side of the house with these qualities. Time to get my brushes and watercolours out. I will need them. It will be a long and very dull forty four weeks.

More Evidence of Peak Renewables

2011-12-15T06:04:00.000-07:00

EU carbon prices fell to their lowest ever level on Wednesday - €6.41 ($8.64) as the euro currency and equities slid on renewed fears over Eurogeddon and oil prices slipped after producers promised to maintain high output.

Meantime, Solon SE, the Berlin-based solar panel builder, filed for insolvency after failing to reach an “amicable solution” with banks and investors. It is likely to be followed by several others, both in Germany and elsewhere as the demand for panels softens as subsidies are removed, reduces or revamped. Even a decision by the German government earlier this year to phase out nuclear energy has done little to reignite the sector.

We have already seen bankruptcy filings in the United States, most notably panel maker Solyndra LLC and Evergreen Solar. Conergy and Q-Cells were among the German solar companies most exposed to the sector’s crisis. Q-Cells, once the world’s largest maker of solar cells, is now struggling to meet refinancing needs and took steps earlier this year that may delay its convertible bond that is due in February 2012. Conergy was rescued late last year after agreeing a debt-for-equity swap in December which would give control to hedge funds Sothic Capital and York.

More evidence of peak renewables – see my earlier posts.

Fiskalunion, Überhaupt Nicht

2011-12-15T04:16:00.001-07:00

The Merkozy Settlement – the deal struck last Friday for fiskalunion in Europe – is beginning to fall apart. The markets are signaling their distrust of the last minute deal and no amount of rhetoric will cover over the cracks already appearing in the arrangements intended to shape the future of Europe.

It began when Ireland made clear that, since the loss of sovereignty was so serious, a referendum may be required so as to confirm their ability to sign onto an arrangement. Since no text of an agreement was available last week – first ministers signed onto an idea, not a specific document – much will depend on language and first principles. Other countries - Sweden, Denmark, Czech Republic and Hungary – are also indicating that they are having serious second thoughts. These four countries are not in the Eurozone.

The Independent (UK) also reports that there are significant tensions in Eurozone countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Ireland and the Netherlands over precisely how the fiskalunion will work. French opposition leaders and emerging candidates for the French Presidency, up for election next year, are signaling that they are deeply disturbed by some aspects of the deal. In Germany, the resignation of Christian Lindner, the general secretary of the Free Democrats, the junior partner in Ms Merkel's coalition, also signals tension.

So the end result may well be fiscal union, not at all (überhaupt nicht). This may be a good thing in the long term, since the deal does not address the core economic issues faced within Europe. In the short term, however, it will be very messy both in terms of debt management but also politically. Eurogeddon, the phrase I used yesterday to capture the essence of what is happening, seems even more appropriate today than yesterday.

Eurogeddon

2011-12-14T14:58:00.001-07:00

Markets are not always smart. The initial reaction to the EU26 “fiskalunion” agreement last week was positive for no intelligent reason. That agreement is a great mistake. The Merkel-Sarkozy Accord (known as the Markozy Settlement in some circles) will make economies worse in Southern Europe as austerity and punishments are imposed, which will slow or impair growth. The accord, which is to be administered by unelected officials, limits the democratic rights of citizens, does not stimulate growth or deal directly with trade imbalances and is a recipe for conflict, tension and dissent. Britain is smart. It is not part of this, though to listen to the British politicians criticizing David Cameron, you would think that not joining in on the march to Eurogeddon was something to be regretted.

The accord does not deal with the vulnerability of banks in Europe, the need to stimulate spending by citizens and governments nor does it address the decline of manufacturing and the lack of growth in some key sectors of regional economies. Indeed, by requiring larger payments into the stabilization fund and the IMF from certain countries, it will actually increase public sector borrowing requirements and likely spur downgrading of the bonds which will be used to raise the funds. Overall, it’s a very bad deal for Europe and a bad deal for the worlds financial system.

So why did everyone except Britain agree?

The conventional wisdom of crowds did not occur here. Instead, we have the behaviour of the herd, made worse by the fact that decisions were being made in the middle of the night. Groupthink led the agreement, with most led to believe that this was the only choice – the last option on the table.

They had previously suggested raising the stabilization fund to $2 trillion, but no one could find the money. They even asked China to help, who politely but firmly said no.

They had asked the US for help, which came in the form of support for the liquidity of the banking system by the injection of funds into the exchange system used by banks to fund debts.

They had suggested a Tobin tax on bank profits – still likely to occur, despite Britain’s veto. This will boost the stabilization fund, but will simply provide more bailout funds for more failing economies.

They had suggested other measures throughout the period since the beginning of the year when the crisis began in earnest.

All to no avail. What they will now do is shrink the Eurozone, with some countries likely to default and began the slow Argentinean like march to recovery. They will start to address Germany’s trade balances and they will start to form serious audit processes for national economies and find ways of stimulating growth.

One suggestion being seriously floated by economists is for “helicopter money” – grants of funds to households to stimulate purchase behaviour. Cash for clunkers was an example. Cash for green home renovation is another. They make the point that the only real option is stimulus.

So lets now watch as Britain begins its journey to growth and Europe does what it does best. Screw up.

Time to Renew Our Public Service

2011-12-14T12:19:00.000-07:00

We look to auditors to do more that audit financial statements. They are also accountable for ensuring that the processes used to create financial expenditures, risks and liabilities are diligent and follow due process. So when the Auditor General of Ontario draws attention to some challenging questions about the Provincial green strategy, we should pay close attention. You can read the report in detail here: Electricity Sector—Renewable Energy Initiatives (Ministry of Energy) (pdf 596kb).

Most commentators have looked at the implications of this systematic, thorough and generally devastating review in terms of green energy and the strategy of support for renewables. I have argued elsewhere (and some time ago – see earlier blog) that we have arrived at “peak renewables” – the point at which renewable energy supports have peaked and where governments gradually or dramatically retreat from their green agenda so as to deal with the real economy. I invoked the Pielke Law that states that economic challenges and reality will trump climate change mitigation every time.

But there is another aspect to the Auditor General’s (AG) report which is troubling. It is the role the public service played in the development and execution of this green “strategy” (sic).

The public service is intended to be a voice of reason, caution in public policy development. They are the route to systematic and thorough analysis of options, ideology independent and not subject to political pressure, either from their own Minister and the governing party (or parties) or from lobby groups and special interests. This means that public servants, at all levels, execute their daily functions in a way that best serves the Crown. For some observers, impartiality means the prudent management of administration. For others, impartiality involves advice that is based on a range of aspects and considerations and that may include information that the minister or the government of the day does not want to hear. In these instances, public servants must remember that they have a responsibility to provide information on policies and programs, but are not expected to, nor should they debate the merits of policy decisions made by the government. Once a decision is made, however unfortunate that may be, the task of the public servant is then to implement that decision in an efficient and effective way.

Ministers are meant to exercise decision making (preferably based on evidence) having been provided with systematic and thorough advice from the public service. They may choose not to follow advice, to ride rough-shod over that advice, but Ministers need to cherish both the quality of that advice and its independence from their agenda and ideology. The more they shape the advice they receive to ensure it fits with the predetermined intentions, the less useful that advice is likely to be.

So now let us to turn to the report and its implications. In its thirty four pages it catalogs these issues as they relate to the public service:

1. No systematic business cases were developed before or after decisions were made about renewable energy to evaluate impacts on either costs or environment. The AG says that this is because the Ministerial directives were clear and explicit – the task was the implement and deliver, not analyze and review. Issue: surely cost benefit and lifecycle environmental impact assessments are part of the delivery process even if they were not, as they should have been, part of the decision making process?

2. So as to accelerate delivery of a Ministerial decision, decisions were made to suspend the review of the energy plan submitted by the Ontario Power Authority (OPA), on which they had already spent $10.7m and involved a major consultative process, and replace the OPA plan with a Government Long-Term Energy Plan which was based on enacting Ministerial directives. Issue: when did a Ministerial plan become, by definition, better than a plan developed by a process defined in law and involving public consultation? At what point does a process laid out in law become suspended by fiat? What advice did the public service provide to the Minister here?

3. The Minister determined to operate a feed-in-tariff and ended their Renewable Energy Standard Offer Program (which was over-subscribed). The Minister then resisted all efforts to control and manage the feed-in-tariff so as to “maintain investor confidence” – this despite the repeated advice of the OPA to control the feed-in tariff. Issue: what advice was the Minister given by how own staff with respect to the advice received by the OPA?

4.Contract negotiations with a Korean consortium were conducted by the Ministry and a payment of $437 million was agreed (later reduced to $110 million) in addition to the Feed in Tariff, making it one of the most attractive incentive green energy deals on the planet. The justification of this was that there were substantial “made in Ontario” requirements for parts and labour built into the agreement to stimulate job creation, despite the fact that no economic analysis and no business case was ever developed. No were relevant authorities – notably the OPA and the Ontario Energy Board – consulted or canvassed. The AG makes explicit that normal due diligence processes were not followed (page 108) and no formal cabinet approval was obtained for this contract. Issue: what on earth was the public service doing? How could such a major activity be undertaken by the public service without due diligence and necessary approvals?

5. The reality is that the transmission grid is already close to capacity. The AG suggests that some 10,400 MW of power available through renewables is “stranded” and cannot be accommodated on the transmission grid as it exists (see page 91 of the report). This affects 3,000 feed-in-tariff holders who are being paid for producing power which no one can use. Issue: At what point did the public service document the smart grid challenges of green and renewable energy in a way that may have affected decision making? The AG report does not indicate what advice Ministers were given with respect to this issue, which is non trivial.

One could go on - this AG’s report being one of the best reads of a formal document for some time. But the point is made: we have a problem, well in fact several.

The first is the policy arrogance of the political elite. They can talk up green energy powerfully and make it sound like it is a solution. Yet we know, and the AG points out, that rising energy costs due to green energy actually increases unemployment. For every green job created, it is likely that two others are lost in other sectors leading green energy to be a source of net job loss. We do not know, because the advice to Ministers is not subject to freedom of information requests, what the advice was but the suspicion is that the focus was upon enacting Ministerial decisions rather than caution, systematic analysis of consequences and ensuring due diligence. The Ministerial response hints at this throughout the AG document.

The second is the lap-doggedness of the public service. Having worked on this file early on in its development, the alignment of public servants with the Ministerial policy was clear: green was right, coal was wrong; CO2 was bad, wind power was good and so on. That is, there were few, if any, voices who were skeptical of the claims of the green energy lobby or of the climate change lobby. Yet it is a part of the work of the public service to be skeptical, especially when a policy decision could lead to unemployment and increased energy poverty, as it is doing in Ontario and has done in other jurisdictions (Britain, for example). An impartial service needs to demonstrate this for every policy, not just for those for which it has n ideological disinclination.

In another context, the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is subject to some ridicule as a credible body precisely because it has been hijacked by a clique and a lobby. A recent study by Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise makes clear just how much influence certain environmental groups have over the work and reporting of the IPCC. She found that substantial claims made by the IPCC in the name of science were in fact argued from non-peer reviewed sources by environmental lobbyists. Large numbers of contributors to their major reports were directly linked to organizations such as Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF); five out of ten contributors to one chapter have a formal, documented link to WWF, 28 out of 44 chapters of the report included at least one individual affiliated with WWF. The all-important Working Group 1 chapters of the 2007 report, the scientific foundation of the report, contained 431 references to non-peer reviewed material. In the complete report 5,587 references were not peer-reviewed (30 per cent of all references) of these, only six were flagged as such. Sources used to support IPCC assertions were newspaper and magazine articles, unpublished Masters and Doctoral theses, Greenpeace and WWF documents as well as press releases.

By the end of March 2010 it had been shown that at least 16 claims of impending climate doom in the IPCC’s key 2007 report had been based on work done by environmental activists, most of which had not received independent reviews before being presented as “fact” by the IPCC. For instance, the IPCC’s insistence that up to 40% of the Amazon rain forest was under imminent threat came from a World Wildlife Fund-International Union for the Conservation of Nature joint report written by a scientist-consultant and a freelance environmental journalist.

These revelations do not inspire confidence in an organization that claims to be, and is portrayed, as basing its conclusions on peer-reviewed literature. This is an especially important example of the pattern we are drawing attention to here, since these lobby based presentations have led the world to create a $100 billion annual fund to be transferred from developed world to the developing world to compensate for the impacts of climate change; has led to major economic disruption in the worlds energy system with a focus on green energy and renewables; major expenditure on climate change mitigation running into trillions of dollars.

The AG’s report on the green strategy of the Government of Ontario also suggests that we should now question the veracity of the public service and its role it this debacle.

But I have a suggestion. In Britain, there is a process by which public servants involved in a process can file their objections to a Ministerial decisision – e.g. on the Feed in Tariff – without fear of punishment. They record the basis of their objection and attach analytic material to justify their objection. Then they get on and do what the Minister has instructed. Once the Government changes (after an election), then the objections are made public. After the fall of the Government of Gordon Brown, for example, the Daily Telegraph reported that:

“…ministers overruled civil servants on spending plans on at least four occasions since the start of 2010. Advice from officials was ignored on a further nine occasions in 2009. This compared with just five occasions in the previous three years. Three quarters of these objections were on the grounds of value for money”.
The Public Service Commission encouraged and enables the filing of such information so as to protect the integrity of the service.

We should also end the payment of bonuses to public servants. As the gap between public sector benefits (pay and pensions) widens in comparison to the private sector (in favour of the public sector), the bonus schemes based on assessments informed by Ministerial opinion (whatever the process map says), this is no longer an appropriate way to compensate public servants. Productivity generally in the public service appears to be either flat or falling – we need to rethink the rewards and supports so as to improve performance, increase job satisfaction and attract and retain smart people.

Finally, we should make it very clear that public servants serve the Crown not just the current Minister. A career public servant of thirty five years will likely serve between fifteen and twenty Ministers. They represent the interests of citizens on an inter generational basis. They should be trained to do so. An investment in professional development is a key to this, but so too is the training of Ministers into the effective use of a public service.

I have the privilege of working with many public servants closely. I have the greatest respect for those who chose to serve in this way. But I have watched their morale and commitment ebb and flow as their work is de-professionalized and degraded. It is time to unleash their talents in productive ways so that we can have better, smarter polices and much better government. The Ontario case makes clear that this is urgent.

Durban: Deal or No Deal?

2011-12-12T07:36:00.000-07:00

The climate deal at Durban is dead on arrival. It is a deal to talk about a deal for an eventual deal. It is full of loop holes, get out of jail free cards and vague language – it had to be to secure approval of countries who basically have no intention of changing their behaviour.

The deal, such as it is, commits the parties to begin negotiations now for a deal to be done by 2015 to create a legally binding deal to come into effect in 2020. The deal keeps alive the Kyoto protocol as a legally binding framework, but Europe will be the only group of nations bound by it – Canada, Russia and Japan are pulling out. The US, China and India were never in. The new framework, yet to be fleshed out, requires all nations to curb emissions, but the developed nations at a faster and deeper cut than the developing nations. China has signalled repeatedly that it will not subject itself to external legal monitoring, but the language of the deal struck in Durban is sufficiently vague to permit them to suggest that the legal framework will be national, not international. So – no universal target, no universal legal framework, no universal commitment. Some deal.

COP17 – the seventeenth conference of the parties – was intended to settle the post-Kyoto question (just as COP15 and COP16 were). It is clear that this process is broken. The Durban agreement has kicked the ball down the road in the hope that the next three conferences can settle what the last seventeen have not. Some deal.

The science advocacy movement supporting the manmade global warming theory has already condemned the agreement reached at Durban as not enough, not serious and calamitous for the planet. It will do little to limit temperature rises to below +2C, little to move the world to a post-carbon economy and little to provide support to those countries who claim to be deeply impacted by the impact of climate change. Dr. James Hansen, a profiteer science advocate campaigner and the so-called “father” of the manmade global warming theory, thinks we have missed the tipping point and it is now likely too late to “save the planet”. Some deal.

Kyoto is dead de facto, if not de jure. The international community has shown, once again, that it is not capable of dealing with transformative challenges. Indeed, it is increasingly clear that international mechanisms for dealing with threat, challenge or change are increasingly “broken”. Anyone who thinks that the Durban agreement is a breakthrough or a substantive development needs to read the text of the agreement carefully. It is vague. It doesn’t deal with the $100billion a year fund – how the money will be raised, managed, distributed – or with the independent monitoring of performance. Some deal.

Canada is right to distance itself from all of this. We should, however, now demonstrate our own commitment to reduce emissions and shoulder our environmental responsibilities in a world-leading way. Waiting for Kyoto2, like Waiting for Godot, is a pointless task. It would be better for us to be responsible, environmentally leading global energy superpower. We should strengthen Alberta’s carbon emissions regulations and increase the cost of CO2 offsets; develop a market based ecosystems service regime that is the envy of the world and focus on shifting our energy system to natural gas or renewables. Its time for Canada to show how a different approach to sustainability can make a difference. After all, we need to do this to sell our energy systems and natural resources to the world. Now that’s a deal.

In Support of David Cameron

2011-12-12T06:07:00.000-07:00

David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, did the right thing for the wrong reason.

Last week the EU27 agreed to what is now known as “fiskalunion”. Governments agreed to give up their sovereign rights to determine taxation, expenditure and fiscal management to a supranational body in exchange for stabilizing Europe and settling the markets. In addition, they agreed to enhance the funds set aside to stabilize the economy – hundreds of billions – and to increase contributions to the IMF. Countries will submit proposed budgets for approval prior to their acceptance and will then be monitored by a supranational body and be disciplined if they fail to live up to commitments made. Germany, for example, breeched such existing fiscal rules some sixty times since 2000 and France some ninety times. They would both be “disciplined”.

This is being done as a response to the fiscal crisis of the Eurozone. But interestingly, it actually does not address the real economic issue. In fact, it is likely to make things worse.

The underlying economic problem is complex. But at its heart it is simple: there is a lack of growth. Some countries, especially the Southern Mediterranean countries, are lacking in growth, especially in export driven industries. Others have large trade surpluses. Some countries have significant debts (Greece for example), but others are in surplus (Italy and Ireland). No one size fits all. By imposing a solution aimed at some countries (Greece) on all, even countries who are doing well (Germany), the EU will make things worse.

It’s a very Germanic solution – discipline and control focused on austerity. Austerity will increase unemployment and further slow growth, as Britain has already seen. What is needed is a strategy for innovation, stimulus and employment. Any country pursuing this, and willing to increase debt to do so, will be punished under the new regime. It makes no sense.

Countries will find themselves unable to determine their own tax and spend regimes – the heart of a national economic agenda – and will be in constant dispute with each other and the EU. One of the leading objectors five years from now will be France, who has a habit of talking big but actually being a deviant when it comes to obeying the EU law. Conflict will be fuelled by this compact and the EU has created conditions for the subsequent fracture of the European union.

So Cameron should have said no on three grounds. First, Britain wants to make decisions about its spending, taxation and economic strategy in Britain, not Brussels. Second, fiskalunion will not solve Europe’s problem – what is needed is a more subtle, complex approach. Third, in the medium and long-term, fiskalunion is a recipe for the fracturing of Europe. While fiscal discipline for the Eurozone is a part of what is needed, the application of fiscal discipline does not deal with trade imbalances, lack of political discipline, productivity and innovation and the ingredients of a growth strategy.

Hanging his decision on protectionism – trying to protect the City of London against a tax on banks and financial transactions – was a mistake. His use of the veto wasn’t.

The End of The Kyoto Accord

2011-11-30T07:52:00.002-07:00

COP17 – the climate change talks taking place in Durban with 20,000 delegates, journalists and hangers on from 194 countries – will see the end of the Kyoto agreement.

The European Union, its delegation led by Poland, is demanding that any extension of Kyoto involve India, China and the US and these nations have said that they will not sign on to Kyoto. Further, Russia, India and Canada have said that they are backing out of Kyoto. It’s dead. There will no longer be a legally binding agreement with respect to CO2 emissions, not that much enforcement of the existing treaty ever took place.

Furthermore, the EU is hardening its position. Angered by suggestions that the EU is not doing enough with respect to climate change (a remarkable suggestion, in the view of the EU, which sees itself as having done more than North American nations and more than any other bloc of nations), the EU is also getting tough on the conditions under which funds from the fund established in Copenhagen could be distributed to developing nations adjusting to the impact of climate change. Canada is also taking this position – its not a gift fund.

Canada is taking a rational stance. It is backing out of Kyoto, challenging the conditions of the climate change fund and suggesting that there needs to an adaptive response to climate change rather than a reinvention of the global economy. It is also not buying the orthodoxy of the “science is settled” and is questioning the way in which the IPCC is operating. This is angering many at the gathering, who accuse the Canadian government of being in the pockets of the oil companies.

What is being proposed is that there be a break in the process – COP18, 19 and 20 will likely take place but work towards a global agreement that will be completed three years from now to come into effect ten years from now. In political terms, lets worry about this two US Presidents from now.

The activists are angered by this and suggest that this delay will make responses to climate change more difficult and less likely to occur. Correct. This is in fact the “cunning plan” which the major Governments of the world are proposing. The message is not subtle. It is “we are done with this”.

The primary reason for this stance is that there are more pressing issues: sovereign debt, a double dip recession and 250 million unemployed (with 1.5 billion with vulnerable jobs) being uppermost in their minds. When given a choice between fundamental changes to the economy required by Kyoto or dealing with the immediate challenges of sovereign debt and economic recession, Governments go local and seek immediate responses. Just yesterday the UK government downgraded its climate change strategy and gave up the protection of its set aside £1 billion for carbon capture and storage. Other governments are backing away from guaranteed feed in tariffs on the grounds that the spike in energy costs are killing jobs, increasing energy poverty and making no real difference to CO2 emissions anyway. They simply do not have the risk capital or the ability to raise it for such an unsure outcome.

The second reason is that the costs of the changes to energy policy, transportation, building codes and other changes required to meet the Kyoto targets are not justified by the returns on these investments. As the shrill science dampens and the uncertainties of the science become clearer, the massive costs of a transition to a post-carbon economy are clear, but the returns are not. If Canada were to cut its emissions dramatically, would this impact global CO2 emissions in a significant way? Not really – China and India would soon make up for the difference. Without a level playing field with all engaged, the impact of unilateral actions are modest, at best. When the science begins to suggest that the impacts are less than we first thought and that there are growing uncertainties about the science, then Governments are not going to risk their capital on improbable outcomes.

The third reason Kyoto is dead is because there is an abundant supply of energy. New technologies for natural gas extraction, oil shale extraction and enhanced oil recovery have pushed the likelihood of “peak oil” (really, peak carbon based fuels) back some fifty to a hundred years. The urgency of action was in part driven in the past by the fear of oil prices moving to unaffordable levels. Advanced in fuel efficient transport, low cost natural gas and new technology have changed this part of the equation. A post-carbon future is no longer an urgent imperative.

None of this is helped by the furtive behaviour of a clique of scientists revealed in Climategate I and II or the rejection of critical voices at COP17 and similar events. The cult like pursuit of climate change policies by deceptive methods – Al Gore comes to mind – makes it less likely that rational policy decisions and conversations take place. The response to serious and mindful criticisms by Canada and the EU are examples of this cult-like devotion. While some saw a UK court decision to see climate change as a religious cult in 2009 as an amuse, it is in fact a correct diagnosis.

So COP17 will end with nothing but emissions and the end of Kyoto. Expect more of the same for the next four years.

The Republican Pantomime Season

2011-11-30T07:06:00.001-07:00

There are just five weeks to go before the Republican primary season begins in earnest, though many must feel that the race for the Republican nomination has been going on for a life-time. Things are now getting serious. By the end of January, the race will have slimmed and the real candidates will be in the frame.

Gone will be Michelle Bachman, Herman Cain and John Huntsman. The first two will get the message that this is not a Christmas pantomime and we don’t need a “Widow Twankey” and a “Buttons” character playing the stage for comedic effect – it’s not Puss in Boots. Huntsman, who is the serious candidate and probably the most mindful of the entire cast of characters currently on stage, will not be able to raise the funds to continue.

Other candidates will survive the first act of the drama of the primaries, but will not make the final curtain. Ron Paul, a true conservative and, at 76, the oldest actor on stage, will not make the cut. The media all but ignore him and the judgment of the party overall will be that he could not beat Obama. Rick Perry will last for a time as the character who is both serious, funny and, at times, ridiculous. While he may be a solid Governor of Texas, he is not Presidential material. Never mind not being smart enough to remember his own lines, he doesn’t actually get the plot.

At the front of the stage will be Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, neither of whom will make great Presidents. Newt because he doesn’t know when to stop and think before he speaks (foot in mouth disease strikes him from time to time) and Romney because he flops, flips and flounders. While Romney is younger, smoother and less prone to fluffing his lines, he actually is a dull actor and a poor interpreter of the role. He doesn’t have much to say.

What would be wonderful is if the producers and directors of this drama – the Republican grandees – do what they did with Eisenhower. He was recruited to run part way through the season, since they soon realized that no one on the stage at the time could carry the performance and win an ovation at the end of the play. Then it was clear that Eisenhower was the actor they needed to fill the part no one way playing on stage. Now it is not at all clear who they could turn to. Serious, skillful, successful conservatives are hard to find. It may be time to call Rudi Giuliani, former Mayor of New York, into the theatre and say “want to join us in the third act?”.

Cop Out at COP 17

2011-11-28T14:48:00.001-07:00

It seems clear that Canada will not renew its commitment to the Kyoto accord. It does not make sense to do so, since neither will the US, Russia or Japan and most of the major polluting countries (India and China, for example) did not sign up in the first place. Kyoto is dead, or at least on its last legs (it will die of natural causes next year if it is not renewed).

Also dead is any major agreement on climate change mitigation for the world coming from the Conference of the Parties (the 17th such gathering) meeting in Durban. The EU has made clear that it will sign up to any binding emissions targets unless all of the major polluters also agree. Since this is not going to happen, the move now is to postpone any attempt to reach a global agreement till 2015, coming into effect in 2020. Even this assumes that an agreement can be reached, which is also unlikely.

Meantime, the science is changing. It is become less certain - more recognition of uncertainty and less acerbic. For example, a recent paper in Science lowers the estimate of CO2 impacts while the IPCC s suggested that extreme weather impacts are less affected by human induced climate change than other factors.

Overall, climate change is moving down the political agenda as the challenges faced by Governments, especially in Europe, are more focused on economics, jobs and debt. The Pielke Jnr. law – climate change mitigation always takes second place to economics – seems to apply, as governments back away from past commitments.

So the 20,000 people gathering in Durban from 194 countries to discuss climate change will focus on money - the commitment made in Copenhagen to transfer money to the most affected nations, especially the small island nations. And that tells us a lot. It’s all about money, at least for some.

Weather or Not..

2011-11-18T08:55:00.001-07:00

For many decades to come, and probably longer, mankind’s influence on the frequency of extreme weather events will be insignificant.

According to a preliminary report released by the IPCC, there will be no detectable influence of mankind’s influence on the Earth’s weather systems for at least thirty years, and possibly not until the end of this century.

The Summary for Policymakers of the Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation, is in stark contrast to other statements made by the IPCC. It shows that mankind’s influence on the weather is far smaller than natural factors.

If and when mankind’s influence becomes apparent it may be just as likely to reduce the number of extreme weather events as increase them.

Surveying the state of scientific knowledge IPCC scientists say they cannot determine if mankind’s influence will result in more, or fewer, extreme weather events over the next thirty years or more.

The IPCC report says:

"Projected changes in climate extremes under different emissions scenarios generally do not strongly diverge in the coming two to three decades, but these signals are relatively small compared to natural climate variability over this time frame. Even the sign of projected changes in some climate extremes over this time frame is uncertain"

The Leadership Gap in Europe

2011-11-18T06:37:00.003-07:00

The Eurozone crisis and the impact it is having on the world is also a crisis of leadership. This is seen clearly today in the double-speak of the British Prime Minister and the German Chancellor, who met in Berlin.

It is clear that nothing of substance was agreed. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, continues to push for a two tier Europe with the lead countries (Germany and France) being able to take command of other countries when they do not follow the rules embodied in the growth and stability pact. What happens when Germany doesn’t follow the rules – it has broken them sixty times since the Euro was created – is not known. David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, continues to deny that there will be a two tier Europe. Suggesting that constitutional reform at this time is a major distraction, Cameron talks as if he is in a position to prevent Merkel and France’s President Sarkozy from winning this argument.

In terms of the actual debt crisis, the “solution” everyone is now narrowing down on is a tax on bank profits. Put this another way, reducing the ability of banks to help the economy by investing and lending. Cameron takes the view that, unless this tax is global, he will oppose it. Merkel takes the view that unless there is this tax, Germany will end up having to bail out Italy, Spain, France, Greece and all the rest – so its urgent and it must happen now, focused first on European banks.

Both Cameron and Merkel like to pretend that all is moving along when it isn’t. They talk rhetoric and platitudes when what is needed is courage. It would be helpful, for example, for Cameron to say at his press conference:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for being here and I would like to thank Chancellor Merkel for an honest and blunt conversation about the future of Europe. We spent several hours in conversation over the last few weeks, including three hours of face to face meetings today, and find that we disagree on the most basic aspects of reform. We do agree that the budget for the EU should be at the level of current budget plus inflation and no more, but that is all we can agree on. We don’t agree on the future of the EU. We don’t agree on the bank tax. We don’t agree that the UK must join the Eurozone as part of the stabilization solution, as Germany suggests and we don’t find it acceptable to consider a two tier Europe. We also don’t think that constitutional reform is a helpful strategy at this time. We will fight this out in a battle for the hearts and minds of the people of Europe and in the end, we will use democracy to let the people decide. Meantime, we will suspend a number of EU regulations and treaty requirements – just as Germany and France have done – so as to enable our own economy to grow. We will in particular focus on job creation through a liberalization of labour laws and tax incentives aimed at enabling investment, growth and job creation – all opposed by the EU. I have no doubt our robust conversation will continue and that we will continue to disagree on the most fundamental issues, but at least we are engaged in an honest and transparent conversation. We both agree that our core commitment is to democracy – something at the heart of our Europe and our future”.

Instead, we got platitudes like “Germany and Britain agree about a lot - starting with the need for a solid European economy, one that is "strong, efficient, that deals with its debts". Or "The UK and Germany need each other". Really.

Its time for courage, inspiration and focus – not spin, deception and double-talk. Don’t hold your breath.

Climate Change and the IPCC - The Durban Boondoggle

2011-11-16T08:19:00.001-07:00

Later this month (28th November – 9th December) the world’s climate change ambassadors, crusaders and hangers on will meet in Durban for COP17 – the seventeenth gathering of the wise and passionate meeting with the intent on preventing what Al Gore calls the “climate change catastrophe”. The gathering is titled “Saving Tomorrow, Today”. They had hoped to agree the extension of the Kyoto Protocol and the development of the mechanisms agreed in Copenhagen at COP15. The omens do not look good.

First, the International Panel on Climate Change briefing document under preparation for this summit retreats from the audacious and largely unproven claims made hitherto. The draft document, now being “edited” (meaning expect significant change in its substance and claims) suggests that there will be no significant warming in the next 20-30 years. This is “because the man-made signal is negligible relatively to the natural variability and that we only have low or medium confidence on whether or not the frequency of extreme events is changing and whether or not the greenhouse gases are behind these changes if any”. This is quite a change from previous statements from the IPCC. But it gets better.

The draft document also states: “Long-term trends in normalized economic disaster losses cannot be reliably attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change”. It goes on to state “"increasing exposure of people and economic assets is the major cause of the long-term changes in economic disaster losses (high confidence)" – something most scientists who focus on natural disasters have been saying for sometime, quite the opposite of what the IPCC normally claims.

This will come as a shock to delegates, who have based all of their work in the past on the imminent danger and catastrophic scenarios presented by the IPCC (the IPCC claims it doesn’t make predictions) – assuming that the draft document survives the editing process without being unduly changed.

The second challenge delegates will have at COP17 is that the world has changed. Governments now no longer see climate change as the most pressing issue of the century: jobs, hunger, poverty and economic conditions are. As Roger Pielke Jnr. makes clear in his excellent book The Climate Fix – economics trumps climate change mitigation every time.

The US wants an agreement on 'symmetry' of international commitments for developing and developed countries before it accepts the move for a new global climate compact. The US wants emerging economies to be on the same page based on current emission levels but does not accept responsibility for its or the rest of the developed world's historical emissions. It has instead asked for a 'graduation criteria' that would break the current distinction between rich and developing countries and set up a process of including emerging economies in the group that bears binding commitments.

The EU insists that it would sign on to Kyoto II only if emerging economies agreed to binding targets by 2015 and start talks for it right away - a substantial shift from its position a year ago. The attempt to formulate a 'coalition of the willing' seems doomed. Some countries had proposed that those who wish to sign on a new global compact should get on with it, leaving even major emitters like the US out if they are not willing. But this has not found buyers. The targets won’t be changed; they will no longer really be taken that seriously.

The BASIC countries – Brazil, South Africa, India and China -- have already taken a position that any decision on climate change actions beyond 2020 must be based on the next report of UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which will be submitted in 2014, and a review of the fulfillment of commitments under the UN climate convention to be done in 2015.

The third challenge the delegates will deal with is downright dishonesty. Only 8% of the "fast-start finance" pledged in Copenhagen has actually found its way to recipients. Many who signed up to Kyoto have paid no attention to their obligations and continue to emit beyond the Kyoto targets – Canada being an example. The EU committed to a target of reducing carbon emissions by 20%, and establishing renewable energy as comprising 20% of energy supply, both by 2020 – the 20/20/20 “rule”. Its not going to happen, especially now that most major economies are in free fall and have backed out of feed-in tariffs and subsidies for the renewable energy sector (see my blog on Peak Renewables). Major counties cannot keep the promises they make.

