Blue Like You

Archive for January 6th, 2008

Dr. Merrilee Fullerton has left a rather prophetic and disconcerting comment on my previous post - Maybe Hospitals should be banned in Ontario:

The problems at Brampton Civic are simply a sign of what happens when you build new facilities without the proper staffing to staff them (there is a shortage of physicians despite what some “experts” have fed the politicians for the past decade).

I’ve worked in Ontario health care for the past 20 years and would say that we have only another 5 years before the system collapses despite huge amounts of money poured on by the Liberals.

Build as many hospitals as you want….but if you don’t have the health care workforce to support them then you will be out of luck for your care.

The National Health Service in Britain is looking toward “self-care” whereby patients essentially look after themselves for their chronic diseases….which will swamp us in the next decade.

The problem is that in an attempt to save a system that won’t work with the pending onslaught of chronic disease and elderly and new treatments, the solution the NHS comes up with is that patients must look after themselves! ….save a system which doesn’t give the patient medical access! What kind of system is this?

And we know Ontario copies what the NHS does quite routinely so this is what we have to look forward to…save the current system at any cost while patients are left to fend for themselves without recourse in their own province.

Strange. Very strange.

What good is a universal, accessible, portable, comprehensive system when as a patient you are left to provide “self-care”?

We pay taxes all our lives in good faith and at the end of our lives will be told: Sorry, you will have to provide “self-care”.

As the NHS goes, so goes Ontario.

Dr. Fullerton’s blog can be found here.

Wake up, Ontario!!! Five years. Can we afford to wait until the next election?

We’re talking about your health, your hospitals, your life.

And the lives of your family members.

Is there anything else more important?

As I mentioned in the previous post, with all the Kyoto misinformation being tossed about, it is refreshing to come across a voice of reason and healthy skepticism in MSM. Lorrie Goldstein has done a tremendous amount of reading on all sides of the debate, and provides a balanced, rational approach.

I asked him by email if he would sum up his position as being an “AGW believer; just not a Kyoto advocate in particular?”

His reply was as follows:

…I agree with the IPCC’s latest report that AGW is “very likely”, although I do not automatically dismiss anyone who disagrees with this theory as a “denier”.

I do not agree there is any scientific consensus on how fast it is happening, how dramatic the impact will be or, most important, what we should do about it, the latter of which is a political issue, not a scientific one.

I oppose the Kyoto accord for reasons I have highlighted in today’s column and many others.

I believe we should purse a made-in-Canada policy which emphasizes practical energy conservation, not just reducing GHG emissions, but air pollution as well, another byproduct of burning fossil fuels.

I would end public subsidies to the fossil fuel industry (how much subsidy do you need when oil is $100 a barrel and rising?) and earmark those funds for credible public and private sector research in Canada into ways of combatting pollution and global warming, including burning fossil fuels as cleanly as possible.

I would also invest money now going into public subsidization of the fossil fuel industry into credible public and private sector research and development of renewable energy resources, especially solar power, which I consider more potentially promising than wind.

I believe we should offer such technology to the rest of the world on fair and reasonable financial terms.

Finally I believe in the responsible use of nuclear power, the only practical man-made energy source we have right now that does not emit GHG or significant amounts of air pollution, to fill in the energy gap as we start to wean ourselves off fossil fuels.

Makes sense to me. How about you?

Whenever I read anything on global warming, climate change or Kyoto, I am struck by how the whole topic of what should essentially be a scientific issue is often framed in terms of a belief system - much like a religion or faith.

People on both sides of the argument attempt to use their own biased data to attempt to convince others that they are right.

If that doesn’t work, then they try guilt and shame. (Ironically, these folks usually tend to be moral relativists in most matters, but when it comes to climate change, their position is ABSOLUTE TRUTH!)

In today’s Sun, Lorrie Goldstein attempts to shine a light of balance and reality into an otherwise murky, emotional debate - Skip the Kyoto Snow Job.

I trust and respect Lorrie’s work on this subject. After doing a great deal of reading and research, he seems to agree that there is some degree of man-made component to global warming (AGW), but remains skeptical of Kyoto as the means to accomplish any real results. That is a position with which I can support.

Kyoto was a seriously flawed treaty from the start in terms of credibility:

…Russia is in compliance with Kyoto and has billions of dollars of “hot air” credits to sell to countries like Canada — not because of its environmental policies, but because the base year for Kyoto was deliberately set at 1990, just as the economy of the former Soviet Union was imploding, causing the shutdown of many GHG-producing industries. Similarly, Germany and the European Union benefit from the collapse of the East German economy.

Kyoto envisions the First World paying billions of dollars to the Third in the faint hope the latter will use that money to reduce its rapidly-growing GHG emissions…

When some countries realize the economic reality that meeting the targets would entail, they often balk at the commitment. The Kyoto Kult activists use guilt as a weapon to try to shame them on the world stage (remember Bali?):

…we must ignore simplistic environmental rhetoric that portrays nations which meet (or try to meet) their Kyoto targets as “good” while those that don’t as “bad.” In reality, all countries act in their own perceived best interests.

China rejects GHG cuts (as has the U.S. through both the Clinton and Bush administrations) not because it favours global climate catastrophe several decades from now if Al Gore’s apocalyptic rhetoric is correct, which is unlikely.

It does so because it has more pressing problems, such as feeding its 1.3 billion people today.

It’s pointless to condemn China for acting in its own interests, just as it’s silly to portray Canada as an energy glutton, a favourite guilt-inducing tactic of environmentalists…

You see this guilt meme rise up often in global warming enterprises.

Scott Stinson of the National Post pointed out yesterday in “Buying your way out of carbon debt“, that the carbon-offset market is becoming big business.

Just how scientifically effective it is, however, is another matter:

…The carbon-offset market was non-existent just a few years ago, but it is big business now, with researchers estimating the activity in North America at more than $100-million last year. So, what are the buyers getting for all that offset money? At best, they are spurring investment in an enterprise that reduces greenhouse-gas emissions. And at worst, critics say, they are simply practising chequebook environmentalism, ­salving guilt by investing in a scheme whose benefits are negligible…

Here’s the inherent glitch:

…But in order for such a transaction to be truly “carbon neutral,” the seller would have to use the offset money to create an environmental benefit that would not otherwise have happened.

Robert Stavins, the director of the Environmental Economics Program at Harvard University, says that is the key problem with offset programs — that the companies that generate credits must do so by “doing something that they otherwise would not have done.“

“It is a comparison with an unobserved — and unobservable — hypothetical,” he said in an interview…

So it all boils down to faith. You are paying to assuage your guilt and look virtuous.

And here’s the kicker. In BS alert! BS alert!, Lorrie Goldstein discloses this little gem:

Finally, if idiot celebrities jetting around the world claiming they are “carbon neutral” because they buy carbon offsets understood the Kyoto Accord, they wouldn’t bother, considering what hypocrites they already are.

That’s because Kyoto doesn’t count GHG emissions caused by flying, although it’s one of the world’s fastest-growing sources of GHG.

Oops!

Goldstein ends today’s column with a suggestion that we skip the rhetoric and look for real solutions:

…Despite what Kyoto propagandists and opportunistic politicians pretend, this isn’t about making an easy choice between “good” and “bad.” It’s about making intelligent choices from the options we have, all of which have positive and negative consequences.

So let’s leave the morality rhetoric to issues of religion and faith.

Or perhaps we should all pray for Divine guidance.