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.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
On The Credibility of Climate Research - Judith Curry
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Building the Alberta the World Needs
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.
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
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”.
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”.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Homeopathic Nonsense
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?
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?
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Putting the Lid Back on Nova Scotia's Cookie Jar
(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.
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.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Psychiatry is in Need of Treatment
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Where on Earth is David Suzuki?
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?”
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?”
Monday, February 15, 2010
The Science is Back
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.
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
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.
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.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Making Health Care Work in Alberta, 2030
How Health Care Works in Alberta
Alberta’s health care system is largely operated by private firms providing for profit or not for profit services to the public. Such firms include General Practitioners, the WCB, dentists, pharmacists and many specialist medical services, such as medical testing services and consultant doctors. While some doctors are employed by the Alberta Health Services, most in fact work for companies – usually their own. Nurses work for both private firms and for public organizations, as do other health professionals, such as Psychologists, Occupational Therapists, Physiotherapists and Rehabilitation Therapists.
When we here people say “we don’t want private health care in Alberta”, what they mean is that they don’t want a system whereby some people can fast track access to services simply through payment. They ignore the fact that some services, for example some obstretics-gynecology practices, offer the opportunity to pay for complete care from the moment pregnancy is confirmed to an agreed period after the birth of a child and that such provision is perfectly legal. Also, most dental and ophthalmology services are paid for largely by the patient, unless they have made arrangements for supplementary health insurance over and above base provision. In fact, the provision of health services outside of hospital systems in Alberta is largely in private hands and even within hospitals, private providers are at work.
Many employers offer their employees additional health care benefits through health insurance plans which employees contribute to, such as those offered by Blue Cross, ManuLife, Alberta Motor Association and others. These supplement the base plan offered by Alberta Health Services. Self-employed workers purchase such insurance for themselves. The organizations offering these services are not Government agencies. For example, Alberta Blue Cross, one of the providers of such services, is a non profit organization independent of Government.
The basic model of health care in Alberta, which is governed by both Federal and Provincial legislation, is that the Province determines which treatments are approved for payment under the Canada Health Act and which professions are licensed to practice under regulation. Once these decisions have been made, publicly or privately provided service providers who meet standards provide services which the public purse pays for.
Some services – chiropractic and homeopathic, for example – are not covered by Alberta Health Services and are only modestly covered in supplementary health plans, if at all. The explanation is that these services, especially homeopathy, have not demonstrated health outcomes sufficient to justify public payment. Practitioners dispute this but, especially in the case of homeopathy, the evidence would appear to justify the exclusion of these services.
A large number of Albertans travel elsewhere to receive medical treatments. A Fraser Institute analysis of this suggests that some 5,354 individuals went to other jurisdictions (mainly the US) in 2009 to receive treatments – mainly so as to reduce wait times. Such treatments varied from internal medicine, general surgery, ophthalmology to plastic surgery. The Fraser Institute recognizes that this is an estimate, but also suggests that the actual number is likely to be higher.
Health Care Spending
In the next decade, health care spending in Canada will consume $2 trillion. Several Provinces in Canada will spend 50% or more of their Provincial tax, royalty and investment revenues on health care by 2020 – including Alberta. Health care currently accounts for 12% of Canada`s GDP.
Government health care spending in the next year in Alberta will be $15 billion, including $657 million for capital projects and an operating budget of $9 billion - $4,416 per citizen. Projected spending on the day to day health care system in Alberta health care 2010 – 2015 will total $50 billion, not including capital or pension servicing of retirees. The five year spending plan assumes a continuance of Government of Canada health transfers ($2 billion in 2008-9), the agreement for which expires in 2014.
In 2007, private health insurers and households (the private sector) across Canada spent $47.8 billion. Private-sector expenditure reached $51.8 billion in 2008 and $54.5 billion in 2009. Prescribed drugs and dental care (which has never been a `listed` service in Alberta) are the greatest components of total private health spending. Canada has a public: private health care model.
Albertans paid significantly more for ‘other medical services,’ which include nursing homes and ambulances, than many other Canadians. Fees vary by municipality: for example, Edmonton charged $344 for an ambulance in 2007. By contrast, the same ambulance would cost a BC family $80.
Hospitals have traditionally occupied a prominent place in health care provision. In the mid-1970s, hospitals accounted for approximately 45% of total health expenditure. During the past 30 years, the share of hospitals in total health expenditure has fallen. In 2009, hospitals made up the largest component of health care spending, accounting for 27.8% of total health expenditures. Since 1997, drugs have accounted for the second-largest share. In 2009, drugs accounted for 16.4% of total health expenditure, while physicians are expected to make up the third-largest share, with 14.0%.
Funding Health Care
Spending on day to day health care in Alberta is funded from: (a) the Government of Alberta general revenues at a cost of $9.7 billion; (b) the Government of Canada at a cost of $2 billion; (c) funds from Lottery revenues at a cost of $260m; (d) funds from health care premiums (Blue Cross etc) - $787m; (e) Alberta Cancer Legacy Fund - $19 million; and “other revenues” (third party recoveries, etc) - $54 million.
Per capita, Alberta spends less than many other Provinces on health care – Alberta ranks eighth (on average) over the last ten years amongst Canadian Provinces. Relatively speaking, there is room for further expenditure on health care in Alberta which could bring us into line with other Provinces.
The barrier to doing so is the perceived growing cost of health care relative to the revenue projections of the Government of Alberta. Alberta, however, has a very low tax base in comparison to many other jurisdictions and has stopped collecting Health Premiums from citizens. Alberta has no sales tax. It also has the second lowest oil and gas royalty regime in the world – only Yemen has a lower royalty rate for oil – in fact, Alberta collects more from gambling, cigarettes and alcohol taxes than it does from oil . If Alberta increased its tax revenues in line with other Canadian jurisdictions, it would be able to fund an expansion of health care services.
Health Outcomes
Life expectancy in Alberta is 78 years for males and 83 years for females. This puts Alberta in the top ten jurisdictions in the world – Japan has 86 years for females and 79 for males and tops the list of countries when they are ranked by life expectancy.
In a study of the population of Alberta, the proportion of the adult population with a healthy body mass was 49% (up from 47% in 2002). The proportion of children with a healthy body mass was 81%. Significant improvements have occurred in the rate of death through heart disease (down from 175 per 100,000 in 2002 to 127,1000 in 2009) , incidence of death from breast cancer (down from 24.2 per 100,000 in 2002 to 20 per 100,000 in 2009) and the number of new cases of lung cancer (down from 56 per 100,000 in 2002 to 50 per 100,000 in 2009).
Some health conditions, diabetes in particular, are not declining but are in fact increasing. The number of new diabetic patients grew in Alberta between 2002 and 2009 from 4.5 per 1,000 persons to 4.6 per 1000, though the incidence of diabetes in Aboriginal population does appear to be moderating at 8.6 per 1,000 (almost twice that of the non Aboriginal population), down from 9 per 1,000 in 2002.
Wait times for patients vary by the patients condition and location. When the condition is urgent, the goal is that the patient is seen within one week, for a serious condition it is up to two weeks and for non urgent conditions it is six to ten weeks. Patients in Calgary and more likely to be seen “on time” than patients in Edmonton.
Of particular concern are wait times for common surgical procedures, especially those affecting seniors. These include hip and knee replacements. It takes an average of 32 weeks to secure a hip replacement and 48 weeks to secure a knee replacement. The targets are 26-30 weeks for hips and 26-45 weeks for knees. Its no wonder so many people travel to the US for surgery. For emergency treatments in ER at Alberta hospitals the situation is poor. Median wait times are 16.6 hours in Calgary’s three hospitals as of February 2008; averages between 22.6 and 27.8 hours at Edmonton hospitals as of March 2009.
