Which Gasoline Octane Level is Best?

A friend recently sent me a link to a Marketplace episode which purported to show that there was an oil company conspiracy afoot to get us to use the highest priced, highest octane or "premium" gas in our ordinary vehicles rather than the lowest priced, lowest octane gas which is all we ever need in our cars. Let me preface the following by stating that I am poor and cheap, so I would truly love to see a good argument for only using the lowest octane gas.   If I ever find that argument, I will never again buy the mid grade (middle octane level). Unfortunately, I haven't found that argument yet.

First of all, the Marketplace show starts, and runs throughout, by raising a false dichotomy between regular (lowest octane) gas and premium (highest octane gas).  This is known as the "straw man" or "false dragon" fallacy.  They have found a case of some idiot (I have no doubt there are millions of such idiots), who asks a gas-jockey what gas to use in her normal car and he dishonestly tries to sell her the most expensive grade (I have no doubt there are many thousands of such gas-jockeys).  The rest of the show then purports to try to prove that you shouldn't waste your money buying the highest octane gas for the average car.  I have been driving and buying gas for decades and I have not personally come across any argument or sales pitch by the oil companies, or anyone else, which has ever suggested we should be using the highest octane level in any but the costliest, high end vehicles.  Thus, the entire Marketplace show, in perfect line with their generalized "Let's expose another Great Conspiracy weekly." format, fails to have any real value except for those who will believe any sales pitch, from any unqualified source, and who always assume that more expensive means better, a loosely defined group that I have always described as foolish.  The question they should have asked, and tried to find answers to, is not: "Do I need the highest available octane level in my gas?" but rather: "Which of the three available octane levels causes my car to run at optimum performance?"

Secondly, for the sake of argument, let's take their efforts at face value.  The only thing these video-bloggers have proved is that they understand (or care) very little about the scientific method and that evidence-based critical thinking is not a significant part of their arguments.  They find an "expert" who is willing to claim that lower octane levels are better.  This is a very unscientific appeal to authority.  What has he based his opinion on?  He never mentions any studies; he simply says "Trust me, I'm an expert."  Do all such experts have the same opinion?  Does ANY other expert have the same opinion?  Marketplace never says.  Knowing Marketplace, I suspect they omitted talking about that because it might ruin their show.  They set up an "experiment" (please note that I did not say a "scientific experiment") in which they use a car, with no given specifications (uncontrolled), to yield a result of precisely 1 data point for regular gas and 1 data point for premium gas.  This test, even if it were valid, would yield nothing more than a single anecdotal testimonial, something that is great for convincing a gullible public, but is essentially meaningless as scientific evidence.  Once again, however, let's proceed as if it were an acceptable scientific test.  The result of their test was a savings in gas when the HIGHER octane level was used, meaning that the car ran more efficiently and suffered less engine stress in overcoming friction to drive the car the test distance, USING THE HIGHER OCTANE LEVEL.  Their conclusion was, to paraphrase: "Never mind the evidence, just take my word for it in spite of the evidence."  Sound much like the climate-change denialists?  As I stated above, this was not a scientific test and was essentially meaningless as a basis upon which to draw a conclusion, but what would they have said if the result had been reversed with 4.8 l/km for the lowest octane gas and 5.0 l/km for the highest octane gas.  Would they have said, "Never mind the evidence." then?  I don't think so.  If they agree that the result is meaningless no matter what the result is, then why have the test as part of the show.  The only possible answer is that this kind of pseudo-scientific crap works on the average joe who is either too ignorant or just too intellectually lazy to really examine what they are watching.  Result: lots of soap-flakes sold by the advertisers to a burgeoning populace of Great Conspiracy theorists.

Back to reality: I will repeat that I have never personally come across any argument or advertisement which suggests that we should be using the highest octane level in our car.  But neither have I ever seen any proper argument presented for using the very lowest octane level available.  What I have heard from the oil companies and from a large number of so-called "experts" on television, in the Toronto Globe and Mail, and on the internet, is that: a) if you are driving an old beater (i.e. a somewhat worn-out engine, especially an older model with less efficiency wary computer controls "on-the'fly") then use regular gas as a higher octane level will not overcome the inefficiencies present to any noticeable degree; b) if you are using a newer model, high-efficiency vehicle, like a top end sports car, then use the highest octane level because those engines are designed for use with such gas and run most efficiently when using such gas; c)  if you are running a newer model vehicle with the engine still in reasonably good running shape, then use the middle grade gas, or regular gas with an octane additive, as the higher octane level helps the engine to run at optimum efficiency, yielding better gas milage and less wear and tear on the engine.

It is true, as they pointed out in the Marketplace show, that modern cars are equipped with knock sensors (small piezo-electric microphones)  which send a signal to the engine control unit, which in turn retards the ignition timing when premature detonation (causing engine knock) is detected.  According to everything I can find on the internet, retarding the ignition timing reduces the tendency of the fuel-air mixture to detonate, but also reduces power output and fuel efficiency.  It is simply easier on the engine (and easier means greater output and efficiency) when a slightly higher octane reading is used, especially when using higher loads, hotter (e.g. summer) temperatures and at higher elevations (such as in Edmonton).  If I was running my car in Toronto especially during the winter and when hauling a lighter load, there would be a lesser need for boosting the octane rating slightly than if I was running it in Edmonton, especially during the summer or when hauling a greater load.

Everything I can find, including write-ups by independents, suggests I should be using the mid-grade gas until the engine is quite old and worn out.  I will happily buy the cheapest gas if anyone can point out a good, scientifically backed argument for doing so.  Maybe the studies disproving the (vastly) majority view are there on the internet and I simply haven't found them yet.  By all means, please send the links to me if anyone finds them.

