The Future, Education and Alberta

When a journalist asked former British Prime Minister (1957-1963) Harold McMillan what politicians fear most, McMillan replied “events, dear boy, events”.  Futurists look at events as the basis for patterns and trends and seek to find meaning in these patterns so as to better understand both what is happening and how we might appropriately respond.

Currently, there are six patterns which are impacting the world in general and Alberta in particular. In Rethinking the Future (Murgatroyd, 2012 available on Kindle and in paperback at lulu.com) I explored these in depth. Here I will do so briefly, but will provide new information and insights which have emerged since the book was written.

Pattern 1: Demographics. The big pattern that will have a substantial impact on the world is the fact that we are likely to reach a global population of 10 billion by 2100, up from 6 billion in 2000. This raises issues of sustainability, equity and community but also challenges us to be innovative. A new book focused on the implications of this development by Danny Dorling, Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield, suggests that new values focused on sustainability, innovation and adaptability, equity and compassion will make it possible for 10 billion to occupy the planet. Others disagree and are seeking to constrain population growth by a variety of measures.

While this is the overarching challenge, there are other challenges. Canada’s birth rate is such that we are not replacing ourselves and will increasingly rely on immigration and innovation (especially improvements in productivity) if we are to sustain our quality of life, education, health care and social fabric. This is likely to lead to a doubling of immigration by 2030 and a tripling by 2050, changing the character of significant areas of Canada, especially those which are most attractive from an economic and quality of life point of view. This includes Alberta. Our schools will be even more multicultural and diverse than they are now. So too will our teaching profession.

People are living longer – with many more predicted to reach 90 and 100 than ever before. As communities support more and more seniors, the key issues for their support will be fragility and mental illness. They will place increasing burdens on health care systems in the developed world, but will also provide us with new sources of social support and resources. Grandparents will be a major source of family support and learning.

Pattern 2: Economics. Some have suggested that we are witnessing the “end of growth” (Heinberg, 2011; Rubin, 2012) – pointing to the low rates of GDP growth in most of the developed world, especially Europe. The rate of growth of the so-called BRICS economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) has also slowed. This view suggests that a return to “normal” economic conditions before the implosion of the US and UK banking systems and the global financial crisis is now unlikely and we need to rethinking our economies for a slower or zero growth.

This seems overly pessimistic as a global view, though may be appropriate for Mediterranean EU States (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain – the PIGS economies) which also have very high unemployment rates, especially for young people.

As the US recovery emerges – GDP growth is app. 1.7% and housing starts and prices are rising – then the Canadian economy will respond. We can already see some sectors – forestry, construction and some service sectors – back to pre recession levels of economic activity. But it is clear that economic optimism has been replaced by economic caution. Also clear for Canadian entrepreneurs is that access to capital – the vital ingredient in building any business- is getting more and more difficult, not that it was ever easy.

Alberta’s economy remains healthy, despite weak demand for bitumen (until recently). The concern is medium to long term – where will Alberta sell its oil and gas now that the US is becoming increasingly energy self-reliant and growingly environmentally determined? If China is to be the primary market but we cannot get to market with efficient pipelines, will we price ourselves out of the heavy oil market for a time and will this slow economic growth in Alberta? Will these developments significantly slow or halt new capital projects in the oil sands?

Given uncertainties with respect to patterns of energy demand, all economies are seeking to diversify. Key to this is access to talented labour and innovation and growing the skills of entrepreneurship. The global war for talent is real and has an impact on economic growth – we seem to attract talent from around the world, but we need to grow more of our own Alberta talent and to retain all the available talent within the Province. As a nation we are also not very good at innovation (Conference Board of Canada, 2013) – we need to get much better if we are to compete on the global stage.

Pattern 3: Environment and Sustainability. There is no doubt that most countries need to do more to support sustainable living, climate change mitigation, land and air stewardship and the management of the watershed and water supplies. As we move to a global population of 10 billion, we need to understand that water, forested lands, land itself are no longer abundant but are in fact scarce. There is strong global support for sustainability as a core value of the 21^st century.

According to the Conference Board[i], Canada ranks 15th out of 17 peer countries on its environmental performance report card. Canada's record in several areas (climate change, energy intensity, smog, and waste production) drags down its comparative performance. Only Australia and the U.S. rank below Canada. The top three performers are France, Norway, and Sweden.

