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A link between small particulate pollution and blood clots (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Breathing in air pollution from traffic fumes can raise the risk of potentially deadly blood clots, a US study says.
Exposure to small particulates - tiny chemicals caused by burning fossil fuels - is known to increase the chances of heart disease and stroke.
But the Harvard School of Public Health found it also affected development of deep vein thrombosis - blood clots in the legs - in a study of 2,000 people.
Researchers said the pollution made the blood more sticky and likely to clot.
The team looked at people living in Italy - nearly 900 of whom developed DVT.
...
Researchers obtained pollution readings from the areas they lived and found those exposed to higher levels of small particulates in the year before diagnosis were more likely to develop blood clots.The Archives of Internal Medicine report said for every 10 microgrammes per square metre increase in small particulates, the risk of developing a DVT went up by 70%.
This is a classic confusion between correlation and causation. In particular, people who are poor are more likely to be unhealthy (generally) so might be more susceptible to DVT. And people who are poor might well be more likely to live in areas with higher levels of small particulate pollution. So there could be other underlying causes for the observed correlation. As with most of these kinds of health studies, they have all sorts of plausible reasons which give credence to why the causation might be true (and it could be true, even though they haven't proven it). Of course this plausibility is why they can get away with implying that the correlation is a causation.
Alistair Darling throws 2.7 billion pounds at tax problem (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Chancellor Alistair Darling has put up the personal tax allowance by £600 - meaning anyone earning up to £40,835 will gain £120 this year.
His £2.7bn tax cut for this year came as part of measures to help those hit by the axing of the 10p tax rate.
He told MPs he would lower the level at which 40p tax is paid - so higher earners did not gain from the change.
This seems like a semi-sensible an idea. One problem is that 2/3 of the tax cut is going to people who already benefitted from a tax cut in the budget. Another problem is that this is adding to UK debt. Otherwise it's as good a solution as any to the political problem New Labour found itself in, since it's not (that) complicated or (that) expensive to implement.
Gordon Brown wants to "reform" the social care system (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has pledged to reform the social care system for England's ageing population.
He says that without a radical shake up, the care system in England alone faces a £6bn shortfall within 20 years.
His speech kicks off a six-month public consultation focused on making care services fairer and affordable.
In Scotland, personal and nursing care is free, whereas Northern Ireland and Wales still have the means-tested system that England has.
...
Speaking to charities, NHS workers, trade unions and local government leaders, Mr Brown said that the current means-tested system could seem unfair.He said he understood the anxieties of families who fear having to sell their own homes to pay for long-term care, and of losing assets they would otherwise have passed onto family or friends.
To combat this, he suggested ideas including better collaboration between health and social services, and helping people to save for their old age while protecting their homes and inheritance.
He also said he wanted care to be more responsive to demands for independence and it must be made easier for people to stay in their own homes.
Needless to say, the words "fairer" (to citizens) and "affordable" (for the government) are contradictions. Any citizen will tell you that the only "fair" system is one that perfectly takes care of the individual in question but that other people have to pay for. And "affordable" for the government means that taxes have to be raised, or service standards lowered. Here Brown is trying to square that circle by somehow conning people to save even more for their old age and/or by keeping people in their own homes for longer so that the burden of looking after them falls even more on the family in question.
But it is rather ridiculous that the rest of the UK is forced to subsidise the Scots in this (as in many other things). Needless to say, Brown doesn't want to push that point too much.
David Cameron takes the piss over government by management consultant (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
British people have been living under a regime of government by "management consultant" where social values do not matter, David Cameron has argued.
He blamed Labour for "an explosion of bureaucracy, cost and irritation", resulting in the closure of libraries, Post Offices and GP surgeries.
The Tory leader said a culture that knows the price of everything but the value of nothing has been spawned.
Cameron has never had an original thought. He is just trying to bounce the perpetual statement that the Thatcherite Tories knew the price of everything and the value of nothing, and make it stick to New Labour. And if any government besides New Labour would be by management consultant, it will be the next Tory government under Cameron, a feeble Blair clone whose only job in life, outside of politics, was in PR, and who is surrounded by slick management consultant types.
Chinese consortium wants to break the Boeing and Airbus duopoly (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
China has launched a new commercial plane maker which it hopes will one day compete with the likes of Boeing and Airbus, state media have reported.
China Commercial Aircraft will aim to develop regional aircraft able to carry more than 150 passengers, Xinhua said.
With $2.7bn (£1.4bn) in initial funding, the Shanghai firm is backed by state and regional governments.
China is currently building a 90-seat regional jet but previous efforts at breaking into the market have failed.