Smoking Marijuana Healthy for You?

    My daughter just sent me a text, pointing out the recent study by Dr. Tashkin and colleagues (look it up in Google and watch the interviews on You-Tube) on the effects of smoking marijuana, and happily stating (incorrectly) that she was right in her earlier-stated belief that smoking marijuana does not cause cancer.  I thought this misunderstanding of what Dr. Tashkin is really saying merited my coming out of blogging retirement and posting the content of the e-mail I sent back to my daughter in reply:
    "Thanks for pointing out that study to me.  I spent some time this afternoon reviewing what Dr. Tashkin has to say about his study.  There are several rather severe problems with your statement, however, that marijuana has been shown to not produce cancer.  You should note that Tashkin himself does not say that.

Firstly, Tashkin fully admits the results of other studies that have shown risk of heart attack to be as much as 4 times higher with marijuana smoking along with a greatly increased risk of lung infections.  Marijuana contains four times as much tar and 50% to 70% more carcinogens than cigarette tobacco, the highest amounts to be found in "street marijuana" as opposed to government regulated and prescribed "medical marijuana".  No one, certainly not Tashkin himself, is saying that we can relax now and expect that those will not harm, or even cause cancer in, marijuana smokers. Tashkin himself points out, in so many words, that we cannot say smoking marijuana doesn't cause cancer.  What he claims is that the results of his study surprised him, and his colleagues in not showing as strong results of cancer as they expected based on the presence and concentration of carcinogens in the smoke.

In discussing possible reasons for this, Tashkin admits a problem with the study in that it does not properly represent the effects of regular smoking over long periods of time.  It was difficult for them to find people who have been regular users for more than 30 years.  He admits, himself, that the proven cancerous effects of tobacco relate to smoking over decades (30 to 50 years) and his study does not properly reflect such time periods.  When you study someone who has been smoking regularly for fifteen years it doesn't mean that his smoking has not already given him cancer, it just means that he has not developed noticeable tumours yet.  (Mom didn't get cancer, get rid of cancer and then get cancer again.  She has had cancer since well before she noticed the first tumour, and still had it between the two bouts of tumour growth.  Dad smoked for fifty years before he got lung cancer that was noticeable, but he may have had the cancer for years or even decades.)  Tashkin also admits the presence of other scientific studies that have indicated higher risk of certain cancers with smoking marijuana than with smoking tobacco.

An additional point of interest from Tashkin's study, is that there may be some benefit from the THC in marijuana in reducing or inhibiting the growth of tumours.  This would also help to explain the lower incidence of cancerous tumours observed and is an exciting possibility. (Could THC be directly administered to a tumour to reduce it or at least stunt its growth?).  But do not make the mistake of equating the presence of a tumour with the presence of cancer.  Just because no bomb has gone off yet does not mean there is no suicide bomber in the store.  Tashkin also rightly points out that while tumour suppression MAY BE a potential side effect of THC we must not forget that it is a powerful immuno-suppressant and may lead to developing severe bacteriological infections, not only in the lungs, but elsewhere in the body. Additionally, marijuana has reliably been proven to greatly reduce the activity of our killer T-Cells that protect us from all manner of diseases.  How happy would you feel NOT getting cancer from smoking marijuana but dying of bronchitis, pneumonia or some other bacteriological infection?

In his concluding remarks, Tashkin points out that, as a pulmonologist, he is absolutely against the practice of inhaling marijuana smoke into the lungs as a means of delivering the THC medically.  He is in favour of the use of swallowed capsules and, possibly, vaporization.  Both he and his colleage, Roth, say that smoking it is very bad for the health, despite the presence of THC.  Also, both have stressed that their study DOES NOT show that smoking marijuana doesn't cause cancer.  They say in no uncertain terms that the matter has not been proven and the presence of so many carcinogens suggests that smoking marijuana does cause cancer, although their study suggests that THC may help mitigate the incidence of cancer."

Cultural Luddism and the Coming Global Reality

Today's posting follows from a seemingly endless series of articles, recently filling newspapers across Canada and the United States, bemoaning and remonstrating against the need for change in one ethic group or another, one definable subsection of society or another, in this changing society (changing world) of ours.  My native Albertans have had decades of strong economy based of raping the land of a limited supply of burnable carbon.  The same is true of many of the eastern United States with coal and the central and western United States with oil.  Many First Nations groups have continued to follow a subsistence pattern largely based on hunting and fishing declining herds and fish stocks.  Canada's Inuit state their opposition to global warming primarily in terms of their perceived need to preserve their traditional way of life.  The cries from all are long, loud and increasing in frequency, demanding that whatever is necessary be done to allow them to continue living the same life their parents and grandparents lived.

I am well aware that this posting will shock and anger many.  Many will accuse me of an utter lack of empathy for those who see their traditional ways of life threatened.  Many will even accuse me of racism in my comments against the First Nations and Inuit groups who demand to be allowed to continue their traditional ways without change.  My position, however, is that all such groups, no matter their region, nation or ethic group, should take a long hard look at reality, stop whining about having to change their ways and start working on new and better ways to live in a rapidly changing world.

Let me begin by reminding the reader that I am one of those Albertans who has benefitted, both directly and indirectly, from those decades of hydrocarbon extraction.  Much of my work as an archaeologist and palaeo-environmentalist was done in the tar sands area of northern Alberta, directly paid for, largely, by the oil companies and consortiums who intended to tear up the land.  Let me address potential accusations of racism by pointing out that I have lived among both the Dené of the Mackenzie Valley and the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic, have worked with both peoples, for months at a time, many times over a career spanning decades.  I have even spent decades studying first hand the archaeological reconstruction of their traditional cultures and prehistoric ways of life and the palaeoenvironmental reconstructions of their traditional environments.  I have the very highest respect for these people, finding them to have been and to continue to be brilliant technologically, innovative culturally, and extremely warm and giving, even to strangers, as social beings.

