Observations do not match IPCC’s predictions

This is the beauty of ’scientific theories’!

In order for something to qualify as a ’scientific theory’, it must include a set of predictions of ‘actions or reactions’, which will prove or disprove said theory.  Though not usually well understood, this is what makes ’scientific theories’ ‘respectable’.

The IPCC’s report formulated a theory.  This theory predicted that due to human activity, there has been (and continues to be) an increase in the Carbon Dioxide levels in our atmosphere, AND that this difference is CAUSING specific, observable changes in world climate.  It then makes a set of specific predictions of how the climate will change as a result of this.

OK.  So far, so good.

Now, back when it came out, there were a LOT of us criticizing the IPCC’s report.  Whether it was: their methodology, their underlying data - whatever the causes, there was much criticism.  This was answered by the supporters of the IPCC report in various ways, which were not always satisfactory.  Much bickering ensued.

But, all this is slowly and surely becoming irrelevant, thanks to the IPCC’s report itself.  WHY?  Because of the predictions it made.  The very ones which - if observed to occur - will confirm that the IPCC report was accurate and the critics were full of dingo’s kidneys.  If, on the other hand, observations are made which are NOT in agreement with the IPCC report’s predictions, it proves the sceptics were correct and that the IPCC report itself is a load of dingo’s kidneys!

Well, over the last little while, much data has indeed been coming in.  Like, loads of it.  And, as many actua scientists (as opposed to advisors to policymakers) had predicted, the bits which ‘fail to support the IPCC report’s predictions’ are the ones most favourable to that ‘report’.  Most of the data coming our actually directly contradicts it…. 

Here is just the tip of the iceberg:

‘Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered’

Abstract

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) concluded that anthropogenic CO₂ emissions probably caused more than half of the “global warming” of the past 50 years and would cause further rapid warming. However, global mean surface temperature has not risen since 1998 and may have fallen since late 2001. The present analysis suggests that the failure of the IPCC’s models to predict this and many other climatic phenomena arises from defects in its evaluation of the three factors whose product is climate sensitivity:

1. Radiative forcing ΔF;
2. The no-feedbacks climate sensitivity parameter κ; and
3. The feedback multiplier ƒ.

Some reasons why the IPCC’s estimates may be excessive and unsafe are explained. More importantly, the conclusion is that, perhaps, there is no “climate crisis”, and that currently-fashionable efforts by governments to reduce anthropogenic CO₂ emissions are pointless, may be ill-conceived, and could even be harmful.

Just in case you like ‘graphic representations’, the article has some nifty graphs.  Not as alarmist as Mr. Gore’s graphs were, but they DO show actual temperature measurements:  please, follow the link to the article and look at them….using plain linear regression, they demonstrate the temperatures are going down…

According to the IPCC’s graphs, these should be going up.  And, before you say ‘this is natural variation and does not prove anything’, let me point out that the IPCC’s predictions say these graphs cover a long enough period to demonstrate warming.

The article then inclused more colourful and pretty charts, diagrams and graphs, a ‘ton’ of actual physics, and comes up with this closing statement:

In short, we must get the science right, or we shall get the policy wrong. If the concluding equation in this analysis (Eqn. 30) is correct, the IPCC’s estimates of climate sensitivity must have been very much exaggerated. There may, therefore, be a good reason why, contrary to the projections of the models on which the IPCC relies, temperatures have not risen for a decade and have been falling since the phase-transition in global temperature trends that occurred in late 2001. Perhaps real-world climate sensitivity is very much below the IPCC’s estimates. Perhaps, therefore, there is no “climate crisis” at all. At present, then, in policy terms there is no case for doing anything. The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing.

Thanks to Jenifer Marohasy for the story!  But that site also had another interesting article:  ‘Global Warming is a myth:  a Note from Jim Peden’.  It has a respected physicist, looking not at ‘climate change’ itself, but analyzing the physics of the very mechanism that the ACC crowd claims is responsible for ‘Greenhouse gasses’ causing ‘Global Warming’.  This is how it starts:

As a dissenting physicist, I simply can no longer buy the notion that CO2 produces any significant warming of the atmosphere at any rate.

I’ve studied the atomic absorption physics to death, from John Nicol’s extensive development to the much longer winded dissertation by Gerlich & Tscheuschner and everything in between, it simply doesn’t add up.

In case you are not familiar with the claims made by the ACC crowd, they say that the atoms of ’greenhouse gasses’ absorb energy in the visible and UV spectrum, break it down into smaller bits (heat) which they then release, and which are then ‘trapped’ in our atmosphere.  Here, a physicist who specializes in atomic absorption (and is respected and recognized as an expert in this), calls their claims a load of dingo’s kidneys…. 

Gosh, I hope everyone loves kidney pie!

 

Please note:  the original post contained an unjustified statement by me, where I jumped to conclusions instead of properly checking my sources.  This was spotted by ‘tamino’, who commented on it.  Many thanks for his help, as getting the correct information is essential.  The incorrect claim has been removed.