Beijing is keen to develop large-scale aviation capacity of its own to reduce its reliance on Airbus and Boeing as consumer demand for flying continues to surge in China.
Studies have suggested that demand for new planes from Chinese airlines will increase fivefold over the next 20 years, requiring about 2,650 additional aircraft.
...
Analysts said it could take China up to 20 years to become a credible force in commercial aviation and that it would only succeed if it attracted sufficient private investment.
The way things are heading right now, and given the size of their home market, it's pretty obvious that sooner or later China will be a big player in this, as in most other industries.
Interestingly enough, if this kind of announcement had happened in Britain then you can guarantee that the BBC would have quoted at least one if not two so-called environmentalists complaining that now was not the time to be building airplanes (because of climate change and all that).
Children with smaller vocabularies linked with depressed fathers (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Children whose fathers are depressed have smaller vocabularies than those who do not, a US study suggests.
But the Eastern Virginia Medical School study of 5,000 families found language development in children whose mothers had similar symptoms seemed unaffected.
Researchers said by the age of two, children with depressed fathers used 1.5 fewer words than the average of 29.
This could be because depressed fathers spent less time reading to their children, they wrote in New Scientist.
This seems to be a classic case of confusing correlation and causation. The researchers could have checked a zillion things to see which correlated with vocabularies, and would have found perhaps a squillion of the zillion had correlations as least as large as this one. They could have then created a grand philosophical statement why each of these gave a "natural" explanation of their implied causation. Unfortunately, it is all rather meaningless.
Government solar power grants allegedly halved in number (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The number of government grants made to people who want to fit solar panels or other green energy systems to their homes has halved, the BBC has learned.
It comes after the low carbon buildings programme cut the maximum grant on offer from £7,500 to £2,500.
The Renewable Energy Association, which says the programme is failing, has accused ministers of complacency.
But the government says uptake went up considerably last month after the need for planning permission was removed.
Needless to say the BBC completely fails to ask the important question, namely should there be any grants at all? Solar power, in its current guise, is not a particularly "green" technology for Britain. Handing out government grants to middle class people who want to pretend that they are saving the world, when they are not, is not a particularly good use of government money. Worse, it means that these people are externalising the cost of their preferred method of energy consumption onto the rest of the country. One thing the world should be doing is moving away from subsidising energy consumption (certainly by middle class, i.e. rich, people), either directly via government grants or indirectly via a lack of a tax on carbon emissions.
Gordon Ramsay doesn't like non-British food (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay says British restaurants should be fined if they serve fruit and vegetables which are not in season.
He told the BBC that fruit and vegetables should be locally-sourced and only on menus when in season.
Mr Ramsay said he had already spoken to Prime Minister Gordon Brown about outlawing out-of-season produce.
He says it would cut carbon emissions as less food would be imported and also lead to improved standards of cooking.
The TV chef said it was "fundamentally important" for chefs to provide locally-sourced food.
"Fruit and veg should be seasonal," he said. "Chefs should be fined if they haven't got ingredients in season on their menu.
"I don't want to see asparagus on in the middle of December. I don't want to see strawberries from Kenya in the middle of March. I want to see it home grown."
Ramsay, whose London restaurants include Petrus, The Savoy Grill and Maze, added that Britain had become a nation of lazy eaters, following trends and fads, rather than substance.
He also said chefs became "lazy" when excited by "frills", and making out-of-season produce illegal would raise "levels of inspiration".
"There should be stringent laws, licensing laws, to make sure produce is only used in season and season only," he said.
"If we don't restrict our movements within this industry of seasonal-produce only, then the whole thing will spiral out of control."
Following the chef's comments, Oxfam's head of research, Duncan Green, said he was sure "the million farmers in east Africa who rely on exporting their goods to scrape a living would see Gordon Ramsay's assertions as a recipe for disaster".
Presumably Ramsay has another book or television series to flog, so has to say something stupid to get some attention. He doesn't even seem to realise that importing food can actually mean that fewer emissions are generated when you look at the entire end-to-end accounting. And it would be interesting to see his tally of air miles, if he is allegedly so concerned about emissions.
Great Tits are allegedly adapting to climate change in Britain (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
At least one of Britain's birds appears to be coping well as climate change alters the availability of a key food.
Researchers found that great tits are laying eggs earlier in the spring than they used to, keeping step with the earlier emergence of caterpillars.
Writing in the journal Science, they point out that the same birds in Holland have not managed to adjust.
Understanding why some species in some places are affected more than others by climatic shifts is vital, they say.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) commented that other species are likely to fare much worse than great tits as temperatures rise.