I would add to this a reminder that I am not simply a member of an industrialized Canadian society.  As someone who, since childhood, has had a strong connection with my own ethnicity (Scottish/Irish) and with history in general, I have lived my entire life very much aware that it was only a short time ago (as an archaeologist views time) that my ancestors were hunters and gatherers.  Although I am sure many resisted the change, they had little choice but to adapt to a farming, cattle herding and/or shepherding way of life over time (sometimes over very little time) no doubt with much accompanying complaint.  Shift forward in time just a little and see the drastic lifestyle changes my more recent ancestors had to engage in adapting to the industrial revolution, accomplished haphazardly with poor planning and much suffering. Alvin Toffler, in 1970, wrote a book entitled Future Shock, in which he described the pain anxiety and disorientation which people can experience when they are forced to change their accustomed ways and in which he predicted increasing occurrences of this socially disruptive effect as the world becomes more globally unified into what he termed a "super-industrial society."

Now we all, of every region, nation and ethic group, are facing another great time of change; only it is now evident that we won't even have as much time to adapt as Alvin Toffler thought.  I speak here, again, of global warming.  Within decades, not centuries, we will not only see but we will be immersed in global changes in water availability, animal, plant and mineral resource availability and socio-economic diversification requirements such as has never been seen before in the history of human society.  We can not, in this situation, afford the luxury of letting the change-deniers and those who wish to cling forever to the comfortable and customary past hold us back from making the economic and societal changes required to not just survive but to thrive in the coming new reality.

Contrary to the warnings of doom by the conservatives and global warming deniers, this does not mean we in Alberta, and elsewhere, have to give up prosperity.  It means we have to quickly get up off our duffs and use this very limited time of prosperity to diversify our economy, including diversification of our energy usage away from our current hydrocarbon-based  monoculture.  It means we have to quickly get more rational about recognizing the changes we are facing in water availability and must start planning now for how to deal with it.  It means that First Nations and Inuit peoples will have to stop looking at the hunting of particular, traditional target herds as their right and start diversifying into more sustainable socio-economic practices in a much changed physical environment.  I am not saying they should have to, in a perfect world. I am saying that global warming has already advanced to the point where, in this world, they do have to.  It is only if we fail to take these steps that we face serious economic stresses, recessions and potential regional economic collapses.  Keep in mind that those regions, nations, cultures who first make the necessary changes to take advantage of the new environmental and global/cultural reality will have a substantial economic/power advantage over those who are laggards, and they may care a great deal less about your particular culture than you do.

   

Making the necessary changes also does not mean we have to give up all of the cherished parts of our past or our ethnicities.  Far from it, we need to work hard to preserve those aspects of our ancient ways which can be preserved and cherished.  These include languages, traditional clothing, games, recipes, ceremonies, and other cultural practices which can be continued no matter what the environment or socio-economic base of the society becomes.

There is a wonderful future available to southern industrialized societies and to the Dené, Inuit and other more traditional peoples, if we all accept this challenge now and start making the necessary cultural changes.  There simply is not time, this time, to be very tolerant of the untra-conservatives and nay-sayers who are constantly trying to hold us back.  Any of us, globally, who try to freeze our culture as a sort of museum piece are likely to see that culture falter, fail and disappear, with a great deal more concomitant cultural stress and "future shock" than is involved in making the necessary cultural changes to preserve the best and most future-viable parts of our respective cultures in the first place.

We are all, more rapidly than ever and more rapidly than most understand, heading into a very different world.  It is already too late to avoid that even if the world governments immediately switched to greener energy sources, and they show no signs at all of making any great move in that direction.  The greatest factor holding us back, and therefore the greatest danger to our making a relatively smooth transition into the future, lies with the ultra-conservatives in all cultures who are poorly informed scientifically and are philosophically blind to anything but their own particular version of the past.  If you care about reducing the future shock experienced by people of your particular culture, start now to get more vocal and more argumentatively forceful in stopping these cultural Luddites from holding us back from making the changes we must now make.

Collapse of the Global Warming "Conspiracy"?!?!?

    I suppose it should come as no surprise to me that so many people, including many influential journalists, are coming to such disastrously wrong conclusions about the meaning of recent revelations regarding mistakes made, sloppy data gathering done and even alleged wrong-doings committed by certain UN scientists.  The scientists in question have been prominently vocal in warning about the potentially harmful and expensive ramifications, for nations around the world, of the increasingly rapid climatic warming that is occurring globally.  The reason I should not be surprised is that the vast majority of people, regrettably, have little or no understanding of science or of scientific method.

    Most people, even atheists and agnostics, are people of faith in their way of thinking.  They do not think scientifically.  You do not have to have faith in any particular God, religion or  book to be a 'faith-thinker.'  You simply have to be a person who tends to base your opinions and conclusions on faith in a person or group relaying information to you, and by extension the conclusions that person or group has come to, rather than on review and scientific consideration of the evidence that person or those persons based their conclusions on.  This is not the same as trust.  We all might, justifiably, come to trust a certain source of information based on past performance.  If it can be reliably demonstrated later that this source has made serious mistakes or even lied or falsified data in some way, then we will, justifiably, lose our trust in that source and perhaps cease to listen to them.  The difference here between the scientific-thinker and the faith-thinker is that the faith-thinker will frequently tend to throw out everything that disgraced source has said whereas the scientific thinker will review the evidence to determine what conclusion to come to, not just about the guilt or innocence of the source mentioned, but about what they were claiming that he was tempted to believe.