 

IMPORTANT UPDATE:  Viscount Moncton, author of the American Physical Society’s ‘Forum on Physics & Society’ article, which is the 1st of the articles I linked to and quoted from, has some questions for the American Physical Society….  (via SmallDeadAnimals and TheCorner)

Yet another lesson… will it be learned?

All right, this clip is not from the boys down under, it is from Pen and Teller - the professional sceptics who put on the show ‘Bullshit’.

In their role as sceptics, they have gone on to challenge much - and not everyone is always pleased with them.  Here, they are teaching a lesson in how ‘environmental enthusiasm’ - a very real and honest desire to protect the Earth from harm by us, humans - can be so very easily abused by those who wish to use these honest, trusting and eager activists and subvert them and their voices for something completely different… 

In some ways, it kind of is like that ‘Trojan Horse’ idea!

The radicalized ‘Church of Global Warming’

If anyone were not yet convinced that the ‘Global Warming Alarmism’ is anything but a new religion, its missionaries have stepped up to remove any lingering doubts doubts.

Few months ago, Canada’s high priest of the ‘Church of Global Warming’ himself, Dr. David Suzuki, had delivered a series of speeches in which he openly called for the jailing of those who disagree with his views on Global Warming.  Dr. Suzuki is a geneticist, and apparently, these credentials qualify him as the leading authority on Climate Change.

Applying this logic, an ornithologist would be qualified to assess building codes for earthquake-prone areas and a meteorologist is qualified to work as an obstetrician.  After all, they are all ’scientists’!!! 

Just imagine…

 

But, I digress…

Is it surprising, then, that one of the founders of the ‘Church of Global Warming’, James Hansen, is doing much the same?  Lubos Motl, from The Reference Frame, has analyzed this and makes some very insightful points:

“…when it is already clear that his predictions have been bunk since the very beginning, James Hansen wants trials against oil firm chiefs who help to allow the people to understand that the predictions have been incorrect.”

 …

“…when you start to see fringe pseudoscientists who not only want to use their subjective, sensationalist, and mad visions and personal interests to unseat all inconvenient CEOs and Congressmen - another explicitly formulated desire of Mr Hansen - but you also see that they seem to have a clique of misinformed or equally evil collaborators who have been partially successful, I am telling you: This is a damn serious situation that should be solved unless you want to repeat some truly black pages from the history.”

It is not the beliefs or opinions themselves which identify someone as a ’radical religionist’, it is the fanticism of their belief that it is their duty to remove all obstacles to re-shaping society according to their own visions. 

Wikipedia (a great place to start info searches) says, under ‘political radicalism’, that:

‘The 19th century American Cyclopaedia of Political Science asserts that “radicalism is characterized less by its principles than by the manner of their application”.’

And that certainly includes the politico-religious extremists spreading the AGW creed.

More Mind Games

Yesterday, I had a fun post on how easily our perceptions can play mind games on us - looking at optical illusons.  Of course, optical illusions, at least of the ‘fun’ type, are just the tip of the iceberg!

The post showed, I hope, just how easy it is for our eyes to be tricked. 

Our brains are wonderful, comples structures.  They take the information from our eyes, and process it.  It is this processing of information which ‘tricks’ our mind.  Why?  Because our brains have developed some mightily useful ways of ‘figuring things out’ without telling us.  At least, without telling that conscious part of our thoughts we often think of as ’us’. 

Yes, it is a form of subconscious ‘prejudice’ system - but it is precisely through this type of ‘pre-judgements’ that let humans  anticipate what is likely to happen next, so as to react in the best, most advantageour (to survival) way.  {Aside:  it is precisely because so many of our bad prejudices are also rooted this very deeply, among other survival tools, that we have a hard time recognizing our own ones… and why it is healthy for us to see other people’s ‘obvious’ prejudice openly, so we may learn to recognize our own bad/destructive/unreasonable prejucices and guard against acting on them.  But, that is for another day…}

When our brain gets some input, it matches this input to ‘past experiences’, compares patterns, looks for similarities.  It then interprets this new inputas best as it can - with respect to all the stored past experiences! And it does so quickly, without us even noticing it is doing it…

That is why we find it so hard to ‘wrap our brains’ around something completely new and outside of our experiences:  our brain has nothing to match it to, and would be just as happy ‘not noticing it’…

The immortal Douglas Adams was quite fascinated by this phenomenon.  And, as was his way, he used humour to get his point across… Please, indulge me (highly paraphrased):

The story went something like this:  A guy had a bet with some people about erecting an invisibility field on the mountain that blocked his view…  It was no easy thing, and in the end, the nay-sayers had lost, because even though the mountain could no longer be seen, there was now a suspicious new moon in low orbit, just about the size of that mountain…  Douglas Adams said that trying to generate an ‘invisibility field’ was silly, that is just so very troublesome.  It would have been much easier to simply paint the mountain pink during the nighttime and erect an S.E.P. field on it.

What is an S.E.P. field?  It simply means ‘Somebody Else’s Problem’ - anything that is ‘unusual’ or appears’ unexpected, and has this S.E.P. field on it - will be less than invisible!  People will look straight through it and not see it!  Their brain will just process it as ’somebody else’s problem’ and refuse to acknowledge its existence…

Seems to me that this is one take on the whole ‘mind tricks’ phenomenon I am trying to get at.  Can’t relate to it - it’s not there. 