It's obvious that with most environmental change some species will do better and some will do worse, so the RSPB statement is trivial (and one-sided). There will be a long litany of research like this appearing over the next decade, but whether it actually helps with understanding how to adapt to climate change is not obvious.
The English allegedly throw out a third of the food they buy (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
People are needlessly throwing away 3.6m tonnes of food each year in England and Wales, research suggests.
The Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) found that salad, fruit and bread were most commonly wasted and 60% of all dumped food was untouched.
The study analysed the waste disposed of by 2,138 households.
Environment Minister Joan Ruddock said the findings were "staggering" at a time of global food shortages and WRAP added it was an environmental issue.
It's only one study, although it seems to have been done reasonably thoroughly. Of course you are always going to get some wastage and 5% or 10% would be a figure which it would be hard to believe you would get much below (given that 99% of the UK is not on a starvation diet). The BBC article does not give the estimated percentage of food waste overall (just of "needless" waste) but the WRAP press release (and related publications) claims it is around a third. So the claim is that we are way above where we should be. This is as good an indication as any that for most people in the UK, food is not an issue, which of course is how it should be, but just with less waste.
Britain should allegedly cut emissions by 90% by 2030 (permanent blog link)
Ann Pettifor says on the BBC (way down an opinion piece about inaction on climate change that says amazingly little given the number of words):
Britain's only Christian campaign dedicated exclusively to climate change, Operation Noah, pressures government to take much more radical action - to cut emissions by 90% by 2030, not 2050.
We may not have got it right, but we are trying to pressure government to act urgently, and to mobilise society in the way that Jubilee 2000 mobilised millions of people to cancel third world debt.
"We may not have got it right" is a bit of an understatement. And to start with, she fails to mention that current government policy is to cut emissions by 60% by 2050, not 90%, although there is some move to change that to 80%. But why would you expect a Christian to be honest and above board? The game here seems to be to take an extreme number and make it more extreme, just so you can get some attention. And the BBC obliges her. And on the substantive point, does she have any evidence that we should be cutting emissions by 90% by 2030, and does she have any way of doing that without massively undermining the standard of living of British citizens? (Well, perhaps she wants the Britain to be much poorer, and if so, she should so, loud and clear.)
(There is also the problem that emissions are not currently properly accounted for. So currently the UK can export emissions to other countries, like China, by exporting industrial production there, and then pretend that emissions have been cut, when in fact all that has happened is that they have been transferred, or possibly even been made worse given that UK factories might be more energy efficient than, say, Chinese ones.)
UK to move cannabis back from class C to class B (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Cannabis is to be reclassified as a class B drug, Jacqui Smith has said.
The home secretary said she wanted to reverse Tony Blair's 2004 downgrading of the drug because of "uncertainty" over its impact on mental health.
The move from class C means the maximum prison sentence for possessing cannabis rises from two years to five years.
Her statement to MPs came despite the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs' review - commissioned by Gordon Brown - saying it should stay class C.
...
Ms Smith, who has admitted smoking cannabis while she was a student, told MPs: "There is a compelling case for us to act now, rather than risk the future health of young people.
The worst sort of pathetic pandering to tabloid newspapers and their ilk. And in this case, since Smith has admitted smoking cannabis, she should certainly go to prison for five years in order to act as a deterrent to others.
Cambridge County Council releases "congestion" charge survey results (permanent blog link)
The Cambridge News says:
Cambridge's controversial congestion charge scheme has been given another thumbs-down.
A public consultation exercise carried out on behalf of Cambridgeshire County Council, the body proposing the idea, found that 61 per cent of people who responded to the survey were against it in principle.
However, asked how they would feel if "attractive alternatives" for travelling into the city were in place, a majority of at-home interviewees said they would then support congestion charging.
And people would also be less against road tolls if the money raised were spent on improving public transport, the study found.
...
Some members of the audience at the presentation - held at New Hall - were critical of the council's public consultation on the controversial scheme.Douglas de Lacey, of Girton parish council, accused the researchers of feeding answers to the interviewees, and several city councillors asked whether information could be provided on exactly how many city residents took part, and what their responses were to each question.
After the meeting, John Bridge, chief executive of Cambridgeshire Chambers of Commerce, said: "If you ask people hypothetical questions, you get hypothetical answers, and despite what the figures seem to show, I still don't think there is much support for congestion charging. The data, it seems to me, is very flawed."
Of course the survey was flawed. For one thing, it was not representative (being no doubt extremely biased towards the academic middle class who answer surveys). For another, they included cyclists and other irrelevant groups in the survey, which would have seriously biased it towards support for the (so-called) congestion charge. (They hate cars and they won't suffer, so what do they care.)