The final challenge at Durban is the IPCC itself. A major review of the IPCC was called for by Environment Ministers. It concluded that some major changes were required, including changes in process and changes in leadership. Few, if any, of these have been made. Given the tawdry nature of their work and the growing critique of its processes (see the new and excellent book by Donna Laframboise (The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert. Toronto: Ivy Avenue Press), many are questioning the veracity and quality of the IPCC and are seeking deeper reforms as well as action on the reforms already called for.

One study, for example, found serious issues with the last IPCC report. Professor of Law at the University of Virginia Jason Johnston researched the IPCC had conclusions on climate change and compared their findings with the peer-reviewed climate science literature. He discovered that "on virtually every major issue in climate change science" IPCC reports "systematically conceal or minimize what appear to be fundamental scientific uncertainties." Put simply – the IPCC exaggerates.

Some three thousand delegates will descend on Durban and they will achieve little, if anything. One thing we could do to lower emissions is to cancel these events. You also need to be careful in following descriptions of these events, especially from the BBC. A BBC World documentary about climate change was sponsored by green crusaders Envirotrade. And of course “Envirotrade was featured in a positive light in the programme but viewers were unaware that there was a funding arrangement in place.” The BBC itself has ruled “that commercial, financial or other interests may have influenced the editorial judgments in these programmes.” So no bias there then. If they are seeking additional funds for new programs, who knows what they will do to secure them.

A One Term President

2011-11-07T09:51:00.000-07:00

With just a year to go before the US Presidential election, things look very problematic for ordinary Americans. Unemployment refuses to abate and housing remains a crisis. Citizens are pulling their money from mainstream banks making more banks vulnerable. The US economy is a mess.

President Obama is losing his base in the black vote and the lower middle class – the very people who ensured his victory his victory. These are the groups most affected by the US economic challenges and are becoming less and less mobile, they key to economic prosperity in the US. They will determine whether or not Obama is a one term President or not. Right now, it looks as if he will probably be just that.

On the republican front, we have a "mess" of candidates. While Mitt Romney remains the likely candidate, he is facing challenges from the strange and sometimes weird bedfellows in his party. Tea Party favourites, odd balls and womanizers (Cain, Gingrich to name just two) seem commonplace in the list of would-be Republican Presidents. While Perry may be a solid and sound Texas Governor, as a potential President he looks weak and ill equipped, both intellectually and in terms of communications. Michelle Bachman is just very strange. The person with the most intellect and global experience - John Huntsman – is making no serious impression at all. It looks like the nomination is Romney's to lose.

Meanwhile what suffers is policy. As all shuffle around in the zombie mode of the walking dead, no one seems seriously to be working on policies that will impact jobs, housing starts, weak banks, fiscal responsibility, personal debt and a failing education system. Obama's jobs bill, for example, is largely a political exercise aimed at creating the impression that republicans don’t want to help to create jobs. The debt deal done earlier this fall is a smoke and mirrors exercise by both parties aimed at image management. No one is seriously looking at facing he crisis of confidence in the US economy head on. Canada’s former Prime Minister, Kim Campbell, famously said that elections are not a time for serious policy debate – there is no honesty when you are working hard to be elected.

While the Greek economic tragedy plays out, it should be seen as a precursor to the likely drama in the US when it begins the austerity work of tackling its $211 trillion in sovereign debt and unfunded sovereign liabilities as well as creating the conditions in which the $14.5 trillion in US personal debt can be lowered.

The US is in the most serious economic trouble it has been in since it was founded. One would never know it, listening to the political debate. None of these candidates, including President Obama, is up to the task and work of being President of the United States – a sad state of affairs indeed, sadly also the case across the Eurozone at this time. Don’t expect it to get any better by this time next year.

Why Robert Reich is Wrong

2011-08-08T09:13:00.000-07:00

Robert Reich is not happy with Standard & Poor. This is what he says at the Huff Post:

“S&P has downgraded the U.S. because it doesn't think we're on track to reduce the nation's debt enough to satisfy S&P -- and we're not doing it in a way S&P prefers.
Here's what S&P said: "The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics." S&P also blames what it considers to be weakened "effectiveness, stability, and predictability" of U.S. policy making and political institutions.

Pardon me for asking, but who gave Standard & Poor's the authority to tell America how much debt it has to shed, and how?”

What concerns him is that S&P’s decision is not based on whether or not the US can pay its bills when they become due – which they can for now - but on whether S&P sees the US as having an ability to deal with the $211 trillion in debt and unfunded liabilities.

His argument is overly simplistic: if you can pay your bills it doesn’t matter what your underlying finances are. It is this kind of thinking that led to the recession, based on busted housing bubble and shady derivatives. S& P are right.

They are right for a very simple reason. The commitment made in the brinkmanship politics of last week was to cut $21 billion for a $3.7 trillion budget for 2012 – no congress can legislate for budgets for a decade – and to raise the debt ceiling modestly. They kicked the issue down the road and will ask a committee of 12 to do the dirty work (and then fight over their recommendations).

A 1% rise in interest rates would wipe out the budget cut and increase debts. In fact, as Fareed Zakaria noted on CNN on Sunday, such a rise in debt interest payments to attract investors would lead to the budget deficit rising by $1.3 trillion over 10 years. That would more than wipe out the entire 10 years of cuts proposed in the debt deal. S&P simply observed that the underlying financial strengths and the realism of Congress and the White House in tackling its debt and unfunded liability problems do not deserve the credit protection of a triple A rating. S&P told the Emperor (Congress) that they have no clothes – well done S&P.

Delusions, Politics and the United States

2011-08-06T06:24:00.000-07:00

As a counselling psychologist, which I was for a number of years, I often encountered delusional individuals or families. The term “delusional” has a specific meaning: a belief that is either mistaken or not substantiated and is held with very strong feelings or opinions and expressed forcefully. A common delusion may be that “my son Jason is probably the best hockey player of his generation” when in fact he is “really average” or that Angela is a near genius when in fact she is not. Being delusional should not to be confused with a delusional disorder, which is more complex psychiatric disorder with a range of symptoms.

One current example of delusional thinking is the President of the United States. He says several times a week that the US is the “greatest country on earth” and does so with seeming conviction. Yet over eighteen million are un or underemployed and the official jobless rate (always an underestimate) is over 9%. Many US states are technically operating in a close to bankrupt financial situation and US debt and unfunded liabilities are in excess of $60 trillion. Some of its former great achievements have been shadow3ed by modest or mediocre performances – its army operations in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the failure of the war on drugs, the poor showing of the US in a variety of sports. While it is true that the US contributes massively to the global economy – US firms and activities provide 25% of the world’s GDP – a great deal of this wealth is dependent on a small number of firms, most of whom outsource manufacturing and logistics to other countries. The US is a great country, but the greatest on earth – a delusion.

Another current example is the idea in Washington that they have responded to the debt crisis by the decisions made this last few days on a process for tackling the debt ceiling and spending. When you look at the agreement it is delusional. The debt ceiling is raised to a lower level than many holding US debt required; cuts to spending are unspecified and to be delayed over a decade; the process for making deeper cuts remains political and vague and few believe the last minute deal will be enough to tackle the real challenge of American’s addiction to debt. There are also no proposals for a significant look at taxation and revenue – the delusion being that cutting spending over a decade will somehow solve the debt addiction problem – a delusion.

My final example of delusion is that the US political system is broken. It is broken in several ways – it is cumbersome, ineffective, riddled with lobby-based agendas (“bought” politicians) and relies on cross-party agreement when the ideological differences both between and within parties are so substantial that such agreements will always be “shams”. It is a very young political system, but it is clearly broken. The delusion is that some hail the agreement in the debt-ceiling and budget as “showing that the system works”. It doesn’t. Exhibit A: the Senate has yet to pass a budget. Exhibit B: the Senate and the House are unlikely to agree on what to cut when – they have had several commissions and task forces over the last decade to address this issue and have not acted. There is no compelling evidence that anything has changed – ask the Chinese Government.

A starting point for “treating” delusional thinking is to confront the delusional thinkers with evidence that their talk and thought process is delusional. This is what Standard & Poor (S&P) did yesterday. They lowered the credit rating of the United States Government, pointing out that the US is delusional and gave an evidence based critique. This was quickly followed by the largest holder of US debt – China – making clear that the US better deal with the underlying problem of living in a delusional world, spending money in ways that do not reflect reality or revenue. Other debt holders (like Brazil and the EU) have also made similar statements recently.

The chattering classes on the hill cannot talk themselves out of the current delusion by substituting it with a new one – they have not “solved” the debt addiction problem, they have merely found language and some limited action which postpones having to do so. What is needed is a reform of the budget process and spending / revenue and a reinvention of US political process. Until this occurs, delusions will continue.

Solar Subsidy

2011-06-10T05:32:00.001-07:00

The UK Government has announced a cut to its subsidy for large solar installations.

As of the beginning of August, installations of solar power that are between 50 kilowatts and 150 kilowatts of capacity will receive 19p per kilowatt-hour produced, down from 32.9p. Larger installations of up to 250kw will receive a reduced tariff of 15p per kwh and field-size installations of between 250kw and 5 megwatts of capacity will get half that, at 8.5p per kwh. Both larger sizes were previously paid 30.7p per kwh.

A sign that the political commitment to renewables has peaked.

More on Peak Renewables

2011-06-09T08:46:00.003-07:00

One response to the idea of peak renewable energy has been that subsidies for energy are commonplace and while they remain, they should apply to renewable energy just as they do to coal and oil and gas. If they did, then the idea of peak renewable energy falls flat.

To deal with this response we need to understand something about costs and subsidy. Let us look at costs first.

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) calculated the costs in dollars per megawatt/hour of different energy sources as follows: Conventional coal power: $100.40; Natural gas: $83.10; Nuclear: $119.00; Onshore wind power: $149.30; Offshore wind power: $191.10; Thermal solar power: $256.60, Photo-voltaic solar power: $396.10.

According to the EIA, the availability, i.e. the ability to produce electricity on demand is 85% for coal, 87% for natural gas, 90% for nuclear, but only 34%-39% for wind and 21%-31% for solar. For CSP Solar to produce electricity the other 74% of the time requires costly thermal storage or an auxiliary fossil fuel boiler (usually a natural gas boiler that operates at about half the efficiency of a modern combine cycle natural gas turbine).

Availability is important, since capacity to produce (e.g. a wind turbines capacity) is not the same as actual production from that energy source. The above estimates of availability (production) are optimistic.

What is clear so far is that renewable energy is less reliable and more expensive than abundant energy from gas or coal. It is also more expensive than nuclear.

This is why governments, for environmental reasons in part but also so as to support a "green economy agenda", subsidize renewable energy. Let us look at energy subsidies.

According to an EIA study based on 2008 data, the U.S. subsidizes solar power to the tune of $24.34 per megawatt hour, $23.37 per year for wind, but only 44 cents for coal, 25 cents for natural gas and $1.59 for nuclear power. If renewable energy was as prevalent as fossil fuels, we couldn't afford the subsidies.

The argument that renewable energy is efficient is lost. The argument that renewable energy is subsidized in just the same way as other energy sources is lost - look at the scale of the difference in subsidy. The argument that remains is the impact on CO2.

Yet as we have grown our renewable energy sector in the US, Canada and Europe, CO2 emission have risen. The impact is negligible.

The political willingness to support renewable energy may be peaking as more and more politicians realize that renewable energy systems are not the answer they were looking for.

Peak Renewables?

2011-06-03T10:57:00.001-07:00

The idea of “peak oil” has been around for some time. It is a simple idea. At some point, we start to deplete oil reserves faster than new reserves become available and when this occurs, the peak of available oil has been reached and its all downhill from there – we are in a terminal decline.

There are several problems with this idea, The first is that technology changes. As it does, our ability to make the oil we have go further or to extract more from known deposits increases. So the “peak” keeps moving. For example, horizontal drilling and “fracking” open new opportunities to increase supply from previously inaccessible reserves or to pursue enhanced recovery from known reserves. Similarly, carbon capture and storage is a technology being pursued in part because it enables enhanced oil recovery. Given that most drilling and production leaves 60% of the oil in the ground, new technologies could essentially double the value of reserves by securing a further 40%.

The second problem with trying to pin a date on peak oil (not necessarily with the construct itself) is that we keep finding new reserves of unconventional oil as well as conventional oil. For example, the reserves of oil sands in the Peace River area of Alberta are substantial but not yet fully accounted for in the analysis of reserves.

The third problem is that demand is also a function of other factors. For example, the price of natural gas is helping households switch from oil based heating to natural gas and oil consumption for transportation demand is affected by substantial improvements in fuel efficiency for motor vehicles.

Given all of these factors, current predictions of the timing of peak oil include the possibility that it has recently occurred, that it will occur shortly, or that a plateau of oil production will sustain supply for up to 100 years. None of these predictions dispute the peaking of oil production, but disagree only on when it will occur. How helpful is that?

But we can also apply the idea of “peaking” to the renewable energy industry – wind, solar, biomass, hydro.

Two arguments for switching to renewable energy -- the depletion of fossil fuels and national security – seem now to be less plausible. The U.S., Canada and Mexico are sitting on substantial quanities of recoverable natural gas. Shale gas is combined with recoverable oil in the Bakken "play" along the U.S.-Canadian border and the Eagle Ford play in Texas. The shale gas reserves of China turn out to be enormous, too. Other countries with now-accessible natural gas reserves, according to the U.S. government, include Australia, South Africa, Argentina, Chile, France, Poland and India.

So now the major reason for supporting a transition to renewables rests on their potential mitigation catastrophic global warming.

As governments around the world look to better manage their fiscal resources, they are changing the “rules” of the game with respect to subsidy of renewable energy. For example, Ontario has suspended all offshore wind projects indefinitely – throwing the policy for renewables into doubt. The leader of the Ontario Conservative Party, currently favoured as the next Premier, sees the subsidies for renewables and the likely impact on energy bills (a 42% rise over the next four years is predicted by the Government of Ontario), as a key election issue. He is receiving widespread support.

In the UK, which has over 2,560 wind turbines installed, the ambition has been to secure 40% of energy from renewable sources, primarily wind. A total of 7,000 turbines, on and off-shore, are either under construction, approved for building or seeking planning permission in the UK. Wind power currently provides 2.3 per cent of the UK’s energy needs – leading the Government’s target to be dismissed by most experts as unrealistic. To achieve the target, two new substantial turbines would need to be erected every day for the next twelve years.

According to government figures, the average wind turbine operates to just 27 per cent of its and there are some grounds for suggesting that even this is a significant exaggeration. Professor Michael Jefferson, of the London Metropolitan Business School, says that in 2008 less than a fifth of onshore wind farms achieved 30 per cent capacity. In that same year, the 140-turbine installation at Whitelee, near East Kilbride operated at just 7.3 per cent of its capacity.. Professor David MacKay, chief scientific adviser at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, has pointed out that in autumn/winter 2006/7 there were 17 days when output from Britain’s wind turbines was less than 10 per cent of their total capacity. On five of those days, output was below 5 per cent and on one day it was only 2 per cent.

To encourage more green energy, the Government launched the Renewables Obligation scheme. Each year, power suppliers must buy a fixed proportion of electricity from green sources. If they fail to meet the target they pay a fine to Government. That money is then split between the owners of existing wind farms. The cost of the Renewables Obligation is passed on to consumers in their fuel bills and is rising sharply each year. In 2006 it was $958 million. By 2020 it will be $4.79 billion.

The Daily Mail looked for the most useless wind-turbine in Britain. The current prize winner is near Reading. The 280ft generator located near the M4 just outside Reading worked at just 15 per cent of its capacity last year. It generated electricity valued at an estimated $159,000, it secured its owners subsidized of $207,000.

The contribution to CO2 reduction of wind power in the UK is minimal. In fact, a House of Lords study shows that wind power is at least 50 per cent more expensive per unit generated than the other main non-CO2 option, nuclear. That is, it offers less CO2 reduction for the dollar than other means of CO2 mitigation, including solar.

Solar is another renewable technology widely seen as part of the “solution” to the CO2 challenge. Yet Britain has just cut its solar subsidies for at or above 50kW solar systems 70% on the grounds of affordability and encouragement of “other technologies”. The impact on the solar panel industry will be significant. More importantly, as fewer installations occur, so the impact on CO2 will be less.

The situation with respect to solar in Spain is dire. The solar industry received subsidies in 2010 of €2.6bn ($3.66 billion), a sum neither the country – nor the utilities – can afford. The three Spanish energy utilities have paid out €20bn to subsidize solar and wind projects since 2005, and are still waiting for the government to pay them back. Credit rating agencies threatened to downgrade the companies if something was not done to address the "tariff deficit".

The Government has now cut the solar subsidy program dramatically. The former subsidies were so generous that Spain has 10 times the amount of solar capacity the government had planned for by 2010 – and a much bigger bill than it had envisioned. Given its overall economic situation, cuts were needed. Similar developments are taking place in Portugal, Ireland and Greece.

All energy sources have potentially harmful side effects. The genuine problems caused by fracking and possible large-scale future drilling of methane hydrates should be carefully monitored and dealt with by government regulation. But the environmental movement since the 1970s has been fixated religiously on a few "soft energy" panaceas -- wind, solar, and biofuels – and these too have side effects. Wind turbines and high-voltage power lines that accompany them that slaughter eagles and other birds. The ENGO’s support for blanketing desert areas with solar panels, at the cost of exterminating much of the local wildlife and vegetation is also another “side effect” Wilderness preservation, the original goal of environmentalism, is been sacrificed to the ideological whims of a few.

But more significantly, there is a public counter-reaction to “green” energy. Anti wind-farm and solar movements are springing up across the developed world, angry about energy price hikes and at the impact on the environment which these technologies have. They are also sceptical about the impact these technologies are actually having on CO2 reduction – especially given recent reports that CO2 continues to increase, despite a recession and a massive investment in these technologies.

As these industries begin to experience “subsidy-sunset” – they are driven by subsidy not market conditions – then the peak of renewable energy from wind and solar may have been reached. The fact that significant and vocal sections of the public are also speaking up and campaigning, may also be another sign that commitment to renewable energy has peaked. We shall see.

With low cost gas, significant new access to oil and an ongoing investment in clean coal we may not need to worry. We are a long way from peak energy.

“Anyone who thinks my story is anywhere near over is sadly mistaken”. Donald Trump

2011-04-26T11:20:00.000-07:00

I am getting some stick for my comparison of Donald Trump with Sarah Palin on two counts. One Donald Trump is no Sarah Palin, she is much sharper and more experienced. Second, I don’t understand American politics – one claimed that 45% of Americans don’t believe that Obama was born in the US (see below), and that both are very credible and respectable potential Presidential candidates and both are speaking on issues which most potential candidates won’t touch with a barge pole. So don’t do down the Palin-Trump axis.

First, I agree with this last point and stated it several times. I also wrote this on my blog post about The Donald: “he may be the only candidate who could garner sufficient support with the party and the people and beat Obama” precisely because he has the cojones to talk about what matters most. I also wrote:

“The tea party don’t like “moderate”. They want radical. They want a candidate who reflects true grit, conservative position and will cut budgets, taxes and restore American to its rightful place in the world. They get excited listening to and encouraging Sarah Palin – they think she’s not just sexy, but right. They think Donald Trump is the new Sarah Palin and is a real man, despite his hair. But they really think that Michelle Bachman, the Senator from Minnesota, combines the best of the Donald and the Sarah into one being. She is likely to be their candidate in the end, and Sarah and Donald will not find a place on the Republican ticket.”

So what’s the scoop.

Birther Issue

On the radio show, which I had no hand in preparing, they played extracts from Donald Trump talking to George Stephanopoulos about the “birther” issue and from his interview on CNN with Candy Crowley. In these interviews Donald said that he thinks the birth of Obama is an issue, but one which the media keeps bringing up. He hopes that Obama is an American citizen, but he suggests that Obama needs to prove it. The majority American opinion is that Trump is wrong. But there are a substantial number of Americans who don’t believe that he was born in the US. A CNN poll conducted in March 2011 has these figures for all Americans:

• Definitely born in U.S. 46%
• Probably born in the U.S. 26%
• Probably born in another country 15%
• Definitely born in another country 10%

but amongst Republicans has these figures:

• Definitely born in U.S. 20%
• Probably born in the U.S. 32%
• Probably born in another country 28%
• Definitely born in another country 15%

A different poll suggests that 51% of Republicans who intend to vote in the US Presidential election believe that Obama was not born in the US. So now we see why Donald is pursuing this viewpoint.

In contrast, Sarah Palin in 2009 denied asking for Obama's birth certificate or denying his citizenship, and again compared birther theories to questions about baby Trig from "many on the left" which were not so much rightful as questions they had a right to ask. In April she again did not pursue the issue when given the opportunity to do so. She does seem to think that it’s a fair question for Trump to pursue, but it’s not a question central to her.

Foreign Policy

“If you're going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big.” Donald Trump

His big idea with respect to Libya, which came from his CNN interview, was for the US to go in and get the oil or not go in at all. He did say that he would let Libya have some of its oil so that they could live a good life, but the battle was about oil. Lets call it what it is and get the oil.

His foreign policy is basically very simple. Tell people what to think. Tell OPEC that we will not pay for oil at the price they want to charge. Tell China to stop playing footsie with their currency (despite the fact that the US is doing the same) and talk up the US. That’s it. Here is what he says: “We have to make it absolutely clear that we’re willing to trade with China, but not to trade away our principles, and that under no circumstances will we keep our markets open to countries that steal from us”.

His overall strategy is this:

“In the modern world you can’t very easily draw up a simple, general foreign policy. I was busy making deals during the last decade of the cold war. Now the game has changed. The day of the chess player is over. Foreign policy has to be put in the hands of a dealmaker. Two dealmakers have served as president-one was Franklin Roosevelt, who got us through WWII, and the other was Richard Nixon, who forced the Russians to the bargaining table to achieve the first meaningful reductions in nuclear arms. A dealmaker can keep many balls in the air, weigh the competing interests of other nations, and above all, constantly put America’s best interests first. The dealmaker knows when to be tough and when to back off. He knows when to bluff and he knows when to threaten, understanding that you threaten only when prepared to carry out the threat. The dealmaker is cunning, secretive, focused, and never settles for less than he wants. It’s been a long time since America had a president like that. “

The Other Side of The Donald

In any attempt to look at The Donald seriously, one needs to bear in mind Trump's support of the "banking and auto bailouts," his previous description of President Ronald Reagan as a con artist, his affection for Canada's single-payer health care system, and his donations to Obama White House insiders Rahm Emanuel and Bill Daley. He has also said many a thing that will come back to haunt him.

Overall though, he will be an interesting, serious and fun person to watch. I am all for this. After all, look at the rest of the field that’s lining up. Not exactly exciting.

One Down

2011-04-25T15:46:00.001-07:00

Earlier today Hayley Barbour made clear he was not running for the Presidency. One down, sixteen to go.

The Race for the Biggest Loser

2011-04-25T09:43:00.003-07:00

While my wife does not like to miss The Biggest Loser, I am a sucker for political stories. So on Tuesday nights as she watches very large people get shouted at and lose weight, I do my due diligence on the Republican hopefuls for the 2012 Presidential election. It’s the same kind of process – a large number of people get shouted at by trainers (also known as interviewers, pundits and former candidates) and many fall off the wagon, leaving a few standing to run in the primaries. Once the primaries start, there are regular weigh ins (known as polls) and some are voted off the show. Eventually there is one left standing and he or she becomes the Biggest Loser, losing to President Obama in the actual Presidential race in November 2012.

One difference between the two shows is that the Biggest Looser weight loss show makes money and the Biggest Loser Republican show costs money. Its estimated that Obama will raise close to $1 billion to fight his campaign and that the Republicans, between them will outspend him 2:1 in the run up to November. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are buying weight loss products, too tight fitting spandex and signing up for gym membership and boosting the weight loss industry profits.

Part of the problem we have with the Republican party is that it has lost its way. Any party that can have George W Bush as its front runner has lost its way. So the traditional conservatives have formed the loose association we know as the Tea Party. This is an organization that rarely drinks tea and has made clear that it is not a Party in the sense of the Republican party, more like a network of like minded groups. They stand in favour of lower and fewer taxes, smaller government, less intrusive government and what they know as traditional conservative values – no to same sex marriage, abortion, gays in the military and immoral conduct. It is an organization Margaret Thatcher would have recognized as the conservative party she led in Britain – she drank tea and shared these values. The tea party have considerable influence over the candidates and the Republican party, as we can see.

It’s a Melee and a Muddle

At my current count there are some twelve potential candidates (some of whom have declared) and a further six who are “waiting in the wings”.

The key people, and the only serious candidates to look at, are Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. If you look at polling undertaken across the US over the last six months, these stand some chance of saving face and not losing too badly. In the most recent poll, Romney is close to Obama (he would lose by 4%) and Huckabee is next (he would lose by 6%). Both are relatively sane, articulate and moderate.

And that’s the problem. The tea party don’t like “moderate”. They want radical. They want a candidate who reflects true grit, conservative position and will cut budgets, taxes and restore American to its rightful place in the world. They get excited listening to and encouraging Sarah Palin – they think she’s not just sexy, but right. They think Donald Trump is the new Sarah Palin and is a real man, despite his hair. But they really think that Michelle Bachman, the Senator from Minnesota, combines the best of the Donald and the Sarah into one being. She is likely to be their candidate in the end, and Sarah and Donald will not find a place on the Republican ticket.

Newt Gingrich comes close to Michelle Bachman in the minds of the tea party, except for the hair. The former speaker is a thoughtful, well read and experienced politician but has the air of the night about him – like a lost ghoul searching for a victim who will willingly sit and listen to him talk for hours. The tea party people see him more as a grandfather than as an aspiring fiancé for the White House. He will not win the nomination.

Then there are at least six men who are smart, articulate but too centrist (or even left of centre) for the liking of the current party. These include John Huntsman (currently Ambassador to China, but about to return so as to run), Tim Pawlenty (former Governor of the State of Minnesota), Mitch Daniels (Governor Indiana), Hayley Barbour (Governor of Mississippi - who made clear after this was originally posted that he wouldnt run), Gary Johnson (former Governor of New Mexico) and Rick Santorum a former United States Senator from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania). All of these are possible contenders – Gary Johnson is already declared – but will require someone to make a major mistake before they make the ticket. One could really say that all are really running for the Vice Presidential place on the Republican ticket, though they will deny this.

If this list wasn’t enough (if you’re keeping count, we’re at twelve), there are another six possibilities that are deeper in the outfield than those listed here. They include Michael Bloomberg (Mayor of New York City), Congressman Ron Paul from Texas (again), gay rights activist and declared candidate Fred Karger, Buddy Roemer, Rudy Giuliani (yes, again) and former UN Ambassador, John Bolton. None of these will make the ticket, though I suspect some will enter the race.

So the list to date of possibilities is eighteen. Eighteen. The Biggest Looser starts with roughly this number of competitors. Their prize for the winner is health, weight loss and a $1 million in cash as well as world wide recognition. For the Republican nominee the prize is debt, losing and world wide recognition. Which do you think is the better deal?

Who Will Trump the Donald?

2011-04-23T16:06:00.002-07:00

It's pretty certain. Donald Trump, wealthy man from real estate and the master of poor hairstyles, will run for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. He is smart, articulate, popular with some and more to the point, comes with little political baggage.

True, he comes with other baggage - two divorces, a bankruptcy and his penchant for which publicity. His focus on Obama's birth record is an example of his opportunism, as is his role as executive producer and star on The Apprentice. He is the man behind some seemingly sexist pageants and is also backing the sale of alternative health products. Others may dislike him because of his wealth, estimates between $750 million ( Deutsche Bank's estimate, which The Donald disputes vehemently) and $2.5 billion.

His political views are well laid out in several interviews he had done over the last decade. He is pro life, pro gun and, anti same sex marriage and anti foreign aid. He wants out of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan and strongly believes that, rather than playing nice with China, we should get tough economically with them until they do something to correct their currency. He would put the economy first.

He wants to be liked, but doesn't mind being disliked for doing what is right. He talks a good story, appears tough and cares deeply about America.

He is not likely to win the Republican nomination, even though he may well be a winning candidate. The nomination is likely to go to a GOP "establishment" figure, like Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee. The Donald has no strong ties with the party elite, is seen by the party as an outsider and spoiler and, as one commentator has already said, "he will out for himself before the party", which is actually what Presidents do.

If he fails to win the party nomination, he may run as an independent - in fact, if he reads the tea-leaves in time, he may just do this off the bat. If this is where he goes, he will split the Republican vote and give Obama a second term. If by some miracle he does become the party nominee, he may be the only candidate who could garner sufficient support with the party and the people and beat Obama.

There are many days between now and polling day November 2012 and so much could happen. Sarah Palin could develop intelligence, Trump might find just the right person to run as his running mate to bring the party on board, the early GOP primaries might signal to the party that their anointed candidates stand no chance of winning and the Tea Party might switch to coffee. Whatever the case, The Donald will make things interesting, at least for a while.

The Situation is Hopeless, But Not Serious

2011-04-21T07:53:00.001-07:00

Johan Norberg, the Swedish writer who has written the highly recommended Financial Fiasco: How America's Infatuation with Home Ownership and Easy Money Created the Economic Crisis, wrote this in The Spectator:

“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it's the only one you have. There is a broad consensus that the financial crisis of 2007 was at least in part a result of record-low interest rates, huge deficits and large-scale credit-financed consumption. Today, governments across the world are trying to solve the crisis — by means of record-low interest rates, huge deficits and large-scale credit-financed consumption. This time, they are also using more novel means of creating easy money: bank bailouts, stimulus packages and quantitative easing.”

And so we now have the spectacle of a US government owing $14.5 trillion to its bond holders, most US States being significantly in debt and the Canadian government, so widely praised for its response to the financial crisis, also facing significant debts which we will take some time (and some pain) to recover from.

Debt is not necessarily a bad thing, if its planned for, manageable within the available overall financial picture and there is a plan to deal with it. But in the case of the US the situation was not planned for, is not manageable and there is no viable plan to deal with it. Given this, we are all in trouble.

For all the talk of austerity, governments everywhere plan to get through 2011 and beyond by borrowing like crazy. The world's rich countries have increased their debt by some 50 per cent over the past three years, according to the IMF. As we saw from S&P’s comments on their credit rating for the US, at some point the bond market determines that it can no longer accept the situation and action has then to be taken. Sovereign bond markets panicked when Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, suggested that investors might one day have to bear some of their own losses. Bond holders don’t like to speculate – especially those holding Sovereign bonds (bonds issued by a Government) – but that is exactly what they are doing. While the bond is underwritten, bond issuers sometimes default – ask those holding Iceland’s bonds.

On this matter, Norberg writes:

“The problem with socialism,' Lady Thatcher once said, 'is that eventually you run out of other people's money.' This time, it is worse: we are running out of our children's money, and our grandchildren's money. We are assuming we will have a never-ending supply of borrowed money, and we have no backup plan if this supply chokes up.”

So it is time for realism. It is time to bite the bullet and start to deal tough with debt and get it down to a reasonable level in the US, each of the US States and Canada. If we adopt the Golden Rule (ironically developed by Gordon Brown) that that the Government will only borrow to invest over the economic cycle and cannot borrow to fund current operations, then we will see draconian cuts to programs and increased taxes. As a grandparent, this is what we need to do to protect my granddaughters future.

The US needs to get its debt down by two thirds (a spending cut of $9.6 trillion) by 2015 and each of the US states should have debt within 4% of their GDP. Canada should rid itself entirely of debt by 2015. While this will impact employment, wealth and the economy, such a price is necessary to restore economic sanity and give confidence back to people. Its ironic that in order to restore confidence, we may first have to shake it. But shake it we must.

Just as almost everyone I know supports the law, but breaks it every time they get behind a steering wheel or supports “green thinking” and “action on climate change”, but does nothing about it (and generally make matters worse), so we must accept that a part of the problem is ourselves. Our assumption that the government will be there “no matter what” and that we have rights to such services as health care and wonderful services that we refuse to pay the real costs of. Its time for a one time tax hike to pay down debt and restore sanity. Its time for us to get serious about our future and rethink all of our public services in the light of known demographics and technology changes that could make things more expensive. Its time to get serious about our future.

So once the Canadian election is over, let the Government (and it really doesn’t matter which one it is – “the government always gets in”) do some straight talk to its citizens and tell us what we have to do to eliminate debt by 2015 and live within our means after that. Having started this journey, we should then all turn our attention to the US and use whatever networks and influence we have to persuade the people to get engaged in a campaign during the 2012 election cycle to eliminate two thirds of US debt and to live within its means.

When I was training as a counselling psychologist, I was always impressed by Paul Watzlawick’s book The Situation is Hopeless, But Not Serious – The Pursuit of Unhappiness (available free for downloading – just Google the title). The idea is simple. We may feel hopeless in the face of such challenges, but when we put our minds to it, we can cope and deal with the situation. It may take courage, determination and some harsh facing up to reality, but few situations are beyond redemption. What makes us unhappy and sick is the sense that “we’re stuck and there’s nothing we can do about it”. We’re not and we can.

When the US Sneezes Alberta Gets Pneumonia

2011-04-19T15:19:00.001-07:00

Standard and Poor’s decision to send a shot across the bows of US economic policy is very welcome. AS the US continues to spend beyond its means and build up a considerable debt - $14.5 trillion and counting – and the politicians cannot agree on a basic strategy to deal with it, someone has to remind the US that sovereign debt needs repaying and that, in the absence of a sovereign, this requires the US to both cut spending on key services (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Services and Defence), reduce transfer payments to States and raise taxes. The trouble is none of the politicians, who tax their friends so as to keep them in office, has the real courage to actually do anything.

To be sure, various politicians talk a good story. But words are cheap. It the action that counts. The recent kerfuffle between the Grand Old Party and the Obama Democrats over a small cut of $38 billion – less than 1% of spending – tells us that courage is absent, politics is broken and even minor challenges to the status quo scare those who govern the nation that used to be the most important on earth.