It is not all bad news. Canada has the world's largest area of forest certified to third-party sustainable forest certification. Canada is one of the best performers for the intensity of use of forest resources. Only Japan ranks ahead of Canada, with a lower percentage of timber cut relative to forest growth. We are also making progress in decoupling economic growth and CO2 emissions and are in fact reducing the rate of growth of emissions.

Increasingly, civil society is being evaluated not just in terms of the well-being and wealth of its citizens but also the health and sustainability of the environment. Alberta is challenged here – our oil sands are seen by many around the world as a blight on the planet. Despite the many efforts being made to strengthen our commitments and champion our achievements for environmental sustainability, we are losing the confidence of many that we take this work seriously. We are not the only jurisdiction facing this challenge, which is a defining challenge for the Government of Canada and Alberta.

Education is key to sustainability – and we need to do more in our schools to help students and communities understand the impact they have on nature and the impact nature can have on them, as the recent storms in southern Alberta demonstrate.

Pattern 4: Power and Politics. Globally there are struggles for a rethinking of power and authority within and between nations. In the Middle East this shows itself in struggles to both establish and sustain democracy. In Asia it is about finding balance between national authority and local autonomy. In Europe it is about finding the balance between technocracy, multinational control and nationhood. Globally there is a search for new models for citizenship, democracy, authority and new ways of securing public good.

It is clear that many hitherto effective systems are not performing well. The case of the United States congress, the European Union, the IMF and World Bank are all case studies of established systems in need of major change.

A part of the driver, at least in the developed world, for the challenge to existing political structures is the new global economy with global drivers for economic policy. Many of the major issues faced by governments – integrity of financial systems, climate change, labour mobility, immigration, terrorism – all require multinational responses. But most of our multinational agencies – the UN, for example – have performed poorly in the face of these challenges.

Another key driver for the rethinking of politics is the sense of disengagement or alienation many feel from the decisions that most affect them. Rebooting democracy is in part a response to alienation and lack of participation. One frontier is education, with Britain moving schools out of the control of local education authorities and into the hands of social enterprise. The recent focus in Alberta on Charter schools has worrying echoes of these developments.

Pattern 5: Technology. New substances, like graphene, or new approaches to the use of stem cells in the treatment of health conditions are beginning to have transformative impacts on many sectors of society. Britain, for example, is considering permitting the “three parent baby” -   replacing defective mitochondrial DNA of one woman with that of another in an embryo. Graphene – a microthin substance 200x stronger than steel – will soon replace silicon and other metals in cell phones, airplanes, cars and every day appliances. Disruptive technologies are emerging quickly.

In education, online learning and personalized learning are the “new black”, with substantial private sector investments now taking place K-PhD with the underlying assumption that technology alone will produce transformation in schools, as it is doing in health care.  Education systems are now targets for global corporations seeking sources of new revenue as traditional revenues decline – as can be seen in the educational strategy being pursued by Pearson, the world’s largest publisher.

Pattern 6: Identify and Self. A number of factors are leading young people around the world to feel vulnerable. This is shown in growing rates of depression and anxiety, suicide and obesity amongst young people. Indeed, challenges to children’s health are so serious that many public health experts see the current generation of parents as being the first who will live longer than many of their sons and daughters.

A strong self of self is weakened by prolonged unemployment, a growing feature of many developed economies. It is also weakened by a sense of environmental vulnerability, changes to our understanding of family and a social shift towards the always connected and yet always alone. As adolescence struggle to make sense of their world and themselves, their progress will be hampered by expectations that they will both look after their parents who will live longer, work harder and more productively in a shrinking workforce and contribute more to society through taxation and social enterprise. Growing up has always been a challenge for many young people – it seems to be getting tougher.

The Good News

Good news abounds. People are living longer, healthier lives. We seem to be getting closer to new treatments for chronic diseases and breakthroughs in stem cell research bode well for new approaches to health.

Fewer people live in poverty than was the case just a decade ago, though inequity is increasing. Despite continuing fears of global warming and evidence that it is, there has been no significant increase in global average surface temperatures since 1998. While some animal, fish and bird species are under threat, we discover new species at a faster rate than we document species loss. Storms continue to show the power of nature, but in North America, the frequency of hurricanes is lower than it has been since records began.