Reforming Health Care
There are six major changes which have been advocated for health care in Alberta.
The first is a switch of focus from treating sickness to preventing illness. Most major improvements in health outcomes have not come from medical breakthrough’s but from changes to public policies. Clean air, improved water quality, effective sanitation, building codes, seat belt legislation, smoking legislation, winter heating subsidies for seniors have all had a major impact on health outcomes. By focusing on public policies and education, significant gains in health and wellness can still be made.
For example, obesity in both adults and children is leading to a major epidemic in the onset of diabetes. Legislation concerning food content and labeling – banning trans fats, restricting access to fast foods, taxing soft drinks to significantly reduce consumption, controlling sugar content in ready meals and other prepared foods, regulating the marketing of food to children, ensuring healthy food in schools and engaging children in diet and food related learning are all seen as precursors to reducing the occurrence of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Requiring daily exercise in schools and providing tax incentives for attending gymnasiums and fitness programs may also be helpful.
The second change many propose is to outsource more of the services which government currently pays for in full to third party providers – either for profit or not for profit organizations. The idea is simple. By paying for a service, but not employing staff or paying for the capital and technology costs, services are provided at agreed prices without the Government having to pay for the full costs of labour or capital. Alberta Health Services is committed to increase its outsourcing of services. The model for this is medical testing. Doctors ask patients to have a medical test – urine or blood tests, for example. The patient goes to a test centre for service and the test results are filed with the patients record. The testing service is private, but Alberta Health Services pays for the tests at a fixed price. The suggestion is that a great many services could be provided in this way, lowering the unit costs of such services to the Government.
As has been found elsewhere, at some point the price paid by the Government is insufficient to attract investment in the infrastructure needed to deliver such services. What then happens is that the Government builds the infrastructure and leases it to the private or non profit provider at an agreed rate so as to create capacities in the system.
Alberta is short at least 1,000 full-time physicians, and that will increase to 1,500 within five years. Alberta's two medical schools together graduate about 250 students per year. While that number will increase to 300 in a few years, with the natural egress of physicians from practice due to retirement, moves to other environs and voluntary changes to practice, that modest increase will not solve our shortage for a very long time. This suggests a third development required in the system: the recognition of the skills of health care professionals other than doctors. Pharmacists are more knowledgeable about the medicinal properties of drugs than are doctors – they should be able to provide prescription services against a medical diagnoses performed by a doctor. Renewal of prescriptions currently occupies and wastes a great deal of clinical time – we can enable the 3,800 practicing pharmacists to do more here. Nurse practitioners can diagnose and prescribe a great many conditions which patients attend both general practitioners and emergency room services for. These professionals should be given the same medical rights as doctors.
This alone will not “solve” the access to care concerns of many Albertans. Some 250,000 residents of Calgary, for example, are not registered with a general practitioner. There is therefore is a need to expand the medical schools in Alberta and to fast track the recognition of new immigrants with medical degrees so that they can practice.
A fourth development is to link behaviour to payments for health. For example, missed appointments in general practice and hospitals account for between 6-10% of all appointment times in the health care system. Those who make appointments and do not show should be required to pay a fee – they are costing our system a great deal of money. Patients have responsibilities as well as rights.
A fifth proposal is to increase the size of the user pay portion of the health service provision, through a combination of health care premiums for Provincial services, only recently abolished, and a requirement for everyone in Alberta to hold health insurance over and above the current tax-paid services. This would increase available funding, link medical aid seeking to cost and promote an understanding of health risks linked to behaviours. The fundamental idea here is to generate new revenues to support health care provision in the Province.
There are more radical ideas in relation to funding the system. The Frontier Centre, for example, is advocating the adoption of a Universal Medical Savings Account. Each citizen would be entitled to a fixed sum, based on medical assessments, which would be placed into a medical savings account. This account constitutes what is available to that person for medical services and they are then free to “buy” their services from any provider. If they want to “top up” their account with their own funds, they would be free to do so.
Whatever we do, the provision of health care will be progressively expensive and at some point, new tax revenues or new payments systems will have to be found.
The final change the health care system needs to consider is simple, yet full of moral hazards. At what point do we say yes or no to a treatment? Some expensive treatments may prolong life for a very short period of time – six months or less. Should that treatment be given? The medical profession is based on a constant quest to preserve life, sometimes at “all costs”. While this is admirable, at what point do living wills, “do not resuscitate” instructions and other considerations come into play. As medical technology advances, we may be able to find new ways of extending life for short periods. Do we always have to adopt such technologies? Public health care expenditure needs to focus on making a significant difference to the quality and extent of life for longer periods of time than a few weeks.
The public versus private health system debate that normally preoccupies public conversations about health care fails to understand both the fact that our health system is already a mixed economy and that private versus public is more than an issue of who pays. The six areas of change outlined here are the substantive issues we need to discuss if health care in Alberta is to be sustained over time.
Alberta’s health care system is largely operated by private firms providing for profit or not for profit services to the public. Such firms include General Practitioners, the WCB, dentists, pharmacists and many specialist medical services, such as medical testing services and consultant doctors. While some doctors are employed by the Alberta Health Services, most in fact work for companies – usually their own. Nurses work for both private firms and for public organizations, as do other health professionals, such as Psychologists, Occupational Therapists, Physiotherapists and Rehabilitation Therapists.
When we here people say “we don’t want private health care in Alberta”, what they mean is that they don’t want a system whereby some people can fast track access to services simply through payment. They ignore the fact that some services, for example some obstretics-gynecology practices, offer the opportunity to pay for complete care from the moment pregnancy is confirmed to an agreed period after the birth of a child and that such provision is perfectly legal. Also, most dental and ophthalmology services are paid for largely by the patient, unless they have made arrangements for supplementary health insurance over and above base provision. In fact, the provision of health services outside of hospital systems in Alberta is largely in private hands and even within hospitals, private providers are at work.
Many employers offer their employees additional health care benefits through health insurance plans which employees contribute to, such as those offered by Blue Cross, ManuLife, Alberta Motor Association and others. These supplement the base plan offered by Alberta Health Services. Self-employed workers purchase such insurance for themselves. The organizations offering these services are not Government agencies. For example, Alberta Blue Cross, one of the providers of such services, is a non profit organization independent of Government.
The basic model of health care in Alberta, which is governed by both Federal and Provincial legislation, is that the Province determines which treatments are approved for payment under the Canada Health Act and which professions are licensed to practice under regulation. Once these decisions have been made, publicly or privately provided service providers who meet standards provide services which the public purse pays for.
Some services – chiropractic and homeopathic, for example – are not covered by Alberta Health Services and are only modestly covered in supplementary health plans, if at all. The explanation is that these services, especially homeopathy, have not demonstrated health outcomes sufficient to justify public payment. Practitioners dispute this but, especially in the case of homeopathy, the evidence would appear to justify the exclusion of these services.
A large number of Albertans travel elsewhere to receive medical treatments. A Fraser Institute analysis of this suggests that some 5,354 individuals went to other jurisdictions (mainly the US) in 2009 to receive treatments – mainly so as to reduce wait times. Such treatments varied from internal medicine, general surgery, ophthalmology to plastic surgery. The Fraser Institute recognizes that this is an estimate, but also suggests that the actual number is likely to be higher.
Health Care Spending
In the next decade, health care spending in Canada will consume $2 trillion. Several Provinces in Canada will spend 50% or more of their Provincial tax, royalty and investment revenues on health care by 2020 – including Alberta. Health care currently accounts for 12% of Canada`s GDP.
