Income Inequality = Super VIllains

Byoliveridley

From the very awesome Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Website, a reminder that income inequality causes more super villains than science, and mashing DNA 🙂  Canada’s Conference Board, which no one would accuse of being socialist, came up with a report yesterday flagging growing inequality in Canada. They flagged inequality as “raising questions of fairness”, and declared it of “moral concern”.

They are late to the party. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has been on this beat for years, and has an ongoing project called The Growing Gap about income inequality. Go read The Spirit level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett of the Inequality Trust in the UK for an epidemiological look at inequality and various social conditions.

Just wanted to share the awesome cartoon, that’s all 🙂

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    FDA Issues Dietary Supplements Final Rule

    Byoliveridley

    The FDA issues rules that will finally make dietary supplement manufacturers conform to some rules in the manufacturing of the products.

    Which ones?

    1. Accurate potency and labeling – 30 mg glucosamine will now contain something close to 30mg
    2. Impurities Testing – All the raw materials will now be tested for impurities/contaminants. They will probably follow USP guidelines.
    3. Adverse event reporting – Manufacturers/sellers will need to report adverse events. This is after the fact safety testing, wholly inadequate, but better than what we had previously.

    See something missing? Efficacy!! You do not have to prove that your product actually works! Basic safety? What is the overdose level? Interactions with other medicines/supplements? Is your dosing form actually bioavailable? Meaning, if you swallow a pill, will it actually get into your bloodstream and reach the intended target?

    Who knows, but standardizing, cataloging and auditing manufacturing processes is a start, I guess. 1.5 cheers for the FDA!

    I would be curious to find out how these companies are going to get audited by the FDA to prove that they’re following the quality control measures they’re supposed to implement. Guess I have to read the 815 pg bundle of joy that is the actual rule to find out more. A cursory word search on audits suggests that the manufacturers do audits on their suppliers, that the quality control unit of manufacturer perform audits on their manufacturing process, but nothing about the FDA conducting audits. Of course, calling yourself a GMP (good manufacturing processes) manufacturer is usually enough to trigger an FDA audit if you’re in pharma. I wonder how the FDA will deal with this one.

    FDA Issues Dietary Supplements Final Rule

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced a final rule establishing regulations to require current good manufacturing practices (cGMP) for dietary supplements. The rule ensures that dietary supplements are produced in a quality manner, do not contain contaminants or impurities, and are accurately labeled.

    “This rule helps to ensure the quality of dietary supplements so that consumers can be confident that the products they purchase contain what is on the label,” said Commissioner of Food and Drugs Andrew C. von Eschenbach, M.D. “In addition, as a result of recent amendments to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, by the end of the year, industry will be required to report all serious dietary supplement related adverse events to FDA.”

    The regulations establish the cGMP needed to ensure quality throughout the manufacturing, packaging, labeling, and storing of dietary supplements. The final rule includes requirements for establishing quality control procedures, designing and constructing manufacturing plants, and testing ingredients and the finished product. It also includes requirements for recordkeeping and handling consumer product complaints.

    “The final rule will help ensure that dietary supplements are manufactured with controls that result in a consistent product free of contamination, with accurate labeling,” said Robert E. Brackett, Ph.D., director of FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

    Under the final rule, manufacturers are required to evaluate the identity, purity, strength, and composition of their dietary supplements. If dietary supplements contain contaminants or do not contain the dietary ingredient they are represented to contain, FDA would consider those products to be adulterated or misbranded.

    The aim of the final rule is to prevent inclusion of the wrong ingredients, too much or too little of a dietary ingredient, contamination by substances such as natural toxins, bacteria, pesticides, glass, lead and other heavy metals, as well as improper packaging and labeling.

  • Gulf States spending more on Clean Energy than Canada

    Byoliveridley

    Gasoline sells for 45 cents a gallon. There is little public transportation and no recycling. Residents drive between air-conditioned apartments and air-conditioned malls, which are lighted 24/7

    Still, the region’s leaders know energy and money, having built their wealth on oil. They understand that oil is a finite resource, vulnerable to competition from new energy sources.