Though wars and civil strife continue, there are actually fewer so far in the twenty first century than at this stage in the twentieth. We also seem better able to find resolution to economic wars through enhanced global cooperation.

The In Between Time

But there is no doubt that we are living in an “in between time”. This is a time between one world order and way of understanding our place in the world and a new world order and the emergence of a different understanding of how we are connected to others and of our place in the world. Educators need to help students understand these six patterns and their interactions, since they will impact them all. We also need to enable active citizenship and citizen engagement as a key outcome of schooling. Given that “the future isn’t what it used to be” (Yogi Berra), we need students to create the Alberta the world needs to see.

Notes and References

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[i] See http://www.globe-net.com/articles/2013/april/5/how-canada-performs-new-report-rates-canada's-innovation-capacity/ April 4, 2013

Murgatroyd, S (2012) Rethinking the Future - Six Patterns Shaping The New Renaissance. Edmonton: futureTHINK Press.

From Public Good to Social Enterprise and Profit - Is This a Good Thing?

England is rapidly moving to a social enterprise model for the delivery of learning at all levels of its education system. By January 2013 some 2,600 English schools (12% of all schools and over 50% of all English High Schools) had opted out of the control of Local Education Authorities (equivalent to an Alberta School Board) and are free to set their own admission standards, recruit teachers to teach (including teachers without a teaching qualification), set teacher pay levels and receive the same funds as a publicly managed school would receive. There are 28 local authorities where at least 1 in 5 schools is now an open academy. In almost all of the 129 local authorities, at least 1 in 5 secondary schools is an open academy. There are 10 local authorities where at least 1 in 5 primary schools is now an open primary academy. Schools are converting all the time – by May of 2013 an additional 150 schools had converted.

At this time academies are not for profit organizations. The ruling Conservative Party has made clear that, should they win an outright majority in the next election, academies can elect to become for profit organizations.

Similar developments are occurring in Sweden, where Free Schools have been operating since 1992. By 2010 some 75% of Swedish school students attended a school owned and operated by a for profit company, subsidized by the States grant of per pupil funding.

Not all is well in Sweden. In 2013 JB Education, which supports the education of over 10,000 students in Free Schools in Sweden indicated that it was to close several of its schools since it could no longer fund these “loss making operations”. Some of Sweden’s private school companies operate schools in the UK. 

Charter schools are similar to academies in England and Free Schools in Sweden. Alberta has just thirteen Charter Schools, all of which are not for profit.

Private sector investments in education K-12 are rising. Both Pearson and News Corp are now investing directly in owning school systems and other investments are focused on technology. In the US alone in 2012 educational investment topped $1 billion, including investments in post-secondary education systems.

What is happening here in England is very simple. Public assets and responsibilities are being transferred initially to non-profit organizations which are building brand and presence so as to get ready for their future for profit status. The country is consciously shifting from a model of education "as a public good" to a model of education "which is a private social enterprise" subsidized in the name of public good. Control has shifted from elected public officials at a local level - the Local Education Authority - to bureaucrats for a national government, who take their instructions from a Minister appointed by the Crown. Removing local control and contracting out the future of a society is essentially what is happening here.

Several issues arise, but these three strike me as worth of exploration:

1. What are the benefits of a social enterprise approach, especially one which is likely to lead to privatization - the declared aim of the UK Conservative Party? Are the benefits to be experienced by learners, the community and society or is it simply a means of transfeering public funds to private interests?

2. What is lost to a community and society by ceding control of a major future resource - the knowledge and skills capacity of nation - to third parties?

3. What happens, as is now the case in Sweden, when some of the major "owners" decide that they can no longer take the losses of an education system and hand back their assets to the State or a new private sector player?

A related example to this is the debacle over what we refer to as P3's (public-private partnerships) but which the UK refers to as the Public Finance Initiative (PFI). By 2014 the value of the PFI sector in the UK will be app.  ₤140 billion and will eventually cost in excess of  ₤300 billion. But there all sorts of issues. In the National Health Service (NHS), where the PFI took a strong hold, there are challenges.  Barts Health NHS Trust in London says the construction of new medical facilities at its two main sites will cost £1.1bn, but the document reveals that the eventual cost will be £7.1bn by the time the contract is fully paid off in 2048-49. That will cost the trust an average of £115m a year at today's prices for the entire duration of the contract. To pay for this staff costs will need to be reduced - nurses versus profit will become a real challenge.This has already raised a red flag in the eyes of the Public Accounts Committee.