President Obama has proposed a program of cuts estimated at $4 trillion while his Republication opponents have proposed cuts of $5.8 trillion over ten years. Both see reducing debt as important, but we all know that neither, especially in a Presidential election year, plan to do anything. Cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Social Services, Defense and hard caps on spending in all other areas coupled with tax increases don’t “sell” to an electorate already battered by the impact of recession.
Yet these same politicians watch the PIGS – Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain – struggle to restore confidence in their economies abroad while fighting real battles at home over the nature of economic stringency. The US must see the protests in Greece and Spain as signals of what might happen in Georgia, Detroit, Nebraska and Arkansas and wonder who will be the political survivors.

This is a major issue for Alberta. Our economy, increasingly dependent on unconventional oil and services, relies on the US for its robustness. Our $247.2 billion GDP relies heavily on exports - $53.9 billion in oil and gas - shipped mainly to the US. What happens if the US has a double dip recession and then starts to have real cuts in public spending of the order of a $500 billion a year for the next decade?

We have a clue. When house building collapsed in the US due to the recession, triggered by the housing bubble, our exports of lumber suffered massively and are only now recovering. While we are increasing exports to other jurisdictions of wood and other natural resources, the US is still our major customer. We know that when the US catches a cold we get pneumonia.

So it is in our interest to keep a close eye on the US debt reduction strategy. We should encourage our Southern Cousins to follow the example of Britain and cut deeply, fast and now. Setting an aggressive debt reduction agenda and then following through by doing it may significantly slow the rate of the US recovery, but this is preferable to a unsustainable recovery based on false accounting, avoidance of key issues and a refusal to act. In the medium to long term, the US would be helped not hindered by stringency.

The Next and Last Pope?

2011-04-05T12:57:00.001-07:00

Benedict XVI was elected in April 2005 at the age of 78. This was six years ago and he is now 84 and seemingly in good health, though he has had some health incidents since he came to the Throne of St Peter. But when he does fall ill and leave us, who will be the next Pope and will the next Pope be the last?

The front runner is Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Cardinal Secretary of State and Camerlengo, having previously served as Archbishop of Vercelli from 1991 to 1995, as Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under the direction of the current Pope. Born in 1934, he is getting on in years, but is a lively and engaging personality and widely respected in the Church. He is favoured by Benedict as his successor, as a number of small indications seem to suggest.

He is not the only Italian in the running. The Cardinal Archbishop of Genoa, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, (68) is also seen as a strong candidate. President of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI), and was elevated to the cardinalate in 2007. He is considered to be conservative in his views, and a theological ally of his predecessor in the CEI, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, who was seen as a major candidate when Benedict was elected.

During the last conclave some liberal media seemed to suggest that an African cardinal may stand a strong change, since it is in Africa that the Church is growing quickly. Cardinal John Njue (67) of Kenya is the only Africa currently rated with an outside chance of winning the election by the College of Cardinals. He is the fourth and current Archbishop of Nairobi, having previously served as Coadjutor Archbishop of Nyeri (2002–2007) and Bishop of Embu (1986–2002). He was elevated to the cardinalate in 2007.

Another African cardinal, Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson (73) is also in the running. Although some bookmakers have made Nigeria's Cardinal Francis Arinze the favourite to succeed Pope Benedict – and thus become the first African pope since the death of Pope Gelasius in 496 – Arinze is now 77 and retired and he may well be too old by the time of any vacancy at the Vatican, Turkson is very active and a constant companion for Benedict – he travelled to the UK on the Pope’s visit in 2010.

There are other, younger members of the College of Cardinals who are seen as pababili – electable Cardinals (though in theory, any Catholic can be elected by the College of Cardinals to the office of the papacy). These include: Oscar Maradiaga, 69, Honduras; Odilo Scherer, 62, German ethnicity, but now Archbishop of São Paulo, Brazil; Philippe Barbarin, 61, Moroccan-Born and currently Archbishop of Lyon in France; Jorge Urosa, 69, Venezuela; Lluis Sistach, 74, Spain; Raul Chiriboga, 77, Ecuador; Stanislaw Dziwisz, 72, Poland and Jose Policarpo, 75, Portugal.

It is unlikely that a Cardinal from Latin America would be elected for three reasons. First, they are distant from the day to day politics of the Vatican. Second, voting would likely be split between them – there are four candidates from the Americas and it is rare that they are aligned on issues or could align around a single candidate. Third, it is more probable that, as has been the tradition for some time, the next Pope like all of the last century, will be a European.

There is some talk of the next Pope being the “last Pope”. In 1139 St. Malachy set out from Ireland on a harrowing pilgrimage to Rome. On sighting the Eternal City he fell to the ground and began murmuring cryptic Latin phrases, each signifying the future destiny of the popes. For four hundred years the manuscript capturing his comments was locked in the labyrinth of the Vatican. On its rediscovery in 1595 it was rejected by the Church authorities as fraudulent but the content of the prophecies remains remarkably and chillingly accurate: to this day 90 percent have come true. St. Malachy prophesied an end to the Roman Catholic Church and predicted the fates of the popes until Judgment Day. According to this prophecy, only one pope remains after Benedict on the doomsday list. We will see.

Meanwhile, you can place your bets at www.paddypower.com. This online betting site has Cardinal Arinze (Nigeria) as the favourite (7/4) and Cardinal Scola of Venice (6/1) and Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez of Honduras (8/1) closely followed by Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco (11/1) as the front runners. Cardinal Bertone, who I see as leading the pack, is sitting at 14/1. For those looking for a wild bet, Bono is 1000/1 as is the former co-star of comedy TV series, Father Ted, Father Dougal McGuire (played by Ardal O’Hanlon).

Innovation, Education, AISI and Alberta

2011-03-31T08:22:00.000-07:00

Canada is not very good at innovation. While we spend a lot on research and development as a nation – around $14 billion a year and close to $1 billion from the Alberta Government – we are not very good at turning research into new goods or services which people want to buy or to significant and sustainable improvements in health and education. Indeed, our ability to do so is declining as we become less productive and less competitive as a nation over time.

One of the reasons we are not good at innovation is that the innovation agenda is being driven by Universities. Universities do tremendous work in producing high quality people and in basic research, but have a poor track record in converting research into goods and services or to changes in health, education and social services which last and make a sustainable difference. They are also in general poor at applied research undertaken in partnership with the private sector or with health or educational practitioners, though this is something they are trying to get better at.

In education, the gap between what university researchers in general focus on and what schools need, do and care about is evident. There is an in-built tension between the systematic school improvement focused research needed by school systems versus the individual research interests of particular scholars. This is reinforced by the reward structure of Universities, which puts weight on publications and conference presentations by educational researchers rather than the impact their work has had on student engagement, learning outcomes or teaching quality. Researchers are rewarded for process achievements rather than outcomes.

The attempt to reposition an applied and systematic approach to school improvement as within the scope of university research in Faculties of education suggests three things. First, it is the end of bottom-up teacher driven research. Universities will want, over time, to reify this work. They always do. Look what has happened to the bulk of research in business schools to see how relevant most of this is to the needs of firms. Second, it will slow the pace of research. The term “fast, focused, results oriented research” which has characterised AISI since its inception does not fit within the culture of universities. Finally, we can expect an increase in competition between Universities for research opportunities as opposed to increased service from the Universities to school based researchers seeking to make a difference to the wellbeing and learning of students.

In the “pre 2011 budget” version of AISI, most of the work of Universities was that of providing educational support to in school applied researchers, as collaborators on specific projects or as mentors, coaches and guides to teams doing applied work in schools. While some of this will continue, over time we will see funding for action oriented research erode and Universities increasingly driving the AISI agenda. This is not a good thing. The real authorities on what is needed in schools and what the agenda for change and development should be are teachers and in school administrators: those nearest to the challenges and opportunities.

A world class model of how to do this has been developed, recognized and well resourced in the past. This model has been the engine of continuous improvement (and in some cases transformation) and it has led to significant gains in learning outcomes. This model is AISI as it was, recognized by many as one of the leading programs of its kind in the world and the envy of many jurisdictions. Programs can always be improved and developed, but when Universities take them on they are rarely improved.

Let me be clear. Some Professors at some Universities have done outstanding work in education and in schools and some have also developed collaborative programs that have made a tremendous impact. The Galileo Educational Network within the University of Calgary is one example. But such individuals and such focused and systematic programs are few and far between. Anyone who has worked in Universities knows that they are not adaptive and responsive cultures. Over time, AISI will change and not for the better.

Alberta needs an innovation agenda for change driven by teachers and in school administrators; it needs a process by which those best able to deliver sustainable change in response to that agenda receive support on condition that they share their results in a way that promotes best practice; it needs to see true collaborative partnerships between teachers, administrators, researchers and communities that lead to school improvement; and it needs to see nimble, flexible approaches to how innovation is done. Whatever happens to the next version of AISI and whatever the rhetoric, we should judge the work in terms of impact and outcome.

A Tribute to Chris Gonnet - Leader, Friend, Colleague

2011-01-11T09:03:00.000-07:00

Every so often one comes upon a person in authority who is a true leader and an inspiration. One such person was Chris Gonnet, Superintendent of Grande Prairie Public Schools. Chris was a friend, a colleague and a fellow champion of inspiring education. He died yesterday of heart attack. He will be missed by many, but most of all by those instructional leaders within Grande Prairie whom he supported with passion and commitment.

Chris and I worked closely together on the Real Learning First project with JC Couture of the ATA. JC and Chris had taught together in Hinton and both had a commitment to education, innovation and learning that I have always found inspiring. Chris was a champion of the Alberta : Finland partnership for educational change and development and, wearing this hat, he and I spend time together in Stockholm, Helsinki, Jasper and Boston.

Chris was an imagineer and passionate about the core values of a school system. He made a difference. He will be missed.

My heartfelt condolences to his family, his friends and his colleagues.

Creative Alberta

2011-01-06T10:01:00.001-07:00

There is a lot of talk in educational circles and amongst employers about the need for the next generation of workers to have twenty first century skills. By this they usually mean that, in addition to mathematical and literacy skills, those leaving schools, colleges and universities should have knowledge and skills in design, teamwork, creative problem solving, critical thinking and an ability to leverage social networks and knowledge. They also need to be able to communicate effectively, both in person and in writing.

Of these skills, what we need most is creativity. We have problems that need solving –environmental challenges, social problems, problems with our health care system, problems of democracy – and its clear that our existing approaches to problem solving are not working. We also need creative people in all walks of life – creative leaders of non-profit organizations, creative designers of clothes, creative culinary technicians, and creative teachers.

The arts are also key to the vibrancy of our communities. Alberta has first class symphony orchestras, a world class ballet company, a very successful opera community and really powerful theatre sector, especially in Edmonton, and a strong visual arts community. In addition to providing pleasure to a great many people, the arts are also a major economic engine in the Province – they are a basis for a significant industry sector in their own right.

Creativity is not at the core of our school system – compliance is. In Grade 7 in Alberta there are over 1,300 objectives to be achieved by students, leaving very little room for creative exploration, real in depth project work or learners creating their own learning agenda. Teachers in high schools feel pressured by the volume of work they must complete so that students can achieve high performance on Provincial Achievement Tests and the High School Diploma. Universities and Colleges push schools each year to do more so as to ensure that students moving to post-secondary institutions have the required skills.

Creativity is also difficult for teachers in large classes – classes of thirty five to thirty five. Schools as physical locations are built for compliance and conformity. The notion of a “class” of students, versus a learning program for each student speaks to this challenge.

If we are serious about developing the creative skills of our learners at all levels then we need to change both what we ask these learners to work on and how we support that learning. In short, we need a transformative change which changes the context, structure and process of learning and change our support systems for teachers to enable this to happen.

This is not an option. To improve the competitiveness and productivity of Alberta firms, to sustain vibrant communities and to rethink our public services we need creative thinking, informed critical thinking and all the design skills we can muster.

A new organization, Creative Alberta, is focusing energy and capacity on making some of this change happen. What a true strategy for a Creative Alberta would be is for Minister Hon. Dave Hancock, Minister of Education, to implement the agenda for change outlined in Inspiring Education – reduce the scope and scale of the Provincial curriculum (teach less, learn more), free schools from many of the constraints under which they currently operate, downsize the role of Government and ehance the independence of schools, change the accountability regime and move to a public assurance model for accountability and invest in the professional development of teachers. There is also a need to create several different routes for the High School Diploma, only one of which should be focused on progression to post-secondary education.

Twenty first century skills require twenty first century schools. Its time we enabled them.

Sarah Palin for President? Not..

2010-12-29T13:26:00.001-07:00

The idea that Sarah Palin could be a serious candidate for the Presidency of the United States in 2012 helps sell newspapers, but is beyond belief. She may become a candidate – an independent republican – but she will not be the official republican candidate and she is unlikely to win. She is the Ross Perrot of the 2012 election.

The US voters will not elect her President for five reasons. First, she is a quitter. She did not see out the last key employment contracts she has entered into, either as Mayor or as Governor.

Second, she is ignorant of world affairs and economics. Just read her Facebook entries and listen to her speak of economic issues and options.

Third, she has no credibility on the international stage. However popular the idea of a President focusing inwards on the economy may be, the reality is that improving the US economy requires a global effort and real strength in economic diplomacy – not something for which Sarah Palin has any credibility.

Fourth, she is a polarising figure. You either love her, find her amusing but dangerous, or hate her. This means that there will not be enough popular support for her to secure the votes needed to beat either the official republican candidate or a sitting US President.

Finally, she is a “foot in mouth” politician. If you wait long enough, she will destroy her own ideas through her own efforts. Just ask her about what she reads or what she understands about fiscal easing and she will put her foot in it. She will, of course, blame others – she is never to be accountable for her own actions – and look at the situation she herself created as if it is a meteor from another planet.

She will increase her profile throughout 2011, make more money, court the right people on the right and be seen frequently enough to fuel speculation. But a serious Presidential candidate? Never.

Watch Out - The Premier is About..

2010-12-29T12:21:00.001-07:00

As we approach the new year, be prepared for real challenges to our public sector and financial double-think from the Government of Alberta.

Some time ago the Premier of Alberta made two bad decisions. The first was to declare that. “while I am Premier”, there would be no new taxes and no increases in taxes. It was one of those declarations that sounds good at the time but, on reflection. is a terrible mistake. It limits and sets up a requirement for him to resign when taxes inevitably do rise.

His second mistake was to cave into the pressure from the oil and gas sector over royalties – ensuring that Alberta has amongst the lowest regulated royalty rates in the world (in the same league as Yemen).

These too major errors of judgement feed into a philosophic position held by the Premier and the majority of caucus: the principle that government should live within its means and not have deficits or debt. A principle few sensible governments adopt, but always admire in others.

What we are about to see are significant and brutal cuts in Alberta public expenditure of so as to continue to “cover up” the two errors of judgement and sustain a philosophic position, now clearly out dated and inappropriate. Its time for a sea change in thinking – even if the Premier may have to go to make it possible.

The Provincial deficit is growing, due to: (a) a structural change in the economy as it relates to royalty revenues from natural gas – the Province needs to get used to a much lower price for gas (around $4.50 - $5.50 as opposed to $7); (b) the growing strength of the Canadian dollar – oil is priced in US dollars, so the achievement of parity costs the government money; (c) continued relatively high rates of unemployment in some sectors; (d) but a return to inflation for some goods and services.

Estimates of the deficit vary, but let us just assume that its between $5 billion and $6 billion. While this could be covered by a combination of cuts to services and a transfer from the stabilisation fund established by the Government to deal with these situations, we cannot go on doing this. Our key source of revenue in the past – natural gas – is not going to return to “normal” for some considerable time – the new technologies enabling the extraction of shale gas has changed the industry for some time to come. We now rely on modest oil revenues and revenues from casino’s, drink and cigarettes.

Trimming spending is the natural instinct of conservatives – just look at the Wild Rose`s position to see how stark this can be. But they are coy about what this really means. Typically, they protect health care spending, which accounts for the largest single chunk of public expenditure and is a system in need of major reform – but they have already committed to a five year funding formulae and we`re just ending year one.

Education also gets a modicum of protection, especially given that the Minister is seeking a second five year settlement with the teachers union.

So what`s left to cut and how deep? 20-30% would be needed to cover the whole deficit for the remaining departments to balance the budget by March 2012 – another strange commitment made by the Premier.

It i time for Alberta to recogonize that Alberta has a revenue problem. It is time to rethink its tax regime – its time for a 3-5% sales tax. Ted Morton signalled this as an option form review on 25th August, but was quickly told to withdraw this thinking (remember the Premier’s commitment). A sales tax would buy time to rethink our public services – especially health care – and to reposition the Province. The Alberta Advantage of low taxes is no longer a true advantage, and will disappear if, as a result, we have low quality public services.

Its also time to implement in full the recommendations of the royalty review panel which the Premier struck at the time of his appointment. While the industry may sream – they always do – they will also stay and pay. Ask Alaska how it managed to significantly increase royalties (before Palin) and they will tell you that the companies screamed, threatened, offered all sorts of sweeteners, but in the end stayed and paid.

It is also time to commit to modest level of borrowing and debt – something most of us understand, since most people own debt. The idea that governments should be debt free is, frankly, bizarre. The issue isn’t debt or no debt, it is how much debt is reasonable given our understanding of the future patterns of revenue and expenditure. If debt to GDP was at around 4-5% no one would especially be concerned.

Finally, its time for a serious look at the future. The Premiers Economic Council will report in June 2011 and outline a strategy and investments needed for the “next” Alberta. Shifting from a reliance on natural resources, from being debt free and from having a revenue problem to investing wisely in the future is an essential task for the Government. Lets hope they have courage. It doesn’t look promising.

Setting the Context: Energy Challanges for 21st Century

2010-10-16T05:11:00.003-07:00

A group of us at the Energy Futures Network and the Renaissance Innovation Network are developing a book Rethinking Energy - here is a working draft of the first chapter...

Introduction

In 2010 the late Hew Crane of SRI International – originally known as the Stanford Research Institute – created a new unit of energy measurement. It is known as the cubic mile of oil . Imagine this: a cube of oil a mile long, a mile wide and a mile deep. Now imagine burning this cube of oil to get energy – whether for electrical power, fuels or other forms of energy. A cubic mile of oil, for those of you technically minded, is equivalent to 26 billion barrels of oil or 6.4 billion tons of coal. A barrel of oil is equivalent to two full tanks of fuel for an SUV.

The reason Crane developed this new measurement was to make clear just what global energy consumption looked like. Each year, the world uses some three cubic miles of oil – some of it with hydrocarbons, some with nuclear and some with wind and bioenergy. Crane is using this measure to capture just how much energy comes from each source, as the following table shows:

Source of Energy Shows as Cubic Miles of Oil per Year

Oil 1.06
Coal 0.81
Natural Gas 0.61
Biomass 0.19
Nuclear 0.15
Hydroelectric 0.17
Geothermal <0.01
Wind and Solar <0.005

Table 1: Sources of Energy (2006)

AS the population of the earth grows – it will exceed eight billion by 2025 – so demand for energy will increase. The best estimate we have is that global energy demand will rise from three cubic miles to six cubic miles by 2050 – energy demand is currently rising at a rate of 2.5% per year.

Meeting Future Energy Demands

The question this gives rise to is simple: how will this demand for energy be met?
Crane and his colleagues have explored this question in some depth. They suggest that a cubic mile of oil can be secured by one of the following:

• 52 nuclear plants developed every year to 2050 – each plant currently requires ten years to construct, has a lifespan of forty years, occupies some four square kilometres of land and costs (at current prices) some $5 billion to build. There is also the problem of disposing of hazardous waste and the growing threat of the use of this waste by terrorists. For each cubic mile of oil from this source, we would require 500 new surface uranium mines; 1,000 new underground uranium mines; and 2,280 nuclear reactor operations.

• 32,850 wind turbines built each year for the next fifty years. A large wind turbine requires a location with a reasonably constant and abundant flow of wind, requires some 0.16 km of land and costs around $2m to build. There are concerns about environmental footprints, aviation and damage to bird life.

• 91,250,000 rooftop solar panels developed and installed each year for the next fifty years. A 2.1killowat solar array requires technical skills for installation, needs a supply of sunshine, covers around 14 m2 and costs around $15,000. Such panels present few, if any, environmental problems.

• 104 coal fired power plants developed each year for the next fifty years. A 500 megawatt coal fired power plant occupies about 2 m2 of land, costs around $650 million and will last while the coal continues to be supplied or thirty five to forty years, depending on national regulations. New regulations in some countries – Canada and the UK included – require such plants to capture and store CO2 emitted by the burning of coal. This adds substantial additional costs. Such plants are major contributors to man-made climate change impacts, acid rain and they give rise to significant environmental land remediation issues.

• 4 Three Gorges Dams developed each year for fifty years. The Three Gorges dam is the world’s largest and it is in China – flooding 632 square kilometers, displacing 1.25 million people and costing $30 billion.

It is worth observing here that it took 200 years (1700 to 1900) for coal to replace wood as the world’s primary energy source. It then took almost 100 years (1870 to 1960) for oil to replace coal. And it took 100 years (1900 to 2000) for natural gas to equal coal in energy usage.

It is also more complicated than this. Take coal fired power plants. To increase the use of coal for energy by one cubic mile each year would require 1,300 new surface coal mines, 2,600 underground mines, some 300,000 new trucks and 2,600 more trains (each consisting of 130 coal cars drawn by three 3,500 horsepower trains. Each mine would leave behind some 750,000 tons of excavated materials sitting some fifty feet deep across twenty square miles.

Wind power is also problematic – it is not windy all the time. In fact, win turbines generally operate at 24-30% of their capacity (never look at installed capacity as a measure of the potential of wind-power – take one third of this capacity and see this as the likely output of a wind turbine). This means that, as wind capacity is increased, additional natural gas fired power plants are needed to “back up” the system so that energy supply meets demand or that ways have to be found of storing energy for use when the wind is low. Given that wind farms are distant from the geographic areas of high demand, there is a need for transmission systems which in turn have environmental consequences.

Biomass – producing energy from landfill waste, wood, alcohol fuels, agricultural crops (including crops grown specially to produce energy) – is also seen by many to have great promise. The global potential is estimated to be no more than 0.5 cubic miles (some suggest it could be as a high as 2 cubic miles), but there is a downside. Most of the biomass in use today is wood. Burning wood may not reduce greenhouse gas emissions – in fact, in some situations, burning biomass can produce more greenhouse gasses than the direct use of fossil fuels. Further, growing crops for energy use will significantly reduce the amount of fertile agricultural land available for food production, thius disrupting the food supply system. We have already seen this. When energy prices were high, farmers sold food crops for energy resulting in bread prices and other food prices rising significantly, causing protests in a number of countries.

Given these observations, it seems likely that the world will be dependent on fossil fuels – oil, gas and coal – for some considerable time.

The question then becomes – do we have enough reserves of carbon based fuels to meet demand?

Global Carbon Energy Reserves

According to several different sources, global conventional oil reserves based on current technologies and normative pricing are some 1,400 billion barrels – equivalent to 46 cubic miles of oil. Additional capacity would be found if the oil price was high – additional exploration and enhanced oil recovery occurs once prices exceed $100/barrel. The best estimate available here suggests that these “additional reserves” could amount to 94 cubic miles of oil. At the current rate of use, proven reserves would supply the worlds energy for some forty years, but at a cost. At the height of the oil boom in 2008 when a barrel of oil sold for $120, a cubic mile of oil would cost US$3 trillion – this is before we add the cost of mitigation the consequences of its use.

Most of this conventional oil (a term used to contrast this kind of oil from oil sands oil, which is seen as unconventional) resides in countries with no or limited democracies: Saudi Arabia (259 billion barrels), Iran (126 billion barrels ), Iraq (115 billion barrels), Kuwait (99 billion barrels ), Abu Dhabi (92 billion barrels), Venezuela (77 billion barrels), Russia (60 billion barrels), Libya (39 billion barrels), Nigeria (35 billion barrels), the USA (22 billion barrels) and Canada (4 billion barrels). Canada in fact currently ranks number nine in world oil production, but by 2015 is expected to be in the top five due to the increasing flow of oil from the oil sands.

The North American oil sands provide a substantial opportunity for energy supply. Colorado, Utah and Wyoming hold oil shale reserves estimated to contain 1.2 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of oil, according to the US Department of Energy, half of which is recoverable. Eastern Utah alone holds oil sands reserves estimated at 12 billion to 19 billion barrels. The Canadian oil sands region in Alberta contains recoverable oil reserves conservatively estimated at 175 billion barrels (the industry works on the assumption that there are an additional 125 billion of recoverable barrels in the Alberta oil sands for a total of 300 billion). In total, worldwide, these reserves total 400 cubic miles of oil.

Natural gas reserves are estimated at 42 cubic miles – sixty nine years of supply at current levels of gas consumption. New technologies which enable extraction of gas from shale are significantly adding to the estimates of reserves – an additional 66 cubic miles.

There are also other developments with respect to natural gas – gas hydrates. Gas hydrates represent a very large global reservoir of natural gas and they are estimated to contain more organic carbon than all other known fossil fuel sources combined. They bind immense amounts of methane within sea-floor or Arctic sediments; the breakdown of a unit volume of methane hydrate at a pressure of one atmosphere produces about 160 unit volumes of gas. Gas hydrates exist under large portions of the world's Arctic areas and on deep sea continental slopes in water depths greater than about 600m. All three Canadian continental margins contain gas hydrates. The Mackenzie River delta, in the NWT, contains some of the most concentrated deposits in the world. A number of other countries such as Russia, the United States, India, Japan and China also have substantial marine gas hydrate deposits. The worldwide amount of methane in gas hydrates is considered to contain at least 1x104 gigatons of carbon in a very conservative estimate. This is about twice the amount of carbon held in all fossil fuels on earth. Converting this into our cubic mile of oil measure, there are some 5,000 cubic miles of oil in gas hydrate fields worldwide.

One more observation about oil and gas. In the last few years oil and gas companies have developed a technique known generally as horizontal drilling – rather than drilling straight down, this method drills straight down for a while and then turns and goes sideways. In addition to going sideways, the method also fractures obstacles that get in the way (stubborn rock formations, for example). This combination of actions creates a technology known as horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing. According to the US Department of Energy, this is unleashing the ability of oil and gas companies to extract oil and gas hitherto inaccessible to drilling. One field alone - the Barnett Shale located in the Bend Arch-Fort Worth Basin - may have the largest producible reserves of any onshore natural gas field in the United States. The field is proven to have 2.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (455 square miles of oil), and is generally estimated to contain as much as 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas resources (5,460 square miles of oil). Oil also has been found in lesser quantities, but sufficient (with oil prices above $90 a barrel) to be commercially viable. The use of this technology is changing our picture of the state of oil and gas reserves.

Coal is an abundant resource – there are 120 cubic miles of proven and accessible reserves. It is also estimated that and additional 1,500 cubic miles could be accessed by a combination of price attractiveness and new technology: coal remains one the most significant energy asset on the planet.

This brief summary – believe us, there is a lot more we could say – suggests that carbon based energy will be a substantial part of the way in which energy demands are met worldwide for at least a generation.

Some may be surprised at this observation. They will have read about “peak oil”. This is the idea, which has been around for some considerable time, that our ability to find and extract oil has peaked and that oil supplies are in decline. M. King Hubbert created and first used the models behind peak oil in 1956 to accurately predict that United States oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970. Hubbert initially predicted in 1974 that peak oil would occur in 1995 "if current trends continue." However, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, global oil consumption actually dropped (due mainly to the shift to energy-efficient cars, the shift to electricity and natural gas for heating, and other factors), then rebounded to a lower level of growth in the mid 1980s. Thus oil production did not peak in 1995, and has climbed to more than double the rate initially projected. This underscores the fact that the only reliable way to identify the timing of peak oil will be in retrospect. Indeed, if you read the literature on peak oil, predictions include the possibilities that it has recently occurred, that it will occur shortly, or that a plateau of oil production will sustain supply for up to 100 years. None of these predictions dispute the peaking of oil production, but disagree only on when it will occur. Our observation is that it is not imminent.

The Consequences of Energy Use

Burning carbon based fuels for energy has consequences, not least for the environment and climate. There are three we should review here: climate change, water and land. But before we look at these, it is important to note that all forms of energy use have consequences, as we shall see throughout this book.

Climate Change

Roger Pielke Snr., a well-established scientist who has worked extensively on the climate change file, has suggested that there are basically three core hypothesis at play in the scientific community engaged in work on climate science. These are:

1. The Total Sceptic Position: Human influence on climate variability and change is of minimal importance, and natural causes dominate climate variations and changes on all time scales. In coming decades, the human influence will continue to be minimal. We should therefore not worry about our use of carbon energy sources. It will have little impact on the worlds climate.

2. The Emerging Position: Although the natural causes of climate variations and changes are undoubtedly important, the human influences are significant and involve a diverse range of first- order climate forcings, including, but not limited to, the human input of carbon dioxide (C02) through the use of fossil fuels and intensive agriculture. Most, if not all, of these human influences on regional and global climate will continue to be of concern during the coming decades. We therefore must reduce our use of carbon energy and seek alternative energy forms.

3. The UN’s International Panel on Climate Change Position: Although the natural causes of climate variations and changes are undoubtedly important, the human influences are significant and are dominated by the emissions into the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, the most important of which is C02. The adverse impact of these gases on regional and global climate constitutes the primary climate issue for the coming decades. We therefore must radically reduce our use of carbon energy – some suggest by 80% of higher by 2050 – so as to ensure that the climate does not warm beyond 2 degrees higher than at present.

Most of the peer reviewed scientific literature favours the emerging position over the IPCC position. It is also the case that very little of the literature favours the sceptic position. Scientific analysis therefore needs to take into account and give more serious consideration to the other factors that have a bearing on climate change. These include the role of oceans as “sinks” for CO2, the role of ocean currents, naturally occurring events (earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions), the sun and sun spots, other greenhouse gasses (especially water vapour), the tilt of the earth and so on. All are known to have some impact on climate. Nonetheless, using oil, coal and natural gas will have an impact on climate.

Roger Pielke Jnr, Professor of ¬Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado, in his book the The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell You About Global Warming , shows clearly that he both agrees with this analysis (not surprisingly, since it his father who offers it) but also he adds a key point. In seeking to mitigate the impacts of the manmade component of climate change by reducing the use of CO2 emitting energy sources, there is a need to balance this change with economic growth. He observes that policymakers who find themselves conflicted, are not confused. They are conflicted because they express a desire to increase the costs of energy so as to reduce the impact of carbon energy use on climate. At the same time these same politicians express a desire to lower those costs so as to sustain economic growth. They are not confused, because when such a trade-off is made, it is inevitably made in the direction of sustaining economic growth. This is Pielke’s law rule of climate change: when environmental and economic objectives are placed into opposition with one another in public or political forums, the economic goals win out. In a recent Financial Post article, Pielke said:

“Countries worldwide have expressed a commitment to sustaining economic growth, and these commitments are not going to change any time soon, no matter how much activists, idealists, or dreamers complain to the contrary. People will pay some amount for environmental goals, but only so much before drawing the line. That is just the way it is, regardless of whether economic growth measures what matters most to a country's well-being, and regardless of other metrics that might better capture quality of life” .

This runs counter to the proposition by many climate campaigners, like Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research in the UK., who has argued that a "planned recession" would be necessary in the U.K. to reduce emissions in response to the threat of climate change. In practice, this would mean that "the building of new airports, petrol cars and dirty coal-fired power stations will have to be halted in the U.K. until new technology provides an alternative to burning fossil fuels." The UK provides an interesting case study. in coming years the U.K. faces the prospects of an energy shortage due to the closing both of coal plants (in turn due to laws governing their particulate emissions) and of nuclear power plants (as part of a long-term plan to reduce dependence on nuclear power), leaving few short-term options to meet expected demands for power. Possible measures to increase energy supply include building more gas-fired plants (which risks a greater dependence on Russian gas and all of the accompanying insecurities), building new nuclear plants or putting off closure of existing plants (despite significant public opposition), and building new, cleaner coal plants (despite their carbon footprints).

Of the choice, a U.K. government official explained in an interview in The Economist that in "a decision between building a new coal plant and letting the lights go out -- that's a no-brainer." The Economist interpreted that comment to signify that "something has to give, and it will probably be environmental targets."

In the UK At least 43 gigawatts of totally new electrical generation capacity, equivalent to half of Britain’s current total, will be needed by 2020, as all but one of its nuclear plants are retired and coal-fired power stations closed to meet EU air pollution standards. A staggering £200bn ($322 billion) of investment will be needed not only to maintain energy security against price spikes as North Sea oil and gas resources dwindle and energy imports grow, but also to deliver the largest single contribution to a low-carbon economy. Electricity output may need to double by 2020 as domestic heating, industry and transportation electrify, but there are very different ideas as to how this should be done, and the role of energy efficiency has been neglected. And it’s not only electricity that will be at a premium, the UK’s overall energy needs, including heating, transport and industrial processes are increasingly satisfied through importing oil and gas. There could be rolling black-outs in the UK unless a strategy for energy which balances economic growth and climate change can be found.

Water

After agriculture, the energy sector is the largest consumer of water in the developed world. All systems of energy production use water. In the US alone, the energy sector withdraws some 200 billion gallons of freshwater and seawater each day – close to half of the nations water use. Most of this water is used for cooling and a great deal is returned, once cooled, after use. Only solar power and wind power use virtually no water at all.

Most alternative energies—whether renewables like solar thermal and biofuels, or unconventional sources like oil sands—use more water than conventional fossil fuels . For example, biofuels produced from irrigated corn use 650 times more water than oil-derived gasoline. For soybean-based biofuels, that number is around 1,000 . Fossil fuel plants that attempt to bury their CO2 using carbon sequestration will likely consume 40%–90% more water than those who do not .

The conventional generation of electricity uses water to turn turbines for hydropower or produce steam for thermoelectric power; it also uses cooling water to condense the steam produced by thermoelectric generation. For typical thermoelectric power plants used for energy production in the US, for example, the amount of water which evaporates and cannot be reused or returned to its source is 0.47 gal (1.8 L) of fresh water evaporated per kWh of end-use electricity. Hydroelectric power plants evaporated 18 gal (68 L) of fresh water per kWh consumed by the end user. Combined, these values give an aggregate total for the United States of 2.0 gal/kWh (7.6 L/kWh) .