Government health care spending in the next year in Alberta will be $15 billion, including $657 million for capital projects and an operating budget of $9 billion - $4,416 per citizen. Projected spending on the day to day health care system in Alberta health care 2010 – 2015 will total $50 billion, not including capital or pension servicing of retirees. The five year spending plan assumes a continuance of Government of Canada health transfers ($2 billion in 2008-9), the agreement for which expires in 2014.
In 2007, private health insurers and households (the private sector) across Canada spent $47.8 billion. Private-sector expenditure reached $51.8 billion in 2008 and $54.5 billion in 2009. Prescribed drugs and dental care (which has never been a `listed` service in Alberta) are the greatest components of total private health spending. Canada has a public: private health care model.
Albertans paid significantly more for ‘other medical services,’ which include nursing homes and ambulances, than many other Canadians. Fees vary by municipality: for example, Edmonton charged $344 for an ambulance in 2007. By contrast, the same ambulance would cost a BC family $80.
Hospitals have traditionally occupied a prominent place in health care provision. In the mid-1970s, hospitals accounted for approximately 45% of total health expenditure. During the past 30 years, the share of hospitals in total health expenditure has fallen. In 2009, hospitals made up the largest component of health care spending, accounting for 27.8% of total health expenditures. Since 1997, drugs have accounted for the second-largest share. In 2009, drugs accounted for 16.4% of total health expenditure, while physicians are expected to make up the third-largest share, with 14.0%.
Funding Health Care
Spending on day to day health care in Alberta is funded from: (a) the Government of Alberta general revenues at a cost of $9.7 billion; (b) the Government of Canada at a cost of $2 billion; (c) funds from Lottery revenues at a cost of $260m; (d) funds from health care premiums (Blue Cross etc) - $787m; (e) Alberta Cancer Legacy Fund - $19 million; and “other revenues” (third party recoveries, etc) - $54 million.
Per capita, Alberta spends less than many other Provinces on health care – Alberta ranks eighth (on average) over the last ten years amongst Canadian Provinces. Relatively speaking, there is room for further expenditure on health care in Alberta which could bring us into line with other Provinces.
The barrier to doing so is the perceived growing cost of health care relative to the revenue projections of the Government of Alberta. Alberta, however, has a very low tax base in comparison to many other jurisdictions and has stopped collecting Health Premiums from citizens. Alberta has no sales tax. It also has the second lowest oil and gas royalty regime in the world – only Yemen has a lower royalty rate for oil – in fact, Alberta collects more from gambling, cigarettes and alcohol taxes than it does from oil . If Alberta increased its tax revenues in line with other Canadian jurisdictions, it would be able to fund an expansion of health care services.
Health Outcomes
Life expectancy in Alberta is 78 years for males and 83 years for females. This puts Alberta in the top ten jurisdictions in the world – Japan has 86 years for females and 79 for males and tops the list of countries when they are ranked by life expectancy.
In a study of the population of Alberta, the proportion of the adult population with a healthy body mass was 49% (up from 47% in 2002). The proportion of children with a healthy body mass was 81%. Significant improvements have occurred in the rate of death through heart disease (down from 175 per 100,000 in 2002 to 127,1000 in 2009) , incidence of death from breast cancer (down from 24.2 per 100,000 in 2002 to 20 per 100,000 in 2009) and the number of new cases of lung cancer (down from 56 per 100,000 in 2002 to 50 per 100,000 in 2009).
Some health conditions, diabetes in particular, are not declining but are in fact increasing. The number of new diabetic patients grew in Alberta between 2002 and 2009 from 4.5 per 1,000 persons to 4.6 per 1000, though the incidence of diabetes in Aboriginal population does appear to be moderating at 8.6 per 1,000 (almost twice that of the non Aboriginal population), down from 9 per 1,000 in 2002.
Wait times for patients vary by the patients condition and location. When the condition is urgent, the goal is that the patient is seen within one week, for a serious condition it is up to two weeks and for non urgent conditions it is six to ten weeks. Patients in Calgary and more likely to be seen “on time” than patients in Edmonton.
Of particular concern are wait times for common surgical procedures, especially those affecting seniors. These include hip and knee replacements. It takes an average of 32 weeks to secure a hip replacement and 48 weeks to secure a knee replacement. The targets are 26-30 weeks for hips and 26-45 weeks for knees. Its no wonder so many people travel to the US for surgery. For emergency treatments in ER at Alberta hospitals the situation is poor. Median wait times are 16.6 hours in Calgary’s three hospitals as of February 2008; averages between 22.6 and 27.8 hours at Edmonton hospitals as of March 2009.
Reforming Health Care
There are six major changes which have been advocated for health care in Alberta.
The first is a switch of focus from treating sickness to preventing illness. Most major improvements in health outcomes have not come from medical breakthrough’s but from changes to public policies. Clean air, improved water quality, effective sanitation, building codes, seat belt legislation, smoking legislation, winter heating subsidies for seniors have all had a major impact on health outcomes. By focusing on public policies and education, significant gains in health and wellness can still be made.
For example, obesity in both adults and children is leading to a major epidemic in the onset of diabetes. Legislation concerning food content and labeling – banning trans fats, restricting access to fast foods, taxing soft drinks to significantly reduce consumption, controlling sugar content in ready meals and other prepared foods, regulating the marketing of food to children, ensuring healthy food in schools and engaging children in diet and food related learning are all seen as precursors to reducing the occurrence of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Requiring daily exercise in schools and providing tax incentives for attending gymnasiums and fitness programs may also be helpful.
The second change many propose is to outsource more of the services which government currently pays for in full to third party providers – either for profit or not for profit organizations. The idea is simple. By paying for a service, but not employing staff or paying for the capital and technology costs, services are provided at agreed prices without the Government having to pay for the full costs of labour or capital. Alberta Health Services is committed to increase its outsourcing of services. The model for this is medical testing. Doctors ask patients to have a medical test – urine or blood tests, for example. The patient goes to a test centre for service and the test results are filed with the patients record. The testing service is private, but Alberta Health Services pays for the tests at a fixed price. The suggestion is that a great many services could be provided in this way, lowering the unit costs of such services to the Government.
As has been found elsewhere, at some point the price paid by the Government is insufficient to attract investment in the infrastructure needed to deliver such services. What then happens is that the Government builds the infrastructure and leases it to the private or non profit provider at an agreed rate so as to create capacities in the system.
Alberta is short at least 1,000 full-time physicians, and that will increase to 1,500 within five years. Alberta's two medical schools together graduate about 250 students per year. While that number will increase to 300 in a few years, with the natural egress of physicians from practice due to retirement, moves to other environs and voluntary changes to practice, that modest increase will not solve our shortage for a very long time. This suggests a third development required in the system: the recognition of the skills of health care professionals other than doctors. Pharmacists are more knowledgeable about the medicinal properties of drugs than are doctors – they should be able to provide prescription services against a medical diagnoses performed by a doctor. Renewal of prescriptions currently occupies and wastes a great deal of clinical time – we can enable the 3,800 practicing pharmacists to do more here. Nurse practitioners can diagnose and prescribe a great many conditions which patients attend both general practitioners and emergency room services for. These professionals should be given the same medical rights as doctors.
This alone will not “solve” the access to care concerns of many Albertans. Some 250,000 residents of Calgary, for example, are not registered with a general practitioner. There is therefore is a need to expand the medical schools in Alberta and to fast track the recognition of new immigrants with medical degrees so that they can practice.