    So even as President-elect Barack Obama talks about promoting green jobs as America’s route out of recession, gulf states, including the emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, are making a concerted push to become the Silicon Valley of alternative energy.

    They are aggressively pouring billions of dollars made in the oil fields into new green technologies. They are establishing billion-dollar clean-technology investment funds. And they are putting millions of dollars behind research projects at universities from California to Boston to London, and setting up green research parks at home.

    Meanwhile, we in Canada are pushing hard to completely ignore environmental concerns as we push to expand the incredibly dirty tar sands. I read an interesting New York Times article recently, summarizing the issues with this dirty oil. Of course, the CO2 emissions, and the incredibly nasty effects of mining, water pollution, etc. are well documented. One fact stuck in my head – The cost to replace one tire in one of the earth moving vehicles is $60,000. What a wasteful enterprise on such a grand scale, whose only purpose is to carry on business as usual when business as usual is going to result in catastrophic climate change in the not so distant future.

  • Canada – No new coal plants?

    Byoliveridley

    For a minute I thought the pain from playing volleyball last night, plus opening my computer up sleepily at 5:45 in the morning before catching an early bus to work had me hallucinating, but yes, the Canadian federal government actually wants to impose a moratorium on the construction of new coal fired power plants unless they include sequestration (which to me means no new power plants).

    The federal government is planning sweeping new climate-change regulations for Canada's electricity sector that will phase out traditional coal-fired power

    Any new coal plants will have to include highly expensive – and unproven – technology to capture greenhouse gas emissions and inject it underground for permanent storage, Environment Minister Jim Prentice said in an interview yesterday.

    Ottawa also plans to impose absolute emission caps on utilities' existing coal-fired power plants and establish a market-based system to allow them to buy credits to meet those targets, Mr. Prentice said.

    via reportonbusiness.com: Ottawa takes aim at coal power.

    I have a certain distrust for this government, so details are crucial. The right things are being said:

    1. All new plants will need sequestration
    2. A cap and trade to deal with existing coal fired power plants
    3. Phase out of facilities after “fully amortized life” – Not clear on exactly what that means
    4. 90% Emissions free power sector by 2025

    As the article points out, Canada relies on coal much less than a lot of other countries, only 18% of current emissions are from coal, as opposed to the US, where about 40% is from coal.

    So, time to celebrate? Not exactly. Canada’s latest release of 2007 data indicates horrendous performance.

    Canada 2007 GHG Inventory

    Overall, total increase was 6 Megatonnes from 2004 to 2007. But the increases from the Tar Sands were nearly 16 Mt, meaning most of Canada’s other sectors saw decreases, thanks to a number of mild winters and greater efficiency.

    Clearly, this performance is going to continue until the Tar Sands are included in any CO2 reduction strategies, whatever we do, or don’t do with the coal will have a little bit of impact, but will definitely not help Canada achieve any of its short or long term goals.

    So, one cheer for this announcement. I suspect that the administration needs something to take to meetings, and is hoping that a coal moratorium will distract people from the biggest culprits, the Tar Sands and our insanely high per capita GHG footprint. A “no new coal” moratorium would be a huge deal in the States, and off the charts in China or India as far as reducing emissions go. But Canada, not bad, but definitely not good enough!

    The Tar Sands will only be stopped when the US steps up to the plate and gets its Cap and Trade going.

  • Update: Canada's Carbon Targets Survive

    Byoliveridley

    In a vote today, the Canadian Parliament voted to keep debate on Bill C-311 alive. The vote was 155-137. This is good news, though the bill likely faces an uncertain future even if it passes parliament, thanks to Canada’s nominated and recently conservative majority senate. It was heartening to see the liberals vote en masse in favour of realistic targets. I am also attaching in verbatim, an email received from Michael Ignatieff’s office this morning on the bill.

    On behalf of Michael Ignatieff, I would like to acknowledge receipt of your recent email regarding Bill C-311, The Climate Change Accountability Act.

    Mr. Harper is isolated on the environment – he’s behind the provinces and our peer countries when it comes to taking leadership on climate change and the environment, and has undermined international progress at every turn.

    The Liberals are taking the Harper Conservatives to task over their failure to commit to a principled environmental policy backed up by real action. We’re calling on the government to immediately put in place a national climate change plan with economy-wide regulations on emissions and strategic investments in renewable and clean energy.

    Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal Party are also supporting Bill C-311 as part of our staunch opposition to Mr. Harper’s laissez-faire approach to the environment and climate change. We support its central principle – that Canada needs to take immediate, ambitious action to get us back on track to reducing emissions and improving our renewable energy sources.

    We must be clear, however: Bill C-311 is not a climate change plan. It picks targets, but it does not lay out a plan on how Canada can reach those targets. That’s where it comes up short. The Liberal Party has put forward a credible, achievable climate and clean energy strategy that will create jobs and make our economy – and our country – one of the cleanest and most competitive in the world. Canada cannot afford to miss this opportunity.

    Thank you for taking the time to write the office of Michael Ignatieff on this important issue.

  • Weaver and the Tarsands: What the media missed.

    Byoliveridley

    It appears that Canada (or the part I follow) is all a twitter about an interesting analysis ($$$) by prominent climate scientist Andrew Weaver and his colleague Neil Swart that counts up all fossil fuel reserves, then converts them into global temperature increases based solely on their combustion CO2 emissions potential. It turns out that oilsand reserves are dwarfed by the available coal and natural gas reserves and overall tarsands contribution to temperature increase is modest.

    If the entire Alberta oil-sand resource (that is, oil-in-place) were to be used, the associated carbon dioxide emissions would induce a global mean temperature change of roughly 0.36 °C (0.24–0.50 °C)  However, considering only the economically viable reserve of 170 billion barrels reduces this potential for warming by about tenfold (to 0.02–0.05 °C), and if only the reserve currently under active development were combusted, the warming would be almost undetectable at our significance level.

    The Canadian media has chosen to play up just the fact that on a global scale, the project will result in a small increase in global temperature, so the oilsands are okay to exploit.

    Climate expert says coal not oilsands real threat – CBC

    Other articles pretty much say the same thing,  Prof. Weaver’s quoted comments don’t help either:

    “The conventional and unconventional oil is not the problem with global warming,”  “The problem is coal and unconventional natural gas.” “One might argue that the best strategy one might take is to use our oil reserves wisely, but at the same time use them in a way that weans us of our dependence on coal and natural gas”

    Weaver’s comments to the media posit this as an either-or, coal and natural gas = bad, oil = okay. Knowing him to be a very intelligent person, I suspect this is some selective quoting. Also, oil is primarily used to fuel transportation, coal and natural gas are used for electricity generation, so I am curious as to what Prof. Weaver is suggesting here as far as using oil reserves to wean us off coal use? Would the plan be to use all the money that we get from exploiting the tarsands to develop an electricity infrastructure that puts efficiency, reduced electricity use, 100% renewables first? I wish! I don’t see that happening. Alberta is currently powered mostly by coal, and if the Federal government is serious in its stated goal to phase new coal out (which is fantastic), then Alberta would switch to natural gas to fuel its tarsands exploitation, and that would not be okay either! Also, these infrastructures are all linked. A lot of BC’s natural gas and proposed big damaging dams like Site C are designed to fuel the tarsands. A province and by extension, country that makes most of its money by taking the resources it was provided for free, and selling them at great profit is not likely to want to transition away from that.

    It was interesting that a few weeks back, Mark Jaccard, yet another prominent BC climate scientist (we are blessed) looked at the same issue and came to the following conclusion.

    Canadian tarsands must contract as part of a global effort to prevent a 4 degree increase in temperatures and catastrophic climate change.

    Vancouver Sun – January 26, 2012

    So, is this Jaccard vs. Weaver?

    Not really.

    Is the Swart and Weaver message that simple? Are they actually saying that it is okay to exploit away because it makes no difference?

    The media should start by reading the byline:

    The claimed economic benefits of exploiting the vast Alberta oil-sand deposits need to be weighed against the need to limit global warming caused by carbon dioxide emissions.

    That’s how the paper starts. It then calculates global warming potentials based on reserves, current production, total “in place” (present, but not always exploitable) and shows that coal and natural gas are by far the greatest potential contributors. This is of course simply because we have much greater reserves of coal and natural gas, so their global warming potential is going to be huge. The paper makes no mention of rate of use, or whether it is humanly possible to use all that coal and natural gas, and what kind of population growth, and per-capita consumption that would entail.