Extracting oil from the oil sands – a significant energy opportunity – uses a lot of water. Surfaced mined bitumen – the basis for the oil– requires between 2 and 5 barrels of freshwater to produce one barrel of oil. Increasingly, producers are finding ways of recycling the water and reusing it. Some of the water used in mining operations (but not in-situ extraction of bitumen) ends up in what are known as “tailings” ponds – vast lakes of water filled with particles which, until recently, took some forty years to settle. Using synthetic biology, these tailings ponds can now be reclaimed much more rapidly (in months rather than years) and the water in these ponds can be cleaned and reused. Nonetheless, there is a challenge about water use for energy production.

Climate change and water are related and have an impact on energy production. In France in 2006, heat waves caused the temperature of river waters to rise significantly. Nuclear plants that used river water to cool their systems could not use the water since it was too ``hot`` and the plants had to be temporarly shut down . Spain also experienced this same challenge. A biorefinery built in Minnesota has been unable to operate, since insufficient water can be found to support it .

It is clear that energy use and water consumption cannot be seen to be distinct from one another, especially if we wish to push towards so-called ``green`` energy. Access to water and seeking methods to reduce water use and loss in energy production will be a key challenge.

Land Use

Extracting oil, coal, oil from the oil sands or increasing our use of biofuels or wind power all have major impacts on how we use land. Land use and the maintenance of the land together with the species that depend on the land is a key challenge for all engaged in the production of energy.

We saw, when looking at what it would take to replace one cubic mile of oil with other forms of energy, just how tough this will be. Look at pictures of oil sands mining and the tailings ponds mining (but not in-situ) create as a result of their process, and you can see the challenge. Remediation of land use from mining operations for oil sands, gas, oil, coal and other forms of extraction (in Canada the Province of Alberta, for example, has 45,000 disuses oil and gas wells that require remediation) is a major challenge. This is leading to many to seek an increase in protected or “set aside” lands which, though they contain oil or gas, cannot be exploited so as to preserve the land and biodiversity.

Wind turbines also occupy a great deal of land and, increasingly, development of wind-farms is being challenged on environmental grounds. Large industrial sized turbines which are installed together to form a wind farm will have a much larger footprint on the land. Depending on the local terrain, wind projects occupy anywhere from 28 – 83 acres per megawatt, but only 2 – 5% of the project area is needed for turbine foundations, roads or other infrastructure. It is in relation to these larger industrial sized wind turbines and wind farms that land use issues become a significant factor in considering the development of wind projects to generate electricity. Successful wind projects require open space and clear access to the wind. This makes them an ideal choice for agricultural areas, grazing lands and the coastline – thus creating a trade-off between different land use options .

Biofuels also create these trade-offs. Unless energy is being produced from landfills or other waste streams from existing processes, land is required to create the feedstock to fuel the energy production system. So as to reduce the impact on food production and biodiversity, those growing fibre for conversion to energy (crops, trees, grasses etc.) are increasingly making use of retired agricultural land or forests (e.g. pine beetle infected forest areas) rather than use quality agricultural land. However, to reach the volumes required for biofuels to begin to replace fossil fuels, a substantial constraint will be access to land.

The Big Challenges

In this chapter we have built the elements of a jig-saw puzzle. So, looking at all of these pieces of the jig saw, we can summarise the challenge for the future of energy as follows:

1. Demand for energy is likely to at least double between now and 2050 – just forty years away. From the history of energy systems, this is not a lot of time in which to change energy production practices. Oil, natural gas and coal will continue to power our energy systems for some time to come.

2. Supplies of energy are sufficient, especially given new technologies for extraction (e.g. horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing) and new sources of available energy (gas hydrates) as well as unconventional oil (e.g. Canada`s oil sands).

3. So called “green energy” – biomass, solar, wind – will grow but remain a small portion of the total energy system. Caution needs to be exercised as many of these options use more water than conventional systems and some also create more greenhouses gasses than conventional oil and gas.

4. Energy production uses a lot of water and, as climate change has increasing impacts, water will be a major challenge for energy production.

5. Climate change is impacted by human activity (but it is not the only “cause” of climate change). So as to reduce the threats to various nations of the impact of climate change, systematic attempts need to be made both to conserve energy and reduce emissions.

6. Producing sufficient energy to meet demand while managing environmental impacts on water, land and air will pose a challenge. The iron law is that, when faced with a trade-off between energy for economic growth or constraints to support environmental policy, economics wins.

7. Getting to double energy supply without constantly invoking the iron law will be a tough challenge for all.

The balance of this book will explore these issues in more depth, focusing on Canada as a case study. The challenge being addressed here is simple: how can we balance three competing forces – the need for energy, the need for economic development and growth and the need to be effective stewards of the environment. This we refer to as the new 3xE challenge for Canada and the developed world.

Apologies and I am Back.

2010-10-16T05:06:00.002-07:00

Apologies to my followers and occasional readers. I have been somewhat hectic, but will be back from now on.

My new collection of fiction - short stories and poems is just published: Beyond Words Short Fiction and Poems and the other book I developed with Don Simpson - Renaissance Leadership is doing well. You can find both listed at lulu.com or here.

Lynne and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary and we look forward to the birth of our first grandchild this month as well as my 60th birthday.

The Prince of Darkness Sheds Light on the Labour Leadership Race

2010-08-31T06:08:00.000-07:00

Lord Mandelson, who used to be known as the Prince of Darkness, is now seeking to be the Giver of Light. In a series of comments on the coming election for a new leader of the British Labour Party, Mandelson has cautioned the party not to become over enthralled with its history as a socialist party. Noting the mood and character of British politics has changed, he calls for a centre right candidate to win the race and warns of the dangers of moving to the left.

Widely interpreted as support for David Miliband and a caution against his brother Ed Miliband, the front runners in the race to succeed Gordon Brown, it is also a hard knock against the only other serious candidate, Ed Balls, who has moved to the left as the campaign has progressed. Mandelson is positioning himself as the sage of “new” Labour following the publication of his book The Third Man which describes his pivotal role as the “piggy in the middle” between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. He reminds the candidates that Britain needs careful and conservative management of its economy, a cautious social policy and real reform of health care. He dismisses two of the candidates – Andy Burnham and Dianne Abbot – as left and gone.

Tony Blair, Mandelson’s former colleague and occasional tormentor – he sacked Mandelson from the British cabinet twice - has clearly decided to support David Miliband. In several reported remarks, he has echoed Lord Mandelson concerns and has also spoken about intelligence, eloquence and courage – all things he attributed to David Miliband and not Ed Miliband.

Early polls showed Ed Balls winning, as the two Miliband brothers effectively split the vote, but betting at Paddy-Power – the world’s leading novelty online betting company - suggests otherwise. The money is going to the Miliband brothers, with David being favourite at 1:3 and Ed a close second at 2:1. Ed Balls is running a distant third at 50:1 and Diane Abbot is still wandering around the paddock at 125:1.

There is just under a month to go and, as Harold Wilson the former British Prime Minister said, “a week is a long time in politics”. Ed Balls is complaining that watching the Miliband Brothers campaign against each other is like watching Big Brother, while Diane Abbot is simply complaining. Balls laid out a social housing and social welfare program which he knows Britain cannot afford. Diane Abbot has demanded a restoration of welfare services which even her own Labour Government scrapped due to ineffectiveness and cost.

The serious focus is now on David Miliband. It should be. Labour just lost the last election and still have a large number of seats in the House of Commons – 258 seats to the Conservatives 301. The Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition, though starting out strongly, has a long road ahead of difficult decisions and potentially divisive issues. The next leader of the Labour Party could be positioned to win a slight majority if a general election is called over a fragmented coalition in the next three years. While some think that the coalition will last for some time, others take the view that, in the end, British politics are tribal: people like clarity and the coalition will become increasingly “fuzzy” as the days go by.

David Miliband, if elected leader, could find himself fighting an election sooner rather than later. The question is: does he have what it takes to win? He is clearly intellectually able to develop policy and strategy appropriate for the times. He is articulate, if over precise. But he is what the British think of as “a bit of an egg-head” – a policy wonk and a little effete. He comes across more like a University Professor than a passionate, committed and yet serious leader of a party of the people. In contrast, his brother, Ed Miliband, has a little more fire and brimstone, but seems to have less depth. Most critical of all is the question in the mind of the electoral college which will elect the new leader – does David Miliband have courage.

When a number of former cabinet members rebelled against Gordon Brown early in 2010, they did so on the basis of promised support from key members of Brown’s cabinet. One of these was David Miliband, also the last cabinet member to offer support to Brown during this crisis – albeit tepid support with a hint of malice. Earlier in his time as Foreign Secretary, he failed to respond to the plea from a close colleague and political ally, James Purnell, then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, to join him in resigning from government to force Gordon Brown out of the position of Prime Minister on the grounds that he was a failure as a leader and could not win a general election. Purnell has since suggested that Miliband dithered, first agreeing and then reneging, suggesting a lack of decisiveness when the right thing to do conflicts with the strong ambitions and need for recognition which many see David Miliband as having.

We will know at the end of September when the election results are announced at the Labour Party conference in Manchester. All of a sudden, the race is beginning to stir.

Change at the IPCC

2010-08-30T15:28:00.001-07:00

In a report commissioned by the Ministers of the Environment who are party to the United Nations climate change process, significant change is proposed for how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) works.

Three major changes are proposed in a report issued on Monday, 30th August. The first is that the term of the Chairman of the IPCC should be shorter. Currently, the incumbent, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, can serve two six year terms and he was renewed for his second term in 2008. It is suggested that the next Chairman should serve to produce a single report and then pass the leadership role to a new Chairman. What would help is if the incumbent resigned to make way for the reforms, but this looks unlikely to happen. Dr Pachauri has already said he will stay in place to see the reforms through.

The second change also relates to the alleged conflicts of interest between the business interests of the Chairman and his role as the lead authority on climate change on behalf of the UN – the role of Chairman is unpaid. The Daily Telegraph (UK), amongst others, had accused Pachauri of using his connections and office to secure funds for organizations of which he was a Director and could benefit directly. Pachurai has vehemently denied these allegations. The report released this week suggests that the IPCC needs to have a robust and thorough conflict of interest policy that deals with such issues. While the allegations concerning Dr Pachurai are one area of possible conflict of interest, another is the affiliation and allegiance of some of the scientific reviewers with environmental organizations.

The final set of recommendations, and perhaps the most important, concern the way in which the scientific reviews are undertaken – especially focused on what counts as legitimate in terms of appropriate science and analysis. The concern, highlighted by the admitted error over the future of the Himalaya’s (the IPCC said that the ice covering the Himalayas would be gone by 2035, but could adduce no evidence to support this view),was with the use of so called “grey literature” (magazine articles, newsletters, monographs) which were not subject to peer review. The review committee said that the review and analysis procedures needed tightening to minimise errors. It also urged the editors of each section of the periodic assessments to ensure genuine controversies were reflected and alternative views were accounted for. This counters the Climategate emails which appeared to suggest that there was a systematic attempt to minimise doubt and alternative views and to declare a “scientific consensus”, even though one did not exist.

More specifically, where climate change models are used to present a scenario (the IPCC does not make predictions, it does suggest what might happen under certain “what if” assumptions), the review committee recommends that the cautions and risk associated with these models should be given more emphasis and that the “concreteness” of these models be cautioned by the uncertainties of simulations.

The report of the Ministerial assessment group will be considered at the next meeting of Ministers in October in South Korea.

A New Kind of School Trustee

2010-08-26T12:33:00.001-07:00

A group of candidates are running for office as school trustees in Edmonton who intend to change the nature of the trustee role and exercise their role as democratically elected oversees of the work of schools. Mostly under forty – and several just around thirty – it is a different generation from the “established” trustees and those they have hired as Superintendents of Schools. We can expect change.

While they accept their fiduciary responsibilities, they see their role in terms of educational outcomes and the development of educational strategy. They understand that they are not professional educators – they don’t need to be. What they are is important: they are the people’s representatives ensuring that educational processes are working and that they are effective in doing what they say they will do. In others words, they understand that their primary accountability is to the electors and the students in their jurisdiction. They are they to ensure that the schools in their constituency are providing the best and most appropriate education.

Superintendents will not like this. In some school jurisdictions, trustees are not permitted to visit schools, yet they are accountable for them. In others, all the reports they receive concerning education are always “positive” and “glowing” – it is as if drop out and the low rate of transition to post-secondary or our abject failure to provide a world-class education to aboriginal students did not exist. Trustees must be connected to the schools in their wards directly, must understand the strengths and weaknesses of those schools, must understand how they are doing – warts and all.

Older trustees will not like this next generation. They will challenge the model of governance which overly focuses on fiscal issues at the expense of teacher quality, student opportunity and educational achievement. They will see the shift from the “hands off” the real work of schools model of governance to a strategic governance role as a challenge. For example, Michael Janz, who is a candidate in Ward F in Edmonton, wants to establish a Ward Council – “a chance to bring together school councils, community leagues, MLAs, City Councillors and other interested citizens tri-annually to discuss our public education system”, engaging the community in the work of schools. Michael also favours direct engagement of trustees in the process of implementing the new strategy being pursued by Alberta Education – Inspiring Education. He is a big believer in “hands on” trusteeship. Many of the “old guard” will be challenged by this approach.

Superintendents – the CEO’s of the education system in your area – are appointed by Boards and the Minister. They have dual accountability. The Alberta Teachers Association, in a document entitled Courage to Choose – Emerging Trends and Strategic Possibilities for Informed Transformation in Alberta Schools, 2010-2011, are calling for an end to this dualism and are asking that the accountability be simple and clear – Superintendents should be locally accountable for the performance and development of the education services in a particular area. Trustees hire and can dismiss them. Superintendents report to them. This same document also suggests that each school, together with their stakeholder community, develop a school development plan which commits the school to a certain level of educational performance and activities – such a plan could be the work of the school in partnership with a Ward Council.

But they key suggestion from this document is for school boards to stop seeing themselves as trustees for the Government of Alberta funding for their school system, but instead to return to the idea that they are trustees for their local community – the people who elected them – for the work of the schools in that community. They are not answerable to the Minister of Education, but to the electors.

What this new generation of school trustee candidates stands for is a return to democracy. Shocking isn’t it.

Rethinking Schooling in Alberta

2010-08-24T08:33:00.001-07:00

Alberta is about to transform its school system. The Alberta Teachers Association, School Boards and Minister of Education appear aligned on basic intent and will seek to reach a new three year Province wide teacher labour settlement to create the stable base for this work.

At the heart of this transformation will be a new emphasis on learning rather than instruction. That is, reduce the sheer volume of content requirements (there are over 1300 objectives in the Grade 7 curriculum for example) and focus more on the competencies and skills required in each subject to be knowledgeable and able to use that knowledge intelligently. While the Minister talks of this in terms of
“personalizing” learning, the focus is really on shifting the emphasis to knowledge in use and knowledge assessed through competency, rather than time on task.

A second key feature is a rethink of the teaching profession. Under discussion is the idea that teachers, like lawyers and doctors, will be certified by the profession and will be required to undertake continued professional development to sustain that certification. As teachers take on more responsibility for curriculum and competency based assessment and will increasingly be responsible for student assessment, it is critical that they update their skills and enhance their knowledge. A reform of initial teacher education will also be desirable.

A third key feature of the informed transformation relates to the use of technology. In the last decade, Alberta Education has invested close to $2 billion in technology for schools – not all of it smart investment. It is important to look carefully at the role technology can play and what the limits to its use can be – while we need to leverage technology, it is not a substitute for effective learning by problem solving or being taught by a person in real time. While some school boards have interpreted “personalizing” education in terms of making the Provincial curriculum available online so that students can study anytime and anywhere, the real meaning of “personalizing” is that means are found to build a stronger sense of student engagement with their learning. If technology can help, then fine – but the real challenge is to make the learning interesting and challenging.

The final feature of the transformation is to permit schools more independence from the top down control regime which has gradually overwhelmed the system. Not all schools have the same resource base, the same kind of students, the same kind of parental support or the same quality of teachers – not all schools are equal. Schools need room to manoeuvre so as to give the students the best chance of success. Some experiments are already taking place – there are designated flexible high schools, for example – but more is needed.

There will be changes to the School Act - students will be required to stay at school until they are seventeen, adding an additional year; there will be changes to school governance; changes will also be made to the accountability regime – but these are the symbols of change. What really needs to be different is how students think about their education and how engaged they are in pursuing it.

The UK Labour Leadership - How to Watch Paint Dry

2010-08-24T08:32:00.001-07:00

The British Labour Party has debts of £20 million ($33 million) and no imaginable way of securing financial support to pay down this bank loan. The newly ennobled Lord Prescott suggests that bankruptcy is inevitable – this despite donations of over £10 million to help fight the election last May. But the bankruptcy of the Labour Party relates to more than money – they are also short on ideas.

This is surprising. With the departure of Gordon Brown from the front ranks of the Labour Party and an election for a new leader in full swing, one would think that ideas would be in abundance and that the party would be in a period of real renewal. A solid left wing candidate – Diane Abbot – and a feisty moderniser – Ed Balls – should provide the canvas for a robust and thorough debate about the politics of the left and the nature of “new” Labour. But the election, now widely seen as a choice between one of the two Milliband brothers, David and Ed, has been as dull as dishwater and is exciting as watching paint dry. There is no doubt that the Miliband brothers are the most talented Labour figures of their generations – it just was not a very inspiring generation of Labour leaders in the first place. At the moment, it is too close to call between them. The election results will be announced at the Labour Party Conference in Manchester at the end of September.

At stake is not just the nature of left wing politics in Britain, but also the quality of political debate. As the Conservative-Liberal coalition continues to demonstrate its ability to tackle the key issues in innovative ways, disaffecting of the centre-left in both governing parties (especially the Liberals) is strong. The opportunity for Labour is to provide an ideological base for a centre-left analysis of Britain and the opportunity to rethink solutions to the challenges which Briton’s face. These challenges – the out of control welfare state, an unsustainable health care system, an education system which shows few improvements over time and a sluggish economy – all have the appeal of requiring radical solutions while at the same time costing less money.

Labour is currently damaged goods. There is no doubt that Gordon Brown’s inability to govern Britain honestly and effectively will taint any attempt to reposition Labour and Blair’s duplicity in the Iraq conflict continues to harm the reputation of the party. But Briton’s can be very forgiving, especially if the party has fresh thinking and new solutions to offer.

Yet nothing imaginative or creative has appeared in the four months of campaigning already completed. Diane Abbot, clearly playing her status as a left winger, has used rhetoric and polemic to argue a left wing stance on University admission (guaranteed places for the poor), policing (stop racism), the war in Iraq and Afghanistan (exit timetables) and social housing (we need more). But on substance – foreign policy, the economy, the reform of welfare – she is quiet.

Andy Burnham, a centre-left candidate based in Manchester, is campaigning by criticising the recently defeated Labour Government – of which he was an integral part – and offering a few choice policy positions. One of these is a new National Care Service –aimed at helping those in need stay at home through the provision of home based care. On key issues he too is all talk and no detail – a characteristic of all in this leadership race.

Ed Balls, the former Minister of Education, is outspoken and bold in his use of language, even though he appears to have little to say of substance, other than that he disagrees with the Millibands. He now thinks that the war in Iraq was a mistake and that seeking to halve the deficit in four years (the commitment of the Labour government of which Balls was a senior minister) was a “mission impossible”. He is vague on what he would in fact do on the economy.

Ed and David Milliband, while expressing familial affection, are fighting similar but subtly different campaigns. David, the former Foreign Secretary, is committed to a broad ethical foreign policy and a radical rethink of the social policies of Britain – broadly in line with the ideas behind the Big Society, launched by the Prime Minister in July. He has defended the war in Iraq and supports fiscal responsible economic policies which minimize the impact on the most vulnerable. He is thought by many to be the likely winner.

His younger brother Ed, who was Energy and Climate Change Secretary in the last administration, takes a similar view of the challenges and has subtle differences with David on the response to these challenges. More of a common man than David – who is seen by many to be overly analytical and intellectual – Ed has a more passionate way of presenting ideas than his brother and, as the campaign unfolds, has been moving increasingly to the left. He has spoken of a four or five year plan to remodel the British economy by tackling the gap between rich and poor and creating a broader industrial base – focusing on personal and regional disparities. But he too has been short on detail.

By the time the Labour Party conference ends on 30th September, the party will have a new leader and the infighting will begin. Failed candidates will continue to vie for position and former grandees will look for front bench opposition places. Meanwhile, the coalition Government will continue to rule with authority and expediency and get on with the business of reinventing Briton, whether or not the Labour Party has anything new to say, which looks doubtful.

Should We Rethink Alberta?

2010-08-22T07:02:00.000-07:00

The Rethink Alberta campaign is clearly having an impact in the media and is helping organizations raise funds to continue their campaigning against the oil sands and in favour of a specific social and political agenda for the twenty first century. While there is no real impact likely on tourism – a similar campaign to boycott the Maritimes on the basis of seal-hunting actually had so little impact that tourism numbers in the Maritimes have grown significantly – they do bring out the environmentalist in large numbers.

The campaigning is very smart. It uses images and messaging which are emotional and controversial – oil coated ducks. Facts are presented as “truths”, even though they are incomplete and not subject to a systematic review by peers. While some are extracted from peer reviewed materials, they do not reflect a comprehensive review of the total situation – for example, in-situ extraction of bitumen does not use water from the Athabasca River and does not produce tailings ponds, only certain processes do. Pictures of reclaimed tailings ponds, such as those from the Syncrude operation, are not shown.

But this campaign cannot be countered by facts or “better” public relations. The Government of Alberta’s budget of $25-$30 million for public relations to improve the understanding of the oil sands world-wide may change a few minds, but is unlikely to counter the powerful images of oil coated ducks or pelicans or open cast mines. The Government of Alberta cannot win a public relations battle with the funds available to it – the environmental lobby has deeper pockets for this kind of work.
The only response – and this was the strategy adopted by other sectors facing environmental challenges – is action. Alberta oil companies and the Government of Alberta needs to make explicit commitments to changing how the industry operates over the next twenty five years so as to change the debate from its current winner or looser game to a win-win for all concerned.

What does this require? Three things, all of which are already happening. The first is the close cooperation of the leading oil sands companies with the intention of resolving these environmental challenges over time in effective and powerful ways. Some time ago five of the leading companies working in the oil sands created a cooperative network known as the Oil Sands Leadership Initiative (OSLI). They are working together to reduce the environmental footprint of the combined oil sands operations, reduce water use, reduce CO2 emissions and ensure air quality. This group also has teams working to reclaim the tailings ponds. While it is early days, OSLI can already point to some success.

The second action that is needed is for the relationship between government and the oil sands companies to become focused on balancing the economic value of the oil sands with the responsibility the government has, as managers of the resource on our behalf, for environmental stewardship. The Land Use Framework, now in place thanks to the work of the former Minister of Sustainable Resource Development, Ted Morton, has kick started the systematic approach to regional land use and will make explicit the strategy for remediation and reclamation for the oil sands regions. We already can see that this plan will set aside land which can only be used for recreation – some twenty per cent of the land in the Fort McMurray region.

The third action is to accelerate investments in environmental technologies which reduce water use, speed up reclamation and remediation (including of the tailings ponds) and, over time, green the oil so that it can meet the standards set by legislation in the US for well-to-wheel emissions and environmental impacts. Significant investments by Alberta Innovates Energy and Environment, Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation of Alberta, Natural Resources Canada and other organizations are already having an impact.

Related actions are also needed. A new relationships with First Nations Communities based on shared and agreed information and an agreed vision for the future would help. Ready access to reliable, independent information about what is actually happening through the Oil Sands Research and Information Network would help journalists and citizens have access to verified information. Full disclosure of sources of funding for environmental groups campaigning against the oil sands may also create greater transparency.

The best way to counter Rethink Alberta is to demonstrate by deeds that this is exactly what is happening. We are rethinking Alberta – its just that many are unaware that we are doing so, or that they are more interested in campaigning than actually making a difference.

What a Difference a Year Makes - Environmentalism in 2010

2010-05-28T10:57:00.001-07:00

What a difference a year makes. This time last year the environmental movement was gearing up for a major breakthrough at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit. With a combination of “doom and gloom” soothsayers – Ban ki Moon, Al Gore, Prince Charles, James Hansen, David Suzuki – and optimistic negotiators, it was clear that Copenhagen was being positioned as “the last chance” we had to save the planet but there was optimism that we might just do it. We know what happened. Polluters couldn’t agree with the small islands and the developing world and the negotiations fell apart, with a compromise “lets look as if we might save the planet” deal being signed off by a few countries at the end of a tough ten days of negotiation.

Since then the environmental movement appears to have gone through a period of loss – grieving the loss of an ideal, finding a new reality in the prospect of additional talks in 2010 culminating in a new global climate change negotiation in Brazil in December, and then realizing that the game is up. There will not be a meaningful commitment to climate change mitigation which involves all of the leading polluters, especially the US, China, India and Canada. What is more, the general public in Canada, the US and Britain are all signalling that climate change is less of a priority for them now as it was five years ago.

Just as the language has gone through significant change – from “global warming” through “climate change” and “climate catastrophe” to the “climate challenge” – so now the environmental movement is going through a change. According to The Guardian (UK), “the economic case for global action to stop the destruction of the natural world is even more powerful than the argument for tackling climate change, a major report for the United Nations will declare this summer” – a fact reinforced by the psychological, social and economic impacts of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

One reason for this shift is money. Groups such as Conservation International (CI) and the Nature Conservancy (TNC) are among the most trusted environmental "brands" in the world, pledged to protect and defend nature. Yet many of the green organisations meant to be leading the fight are busy securing funds from those who are also destroying the environmental through mining and exploration. Sierra Club – the biggest green group in the US – was approached in 2008 by the makers of Clorox bleach, who said that if the club endorsed their new range of "green" household cleaners, they would give it a percentage of the sales. The club's Corporate Accountability Committee said the deal created a blatant conflict of interest – but took it anyway. Money talks. Right now the money is saying that biodiversity and environmental impacts of pollution, deforestation, land use changes and other matters are more important than climate change.

A second reason is public opinion. The public are disaffected by all the talk about the need for a response to climate change and both the lack of action and the costs of the actions that need to be taken. In the UK, where energy rationing over the next decade is a real possibility due to the now defeated governments dithering on environmental policy, many are now balking at the rising costs of energy and the ugliness of the countryside blighted by wind turbines. In the US, public support for action on climate change is down from 46% of the population to 36% in just one year. Environmental groups no longer enjoy the wide support of the people when they focus on climate change.

A third reason is political reality. Climate change as a policy strategy in the US and Canada is stuck and likely to be so for some time. The US Senate has the Kerry-Lieberman bill to debate, but it is unlikely to pass. Canada has indicated it will follow the US lead to create a single north American strategy, so Canada is also unlikely to do anything until the US passes appropriate legislation. However, major changes are taking place with respect to conservation, water, land use and air quality on both side of the US-Canada divide and serious attention to conservation and clean-up can be expected on both sides of the border following the BP spill. Environmental groups are already gearing up to lobby on these issues, dusting off old policies and approaches from the early 1990’s. Both the US and Canada are more likely to enact legislation on these issues than on transformative changes required to “stop” climate change.

The final reason that the environmental groups are shifting ground is that the science of climate change remains problematic. While some would argue that the core science demonstrating that the climate is changing and that this is due largely to the actions of people remains unchanged, the sceptics have gained sufficient ground over the last year to plant large trees of doubt. Worse, data from real world observations (as opposed to data from climate change models) provide opportunities for varying interpretations of the current state of the planet. The science is becoming a tough sell.

For all these reasons, the environmentalist will now focus more and more on environmental degradation and clean-up than on climate change – deforestation, water and land use will be the new focus for their work. Not a bad thing either.

Making Green Oil Happen

2010-05-18T02:59:00.001-07:00

Alberta’s oil sands are the world’s largest energy project, with $200 billion in funds committed from the world’s leading oil producers, including BP, ExxonMobil and Shell. The lifetime value of the oil locked in the bitumen around Fort McMurray is $17.5 trillion. The companies currently produce 1.3 million barrels a day and their strategic intent is to triple this production over the next decade.

A recent report, written by Ceres - a coalition of investors, environmental groups and public interest groups working with companies to address sustainability challenges such as climate change – and widely publicized around the world, suggests that the oil sands risk assessment is such that the potential profitable of the oil extracted from the oil sands will decline over time unless the environmental issues associated with its extraction are addressed. These issues include increasing C02 emissions, water use, tailings ponds, land reclamation, biodiversity, the state of the Athabasca river and its watershed and biodiversity impacts.

One key issue, dramatized by the death of over 1,500 ducks, is the tailing ponds – already so large that they cover an area equivalent to Washington DC (US) and require the world’s second largest damn to prevent leakage into the water system. The Government of Alberta, which issued Directive 74, is now requiring the oil companies to speed up their restoration of the tailings ponds and solve this problem once and for all. A related problem is water. It takes approximately twelve barrels of water to extract one barrel of oil, but eight of these barrels of water can be recycled in the process, leaving four to be “lost” to production or become part of the tailings ponds. If the current use continues to grow at the current rate, then the oil sands companies could be at the limit of their water quota’s by 2014, causing production to be delayed, slowed or postponed. These represent real financial risks to the industry, but also call upon the managers of the resource (the Government of Alberta) to act on behalf of the owners of the resource (the people of Alberta) to engage in effective stewardship.

But what should be done? What does a greening of the oil sands and a mitigation of these real industry risks look like?

The first step is to put a realistic price on CO2 emissions and provide for a trading scheme which will permit emitters to buy time while they find appropriate technological solutions to the emissions challenge. When the industry came together two years ago to look at the value chain for oil from the oil sands, it was clear that this price needs to be set at around $40 - $70 a tonne of CO2, which will be enough of a penalty to drive innovation. If CO2 is allowed simply to float on the market like any other commodity, it could sell for below the current Alberta penalty price of $15 a tonne (it has been as low as $13 on the European CTS market).

The second step is to invest heavily in research and development on oil sands technologies which will green the oil sands. The Government of Alberta might want to look at recreating AOSTRA – a public private R&D partnership which had access to significant public:private funds so that key challenges in the sector could be overcome. Its time for the industry and government to enter into a real partnership to leapfrog past the current “tit for tat” politics of green energy and get to grips with the problem in a serious way. A $1 billion fund for R&D against a clear plan of action would send a powerful signal to firms, investors and the public that we are serious about green oil.

As part of this R&D work, the Government of Alberta should create an X Prize (called the Alberta Challenge) to see if somewhere in the world there is a method for extracting oil from bitumen in a way that halves water use. The X Prize is a method of setting a real issue in front of the world, creating specifications for the solution and standing back waiting for solutions to emerge. A prize of $25 million would be a small price to pay for a new approach to extraction and this approach has produced results in the past.

The third step is to use the power of regulation to stimulate development. Shell has asked for this and many other companies are making the point that they require tough Government regulations so that they can legitimately expend investors capital on meeting these regulatory requirements. Directive 74, the land use framework, Water for Life strategy and other measures are all steps in the right direction, but much more needs to be done to demonstrate that the Government is on top of its stewardship responsibilities.

The final step involves transparency – publishing performance data on an independent website, such as that being developed by the Oil Sands Research and Information Network (OSRIN) at the University of Alberta. Seeing what each mining site is doing to reduce CO2 emissions, water use, improving air quality, land restoration, tailings and biodiversity would be an important part of any strategy to green the oil sands.

Until we demonstrate to the world that Alberta is leapfrogging past the current issues and challenges and creating a new industry – how to make dirty oil green – then we will continue to be challenged in the courts, legislatures, investor community and shareholder groups around the world. The “green” issue will not go away – in fact, it is a massive opportunity to diversify the Alberta economy and we should be really pushing the managers of our resource to make green oil happen now.

A Green Future for Canada?

2010-05-18T02:25:00.001-07:00

Britain’s continuing challenge to supply energy to its people over the coming twenty five years provides an interesting backcloth to the debates about the environment, energy and climate change.

Here is the challenge: energy demand in Britain will soon outstrip energy supply. There are several reasons for this, but one is that several coal fired power plants cannot meet CO2 emissions target and remain profitable, so they will close. Another is that, for ideological reasons, the Government of Britain has not invested in nuclear energy but instead placed most of its bets on wind power and hydro power, neither of which can come on stream fast enough with sufficient capacity to meet demand. In 2008, the British Government policy was to ensure that renewable energy accounted for 38% of energy supplies by 2020. At the current rates of construction and development, this target cannot be achieved. Going green and carbon free will lead to energy supply challenges in the near future. If the new British government does as it says it will do, that is place a floor price on CO2 emissions trading certificates of £35, then the energy consumers of Britain will pay considerably more for an unreliable energy supply than they do now and this too will reduce energy supply as more coal fired power stations will become unprofitable.

This takes us then to the strategy being proposed in the Kerry-Lieberman climate change bill, which combines “cap and trade” with “pork barrel spending”, at least according to Investors Business Daily – an investor trade magazine. The bill now before the Senate proposed a $7 billion CO2 tax to improve transport infrastructure and efficiency and $2 billion a year in public spending on carbon capture and storage and a systematic approach to carbon trading with the aim of reducing emissions by 85% on 2005 levels by 2050 (the US is already 10% below the 2005 level due to the recession and other measures). The program’s cap starts in 2013 for the electricity and transportation sectors, which together constitute an estimated 66 percent of total domestic emissions. The industrial sector joins in 2016, bringing the total up to almost 85 percent. The remaining 15 percent of U.S. emissions are treated separately from the cap-and-trade program with a range of targeted policies and regulations.

The global temperature “savings” of the Kerry-Lieberman bill is astoundingly small—0.043°C (0.077°F) by 2050 and 0.111°C (0.200°F) by 2100. In other words, by century’s end, reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 83% will only result in global temperatures being one-fifth of one degree Fahrenheit less than they would otherwise be. That is a scientifically meaningless reduction.