A fourth development is to link behaviour to payments for health. For example, missed appointments in general practice and hospitals account for between 6-10% of all appointment times in the health care system. Those who make appointments and do not show should be required to pay a fee – they are costing our system a great deal of money. Patients have responsibilities as well as rights.
A fifth proposal is to increase the size of the user pay portion of the health service provision, through a combination of health care premiums for Provincial services, only recently abolished, and a requirement for everyone in Alberta to hold health insurance over and above the current tax-paid services. This would increase available funding, link medical aid seeking to cost and promote an understanding of health risks linked to behaviours. The fundamental idea here is to generate new revenues to support health care provision in the Province.
There are more radical ideas in relation to funding the system. The Frontier Centre, for example, is advocating the adoption of a Universal Medical Savings Account. Each citizen would be entitled to a fixed sum, based on medical assessments, which would be placed into a medical savings account. This account constitutes what is available to that person for medical services and they are then free to “buy” their services from any provider. If they want to “top up” their account with their own funds, they would be free to do so.
Whatever we do, the provision of health care will be progressively expensive and at some point, new tax revenues or new payments systems will have to be found.
The final change the health care system needs to consider is simple, yet full of moral hazards. At what point do we say yes or no to a treatment? Some expensive treatments may prolong life for a very short period of time – six months or less. Should that treatment be given? The medical profession is based on a constant quest to preserve life, sometimes at “all costs”. While this is admirable, at what point do living wills, “do not resuscitate” instructions and other considerations come into play. As medical technology advances, we may be able to find new ways of extending life for short periods. Do we always have to adopt such technologies? Public health care expenditure needs to focus on making a significant difference to the quality and extent of life for longer periods of time than a few weeks.
The public versus private health system debate that normally preoccupies public conversations about health care fails to understand both the fact that our health system is already a mixed economy and that private versus public is more than an issue of who pays. The six areas of change outlined here are the substantive issues we need to discuss if health care in Alberta is to be sustained over time.
What a Difference a Year Makes - Climate Science
Claims that the earth is warming and will warm further over the next fifty years are based on two things. First, temperature readings from both land based data stations and also from satellite data are used to determine the temperature at key locations around the world. Second, the claims are based on computer simulations or models of how the climate works, which enables scientists to develop scenarios of the future which, given the assumptions which are made, suggest what future temperature will be like.
Recent analysis of land stations suggests that the data they provide is problematic in three ways. First, many of the land stations are inappropriately placed. A review of the land stations in the US suggests that the majority are placed in places that give artificially high readings - they are near heat vents, close to buildings or in locations that do not meet international standards for land station placement. Second, the data used from land stations is not consistent over time. The stations used in the 1930's are different from the stations used in 2010. This means that we are not comparing like with like. Finally, there is good evidence that the data from land stations has been manipulated by climate scientists - Russian and Chinese scientists are making clear that the data from their own stations has been unduly manipulated. Satellite data is much more reliable.
What the data shows from these measures is in dispute. The "warmist" scientists indicate that the data is clear. The earth is warming and, by the end of the century, will be between 3 and 5 degrees centigrade warmer than it is now. The "cool it" scientist take a different view. They suggest that warming is within a normal range of less than 1 degree C in each century and that warming, at least using satellite data, has not occurred since 1995 - a view recently confirmed by the disgraced former Director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
Linked to this dispute is another. It concerns the veracity of the claims about the future impact of the climate on the planet based on computer models. The "warmist" view of these models is that they suggest very strongly that CO2 produced by industrial activity is largely to blame for warming and that, unless CO2 emissions are reduced dramatically, glaciers will met, seas will flood coastal areas and engulf small islands and there will be a significant impact on agricultural production, the spread of illness and our basic way of life. The "cool it" scientists claim that the models themselves are flawed and exaggerate the impact of CO2 and minimize the impact of the sun, water vapour, ocean currents and other factors which have an impact on climate. While almost all scientists agree that the climate is changing - it always has and always will - and that CO2 is a factor, they differ on the extent to which man made CO2 is a factor and the impact of climate change on human systems.
A year ago the views of those who disputed "the consensus" were largely dismissed as heretical by mainstream science. Labelled as "deniers" by the dominant “warmists”, the sceptics were seen as a fringe group of scientists who did not fully understand the complexity of climate change and were ignorant about the data. The mantra was that there was a scientific consensus, climate change was real and an urgent problem and that a vast number of scientists were all agreed about the “science”.
Since the Climategate email scandal, the sixteen errors of fact in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fourth assessment, the obvious disagreements evident in the peer reviewed scientific literature and the discrediting of key analytic procedures used to reach the “warmist” conclusions, things have changed. The debate has shifted from one of politically correct science versus “odd ball” deniers to a real scientific discussion about the veracity of a theory, the reliability of the evidence and the process of scientific discovery.
There are now real debates about the Arctic sea ice and the fact that it has been both expanding and thickening for some time. There is a serious discussion as to whether or not our land station data is providing the evidence we need or whether we should take account of the data from more of these stations and move many of them to locations which meet internationally agreed standards. There is a growing call for a reform of the IPCC so that it no longer is an advocacy body for one theory of climate change, but that it should become a body which reviews all aspects of climate change science, not just that advocated by the World Wildlife Fund and a few other campaign organizations.
The sceptics have achieved a great deal in the last year. They have enabled a serious debate to take place about theories, methods, evidence and outcomes. Rather than being called “deniers” we may want to think of a new term for them – scientists, perhaps.
Recent analysis of land stations suggests that the data they provide is problematic in three ways. First, many of the land stations are inappropriately placed. A review of the land stations in the US suggests that the majority are placed in places that give artificially high readings - they are near heat vents, close to buildings or in locations that do not meet international standards for land station placement. Second, the data used from land stations is not consistent over time. The stations used in the 1930's are different from the stations used in 2010. This means that we are not comparing like with like. Finally, there is good evidence that the data from land stations has been manipulated by climate scientists - Russian and Chinese scientists are making clear that the data from their own stations has been unduly manipulated. Satellite data is much more reliable.
What the data shows from these measures is in dispute. The "warmist" scientists indicate that the data is clear. The earth is warming and, by the end of the century, will be between 3 and 5 degrees centigrade warmer than it is now. The "cool it" scientist take a different view. They suggest that warming is within a normal range of less than 1 degree C in each century and that warming, at least using satellite data, has not occurred since 1995 - a view recently confirmed by the disgraced former Director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
Linked to this dispute is another. It concerns the veracity of the claims about the future impact of the climate on the planet based on computer models. The "warmist" view of these models is that they suggest very strongly that CO2 produced by industrial activity is largely to blame for warming and that, unless CO2 emissions are reduced dramatically, glaciers will met, seas will flood coastal areas and engulf small islands and there will be a significant impact on agricultural production, the spread of illness and our basic way of life. The "cool it" scientists claim that the models themselves are flawed and exaggerate the impact of CO2 and minimize the impact of the sun, water vapour, ocean currents and other factors which have an impact on climate. While almost all scientists agree that the climate is changing - it always has and always will - and that CO2 is a factor, they differ on the extent to which man made CO2 is a factor and the impact of climate change on human systems.
A year ago the views of those who disputed "the consensus" were largely dismissed as heretical by mainstream science. Labelled as "deniers" by the dominant “warmists”, the sceptics were seen as a fringe group of scientists who did not fully understand the complexity of climate change and were ignorant about the data. The mantra was that there was a scientific consensus, climate change was real and an urgent problem and that a vast number of scientists were all agreed about the “science”.