The county council unfortunately seems still to be under the delusion that central goverment is going to cough up 500 million pounds as a bribe to go forward with this scheme. But it would be ridiculous if central government came anywhere near throwing that much (additional) money at a small provincial town like Cambridge. In any case, any county councillor who votes for this scheme will find that this new tax is not going to be anywhere nearly as popular as suggested by this rigged survey.
Another study which claims that breastfeeding raises IQ (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
More evidence is being put forward that breastfed babies eventually become more intelligent than those who are fed with formula milk.
Canada's McGill University found breastfed babies ended up performing better in IQ tests by the age of six.
But the researchers were unsure whether it was related to the breast milk itself or the bond from breastfeeding.
The study of nearly 14,000 children is the latest in a series of reports to have found such a positive link.
However, one problem has been that some of the research has struggled to identify whether the findings were related to the fact that mothers from more affluent backgrounds were more likely to breastfeed and it was factors related to the family circumstances that was really influencing intelligence.
But the latest study attempted to take this into account by following the progress of children born in hospitals in Belarus, some of which ran breastfeeding promotion schemes to boost rates across all groups.
They found that those who breastfed exclusively for the first three months - with many also continuing to 12 months - scored an average of 5.9 points higher on IQ tests in childhood.
Unfortunately this is just another classic confusion between correlation and causation. The hospitals might have promoted the schemes "across all groups" but it does not say that the take-up was the same across all groups. And indeed, the fact that some mothers were more willing to take this up could be taken as prima facie evidence that they were more motivated in the first place, hence might be better mothers, completely independently of whether they breastfed their children or not. So it is misleading to state that it is unclear whether this result "was related to the breast milk itself or the bond from breastfeeding". It could just be related to the fact that correlation is not the same thing as causation. The only way to do this study properly would be to randomly select which mothers breastfeed and which do not. Needless to say, that study will (probably) never be done.
UK postal service "liberalisation" not a benefit to small businesses and households (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The liberalisation of the UK postal service has produced "no significant benefits" for either households or small businesses, a report has said.
That is the initial finding of an independent review of the UK postal sector commissioned by the government.
It warned there was now a threat to the Royal Mail's financial stability.
The Royal Mail's 350-year monopoly ended at the start of 2006, when other licensed operators were given the right to collect and deliver mail.
...
While the initial report said homes and small firms had not gained from the increased competition, it said large companies had "seen clear benefits from liberalisation - choice, lower prices and more assurance about the quality of the mail service".
Who would have thought, eh? The whole point of the "liberalisation" of the postal service was to end the subsidy of the service by large companies for the benefit of small companies and households. So it's not very surprising that the former have gained and the latter have lost.
The BBC complains about the Ryanair business model (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Ryanair is to increase its check-in charges by £1 to £4 per passenger and by £2 to £8 per bag from Tuesday to try and reduce its airport costs.
The Irish no frills airline is encouraging travellers to check-in online and take only hand luggage.
...
Many Ryanair passengers will find that they pay more in taxes, fees and charges than for the flight itself.To take one example, an early one-way flight from London Stansted to Dublin on Saturday 10 May is currently advertised at £14.99.
On top of that, passengers will pay £19.75 in taxes and fees.
In addition, there's £4.37 for aviation insurance and the "wheelchair levy".
If you want to check-in in person at the airport, that will cost you an extra £4 from Tuesday.
And for every piece of luggage you want to check-in, add £8.
Plus, at the end of the transaction, you will be charged £3 if you pay by credit card or £1 by debit card.
So, if you travelled to Dublin on Saturday with two pieces of luggage, you could end up paying an additional £47.12 on top of your £14.99 flight.
Ryanair has optimised the model that says you get what you pay for, no more and no less. Indeed, this is the model that economists would probably claim is best for the world (whether it is or not). But it's disingenuous of the BBC to complain about this fact. Especially when the BBC complains that passengers can "pay more in taxes, fees and charges than for the flight itself". The largest chunk of that cost is for taxes and fees, which the BBC knows full well Ryanair can do nothing about. Indeed, the academic middle class people who work for the BBC constantly agitate for airplane taxes to be increased even more (saving the world, and all that), so it's doubly disingenuous of the BBC to run with this argument. But never let facts get in the way of a good story.
IPPR wants UK to spend £500m more on teacher training (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Training days for England's teachers should be quadrupled to 20 a year, costing £75m, a think tank proposes.
The Institute for Public Policy Research says the difference between excellent and bad teachers means pupils achieve more than a GCSE grade extra.
It argues that teaching does not attract the best graduates nor equip them adequately for the challenges of teaching in the 21st Century.