Further, when a school or building built with a P3 is no longer needed, payments still have to be made. What sense is there in this?

There are complex challenges here, I know - governments are seeking to manage expenditure, but what looks superficially like a smart move may in fact be very costly and not just in terms of money.

Understanding the Psychology of Heretics

I have been wondering why otherwise thoughtful, talented and highly educated people adopt beliefs which are difficult to defend.

This triggered by interest in a book by Will Storr called Heretics – Adventures with the Enemies of Science (London: Picador, 2013). The talented journalist and author looks at believers in homeopathy, deniers of climate change, those who believe hearing voices is a natural phenomenon and can be treated by listening to the voices and talking back rather than psychiatric treatments and many others. Why this book is interesting is because it seeks to understand the psychological process by which someone develops and clings to a view despite the fact that the evidence and science is against them.

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winning economist, has also been exploring this theme in his New York Times blog site and in some of his columns. He wonders why, in the face of irrefutable evidence that they are wrong, those who support austerity in Europe continue to do so. He also wonders why economists who are convinced that quantitative easing as practiced by the US Federal Reserve will “obviously” lead to inflation when in fact there is no evidence supporting this view.

Storr suggests and discusses these conclusions:

1. We each develop, for those issues in which we have an interest, a mental model of reality and truth – our map of salience. This map is based on a variety of things – education, experience, observation, the views of individuals who are significant to us, opposition to the views of those we dislike and so on.
2. As we develop a map of salience, we seek out (consciously or unconsciously) evidence which reinforces our map and exclude or dispute that which does not. That is, we seek out selective evidence in support of our map of salience. This process in psychology is known as confirmation bias.
3. The longer we build our map of salience, the more it becomes our “virtual reality” – the way we see this issue or range of issues. Those who believe in homeopathy cannot imagine their world view to be wrong – “homeopathy can cure cancer!” (it cant and in several countries it is illegal to make this claim as a practitioner of homeopathy).
4. We don’t stop just at selective evidence gathering. We also create evidence by telling ourselves or sharing stories we understand to be true, even thought they are not. For example, the stories told by those who have been abducted by aliens or have seen UFO’s. These stories are powerfully held, told and shared and those who tell them are unshakable in their belief that they are true. This we can refer to as “confabulation”  - defined as “to fill in gaps in one's memory with fabrications that one believes to be facts”.
5. But we are not finished. Individuals then begin to practice what we psychologists call the “sense stopping rule”.  We ignore everything that runs counter to our map of salience and our confabulated stories (confirmation bias) and we scrutinize evidence from our opponents more rigorously than we scrutinize our own claims, data and stories – that is, we are simply unwilling to accept a different map of salience from our own. 

Storr’s book is written as a narrative of his encounter with mavericks, heretics and hucksters. Its not an easy book to read, but it is insightful. He suggests that “the world as we know it began in the 18^th century” with the development of an understanding of the scientific method and process and the growth of the Enlightenment. Science rescued man from the tyranny of beliefs alone and enabled mankind to test their understanding of the world in systematic, thorough and very focused ways. Through science, mankind has been able to develop a set of maps of salience which are routed in evidence which is independent of belief systems, confirmation bias , the sense stopping rule and confabulation. At least we think it is.

When scientists begin to show signs of confabulation, confirmation bias and the sense stopping rule – what do we now do? This is Paul Krugman’s point. When this occurs, our trust in the particular scientist (in this case an economist) and more generally in science begins to be eroded.

One of my own problems with some climate scientists is their growing use of confabulation, their clear bias on the basis of “consensus” and the evidence of sense stopping. Not all of the climate scientists can be seen to practice these things, but some significant players can. Just as Paul Krugman wonders what the “science” of economics will become when we have these behaviours occurring, so I wonder what will become of science itself.

Dan Brown's Inferno and the Future of Mankind

Dan Brown’s new novel Inferno is, as all of his novels are, a literary mess. It’s a ramble through bits of history, literature, architecture, science and politics with a thriller thrown in. But what this book will do, apart from being the basis for a blockbuster film and a major best seller, is help put into people’s consciousness the challenge of our demography.