Since the Climategate email scandal, the sixteen errors of fact in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fourth assessment, the obvious disagreements evident in the peer reviewed scientific literature and the discrediting of key analytic procedures used to reach the “warmist” conclusions, things have changed. The debate has shifted from one of politically correct science versus “odd ball” deniers to a real scientific discussion about the veracity of a theory, the reliability of the evidence and the process of scientific discovery.
There are now real debates about the Arctic sea ice and the fact that it has been both expanding and thickening for some time. There is a serious discussion as to whether or not our land station data is providing the evidence we need or whether we should take account of the data from more of these stations and move many of them to locations which meet internationally agreed standards. There is a growing call for a reform of the IPCC so that it no longer is an advocacy body for one theory of climate change, but that it should become a body which reviews all aspects of climate change science, not just that advocated by the World Wildlife Fund and a few other campaign organizations.
The sceptics have achieved a great deal in the last year. They have enabled a serious debate to take place about theories, methods, evidence and outcomes. Rather than being called “deniers” we may want to think of a new term for them – scientists, perhaps.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Alberta Government Plays the Health Card at the Expense of the Prosperity of the Province
Tax and other revenues before oil and gas in Alberta in 2010-2011 will be $26.7billion. Of this, the Province will spend $15 billion in this same year on health care – 56%. Between health care and compulsory education, some 79% of our base revenues will be spent – add in post-secondary education and innovation and we are now at 90% of base revenues. Oil and gas, which are expected to produce revenues of around $7.3 billion, funds the rest of the work of the Government of Alberta.
This is not how the Government looks at it. They see these two sources of revenue as a single pot from which they can dip into to fund programs and services. For them, revenues total $34 billion. But not all of this revenue is of the same kind. Oil and gas revenues depend on global prices and the decisions made by people other than the Government – the decisions private companies make. Some of these oil and gas funds were expected to be used to boost the Heritage Fund and the sustainability fund, but instead we are using them to boost spending.
When we take the government’s figure of $34 billion, health care takes up 44% and within five to seven years will pass the 50% mark. The Government says that this is what Albertans want. They say whenever they talk to “real” Albertan’s they tell them to invest “what it takes” to run health care. This is rather like asking an obese teenager whether they would like another hamburger. No one has explained the medium to long term consequences of this spending – closing one of our Colleges, cutting more social and cultural programs, abandoning commitments to the homeless. Rather, we are again treating health care (or, more realistically, sickness) as if it is an unstoppable force.
One way of looking at the decisions made by the Government in its budget today is that it is sacrificing its long term interests for short term gain. The long term interest requires us to increase access to and the affordability of post-secondary education so that we have more people in our workforce who have the skills to adopt and adapt and respond to innovative opportunities. This long term view also sees improving the work of schools as key to our collective future – securing more high school completion, enabling more of our young people to qualify for access to post-secondary education, improving performance across the board. So as to fund health care, we are now reducing affordability (reducing funds available for scholarships and awards) and reducing capacity by cutting real investment in our post secondary institutions.
We are also reducing, in real terms, spending on education in schools. While the budget makes it look like there is an increase in spending - $43 million of “new money” (0.7% of the education budget) – this will quickly be eaten away by the decision not to directly fund mandated pay increases for teachers and not to provide funding to account for inflation, now running at 1.3% but expected to rise during the year.
Education, both at K-12 and post secondary, is critical to Alberta’s future. It is the underpinning of any strategy to really diversify the economy, build jurisdictional advantage, make it possible for our firms to compete against players who have ready access to larger markets and a more venture capital. For Alberta to be successful in the middle of this century we need to double the number of people working in firms with post-graduate degrees, increase our investments in lifelong learning and encourage more entrepreneurs to see learning and investment in productivity skills as key to their future. In this sense, educational investments are exactly that: investments in future prosperity.
Health care spending is consumptive spending. Because we are prosperous – Alberta has one of the highest GDP’s per capita in the world – we spend because we can. We create substantial new facilities and seek to attract some of the best medical scientists in the world so that they can extend the life of clearly deserving individuals by a few years or months. This is highly desirable and valuable service for those individuals, but hardly an investment in future prosperity for the Province as a whole. As the population ages, we will spend more and more of our health care resources on caring for the terminally ill and those whose medical conditions cannot be treated, merely ameliorated. This is a great thing to be doing, but let us recognize it for what it is – spending to support individuals in need, not spending so as to invest in our future prosperity.
Some health care spending is future focused – spending on wellness and fitness programs, programs intended to get injured workers back to work quickly, investments in children’s health so as to ensure that they can have many years as productive members of society. All of these activities are future focused and the balance of health care spending needs to shift from sickness to wellness over time. But the level of spending on these services is not as great as spending on tertiary care, pharmaceuticals and the care of the elderly.
By moving resources away from education to health our Government is making a conscious choice to favour the present over the future. By reducing in real terms its commitment to post secondary education and holding the line on spending in K-12 it is willing to risk the future well-being of the economy in favour of health care and its attempt to “buy votes”.
At some point the tension between consumption and investment becomes real. This is when, in order to fund continued consumptive spending, the Government has to make tough choices about investment – closing a Community College, privatizing a University or increasing tax revenues to pay for continued consumption and investment. The “bet” being taken by the Government of Alberta is that this “tipping point” is some ways away. It’s a big bet.
Once health spending surpasses half of all revenues several things need to happen. First, there needs to be an understanding that health costs cannot continue to rise at an annual rate in excess of the growth in revenues. Second, there needs to be a shift of resources away from tertiary care – hospitals and specialist services – towards wellness and primary care. Third, there needs to be a way to reduce the growth of non publicly funded health care costs – especially pharmaceuticals, medical technology and dentistry. Finally, there needs to be a recognition that, while public health should remain the cornerstone of provision, our system is actually a mixed economy of public and private, public funds and user pay and private providers providing services (pharmacies, doctors, dentists are largely private providers). Given this mixed economy, there will be a need to change the mix.
We cannot allow political expediency to undermine Alberta’s future prospects. We need to rebalance our budgets through tax increases so that we can expand our educational provision, make it affordable and increase our competitive advantage. This may not be what the “real Albertan’s” Ed Stelmach talks to say they want, but it is actually what they need.
This is not how the Government looks at it. They see these two sources of revenue as a single pot from which they can dip into to fund programs and services. For them, revenues total $34 billion. But not all of this revenue is of the same kind. Oil and gas revenues depend on global prices and the decisions made by people other than the Government – the decisions private companies make. Some of these oil and gas funds were expected to be used to boost the Heritage Fund and the sustainability fund, but instead we are using them to boost spending.
When we take the government’s figure of $34 billion, health care takes up 44% and within five to seven years will pass the 50% mark. The Government says that this is what Albertans want. They say whenever they talk to “real” Albertan’s they tell them to invest “what it takes” to run health care. This is rather like asking an obese teenager whether they would like another hamburger. No one has explained the medium to long term consequences of this spending – closing one of our Colleges, cutting more social and cultural programs, abandoning commitments to the homeless. Rather, we are again treating health care (or, more realistically, sickness) as if it is an unstoppable force.
One way of looking at the decisions made by the Government in its budget today is that it is sacrificing its long term interests for short term gain. The long term interest requires us to increase access to and the affordability of post-secondary education so that we have more people in our workforce who have the skills to adopt and adapt and respond to innovative opportunities. This long term view also sees improving the work of schools as key to our collective future – securing more high school completion, enabling more of our young people to qualify for access to post-secondary education, improving performance across the board. So as to fund health care, we are now reducing affordability (reducing funds available for scholarships and awards) and reducing capacity by cutting real investment in our post secondary institutions.