The government and teachers' unions say the country has the best teachers ever.
The IPPR commissioned the Centre for Market and Public Organisation to calculate the impact of teachers on pupils' attainment.
It did this primarily using data collected between 1999 and 2002 to evaluate the introduction of performance-related pay for teachers.
This involved about 6,000 pupils and 300 teachers in 40 schools which, it acknowledges, were not representative of all England's schools.
The study found a pupil taking eight GCSEs and taught by eight "good" teachers would score four to five more GCSE points than the same pupil in the same school taught by eight "poor" teachers. An "excellent" teacher had an even greater impact.
...
The IPPR has several pages of recommendations, including a national written test for those wanting to train as teachers supplemented by psychometric testing, two years of training not one, more appraisals and 20 days' development a year - up from the current five.It estimates that moving to a two-year training course would double the cost to £850m a year, while the extra development days would cost roughly four times the current amount, at £75m.
It is interesting how the BBC mentions a cost figure of £75m in the first paragraph, yet buried deep down the article we find out that in fact the real cost of the IPPR proposals is at least £500m. And the IPPR seems to have very little evidence to support the cost effectiveness of their proposals. And it's not just that they admit that their sampling was not representative. There is no mention whether quadrupling the training time of "poor" teachers would actually have much effect. Finally, the fact that the IPPR promotes psychometric testing fairly well discredits the entire exercise. The UK should stop wasting money on these pointless (and expensive) consultancies and instead spend the money on education.
But the prize for the most amusing sentence in the article has to be for the claim that "the government and teachers' unions say the country has the best teachers ever".
Last chance to give views over NATS airspace management plans (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Residents, parish and town councils have until 15 May to give their views on flight paths over Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex.
Suffolk Coastal District Council wants peoples' views to help it provide a response to a consultation by the National Air Traffic Service (NATS).
NATS is looking to alter the way planes are directed to fly in eastern England.
Andrew Nunn, cabinet member for the environment, said the plans had nothing to do with airport expansion proposals.
"This consultation by NATS is strictly about the way flights are managed in our region," he said.
"The proposals would see a change in the way that the airspace is controlled over Suffolk, Cambridge and Essex.
"I would recommend that people have a look at the detailed proposals on www.consultation.nats.co.uk and then let us know their views."
Another pointless public consultation. People who believe they are badly affected by the proposals (whether this is true or not) will complain endlessly and loudly. Everybody else (from the public) could care less. Unless NATS did something stupid (which is always a possibility) then presumably their suggestions are eminently sensible. In any case, this is something which the public is extremely unqualified to judge, so why is the government asking for the opinions of the public? And if 99.9% of those people writing in object to the plans, will the goverment pay any attention? Or, more to the point, will the courts force them to pay attention, since the government has stupidly set up this consultation in the first place under some claim to be interested in people's views?
Head teachers claim that Ofsted puts off people from becoming head teachers (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
School leaders are being driven out of the profession by "pernicious systems of accountability", head teachers say.
Ministers had to learn to trust teachers, said National Association of Head Teachers leader Mick Brookes.
The current Ofsted regime encouraged schools to deny problems for fear of being publicly shamed, he told his annual conference in Liverpool.
Research published by the NAHT suggests 86% of school leaders think Ofsted pressures deter would-be head teachers.
...
The NAHT survey of 500 members, released at the conference, found 86% thought the impact of Ofsted inspections meant potential head teachers were put off applying.More than two-thirds thought the impact on their school was at best neutral, and at worst very unhelpful.
The research found 86% of members thought inspections increased vulnerability and insecurity.
Ofsted said inspections were effective, but it had a responsibility to assess their impact on education.
It said it did not necessarily accept the verdict of small sample surveys, not compiled by recognised polling organisations.
These kinds of surveys are fairly meaningless. But here the sample size is not the issue. Rather the problem is that the sample is biased (people with an axe to grind are more likely to respond), and in most surveys the questions are usually biased as well. (Has anyone ever come across a survey which didn't allegedly prove the point that the organisation which conducted the survey was trying to promote?) For example, here did they ask the 500 people surveyed whether they personally had allegedly been put off becoming a head teacher (evidently not, since they are head teachers)? And in any case, if prospective head teachers believe they should not be held to account, should they really become head teachers? Schools are for the benefit of the children, not the head teachers.
On the other hand, the basic point is correct. There is very little reason to have these inspections, since they are more a game than anything to do with education. Needless to say, Ofsted is going to claim that inspections are "effective" because to believe otherwise would be to believe that Ofsted should not exist.
Trade unionist wants parents rewarded for spending "quality time" with their children (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Parents who spend quality time with their children should be rewarded through the benefits system, head teachers' leaders have said.
