Signs of the Times: acid ocean killing commercial fishery??

          Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the fizz in the beer (everybody likes beer!), the rise in yeast (everybody loves crunchies and bread) and, as global warming "sceptics" like to claim, "CO2 is plant food". Plant food it might be but, like good ol salt, too much of a good thing can kill ya.. (another of those things the "sceptics" didn't tell ya..)

            CO2 levels in the atmosphere are rising due primarily to industrial activity and forest cutting. The CO2 in the air tends to exist in equilibrium with that dissolved in sea water. At equilibrium the number of CO2 molecules leaving a given surface area of sea water is balanced by the number of CO2 molecules dissolving in the water. If we add CO2 to the air there is more "pressure" on the side of the air and so more molecules will enter the water than leave it, till a new equilibrium is established.

             A bit of the CO2 that enters seawater is turned into a weak acid, carbonic acid (not toxic - gives the tang to beer and pop):

            CO2 + H2O --> H2CO3

            and some of the carbonic acid dissociates into electrically charged ions or radicals:

            H2CO3 + H2O--> H3O(+) + HCO3 (-)

            The H3O thingy ("hydronium ion") is the gold standard of acidity. Since carbonic acid is a weak acid, there aren't too many hydronium ions. But nature is a system of balances which have co-evolved together over time. Putting too many hydronium ions in sea water is not good. The water becomes too acid for sea life to survive. Some forms of life, including photosynthetic plankton which form the base of ocean food web, possess shells. These shells will dissolve or not properly form if seawater is too acid.

           What will happen? At the least, the result will be a loss of livelihood for fisherfolk. At the limit, if ocean ecosystems collapse, people highly dependent upon ocean fisheries will starve. Simple as that. No brainer..

http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/TV%20Shows/The%20National/ID/2439669610/

           This stuff is scary! "Never before seen" levels of CO2 in the water column. 95% of an annual crop of scallops in British Columbia wiped out - just gone. (In past centuries that would be called "famine".)

            In the video above, the feds hypocritically state they are looking into things. Really? Are they really looking well.. I mean all those cuts to federally funded science.. shouldn't those cuts hinder, well.., the capacity of government scientists to do their job protecting the public from environmental hazards and all that?

http://www.themarknews.com/2014/02/20/war-on-science/ 

internal blog links: 

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/05/you-gets-what-you-pays-for.html 

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/03/experimental-lakes-areas-curious-episode.html 

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-imperial-prime-minister-wither.html 

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2012/03/decline-and-fall-of-canadian-science.html

The future of Canadian Science at stake?

          A plea for fundamental scientific research from Nobel prize winning Canadian chemist, John Polanyi.
 
http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/As+It+Happens/ID/2384023775/

           Polanyi is here reacting against another false perception propagated by the neconservative ideology of the present government. This view holds that research is not good if it does not directly aid the business community's bottom line. The problem here is with the world "directly". Fundamental research is often a roulette game. If you hit big you hit BIG! Think about lasers..

           Much fundamental research, though, does not pan out or does not produce knowledge of immediate benefit. But neocon ideologues want immediate results.They can't see beyond the next quarter's profit margin. They seem to suffer from a kind of mental myopia, a short sightedness of vision.. meanwhile human demography, our planet's ecology, the climate, the resource base we live from, all go to hell in a handbasket. 

           The Haper government, true to its ideological roots, has announced a further re-visioning of the goals of Research Canada: science will be the handmaiden of industry. The cart will drive the horse..

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/05/07/national_research_council_open_for_business_conservative_government_says.html

You gets what you pays for..

                Lest we all forget, the Harper Conservative governement was elected on a platform of fiscal responsibility in the wake of the Chrétien Liberals' financing scandals: federal monies were diverted to support the anti-separatist "Non" campaign in Québec, some of that money got further diverted into Liberal election funds and gifts to Liberal supporters. 

              It is therefore a bit surprising - ? shocking ? - to note that the Conservatives have - temporarily at least - lost track of $3.1 Billion earmarked for the "war on terrorism". 