We are also reducing, in real terms, spending on education in schools. While the budget makes it look like there is an increase in spending - $43 million of “new money” (0.7% of the education budget) – this will quickly be eaten away by the decision not to directly fund mandated pay increases for teachers and not to provide funding to account for inflation, now running at 1.3% but expected to rise during the year.
Education, both at K-12 and post secondary, is critical to Alberta’s future. It is the underpinning of any strategy to really diversify the economy, build jurisdictional advantage, make it possible for our firms to compete against players who have ready access to larger markets and a more venture capital. For Alberta to be successful in the middle of this century we need to double the number of people working in firms with post-graduate degrees, increase our investments in lifelong learning and encourage more entrepreneurs to see learning and investment in productivity skills as key to their future. In this sense, educational investments are exactly that: investments in future prosperity.
Health care spending is consumptive spending. Because we are prosperous – Alberta has one of the highest GDP’s per capita in the world – we spend because we can. We create substantial new facilities and seek to attract some of the best medical scientists in the world so that they can extend the life of clearly deserving individuals by a few years or months. This is highly desirable and valuable service for those individuals, but hardly an investment in future prosperity for the Province as a whole. As the population ages, we will spend more and more of our health care resources on caring for the terminally ill and those whose medical conditions cannot be treated, merely ameliorated. This is a great thing to be doing, but let us recognize it for what it is – spending to support individuals in need, not spending so as to invest in our future prosperity.
Some health care spending is future focused – spending on wellness and fitness programs, programs intended to get injured workers back to work quickly, investments in children’s health so as to ensure that they can have many years as productive members of society. All of these activities are future focused and the balance of health care spending needs to shift from sickness to wellness over time. But the level of spending on these services is not as great as spending on tertiary care, pharmaceuticals and the care of the elderly.
By moving resources away from education to health our Government is making a conscious choice to favour the present over the future. By reducing in real terms its commitment to post secondary education and holding the line on spending in K-12 it is willing to risk the future well-being of the economy in favour of health care and its attempt to “buy votes”.
At some point the tension between consumption and investment becomes real. This is when, in order to fund continued consumptive spending, the Government has to make tough choices about investment – closing a Community College, privatizing a University or increasing tax revenues to pay for continued consumption and investment. The “bet” being taken by the Government of Alberta is that this “tipping point” is some ways away. It’s a big bet.
Once health spending surpasses half of all revenues several things need to happen. First, there needs to be an understanding that health costs cannot continue to rise at an annual rate in excess of the growth in revenues. Second, there needs to be a shift of resources away from tertiary care – hospitals and specialist services – towards wellness and primary care. Third, there needs to be a way to reduce the growth of non publicly funded health care costs – especially pharmaceuticals, medical technology and dentistry. Finally, there needs to be a recognition that, while public health should remain the cornerstone of provision, our system is actually a mixed economy of public and private, public funds and user pay and private providers providing services (pharmacies, doctors, dentists are largely private providers). Given this mixed economy, there will be a need to change the mix.
We cannot allow political expediency to undermine Alberta’s future prospects. We need to rebalance our budgets through tax increases so that we can expand our educational provision, make it affordable and increase our competitive advantage. This may not be what the “real Albertan’s” Ed Stelmach talks to say they want, but it is actually what they need.
Friday, February 05, 2010
My Big Fat Greek Debt
Europe is in trouble. The signs are clear. Its financial system is shaking and bond markets are under pressure from speculators.
It began with the recession and the rush to create social programs, stimulus spending and social investments, which led to a great deal of European debt. This debt load is very high - public debt could reach 84 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) for the whole of the EU by the end of 2010, an increase of 18 percentage points from 2007 and 24% above the agreed limit of such debt within the EU. Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister and former Chancellor, always argued that 45% was the desired deficit target. Britain will have public sector debts equal to 70% of GDP and a deficit of 13%.
So bad are debt levels that the bond rating agencies have all downgraded their ratings of Greece and some have also downgraded Ireland and Spain – they are also looking carefully at Portugal.
Greece is the problem child of Europe. Its current operating deficit is 12.6% of GDP and its debt levels are equal to 113% of GDP. The country is essentially one big Ponzi operation – borrowing money from new bonds to pay off older bond holders.
The European Commission warned this week that Greece will have to do far more than it is currently planning to curb its public finances in the longer-term, to reform tax collection and improve the way it keeps accounts. EU Economy Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said that EU officials would carefully monitor Greece's efforts and "will ask the Greek authorities to make additional measures" if it isn't on track to reduce a budget deficit from 12.7 percent last year to 2 percent of economic output by 2012.
Prime Minister George Papandreou of Greece, speaking during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said his country did not need a loan from the European Union. Instead, he has cut public sector pay by 10% and frozen it for an indefinite period, cut public spending by 10%, found new taxes on carbon based fuels and changed the retirement age so as to cut social security spending. He has also warned that additional measures are possible. In particular, Papandreou pledged to go after tax evaders and those who could afford to pay may well be forced to do so.
Austerity is not a popular strategy. Not surprisingly, the governments measures were met with instant strike action by public sector workers. Farmers are blocking major roads across the country in a bid to get financial help from the government, which has so far refused. Further industrial action is proposed.
The fear is that Greece may default on its debts – refusing to pay bond holders. Should it do so, this would threaten the integrity of the Euro as a currency and the economic regime that lies behind it. Markets are already nervous about these developments, as has been seen in market activity in the last few days – the Euro is falling in value against other currencies.
Part of the problem is that Greece has very poor public accounts. Indeed, the public accounts it used to gain entry into the Eurozone have since been proven to be grossly inaccurate – had the accurate accounts been used, they would not have been granted membership and been able to use the Euro as their currency. Now that the heat is on, the EU intends to review every book entry to make sure the picture they provide of Greece’s finance are accurate. The betting is that they will be surprised at what they find.
There is a view, expressed by a minority of economists, that Greece should be allowed to fail and default on its debts. This would lead to an IMF intervention and strict external management of Greece’s finances, but would also send shock waves through global markets and force them to address the reality of unprecedented debt and really get to grips with how to deal with it. Such a strategy could, however, send the world into a second recession before it has recovered from the first.
What is also clear is that bond buyers will demand better interest rates to hedge their risk of default from a number of European countries. This will lead to the more rapid increase of interest rates world-wide, as Governments compete for funds. Several UK banks now confidently forecast interest rates in the UK at 6.5 – 8% by October 2010.
We should keep an eye on the Eurozone. What happens in Greece will not stay in Greece. It will come home to all of us as the markets respond.
It began with the recession and the rush to create social programs, stimulus spending and social investments, which led to a great deal of European debt. This debt load is very high - public debt could reach 84 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) for the whole of the EU by the end of 2010, an increase of 18 percentage points from 2007 and 24% above the agreed limit of such debt within the EU. Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister and former Chancellor, always argued that 45% was the desired deficit target. Britain will have public sector debts equal to 70% of GDP and a deficit of 13%.
So bad are debt levels that the bond rating agencies have all downgraded their ratings of Greece and some have also downgraded Ireland and Spain – they are also looking carefully at Portugal.
Greece is the problem child of Europe. Its current operating deficit is 12.6% of GDP and its debt levels are equal to 113% of GDP. The country is essentially one big Ponzi operation – borrowing money from new bonds to pay off older bond holders.
The European Commission warned this week that Greece will have to do far more than it is currently planning to curb its public finances in the longer-term, to reform tax collection and improve the way it keeps accounts. EU Economy Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said that EU officials would carefully monitor Greece's efforts and "will ask the Greek authorities to make additional measures" if it isn't on track to reduce a budget deficit from 12.7 percent last year to 2 percent of economic output by 2012.