Punitive steps like fining parents for truanting children rarely worked, National Association of Head Teachers president Clarissa Williams argued.
...
Perhaps parents who spent time reading to their children, going to school parents evenings or helping out in their school, could get higher payments, she suggested.She acknowledged it was a complex area and that there would always be some parents that would be hard to reach, but that did not mean it should not be tried.
"We all know what good parenting is, and in fact unless we actually show that and reward that in ways that people see the rewards, which - let's be honest - financial rewards are quite important.
Why is it that teachers' trade unions seem to come up with the craziest ideas? The claim that "we all know what good parenting is" is all very well (although blatantly false), but are we going to have thousands of bureaucrats up and down the country visiting every family and deciding, using some checklist, whether the parents are spending "quality time" with their children? In particular, for the one example she actually mentions, how is the State going to determine if parents are reading to their children (and for how long)? And needless to say, during the one or two hours these time wasters are visiting a family, there will be lots of "quality time" being demonstrated.
The other two suggestions she makes have to do with the school (surprise, since teachers have a vested self-interest in this one). Now in what way is going to school parents evenings (which is at least something that the State could sign off on without undue silliness) have anything to do with spending "quality time" with one's children? On the other hand, "helping out in school" is something that middle class parents will be much more likely to be able to do. And indeed, given the way the world works, the middle class will be much more successful at playing this game than the working class, so ultimately all this crackpot scheme would do is entrench middle class advantage, and in particular allow middle class parents to get yet more subsidy from the State for no reason.
Court wants to rule whether there should be a referendum on Lisbon Treaty (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Millionaire Stuart Wheeler has won his battle to force a High Court review into whether the government should hold a referendum on the EU's Lisbon treaty.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has ruled out a public vote on the treaty, saying it does not alter the UK constitution.
But Mr Wheeler said a vote was promised on the EU constitution and says the Lisbon treaty is virtually identical.
...
Mr Wheeler, 73, a Conservative Party donor, said his legal challenge was "not trying to interfere with Parliament".He claims voters had a "legitimate expectation" that a referendum would be held after one was promised in Labour's last election manifesto on the EU constitution.
Unbelievable. It should not be up to the courts to decide what is and is not official government policy. It now seems that anything that gets mentioned in a manifesto, no matter how indirectly (as here, since the treaty is not the constitution), has to be implemented or the courts will claim they can review the situation. This is totally absurd.
Cambridge remains a Lib Dem town, but Arbury votes for Labour (permanent blog link)
The Cambridge News says:
Cambridge has two new parties in the council chamber after a night of surprises in the local government elections.
The Green Party made history by winning its first-ever seat, ousting a Labour councillor of more than 20 years' standing, John Durrant, in Abbey ward.
And after two years with no representation on the council at all, the Conservatives are back. They too won a seat from Labour, in Coleridge.
Former mayor John Hipkin, who split from the Lib Dems after a big row last year, is back on the council as an independent. He won the Castle seat.
The Lib Dems remain the ruling party by a big margin. They still have 28 seats - the same as their tally before yesterday's election. But Labour has dropped from 13 to 11.
The Tories barely won in Coleridge, by 14 votes. The election of a Green candidate is pretty remarkable, although she will have no power and make no difference (the Lib Dems don't have to listen to anybody, not even the non-elite in their own party, never mind anyone else).
Against the tide of the country and the city, the people of Arbury voted in a Labour candidate, Mike Todd-Jones, over the sitting Lib Dem incumbent, Rhodri James, by a mere 33 votes. Last time around Todd-Jones lost to another Lib Dem councillor by only 12 votes. Further, between the last and this election, the Tories actually went down in Arbury, from 504 to 468. And the Greens also went down, from 211 to 187. There was a new party contesting the election this time around, the so-called English Democrats, but they only got 161 votes (presumably mostly from the Tories).
Why Arbury is swimming against the tide is a mystery. It's not as if the Lib Dems have done or have not done anything to particularly irritate the citizens of Arbury. The Lib Dems did not take Arbury for granted, since they easily distributed many more leaflets than all the other parties combined. (But the most expensive leaflet distributed was a two-page glossy one from the English Democrats, who must have some sugar daddy backing them.) Of course the Lib Dems patronise Arbury. In particular, they seem to think that everyone in Arbury lives in social housing. But all the political parties patronise Arbury.
Global warming might pause for the next decade (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The Earth's temperature may stay roughly the same for a decade, as natural climate cycles enter a cooling phase, scientists have predicted.
A new computer model developed by German researchers, reported in the journal Nature, suggests the cooling will counter greenhouse warming.
However, temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020, they say.
...
The projection does not come as a surprise to climate scientists, though it may to a public that has perhaps become used to the idea that the rapid temperature rises seen through the 1990s are a permanent phenomenon.
Interesting, although it's only one study, and as stated in the last paragraph, it is not surprising. There are always natural variations in the temperature.
An alleged link between trees and (lack of) asthma (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Children who live in tree-lined streets have lower rates of asthma, a New York-based study suggests.
Columbia University researchers found that asthma rates among children aged four and five fell by 25% for every extra 343 trees per square kilometre.
They believe more trees may aid air quality or simply encourage children to play outside, although they say the true reason for the finding is unclear.
...
The link between numbers of trees and asthma cases held true even after taking into account sources of pollution, levels of affluence and population density, the researchers said.However, once these factors were taken into account, the number of trees in a street did not appear to have any impact on the number of children whose asthma was so severe that they required hospital treatment.
At least these researchers tried to account for some of the obvious factors (in particular wealth). But they still have not demonstrated that they have found any causation rather than just a correlation. And the last paragraph is an indication that whatever effect there might be could prove not to be significant in the cases that most matter.
Climate Change and Ecosystem Services (permanent blog link)
Robert Watson gave the seventh, and final, talk in the 6th Annual Lecture Series in Sustainable Development. His title was "Climate Change and Ecosystem Services: Science, Economics and Ethics".
Watson is best known for having been the chair of the IPCC from 1997 until 2002, when the Bush administration had him removed at the behest of the oil industry. But he's been involved with lots of public bureaucracies over time, including the Clinton administration, NASA, the World Bank, and currently as Chief Scientific Advisor to DEFRA in the UK.
He gave a fairly lengthy and detailed Powerpoint presentation. It's pretty obvious he's given pretty much the same presentation over and over and over again, because he zipped through it without pause for breath. He started by pointing out that climate change should not be considered in isolation but as related to other issues such as air quality, water, forestry, biodiversity, and desertification. He bemoaned that most people and organisations seem to focus on one thing rather than the broader picture.
He went through the usual evidence about the link between emissions and climate change, and how climate change would affect the poor more than the rich (surprise), and how "perverse policies" on subsidies for agriculture and energy were making things worse. His one cute quote was that all the countries of the world would have to work together to get things to work out, but that they could be hindered by "one arrogant country that tries to dominate the world".
As part of the litany, he produced slide after slide saying how most things were going to get worse rather than better. For example, wet countries would generally get wetter, and dry countries generally dryer. And it's interesting that almost all the news from an increase in temperature is claimed to be negative. Well, it's possible that the Earth happened to be residing in a Goldilocks scenario before 1800, and so any change (e.g. upwards or downwards in temperature) is bad. But far more likely is that the real issue is the rate of change, not the change itself.
He said that in some assessment he had been involved with on food production, they had ignored GM technology. The way he put it was that they "did not assume that GM crops would succeed". Well, that could be deemed to be a cautious approach, but it is also rather naive. Malthus thought our population increase was not "sustainable", because he ignored new technology. But Watson seems to have a particular gripe against GM technology, not only for food, but also for trees (so, for example, to make fast-growing ones which could thrive in arid conditions). This is probably because he is concerned about biodiversity, and he evidently thinks that that consideration trumps pretty much anything else. That is a position that an academic can take.
On other issues he was not so dogmatic as are most so-called environmentalists. So he was not anti-nuclear (but there were the obvious issues with nuclear). And he was not against carbon capture and storage, seeing that as a crucial piece of the puzzle (since coal was not going to go away). At the end he even said he was willing to contemplate some of the proposed (generally wacky) geoengineering "solutions" to climate change, if the planet needed an emergency short-term fix. For example, the Greenland ice sheet seems to be melting faster than models predict, and if it was thought that it would all melt in short order, then some crazy things would have to be considered. Otherwise we would have to cope with a 7m sea-level rise.
On most issues he toed the straight party line. So ecosystem services were not valued by the markets, and that was leading to bad ecosystem management. Well, in some ways this is trivially obvious and is worth considering. But would or should anyone trust the alleged value put on some ecosystem service by some expert (most of whom have an axe to grind, in particular do not like the markets)? And another problem with this approach is that it works best for issues which can be isolated to one nation. For issues like emissions, it makes perfectly good sense for any given nation not to worry, because most of the consequences of its own emissions will be borne by other nations.
He claimed that if the melting of the Arctic ice had been known about during the Cold War, then the US and Russians would be amongst the most enthusiastic about doing something about emissions, rather than amongst the least enthusiastic, because allegedly they would have seen a navigable Arctic Ocean as a security threat. Well, this is a bit of wishful thinking.