Dang! Now where did those three billion smackeroos go..

                 The synopsis boxes on the right hand side of the above article are interesting reading, too:

"The national search-and-rescue system run by the Canadian Forces and the Canadian Coast Guard is troubled by aging equipment and shortages of pilots and flight engineers. They are doing an adequate job now, but will face sustainability problems in the future."

              Part of the neoconservative ideology inspiring the Harper Conservatives is, of course, the "need" to constantly cut "government" and turn over everything to the private sector. The argument - ideologically, not factually, based - is that "government is inefficient". This argument, like all truisms, obviously has some validity but is overgeneralized to the point of absurdity by neoconservative ideologues to include even those functions and services which generate too low a profit margin when performed by the private sector. This is duh.. why they were put in the public sector in the first place! 

               Such services inevitably degrade in the hands of the private sector or, worse, end up excluding the very people who are most vulnerable and in need (poorer communities or segments of the population). The various attempts around the world to privitize potable water delivery are glaring examples of the failure of privitization to provide adequate essential public services. 

                Here, Canadian search and rescue services, is, perhaps, another example. Either society decides - hopefully democratically - that it wants adequate search and rescue services and then delivers the funding. Or isolated communities and governments are left to do as best they can. One can agree or disagree with either position but they are, at least, honest statements of alternative political positions. Anything "in between" is simply neocon hypocrisy and word-twisting. One the one hand, we praise "our boys and girls" in the military while providing them with inadequate - and therefore risky - equipment and manpower. This is not just hypocritical, it is immoral and criminal. Ideologues refuse to realize there are simply somethings governments do better. This lesson, learned during the 19th century, is now being unlearned by our contemporary "laissez-faire" ideologues. How long before the people wake up to the fact they are being short changed?

                The faulty logic in ideological overgeneralization of the "government is inefficient" argument is appalingly evident: yes, you may indeed save some money at the front end by privitizing a public function but the OVERALL costs to society as a whole, may actually rise exponentially. Programs to give welfare recipients SERIOUS occupational training cost the taxpayer money. But the ex-welfare recipicient who enters the workforce with qualifications is unlikely to fall back on the dole again. During their working life, they are likely to contribute several times, in taxes, the costs of the program that got them off welfare. They are also less likely to be a burden to the community in terms of health problems, substance or alcohol abuse, imprisionment or institutionalization for mental health problems. When one does full cost accounting, one often finds that a public service rendered by a public agent actually ends up costing society less than a privitized one. But such a position is not politically correct today..

The Imperial Prime Minister: wither democracy?

             An interesting half-hour discussion this morning on the state of Canadian democracy, heard on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's morning radio program, "The Current". Recently social conservative backbencers have openly complained that the Prime Minister's Office is stiffling their right to represent their constituents on issues such as abortion law and sex selective abortion of girls reportedly practiced in some ethnic communities. They claim that they have been told that these issues are not welcome on the floor of parliament and will not be debated.

             Brent Rathgeber, a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) representing Edmonton, Alberta speaks on the first segment of the audio-clip (hit the "Listen" button of the link below). Rathgeber is not himself a social conservative but believes that fundamental principles of democratic governance are being violated by his own party. Conservatives, he claims, have traditionally stood for freedom of speech and freedom of open debate.

Conservative Backbenchers muzzled?

            The last segment, beginning around minute 16, is an interview with conservative pundit Andrew Coyne. Coyne has some interesting points to make about the general state of health of Canadian democracy today. Party discipline, he notes, has grown across all party lines in recent decades. But why? I have asked myself this very question quite a few times lately. Is Canada moving towards an American style presidential system and away from British style adversarial parliament? A recent article by Mr Coyne in which he compares the Canadian and Australian parliaments suggests this might be the case.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/03/27/andrew-coyne-backbench-revolt-isnt-pro-life-vs-pro-choice-its-for-the-freedom-of-all-mps/

             Coyne concludes his article with the stirring lines:

"This did not begin with Warawa, in short, and it will not end here. The question is whether opposition MPs will join the fray. The shuttering of Warawa’s motion, after all, was an all-party affair: it was his motion this time, but it could be theirs next. There’s a fight worth having, here, but it isn’t Conservatives vs. Opposition, or pro-life vs. pro-choice. It’s for the freedom of all MPs against the dictates of a system that, as in no other democracy, has vested all power in the party leader."