    Take, for example, Margaret Wente's recent submission in the Globe and mail: (www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/the-great-global-warming-collapse/article1458206/).  The very title,  "The great global warming collapse." suggests that we can all now relax about global warming as if it has been shown to have all been a great conspiracy, a fraud.  This is only one example.  There are many others of its ilk readily available not only in news articles but in myriad blogs across the net.  The problem with this conclusion is that these people are trying to throw out decades of replicated and verified data gathered by literally thousands of independent scientists from all over the world based on their new found lack of trust in someone they probably had never heard of before.  Some talk as if belief in global warming was based on the work of a handful of scientists or on one or two studies which might be flawed, or even falsified, instead of on thousands of independent studies by thousands of independent scientists over many decades.  As for those who suggest it is all a great scientific conspiracy: how could you possibly organize and run such an enormous conspiracy even if you wanted to?  What would the motivation be to be part of such a conspiracy?  There would be far, far, FAR more money in being on the anti-global warming side with merry buckets of cash and huge honours gratefully proffered by the vastly wealthy and powerful oil and coal companies as well as those corporations that depend on ready and cheap supplies of oil and coal and the petro-State governments (such as Alberta's) if you could only demonstrate scientifically that global warming was not occurring.

   The problem for those who insist that global warming is a fraud and a conspiracy is that the scientific evidence for it is overwhelming and no one has been able to demonstrate that it is not occurring.  In fact, we have reached the point where anyone who examines the evidence for global warming, rather than depending on "he said/she said" arguments, can see that global warming is a fact.  It does not take a scientific degree to be certain of this.  It simply takes scientific thinking coupled with EXAMINATION OF THE EVIDENCE.  The glaciers of the Alps may not be gone by 2035, but they are unquestionable receding at an astonishing rate.  North American and Australian glaciers are similarly retreating at a great rate.  A quick search of the internet will reveal comparative photographs, taken over decades, of numerous glaciers that demonstrate this retreat. The Greenland Ice cap is thinning at a historically unprecedented rate.  Huge ice shelves are breaking up both in the Arctic and Antarctic.  The Arctic Ocean shows more open water every year.  Weather stations around the world evidence increased temperatures.    This can readily be verified even by non-scientists with little or no formal scientific training.  I can assure you that the Inuit all across Canada's north can testify that the Arctic is warming without reference to a single scientific report.

    Even if you feel that the jury should be out still on the question of the amount or degree of anthropogenically caused global warming, there can no longer be any valid, scientific denial that global warming is occurring and this warming will cause huge and expensive problems for people all over the world.  I live in Alberta and, while global warming may bring a benefit or two such as warmer winters, it will also bring increased incidence of tornados and greatly reduced fresh water supplies.  People who live in the Arctic, on many small Pacific islands, in many coastal cities and in areas already marginal because of drought, will face even greater problems.  As for anyone who claims that there is no significant anthropogenic contribution to the observed global warming, I will ask again here, as I did in my posting of December 31, 2009, how can we possibly add billions of tons of carbon-dioxide and methane to the atmosphere year after year and not contribute significantly to global warming?  That is a question perennially avoided by those who argue that warnings by scientists of global warming are due to some sort of conspiracy.

    Not everyone can be a trained scientist.  Not everyone should be.  But everyone should be willing to take a scientific look at the evidence for global warming before making up his or her mind about it.  Trust in particular experts can be comforting and nice, but it is not necessary when looking for truth in a matter so eminently open to materialistic examination as global warming.  Only the willingness to examine the material evidence objectively and logically is necessary. For anyone interested in learning more about how scientists approach the evidence in forming their opinions I would, at a bare minimum, recommend reading the following:

    Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1962. 2nd edition 1970. 3rd edition 1996

    Popper, Karl, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Basic Books, New York, NY, 1959

    Suppe, Frederick (Editor), The Structure of Scientific Theories, University of Illinois Press, Chicago, IL, 2nd edition 1977. 

Ignorance is Fun?

    This posting is based on a comment I felt compelled to make on someone else's blog.  That blog brought to my attention something I have thought about and discussed with others many times over the years.  Few people would disagree that science is to be praised for doing us many favours in terms of revealing how the universe really works and allowing us to discover, thereby, new ways of improving our lives.  Many people, however, perhaps even most people, feel that science has a regrettable side in that, for every discovery made, there is one less mystery to make our lives exciting and fun.

    For myself, having been science oriented since childhood and involved directly in a number of scientific disciplines during my adult life, I find it difficult to understand how people can hold this opinion and I certainly have never felt that way myself.  Not knowing what something is or how it works (another word for this is ignorance), replacing the scientific search for knowledge with ancient religious dogma or fairy tales, adds no more mystery to our lives than would throwing a blanket over something and wondering what's under it, or wearing blinders and wondering what it is that we can't see.

    The real universe, and in fact each discoverable part of the universe, holds so much more mystery than any mere human being could possibly imagine. Each discovery made always leads to several more mysteries that we never even suspected were there. Every discovery in astronomy has only served to expand our universe as we understand it, not shrink it.  Every discovery in biology has raised new mysteries about the incredible variety and versatility of DNA, RNA and biological cells.