Demography at the grand scale tells us that we are reaching towards 9-11 billion people existing together on the planet by 2050 – up from the 7.9 billion living on the planet now. The premise of Dan Brown’s thriller is that this figure is unsustainable – creating unbearable pressures on the environment, global food supplies, and energy resources. Something has to be done and his thriller is based on a strategy for culling the global population based on genetic engineering by means of a vector based virus.

Some facts will help. The population is expanding, as the UN graph below shows. Starting from 1800, the graph shows global population expansion through to 2004 and then the three scenarios which follow are varying estimates of what is likely to happen to the end of the century. Two scenarios show that, as the overall health and wealth of the global population rises then birth rates decline and the species finds some balance with the planet. The red scenario suggests that this doesn’t happen and the human herd simply grows exponentially.

The population is getting both wealthier and healthier, as the powerful video by Hans Rossling shows (see here).

A new study of demography by Danny Dorling (Population 10 Billion – The Coming Demographic Crisis and How to Survive It. London: Constable and Robinson, 2013), which is much better written than Dan Brown’s novel (but will get less attention), makes clear that population will stabilize as individuals realize that sustainability is something that they can act on without the need for global Kyoto like agreements and companies realize that all people on earth seek the same things and to create these sustainable life-styles is a fantastic capitalist opportunity. This is also the theme of the book we published by Alan Knight (Rethinking Corporate Sustainability – If Only We Ran the Planet Like a Shop – available here). Packed full of counter-intuitive ideas and observations, Dorling’s book is a tool kit to prepare for the future and to help us ask the right questions.

But what are the right questions? I would suggest that there are five:

1. What actions can we as individuals and as society take to reduce inequity and increase equity?
2. What actions can we take to reduce consumption and waste and increase the utilization of currently “in use” resources?
3. What actions can we take to better manage our own wellness and health?
4. What actions do we need to take to promote and develop happiness, wellbeing and community?
5. What actions do we need to take to look after the land, forests and water supplies on which we all depend?

The future depends on innovative approaches to sustainable living. The simple and politically attractive solutions – reduce C02 emissions by 40% by 2030 (50% if everyone agrees to do this together, which is the EU’s policy position) – make no sense since they will make no difference to the climate and will disrupt just some aspects of life (e.g. food supply chains, transport systems) unnecessarily. The real challenge is to develop a sense of personal responsibility for our collective future.

Certainly, some policy positions from governments would help – like making austerity apply to the rich rather than the poor, forcing companies to do more than focusing on profitability and requiring communities to see health as an issue of prevention than one of supply. But these are the outcomes of a shift in attitude – it is this shift that will make the difference.

Alan Knight’s key point is that using fear to shift attitudes isn’t working. If we use opportunity instead, it may work better. For example, if companies stopped selling everything and started renting those things we only use occasionally this would help. Its 10 billion small actions that will make the wellbeing of 10 billion people possible.

So as you snuggle down to read Dan Brown’s badly written but hugely popular book give a thought to the real issue of our collective future. That is what he is really trying to write about.

Floods, Alberta and Climate Change

Between Wednesday and today, southern Alberta experienced over 250 mm of rain – equivalent to an entire year of rainfall. Needless to say, flooding is extensive with over 100,000 persons evacuated and the downtown of the City of Calgary is closed. The Calgary Stampede grounds – home of the biggest outdoor event on earth (due to be held just two weeks from now) is submerged. A state of emergency has been declared, three are known to be dead and the army is en route to help.

To the West the Town of Canmore, where I spend a month or so each year to write, is cut off, with all major roads to the Town unfit for use with one of the nations most major highways damaged and in need of radical repair. Many river side or creek side houses are damaged beyond repair.

It is a disaster. One of the most major disasters in Alberta history – ranking alongside the Tornado which hit Edmonton in 1987, though this had many more deaths (27).

Right now the focus is on seeking to ensure that there is no further loss of life, to provide shelter, food and clothing for those displaced and to care for the animals affected.

Next attention will turn to recovery, restoring some sense of normalcy and demonstrating how resilient communities can be. In particular, there will be a need to rebuild infrastructure - roads, bridges, power supplies.

