The economy is in recovery, the financial world has survived its greatest test since the 1930's, at least that's what all the pundits on most media outlets are proclaiming. I don't necessarily believe that history repeats itself, but I am suspicious of the sales pitch that we are getting right now (because there is still huge amounts of cash around the world sitting on the sidelines waiting for the second shoe to drop). In the Great Depression the first market crash was followed by a recovery of similar proportions to what has happened since March 2009. But government interventions in the 1930's prolonged that recovery resulting in World War II. We may now be in a similar situation. The market tinkerers especially in the United States will soon be required to unwind there positions without upsetting the applecart. All countries where market interventions were large will be doing the same thing, the trick is timing. Its hard to imagine the arrogance of these guys. Few of them foresaw the extent of the market crash in 2008, most "experts" predicted a short and shallow recession. Yet now, these same experts know exactly how to fix things and can predict the consequences of their actions. They are smarter than all the millions of investors around the world and everything will be fine. Yeah right!
In Canada, Prime Minister Harper issued a "stimulus report card" yesterday proclaiming that things are just hunky-dory and he's doing a wonderful job. Two recent articles in the Globe and Mail cast some doubt on the possibility that a recovery can be controlled. Preston Manning wonders how long it will take to recover from the stimulus, and Gwyn Morgan wonders why governments fail to learn from past mistakes. Free-market capitalism is not the cause of the financial crisis as Morgan points out, and has lately been popularized in a movie by Michael Moore. In fact, recent elections in Europe are not supporting socialist ideals as may be expected due to the Great Recession. Even in Canada polls show there is no rush to support the Liberals or NDP. Maybe people aren't fooled, maybe not. Are we out of the woods, or have we just come to a clearing in the forest? Time will tell.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Saturday, September 26, 2009
The Growing Federal Parliament
A Bill in the Canadian Parliament will be introduced soon that will change the number of seats in the House of Commons from 308 to 342. All of the additional 34 seats will come from Ontario (21), Alberta (6) and British Columbia (7). The rest of the country remains unaffected. This change will go some of the way to repairing the gross underrepresentation of these provinces while at the same time bloating the size of parliament. An interesting article by Brian Lee Crowley called "How rep follows pop - and what it means for Quebec", discusses how this change may be the beginning of a Canadian transformation away from the socialist economic and social policies that have catered to Quebec for the past 50 years.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Casualty of the Toronto Garbage Strike
In a surprise announcement this morning the Mayor of Toronto David Miller, said he would not seek a third term. Citing family reasons for not running, Miller proclaimed that he had accomplished all he wanted to do to get Toronto on the right track. The political reality is that polls have shown him far behind possible other candidates which would make fund raising difficult with the election just over a year away. The garbage strike in the midst of the Great Recession showed everyone for a moment what it means to support union "rights" at the expense of taxpayer expectations. The disclosure yesterday of a $200 million error in the "sick bank" account (coincidence?) makes Miller look like he was hiding facts from everyone to favour the unions. Miller will serve out the rest of his term as a lame duck, possibly positioning himself for Michael Bryant's old job as CEO of Invest Toronto which he has taken over. Doing two jobs by a lame duck, isn't bureaucracy wonderful?
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Anthropogenic Global Warming: Who put the hype in hypothesis?
A blog by Peter Foster in the National Post (Full Comment) caught my eye this week. I have studied and taught science for more than 35 years so I am well familiar with the Scientific Method and how it is used. Mr. Foster's comments on Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) pretty much says it all for me.
I have no doubt that Global Warming is occurring or has occurred, otherwise I'd be writing this from under at least 1000 metres of ice that passed through these parts during the last Ice Age. The ice is gone, so it must have melted because of rising temperatures whose cause has yet to be determined, but it wasn't us. In fact the melting continues and has now reached Canada's most northern outposts including Arctic waters. As well, glaciers and ice sheets around the world seem to be shrinking, and yes it is possible that certain gases released by human activity have accelerated this melting; that is the hypothesis that underlies AGW. Make no mistake, it is still an hypothesis. In science an hypothesis is not a fact or even a theory. To use an hypothesis to make predictions, extrapolate consequences or anything else is bad science and of course that is the basis of the general belief that AGW will lead to global catastrophe. A tenuous cause predicts catastrophic events that are accepted by a consensus of scientists and politicians. The effect is accepted before the cause is proven. Why governments and many scientists have acceded to this idea with apparently little dissension is discussed in Mr. Foster's article but no real explanation is provided. Here is where I must show how utterly cynical I am. If you were a scientist working for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) it is not in your self interest to question the need for your employment. If you are in government and you can expand your power to include huge amounts of money and influence it is not in your self interest to question the authority of the IPCC.
All science always operates under varying degrees of uncertainty, even the simplest weather forecast is couched in terms of probability of this or that happening. Weather prediction is a science because as more data is gathered the degree of uncertainty is diminished and weather events can be predicted with reasonable accuracy in the short term. Climate prediction is very different. Although our computer climate models show temperature increases in the future with potentially catastrophic effects, the models and the very computers themselves are so new that the accuracy of their predictions is questionable at best compared to currently used weather models. With that level of certainty is it wise to spend billions or more to mitigate a situation that may not happen? Then why do it? Self interest - but not yours.
I have no doubt that Global Warming is occurring or has occurred, otherwise I'd be writing this from under at least 1000 metres of ice that passed through these parts during the last Ice Age. The ice is gone, so it must have melted because of rising temperatures whose cause has yet to be determined, but it wasn't us. In fact the melting continues and has now reached Canada's most northern outposts including Arctic waters. As well, glaciers and ice sheets around the world seem to be shrinking, and yes it is possible that certain gases released by human activity have accelerated this melting; that is the hypothesis that underlies AGW. Make no mistake, it is still an hypothesis. In science an hypothesis is not a fact or even a theory. To use an hypothesis to make predictions, extrapolate consequences or anything else is bad science and of course that is the basis of the general belief that AGW will lead to global catastrophe. A tenuous cause predicts catastrophic events that are accepted by a consensus of scientists and politicians. The effect is accepted before the cause is proven. Why governments and many scientists have acceded to this idea with apparently little dissension is discussed in Mr. Foster's article but no real explanation is provided. Here is where I must show how utterly cynical I am. If you were a scientist working for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) it is not in your self interest to question the need for your employment. If you are in government and you can expand your power to include huge amounts of money and influence it is not in your self interest to question the authority of the IPCC.
All science always operates under varying degrees of uncertainty, even the simplest weather forecast is couched in terms of probability of this or that happening. Weather prediction is a science because as more data is gathered the degree of uncertainty is diminished and weather events can be predicted with reasonable accuracy in the short term. Climate prediction is very different. Although our computer climate models show temperature increases in the future with potentially catastrophic effects, the models and the very computers themselves are so new that the accuracy of their predictions is questionable at best compared to currently used weather models. With that level of certainty is it wise to spend billions or more to mitigate a situation that may not happen? Then why do it? Self interest - but not yours.
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