The costs of this will be higher energy and transport costs and challenges to meet growing demand. However, the US is confident that its energy supplies – partly driven by the low cost of shale gas and the ability to secure low cost oil from offshore and Canada – will meet its energy needs to 2025.

The Kerry-Lieberman bill is not likely to pass the Senate anytime soon. Many see it as already dead in the water, since it does not have the support of the Republicans in the Senate. More importantly, its provisions for offshore drilling (including environmental conditions and responsibilities) are now in doubt, given the offshore oil challenges now being faced by BP off the coast of Louisiana.

In Canada, the commitment is to match the US provisions whenever these emerge. The principle here is that there should be a single set of standards and policies for the whole of North America, rather than a patchwork quilt of local provisions (State by State, Province by Province, country by country) – a kind of NAFTA Energy and Environment policy. While many criticize this, the argument is economic – why create competitive disadvantage for Canada with the US?

Environmental policies cannot be separated from policies for economic and community development. In Canada, there is a need to strengthen environmental stewardship in anticipation of eventual US actions – regulations governing tailings ponds, land use and restoration, air quality and water quality as well as sustaining biodiversity could all be introduced pending the joint Canada-US strategy on emissions.

As these conversations take place, some scientists are now suggesting that we prepare for global cooling. Professor Don Easterbrook of Western Washington University has suggested that three scenarios are emerging, based on known patterns of climate and current temperature data for North America. These are: (1) global cooling similar to the global cooling of 1945 to 1977, (2) global cooling similar to the cool period from 1880 to 1915, and (3) global cooling similar to the Dalton Minimum from 1790 to 1820. He is placing his bets on the second of these scenarios, but suggests that all of these options present a worse case than any of the implications of the global warming view of the climate.

Whether he is right or not, it is clear that action on climate change is not likely to be quickly forthcoming. The UN process is stalled and the actions in the US and Canada are awaiting the right political climate for a Senate decision. The science is still being challenged and the arguments about appropriate actions are taking second place to recession and austerity issues faced by many European countries and other jurisdictions around the world.

Alberta could chose to lead by focusing on greening the oil sands and ensuring that it shifts its reputation from being a producer of “dirty oil” to being a leader in “green oil”. It would be a challenge, but it would position Alberta as a leading jurisdiction with a new view of stewardship for its future.

The End of New Labour

2010-05-18T02:22:00.001-07:00

When the monarch dies, the cry goes up “The King is Dead, Long Live the King!”. At Labour Party headquarters in Britain the new cry appears to be “New Labour is Dead, Long Live the Labour Party!”.

With Gordon Brown’s resignation, the race is on to succeed him as Leader of the Labour Party and the first two into the race – Ed and David Milliband – have made it clear that they wish to return to the heart and soul of the party and have done with the idea of “new” Labour. Ed Balls, who is likely to announce his candidacy shortly has also said that this will be a battle about returning to the true roots of the party and to fight the next election from a progressive position, not as “red Tories” (the name given to left of centre conservatives). John Cruddas, who famously resigned from the Brown cabinet in the hope of triggering a rebellion in 2009, has also indicated that the challenge will be to bring Labour back to square one and rebuild the party as a party of the progressive left, though he has ruled himself out of the race.

The fact that some key figures – Harriet Harman, Alan Johnson, Jack Straw – who have been associated for a considerable time with the “new” Labour “brand” have made clear that they will not be candidates, also indicates that the “new” Labour motif is to be sidestepped in favour of a more progressive, left of centre stance.

There are two major reasons for this shift of thinking within the Labour party. The first and most obvious is arithmetic: Labour was roundly rejected in the recent general election by the people. Though it did better than some expected, it was Labour’s worse showing in terms of popular vote for eighty years. The party was not humiliated, but roundly defeated and will now spend at least five years if not a decade in opposition.

Second, there is clear evidence that throwing money at problems and setting centrally determined targets for health, education and social programs – state centralism – does not work. The history of new Labour will be written sometime in the future. It will focus on how Blair and Brown sought to “control” the levers of the State through money, targets, quango’s and inspection and how this failed to create any major improvements in health, education and other fields. What this did do was turn Britain from a nation of shopkeepers and entrepreneurs into a nation of bookkeepers and idea inhibitors who work for the public sector. Wages in the public sector are 7-9% higher than in the private sector and Britain is primarily a public sector economy with some entrepreneurial activity.

The next Labour leader needs to explain how Labour will transform communities and public organizations in such a way that they are once again effective means of securing fairness, meritocracy and empowerment. They will need to show how their thinking differs from that of the progressive arm of the Conservative party who appear to be pursuing policies closer to “old” Labour than Labour itself. They also have to explain how Labour will return pride, dignity and respect to communities, schools, health care and other public sector services. It is a tall order.

What we will witness in the Labour Party’s leadership struggle between now and the start of the party conference in September is a struggle for the ideological grounding of the party. The Milliband brothers are likely to provide the conversations, debates and writing that will articulate this ideology and lead to significant policy shifts – John Cruddas could also provide ballast to thinking, even though he will not be a candidate. Ed Balls, in contrast, is a lightweight thinker with heavyweight credentials – an enforcer and proclaimer rather than a thinker and imaginer. It will be an interesting time, but not the best of times for Labour.

Coalition Challenges

2010-05-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

Stories are beginning to emerge of profligate spending decisions made in the dying days of the British Labour Government. A committee of inquiry, a sub committee of cabinet, will look at spending decisions made in the final twelve months of the Labour party regime and examine their rationale. It is part of the new Lib-Con Government’s systematic attempt to reduce spending. It is the kind of thing one expects to hear from any new Government. They will also start halting decisions in progress – issuing identity cards for UK citizens, building a third runway at Heathrow, spending significant amounts of unproven technology.

So far so good. The new coalition has survived its first week with only one major rebellion. It relates to the decision, made by Cameron and embodied in the Lib-Con pact, for a fixed term parliament. A significant number of MP’s are concerned that a weak Government could survive repeated votes of no-confidence until such time as the Commons could muster a 55% majority for dissolution. The tradition has been that a vote of non-confidence on a finance related bill or a bill said by Government to be a critical bill for its agenda would lead to an election. Cameron is likely to ensure that the legislation for a fixed term enables this tradition to continue.

But the coalition has just found out where the washrooms are and are discovering for the first time what their colleagues are really thinking – the real work has yet to begin.

Three big issues confront the new Government. The first is the issue of deficits and debt. The British government is spending much more than it brings in tax and other revenues. The deficit sits at £163 billion and is likely to rise, once the final figures are in at the end of the year, to £178 billion – 12.4% of GDP. The target is to have no more than 3% of government spending funded by borrowing. Total UK government debt in the UK is 68.6% of GDP – higher than the debts of Ireland and Spain, but much lower than those of Greece (113%) and Italy (115%). Britain’s inflation rate, targeted to be no more than 2% in any year, is currently running at an annual rate of 3.4% - Britain is in serious economic peril.

To achieve the EU target of no more than 3% of GDP deficits, massive cuts in social and other programs are needed – in the order of £20 billion a year of new cuts for each of the next ten years. Targets include major capital projects (especially health care and defence), social benefits, pension allowances and public sector pay. Public sector pay is running ahead of private sector pay in a significant way – the average hourly wage paid to public sector workers is 7% higher than that in the private sector and bonuses are paid against criteria which are so soft that almost all eligible for performance bonuses get them. Pay cuts, pay freezes and pay restraints of other kinds are clearly on the cards.

The Government has ruled out, at least for now, significant tax rises. Most commentators agree, however, that a rise in sales tax (known in Canada as GST and in the UK as VAT) from its current 17% to 20% or higher (some suggest as high as 25%) is certain at some point in the near future. Other tax changes are also likely, including taxes on inheritance. The banks are also likely to be taxed on profits.

The second challenge facing the Government is a simple one. Britain does not have a sufficiently robust power supply to fuel its future. With both nuclear and coal fire power stations being decommissioned due to age, it is possible that Britain will face rolling energy black outs within the next ten to fifteen years unless significant new capacity is added. The Labour Government invested heavily in wind power and hydro power as a response to this challenge and avoided the tough decisions it needed to make on nuclear. It will fall to this coalition government to make the commitment to nuclear – the only way in which Britain’s real energy demands can be met. The coalition has made clear it will not directly subsidize the nuclear sector. It will, however, do so indirectly. The Government indicated last week that it intends to set a “floor” price for CO2 certificates needed for carbon trading – the cost of which is borne by consumers. The suggested floor price is £35 – some £23 higher than the lowest price carbon trades have reached in the last twelve months. Since nuclear developers do not have to buy carbon credits – nuclear is CO2 free – it will create a cost advantage for nuclear which should encourage and enable investors. One challenge – the new Energy and Climate Change Minister is a long time opponent of nuclear power.

The third challenge is to change the statist culture of Britain. Since Labour came to power in 1997, the role of the private sector in the British economy has declined as the role of the public sector has expanded. Over 50% of the UK’s GDP is derived from public sector activity, up from 39% in 2001 and 29% when Labour took office. Parts of the UK have become so dependent on public spending that it can crowd out private enterprise in these regions and countries. It is partly a chicken and egg situation - public spending in these regions is high because they are doing less well economically, but on the other hand a high public spending share can make a revival of the private sector difficult to achieve. And the latest data suggests that this problem is getting worse. What this has done is create a culture of dependency and a centralist, statist and bureaucratic nation. A key challenge for the coalition government is to rekindle entrepreneurship, stimulate local accountability and reduce the power of the state. It’s a tough challenge.

These three challenges alone, never mind challenges over foreign policy – Britain’s place in Europe, the military role in a modern world and defence spending – and political reform, will test the coalition to the full.

The coalition is full of young people, mainly male, with no experience of government. Some old hands – Ken Clark (Conservative – Justice Secretary), William Hague (Conservative – Foreign Secretary) and Vince Cable (Liberal – Business Secretary) – will be called upon to provide sage counsel when things get tough. A lot will depend on the relationship between David Cameron and Nick Clegg and their ability to see past the interests of party and look at the interests of the country. Right now they appear convinced that they can work their way through the challenges ahead. We will see.

This is all new to most of the electorate of Britain, many of whom have no real recollection of earlier coalition or supply and support arrangements of the past. There is a strong level of naiveté about what the Government is facing and even less of an understanding of just how tough the next decade in Britain will be. The word “austerity” is starting to be used, but this hardly conveys the level of severity associated with what this Government will have to do. The coalition will need to declare war on debts and deficits.

It is far too soon to tell if this coalition will last for five years, but it will certainly last until next year. The Throne Speech on 25th May and the first coalition budget in June will pass comfortably, but it’s the spending review and subsequent budget that will challenge the temperaments of all concerned. Tensions will be continuous, but the deep cuts and energy policy will likely be the source of fractious policy issues between the coalition partners. An election in 2011 is still a high probability.

All Aboard the Coalition Express

2010-05-14T22:31:00.001-07:00

(Written on 11th May)

In a dramatic evening, Gordon Brown resigned as British Prime Minister and, with immediate effect, as Leader of the Labour Party. He is returning to private life after a lifetime of service to the Labour Party. Harriet Harman will succeed him as Acting Leader of the Labour Party.

David Cameron became the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812. He is to lead a full coalition Government with the Liberal Democrats whose leader, Nick Clegg, becomes Deputy Prime Minister. The two parties have agreed to a set of policy initiatives and to a five year term. Four other cabinet positions will also go to the Liberal Democrats. George Osborne (Conservative) becomes Chancellor – he will introduce an emergency budget within one month. William Hague (Conservative) becomes Foreign Secretary and Vince Cable (Liberal) becomes Business Secretary, replacing Lord Mandelson.

The transfer of power took less than an hour and a half, including the time taken for Gordon Brown and David Cameron to visit with the Queen and kiss hands.

These are radical developments for Britain, which has not had a coalition government of substance since the second world war. Both Cameron and Clegg are positioning this as a new form of government, part of the change they wish to see in British politics. Reform of the voting system may make such arrangements more permanent.

The new Government has a lot to do. Britain has a structural deficit of £119 billion and an actual deficit of £163 billion – 11% of GDP. The famous Brown formulae targeted deficits at no more than 4% of GDP. The agreed policy program sees no significant tax changes or increases, but substantial cuts in public service. It also sees tougher bank regulation, with more power to the Bank of England, and a bank windfall charge.

We will see how long this coalition actually lasts. On paper, there is an agreement to deal with immediate issues and core policy issues, but five years is a long time. All appear committed to making this work, but there is no experience or history of peacetime coalitions between opposing parties working in Britain. The two leaders, who have very similar backgrounds, may get on well together, but the draconian policies they will have to pursue to rebalance Britain’s economy and roll back the nanny state are so substantial that tensions within and between the parties will emerge quickly. It will be a real test of leadership to hold the coalition together and sustain the support of the political parties who have enjoined.

Last Thursday the people spoke and the politicians have now answered. Let us hope the answer is the response the people expected.

Deal or No Deal

2010-05-14T22:30:00.000-07:00

(Written on 11th May - Two Hours Before the Change of Government)

It is now a five full days since the British election and no new British Government has emerged. While it is looking possible that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats could secure agreement at a senior level between their two parties, it is not at all certain that the political parties themselves will agree to the coalition that emerges. Meetings later today with the respective parties may raise new roadblocks to the emerging deal and show just how far out in front of their parties their leaders are.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has also been in meetings with Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, countering the offers being made by the Conservatives and suggesting that, if the process breaks down, then Labour would be willing to enter into discussions with the Liberal Democrats. In particular, Brown has been stressing his willingness to quickly introduce legislation for a referendum on proportional representation – a key issue for the Liberals. He has also resigned as leader of the Labour Party effective after the Party Conference in September so as to remove himself as an obstacle to any workable agreement. (Importantly, he has not resigned as Prime Minister).

The problem with a Lib-Lab pact is arithmetic. Between the two they do not have an overall majority and need the support of some independents and others to enable a stable government to take place. The Scottish Nationalists and the SDLP of Northern Ireland both see this as an opportunity to secure both transfers of powers and new cash investments in exchange for their offers of support. The Scottish Nationalists will only act in the interest of Scotland and for them its about further aspects of independence.

The problems with a Con-Lib pact are more complex. First, David Cameron has been adverse to major electoral reform. His initial offer was for an all party process to define the options – hardly exciting to the Liberals, who have been party to such conversations since 1922. It is now clear that Cameron is offering a referendum, but has indicated his party would oppose any change in the electoral system. Second, there are real identity issues for the Liberals. The Conservatives are seeking to make large and immediate cuts in public spending as means of lowering deficits and debts. Such moves are popular, until their full impact begins to be felt. The Liberals, as coalition partners, will be blamed for not moderating (or worse, fully supporting) the cuts and will suffer electorally. Finally, engineering the Liberal and Conservative parties to constantly vote with an agreed agenda will be a constant challenge for both leaders – it may, in fact, become their preoccupation. Rather than a clear majority (the coalition would, in theory, have over 370 votes when the threshold required for a successful vote is 326), each vote would see defectors on both sides.
Clegg is playing both sides and did so, for a time at least, secretly thus giving the lie to his insistence that transparency is a key value in politics. Also, his behavior raises questions about whether his motives are as direct as they once appeared. Is he seeking the best for the Liberals in terms of political reform – which all of his acolytes stress is the key issue – when Rome is in fact burning. As Conservative acolytes are continuously saying, very few of the British people see electoral reform and reform of the Lords and other aspects of the constitution as being critical when the economy is so fragile.

The elephant is the room in these discussions is the economy. The key difference between the Conservatives on the one hand and the Lib-Labs on the other is the speed at which they think the deficit should be tackled. The very able finance critic for the Liberals, Vince Cable, sees the real immediate challenge to be continuing to support the green shoots of recovery from recession – acting too quickly to cut the deficit and tackle Britains very serious excessive public borrowing and spending may harm this recovery. He wants to wait at least a year before getting serious about cuts. Gordon Brown and his Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling share this view and most of the left of the Labour Party still think it possible to recovery from recession and save a lot of the public services currently slated for cuts – after all, most of them were put in place by Labour since 1997.

The Conservatives take a very different view. They want serious and deep cuts now so as to return confidence to the markets, secure new investment and create a reenergized economy which will spur growth. Reducing government and increasing the focus on the private sector is what they see as essential in returning Britain to being a country which lives off its wits and skills rather than off the teat of taxes and public sector borrowing. Over half of the UK’s GDP is derived from Government activity (its 65% in Wales and 62% in Scotland).

It is these very different philosophies, coupled with the fracas over electoral reform, which is the heart of the Liberal dilemma. Who should they get in bed with?

There are another set of considerations, linked to a particular view of democracy. The British people gave the Conservative party the largest share of the vote and the largest number of seats. If the Lib:Lab pact emerges and the Labour party is kept in power then it looks like the party that had the lowest share of the votes, colluding with parties that hardly anyone could vote for, will be seen to be keeping in power the party that seventy two per cent of the people did not want to Govern – Labour. It will be a gift for the Conservatives. They will use the Lib:Lab pact as a vehicle for demonstrating that, while on the one hand Nick Clegg seems most concerned about democracy, in reality all he is interested in is raw power.

The second set of considerations for Clegg is that he will be doing a deal with a party without a known leader. Gordon Brown, throwing the dice one last time, has resigned as party leader after one of the worst showings for the Labour Party in eighty years. While there are several candidates to replace him – Alan Johnson, Ed Balls, Ed Milliband, David Milliband, Jack Straw to name just a few – the Prime Minister has considerable personal power, whatever deal with the Liberals say. One power he has, unless this is changed by the deal itself, is when to call an election. Another is to make key appointments. Would you enter a long term political relationship with Mr X?

We should known the outcome of all of this very soon – possibly as this “goes to the web”. What is obvious to those of us with memories is that, whatever the deal says in writing, there will be another election in Britain sooner rather than later. Some pundits are suggesting November, but the more common assumption is that it will be this time next year when the coalition or agreement falls apart. What will be critical in that election is the judgment of the people on the Liberals and their current behavior as well as the state of the economy. Its back to the economy and trust.

Hung Parliament

2010-05-14T22:27:00.000-07:00

(written on 7th May)

The British have voted in what some are now calling the Mick Jagger election – no one| can get satisfaction. No single party has secured a sufficient number of seats to govern with a majority. It is now clear, with all but one constituency still to declare (delayed due to the death of a candidate), that it will be a hung parliament, with the Conservatives having the largest number of seats (estimated to be 307 when all results are declared), with the Labour Party coming second and the Liberals a disappointing third. The Conservatives clearly won more of the popular vote and both Liberals and Labour lost a considerable number of seats – indeed it is a real defeat for Labour, the worst collapse in over eighty years.

The results contain a number of surprises. Several former cabinet members have lost their seats. The Liberals failed to secure the momentum which many thought would lead them to be either the second largest party or a breakthrough in terms of the total number of seats – they are actually worse off than before the election in terms of representation. In fact, the Liberals are down and some well known Liberal figures are no longer sitting members of parliament.

What happens now will be this. After a period of reflection during Friday, caused by the pending thirty or so seats due to be declared during the day, Gordon Brown as sitting Prime Minister will wait to see how negotiations between Nick Clegg and David Cameron go, since Cameron has offered a wide ranging alliance with the Liberals for a national government. Horse trading at the level of policy, position and program is already underway between Clegg and Cameron, with Cameron making the running. Brown is playing a wait and see game, but is likely to leave office by Tuesday at the latest.

There will be a concern to have a clear decision before the markets open on Monday. The last thing any Government needs is a run on sterling. However, this requires some real clarity on the part of all leaders and a sense of dignity coupled with foresight to ensure a smooth transition.

The talk, at least amongst the political chattering classes, is of coalition, with some key liberals occupying cabinet positions. The more likely decision, according to Conservative insiders, is for Cameron to govern as a minority, using Stephen Harper’s Canadian government as a model. While this will be his initial instinct, it means that a large part of his strategy would be sacrificed due to his inability to secure the support of the other parties for drastic cuts to public service and significant changes to the education and health systems. The art of the possible will replace the science of the necessary. Cameron will be working hard to craft an agenda which will keep him in power for at least two years if not longer – he will need the support of a cross section of the House to make this possible.

What will be different is that the Conservatives and Liberals will agree a program that they will both support for the medium to long term – scrapping identity cards, school reform, action of the economy, changes in the House of Lords and electoral system, some changes in the tax structure and a commitment to working towards a carbon free economy. There are many areas of policy where the two parties agree, but differences are substantial – especially over Europe, the need for a replacement for Trident missiles and the speed at which they need to act on the economy.
Until Cameron can secure an arrangement with Clegg, Brown remains Prime Minister and the cabinet is intact. Brown has made an offer to Clegg that, if talks with Cameron collapse, he will be willing to seek to make arrangements with the Liberal Democratic leader. Lord Mandelson, formerly known as the Prince of Darkness and now presented as the sage of the Labour Party, suggested this morning that the electorate had voted for change. Change in how Britain is governed and a change in who governs. We will see. What is clear is that the situation is unclear until such time as Cameron is called to the Palace. It will be a busy week-end for all concerned.

At the time of writing, with all but one result declared, the Conservatives have secured 306 seats (gaining 97), Labour 258 (down 91), Liberals 55 (down 5). The Conservatives secured 36% of the popular vote, Labour 29% and Liberals 23% - the Liberals being the biggest looser in this election, since they expected to beat Labour in the popular vote. An overall majority would require 326 seats.

A Conservative Minority in the UK

2010-05-04T08:08:00.002-07:00

With just two days of campaigning left in the British election, David Cameron has what is known as “momentum”. Polling at 35% against 28% for Labour and Liberals, the Conservative leader is increasingly looking like a winner. However, this lead is insufficient to give him an overall majority of the parties in the election. He needs 326 seats and at 35% he would secure less than 315.

More importantly, the polls are suggesting that almost half of those polled may yet change their minds at the ballot box, switching their vote at the last minute. It is a cliff hanger.

Gordon Brown is fighting back. In a powerful and emotional speech yesterday, he vowed to spend his life fighting inequality and injustice. Triggered by an emotional story from a teenager at a conference of social activists he found his passion and spoke from the heart. Nick Clegg, the Liberal leader, continues to have appeal as a person, but now that many have started to look at the Liberal policy platform, he seems stuck – they like him, but not what he plans to do.

Cameron has laid out what the Conservatives would do in the first six months in office. Repealing a large number of Labour’s more recent legislation, introducing a new budget with significant cuts to public service, starting to close down a number of quasi government agencies and cutting the pay of cabinet Ministers are all part of the package. Early on they will also begin their major reform of the education system, focusing on reducing bureaucracy, enabling cooperatives to run schools within the public school system (Charter schools run by parents, teachers and others) and changing the role of government. While some have criticized Cameron for making clear his plan – Clegg called it measuring the curtains for Downing Street – the clarity of the plan is attracting support.

It is unlikely that the result of the election will be known on Friday morning, as has been the case for the last several elections. In fact, it could take some time for the dust to settle and the outcome to come clear. If the vote is not decisive, then horse trading between the parties will begin. Gordon Brown will be asked by the Queen if he is able to form a Government and will likely try and fail, unless he also steps down as Prime Minister to enable a deal with the Liberals. If he does fail, then the Queen will call on David Cameron to see what he is able to do.

What is worrying some is the impact this uncertainty will have on the markets and on the value of the pound. Some traders suggest that the money markets have already discounted the impact of a hung parliament on sterling. Business leaders are not so sure. In New Zealand, which has had minority governments since it introduced proportional representation, this kind of uncertainty always slows investment and slows entrepreneurial development. Britain cannot afford a prolonged period of uncertainty, given its slow and fragile recovery from the recession.

By Friday mid-day the shape of the negotiations will become clear. The Queen will be advised to act quickly so that she is not seen as delaying the process of arbitrage which will preoccupy the political class and the news media for several days. It may take several days for the dust to settle and a new Government to emerge.

Whatever happens, it looks like the final days for Gordon Brown. The press are already reporting behind the scenes maneuvering for leadership amongst potential candidates. Brown himself vows to lead the party into the future, but then what else can he say. It will take a remarkable shift of public opinion over a forty eight hour period for Brown to be able to withstand the pressure for him to go after the likely defeat he is about to experience.

As an observer, this is the most interesting election since the election of 1974. Too close to call and full of raw energy, the politicians have at least managed to engage the people in the election itself. Whatever the outcome, this in itself is quite the achievement. Let’s hope they will not be underwhelmed by the outcome.

Voting Begins in Britain

2010-05-01T07:34:00.002-07:00

Postal voters are now casting their votes in the British election and election officers are gearing up for what they expect to be a larger than usual turnout in Thursdays general election in Britain. In the last two elections, turnout has been down – 61.4% in 2005 and 59.4% in 2001 – but the interest generated by the three televised leaders debates and the disgust the electorate feel over the political class is expected to lead to the higher figures which characterized the period between 1955 and 1970 – some 75% of electors voting or higher.

A You-Gov published today place the Conservatives in the lead with 34% of the poll, while Labour and the Liberal Democrats are neck and neck at 28%. When we take account the margin of error, the election is still too close to call.

David Cameron is on the streets, television and radio making the case for a strong conservative vote to avoid the quagmire of a hung parliament and another general election before the end of the year. Nick Clegg is arguing that the race is now between him and Cameron, with Labour clearly in third place – and he has the support of The Guardian newspaper, who recommend tactical voting to ensure a Liberal-Labour coalition of the centre-left. Brown is apologizing for being Gordon Brown, but defending his record on the management of the economy.

The key to the election will be undecided voters and the protest votes. A great many undecided voters are normally “decided”, but don’t want to declare themselves. On this occasions, they are genuinely undecided – unable to make a choice. Many of these undecided voters are former Labour voters who are now so disillusioned with Brown and disgusted at the expense scandal that they feel stranded in the middle of a raging river with debt, deficit, challenging issues in education, health and misery over the Iraq war raging past them. The Liberal Democrats are natural allies, but are not likely to form a Government. The Conservatives, who have adopted a manifesto that would have been a classic Labour manifesto under Harold Wilson, have an unpalatable past for a wavering Labour supporter, are a real choice, if they feel that they can trust Cameron to honour his contract with the people. It will be a difficult decision.

Some will make a protest statement. In the North, the British National Party (BNP), a neo Nazi coalition of odd balls and right wing fanatics, will likely retain their current two seats and possibly pick up another. The Green party may attract more voters, as will some of the independents. With over one hundred and fifty incumbents having retired – the largest number to leave Westminster since the 1920’s – voters cannot take comfort in many places by returning their sitting MP.

Having run a constituency at the time of a general election, this coming Monday and Tuesday are tough days. One mistake, one off the cuff remark, as Gordon Brown can attest, can lose the election for a party. More significantly, party organizers will be rallying their workers to get the vote out – praying for good weather and trying to firm up their base of support. Every vote will really count this time and the “agents”, as the managers are called, will be working overtime on logistics and intelligence – finding out who will vote for their party and making sure they get them out to vote. The weather forecast is for patchy rain and chilly – not a good omen.

Speaking with voters in Wales and others here in Lancashire, one has the impression that the leaders of the three parties have increased the level of resentment towards the political class rather than lowered it. All three are seen as “talkers, not doers” and all three are seen as avoiding the elephant in the room – real and substantial budget cuts and tax adjustments that are needed to get Britain back in the black. One business owner who runs a Wine Bar in Llangollen observed that not one of them has spoken clearly and specifically about what they will cut and when, but instead have talked in generalities. Another retired public sector worker wonders when the three parties will wake up to the bloated size of the public service – the public sector in Wales accounts for 64% of the GDP of the nations and almost all of the jobs created since Labour came to power are in the public sector or owe their existence to subsidy.

Five days to go – one hundred hours of campaign time. Pubs are filling up with political talk over beer, wine and coolers. The outcome is anyone’s guess, but polls have been wrong before. In 1992 the pollsters did get it wrong, and most of them didn’t cover themselves in glory in 1997. New methods and new companies may make polling more efficient and potentially more accurate, but the electorate have a habit of surprising people. In 1992, the opinion polls, which had normally predicted election results fairly accurately, were not just wrong but spectacularly so. The five main UK polls published on the morning of the general election predicted a Labour lead of 0.8 %, which would have ensured a hung parliament with Labour as the largest party. The BBC and ITV exit polls suggested a Conservative lead of 4%, which would have resulted in a hung parliament with the Conservatives as the largest party. In fact, the Conservatives were 7.5 % ahead and John Major was able to form a Conservative government with an overall majority of 21 seats. Cameron is hoping that the same story repeats itself on Thursday. We will soon know.

Liverpool and Brown both Lost Last Night

2010-04-30T03:38:00.000-07:00

The British electorate faced a difficult choice last night. Should they watch the final Prime Ministerial debate, which focused on the number one issue – the economy – or should they watch Liverpool play Athetico Madrid in a semi final game of the Europa League? Most watched the soccer and they were wise to do so.

The debate, despite a few interesting moments, was as dull as ditchwater. Labour’s Gordon Brown hurled numbers and data at the viewer with no concern for their anger, despair or serious concerns about their jobs, inflation and rising prices of gasoline, housing and food. Nick Clegg, the liberal leader, was clearly out of his depth and struggled for coherence. David Cameron, increasingly looking like a future Prime Minister, scored goal after goal, yet never seemed to emerge as an insightful, caring and smart Conservative leader that the right wing press tell us that he is. The debate was tedious, uninspiring and contained only one new insight.

That insight is what the media picked up today – not one of the three leaders talked seriously about either taxation or spending cuts, both of which need to change if the next Government is to fight the growing problem of deficit, debt and out of control spending by the Government of Britain. And this matters. As the European Union is discovering, not tackling debt and not clawing back profligate spending has consequences – both Greece and Spain’s sovereign bonds are now officially “junk” and there is a growing concern that, even with both the IMF and the EU propping up Greece, there may be sovereign debt defaults in the Eurozone. Portugal and Italy are also in serious difficulties. Ireland and Britain are close behind. A failure to tackle this issue head-on and quickly will be disastrous for Britain. Everyone knows this and is ready for it, yet the leaders rarely talk about it.

One third of the British available for work population either works for Government or is paid in some measure by the Government. This is a large chunk of the electorate. The leaders fear that if they tell the truth about spending cuts, voters will desert them. Gordon Brown, for example, did not deny that some £20 billion will be cut from the National Health Service, but made the ridiculous claim that none of these cuts would have any impact on front line services – how naïve does he think the British electorate is. Cameron has also vowed not to cut health, yet it is a massively expensive and very inefficient service. Clegg’s position on cuts is also vague – he talks of efficiency and removing duplication.

Clegg’s most serious error is to insist that the banks should be forced to lend to those seeking to build small businesses or buy their first house. This is exactly what Governments should not be doing – creating a lend at any cost market for borrowers who cannot afford to pay back the loans. This is how the trouble began in the US and why lending has to be the target of tough regulation. Bank taxes and bonuses are not the issue – profligate risky lending is.

On taxation, all three are talking of taxing banks, outlawing bankers bonuses and making the financial system tougher. The Conservatives are talking about scaling back some payroll taxes, but they are not talking about increasing sales taxes and taxing inheritance – both of which they plan to do.

At the end of yesterday, polling still showed, all three parties are still so close that the election outcome still looks like a hung parliament. The Labour party is polling third, but the difference between the Conservatives and Labour are within the margin of error of the polls. The debate will have made no difference to the poll results. What will is the fact that Brown is increasingly looking and behaving like a loser.

On the day before the debate, Brown was confronted by a long time Labour supporter who asked him what he was going to do about jobs, adding that she thought the presence of so many Eastern Europeans was making it difficult for British workers to get jobs. He answered her question, not very coherently, but was heard to call her a “bigot” when he was getting in his car to be driven away. His comment was captured on tape and broadcast. He had to apologize and then work to recover his image, already that of a bully and an angry man. His recovery made, the people will not forget.

Cameron is increasingly looking like the main beneficiary of the peoples anger at Labour in general and Brown in particular, but not sufficiently statesman like to command the lead. In a hung parliament, he will need a large group of independent MP’s and the Liberals to form a coalition that can govern.

Clegg’s naiveté will be a problem for Cameron. Clegg is insisting of electoral reform as a precondition to collaboration and is also suggesting that the Liberals should get some cabinet seats. This is not at all what Cameron has in mind, so we can expect a prolonged struggle over the shape of the Government. Meanwhile, Brown’s acolytes have been exploring options with their Liberal counterparts. Given Brown’s thirst for power, it is thought by some that he is more likely to cut a deal with the Liberals than Cameron. As sitting Prime Minister, Brown will have first run at cabinet making – in a hung parliament, the Queen is likely to call on Brown to see if he can form a Government, even if the Conservatives have gained significantly more seats than they had at dissolution. Clegg signaled last week that, if Brown came third, he can hardly lay claim to being Prime Minister, suggesting that any deal with Labour would need to be with a different leader – also unlikely. So it will be a messy few days or weeks before the Government becomes clear.

Anthony Howard, the seasoned political observer, appearing on television, reminded viewers that there is a big difference between opinion polls and elections and also a good few days to go. He still thinks there could be a swing to the Conservatives sufficient to give them a very narrow victory, though concedes the possibility of a hung parliament. The way seats are distributed requires a significant swing – 12% or more – to the Conservatives for outright victory in 326 seats or more. Voters are so disgusted with the political class as a whole that such a large swing is unlikely.

The vote is on Thursday May 6th. There is long week-end holiday just before this, which will give some respite from the bickering of the leaders and the relentless television coverage. No one is wasting time talking about real austerity policies or real change – it is all now about trust. No one seems to have sufficient trust in the political class to give them a right to rule, which is the real lesson of this election to date.

Liverpool lost, by the way.