    There was a time when, taught by dogma, we "knew" that the universe consisted only of our solar system surrounded by a few stars, sterile of life, and that surrounded, only a few miles away, by the abodes of the gods.  Now we find ourselves living in a visible universe, over 27 billion light years across, containing potentially uncountable trillions of inhabitable planets.  This visible universe is perhaps held within an infinite universe, or even an infinite number of universes, potentially with different basic physical laws.  Even something as familiar, predictable and understandable on the surface as the movement of billiard balls has become mysterious when we examine it in the light of our developing understanding of quantum mechanics plus the fact that billiard balls and tables are made up of unpredictable subatomic particles.  What scientists do, simultaneously with adding to our understanding of how things work, is add to our store of mysteries; and that is nothing if not exciting and fun.

Opinions on Global Warming: to Take Action or Not

    This is just an initial posting on a topic that I will, no doubt, visit again and again during the course of my blogging career (hobby).  Global warming is a topic that is deriving a great deal of attention from people all over the world, and deservedly so.  Whether you are for or against taking action on global warming, you should be greatly concerned because scientists and politicians all over the world are talking about spending trillions of dollars and shifting corporate dominance from some industries to others by decree.  If governments take the action that scientists are urging it may greatly affect your wealth, what job you have and possibly even where you are able to live.  If they fail to take this action it may greatly affect your wealth, what job you have and possibly even where you are able to live.  In either case, moreover, it is no stretch to see that at least some parts of the world (maybe yours) are likely to be affected in terms of quality of life, national (political) power and susceptibility to war.  Island nations and coastal cities may or may not be inundated by rising seas.  Species of animals may or may not go extinct.  Populations may or may not have to shift geographically.  In short, whether or not the world's governments take action on global warming and, if they do, what action they take or don't take, IS IMPORTANT!

    Here, at the close of 2009, shortly after the close of (yes, I'll say it point blank) the ineffective, failed Copenhagen Conference, there is almost no scientific controversy over the clearly established fact that the world is warming climatically.  There is also no scientific controversy over the fact that some significant portion of this warming is due to anthropogenic factors (caused by human activities).  The only real controversy among scientists is over what number to put at measuring this anthropogenic portion and in how many degrees centigrade global temperature will be raised by some target date.

    In this short posting I would simply like to focus attention on the NEED FOR EVIDENCE, no matter what your position is.  I never cease to be amazed, truly amazed, when people arguing for or against taking action on any given postulation, be it political, economic, ecological or what have you, do so without consideration of or reference to the evidence.  Whether your views match mine, parallel mine or directly oppose mine, they will be of interest to me and have a chance of affecting my position only if they are accompanied by or refer me to the readily accessible hard evidence (not just some other 'experts' conclusion) upon which your views are based.  No matter who your favourite or most trusted authorities are, authority itself is not a scientific argument.  No evidence-based position becomes less respectable simply because it is favoured or put forward by a fool or a liar.  No evidence-based position becomes more respectable simply because it is favoured or put forward by a well liked and trusted authority.

    So, please people, present your evidence, or refer me to that accessible evidence, for whichever action or inaction you care to propose.  I find truly horrifying the amount of shear blather that is out there on radio, television and the net, which can never be considered anything other than blather simply because no effort is made to refer the listener to the evidence, or some readily accessible source of the evidence, for or against any particular position.

    My personal position on the reality of global warming, having reviewed a great deal of published evidence over the course of several decades, is that global climatic warming is incontrovertibly occurring.  In line with my comments above, I should either present the evidence here, or I should direct the reader to a reference for the evidence.  I will do so, very simply, thus: Go to the web-searching site of your choice (I like Google) type in "weather records" plus the name of the city, province and country of your choice.  You will quickly be presented with a list of numerous sites at which you can see, free of charge, the daily weather records of at least one weather station in or near that city. Compare those weather records with the long term, 30 year averages for the same site (a standard reference in climatology).  This requires no particular scientific education, just the ability to add, subtract and divide.  Weather, averaged over decades, equals climate.  Do this for weather stations all over the world and you will be convinced that, even though some sites  have cooled, globally the planet has warmed  measurably, especially in the far northern and far southern regions.  Case closed! Don't try to sway me with cracks about conspiracy theories or reference to some jerk who got caught in a lie.  Those comments are irrelevant.  All that really counts is the hard evidence for warming and that is readily available to anyone who cares to look, free of charge.

    Now, as to the case for how much of this warming is due to anthropogenic causes, I cannot express a firm opinion as I have not done a personal study and cannot put numbers to the mensuration of anthropogenic causes relative to the observed amount of global warming.  What I can say is this: We, as a species, are pouring billions of tons of carbon-dioxide and methane into the atmosphere every year (again a simple internet search of "tons of carbon-dioxide" or "tons of methane" will present a list of numerous sites that put hard numbers to this).  These gasses have measurable and measured effects as warming "greenhouse" gasses (the hard numbers freely and readily available on the net).  I would love to have someone explain to me, with evidence, how we can possibly do this year after year after year and not contribute significantly to the observed warming of the planet.  Please someone, if you read this and think you can present such an evidence-based argument, leave me a comment at the end of this posting; I would love to hear from you.

    In summary: opinion, minus evidence, can be OK.  We should all feel free to express an opinion on many topics even if that opinion is based only on a feeling or a hope.  However, if the opinion takes the form of a recommendation for or against taking action on something as potentially life altering as global warming, base your opinion on hard and publicly accessible evidence or your opinion simply isn't worth the time it takes to hear it.

Welcome to Dilbertville

    Everybody has them: examples of situations from their own workplace that resemble a Dilbert© cartoon more than what you expect from reality.  I can think of examples from nearly every major organization I have every been a part of,  in University, in the museums and government organizations I have worked for and in the commercial businesses I have worked for, not least of which is the one I currently work for.