              The distortions of the democratic process are everywhere if one takes the time and effort to look and see. In this blog we have examined recent efforts on the part of the Harper governement to silence scientific debate relating to the hazards of fossil fuel use (climate change in general and potential biohazards resulting from extracting and refining Alberta tar sands). See the internal blog links at the end of this article for links to these articles.

              In his interview on "The Current", Coyne described the perncious current practice - borrowed from the US? - of utilizing omnibus bills to ram through federal budgets without debate. Listen to the audioclip of the link below, Backbench MPs muzzled?, beginning around minute 16 for the Coyne interview. Obviously "pragmatism" or "efficiency" are invoked to justify this undemocratic practice: modern goverments have simply grown too large, too complex and too interconnected in their functioning to afford the luxury of longwinded debate..

Backbench MPs muzzled?

              The following article, published Easter Sunday in the New York Times by Canadian academic Prof. Thomas Homer-Dixon, sounds an alarm for citizen's on both sides of the border.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/opinion/the-tar-sands-disaster.html?_r=1&

              Prof Homer-Dixon in a short, 8 minute, interview on the CBC newsprogram: "As it happens", 2 April, 2013. This spoken statement of his position, I find particularly eloquent.

http://www.cbc.ca/asithappens/features/2013/04/02/thomas-homer-dixon-nyt-editorial-the-tar-sands-disaster/


             My own analysis of the state of democracy in Canada and the world is more "structural" and perhaps more pessimistic than conservative pundit Andrew Coyne's. I perceive the disenfranchisement of the citizen / the disempowerment of civil society as an inevitable byproduct of technocracy. One's actual starting position on the political spectrum appears irrelevant. Technocracy operates it centralizing of power and regulation of information flows whether one begins from the Left - marxist Communism - or from the Right - fascism and its antechamber, the modern corporation controlled State. Wherever one starts from, one ends up in the same place. Chinese taoist philosophy says that the tao (the nature) of water is to seek sealevel. All rivers flow to the sea. I see Fascism as the tao of industrialisation. "Republican values" - in the French revolutionary sense of "republican": liberty, equality, fraternity and representative government arose prior to the industrial reveolution (and technocracy). The Great Historical Question: would such "republican" values have risen if the industrial revolution had occurred in the first half of the 18th century instead of the first half of the 19th century..

              To cut to the chase."Every cloud has a silver lining". Bad things shake people up, forcing them to consider new and better ways of living, of doing things, of making a buck. Consider the New Economy we are entering in this dawn of a new century, the post peak oil economy. Cheap oil is running out. What is left will cost more and more to discover, extract and refine. Environmental impacts will worsen. This all looks bad for our energy junkie lifestyles, certainly. But the New Economy also offers the (potential) promise of reversing the trend toward antidemocratic centralization which industrialisation and technocracy have installed. If we play our cards right we will find within ourselves the wit and wisdom to grasp this opportunity to re-empower our local communities, our families, our lives and to offer our children a future in which hope still lives.
 

internal blog links:

Harper muzzles Conservatives' Right Wing?

Harper muzzles Environmental Science?

This link gives numerous internal blog links 
climate scientists speak out

Experimental Lakes Area: a most curious episode

         A curious episode in the ongoing saga of Canadian environmental science. The Experimental Lakes Area (northern Ontario). This multidecade project is world renowned for providing essential information on the dynamics of freshwater ecosystems and their interaction with air and water borne pollutants: acid rain, mercury, phosphorus runoff..