What he wanted as a way forward was (1) a price put on carbon (either via a tax, or some trading system, or regulation), and (2) lots of new technology developed, and (3) the behaviour of everyone changed. Well, a tax on carbon makes perfectly good sense (and while we're at it, how about a tax on all other polluting activities). And only the most luddite of the so-called environmentalists oppose technological advances towards a "carbon free" economy. But when people start talking about changing behaviour, it's a sure sign that they are fully paid up members of the academic middle class, who seem to believe that if they control freak enough then the world would be a better place. Unfortunately, most societies with strict controls on behaviour are not the kind of societies that most people want to belong to.
On the issue of public perception, Watson even made the astonishing claim that the scientists were "not getting the message across". Well, anyone who reads the BBC website (for example) is daily innundated with messages about climate change and how the world is about to end. The problem is not that the message is not getting across. The problem is that people do not like the proposed solutions to the problem, which as far as they are concerned amount to a reduction in their living standards. The odd scientists crops up who says "if we go to a carbon-free economy then we will actually be richer, not poorer". But nobody believes this. All they see is that the ruling elite want to screw them for driving a car, or getting into a plane (both activities which the ruling elite take for granted for themselves, of course).
His take on this "message" issue was that the scientists had to convince the public that they would personally suffer if emissions were not reduced. So one way was to talk about the impact on people's children and grandchildren. (But just having children is the single most environmentally damaging thing anyone can do, so this consideration is slightly ironic.) And another was to say that, for example, people's health would be directly and negatively impacted. So apparently, in the Clinton administration they tried to use poor air quality as the threat, but nobody cared much for that argument, perhaps because air quality in the US is perfectly good. But apparently a good health scare was just the ticket to make the people stand up and take notice. This kind of negative argumentation is unfortunate. It's exactly what the Bush administration does with terrorism. You whip up fear so that people are willing to have their rights and freedoms trampled. (Well, in the climate change case people believe the message, with Bush he just made it up so he could assume frightening executive power.)
Right at the end Watson mentioned that we were spending too much time and effort on climate research itself, since it was already obvious that man-made emissions were the reason behind climate change. He wanted more money spent on adaptation and mitigation. Although bizarrely enough he added that he especially wanted money spent on economists and social scientists. Needless to say, it would be far better to spend money on (real) scientists and engineers.
Nuclear power's carbon emissions could allegedly rise (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The case for nuclear power as a low carbon energy source to replace fossil fuels has been challenged in a new report by Australian academics.
It suggests greenhouse emissions from the mining of uranium - on which nuclear power relies - are on the rise.
Availability of high-grade uranium ore is set to decline with time, it says, making the fuel less environmentally friendly and more costly to extract.
...
A significant proportion of greenhouse emissions from nuclear power stem from the fuel supply stage, which includes uranium mining, milling, enrichment and fuel manufacturing.Others sources of carbon include construction of the plant - including the manufacturing of steel and concrete materials - and decomissioning.
It is good that someone is looking at this. It is of course only one study, and the motives of the authors are not clear. But this kind of analysis needs to be done. It should also be done for other so-called carbon-free sources of energy, including solar and wind and hydropower.
Labour budget hits all post-2000 "polluting" cars (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The government has denied claims it concealed the full extent of changes in car tax set out in this year's Budget.
Chancellor Alistair Darling announced in March he wanted to encourage manufacturers to produce cleaner cars.
But he did not say explicitly owners of the most polluting cars registered after March 2001 would have to pay more than £400 in tax from next year.
The Conservatives accused the Treasury of "duplicity". The AA said more should have been done to explain the changes.
In his Budget speech, Mr Darling set out "a major reform to Vehicle Excise Duty" (VED) which he said would "encourage manufacturers to produce cleaner cars".
And he said by introducing new bands of tax there would be "an incentive to encourage drivers to choose the least polluting car."
He also said it was "right that if people choose to buy a more polluting car that they should pay more in the first year to reflect the environmental cost."
However, he did not say explicitly higher charges would apply to anyone who bought a car from 1 March 2001.
One of the worst aspects of Gordon Brown as Chancellor was that he determinedly gave only positive spin in the Budget speech and all the negative details were leaked out later in dribs and drabs. Unfortunately, now that we have this tradition it is never going to stop (especially given Cameron's background in PR).
And you can see why Darling didn't want to come clean on this tax. Because making the tax retrospective shows that it blatantly has nothing to do with trying to "encourage manufacturers to produce cleaner cars".
For more articles (older ones) see archive.
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