    Dealing with managers who only vaguely understand how the business they run works is a phenomenon that is as old as human organizations.  It has gone by many different names and has been expressed in many different ways, depending on the nature and complexity of the particular organization under examination.  In recent history, two contributing phenomena have been identified under the names "The Peter Principle" (see, for example, the 1969 book of that name by Lawrence J Peter and Raymond Hull) and the "Dilbert Principle." (see, for example, the 1996 book of that name by Scott Adams).

    There are reams of analyses of these principles as they relate to the management of organizations, so I will not venture into any such now, in this forum.  I will simply re-state, for those not already familiar with the terms, what, in general terms, they refer to.  The Peter Principle refers to the phenomenon by which people in an organization tend to be promoted to their own 'level of incompetence'.  In other words, if a person was found to be competant in his position he would be promoted to a more demanding position and, if he did well at that position he would be promoted to a yet more demanding position.  Eventually this person would reach a position (perhaps middle management, perhaps upper management) at which he proved himself to be at best uninspired and at worst incompetant.  There he would stay, as people are only seldom demoted to a lower position on the command chain,  By this means the corporation would eventually become filled with uninspired or even incompetant managers, with understandably deleterious results.  In the 1970's it was suggested by many who study the functioning of organizations that this principle describes a very real, very common and very great danger to the successful operation of our various institutions.

    The Dilbert Principle is a somewhat satirical variation of the Peter Principle which observes that, in modern organizations, the least capable people tend to be promoted to management because companies need their smartest people to do the useful work.  In the humourist Scott Adams' words: "It's hard to design software, but relatively easy to run staff meetings.  This creates a situation where you have more geniuses reporting to morons than at any time in history." (see www.dilbert.com).

    Having studied organizational psychology at university and having lived my life, I can personally attest to the fact that these principles describe very real human situations; that, although similar, they are separate phenomena and that both can be in operation in any given organization at the same time.  To these, however, I would add one other simultaneously operating factor which is also well known to anyone who has studied the operation of organizations.  In any organization in which a manager's position is not absolutely secure, said manager will tend to surround himself with sycophants and will tend to actively avoid promoting more competent persons that himself to positions from which that competent underling can threaten his managerial position (through replacement).

    Let all three of these principles run rampant in a single mid-sized organization, and you get something resembling the company I currently work for.  In this company, the producers of profit are skilled and licensed professionals who, traditionally, required something of a mix of science and art in practicing their trade.  Much of the work requires reasoned selection of target persons to focus on, from a very large database of company files, and the ability to convince those target persons within a very short time frame, to deal financially with the company.  Skill also came to play in deciding precisely when and how to follow-up with customers in order to preserve or even expand their business with the company.   Individual employees tended to produce easily measurable profit in direct relation with their skill level and would be financially rewarded with salary and commission accordingly.

    The geniuses or idiots (you decide which) running my company have decided to modernize using a software program which randomly selects files to focus on and arbitrarily limits discussions with customers to no more than five minutes.  Even more disconcertingly, they now refuse to allow any of the afore mentioned professional employees to decide when or how to follow up with a customer to make sure they continue to pay the company or to convince the customer to expand their financial business with the company.  Once a customer is paying the company there is to be no more contact with the customer unless the customer calls in or they stop paying the company all together, at which point that customer's file would go back into the pool from which random selection for contact would be made by the software package.  Moreover, the software now running the show makes up-to-the-minute reports on each employee so that the CEO can tell at a glance how many minutes an employee has been working and how many contacts they have made, as well as how many minutes each has paused the program to go to the washroom, lunch or for any other reason. Additionally, compensation for producing employees, as opposed to support employees, will soon no longer be based on how much money we bring in.  Rather, it will be based on how many calls each producer completes.  In other words, the employee who brings in very little money to the company, but who completes many contacts with potential customers, will receive greater compensation that the employee who brings in more money with fewer contacts.

    The software package controlling all of this, and client support from the software-owning company in the United States, was purchased for our company at a cost of millions of dollars by two cronies of our relatively new CEO.  These two have been placed in controlling positions immediately below and answering only to the CEO.  These three, in February of this year, placed all of our branches across the country on this system simultaneously, without prior testing.  How much intelligence would it take, even if you thought all of this was a good idea, to try the system out first in one branch, or even in one department of one branch, to test its efficacy and to work out solutions to any problems that developed, before committing all sectors of the company nation-wide and irreversibly to its control.  And problems there have been.  For the first several months we had huge amounts of down-time because one portion or another of the software was simply not functioning properly.  Anyone at any managerial level who complained too much was labelled an obstacle rather than an enabler and has been threatened with being fired.  Anyone who placed greater importance on pride in their work, as opposed to fear of loss of their income, has either been fired or has chosen to leave the company voluntarily.  These include people at every level from support staff to executive vice-presidents.  Our production (profitability) has dropped considerably but all remaining managers are on-board with the explanation that this must be the fault, somehow, of the licensed producers at the bottom of the command structure.  No explanation for how we could be at fault is ever proffered.

    So why do I continue to work for this company?  For me it is just a retirement job, a continuing source of mortgage money.  The work has become, especially of late, exceedingly mindless and boring but leaves me lots of time, including holiday time, for more intellectually stimulating pursuits.  So long as my income and holiday time stay high enough to accomplish that, I will stay.  In truth, I see a distinctly humourous side to it all, as would Scott Adams and his readers.  Something compels me to stay, if only to see what will come next.  I do wonder constantly, however, if that is likely to be much longer.  The current management, it seems to me, is likely only to make things worse, not better.  Each day when I go to work, I am truly in Dilbertville.