         In an interview on the CBC radio program, "As it happens", Prof Britt Hall, an earth science researcher claimed that the federal government gave her the run around when pressed for reasons for cutting funding to the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) project. Successive "reasons" provided:

1- Budget. This is BS for several reasons. Firstly, ELA costs a measly $2 Million (that is "Million" with an "m", not billion with an "b"). In return, not only does ELA provide info essential for assessing environmental risks, remediating them and drafting legislation but ELA puts science Canada on the world map. As one scientists puts it succinctly: "ELA is Canada's Hadron Collider". The services ELA provided in the long term study of freshwater ecosystem dynamics were, in fact, unique in the world. And all this for a measly $2 million (with an "m", remember). Secondly, most of the $2 million in funding were internal federal expenditures for the salaries of federal government employed scientists. Thus even if the feds chose to withdraw their participation in the scientific side of the project, there is no reason for physically closing it down. At present, full staff maintenance of the facility costs a mere $600,000. Maintaining a skelton maintenance staff for externally funded university and private industry researchers would cost "much less" than $600,000 (Prof Hall in the 18 march"As it happens" interview). We are now getting down into the $100,000 range which is chicken feed even for provincial governments! No, budget is not a legitimate excuse for shutting down ELA.

2- The second phony "reason" the feds tried to get Prof Hall to swallow: "not our mandate". But ELA reasearch does actually relate to the environment in Canada, duhhh.. (Who then should be responsible for the Canadian environment - the Vietnamese environmental agency, maybe??)

3- The last pathetic excuse for a rationale for killing ELA: redundancy - work done at ELA overlaps that covered by other federally funded projects. Problem: one can't find 'em when one looks for 'em.. More BS..

               When pressed by the "As it happens" interviewer for a plausible reason for the cuts, Prof Hall said simply, the only conclusion one could draw is that the feds don't want research on air pollution / fresh water ecosystem quality to continue. Aside: Prof Hall is a soft spoken woman and does not come across as an ideological firebrand of the confrontational environmental Left. She is an academic.

                 After the jaw drop provoked by this astounding interview, comes the obvious question: but WHY?? Why the hell cut a high prestige, world class long term science project of great potential value which, moreover, operates on a shoestring budget? What have the feds got for brains??!! What is Steven Harper and his friends dropping or smoking?

               Perhaps research on air quality bothers Harper's friends / supporters in the Oil Patch. This is the closest to a rational motive I could find. Anybody got better?

Podcast of "As it happens", CBC, monday, 18 march, 2013. To quickly access the  interview with Prof Britt Hall advance the cursor one third.

http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/podcasts/asithappens_20130318_13749.mp3

                 The CBC deserves a bit of credit (not much, but a little) for sticking with this story a bit longer than usual. The day following the interview with Prof Hall, Prof Moss, a limnologist (studies terrestrial water systems) registrered his astonishment at  Canada's  recent "loss of good sense": gagging scientists, restricting access to research results, radical - and apparently strategic - budget cuts to scientific projects of long term proven value. Prof Moss particularly lamented the loss of the long term data base provided by ELA's 45 years of continuous monitoring and research.

                  Access to the interview with Prof Moss is easy, first interview on clip:

http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/podcasts/asithappens_20130320_36132.mp3

Internal blog links (gives numerous internal links): 

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/02/climate-scientists-speak-out.html  

                  

Tacky, tacky, tacky..: the face of populism in Canada

           Magnificent example of populist rabble rousing! Krista Erickson stands up for the "little man" - the eternal Taxpayer - against that nasty liberal / artist Margie Gillis. Gillis manages to come off with some dignity despite the ambush - good thinking Margie!