Prime Minister George Papandreou of Greece, speaking during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said his country did not need a loan from the European Union. Instead, he has cut public sector pay by 10% and frozen it for an indefinite period, cut public spending by 10%, found new taxes on carbon based fuels and changed the retirement age so as to cut social security spending. He has also warned that additional measures are possible. In particular, Papandreou pledged to go after tax evaders and those who could afford to pay may well be forced to do so.
Austerity is not a popular strategy. Not surprisingly, the governments measures were met with instant strike action by public sector workers. Farmers are blocking major roads across the country in a bid to get financial help from the government, which has so far refused. Further industrial action is proposed.
The fear is that Greece may default on its debts – refusing to pay bond holders. Should it do so, this would threaten the integrity of the Euro as a currency and the economic regime that lies behind it. Markets are already nervous about these developments, as has been seen in market activity in the last few days – the Euro is falling in value against other currencies.
Part of the problem is that Greece has very poor public accounts. Indeed, the public accounts it used to gain entry into the Eurozone have since been proven to be grossly inaccurate – had the accurate accounts been used, they would not have been granted membership and been able to use the Euro as their currency. Now that the heat is on, the EU intends to review every book entry to make sure the picture they provide of Greece’s finance are accurate. The betting is that they will be surprised at what they find.
There is a view, expressed by a minority of economists, that Greece should be allowed to fail and default on its debts. This would lead to an IMF intervention and strict external management of Greece’s finances, but would also send shock waves through global markets and force them to address the reality of unprecedented debt and really get to grips with how to deal with it. Such a strategy could, however, send the world into a second recession before it has recovered from the first.
What is also clear is that bond buyers will demand better interest rates to hedge their risk of default from a number of European countries. This will lead to the more rapid increase of interest rates world-wide, as Governments compete for funds. Several UK banks now confidently forecast interest rates in the UK at 6.5 – 8% by October 2010.
We should keep an eye on the Eurozone. What happens in Greece will not stay in Greece. It will come home to all of us as the markets respond.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Mann on a Mission
Climate science, now undergoing major scrutiny, is a complex and emerging science in which few things are finally “settled” . Disputes abound, not least between those who see the world as warming and at a “tipping point” for disruptive change unless man-made CO2 are massively reduced and those who take the view that, while the climate is changing, reducing man made CO2 emissions will have little or no impact.
What became an issue in climate science was whether or not a small clique of scientists – led by Professor Phil Jones at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) and Professor Michael Mann of Penn State University – falsified evidence, destroyed data, manipulated data inappropriately or used their status and influence as leading climate scientists to inhibit scientific debate and push one theory (anthropogenic global warming) in a way that disabled criticism. These accusations flowed from the “leaking” of emails between various climate scientists, now alleged to have been hacked by Russian spies. Climategate, as the leaked emails were known, became a cause celebre for climate skeptics.
Penn State University undertook to systematically review the allegations against Professor Mann and to report both the its own governing body and to the public. The internal team of distinguished scholars reported today.
Their conclusions are thorough and clear. Michael Mann did not falsify, inappropriately analyse or manipulate or destroy evidence. His published work here under scrutiny is “sound”. What remains in doubt, and now the subject of further study by a second panel of peers, is whether his conduct as a scientist was appropriate. The review committee are not saying that his behaviour was inappropriate, only that it requires further scrutiny. They have established a team of five scientists from within Penn State to do this and have asked them to report back in one hundred and twenty days.
At issue is the conduct of Mann, Jones and others with respect to the alleged attempts to manipulate peer review such as to favour their own theories at the expense of others. Also involved is the dismissive (and sometimes disreputable) comments made about those whose view differ from their own. The base question is one of integrity of conduct.
Mann is no stranger to controversy. He is the principle author of the famous “hockey stick” graph, used by Al Gore and the IPCC to make the clear and explicit case for the present warming period to be exceptional and beyond normal patterns for the climate. Now discredited, both through a congressional scientific review and through the work of statisticians who have offered a thoroughgoing critique of the methods used to create this graph, Mann continues to maintain that his results are what the graph shows. Mann knows how to be both resilient and defiant. He is a man on a mission.
Whether or not the new inquiry finds him to have issues with integrity or not, his position as one of the apostles of the new religion of global warming is now severely weakened. The fact that he was not exonerated on all “charges” by the Penn State team is in itself a cause for concern. His peers will likely support him in general, but suggest some cautions about how he conducts himself in the future. Whatever is said, Michael Mann is damaged goods.
What became an issue in climate science was whether or not a small clique of scientists – led by Professor Phil Jones at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) and Professor Michael Mann of Penn State University – falsified evidence, destroyed data, manipulated data inappropriately or used their status and influence as leading climate scientists to inhibit scientific debate and push one theory (anthropogenic global warming) in a way that disabled criticism. These accusations flowed from the “leaking” of emails between various climate scientists, now alleged to have been hacked by Russian spies. Climategate, as the leaked emails were known, became a cause celebre for climate skeptics.
Penn State University undertook to systematically review the allegations against Professor Mann and to report both the its own governing body and to the public. The internal team of distinguished scholars reported today.
Their conclusions are thorough and clear. Michael Mann did not falsify, inappropriately analyse or manipulate or destroy evidence. His published work here under scrutiny is “sound”. What remains in doubt, and now the subject of further study by a second panel of peers, is whether his conduct as a scientist was appropriate. The review committee are not saying that his behaviour was inappropriate, only that it requires further scrutiny. They have established a team of five scientists from within Penn State to do this and have asked them to report back in one hundred and twenty days.
At issue is the conduct of Mann, Jones and others with respect to the alleged attempts to manipulate peer review such as to favour their own theories at the expense of others. Also involved is the dismissive (and sometimes disreputable) comments made about those whose view differ from their own. The base question is one of integrity of conduct.
Mann is no stranger to controversy. He is the principle author of the famous “hockey stick” graph, used by Al Gore and the IPCC to make the clear and explicit case for the present warming period to be exceptional and beyond normal patterns for the climate. Now discredited, both through a congressional scientific review and through the work of statisticians who have offered a thoroughgoing critique of the methods used to create this graph, Mann continues to maintain that his results are what the graph shows. Mann knows how to be both resilient and defiant. He is a man on a mission.
Whether or not the new inquiry finds him to have issues with integrity or not, his position as one of the apostles of the new religion of global warming is now severely weakened. The fact that he was not exonerated on all “charges” by the Penn State team is in itself a cause for concern. His peers will likely support him in general, but suggest some cautions about how he conducts himself in the future. Whatever is said, Michael Mann is damaged goods.
Monday, February 01, 2010
The Changed Climate of Climate Change
The unravelling of the claims with respect to global climate change has begun in earnest during the first month of 2010. So much so, in fact, that those who protest that the science is settled are now being ridiculed by the mainstream press.
It began at Copenhagen, with the sidelining of the United Nations process by Obama and others and the duly noted “Copenhagen accord”. This signalled the end of the UN process, which had been taking place since 1998 as the primary process for the development of an internationally binding treaty curtailing certain emissions, notably CO2. To all intents and purposes, this process is now dead – there are no realistic prospects of a treaty being agreed during 2010 at the Mexico summit in December.
The focus quickly then moved to three issues. The first is the credibility of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a body offering serious scientific analysis of the known science. The second is the analysis of other scientific claims, notably the evidence base for the global temperature. Finally, there has been a great deal of attention paid to the antics of the Chairman of the IPCC, Dr Rajendra Pachauri.