Senate Reform: Deletion? Simple Election? or Modified Appointment.

    I have always been a staunch supporter of the Canadian Senate as an integral and important part of our system of government.  I have always felt that we do need a forum of 'sober second thought,' preferably consisting of appointed, not elected, persons who are carefully selected from among the most intelligent, educated, open-minded and respected of Canadian citizens.  Our elected Members of Parliament are too much in the limelight of, and under the thumb of, rapidly changing and often poorly informed public opinion.  Without the check of an intelligent and well educated Senate to slow down the process of lawmaking, to re-think what our parliamentarians put forward as new laws or modifications to our constitution, to recommend vital changes to those laws and constitutional modifications, we would be very much in danger of having what would amount to little more than 'mob rule by proxy.'

    Remember, the Senate cannot stop laws or constitutional changes that Parliament wants, it can only force them to slow down and reconsider the potential ramifications of those bills, if enacted, despite how popular they may be temporarily with the public at large, or because of how unpopular they may be with the public.  To be sure, very few Members of Parliament would ever want to have to function without the Senate there as a potential scapegoat.  It is frequently enough a valuable ploy for an elected Member of Parliament to be able to vote for a temporarily popular bill that he or she knows to be ill-advised or unworkable in some way and to blame the 'killing of the bill' on that nasty old Senate.  What those parliamentarians know, but never talk about publicly, is that the Senate cannot kill a bill.  It can send it back only three times for reconsideration.  Even if the bill had to wait until the next sitting of Parliament, our MP's could send it back to the Senate and force it through then.  The Senate of Canada can delay a bill but cannot stop it from being enacted.

    Although there are ill-advised calls heard now and then for elimination of the Senate, I believe most Canadians understand how vital a role the Senate plays in protecting us from our own impetuousness, or that of our elected representatives.  Laws and constitutional changes, after all, should function and function well, over long periods of time, in order to foster a stable, healthy society.  They are far too important to leave them subject to, or requiring, overly-frequent 'tweeking' in response to temporary changes in the public whim.

    In the last couple of decades, however, there have been increasing calls, especially in my native Alberta, to move to an elected Senate.  I have always been opposed to an elected Senate because I felt it would then become little more than a rubber-stamping extension of our elected Parliament.  Far from enabling better government, this would simply do away with the greatest value of the Senate which, as stated above, is to enable reconsideration of Parliamentary bills by worthy people who are not subject to necessarily impending re-election and, resultingly, rapidly fluctuating public whim.

    Of late I have had to rethink my position on this.  One example of why is the recent appointment of Mike Duffy to the Canadian Senate and his subsequent behaviour as an appointed Senator.  His boorishness, overbearing manner, ultra-partisanship and lack of transparency with regards to his immensely bloated expenditures out of the public purse make him an embarrassment to all well-meaning Canadians of any political stripe.  I hasten to add that, although Duffy is not the model of all of our Senators by any means, neither is he the only example of the depths to which our current system of appointment by the Prime Minister (who himself gains his position through a 'first past the post' party system that leaves huge sections of the Canadian population unrepresented or poorly represented in Parliament) has sunk the nature and manner of our governance.  In fact, in the last year alone Stephen Harper, the most authoritarian, controlling, secretive and ultra-Conservative Prime Minister that Canada has ever had, has appointed twenty-seven new Senators in an unprecedented orgy of partisanship.

    In order to function in a healthy manner for the benefit of all Canadians, Senators must be selected in a  more publicly structured and less partisan way.  After all, even ultra-Conservatives must realize that a time will come, as it has before, when the public psyche will swing to the left again and a more leftish Prime Minister will then be in a position to load up the Senate with patronage appointments of his favourite political hacks.  Elections and Senate appointments are not sporting events to be temporarily celebrated in terms of winners vs. losers and then forgotten (although I suspect many people, unthinkingly, tend to regard them this way).  This is how we are ruled and governed in every public aspect, and in a great many private aspects, of our lives.  IT IS IMPORTANT to every Canadian whether or not he thinks much about it.

    I too would now like to see the system for the selection of our Senators modified.  My preference would be to maintain the system of Prime Ministerial appointment, but to restrict his or her selection to a pool of elected possibles.  Elections within each Province and Territory could be held at set intervals and a group of several candidates elected by popular vote.  This would require that the candidates be able to convincingly support their own candidacy with public discussions of what their qualifications are, how they think on various issues, and why they feel they are better suited to a position of checking the power of Members of Parliament than to simply running for office as a potential Member of Parliament.  From this pool of elected candidates the Prime Minister would still have the serious input of selecting which of the candidates from each region actually become Senators.  This is not the forum in which to go into the fine details of how this system would work, but it may readily be seen that some such system would better function to satisfy the wishes and needs of the Canadian populace yet still conform to a large degree to the Prime Minister's inevitably partisan desire for wielding some controlling influence on the Senate.  At the same time, it would eliminate the worst excesses of our current system of rewarding unsuitable and even incompetent party hacks with patronage appointments on the public purse.

    I urge all Canadians to think about this seriously.  Don't be blasé about our governance and don't fall into the trap of letting our Senate become just a pack of elected 'Yes Men' (and women) for whatever major political party happens to hold sway at any given time.  I urge you further to talk openly about this with friends and colleagues.  Talk about it, e-mail and blog about it, and let's start pressing our politicians to get more serious, not just about reforming the Senate, but about reforming it in such a way that it becomes more valuable in its intended function, not less so.

Canada's Failing Democracy

    Democracy can be loosely defined as "rule by the people."  We, in Canada, call ourselves a democracy with great self-satisfaction.  Of course, democracy doesn't mean the people have to participate in a referendum on every question or every action taken by the government.  Ours is a parliamentary democracy in which our elected representatives make those decisions for us and we, in theory, can hold them accountable for their decisions at election time.