Ten Days to Go and All Up For Grabs

2010-04-25T13:01:00.001-07:00

Just ten days to go before the British general election and uncertainty about the outcome is on everyone’s mind. The latest opinion poll, taken after the TV debate on Thursday, shows the Conservatives in the lead with 35% and the Liberals and Labour tied for second place, with Labour just a point behind the Liberals at 27%. With a 3% margin of error in the polling, the election is too close to call, though it is clear that the momentum has returned to the Conservatives.

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, has occupied a great deal of attention during the last week or so following his surprisingly stong performance in both the first and second leaders debate. The third and last of these debates will take place on Thursday and the focus will be on the economy. This is the debate that matters. First, the economy is one of the two key issue on which many voters will make their decision – the other key issue is trust. Second, the parties have sharp differences on what they will do to restore Britain’s economy, now badly damaged after massive spending since 1998 leading to deficits and debt.

The conservatives want to cut programs. So does the Labour Party. Reports are beginning to appear of substantial cuts to the National Health Service, in the order of £20 billion by 2014, now being planned by Labour, despite promises to maintain health care as the top priority. Labour plans to find efficiencies without affecting front-line services – cutting most of the administrative trivia they themselves imposed on health, education, social services, policing and other agencies. They also plan increases in overall public spending while cutting.

The conservative party have pledged not to cut health and foreign aid, but to eliminate "the bulk" of the UK's structural deficit within five years beginning in 2010 with £6bn in cuts. One of the ways they intend to do this is by permitting charities, trusts, voluntary groups and co-operatives to set up new Academy schools, independent of local authority control, and to run other public services – doing for a range of public services what Margaret Thatcher did for housing.

The Liberals, whose policies are now being taken seriously, are also proposing cutting spending. They are identifying £15bn of lower priority spending per year which they will cut so as to protect front-line services while reducing structural deficit at least as fast as Labour plans, beginning in 2011 – basically, the same policy as Labour. They intend to raise the threshold at which people start paying income tax from £6,475 to £10,000, which is a populist move and will simplify the tax system. They will also impose "mansion tax" on the value of properties over £2m and increase capital gains tax to bring it into line with income tax. This “mansion tax” sounds like a lot, but a lot of people who bought houses in parts of the UK in the 1950’s and 60’s now find that they are worth close to or above this sum, so this will alienate some of the middle class. Finally on the economy, the Liberals plan to introduce a banking levy until such time as banks' retail and investment arms can be separated – a proposal also made by Labour.

The real difference is that Labour has demonstrated itself incapable of stimulating the economy, the Conservatives understand the challenge and the Liberals don’t expect to win, but are aligning themselves with Labour in case there is a coalition government.

Clegg is already laying out terms. Last week he made any coalition dependent on the speedy introduction of proportional representation into the British electoral system – it already occurs in Scotland and Wales. This week-end he had made clear that, if Labour comes third, it would be absurd for Gordon Brown to remain as Prime Minister in any coalition – a clear bid for the job in such a Government.

Talk of a hung parliament is making the financial community anxious. The key to recovery, they suggest, is stable government. As we can see from the Canadian experience, minority governments are constantly concerned about their ability to stave off votes of no confidence. Coalition governments, as we can see from many European countries, can be successful usually for a short period of time. At some point, a majority government is needed to govern effectively – the financiers say. Economic growth in the first quarter of 2010 was 0.2% - half of the growth predicted by the analysts. Investors are waiting to see the outcome of the election, and may show signs of jitters the day after if the outcome is unclear.

Meanwhile, the leaders are on the “stomp” pitching their ideas to a bemused public. While millions have tuned into the leaders debates, most remain ignorant of what the parties actually intend to do. Many are also meeting candidates they have never seen before. Some one hundred and fifty MP’s retired, the largest number to leave politics at the same time in over a century. Trusted local MP’s are no longer there, so uncertainty is increased. The poll is on May 6th – there is a lot yet for the candidates to do to get their message out.

Clegg, Cameron & Brown - Talking Suits

2010-04-22T16:48:00.001-07:00

David Cameron began the second televised leaders debate of the British election with a lot to prove. Just two weeks to go and he is not doing as well as he needs if he is to ensure an overall majority on May 6th. For Cameron, the debate was meant to be an opportunity for him to capture some momentum and to put to bed the fantasy that the newly popular Liberal leader, Nick Clegg, could perhaps form the next government.

For Clegg, he could either build on the momentum he secured following last weeks debate or begin to lose ground. Gordon Brown, the hapless Labour leader who has been practicing smiling and learning not to be funny, sought to display his foreign statesman credentials as a way of trying to stall his inevitable demise.

Both Cameron and Brown sought to attack Clegg, Clegg came out the winner in the last debate and the task on this occasion was to bruise, blast and belittle the Liberal leader. He was not helped this week by the disclosure that some significant financial donations to his party were paid directly into his own bank account. He did, however, hold his own and came out well.

Clegg is articulate, insightful, funny and smart. Words that we could also use to describe Cameron. The difference between Cameron and Clegg is that no one expected Clegg to do so well and everyone was looking to Cameron to shine. Cameron was dull when compared to expectations and Clegg shone against the lack of expectation.

Nothing happened on this occasion to shift opinion. The debate was, if anything, solid and dull. The opinion polls will not be radically impacted by the debate this time round. There is one more debate next week, just seven days before polling which could be more important.

The big winner is television. Despite the fear of voter apathy and alienation, viewers have tuned-in in very large numbers to watch at least some of these debates. The fact that the first made history – both for the very fact of it occurring and for the impact Nick Clegg had – reinforced the importance of television.

The election outcome is still too close to call. What Clegg also did this week was to up-the ante on any post-election horse trading if there is a hung parliament – he is demanding immediate action on proportional representation as a condition of his support for either of the other parties. He is also making clear his expectation that support involves more of a coalition that, as with Canada, tacit support through parliamentary voting agreements. The real election result may not be known for some days after voting on May 6th.

Election TV

2010-04-16T05:11:00.000-07:00

Fifty years after the US began Presidential TV debates, the British viewing public were treated to the experience of a debate amongst the three front runners in the British general election – Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg. In an otherwise average piece of television, Nick Clegg came out of the debate ahead of his rivals. Gordon Brown disappointed even his own champions. Cameron was acceptable.

There were no knock-out blows or disastrous gaffes, no jokes that were memorable and no new policies. This did not prevent fierce clashes over issues such as economy, MPs’ expenses and immigration, over which the parties disagree. On the economy, Brown wants more investment from government and Cameron austerity. On the MP’s expenses no one can agree what needs to be done now. On immigration, the parties take a different stance on the link between jobs and immigration – Cameron wanting to ensure that more jobs go to British born workers and Brown and Clegg preferring to remain vague. All three agree that immigration is too high and needs to be curtailed.
Clegg was polished, assured and articulate. He positioned his liberal party as a rational, mature alternative to the bickering of the traditional two parties of power. He outlined ideas and policies which, on the surface, sound rational and he won the popularity poll hands down. In snap surveys taken immediately after the debate, he secured between 43 and 51% of the poll, depending on which pollster you want to listen to. There are two more debates before election day on May 6th – the next one on foreign affairs and the final one on the economy. All three leaders will be working to improve their performance.

The themes of the election came out clearly. Cameron reiterated, every time Brown appeared to have a new idea, that the Government had been in power for thirteen years and is now seeking another five to do what they should have done all along. Brown speaks of his experience and being a steady hand on the tiller of the ship, which many see to be sinking. Clegg suggests that the more the Labour and Conservative parties argue the more they sound the same – it’s time for a change.

Close to ten million voters (9.9 million in fact) were watching peak time politics – a kind of job interview in front of a nation. This means that some twenty five to thirty million will be talking about this over a coffee or beer and a cigarette for the next few days. A novelty in itself. But they did not watch a great game changer or are unlikely to now see the parties in a different way and may well return to East Enders or Coronation Street rather than watch the next two debates. Though history was made by the fact of the debates themselves, what was said was not new.

Clegg will try and use the momentum from the debate to argue that this will be the breakthrough election for the Liberals. He will suggest that he has the momentum to form a Government. The Liberals have suggested this in every election since the second world war and have never come even close. This time, however, it will cement his position as the potential king maker if there is a hung parliament. Clegg did himself no harm. His challenge is to repeat this performance on two more occasions – all eyes will now be on him.

Brown is not good at television. His basic grumpy intellectual side seems to shine through the camera like a laser, even when he is trying to be funny. His humour is also, well, not funny. His big joke, wait for it, was to thank David Cameron for showing him as a smiling man in the posters which adorn the billboards across Britain. See what I mean. Cameron is a polished performer and that is his problem. He comes across as what the Brits call “smarmy” – a kind of performing spin doctor whose words sound good until you read them in the cold light of day. He is Blair again. This was very obvious in last nights debate. Clegg won because he seemed the only one who was both comfortable and genuine, but then he can afford to be – he has no real chance of winning.

The polls published today show the Conservatives with a seven point lead over Labour who, in turn, have a ten point lead over the Liberals. The election is still too close to call, though the Conservatives appear to have some momentum. It will be a few days before we can see what impact, if any, the TV debate had on core voter opinion. The race will begin to settle only in the final week of the race – the first week of May.

Knives and Politics

2010-04-14T05:16:00.001-07:00

The three major British political parties have released their manifestos – a kind of blueprint for what they might do until they discover just how bad the situation really is once in office. The situation is serious – all agree – but none are tackling the challenge of debt, disaffection and continued economic uncertainty head on. It is as if the manifestos were written before Britain became a debt loaded country.

The Conservatives are the most radical. They are offering a “power to the people” strategy, in which public services are subject to more local control. Residents would win the right to instigate referendums if 5 per cent of local people backed the move. The Tories also want to see more elected mayors and police commanders. Communities would be allowed to take over pubs and post offices threatened with closure. Public-sector workers would be encouraged to form "co-ops" to run services like nursing teams, schools or other public services. They are focused on changing the way government engages with the economy, reducing some proposed tax increases, changing the way in which government programs are funded. In terms of health, the Tories have promised "real choice" by entitling patients to choose any healthcare provider – including private clinics – within NHS prices, while people would be guaranteed access to a local GP 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Top-down Government targets, such as waiting times for treatment, would be scrapped in a blitz on the "endless layers of bureaucracy and management". Schools would undergo their biggest reform for a generation, with the establishment of state-funded "free schools" run by parents, teachers' charities, trusts and voluntary groups.

The Labour party manifesto is offering more of the kind of government that has been in place since Blair won power in 1997. On education, Labour is offering a new idea: Promise of "a choice of good schools in every area". Where parents are not satisfied, they will have the power to trigger a ballot on bringing in a new school leadership team from a "proven and trusted accredited provider" through a merger or takeover. Up to 1,000 secondary schools would be part of such an accredited schools group by 2015. On the economy, Labour pledge to build a hi-tech economy, supporting business and industry to create one million more skilled jobs and modernising our infrastructure with High Speed Rail, a Green Investment Bank and broadband access for all. Nothing new there.

The Liberals are focused on their usual list of policies: fairer taxes, economic reform, a pupil premium for the poorest children worth some $2.5 billion in all and constitutional change. What is most important about the Liberal manifesto is that it is silent on the idea of coalition or support for a minority government, which is looking more like the outcome of the election. It is not possible to read their manifesto and detect a bias which would favour an alliance with one either the Labour or Conservative parties.

The polls now show a narrowing of the gap, already slim, between the Conservatives and Labour, with one poll having the Tories lead by just 3% - the same as the margin of error. The average is a six point lead – not enough for the Tories to secure a majority government. The British people are having a hard time buying into the idea that David Cameron is a statesman like leader who is right for Britain at this time, but they also dislike Gordon Brown. Trust is the real issue here.

There are three weeks to go. Harold Wilson, former Labour Prime Minister, was fond of reminding his audiences that a week is a long time in politics. A lot can yet happen. Usually at this point, clear patterns of voter interest, concerns and behaviour begin to emerge. Not this time. Most pundits are convinced that there will be a hung parliament and furious efforts are been made behind the scenes to see what alliances and alignments can be made. One insider has indicated that the trade off process from the minor parties has already begun, with Plaid Cymru (the Welsh Nationalists) offering to support Labour under certain conditions.

What is certain is that a large number of the British electorate are yet to show any real interest. The campaign has not got them fired up or engaged. Despite the hype, its business as usual for the majority of Brits. The front pages of the newspapers carry some election news, but are more concerned with gossip and froth than with the future of the country. Front page news today – butchers at one of Britain’s largest supermarket chains have been advised not to use knives, since these are dangerous. It seems that there is more interest in this story than in creating a new golden age of politics.

The Canadian Broadcasting Castration

2010-04-02T16:59:00.001-07:00

What is a commercial, as in radio commercial? There are several definitions. One is this: “pertaining to commerce and having either monetary or non-monetary gain as motive”. Keep this in mind.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), which some wits now call the Canadian Broadcasting Castration, following the cuts made to classical music programming over a year ago, is funded by over $1 billion of public funds. It constantly complains of poverty and constantly irritates the public by its whining and general misery-boys performance when in front of Senate and Commons committees.

But it is now unbelievably frustrating to listen to. One reason, and for me it is serious, is that is constantly runs commercials (see definition above) saying that it is commercial free. This nonsense is repeated three or four times an hour – trailers for other CBC shows or just the annoying repetition that you are listening to CBC Radio 2 which is commercial free.

When I wrote to the CBC, both by snail mail and email, I receive no response. As an owner of this Castration I feel demeaned by this lack of interest in the views of shareholders. As a listener to CBC Radio 2 between 9am and 2.45pm on weekdays (Mountain Standard Time),this is slowly driving me to drastic action. I don’t know what form this will take, but it could well be streaming BBC Radio 3.

Its no wonder that the CBC gets a rough ride in the public mind when it both disregards us and then insults our intelligence.
Rant over.

REBOOT, RETHINK, REGROUP - The New Reality of Climate Change Science and Policy

2010-04-02T07:49:00.001-07:00

A parliamentary committee in Britain has largely exonerated Dr Phil Jones, Director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and a key figure in Climategate. While they wee very critical of the practice in climatology of not releasing raw data at the same time the analysis of that data is published and of not responding to legitimate and entirely correct requests under the Freedom of Information legislation in the UK to release these data, the committee was in a forgiving mood.

Their review and conclusion do not alter one basic fact. The global temperature data set which came from Dr Jones and his two colleagues is not readily available for public scrutiny. This is important, since the data set is at the heart of the claims made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that there is aggressive warming of the planet taking place. The raw data does exist and can be reconstructed from other records. What does not exist is the systematic adjustments made to these data by Phil Jones and his colleagues to account for urban heat sinks and other anomalies – adjustments which, when made, make all the difference between the raw data and the published data.

Here is why. Measurements of the surface temperature are made by simple instruments which are meant to be located in places which are unaffected by human activity – cars, heat sources, large buildings. Many are inappropriately located and adjustments have to be made to take into account the impact of these factors on the measurement. Thus whenever you see reference to global temperature you are not looking at a reading from an instrument, you are looking at data output from a model of what the instruments would say if only they were located in a different place. How the model is built has a major impact on what the surface temperature will be.

Ross McKitrick at the University of Guelph has analyzed the published data and used it to reconstruct models and then tested these against raw data sets which are available. His conclusion is simple. Most of the warming reported in the literature can be explained by the urban heat sinks and locations of the measuring instruments. Rather than measuring climate, the Phil Jones data is actually measuring industrialization – where industry and man has an impact on measuring instruments. Almost all of the temperature rises reported in the Phil Jones models can be explained by non-climatic factors.

It gets worse. The IPCC claim that the matter is settled – there are no significant effects of industrialization on the measurement model. In fact, the IPCC say in the Summary for Policymakers, that the impact of such effects have a “negligible influence” on the data. They cite no substantial evidence for this claim. It is now clear that the evidence does not support this view and that the IPCC fabricated the evidence to support their claim.

This is a crucial matter. If the basis of the warming claim is problematic, what else is problematic? We know that the IPCC got it wrong on the claim that the ice caps on the Himalayas were melting so fast that they would soon be gone. We know that they got the measurement and claims about sea level rises in the northern hemisphere. We know they are dead wrong in the claims that the warming climate is increasing the number and severity of storms. We know they got claims about the Amazon rainforest wrong. In all, we know that there were sixteen claims that cannot be supported by the available peer reviewed evidence and that many of the claims made by the IPCC were based on what is known as “grey literature” – non peer reviewed materials in newspapers, leaflets, pamphlets and magazines.

Der Spiegel, the German insight newspaper, has published a major eight part series of online articles this week about the “superstorm” affecting climate change science. Written in English, the articles explore the mistaken claims of the IPCC and use simple language to make clear that the science is not settled and that several major claims of the IPCC are demonstrably false. They look to what they call “politically charged science” as an explanation for why the boundary between science and politics has been so blurred and how campaigners become scientists who use their own scientific claims as a basis for their own campaigns.

They look at several examples, but the most telling is the generally accepted political idea that temperature rises must be limited to 20C or the planet is in peril. This idea was central to the conversations at Copenhagen and remains at the heart of policy debate in Governments around the world, most especially in Europe. Climate models involve some of the most demanding computations of any simulations, and only a handful of institutes worldwide have the necessary supercomputers. The computers must run at full capacity for months to work their way through the jungle of data produced by coupled differential equations. All of this is much too complicated for politicians, who aren't terribly interested in the details. They have little use for radiation budgets and ocean-atmosphere circulation models. Instead, they prefer simple targets. For this reason a group of German scientists, yielding to political pressure, invented an easily digestible message in the mid-1990s: the two-degree target. To avoid even greater damage to human beings and nature, the scientists warned, the temperature on Earth could not be more than two degrees Celsius higher than it was before the beginning of industrialization.

Der Spiegel suggests that this is scientific nonsense. "Two degrees is not a magical limit -- it's clearly a political goal," says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). "The world will not come to an end right away in the event of stronger warming, nor are we definitely saved if warming is not as significant. The reality, of course, is much more complicated." Schellnhuber is the “inventor” of the two-degree target. This one idea, which has no basis in science, made him Germany's most influential climatologist. Schellnhuber, a theoretical physicist, became Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief scientific adviser.

Half truths, fabrications and outrageous claims do not make for a science. More specifically, they do not create the conditions under which a science can be “settled” or trusted by the public. Der Spiegel’s eight part series is a major challenge to the scientific community and to those who claim to be using science as a basis for policy. Trying to use fear to secure a radical agenda is not what we expect of either science or government. What needs to happen now is for us to start again with a dispassionate look at the science, pressing the restart button on public policy and stop the use of fear as a basis for action.

We have time. There have been many periods in human history when the planet has been warmer and when CO2 concentrations have been higher. We are adapting. Great work is taking place to reduce CO2 emissions, to increase our use of renewables and to green the planet. We can get science back from the post-modernists and return to a critical, sceptical and transparent form of science which truly engages the scientific community in scientific work stripped of polemics.

Now what we need is for the politicians to catch up and to understand that their religious fervour is out of place with their public and that the parade they thought they had rushed to the front of has dispersed behind them. Its time to rethink public policy.

The Phony War

2010-04-01T15:37:00.001-07:00

The Prime Minister of Britain gets to decide when an election will take place. Right now, Gordon Brown has not declared his intention. Everyone expects that it will take place on May 6th of this year. The horses are at the starting gate, but the starter gun has yet to go off. It looks like this could be a classically short election – just three to four weeks. Expect the election to be called in the next ten days.

It will be close. As of today, the Conservative lead is just six points – not enough for them to form a Government, but close enough to the Labour party to make for a hard fight. Even after the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, and his opposite numbers in the Liberal and Conservative party did a television debate, following the presentation of Labour’s budget, the parties remain close. None of them could convince the British public that they had a handle on the country’s finances.

Meantime, Gordon Brown is enjoying a renewed sense of energy. Boosted by a strong endorsement by Tony Blair and a weak performance to date by his opponent, David Cameron, Brown is beginning to look statesmanlike. He has weathered accusation of being a bully and a bore, and has started to appear as a strong man with a soft spot for his family. He is changing his appearance and starting to look, well, smart.

Cameron, in contrast, is looking hapless. He just can’t get his mojo to work, as they say. A speech on the family went nowhere and his rhetoric of change, mirroring Obama’s during the US election, just sounds vacuous. His strong stance on the economy, which is attracting strong support from British industry, is weakened by members of his own party undermining his policy.

Labour has focused its big guns on attacking the Conservative finance spokesman, George Osborne. They don’t like his elitist background – wealthy family, public school and a good university. But their major concern with Osborne is that he is proposing policies which challenge the tax and spend strategy Labour is fond of. But Osborne is smart. He has secured support of the leaders of industry for a campaign aimed at lowering a tax on employers and employees which Labour intends to raise. He has connected this to a strategy for job creation and is winning the argument that tax and spend will slow recovery, increase debt and cause more and more to become dependent on the State. He is fast becoming both the lightening rod for attack and the bedrock of a fight back by the Conservatives.

Osborne is also suggesting that there is a lot of waste in Government – something the Government denies. Yet the budget brought down by Alistair Darling just a few days ago also seeks efficiencies and more effective government – around $20 - $25 billion a year. In a nanny state where over a third of the population receive state subsidies, waste and inefficiency is inevitable.

What the general public have yet to realize, but will as soon as the election starter gun goes off, is that this election is about more than the economy and finance. It is also about the nature of Government. Labour believes in big government, central planning and high levels of target setting and accountability measurement. One example of the change that the conservatives envision is in education. The manifesto commits the Conservatives to developing vouchers which will follow the child, reforming the system so that Charter schools can be created to meet student needs and restoring the role of parents, teachers and community in designing education. Modeled on developments in Sweden, the strategy is one of ending the state control of the system and enabling massive privatization.

They have a similar strategy for health. Rather than insisting that services be provided by the National Health Service – the third largest employer in the world – the Conservatives will permit state employees to privatize the services they offer. They will also give real authority to local health providers and reduce the power of central government.

This major ideological difference will become a campaign focus during the election – it will rival the economy as a deciding issue when voters stand in line to vote.

The betting is still on a hung parliament – no one party having a sufficient majority to command the levers of power. In this event, the Prime Minister may be given some considerable time – some suggest up to a month – to form a coalition. Britain is used to a change of power within twenty four hours of the election result are known. Sir Gus O’Donnell, Secretary to the Cabinet and the most senior public servant, recently told a Commons committee that it would be up to the Prime Minister to decide when to resign even if the Conservatives had the majority of the seats in the house. It will be tense and interesting.

Right now it’s the phony war. When Gordon Brown calls “start” we can expect fireworks. It is the most important election since Thatcher stood down.

After Health Care, Climate Change

2010-03-22T16:13:00.001-07:00

With health care almost through the US Congress – just the small hurdle of a simple majority Senate vote to come – the attention is now moving to the climate change legislation that has been stalled in the Senate for some considerable time.

Democrat senator John Kerry has been working for several months with Republican Lindsey Graham and independent senator Joe Lieberman, to develop a compromise version of a bill that they think could secure bipartisan support. This move has received support from the environmental organizations as well, surprisingly, from the American Chamber of Commerce. There appears to be fast moving support for the new bill, due to be released before the end of this week.

The new bill downgrades emission reduction targets as set out in the original and much derided Boxer-Kerry bill, proposing cuts in emissions of 17 per cent by 2020 on 2005 levels as opposed to the original 20 per cent target. The new bill also proposes increased financial support for the nuclear energy, domestic oil and gas, and clean coal industries, and sets out many safeguards designed to support those sectors that would be hit hardest by the introduction of a nationwide emissions cap-and-trade scheme. For example, it raises the prospect of a price ceiling for carbon credits, financial assistance for those sectors that face the threat of "carbon leakage", incentives to help farmers cut emissions, and trade measures to protect US firms from "imports from other countries that do not adhere to emissions-cutting measures". This last provision targets, according to some commentators, bitumen from the Alberta oil sands.

Gone, at least for now, is any suggestion that a new draft bill will include cap and trade arrangements covering all of US industry. Instead, it is likely to focus initially just on energy producers, with provisions for this to be extended later to other manufacturing sectors.

One other provision of the bill will to encourage and enable investment in green technology. This will be done in part by direct government investment, support for feed-in tariffs and other R&D investments, but may also include other measures. Meantime, in Britain, the Government has indicated its intention of creating a state run Green Investment Bank with initial capital of £2 billion ($3 billion) and other jurisdictions are looking at issuing Green Bonds to support technology developments related to climate change mitigation, renewable energy and transport systems.

Opposition to the bill will likely be strong. Senator Inhoffe, the High Priest of climate change skeptics, will oppose any attempt to introduce emissions controls, cap and trade and supports for renewable energy on the ground of it not being needed (the science is corrupted) and being bad for the economy. Others will oppose the bill on the grounds that it doesn’t go far enough. Yet others will suggest that the US cannot afford to do anything while its debts are so high.

Canada will watch these developments with interest. There is a clear commitment that the Canadian cap and trade and climate change policies will be aligned to those adopted by the US. Based on the idea that doing otherwise might create competitive disadvantage for Canada, focusing cap and trade on energy producers and creating incentives for technology based innovation is in line with the current Canadian governments thinking. The Liberals, NDP and Bloc will likely seek to push Canada to do more than the US.

Health care reform is a key moment for the Obama administration – a turning point from being a “no change yet” President to becoming “a yes we can, a little” President. Climate change is likely his next challenge.

Clegg - The Kingmaker

2010-03-21T05:18:00.002-07:00

With six weeks to go before the British general election, not yet called by the Prime Minister, betting on the outcome is moving quickly. The online betting store paddypower.com is looking at a very close election. David Cameron’s Conservatives had odds of 1-7 and Gordon Brown’s Labour Party have odds of 4-1. A hung parliament is looking increasingly likely. Polling on St Patrick’s day gave the Conservatives a five point lead over labour, with a 3 point margin of error. Its very close.

These odds and polls gives the spotlight to the would be “kingmaker”, Nick Clegg of the Liberal Party – the odds of him winning the election outright are 150 – 1. The Liberal Party is being courted by the outriders of the two main parties, since his guarantees of support would enable either Labour or the Conservative party to claim victory in a minority government, supported by Liberals.

But what would Clegg want in return? Clegg is, by instincts, a watered down version of David Cameron and he would be most inclined to cut a deal with the Conservatives. However, his party – once the bastions of power in nineteenth century Britain, are generally left of centre and more sympathetic to Labour. He has established four tests for power sharing or support for Government. These are: lower taxes on the poor, a pupil premium in education, a greener economy, and political reform. Each of these are accompanied by policies which he would expect his political partner to endorse.

He would also expect, though it is difficult to understand why, a raft of cabinet positions in a true coalition government. Indeed, Vince Cable, his very capable shadow finance minister, has already been in talks with officials from the Treasury and he is touting himself as “the next Chancellor”, likely to be the most unpopular person in Britain once the election is over. Britain is mired in debt and the EU are demanding that taxes increased and programs be cut dramatically so as to pay down deficits and reduce debt. Britain already has the highest personal tax rates in the G8 and has a deficit close to 12% of GDP – twice the average of the EU. Personal debt levels of British households are also very high - 170 percent of overall annual income, compared with 130 percent in the United States – indicating that any reduction in social support services or increase in taxation will be very difficult for the public to tolerate.

Clegg’s thinking is based on the idea of a coalition – power sharing. Based on the election results, whoever is successful in courting Clegg would allocate a number of key cabinet positions to the Liberals and would form a power sharing executive. The least likely position the dominant party will allocate to the Liberals is the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer – the finance ministry. This will be the central position in any British government for a decade to come. More likely are positions in Education, Health, Social Services or Justice. The problem here is that the benchstrength of the Liberal Party in these portfolios is weak.

It is also unlikely, given Cameron’s desire to be an agent of social change in Britain – especially in relation to health and education – that a Liberal coalition would last long. Disputes at cabinet, significant tensions over policy direction would flare quickly and the whole enterprise might fall apart almost before it got started.

A more likely model for resolving a hung parliament is the Canadian model now in place in Ottawa. The party with the most seats, but not enough to form a majority government, acts as the Governing party and trusts in the support of the house issue by issue. While this is less stable in theory than a coalition, given the scale of the challenge Britain faces, it is more likely to be the case that the Conservatives could govern in this way for a period of time – say two years – before being defeated on a key issue. It is known that the “backroom boys” in Cameron’s conservatives are looking closely at Stephen Harper’s strategy for maintaining an aggressive minority government.

Whatever happens, this will be the most interesting election in Britain since Thatcher was first elected Prime Minister on 4th May 1979. Should Cameron repeat her success on the 6th May 2010, he will have an urgent set of tasks to start to restore confidence in Britain’s economy and to reduce the size, scope and intrusion of Government. Should Labour win, which is still a possibility (though remote), Brown will have succeeded in proving that miracles can happen and that Lazarus is not the only person to have come back from the dead.

What we know for certain is that paddypower.com, in taking all of its bets on the outcome of the election, will be the sure fire winner.

Reviewing the Review - IPCC Whitewash

2010-03-13T07:12:00.001-07:00

When the environment ministers from around the world met earlier this year, they concluded that the IPCC should be reviewed. They based this decision on the evidence of a growing catalogue of demonstrable errors of fact in the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (FAR) and on the clear evidence that many of the key findings were not based on peer reviewed evidence but on the so called “grey literature” – magazines, pamphlets from environmental lobby groups and other material. They also expressed concern about the way in which the IPCC behaved whenever criticism was made – essentially using a combination of arrogance and abuse against its critics. While some had expressed serious concerns about the credibility of the Chairman of the IPCC, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, who defended many of the worst examples of error and process failures until his colleagues apologized for them, it was also clear that no immediate effort would be made to either review his role or remove him.

The review body, demanded by the ministers, has now been established. Who appointed the review team? The Chairman of the IPCC, Dr Rajendra Pachauri , working in cahoots with Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations. What is the mandate of this review body? It has four key tasks: to analyse the IPCC process, including links with other UN agencies; to review use of non-peer reviewed sources and data and evaluate the process of quality control; to assess how procedures handle “the full range of scientific views are managed in fact and to recommend changes; and to review IPCC communications with the public and the media. In making the announcement last week, Ban Ki Moon reiterated his view “that the case for man made global warming is sound” and Dr. Pachauri said "We believe the conclusions of the IPCC report are really beyond any reasonable doubt".

The review team will take for granted that the substance of the 2007 report is robust – an idea that many scientists would now like to question. A total of eighteen key areas – the heart of the “warmist” science – are now shown to be problematic, the latest being the claim that the Amazon rain forest is especially vulnerable to very minor changes in temperatures – a claim now known to be based on contaminated data and poor analysis.

Who will conduct the review? The review will be conducted by the Inter-Academy Council and headed by its co-chairman Professor Robbert Dijkgraaf, a professor of mathematical physics at the University of Amsterdam, who told reporters that the review would be entirely independent of the United Nations but would be funded by it. The Inter-Academy Council is a representative body for a number of national academies of science, almost all of which are committed to the climate change cause. Indeed, Dijkgraaf recently broadcast on Dutch radio a statement about the “consensus” on climate science, suggesting that the science is settled and that there was nothing substantially wrong with the 2007 report.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph this week, Gerald Warner suggests that we know already what this panel will suggest – remove the Chairman, clean up the process but continue to argue that the science is settled. When the panel reports in August 2010 they will likely repeat the Ban Ki Moon line that a few paragraphs in a 3,000 page document which are problematic do not lead to the conclusion that the substance of the 2007 assessment is wrong. Warner suggests that this would be “not only a whitewash but one in which the paint is spread so thinly as to be transparent”.

What many in the science and public policy community are hoping for is for a more open, self reflective and critical review of all aspects of the science of climate change, untainted by the political agenda of those lobbying for green policies and the “green economy”. Professor Mike Hulme of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit, for example, has suggested that the IPCC has had a tendency to politicize climate change science which in turn has also helped to foster a more authoritarian and exclusive form of scientific knowledge production – just at a time when a globalizing and wired cosmopolitan culture is demanding of science something much more open and inclusive. Suggesting that the IPCC may have run its course, he is recommending a more open approach to the science, which makes extensive use of the tools of social media.

Whatever the panel reports, any attempt to “whitewash” the IPCC will be its death knell. Large numbers of the citizens of the world now see climate science and the politics of climate mitigation as so tainted and corrupted by vested interests that they will have no truck with a set of recommendations that perpetuate current practice with some slight modification.

Rather than review the IPCC processes, the team should have been asked to suggest to the environment ministers how they can get themselves out of the quagmire they have created by their own relentless pursuit of a partial view of science as a basis for their own public policies. Unless a radical rethink of how the analysis of current evidence from all viewpoints becomes the normative practice of these ministers, we will continue to see half-baked policies being pursued through grey literature fed science by ministers unwilling to listen to a range of views which may caution their reformist radicalism.

Is Canada's Budget 2010 Good for Innovation?

2010-03-04T16:27:00.002-07:00

The Federal budget is out and the decisions are made and, as expected, no imagination is shown.

Just focusing on the innovation agenda, the Government of Canada announced these decisions:

• $108 million to support young workers through internships and skills development to help them find jobs and to support Aboriginal students.
• Over $600 million to help develop and attract talented people, to strengthen our capacity for world-leading research and development, and to improve the commercialization of research.
• Making Canada a tariff-free zone for manufacturers, by eliminating all remaining tariffs on machinery and equipment and goods imported for further manufacturing in Canada.
• Establishing a Red Tape Reduction Commission to reduce paperwork for businesses.
• Measures to support investment in clean energy generation.

The $600 million for innovation looks like it is headed to Universities rather than firms. Let us just document how this money will flow:

• Providing $45 million over five years to establish a post-doctoral fellowship program to help attract the research leaders of tomorrow to Canada.
• Delivering $222 million in funding over five years to strengthen the world-leading research taking place at TRIUMF, Canada’s premier national laboratory for nuclear and particle physics research.
• Increasing the combined annual budgets of Canada’s research granting councils by an additional $32 million per year, plus an additional $8 million per year to the Indirect Costs of Research Program.
• Providing Genome Canada with an additional $75 million for genomics research.
• Doubling the budget of the College and Community Innovation Program with an additional $15 million per year.
• Providing $135 million over two years to the National Research Council Canada’s regional innovation clusters program.
• Providing $48 million over two years for research, development and application of medical isotopes.
• Providing a total of $497 million over five years to develop the RADARSAT Constellation Mission.
• Launching a new Small and Medium-sized Enterprise Innovation Commercialization Program with $40 million over two years.
• Renewing and making ongoing $49 million in annual funding for the regional development agencies to support innovation across Canada.