    Here’s a very important calculation from the paper that will be lost in the details. To limit temperature rise to 2 °C or less, the allowed, cumulative per person future carbon consumption is 85 tons of carbon. The per-capita carbon potential of the tarsands alone to US and Canada is 65 tons of carbon. So, by itself, the proven reserves (10% of what’s there) of the tarsands can eat up 75% of our allowed carbon budget, not so small, is it.

    Here’s what Swart and Weaver have to say about trajectory:

    The eventual construction of the Keystone XL pipeline would signify a North American commitment to using the Alberta oilsand reserve, which carries with it a corresponding carbon footprint

    Here’s the last paragraph from the paper, another big trajectory argument.

    If North American and international policymakers wish to limit global warming to less than 2 °C they will clearly need to put in place measures that ensure a rapid transition of global energy systems to non-greenhouse-gas-emitting sources, while avoiding commitments to new infrastructure supporting dependence on fossil fuels

    Absolutely, 100% agreed, but this is not what the media message is at all, interesting.

    So Swart and Weaver point out that we need to avoid commitments to new infrastructure promoting fossil fuel dependence, and that building projects like Keystone XL and the Northern Gateway signal a serious commitment to using the entire tarsands. The message in the paper is much more nuanced, and more measured than what’s in the media, not surprising.

    I have long since come to the conclusion that this is not about counting of individual carbon atoms and their non-measurable global warming contributions, of course any single project will not tip us over one way or the other. It is about trajectory. To use two smoking analogies, the argument against smoking is not that the next cigarette will kill you, it is that smoking will kill many people in a population over a lifetime. More aptly in this case, the argument is that  Grand River Enterprises, a small Canadian cigarette concern, doesn’t contribute as much to smoking deaths as does Imperial Tobacco, so it is somehow different and okay.

    Every major fossil fuel commitment we make is a commitment we do not make to reducing consumption, or increasing renewable use. Every foreign policy/domestic policy decision we take to keep our dollar high to get maximum revenue from the tarsands to shareholders (not the population) is a commitment to not building renewable infrastructure, or spending money on energy efficiency. So, trajectories count, and that is the underlying message from Swart and Weaver.

    To finish it off, here’s the PhD Comics Science News Cycle, which is very apropos.

    PS: Is Weaver and the Tarsands a good band name?

    Update:

    Joe Romm of climate progress responds to the paper here, thanks @softgrasswalker

    And from comments, looks like Prof Weaver was on the CBC this morning, reprising his usual climate hawk self, will listen when they put the audio up.

    Here’s Prof. Weaver in the Huffington Post commenting on the study. More about this when I don’t have work to do.

    References:

    Swart, Neil C., and Andrew J. Weaver. “The Alberta oil sands and climate.” Nature Clim. Change advance online publication (February 19, 2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1421.

  • Canadian Federal Government GHG Mitigation – FAIL

    Byoliveridley

    Two central programs that the Conservative government has claimed will result in significant reductions in Canada's greenhouse gas emissions are nearly impossible to verify, the federal environment commissioner says.

    A tax credit intended to encourage public transit use, part of the maiden Tory budget in 2006, will “lead to negligible reductions” in Canada's greenhouse gas emissions and the tools to measure its impact don't yet exist, Scott Vaughn's audit of the government's tools for cutting air emissions found.

    And impressive claims that a $1.5-billion climate change trust fund would lead to an 80-megatonne cut in emissions by giving provinces money to go green appears to be based more on a best-case scenario that may be flawed, the audit found.

    Not that the Conservative government is serious about its climate change mitigation strategies. Their programs were easily tagged as worse than useless. A transit tax credit is useless without increasing transit options, discouraging urban sprawl and increasing automobile fuel efficiency. I like the fact that I can get $10 off a monthly bus pass with this program, but in the end, most people will pay 10 bucks a month if it means getting to work in half an hour, instead of an hour and 15 minutes. When you use exclusively tax based solutions, everyone optimizes their short term gains and nothing happens in the long term.