    This only works well, however, if we do let them know, in no uncertain terms, what we expect, what we like and what we do not want, frequently between elections.  When our politicians make poor or harmful decisions we should let them know immediately through letters, public protests, internet blogs, etc.  Elections themselves occur too infrequently to be the only check and balance tool we use.  In Canada, the system is severely broken and it is our (the people's) fault.

    Politicians continually get away with inaction, where action is required, and with wrongful action where different action is required.  By the time the next election roles around the politicians have, all too easily, distracted most of the population with hand-picked "platform issues", usually couched in the most general (and thereby unaccountable) of terms such as 'fighting poverty' or 'fixing the economy' or 'creating prosperity through jobs."  Following the election, they all too easily get away with simply ignoring their platform promises or watering them down  to some pathetic ghost of their original selves.

    The Harper Conservatives promised to make government more open, but have practiced the most secretive and unaccountable government we have had in Canada since World War II.  They promised to protect Canadian sovereignty in the arctic, but have done nothing concrete to ensure that sovereignty while Russia, Denmark and the U.S.A. have all taken concrete steps to encroach upon our sovereignty. They promised to ensure more jobs and job security, but continue to tie Canada's employment fate too tightly to the plateauing (if not failing) American market and western dirty oil while doing almost nothing to take advantage of the burgeoning behemoths of China and India and the far more secure job creation powers of low carbon energy sources. They promised to set Canadian elections to set dates in order to avoid unnecessary elections being arranged at the whim of some political party or parties for no other reason than the polls' indicating they might increase in parliamentary seats held at that particular time.  Then what does Harper do last fall but ignore his own proposal and call an election nobody but the Conservatives wanted simply because they 'scented' (incorrectly) the possibility of a majority Conservative government at that time.

    Yet, do Harper and his Conservative government face protest from the public for these failings?  No, the response is almost silent complacency, not because everyone, or even some vast majority, agrees with their record on these matters, but because we, by and large, find it too difficult, too time consuming, too embarrassing to speak out clearly and let the government know we are not happy.  It is much easier to sit back and say "we'll have our say in the next election."  Of course, elections themselves are a bother and cost more than ten tax dollars for each citizen so even those who are unhappy with the government tend to say "the last thing we need is another election right now,"  And what do the polls show about what the Canadian populace thinks about their government?  Polls taken just before and just after Mr. Harper's recent public recital, in which he sang a Beatles song and played the piano, indicate a huge upsurge in Harper's popularity as a political leader!!!  He doesn't have to perform well as a leader week by week and month by month, he simply has to perform moderately well, on a particular night, as a stage entertainer?  The answer to this last question is apparently, and to the great shame of all Canadians, yes!  I'll say it again, Canada's political system is very badly broken and it's our own fault.

Future Human Evolution?

    I remember my mother, when I was about 10 years old, saying words to the effect that: "... many thoughtful, wise, educated people suggest that humanity has stopped evolving now ... that we evolved this far over the last three to four billion years but have now reached where we were 'intended' to reach in biological terms."  She stated, furthermore, her belief that our future evolution would be in terms of cultural change, not biological change.  These words had a deep effect on me as they both gave me deeper insight into my mother's character and beliefs and, at the same time, distanced me further from her.  To my mother, although she was not stating this as unquestionable dogma, the lack of future biological evolution in humanity was a comforting thought which helped to unify her educated belief in science and evolution with her "fuzzier" Christian faith in the presence of a God who wanted us to live forever, after death, in heaven.  I suspect most people of faith share some similar version of this belief.

    I have heard what amounts to the same view expressed by many atheist and agnostic friends, colleagues and acquaintances.  They do not share my mother's belief in a teleological universe ruled by the plan of an intelligence intending to create us by means of evolution, but neither do they seem to be able to envisage a future in which evolution continues to operate on humanity in any meaningful way.  They do not even foresee our deliberately manipulating the genes of our children and their children's children's children in any great way other than minor tinkering with factors such as aging or general susceptibility to various diseases.  In short, almost everyone I know seems to believe that evolution has all but ceased forever to operate on humanity.

    To me that concept evokes a sense of sadness, if not outright horror.  To suggest that we would not, could not or should not evolve further sounds to me more like a prison sentence than an affirmation of our present glory.  I do not mean to suggest that I believe in a ladder-like 'upward' directionality to evolution; I do not believe that.  What I do envision and hope for is a future in which humanity will change to meet myriad challenges in myriad environments, perhaps on many different worlds throughout the universe.  Resultantly, I foresee us developing into myriad different forms, mental as well as physical. Science fiction tends to portray 'more evolved' intelligences as little more than modern human intelligences with a few fancy skills added, such as teleportation or telekinesis or telepathy.  But why should our descendants not change mentally as drastically as we have changed from our most ancient ancestors?

    My mother viewed us, in comparison with our distant descendants, as grandparents in comparison with adult grandchildren.  These grandchildren, in her view, would have different experiences and more advanced knowledge, but would remain comfortably familiar both in physique and in mentality.  In contrast, I view us in comparison to our distant descendants as bacteria might be compared to worms, worms compared to lizards or as lizards compared to modern humans.  Perhaps, among at least some of our descendants, should they manage to avoid total extinction, some form of multi-unit intelligence might arise, functioning analogously to the way individual cells in our bodies function together to create what seems to each of us to be a single thinking creature.  Should we be any more horrified by that possibility than an intelligent bacterium should be at the existence of a modern, multicellular human?