This is largely cosmetic. They are restoring cut funds to granting councils, propping up agencies they have cut in the past. They are adding capacity to the College and Polytechnic sector, which should now be seen as the engine of applied research and a direct route to real innovation, as well as increasing funding to organizations like Western Economic Diversification and ACOA.

At best, this is a “touch up: job – painting over the cracks in the existing innovation system caused by past decisions. At worst, this budget shows the lack of courage at the national level and will do little to move Canada from 14th place out of 17 countries, according to the Conference Board of Canada.

What should the Government have done? To be bold, eve within the constraint budget of $600 million, they should have allocated half to IRAP and half to the College and Polytechnic sector – organizations closest to firms. This would have signaled to firms that innovation is about firms, not about researchers pursuing their own interests. While university based research is not unimportant, it is not the engine of innovation that Canada needs – at least, not as we are doing this work right now.

The good news here is the action the Government are taking positive action to stimulate productivity. The budget announces that Canada will become a tariff-free zone for manufacturers, by eliminating all remaining tariffs on machinery and equipment and goods imported for further manufacturing in Canada. This enables firms to invest at a lower unit cost in equipment needed to improve productivity and competitiveness and to lower the costs of renewal of business processes requiring technology. This will be helpful.

Also good news is the recognition that we need more and more people with skills inside firms, withv$108 million going to this work. Co-op programs, industrial placements, post-doctoral positions inside firms could all be supported, though these funds are small relative to the challenge and opportunity.

On balance – is this a good budget for innovation? The answer is, a reluctant, possibly. It shows little imagination, no courage and no effective response to Canada’s declining competitive position in the innovation league table. Some of these investments will accelerate commercial activities, but most will not lead to new products and services or accelerated access to new markets. My definition of innovation requires sales of new products and services to occur and new jobs to be created as a result – this budget will have a very modest impact.

The Green Job Myth - Or Is It?

2010-03-03T11:03:00.001-07:00

There is a strong claim by politicians in a variety of countries that climate change policies and regulation, coupled with investments in green technologies, will create green jobs. Al Gore suggests that the right kind of strategy could create 1.7 million US jobs. Michael Ignatieff, Canada’s liberal leader, suggests that Canada could create, well a lot of green energy jobs with the right policies – cap and trade, investments in a smart-grid, non fossil fuel power policy and carbon taxes. Gordon Brown, the current British Prime Minister, speaks of 400,000 green jobs in eight years.

These claims are based, in part at least, on the 20087 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report report, especially Chapter 11, which looks at the economic costs and opportunities linked to climate change action. This chapter did not go through the normal double review process the IPCC always says is the hallmark of its quality assurance process. Had it done so, some key problems may have been caught.

The first of these it that there are few peer reviewed papers which support the position taken in the summary of this chapter in the Summary for Policy Makers associated with the IPCC fourth assessment. One of the authors of several IPCC documents and one of the world’s top economists, Richard Tol, has now suggested that the basis for many of the claims are papers in the so-called “grey” literature – magazines, pamphlets and other documents – rather than peer review literature. Despite claims that the processes of the IPCC focus only on peer reviewed cases, this is clearly simply untrue as has been shown in other chapters of this report and is now shown to be untrue here.

The second problem a sceptical and thorough review would have revealed is that the claims made for the economic impacts of carbon mitigation and other measures are based on computer models and simulations, which are in turn based on the assumptions made by the modelers. One of these assumptions is that policies for the environment will always be smart and well designed – something it is difficult to imagine coming out of the US Senate. One peer review study of the EU policies – the 20% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020 – shows that it is poorly designed as a strategy and will cost more than twice the amount needed to achieve the outcome, thereby costing jobs.

The third problem is that some of the caveats disappeared between various drafts of this Chapter. For example, a key assumption in some models is that revenues from carbon taxes and emission permit auctions are used to reduce taxes on labour. If this revenue is not dedicated to this, but instead used to invest in technology (which is what Obama plans), then jobs will be lost. Further, there is no positive impact on employment and job creation if emission reductions are achieved by subsidies for renewables or if emission permits are given away for free – both actions being commonplace amongst governments, as we can see in Spain. There every “green job” created with government money in Spain over the last eight years came at the cost of 2.2 regular jobs, and only one in 10 of the newly created green jobs became a permanent job, according to a study released in 2009.

This Spanish experience is noteworthy. Dr. Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at Juan Carlos University in Madrid, has said the United States should expect results similar to those he found in Spain. "Spain’s experience (cited by President Obama as a model) reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created, to which we have to add those jobs that non-subsidized investments with the same resources would have created,” wrote Calzada in his report: Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources.

So we now have an uncertain basis for predictions with respect to green job growth, a string of caveats which, when taken together, suggest a high degree of risk in the predictions and firm evidence from the Spanish experience that the risk associated with a strong push for a green job economy are very serious indeed – especially now that Spain, together with Greece, Ireland and Portugal are on the EU’s “critical list” in terms of economic well being.

Don’t panic, say some politicians, we have another source for our confidence: the Stern Report, released in 2004. This political document – it came from a the UK Finance Ministry – suggests that that tackling climate change will cost 20 times less than doing nothing and thus underpins UK political initiatives, such as emission trading or energy-efficiency actions. It also suggests that such policies will create a green economy, with thousands of new jobs. In a thorough review of this document, Richard Tol suggests that it uses only the most pessimistic impact studies, starts from a too-low discount rate and has no real cost-benefit analysis. Tol therefore called the report "alarmist and incompetent".

His main criticism of the Stern report are these: (a) the Stern Review Team used the scientific literature selectively and the bias systematically favoured the worst case scenario; (b) they made technical errors (counting risks twice over, refusing to take into consideration the considerable attenuation of net damages obtainable via adaptation strategies, forgetting some of the economic costs of prevention policies, discrepancies between the damages as described and economic growth assumptions, in Africa in particular, etc.); and (c) they manipulated the economic concepts and tools, in particular the discount rate, so as to paint the most alarming picture of expected damages if the international community failed to take early energetic action. Tol’s analysis, which is thorough, explores the implications of these problems in detail.

What are we to make of all of this? It is simple – we are being asked to place a bet with a high level of risk that it may have the opposite impact to that intended (see Spain). The bet will involve a massive new tax, cap and trade regime and lifestyle changes in the hope that a large number of new green jobs will be created. Don’t you thin we should demand better evidence that it will work? Don’t you think we should know about the assumptions being made. All of the evidence suggests that it is not a simple equation – green policies don’t equal green jobs. Time for a real debate.

Brown versus Cameron - Game On!

2010-03-03T07:30:00.001-07:00

This time last year the Conservative Party in Britain was thirteen points ahead of Labour in the opinion polls. Now it is just six points ahead and falling like a stone. What is going wrong?

David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, modelled a lot of his campaign strategy on Obama’s successful bid for the US Presidency. Outlining the need for change, being general about what change meant and decrying the failures of the party in power were, he thought, enough to unseat an unpopular Labour government. What he failed to notice, until recently, was that the disappointment with Obama’s performance and the emptiness of the mantra “yes we can” is palpable. Over a year after starting health reform, Obama is still stuck in the mud. Climate change and energy security has not even started the torturous journey through the Senate. The US economy is still not mending. People demand more than a mantra. They want specifics. Cameron has to start talking action plans and detail.

The second thing that Cameron’s team has failed to do is be consistent and coherent. On the family and the tax benefits he intends to provide for married couples, but not others, he is vague. Different Conservative spokesmen have said different things about where the needed cuts to public spending would come and what the impact would be. Some potential cabinet ministers are briefing against their colleagues as they jockey for position and power.

Some of the policies – on education, for example – are not easily explained. While creating more independence for schools and freeing them of many of the centrally imposed administrative constraints may be helpful, Cameron and his team have said little about what they will do with high stakes testing or what changes they see in the curriculum. Given that the curriculum and testing are the central issues affecting performance, the policy position seems interesting, but hardly relevant.

On the National Health Service (NHS), the worlds third largest employer after the Chinese Red Army and the Indian Railway system, Cameron has made clear that they will focus on outsourcing services and improving productivity. Despite a fifty page policy document, most voters don’t see much difference on this crucial policy area between the political parties.

The most critical failure, to date at least, is the apparent inability for Cameron to show a consistent style of leadership which connects to the British people. Like Blair before him, Cameron is a master of rhetoric and the poignant phrase. He is also a chameleon. Lizards don’t do well in appealing to a cynical, disengaged British public who think all politicians are snakes. Still angry at the expenses scandal, which milked millions out of the public purse to support the fancies of elected officials, the public are looking for someone with moral authority who can inspire a generation. So far they are disappointed. Cameron is seen by many as from an elite background, he is a multi millionaire and appears somewhat aloof. He is disconnected from the day to day struggles of the electors and speaks a language which many find “high falutin” – the kind of language one expects from a “toff”.

Gordon Brown, not exactly a poet or sensitive touchy-feely kind of man, is someone Britain knows. He is volatile, relentless and very focused. He and his team have done a lot to position the Conservative party as a reckless, cost cutting bunch of over educated stuffed shirts who, given the chance, will wreck the carefully built social and economic structure of Britain. Despite evidence that none of this is true, the public are beginning to believe it. Brown is painting the Conservatives into a corner. A hung parliament or Brown clinging to power by a small majority looks increasingly likely.

Given what is happening in Europe – the precarious state of the Eurozone, confusion over the future of the European Union’s future, lacklustre economic recovery and strains between the traditional powers of France and Germany versus Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland – the outcome of the British election has broad significance for the EU. Brown will be a supporter of fiscal responsibility in the EU and Cameron is, at best, lukewarm about many aspects of the Union and its policies. The quiet hand of Europe will be rooting for Gordon Brown.

There are just eight and a half weeks to go before the expected poll date in Britain. It will be an interesting period in British political history – well worth keeping an eye on.

Making a Difference - Real Learning

2010-03-02T19:49:00.001-07:00

I used to teach learners we then called “special needs”. They were not physically challenged. They were not mentally challenged in the sense of having a disorder within the real of DSM III (as it then was). They were challenged by the education system which did not suite them and, in most cases, by parents who were not always sure they liked them.

There were sixteen of them. They came from what we may call distressed and dysfunctional families, but they called their parents mum and dad and their place “home”. They didn’t take drugs and we didn’t give them drugs – Ritalin was not available when I began teaching, though beer was in widespread use (even in the staff room). I did not hit them, though other teachers routinely did – it was a different time, one where physical punishment was metered out by Assistant Principals, some of whom were bullies.

There was not a national curriculum or key stages which these young people had to pass through. I was simply asked, as a teacher who had a degree in psychology, to work with them “and see where I could take them”. I was expected to enhance their reading, writing, number and social skills, but targets were not set and I was not subject to high stakes testing. I did, however, report on progress to my Principal and all parents every two weeks.

I had few resources. I had a book allowance, a radio and a TV set and I begged, borrowed and occasionally land-leased things I needed. These included a dartboard – if you want to get 15 years olds manipulating numbers fast, play darts; seven sets of domino's, used to teach life skills; packs of playing cards to help them understand the power of memory and learning; literally hundreds of magazines, newspapers, old photographs and like resources we used for building our idea and challenge collages; a reel-to reel tape recorder for our weekly radio broadcast to the whole school and dress up clothes for our fortnightly plays.

We had fun. Laughter was the order of the day. We also did a lot of work. Writing scripts, creating news collages, telling stories of families, learning how the horse racing and betting game really worked (four of the kids in the class had to put their parents bets on the horses at lunch time and over the week-end: a great opportunity to teach about risk, probability and the management of uncertainty).

By the time we finished our year together, each of the young persons in this class had a reading age equal to their actual age – a real achievement. Each of them secured 85% or higher on a “maths you need every day” test we devised. Each of them had made a public presentation, participated in a great deal of team activity and would be assessed by the school psychologist as having a high emotional intelligence quotient, despite their lack of IQ.

When we were leaving the school – me to take up a Research Fellowship and some of them to start their apprenticeships or go into the world of work – we were pleased to have worked together. Several stayed in touch.

Over twenty five years later we had a reunion. All but one showed up – he had died in action in the Falklands war (“he was always a bit of a nutter, that Ken” said his best friend, Angela). All were or had been married and all had daughters or sons, many of whom they brought to meet some of their old teachers. There were four of us they made a b-line for. We had, according to them, given them the spirit and the support to at least try to be something “out there”, they said.
One was now a local Councilor, Chairman of the Public Works Committee. Not a brilliant young man, but street smart and very focused. Two owned pubs and were quite wealthy. Several were self employed and, seemingly doing ok (“but don’t ask too many questions”, said Blethyn-the Blond Bombshell, as she was known in class). All were in cars much better than mine, though it was not always clear whether legal ownership was a matter still in dispute.

What mattered most to them, they said, was that the four of us teachers cared about them as people. They weren’t numbers, not check marks, not accountability statistics – they were Aiden, Angharrad, Blethyn, Mike, Sandy, Glyn, Wyn-Wynne and their friends. We showed respect. We also, they said, made them work hard, even though it didn’t always feel like work.

I had kept some of the tapes of our weekly newscast to the school and played them for them. They fell about laughing at how they sounded and at what they felt was important. They also started correcting each others grammar as we sat with a pint in the room at the back of the Craven Arms.

It was a year in my life. But these young men and women have shaped my life. They showed me that, even amidst hardship and stress, one can learn, be inspired and engage with others in pursuit of a project that matters or an activity where you can feel oneself learning. It also taught me the importance of the nimble professional, able to craft activities appropriate to the moment, the people and the goal. We weren’t told what to teach when, we had to work that out. We earned the respect of the community through our inventiveness, creativity and passion for learning.

I spend some time in schools now. I see many teachers doing remarkable things and young people responding as they have always done to genuineness, warmth and empathy. Our learners constantly surprise us.

But I also find a temerity amongst teachers, a fear of risk. I sometimes find fear of accountability – the stress of Provincial Achievement Tests. I often find a sense of despair that they cant do all that is expected of them by the Provincial curriculum – not quite the bible, but certainly regarded by many as the handbook to the holy land. Some cherish their professionalism, but many feel that it has been lost – certainly in the eyes of the community.

I wrote some time ago that it is time to give schools back to teachers – to trust them again and to give them room in the curriculum at all levels to invent, create, inspire, challenge and take risks with ideas. It is also time to rethink accountability and to focus on the teachers accountability for the work of each student in real time. It is time for real learning. It is time to recognize that, as far as learning outcomes are concerned, less is more. Less curriculum demands and more learning; less standardized testing and more person to person accountability; less fear and more inspiration.

Ironically, we were doing real learning in my class with the sixteen young men and women I taught in 1972-3. It was certainly real and life-long for them when I met them in 1999 in a pub in Cwmbran. They cared about their learning some twenty six years later.

I followed up with ten of my class last year. Two more of the sixteen had died – cancer. Six had the experience of seeing their sons or daughters graduate from university with a degree – the first in their families long history ever to do so. One, a car dealer, was now a multi-millionaire – when I knew him he survived by stealing from his mothers purse. All but one have grandchildren and they spend their grand parent time teaching them to read, write and do math. They know, first hand, the transformative power of learning.

Schools shape generations and can be inspiring places. To inspire learning, we need space and time. Space in the curriculum and time to customize that learning for every child. Now is the time for us to show just what we in Alberta can do when we set our minds to it.

One place we can learn from is from our special needs community and the teachers and staff who serve them. They are and have always been pioneers and I am proud to have once being a part of this cadre of innovators and imagineers.

Innovation Watch

2010-03-02T18:19:00.001-07:00

The Government of Canada looks likely to focus a key part of its budget this week on investments related to productivity and innovation. The concern is that Canada has “lost the plot” with innovation – rather than being number one in the world, which was the plan, we are fourteenth amongst seventeen nations as measured by the Conference Board of Canada. What should the budget contain?

What we have done in the past is to invest in university research, development and commercialization activities in the vain hope that this would produce great commercial outcomes. The reality, plain for all to see, is that it has yet to do so. The roughly $14 billion annual investment in R&D at our universities produces but modest returns. In part this is because universities, by and large, are simply not designed to create commercial value from ideas and in part because they lack incentives to do so.

Is the solution to spend even more on our universities to try and fix the path to commercialization? No. The real solution is to focus energy on where innovation really takes place – in firms. Rather than boost spending on R&D, the government should use any new funds to significantly boost IRAP – the Industrial Research Assistance Program – and to create incentives for private and public partnerships. More specifically, it should seek to make focused and strategic investments in key industry sectors we want to grow and minimize investments in dying industry sectors.

A second investment we need to see is a massive boost to funding for post-graduate student places, especially those with a co-op component or post doctoral positions in firms. Increasing the ability of firms to leverage ideas and innovation is key. Those countries ahead of us in the league table have more post-grads in the workforce in real firms than Canada does.

Third, the Government of Canada, working in partnership with the Colleges and Polytechnic institutions, should invest in the applied research they are engaged in. These institutions are close to industry, provide them with skilled people and do critical (and relatively inexpensive) applied work. Their work on the innovation agenda should be recognized and funded accordingly.

Finally, we should address the real lack of tier one venture capital in this country. Whether its Ontario, BC or Alberta, companies need to be “fed” two things – risk capital supported by expert managerial talent and realistic, current market intelligence. Tier one venture firms do this – banks and angel investors do not.

There are some other things that matter. The Federal Government needs to partner closely with the Provinces in developing appropriate local innovation strategies; it needs to simplify the processes it uses for securing IRAP funds; it needs to start pooling its intelligence; it needs to stop believing its own press releases and start getting realistic about the challenges facing Canada over the next twenty five years. Its time for some leadership and courage on the innovation file.

The Government of Canada also needs to stand firm in the interests of Canadian firms and researchers against the persistent demands of the WTO and the US as they relate to intellectual property. The demands from these organization represent an attempt to behave as a colonial power as far as knowledge is concerned. Canada should, in partnership with other countries who are also balking at the hegemony of intellectual property law demands of the US, show what a twenty first century collaborative intellectual property regime could look like.

There is a lot to do. We will see this week whether or not the Government of Canada understands the challenge and has the courage to act. Don’t hold your breath.

Being Fiscally Responsible - A Progressive Alberta Perspective

2010-03-01T08:46:00.000-07:00

The term “fiscal responsibility” in Alberta has come to have, within the Progressive Conservative Party, one meaning: debt free. This has always been seen to be a desirable state, but not an essential one in most countries. Yet, in Alberta the idea of being debt free is almost religious. Yet the debt owed to the environment, to those in need of our help and to future generations is not being “accounted” for in the thrust to a debt free Alberta.

There is another approach to fiscal responsibility, one which seeks to balance the obligations for responsible finance with the social and economic obligations of government, acting on behalf of the people. This approach has these requirements:

1. Spend intelligently. Government spending should be focused on securing outcomes linked to a vision and strategy for the Province. This requires the balancing of investment in the future (education and environmental policies, for example) with consumption based spending (a significant proportion of health spending is consumptive). It also requires the government to ensure that it is safeguarding the well-being and interests of the vulnerable, supporting innovation and enabling cultural institutions, which shape our experience of Alberta.

2. Tax appropriately. Alberta has pursued a strategy of being a low tax jurisdiction. That strategy is now failing – at least as far as corporate taxation is concerned. It is also failing in another way. As the public see cuts to education, school closures, non profits who deliver social services being starved of cash and other developments, they know something is out of place. Alberta should tax according to the revenue requirements of the vision and strategy for the Province. It should be committed to accessible and affordable education, for example, and tax appropriately. There is something wrong with a jurisdiction that makes it more difficult for students to study at College or University while at the same time encouraging gambling – gambling and sin taxes produce more revenue for the Government than oil.

3. Borrow responsibility. There is nothing wrong with debt. Almost every Albertan has some. The question is at what risk and at what cost. Imagine if the Province had a debt limit of 10% of the entire revenue from other sources – what could we invest that money in?

4. Be accountable. Show the planned intent of an expenditure, show the outcome and tell us whether the outcome is in line with what was intended when the expenditure was made. There is still too much that is “hidden” and has to be dug for. There is also a need to show the risk associated with an expenditure – for example, what is the risk associated with the significant reduction in funding to Alberta’s post-secondary system announced in the recent budget? Do we know?

5. Be transparent. Accountability and transparency are close cousins, but not the same thing. For example, what is the rationale for the Premiers decision that, while he is Premier, there will be no new taxes and no increases in taxes. Showing us the rationale for this and sharing the debate that must have taken place in Treasury Board would be transparency. Show us the full costs to the environment of the current policy towards oil and gas exploration and mining. Be transparent about intent as well as the actual flow of money.

If these were the foundations of fiscal responsibility for a progressive jurisdiction, then Alberta may become a better place.

A DECLARATION IN SUPPORT OF OUR SCHOOLS

2010-02-28T07:13:00.003-07:00

WHY WE NEED TO THINK ABOUT OUR SCHOOLS

Alberta should be proud of its school system. It ranks second in the world behind Finland in terms of educational outcomes. Our schools are also ranked by several studies to be the best in Canada and are strongly supported by local communities. Of course, there are challenges – there always will be. But our students, working with their teachers and supported by parents and the community, are generally doing well and our schools are amongst the best in the world.

The challenge for Alberta is that doing well now may not be good enough for our future. As a small jurisdiction – just 3.5 million people – we face growing competition from others for talent, capital and resources. “Good” may no longer be good enough – we need our schools to be great so that Alberta can build its next generation economy, enhance and develop our communities and sustain our environment.

It is time for change.

Our social and economic well-being requires a different kind of school and learning from that which helped build such a successful Province. Essential skills (literacy, numeracy, critical thinking, digital navigation) remain essential, but so are other skills – social networking and team skills, problem solving, participatory democracy skills, Imagineering and creative skills, design…there are many such lists and different conceptions of what these lists mean. The point is simple: we need to rethink what it is our schools are doing and how they are doing it, building on our success in doing so.

What we have to do as citizens is decide what our schools are for – “what is the purpose of our schools in the 21st century?”. Then we can work out just what schools should work on to continue to be amongst the best in the world.

Schools are the foundation of civil society and they lay the foundation for life long learning. They are the hub of communities. Teachers, as professionals, need to be nimble and adaptive as knowledge and understanding changes so quickly. They also need to be respected as professional. Parents need to be engaged in their child’s learning. Students need to be seen as citizens in their own right and their rights should be respected.

SCHOOLS AND THE NEXT ALBERTA

We are preparing our young people for a world that is different from the one we grew up in, for jobs that don’t yet exist and for the reality of constant and faster change. What is clear, is that the new economy is driven by knowledge and the speed at which people adapt and learn will become critical to both their success and the future of the Province.

Also clear is that an old reliance on basic skills will not be enough to secure the long term well-being of individuals, families or communities. We need to see education is the primary investment we will make in our Province’s future – they are the foundation for lifelong learning.

Education is also the bedrock of democratic society. Education is the great leveller – it allows people to develop to the potential of their intelligence and hard work, and breaks down the cultures of entitlement based on social class, bloodlines, race or religion. Citizens must be literate, have a decent understanding of history, science, politics, math, and be able to apply reason, evidence and critical thinking both to his or her own life and to the broader context of society and the environment. They must be encouraged to use their own minds and conscience to guide their decisions, rather than abdicating this responsibility to authority figures. They should also learn the difference between scepticism and denial of evidence.

Critical thinking should not be confused with criticism of thinking.

An investment in education and learning should be driven by some core principles – principles that commit us to a vision of schooling that focuses on excellence, supports differences and makes sure we do not loose out on the global “war for talent”.

We know that the Government of Alberta intends to introduce a new School Act. This should be an Act that stands the test of time, that helps Alberta build its future and enhance its position in the world.

The Act and the work associated with it needs to be based on some key principles. We should make these principled commitments as a Province so that our schools continue to be amongst the best in the world. You can help by signing up to these principles – we will let you know how to do so shortly, but use this blog to register your interests.

PRINCIPLES FOR ALBERTA’S EDUCATION SYSTEM

Success for all is a corner stone of our shared commitment to provide good schools for all students.

Ability comes in many forms and learners need to be supported to enjoy success no matter where their talents lie – education is not just for and about “academics” – we need to be a Province rich in all the talents.

The educational success of learners should not depend on the background or social status or economic characteristics of learners and their families. Schools, communities and families must work together to close gaps in attainment and give each learner the opportunity to find their talent, nurture that talent and be excellent. Success for all requires a significant investment in early childhood learning - without this, learners and the community spend their resources “catching up” rather than developing the talents of their learners.

Education should engage the learner with exciting, relevant content and opportunities for learning through experience and doing. The curriculum should balance abstract and practical knowledge so that every learner can access high quality knowledge and skills as well as vocational opportunities. Teachers should be able to add adapt and develop curriculum – it should not be “over-prescribed” by the Province.

Education should help learners to understand how to be healthy and happy and support them in their efforts to develop and maintain their emotional, physical and mental well-being. Schools should recognize that learning takes place both in and outside of schools – we need to facilitate, enable and recognize learning from a variety of different settings.

Education must be a partnership.

The education of Albertans should be a partnership of schools, parents and the wider community in a local area. Learners have a valuable role to play in contributing to the design of their own learning, and in shaping the way their learning environment operates.

Every place of learning should be different and innovative and we must find meaningful, yet effective, ways of holding schools to account for their performance that reward rather than stifle innovation and creativity.

Trust in our schools and education professionals must be fostered.

Every teacher should be a creative professional involved in the design of curricula and learning environments, and should be supported and supported in their acquisition of appropriate skills to fulfill that role.

Decisions in education should respect the rights of learners as citizens.
Decisions about and in schools should be driven by evidence and research. Alberta needs to be world-class in educational research if its schools are to the lead the world in performance and success.

Decisions about schools need to be based on the outcomes of participatory democracy – communities should be engaged in the work of their schools.

Making Learning Accessible

Schools need a curriculum that is accessible, authentic and valued by learners. An academic curriculum is valuable to many, but so too is apprenticeship, the creative arts, sports and many other “routes” for the talents of our learners. Learners need choices and resources should be linked to the choices learners make.

Schools, colleges and universities should be accessible, affordable and effective. Making access and affordability for our post-secondary system is a pre-requisite for building Alberta’s competitive advantage and is essential if the links between schools and Alberta’s post-secondary system are to be meaningful.

OUR SCHOOLS HAVE MANY CHALLENGES

We know that our schools, teachers and the students within them face challenges – lack of resources, uneven access to broadband and technology, testing and its impacts on real learning – the list can go on. What we need to do is to go back to first principles, secure agreement that these principles should be driving our thinking about our schools and then use these principles to drive decisions. We can’t deal with all issues in a single document. What we can do is establish the basis for future decisions.

WHAT YOU CAN DO..

Building on our past success, preparing Alberta for the competitive knowledge based economy, ensuring that every talent available to us is found, fostered and nurtured and developed to the fullest potential – this is what we need our schools to do. Our schools also need to lay the foundation for participative democracy, lifelong learning and citizenship.

If we want to move from “good” to “great” and do so in a way that nurtures respect, transparency and effectiveness then we must start from first principles.

If we want to tackle some key problems – high school completion rates are low, not everyone who enters post-secondary completes, many employees do not have the literacy skills required to be highly effective in their work – then we need to refocus and reshape our schools and the linkages between schools, colleges and universities.

If we can agree on these, then we can start working on the things that are getting in the way of moving from good to great. But don’t let these other issues get in the way of alignment on the big picture.Lets focus on what matters most.

If you support this thinking and these principles, then we will soon ask you to sign our Declaration of First Principles for Alberta’s Schools. You can also help improve the declaration by going to our Facebook group http://apps.facebook.com/group.php?gid=316469659964

As the Government develops the School Act, we will draw attention to this work and its support – the more that sign up, the more likely it will be that the School Act will reflect these principles. Sign now and make a difference.

On The Credibility of Climate Research - Judith Curry

2010-02-25T19:38:00.002-07:00

Judith Curry, Georgia Institute of Technology writes: I am trying something new, a blogospheric experiment, if you will. I have been a fairly active participant in the blogosphere since 2006, and recently posted two essays on climategate, one at climateaudit.org and the other at climateprogress.org. Both essays were subsequently picked up by other blogs, and the diversity of opinions expressed at the different blogs was quite interesting. Hence I am distributing this essay to a number of different blogs simultaneously with the hope of demonstrating the collective power of the blogosphere to generate ideas and debate them. I look forward to a stimulating discussion on this important topic.

Climategate has now become broadened in scope to extend beyond the CRU emails to include glaciergate and a host of other issues associated with the IPCC. In responding to climategate, the climate research establishment has appealed to its own authority and failed to understand that climategate is primarily a crisis of trust. Finally, we have an editorial published in Science on February 10 from Ralph Cicerone, President of the National Academy of Science, that begins to articulate the trust issue: “This view reflects the fragile nature of trust between science and society, demonstrating that the perceived misbehavior of even a few scientists can diminish the credibility of science as a whole. What needs to be done? Two aspects need urgent attention: the general practice of science and the personal behaviors of scientists.” While I applaud loudly Dr. Cicerone’s statement, I wish it had been made earlier and had not been isolated from the public by publishing the statement behind paywall at Science. Unfortunately, the void of substantive statements from our institutions has been filled in ways that have made the situation much worse.

Credibility is a combination of expertise and trust. While scientists persist in thinking that they should be trusted because of their expertise, climategate has made it clear that expertise itself is not a sufficient basis for public trust. The fallout from climategate is much broader than the allegations of misconduct by scientists at two universities. Of greatest importance is the reduced credibility of the IPCC assessment reports, which are providing the scientific basis for international policies on climate change. Recent disclosures about the IPCC have brought up a host of concerns about the IPCC that had been festering in the background: involvement of IPCC scientists in explicit climate policy advocacy; tribalism that excluded skeptics; hubris of scientists with regards to a noble (Nobel) cause; alarmism; and inadequate attention to the statistics of uncertainty and the complexity of alternative interpretations.

The scientists involved in the CRU emails and the IPCC have been defended as scientists with the best of intentions trying to do their work in a very difficult environment. They blame the alleged hacking incident on the “climate denial machine.” They are described as fighting a valiant war to keep misinformation from the public that is being pushed by skeptics with links to the oil industry. They are focused on moving the science forward, rather than the janitorial work of record keeping, data archival, etc. They have had to adopt unconventional strategies to fight off what they thought was malicious interference. They defend their science based upon their years of experience and their expertise.

Scientists are claiming that the scientific content of the IPCC reports is not compromised by climategate. The jury is still out on the specific fallout from climategate in terms of the historical and paleo temperature records. There are larger concerns (raised by glaciergate, etc.) particularly with regards to the IPCC Assessment Report on Impacts (Working Group II): has a combination of groupthink, political advocacy and a noble cause syndrome stifled scientific debate, slowed down scientific progress and corrupted the assessment process? If institutions are doing their jobs, then misconduct by a few individual scientists should be quickly identified, and the impacts of the misconduct should be confined and quickly rectified. Institutions need to look in the mirror and ask the question as to how they enabled this situation and what opportunities they missed to forestall such substantial loss of public trust in climate research and the major assessment reports.

In their misguided war against the skeptics, the CRU emails reveal that core research values became compromised. Much has been said about the role of the highly politicized environment in providing an extremely difficult environment in which to conduct science that produces a lot of stress for the scientists. There is no question that this environment is not conducive to science and scientists need more support from their institutions in dealing with it. However, there is nothing in this crazy environment that is worth sacrificing your personal or professional integrity. And when your science receives this kind of attention, it means that the science is really important to the public. Therefore scientists need to do everything possible to make sure that they effectively communicate uncertainty, risk, probability and complexity, and provide a context that includes alternative and competing scientific viewpoints. This is an important responsibility that individual scientists and particularly the institutions need to take very seriously.

Both individual scientists and the institutions need to look in the mirror and really understand how this happened. Climategate isn’t going to go away until these issues are resolved. Science is ultimately a self-correcting process, but with a major international treaty and far-reaching domestic legislation on the table, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

The Changing Nature of Skepticism about Global Warming
Over the last few months, I have been trying to understand how this insane environment for climate research developed. In my informal investigations, I have been listening to the perspectives of a broad range of people that have been labeled as “skeptics” or even “deniers”. I have come to understand that global warming skepticism is very different now than it was five years ago. Here is my take on how global warming skepticism has evolved over the past several decades.

In the 1980’s, James Hansen and Steven Schneider led the charge in informing the public of the risks of potential anthropogenic climate change. Sir John Houghton and Bert Bolin played similar roles in Europe. This charge was embraced by the environmental advocacy groups, and global warming alarmism was born. During this period I would say that many if not most researchers, including myself, were skeptical that global warming was detectable in the temperature record and that it would have dire consequences. The traditional foes of the environmental movement worked to counter the alarmism of the environmental movement, but this was mostly a war between advocacy groups and not an issue that had taken hold in the mainstream media and the public consciousness. In the first few years of the 21st century, the stakes became higher and we saw the birth of what some have called a “monolithic climate denial machine”. Skeptical research published by academics provided fodder for the think tanks and advocacy groups, which were fed by money provided by the oil industry. This was all amplified by talk radio and cable news.

In 2006 and 2007, things changed as a result of Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” plus the IPCC 4th Assessment Report, and global warming became a seemingly unstoppable juggernaut. The reason that the IPCC 4th Assessment Report was so influential is that people trusted the process the IPCC described: participation of a thousand scientists from 100 different countries, who worked for several years to produce 3000 pages with thousands of peer reviewed scientific references, with extensive peer review. Further, the process was undertaken with the participation of policy makers under the watchful eyes of advocacy groups with a broad range of conflicting interests. As a result of the IPCC influence, scientific skepticism by academic researchers became vastly diminished and it became easier to embellish the IPCC findings rather than to buck the juggernaut. Big oil funding for contrary views mostly dried up and the mainstream media supported the IPCC consensus. But there was a new movement in the blogosphere, which I refer to as the “climate auditors”, started by Steve McIntyre. The climate change establishment failed to understand this changing dynamic, and continued to blame skepticism on the denial machine funded by big oil.