The IPCC reports have been seen by many as a summative and authoritative statement of our knowledge of the climate, its behaviour and the future of the climate. The assumption was that over two and a half thousand scientists participated in a highly structured process of reviewing peer reviewed scientific literature, offering an analysis of this literature and providing an authoritative review of the science. It now appears that many of the scientists were in fact environmental activitists, that some of its findings were based not on peer review but on magazines, comments and environmental literature and that some of the data was manipulated to produce the “expected” results – such as the hockey stick graph showing temperature changes over time. The IPCC itself has admitted that its findings with respect to the Himalayas being ice free by 2035 is a nonsense. Some fifteen other such claims are under review – all of them based not on peer review science but “other materials”.
So discredited is the process, especially the process by which the summary for policymakers is developed, that some inside the IPCC are calling for major revisions in how the work gets done and are also calling for more disclosure of the limits to the science, the cautions with respect to interpretations and the caveats with respect to the quality of the evidence.
Then there are other scientific issues now receiving a lot of attention. The most significant of these relates to the way in which global temperatures are measured, analyzed and reported. The basic problem is simple. The number of temperature gauges used to calculate the temperature of the lower atmosphere is now so reduced and selective as to be problematic. Canada, for example, has just six sites that get used in the analysis– all of them near the US border – and not a single site in the colder parts of the country. This despite the fact that Canada has several hundred gauges placed appropriately for use. By being selective about which sites are analysed and which are excluded, warming trends can be “created”. It gets worse. Many of the sites used do not confirm to agreed standards for their location – they are located near heat sinks or in locations likely to inflate temperature. That’s not all. The data is highly adjusted to take into account a variety of issues, but such an adjustment process is poorly documented, inconsistent and appears always to increase temperature, not reduce them. A great many of the Climategate emails demonstrate that this is problematic. This issue has reached the point where several scientists are concerned that we do not have a stable, reliable and thoroughly documented and accessible system for temperature measure by land and sea instruments.
We do have satellite data – which clearly shows that there has been no warming for many years and that many of the assumptions about the current warming cycle are problematic – but this is not yet seen as the “gold standard” of measurement by many. We have a problem.
Finally, there is the sexy Dr Pachauri, the railway engineer turned climate change expert who Chairs the IPCC. It is now “OK” to think of him as sexy – he has written a novel featuring a sixty year old Indian climatologist which has been described by many as, if not soft porn, “titillating”. But launching a sexy novel is the least of Dr Pachauri’s problems. He has been accused of conflict of interest in that he is actively promoting a view of the climate which leads countries to want to invest in products and services which match his own business interests. He has denied these claims, but not convincingly. The UK Government, it is reported, has declined to fully support the renewal of his IPCC appointment and many others, including some US officials, are calling for a new Chair to signal a new approach to the work of the IPCC.
As the US backs down from any commitment to cap and trade and sets very modest climate change goals for the next decade and Canada follows suit so as to create a level playing field for North America, the world’s ambitions for emissions cuts are reduced to a modest and appropriate level. The heat appears to have gone out of the climate change agenda, at least for now. This is seen by some as a victory for the sceptics, but it is in fact a victory for science.
There is no consensus on climate change within the scientific community and, while most of the sceptics accept that climate change is happening and that CO2 is a component of that process, what is now possible is a serious and much more rational look at how we can adapt to a more variable climate than we have been used to. Rather than having a single solution – massive cuts in C02 and a focus on renewable energy – we now have to find creative and imaginative responses to what will likely be a significantly colder period followed by a substantially warmer one.
It began at Copenhagen, with the sidelining of the United Nations process by Obama and others and the duly noted “Copenhagen accord”. This signalled the end of the UN process, which had been taking place since 1998 as the primary process for the development of an internationally binding treaty curtailing certain emissions, notably CO2. To all intents and purposes, this process is now dead – there are no realistic prospects of a treaty being agreed during 2010 at the Mexico summit in December.
The focus quickly then moved to three issues. The first is the credibility of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a body offering serious scientific analysis of the known science. The second is the analysis of other scientific claims, notably the evidence base for the global temperature. Finally, there has been a great deal of attention paid to the antics of the Chairman of the IPCC, Dr Rajendra Pachauri.
The IPCC reports have been seen by many as a summative and authoritative statement of our knowledge of the climate, its behaviour and the future of the climate. The assumption was that over two and a half thousand scientists participated in a highly structured process of reviewing peer reviewed scientific literature, offering an analysis of this literature and providing an authoritative review of the science. It now appears that many of the scientists were in fact environmental activitists, that some of its findings were based not on peer review but on magazines, comments and environmental literature and that some of the data was manipulated to produce the “expected” results – such as the hockey stick graph showing temperature changes over time. The IPCC itself has admitted that its findings with respect to the Himalayas being ice free by 2035 is a nonsense. Some fifteen other such claims are under review – all of them based not on peer review science but “other materials”.
So discredited is the process, especially the process by which the summary for policymakers is developed, that some inside the IPCC are calling for major revisions in how the work gets done and are also calling for more disclosure of the limits to the science, the cautions with respect to interpretations and the caveats with respect to the quality of the evidence.
Then there are other scientific issues now receiving a lot of attention. The most significant of these relates to the way in which global temperatures are measured, analyzed and reported. The basic problem is simple. The number of temperature gauges used to calculate the temperature of the lower atmosphere is now so reduced and selective as to be problematic. Canada, for example, has just six sites that get used in the analysis– all of them near the US border – and not a single site in the colder parts of the country. This despite the fact that Canada has several hundred gauges placed appropriately for use. By being selective about which sites are analysed and which are excluded, warming trends can be “created”. It gets worse. Many of the sites used do not confirm to agreed standards for their location – they are located near heat sinks or in locations likely to inflate temperature. That’s not all. The data is highly adjusted to take into account a variety of issues, but such an adjustment process is poorly documented, inconsistent and appears always to increase temperature, not reduce them. A great many of the Climategate emails demonstrate that this is problematic. This issue has reached the point where several scientists are concerned that we do not have a stable, reliable and thoroughly documented and accessible system for temperature measure by land and sea instruments.
We do have satellite data – which clearly shows that there has been no warming for many years and that many of the assumptions about the current warming cycle are problematic – but this is not yet seen as the “gold standard” of measurement by many. We have a problem.
Finally, there is the sexy Dr Pachauri, the railway engineer turned climate change expert who Chairs the IPCC. It is now “OK” to think of him as sexy – he has written a novel featuring a sixty year old Indian climatologist which has been described by many as, if not soft porn, “titillating”. But launching a sexy novel is the least of Dr Pachauri’s problems. He has been accused of conflict of interest in that he is actively promoting a view of the climate which leads countries to want to invest in products and services which match his own business interests. He has denied these claims, but not convincingly. The UK Government, it is reported, has declined to fully support the renewal of his IPCC appointment and many others, including some US officials, are calling for a new Chair to signal a new approach to the work of the IPCC.
As the US backs down from any commitment to cap and trade and sets very modest climate change goals for the next decade and Canada follows suit so as to create a level playing field for North America, the world’s ambitions for emissions cuts are reduced to a modest and appropriate level. The heat appears to have gone out of the climate change agenda, at least for now. This is seen by some as a victory for the sceptics, but it is in fact a victory for science.
There is no consensus on climate change within the scientific community and, while most of the sceptics accept that climate change is happening and that CO2 is a component of that process, what is now possible is a serious and much more rational look at how we can adapt to a more variable climate than we have been used to. Rather than having a single solution – massive cuts in C02 and a focus on renewable energy – we now have to find creative and imaginative responses to what will likely be a significantly colder period followed by a substantially warmer one.
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