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/971454253001Importante

          Students of Authoritarianism (or aspiring führers), study the video carefully! Observe how Gillis' past statements are ripped out of context - "Canada not a compassionate society" - and then used to beat up Gillis. The internal dialogue of the viewer is being artfully programmed here by spinmeister Erickson: Oh! what a naughty, arrogant woman! how unpatriotic! and how terribly, terribly ungrateful, taking a million dollars from the Taxpayers in grants (over 39 years and for salaries for many aspiring artists, admittedly) and then claiming Canada is "not compassionate", tsk, tsk, tsk.. Oh, yes, it's all there, all the tools of the demagog's trade, masterfully - and yet apparently instinctively - deployed: the misquoting, the baiting, the rabble rousing followed by pandering to the baser instincts roused. Beautiful Krista, beautiful, you are a master..


           Aside from the tactics employed, the video is also a showroom of the populist psychology on many different levels (astute observers could list more):


- reduction of life to the purely quantitative: how much is it worth?

- behind the rhetoric of  hairy chested "individualism" and the incessant cant of "freedom" (or "democracy" in foreign affairs), the desire to suppress the natural diversity of opinion found in modern societies, the constant pressure to conform to rigid normes and to force others to adopt herd normes of conduct, belief, life-style, occupation..


             Presently reading "The Authoritarians", a free access online text by an American prof of psychology teaching at the University of Manitoba, another recommended window into the populist / authoritarian mentality:

http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf

(One wonders why he chose to do his research on authoritarianism from a base in Canada given that he is American and the US seems to be the major current source of authoritarian thinking on the continent. Did his topic of research put him in the way of too many stray bullets.. )

Internal blog link: later article on Krista's bullying populist attack on the arts

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.com/2012/02/krista-puts-her-hoof-in-it-again.html

Can you talk from both sides of your mouth at the same time?

            Can you talk from both sides of your mouth at once? The Harper (neo-)cons can!

            Now that the election is underway, they - like the other parties - are positively bending over backwards to gain the "ethnic" vote. And, be it admitted, they seem to be doing a better job at it than the aenemic Liberals. In these troubled and troubling times, the Harperites populist / reactionary rhetoric finds traction in immigrant communities still rooted in traditional value systems..

              Yet what one fails to observe is that these same Harperites were, not so long ago, vigorously slashing funding to immigrant groups, particularly in hated Toronto (read: appeal to redneck sentiment across the country..)

http:rewindthecuts.ca/letters-and-statements-of-support/non-political-sources/ 

              What we find galling: the programs being cut were functioning, even functioning  well by all acounts. By assisting immigrants to integrate, their subsidies were, most likely, more than "paying for themselves" in increased taxes (from better integrated / higher salaried new Canadians), and reduced Welfare, Social Services, Health Care and prison costs. Thus, once again, our "good governement", "responsible government", "law and order" Harperites have sacrificed good and responsible governance to short term political expedience. Shame on you all!

Transparency and Hard Ball Immigrant Services Games

       Harper's Conservatives are out to gut community organizations helping to integrate immigrants into Canadian life. 

http://www.thestar.com/iphone/news/investigations/immigration/article/923349--settlement-agencies-shocked-by-gag-order?bn=1

        The logic of such a move leaves much to be desired: why say Canada "welcomes" immigrants and then kill the grassroots organizations which are so efficient in carrying out that work? Don't make sense to me..

        But there's worse - as there usually is:

"Immigrant service agencies were horrified when they got a government email last week banning them from discussing recent federal funding cuts that may kill some of them"

           Thus while preaching a platform of "transparency", "grassroots values", and "responsible government", the Feds cut funding to those who were actually actively engaged in the grassroots integration (="responsibilisation") of new Canadians.  Further, the Feds even want to muzzle discussion about the cuts...

           I'm flabbergastered. I admit I don't get it.. What happened to the promised "transparency", "grassroots values" and "responsibility". We are simply at a loss for words before such blatant hypocrisy (?cynicism?), of the consistent failure of this government to put in practice the platitudinous, populist values they preach. Instead, they descend to the level of American style attack ads on their opponents - a sure sign that your government is playing dirty! They want to divert your attention from real problems, solutions and choices to strawmen set up for the mob to attack.We're in big trouble folks. Just look what's happening south of the border to see where we're going.