Climate Auditors and the Blogosphere
Steve McIntyre started the blog climateaudit.org so that he could defend himself against claims being made at the blog realclimate.org with regards to his critique of the “hockey stick” since he was unable to post his comments there. Climateaudit has focused on auditing topics related to the paleoclimate reconstructions over the past millennia (in particular the so called “hockey stick”) and also the software being used by climate researchers to fix data problems due to poor quality surface weather stations in the historical climate data record. McIntyre’s “auditing” became very popular not only with the skeptics, but also with the progressive “open source” community, and there are now a number of such blogs. The blog with the largest public audience is wattsupwiththat.com, led by weatherman Anthony Watts, with over 2 million unique visitors each month.

So who are the climate auditors? They are technically educated people, mostly outside of academia. Several individuals have developed substantial expertise in aspects of climate science, although they mainly audit rather than produce original scientific research. They tend to be watchdogs rather than deniers; many of them classify themselves as “lukewarmers”. They are independent of oil industry influence. They have found a collective voice in the blogosphere and their posts are often picked up by the mainstream media. They are demanding greater accountability and transparency of climate research and assessment reports.

So what motivated their FOIA requests of the CRU at the University of East Anglia? Last weekend, I was part of a discussion on this issue at the Blackboard. Among the participants in this discussion was Steven Mosher, who broke the climategate story and has already written a book on it here. They are concerned about inadvertent introduction of bias into the CRU temperature data by having the same people who create the dataset use the dataset in research and in verifying climate models; this concern applies to both NASA GISS and the connection between CRU and the Hadley Centre. This concern is exacerbated by the choice of James Hansen at NASA GISS to become a policy advocate, and his forecasts of forthcoming “warmest years.” Medical research has long been concerned with the introduction of such bias, which is why they conduct double blind studies when testing the efficacy of a medical treatment. Any such bias could be checked by independent analyses of the data; however, people outside the inner circle were unable to obtain access to the information required to link the raw data to the final analyzed product. Further, creation of the surface data sets was treated like a research project, with no emphasis on data quality analysis, and there was no independent oversight. Given the importance of these data sets both to scientific research and public policy, they feel that greater public accountability is required.

So why do the mainstream climate researchers have such a problem with the climate auditors? The scientists involved in the CRU emails seem to regard Steve McIntyre as their arch-nemesis (Roger Pielke Jr’s term). Steve McIntyre’s early critiques of the hockey stick were dismissed and he was characterized as a shill for the oil industry. Academic/blogospheric guerilla warfare ensued, as the academic researchers tried to prevent access of the climate auditors to publishing in scientific journals and presenting their work at professional conferences, and tried to deny them access to published research data and computer programs. The bloggers countered with highly critical posts in the blogosphere and FOIA requests. And climategate was the result.

So how did this group of bloggers succeed in bringing the climate establishment to its knees (whether or not the climate establishment realizes yet that this has happened)? Again, trust plays a big role; it was pretty easy to follow the money trail associated with the “denial machine”. On the other hand, the climate auditors have no apparent political agenda,
are doing this work for free, and have been playing a watchdog role, which has engendered the trust of a large segment of the population.
Towards Rebuilding Trust
Rebuilding trust with the public on the subject of climate research starts with Ralph Cicerone’s statement “Two aspects need urgent attention: the general practice of science and the personal behaviors of scientists.” Much has been written about the need for greater transparency, reforms to peer review, etc. and I am hopeful that the relevant institutions will respond appropriately. Investigations of misconduct are being conducted at the University of East Anglia and at Penn State. Here I would like to bring up some broader issues that will require substantial reflection by the institutions and also by individual scientists.

Climate research and its institutions have not yet adapted to its high policy relevance. How scientists can most effectively and appropriately engage with the policy process is a topic that has not been adequately discussed (e.g. the “honest broker” challenge discussed by Roger Pielke Jr), and climate researchers are poorly informed in this regard. The result has been reflexive support for the UNFCCC policy agenda (e.g. carbon cap and trade) by many climate researchers that are involved in the public debate (particularly those involved in the IPCC), which they believe follows logically from the findings of the (allegedly policy neutral) IPCC. The often misinformed policy advocacy by this group of climate scientists has played a role in the political polarization of this issue.. The interface between science and policy is a muddy issue, but it is very important that scientists have guidance in navigating the potential pitfalls. Improving this situation could help defuse the hostile environment that scientists involved in the public debate have to deal with, and would also help restore the public trust of climate scientists.

The failure of the public and policy makers to understand the truth as presented by the IPCC is often blamed on difficulties of communicating such a complex topic to a relatively uneducated public that is referred to as “unscientific America” by Chris Mooney. Efforts are made to “dumb down” the message and to frame the message to respond to issues that are salient to the audience. People have heard the alarm, but they remain unconvinced because of a perceived political agenda and lack of trust of the message and the messengers. At the same time, there is a large group of educated and evidence driven people (e.g. the libertarians, people that read the technical skeptic blogs, not to mention policy makers) who want to understand the risk and uncertainties associated with climate change, without being told what kinds of policies they should be supporting. More effective communication strategies can be devised by recognizing that there are two groups with different levels of base knowledge about the topic. But building trust through public communication on this topic requires that uncertainty be acknowledged. My own experience in making public presentations about climate change has found that discussing the uncertainties increases the public trust in what scientists are trying to convey and doesn’t detract from the receptivity to understanding climate change risks (they distrust alarmism). Trust can also be rebuilt by discussing broad choices rather than focusing on specific policies.

And finally, the blogosphere can be a very powerful tool for increasing the credibility of climate research. “Dueling blogs” (e.g. climateprogress.org versus wattsupwiththat.com and realclimate.org versus climateaudit.org) can actually enhance public trust in the science as they see both sides of the arguments being discussed. Debating science with skeptics should be the spice of academic life, but many climate researchers lost this somehow by mistakenly thinking that skeptical arguments would diminish the public trust in the message coming from the climate research establishment. Such debate is alive and well in the blogosphere, but few mainstream climate researchers participate in the blogospheric debate. The climate researchers at realclimate.org were the pioneers in this, and other academic climate researchers hosting blogs include Roy Spencer, Roger Pielke Sr and Jr, Richard Rood, and Andrew Dessler. The blogs that are most effective are those that allow comments from both sides of the debate (many blogs are heavily moderated). While the blogosphere has a “wild west” aspect to it, I have certainly learned a lot by participating in the blogospheric debate including how to sharpen my thinking and improve the rhetoric of my arguments. Additional scientific voices entering the public debate particularly in the blogosphere would help in the broader communication efforts and in rebuilding trust. And we need to acknowledge the emerging auditing and open source movements in the in the internet-enabled world, and put them to productive use. The openness and democratization of knowledge enabled by the internet can be a tremendous tool for building public understanding of climate science and also trust in climate research.

No one really believes that the “science is settled” or that “the debate is over.” Scientists and others that say this seem to want to advance a particular agenda. There is nothing more detrimental to public trust than such statements.

And finally, I hope that this blogospheric experiment will demonstrate how the diversity of the different blogs can be used collectively to generate ideas and debate them, towards bringing some sanity to this whole situation surrounding the politicization of climate science and rebuilding trust with the public.

Building the Alberta the World Needs

2010-02-23T16:31:00.001-07:00

Alberta is an important place in the world. Our schools are amongst the best in the world according to an analysis of standard test data – we rank second only to Finland. As oil from other sources begins to decline, Alberta oil will be in high demand – whatever Whole Foods wants to think. Our scientists and technologists are in high demand world-wide – they are innovative, creative and successful. Our musicians, ballet dancers, artists and theatre companies are recognized worldwide for their talents – over a billion people watched Alberta Ballet perform at the Olympics. But Alberta is at a tipping point – the smell of real change is in the air.

Politically, a tired and lacklustre conservative government is finding it difficult to capture the hearts and minds of Albertan’s. After thirty nine years in office, the party seems to have run out of ideas and is sticking to its “no new taxes” and spend our way out of trouble when the mood is one which favours austerity and realignment. Two new political parties – The Wild Rose Alliance and the Alberta Party – are hoping to capture the minds of Albertan’s followed by their votes when the election is called for March 2012. Progressives are meeting in various rooms across Alberta in an attempt to Reboot the Province – positioning policy and thinking for a twenty first century Province ready to take its place in the world.

Significant reforms are planned for Alberta’s school system by the widely respected Minister for Education, Dave Hancock. What these reforms will be is not yet clear, but the expectation is for a significant change in terms of curriculum, assessment and the use of technology. Hancock talks frequently about new skills for a new century – a century that is already approaching the end of its first decade. Many within the system are enthusiastic about the potential for change, but fearful that it will not be substantive. They fear a missed opportunity – one that comes only every thirty or forty years.

The Premiers Economic Council, which has members from Alberta, other parts of Canada and elsewhere in the world, is beginning to look at what Alberta could be like in 2040 and what it needs to do now so as to make 2040 a “preferred future” for the Province. It is likely to challenge the Province to see people and skills as its core assets, not oil and gas, and challenge the Province to do more to leverage its natural resources to lead the world in green technologies for agriculture, forestry, oil and gas. It also needs to push the case for Alberta, which after all is a small jurisdiction, to focus its resources and energies on those areas where it can build jurisdictional advantage.

The oil sands companies, not deaf to challenges as to the environmental impact of their work, have been working collaboratively for some time to share environmental solutions and leverage the skills available to them from around the world to solve key problems – water use, air quality, emissions, tailings and wetlands reclamation. Real progress is being made, though few know about the work they are doing.

Alberta’s reputation in key fields of health care – rehabilitation, heart disease, diabetes, head and neck reconstruction – is world class and many other fields, notably nanotechnology and medicine and metabalomics are quickly emerging as areas in which Alberta has an emerging reputation. What is needed here is a strong focus on solving some key public health issues – obesity and the health of our aboriginal peoples being at the forefront – and an effective focus on wellness as the cornerstone of a twenty first century health strategy.

Commercially, we have emerging sectors of the economy which show considerable promise. Alberta’s geometrics sector accounts for almost half of Canada’s GDP revenues from this sector and is the Canadian leader in innovation. New investments mechanisms, innovation vouchers and the role of strategic R&D investments are beginning to pay off.

Alberta is poised to take its deserved place in the world. What is missing is leadership. That is leadership across all sectors, not just political leadership.

Alberta politicians are very inward focused on securing their local mandates and see the status of Alberta in Canada as their prime motivation for looking beyond the next vote. It is short sighted. We should be looking at our place in North America, our partnerships with European nations and our standing in the world as drivers for decisions.

In business, there is a real need for leadership. Where is the Richard Branson of Alberta – the leader who inspires a generation of entrepreneurs, who leads the charge for market share, who champions real innovation, not just in one field? Where are the oil and gas leaders who speak up every week about what they are doing for the environment, what they plan to do and what others can do to help? Where are the champions of the next economy ? Who in business is speaking up about the skills they need to see our schools, colleges and Universities producing?

In education, there is silence from community organizations, industry, non profits and school boards about changes that are needed. While many participated in forums and local conversations managed by the Government, no one is speaking out about the future of our schools and what it is we need them to be.

Without focused, passionate and committed leadership, Alberta may not take its rightful place as a leading jurisdiction in the world. Yet we could. Finland, seen by all observers as the world leader in both innovation and education, did it and continues to do so. Why cant we? What we need are leaders who have a compelling vision which a truly progressive population can rally behind.

The Dreadful Prime Minister

2010-02-23T02:29:00.001-07:00

The prospects for a hung British parliament following the May elections throughout the United Kingdom looked strong today. A new poll by ICM, published in The Guardian and The Evening Standard, shows that the Conservative lead over Labour has fallen to just seven points in the last week.

The steady decline in David Cameron’s conservative support comes from his own failure to explain his policies, especially on the economy. In televisions interviews this week he has been unable to explain where and when cuts in public expenditure will be made and what the tax implications of his policies are.

Gordon Brown, under attack in the media for reports of his bullying and boorish behavior aimed at how own staff and colleagues, looks to be improving his performance. His campaign, basically “take a close look at Labour and an even closer one at the Tories” seems to be paying off. His bullying is being “spun” by his handlers and his wife as the behavior of a man determined to ensure that the right policies are in place for the Britain of the future – a man passionate about the work he is doing. So far this spin seems to be working. Indeed, there is now talk of Brown calling a snap election some several weeks sooner than the May 6th vote everyone is expecting.

What is also working is Labour’s claim that the leadership of the Conservative party are upper middle class and “toffs”. In translation, “wealthy, aristocratic smarty pants”. In contrast, the claim is that Labour is still “of the people, for the people”. In fact, both parties are headed by people with a similar educational background and with wealth. While more conservatives inherited wealth, both parties have their fair share of toffs.

The battleground will be the economy and the size of public sector deficits and debts over the coming decade. A former leading conservative, Dominic Lawson, writes in The Independent today that the conservatives may actually be better off losing the coming election. Whoever wins will have to make substantial cuts in public expenditure and raise taxes so as to balance the books and get Britain back within normal ranges of public sector debt. Doing so will be massively unpopular and will likely lead to a single term government.

Even if the conservatives were to be the biggest party in a hung parliament after the coming election, that would not give David Cameron the immediate right to try to form a government. The incumbent Prime Minister is constitutionally entitled to make such an attempt himself. Edward Heath attempted this in February 1974, with his failed effort to persuade the then Liberal leader, Jeremy Thorpe, to support a Conservative Party which had fewer Parliamentary seats than Labour. One can imagine Gordon Brown seeking to construct a coalition with the independents, nationalists and others so as to stay in power. The irony would be that doing this and then taking the needed economic steps would confirm his reputation as the “dreadful Prime Minister”.

Homeopathic Nonsense

2010-02-22T07:17:00.000-07:00

Medicine is fraught with difficulties. The case, currently before the Alberta courts, of the child on life support whose parents want to sustain but the doctors directly involved see no hope is one example of the ethical and moral hazard of medical practice. The case of Avandia – the diabetes drug now known to have strong side effects, including fatal heart attacks – was approved by a medical panel, indicating how difficult it is to see solid clinical evidence as a basis for decision making, despite randomized control trials and strict standards for drug testing.

But some decisions in medical science are relatively straightforward, especially for those whose task it is to determine which medical procedures get funded and which do not. No one should fund or indeed support homeopathy.

There are many who believe in homeopathy. The fact that there is a belief system and a group of people who are adherents to this belief system does not make homeopathy effective or an appropriate treatment. Indeed, no clinical evidence exists to suggest that homeopathy has any effects whatsoever.

Don’t take my word for it. A thorough review of homeopathy has just been completed by the Science and Technology Committee of the House of Commons in Britain. Their conclusion: “the evidence base shows that homeopathy is not efficacious (that is, it does not work beyond the placebo effect) and that explanations for why homeopathy would work are scientifically implausible”. Is that clear. It was clear enough when, following a similar review, public funding for homeopathy was withdrawn in both Germany and Switzerland.

Yet in British Columbia the Green Party has argued that it should be funded, despite the decision of the BC Government not to do so. Jane Sterk, leader of the Greens, has bought into the idea that if people want it they should be able to get it as part of a Provincial health plan, whether or not the treatments work.

We also have a Federal initiative which seems to take homeopathy seriously. The Natural Health Products Research Program (NHPRP) of the Natural Health Products Directorate within Health Canada has been consulting with homeopathic practitioners and developing a research agenda, as if if this branch of pseudo-science was to be taken as seriously as, for example, a pharmaceutical product or new medical practice. Homeopathic products, sold over the counter in drug stores, are regulated by this Federal body. In 2008 the federal government proposed Bill C-51, which contained the potential of restricting the availability of certain natural health products -- including homeopathic medicines -- except by prescription through practitioners who are authorized by their provincial governments. The reality is that many of the “medicines” labeled homeopathic contain no detectable amount of active ingredient, so it is impossible to test whether they contain what their label says. Unlike most potent drugs, they have not been proven effective against disease by double-blind clinical testing. In fact, the vast majority of homeopathic products have never even been tested; proponents simply rely on "provings" to tell them what should work. Its time for the a bill to ban their sale.

In June 2007, Ontario passed the Homeopathy Act, which regulates the practice of this pseudo-medicine. It establishes a College of Homeopaths, regulates entry to the profession and seeks to regulate practice, though not all aspects of the Act are fully in force. The problem here is that this gives credibility to a practice for which there is simply no substantive evidence to support its practice.

It is a sad commentary on our health care system in Canada where evidence and clear thinking give way to populism. Where is the politician demanding the removal of homeopathic remedies from drugstores and who also favours the prosecution of practitioners under fraud laws?

Putting the Lid Back on Nova Scotia's Cookie Jar

2010-02-21T16:00:00.001-07:00

(This posting is the 600th Posting on this Blog Site - Many thanks for all your reader comments and support...keep reading!)

What do these things have in common: a generator, a pink iPod Nano, a Memphis loveseat, an electric fireplace and a 50” HDTV? They were all purchased by Nova Scotia taxpayers for MLA’s so as to aid their journey through the difficult and often dangerous world of Provincial politics. In all, MLA’s claimed some $699,023 for items such as these between 2006 and 2009 in Nova Scotia – some $282,000 for technology devices alone.

You may wonder what they are doing with these items. The generator may be useful in an MLA’s search for power, the TV for catching the ego whenever it appears front of camera, the fireplace may be a substitute for the warm glow of success while the loveseat simply provides opportunities for advancement. Whatever the rationale for these taxpayer paid expenses, the tax payers are livid.

So too is the Premier, Darrell Dexter, who incidentlally managed to get through five computers in three years. Feigning outrage and amazement, the Premier has promised to clean up the expense scandal and bring dignity and trust back into Provincial politics. His own expenses in this three year period amounted to $21,931 – putting him in the middle of the pack for the biggest spenders, soon to be renamed the “biggest losers”.

The local economy will suffer as a result. Some stores must have come to rely on their key MLA customers. Take Len Goucher, former Progressive Conservative cabinet minister. In a three year period he purchased five digital cameras, eleven computers, twelve printers and four video recorders. To spruce up his social life, taxpayers were also charged for the Xbox 360 Dance Revolution video game – I assume he is now very fit and easily able to tango around Dartmouth when the tide is out. These purchases, which total close to $44,000, would pay the wages of a technology shop owner for a year.

In comparison to the expense scandal rocking the House of Commons in the United Kingdom, the MLA’s from Nova Scotia are rank amateurs. Not one of them charged the taxpayer for a second home and kept the profits from the sale of the house, made shortly after it was purchased for them. Nor has anyone ordered a duck shoot, cleaned out a moat or had their castle refurbished. No one has started to charge for their children driving them to the legislature or for their wife opening their mail. These Nova Scotia MLA’s are low grade expense claimers. They could learn a lot from the now despised British MP’s.
Indeed, the Speaker of the British House of Commons had to leave his post – he was forced to take a seat in the Lords – because of his mishandling of the expense scandal. Over half of the members of the House have had to repay expenses and four face criminal charges. Many are leaving politics after years of service, feeling themselves unable to recover from the public hostility towards them.

So far, there has been just one casualty in the Nova Scotia house – MLA for Yarmouth, Richard Hulbert. In addition to buying a top of the line generator, power hungry Hulbert also bought a $2,500 TV and taxpayers were kind enough to also pay $575 for its installation. In all, Hulbert’s three year expense toll was $33,220. His resignation followed. No sign yet of the resignation of others.

Some MLA’s may face more serious challenges. Some of the expenses submitted by some were duplicate expenses – claiming for the same item twice. While human error may account for some of these, there is the possibility that some of these were deliberate. If so, they would amount to an attempt to defraud the people of Nova Scotia. Can’t have that can we, especially when we’re busy Xbox dancing.

Not all MLA’s boarded the gravy train, which has been running continuously for many years. Some, like Bill Estabrooks of the NDP, have charged as little as $2,043 over three years, with Liberal Leo Glavine MLA being just a tad more expensive to run at $3,591. Some do think before they spend other people’s money.

Now the Premier, still feigning indignation after three weeks of the scandal, is wondering how to deal with it. Rather than make matters worse, which is what the Brit’s have done with their half-hearted reforms, he should tighten the rules considerably and provide an annual allowance rather than an item based expense system and specify what can and cant be done with the allowance. He should ensure that all expenses incurred by MLA’s and all gifts received by them are posted online within fourteen working days of a claim being made or a gift being received. He should ensure that MLA’s maintain a register of members interests, indicating what investments they hold and what boards and organizations they belong to. Members who can be shown to have breeched the rules should be suspended from the House until their case is investigated thoroughly to ensure that there has been no criminal wrong doing. He should, in short, adopt a policy of transparency coupled with zero tolerance for abuse.

He also needs to have a quiet word with the Speaker of the House and indicate that this is not a party issue – all parties are tainted by this scandal – but an issue of trust and the credibility of the political class. If confidence in the work of politicians is to be regained, every action taken has to be squeaky clean.

Dan Leger or the Chronicle Herald in Halifax observed recently that “the cookie jar was open for so long that nobody in politics today can remember who pried off the lid”. When we’ve stopped Xbox dancing, put away the loveseat and taken the TV back, it will be time to put the lid back on that cookie jar.

Psychiatry is in Need of Treatment

2010-02-20T13:00:00.000-07:00

Psychiatrists want to add “sex addiction” to the catalogue of psychological disorders that can be reliably diagnosed and treated. The Tiger Woods syndrome will be next in line, along with catastrophic views on the environment, an addiction to Starbucks, liking Barry Manilow and singing the praises of Rush Limbaugh. Soon all of our lives will be illness states, with some of us coping better than others in managing our daily diagnostics and treating ourselves through counselling, psychiatry and self-medication.

The quest to add sex addiction to the catalogue of recognized illness states is just a part of the desire of psychiatrists to identify everything as problematic. The handbook for diagnosis, what is known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known commonly as “the DSM”, now in its 4th edition, is the bible of mental illness. If you want to call in sick, go to the library and find a copy – it’s a treasure trove of sick-day opportunities. A new edition, the fifth, is due in 2013.

The DSM is problematic. Diagnoses like “homosexuality”, once classified as an illness, come and go depending on societal pressures. By no stretch of the imagination is it a scientific, evidence based document. This is not surprising. Freud was not a scientist who used evidence and data for his treatment. Now Freud’s ideas have been largely discounted and his diagnostic category of “neurosis” is no longer used. Indeed, several forms of therapy once popular have, on the basis of evidence been sidelined. What hasn’t been revised is the approach to the definition of mental illness.

There has also been a lot of psychiatric nonsense and billable rubbish, including the recovered memory craze, Satanic abuse confabulations, facilitated communication, multiple personality disorder with up to a hundred or more alternative personalities, including animals. Then there was Harvard psychiatrist John Mack’s gullible speculations about alien abductions – a suitable case for treatment in itself. Some psychiatrists are addicted to revenue and new illness categories “capture” more customers.

Thomas Szasz argued that there was no such thing as mental illness and that psychiatry is largely a fraud. He had many followers. Indeed, fraud and psychiatry sometimes go together. In the 1990’s the medical insurers in the US took Szasz’s claims seriously and started to investigate psychiatric fraud. They looked at 50,000 cases handled by the National Medical Enterprises Corporation’s psychiatric hospitals. What they found was startling: 32.6% contained a fraudulent diagnosis to match insurance coverage, while 43.4% of the cases were billed for services not actually rendered. Is systematic deception to be a new addiction and a new DSM category?

Millions of students are now sent to special education classes or given prescriptions for Ritalin and other powerful, addictive medications for conditions termed “learning disabilities”, dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and attention deficit disorder (ADD). Fred Bauman, M.D. , a specialist in child neurology for 35 years, contends that these children are said to have conditions that do not really exist: "I diagnose these children the same way that I diagnose real diseases, such as epilepsy, brain tumours, and so on, and I find that they are normal. I do not find that I can validate the presence of any disease in this population of children”, he said. Some of us went to school before Ritalin was available – when we found ourselves with ADHD we were reassigned to activities which demanded our attention. Now we administer drugs.

Its time to rethink mental illness and to challenge the assumption that everything we do as a form of illness – from eating well (dietary disorder), drinking good wine (alcoholism), needing three cups of coffee to kick start the morning (Starbucks addiction), sex two times a day (sex addiction), telling funny stories (humour addiction), not paying attention when the news is on (attention deficit disorder), having sex while the news is on and drinking wine at the same time (deviancy) and so on. While there are real mental illnesses – depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disease – not everything we do is “on the edge” of madness.

It may actually be the case that psychiatry itself is the new disorder in need of treatment.

Where on Earth is David Suzuki?

2010-02-17T18:19:00.000-07:00

Since January there have been revelations one after another about the state of climate science, the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inquiries into Climategate, confessions by some climate scientists that they may have both exaggerated some findings and been wrong about others and retractions of significant claims from the IPCC.

What has happened is that the mythical “scientific consensus” has come apart, key figures who have been a part of the process of “settling” climate science are now asking for a new process to replace the IPCC process and many members of power holding political parties are backing off radical policies to “stop” climate change and instead are favouring an adaptation strategy, focused on technology investments and seeking to promote green energy rather than develop systems of “cap and trade” or tax carbon. Between the collapse of Copenhagen, the world of climate change has changed.

In all of this, some key figures have been absent from the debate. Al Gore, normally effervescent and quick to come to the defense of the consensus, has all but deserted the field. In part this is because some of his own claims – about sea level rises, impact of climate change or hurricane frequency, speed of global warming - are simply unproven. Donald Trump, not a fan of global warming, has suggested that the Nobel Prize should ask for Gore and the IPCC’s prize back. A petition has been started asking for exactly this to happen.

David Suzuki, the Canada’s Patron Saint of Climate Change, has also said very little – he is missing in action just when scientists who claimed to know all about the climate need his help. Also missing is Lord Stern, author of the Stern Report which suggested that the world was at a tipping point and unless action was taken “immediately” (this was two years ago), then the world’s economies would be burdened by the impact of climate change for generations to come.

Prince Charles, the Prince of Beffudlement, has been busy promoting his views of architecture and planning, but is quiet about climate change. Days before Copenhagen and at Copenhagen itself, he saw this as the defining issue of our generation and Copenhagen as a “last chance” for humanity to do the right thing. Given that the world’s governments took a pass at Copenhagen, I suspect he is busy installing air conditioning at Buckingham Palace.

One person who has been busy, both writing titillating novels and defending his tattered reputation is the railway engineer who finds himself as Chairman of the IPCC, Dr Rajendra Pachauri. Accused of conflicts of interest, Dr Pachauri stalwartly defends the IPCC, despite the revelation of a some twenty major problems with the IPCC 2007 influential report and growing evidence of the failure of the peer review and scientific assessment process. Defending the indefensible and accusing others of failing to understand the work of the IPCC are signs of increasing desperation. Calls for his resignation are growing and very few are coming to his defense.

Even Barrack Obama, who saw Climate Change as one of the defining issues for his Presidency a year ago, now refers to the issue in terms of energy, jobs and security. Only Gordon Brown, whose opinions are seen to be less and less relevant as he is facing down the possibility of a humiliating defeat in the May election in Britain, is out championing the pre-Climategate Copenhagen science, egged on by his Climate Change Minister, Ed Milliband. Young Ed has declared war of “climate change skeptics”, which now include several lead IPCC authors.

As the science begins to take its rightful place in public discourse, with scientists seeking to understand the complex evidence and challenge that evidence and the assumed understanding, those who used science to promote their noble (and often financial) causes – Pachauri, Gore, Suzuki Foundation, Stern – are laying low to see where the bombs fall and how they can salvage something from the debacle. There are more bombs to come – hardly a day passes without another serious flaw in the IPCC’s 4th Assessment appearing. Shock and awe at the collapse of an ideologically driven science is apparent.

What will happen now is that we will begin to see new faces and new names. Some of the “deniers” will be rehabilitated and those campaigners who offer an apology for their enthusiasm and commit themselves to a serious, systematic, critical and reflective use of science will be allowed out of purdah and allowed once again to walk amongst us. Meantime, we can all play “Where on Earth is David Suzuki?”

The Science is Back

2010-02-15T13:12:00.000-07:00

The man at the centre of the Climategate scandal, Professor Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia’a Climate Research Unit (CRU), has made clear that there has been no warming since 1995. His admission casts doubts on the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), where he was a lead author and largely responsible for the claim that warming was moving apace and represented a major threat to the planet.

In an confessional interview with the BBC, published by The Daily Express in Britain, he also said that he was a good scientist but not at all good at keeping records. He has resisted requests to hand over his raw data for scrutiny under the Freedom of Information legislation in the UK, largely because of how chaotic these records were. The Climategate emails themselves confirm this. In fact, it now appears that crucial data, including that relating to the famous “hockey stick graph” which showed dramatic warming over the last fifty years, has gone missing.

Phil Jones's "confession” also makes clear that he now accepts that the Medieval Warm Period, which affected large tracts of Europe, Greenland and North America, was warmer that the current temperature in these same regions.

Part of the explanation for the apparent rise in temperatures, reported by CRU and used by climate scientists as part of computer models, concerns the location of land stations which measure the earths temperature. Many of these have been incorrectly sited, seriously compromising the data by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from time to time. Some are next to air- conditioning units or are on waste treatment plants. One of the most infamous land stations is next to a waste incinerator.

A review of every station that produces data used by climate scientists – and not all of the data produced by land stations is used – suggests that their location presents a warming bias in the data and, when this is taken into account, there has been no statistically significant warming for fifteen years. Professor Terry Mills, professor of applied statistics and econometrics at Loughborough University in England, looked at the same data as the IPCC. He found that the warming trend it reported over the past 30 years or so was just as likely to be due to random fluctuations as to the impacts of greenhouse gases. Mills’s findings are to be published in Climatic Change, a peer reviewed environmental journal.

These developments – the Jones “confession” and the work by a variety of scientists examining the temperature records – cast doubt on the cornerstone of the theory of man made global warming. But the scientists at the heart of this theory are defending their ground. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts has recently issued a new set of global temperature readings covering the past 30 years, with thermometer readings augmented by satellite data. Dr Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, said: “This new set of data confirms the trend towards rising global temperatures and suggest that, if anything, the world is warming even more quickly than we had thought,” The Times of London reports.

What is sure is that the tone and texture of the science of climate change is shifting. From there being a consensus and declarations that “the science is settled”, scientists from all sides are now raising questions, offering different or challenging interpretations and offering competing theories.

Climate science is a young science, with many competing views of the dynamics of climate and the ways in which climate can be best understood. What appears to be happening since the collapse of the Copenhagen climate change negotiations is that scientists are now concerned with pursuing noble causes and more concerned with the credibility and veracity of their science. This is a welcome development. Science is about systematic work, theory and scepticism. Its good to see that all three are in vogue.

British Election Not Going Well for the Tories

2010-02-15T07:59:00.000-07:00

Despite an eleven point lead in the latest opinion polls, the Conservative Party and its leader David Cameron are not doing well in their campaign to become the next ruling party in Britain. A series of missteps, a successful process of making Gordon Brown appear more like a man with emotions and focus and a continuing struggle with the economy are taking their toll on the party which should be winning easily.

Over the last year, the Conservative Party have polled ahead of Labour every week. At one point they were some twenty points ahead. But after six weeks of campaigning in 2010, their lead is narrowing and the party looks “wobbly”. Close to half of those polled see the leaders of the party as aloof and privileged, with many not being able to name some of the front bench leaders of the party. The Conservatives need a fifteen point lead to ensure that they will defeat Labour.

They are not campaigning well. Running a campaign around the theme “Britain is broken”, they have been exaggerating official data to make their point. For example, they inflated the rate of teenage pregnancy by a factor of ten and were called out for doing so by the media. They have made other missteps – their position on the family has changed twice since January and they have sent confusing messages about their strategy for the economy. The Tories also claimed that Labour was going to implement a “death tax” of £20,000 ($40,000), which turned out not to be the case, The image the media is now describing is one of confusion and uncertainty at the centre of the campaign.

There is also a growing fear amongst many electors that the austerity plan at the heart of their approach to the economy will be too aggressive, severe and painful. While many expect Britain to have to increase taxes and cut programs so as to reduce government debt and deficits, they also fear the consequences pg this “slash and burn” strategy. The party has done a poor job to date of being explicit about what this strategy will look like, what it will involve and who will be most affected. Attempts to clarify the party position have, so far, led to more confusion than clarity.

Meanwhile, the rehabilitation of Gordon Brown continues. This last week-end he could be seen describing his own emotional reaction to the death of his first child shortly after birth – weeping as he did so. He has also suddenly developed a sense of humour and his wife, widely seen as very sensible, is out explaining that he is not the temper-tantrum shouting megalomaniac that many have described working with in Downing Street. Picking up on Conservative gaffes, Brown is actually gaining ground. So much so that there has been talk, now silenced, of a snap election in April. The firm date is still May 6th of this year.

The British economy is the real issue in the election. With recovery from recession slow, government indebtedness growing and the fate of the Eurozone in the balance, the fear is that there will be a second recession in Europe, especially if interest rates rise quickly to stave off the debt crisis affecting Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece. The challenge for voters is to determine which party is more likely to manage recovery and sustain the economy over the short term. Brown, in a carefully built image, is seen to have a strong set of financial management skills, despite the fact that his actions as Chancellor has made the situation Britain faces one of vulnerability rather than strength. David Cameron’s dithering and apparent fumbling of the economic strategy will hurt him in the election.

The formal election call has not yet been made and the campaign is still unofficial. However, public perceptions are being formed and the Labour Party under Gordon Brown is doing better at this stage than expected. Some journalists are still pitching the idea of a hung parliament, but most are still placing their bets on a Conservative win, albeit with a narrow majority. We will know for sure three months from now.