Then we will start to understand what needs to be done to repair the damage and protect against the next severe weather event.

Sometime soon there will be an attempt made to explain these floods in terms of manmade climate change. But the science doesn’t support this explanation. In fact, the science focuses on cycles of natural occurring and competing phenomenon (including shifts in ocean circulation patterns, cloud formation and sun spots) and the building of property on flood plains, recovered wetlands and other “at risk” zones. The extent of damage to property and community is due more to planning decisions and building designs rather than man made climate change.

No doubt, links will be made between oil sands development, climate change and extreme weather events. But even Al Gore laments that the science does not enable him to claim that climate change and extreme weather events are linked. An IPCC report on this exact matter came to this conclusion. While there is a political interest in this link, it is not scientifically sound to make one.

Rather than engaging in fantasy science, it would be better for us to spend our energy and use our skills to care for those who need practical help right now.

A Sad Case of Opportunism

Anyone who watched television and saw the devastation in Oklahoma this past week-end cannot help but be moved, especially by the sad loss of children. For a region used to such extreme weather events over its history, it is still a shock each time it occurs.

Sadly, however, this tragic event has created a storm of ideologically driven statements about how the underlying cause of the devastation is climate change - something that couldn't be further from the truth.

All of those who have spent their careers studying extreme weather events agree with the IPCC assessment that there is not an established link between climate, CO2 and the frequency and severity of tornadoes. Anyone who says that there is such a link has not ready the science, seen the systematic reviews of the literature or understands the dynamics of climate.

Yet we have Senator Boxer declaring that "this is climate change" and that "CO2 could cost us the planet". She goes on to say "the scientists all agreed that what we’d start to see was extreme weather" - which is not true. The IPCC systematic review of this issue suggests something quite different. The IPCC SREX report concluded that there is no evidence that warming is increasing extreme weather, droughts, floods, hurricanes, etc. and no evidence of a human fingerprint on such extremes. In fact, the data shows such extremes have decreased over time, even though CO2 has been rising.

So, expect more of this. Rather than focusing on questions like "why wasnt there a shelter in the elementary school?" we will, if we are not careful, be distracted by spurious claims about science and climate which cannot be supported by evidence.

Science in the Dock: Experts, Climate Change and Evidence

Some facts that get in the way of climate change alarmist thinking:

Not Warming: The Hadley Centre/CRU records show no warming for 18 years (v.3) or 19 years (v.4), and the RSS satellite dataset shows no warming for 23 years (h/t to Werner Brozek for determining these values). This is accepted by the Chairman of the IPCC as reported here.

Not Warming as Much as Anticipated: “The earth may warm at a slightly slower rate in coming decades than scientists were predicting six years ago, according to a paper published on Sunday by researchers from Oxford university, Nasa and nearly a dozen other institutions.” See review here.

Rate of Warming Due to CO2: Many peer-reviewed scientific papers have been published lowering the so-called 'climate sensitivity' to CO2 to a mere 0.5-1.6C per doubling of CO2, less than half of what was previously believed.  Thus, at the current rate of CO2 increase, it would take 200 years for CO2 to double for a mere 0.5-1.6C warming, which is nothing to worry about and likely beneficial.

Good News About CO2: Many peer-reviewed scientific papers have also demonstrated that CO2 is greening the planet. One published recently noted an 11% increase in green cover over arid areas due to CO2 fertilization over the past 30 years.

Sea Levels Not Rising: According to the NOAA 2012 sea level budget, sea levels are rising at a mere 1.1-1.3 mm/yr, less than 5 inches per century, less than the average rate of rise over the past 18,000 years. According to a paper published in the Journal of Climate by JM Gregory et al (with 14 other top international sea level experts) in Dec 2012, there is no evidence of an anthropogenic (man-made) influence on sea levels, and no evidence of any acceleration of sea level rise over the 20th century.

Sea Levels Not Rising 2: There has been no acceleration the rate of sea level rise. Sea level has been rising for centuries. But the rate of the rise has not changed a whole lot. Both tidal stations and satellites show no increase in the historic rate of sea level rise, in either the short or long term.  Up until about the end of 2004, there was little change in the rate of sea level rise. Since then the rise has slowed down. The average (dark blue line) does not stray far from the trend (black line) up until 1994. Since then, it is well below the projected trend (gray line). We were supposed to be seeing some kind of big acceleration in the sea level rise caused by increased CO2. Instead, we are seeing a decrease in the rate of sea level rise. So the first claim, that increasing CO2 will cause increased rates of sea level rise, is not supported by the evidence.

Extreme Weather Not Linked to Climate Change: The UN IPCC SREX report concluded that there is no evidence that warming is increasing extreme weather, droughts, floods, hurricanes, etc. and no evidence of a human fingerprint on such extremes. In fact, the data shows such extremes have decreased.

Small Islands Growing Not Sinking: A recent study of small islands in the Pacific, which you can read a summary of here, the islands are growing not sinking with many increasing in size significantly. Of the 27 islands studied, only four had diminished in size. Some are expanding to the point at which new airports are being built.

Climate Scientists Challenge Climate Scientists: The following statement is made by a lead author for the IPCC, Hans Von Storch:

“Unfortunately in climate science there is a tendency to proclaim absolute truths and to link these immediately to instructions on actions to take,’ von Storch said. ‘The climate pope tells us what has to be done, and for the people it’s: keep your mouths shut. Scientists have been taking over the roles of medicine men and priests. That’s not the job of scientists. Science is supposed to help understand problems, show the possibilities that exist in dealing with them. The best is to show many possibilities. Then the political process has to decide the path to take.’

But some of his colleagues in science like to use ‘stories that point to a catastrophe,’ said the professor of meteorology. One example was the assumption that our region would see ‘murderous violent storms’. But there was no data showing this. ‘It all has a cultural, anthropological background’ . ‘If you sin, then you will be punished. And the punishment always takes on an environmental dimension which also included storms in the past. In former times it was God’s punishment. Today it’s punishment by Nature. Nature is to keep man in check. And for this we see idiotic films like ‘The Day After Tomorrow.’’

With ‘snappy’ and short statements like ‘snow will be a thing of the past’, the loud speakers among the scientists are putting the credibility of science at stake.’”

More info on Hans von Storch here. He also runs the climate blogklimazwiebel.de and is co-author of the recently released book: The Climate Trap: The Dangerous Proximity of Politics and Climate Science.

When we start to unpick all of this, we are back to my concerns about "experts" - see the blog post earlier this week about experts - and the nature of science.

Education in the US - Time for Mindful Action

Many years ago one of my University Professors, Stanley Bertram Chrimes (1907 – 1984), suggested that it was perfectly possible to get an excellent high school education in the US – it just took four years of University studies to do it. This was before the OECD’s international rankings of school system performance began to appear. Scores from the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) showed  15-year-old students in the U.S. performing about average in reading and science, and below average in math. Out of 34 countries, the U.S. ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math. In contrast, Canada ranked 6^th in reading, 8^th in science and 10^th in mathematics.

Why does the US do so poorly? There are several reasons, but these five strike me as critical:

•          The education system in the US is a market based economy focused on costs and management not learning and outcomes. There is little consistency of approach across the US States and districts. The key driver appears to be costs and control.
•         There is not a tight-loose system which enables professional teachers to excel. The clearest example of this relates to curriculum. Some districts have a very prescribed curriculum, in others teachers are free to create their own. This dimension of prescription to total freedom is unusual. In high performing systems there is a prescribed curriculum framework within which teachers are encouraged to create appropriate pedagogy. The US has yet to discover just how powerful this can be and, perhaps more tellingly, how it can implement this tight-loose system.
•          The range of ability and challenge of poverty is a serious impairment to high performance. When we look at the PISA data closely, we see that the US has a much high level of variance between schools in performance. Equity is a challenge.
•          Disparities between regions of the US and districts within States are substantial. For example, Catholic educators in many jurisdictions do not receive State support for their schools. Yet in Canada, Catholic students receive basically the same funding as all other students for their learning. The difference between wealthy states and poor states in terms of support for schooling is considerable.
•          There is a stronger focus on “shiny objects” – new approaches, technology, fads and trends – in the US than in many other systems. Schools have been seduced by “the next thing” too many times.

If the US is to catch up and perform well in its school system it needs to focus on equity, a curriculum framework and enhancing the ability of teachers and schools to make decisions. Its about  time.