But, there are way more sinister uses of this ability we, people have, to interpret what we see according to familiar patterns.  This can be seriously abused by people with very particular - and not always honourable - aims.

Just like we can be tricked by a simple optical illusion, we can be tricked into seeing ‘things’ that never happened.  And once people ’see things for themselves’, they accept them as true… and belieave them.

All our actions are based on what we perceive.  Not on facts - only on what we think are the acts. Not on truth, because we have no way of separating truth from our very distorted - and sometimes intentionally tricked - perceptions of the truth, on what we think the truth is.

A lie repeated often enough will eventually appear to us as the truth (it’s precisely this ’previously encountered pattern’ matching thing in our subconsciousness that does this!). 

Conversly, a truth never heard of, will never be considered when one makes decisions.  After all, we can only decide on our best understanding of the truth…

Perhaps it is time we took a moment and re-evaluated just how easy it is for our brains to become victims of ‘mind games’…

Perceptions and mind games

Our mind is always processing ’stuff’ around us.  And it is relatively easy for our mind trick us into perceiving things that are not there, or into not perceiving things that are there.  And so on….

This is such a fascinating subject!  What is it about our minds that allows this trickery to go on?  Many people have been asking this - Scientific American addresses it in ‘The Neuroscience of Illusion’.

Yes, true, this is looking at optical illusions only, but, well, that is the first step!  And some of these illusions are pretty neat! (If you want to skip the article, here is a link for the 5 illusions themselves).  And here is a whole gallery of them!

And, in my never-humble-way, here, for your enjoyment, is an optical illusion that I think is my own (though, with the mind playing tricks like this, I might have seen it somewhere, and then just been tricked into thinking I thought of it…) 

Because it is in a tree, it is ‘obvious’ (hopefully) that this is a picture of a bird.  Well, two birds - but not at once.  One is a big bird, one is a little bird.

Which one did you see first?

 

Vaclav Klaus’ Washington CEI speech

This President is one smart cookie!

Yesterday, he delivered a speech in Washington, in which he said:

“It is interesting that you came up with the name Josef Alois Schumpeter (to intentionally use the Czech pronunciation). I don’t expect all of you to know that this great economist was born in 1883 on the territory of my country – the Czech Republic – in the small Moravian town of Třešť, belonging at that time to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. He was part of an important group of Austrian Moravians which includes names such as Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Karl Kautsky, Ernst Mach, Robert Musil, and many others.”

…

“Reading his Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, which was published in England in the 1940s along with books such as Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four, one comes across a slightly different story, which is his evolutionary theory of the demise of capitalism based on its very success. His main argument – as I remember it – was that innovations would become a matter of routine, progress would be mechanized, problems would be “simply solved” by means of reason and science, entrepreneurship would be replaced by mere calculation, individual motivation would subside, collectivistic mentality would prevail and the growing importance of teamwork in modern large corporations would lead to the gradual obsoleteness and at the end disappearance of the crucial player (or perhaps mover) of capitalism – of the entrepreneur. That was his vision of the end of capitalism. He regretted it, but did not see it as the end of history, progress and development.”

…

“The first problem this theory has is its connection with the reality because the world has not followed Schumpeter’s predictions.”

The complete text is on Mr. Klaus’ blog.

This, to me, is a telling analysis:  this economist looks at the theory, evaluates its internal consistencies (or lack thereof) - and then COMPARES THE THEORY TO REAL-LIFE OUTCOMES !!!!

Not only did he do EXACTLY THIS with the IPCC-type AGW/ACC ’theories’ (and I do use the term ‘theories’ loosely) in his book ’Blue Planet in Green Shackles - What is Endangered:  Climate or Freedom?’, he also points out the necessary consequence of actions currently being implemented to ‘mitigate’ AGW/ACC:  establishment of world government. 

So, why would anyone think there are any dangers in establishing this ‘world government’?  Mr. Klaus warns that we just might me passing world government into the hands of arrogant elitists who are convinced that ‘they know better than the rest of us’….  He asserts that some of the same people who are advocating establishing world authorities to regulate carbon emission - with the power of enforcment (that is, world government) - that were also advocating this 30 years ago in the name of world socialism.  Just listen to Glenn Beck’s second interview with him: 

 

Kind of makes you pause and think, does it not?

It should!

‘Blue Planet in Green Shackles’ - the ISBN#

This is the mystery of the disappearing planet….as in - where in the world can one purchase a copy of the English-language version of ‘Blue Planet in Green Shackles - What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?’

The English translation of this book by Czech Republic’s President, Vaclav Klaus, was released this week in Washington, D.C. - as I have learned from ‘The Reference Frame’, and wrote about earlier. I must admit, I was rather exited! Finally, I could get my hands on it and read what all this excitement is about.

Yet, I could not find how to get my hands on it! Judging from some of the responses I got, I am not alone…

My Mom always used to say: “If ever you are in doubt, ask a physicist!’ (Well, she said something like that - I think…) So, I did - and Mr. Motl from ‘The Reference Frame’ was kind enough to send me this reply:

Dear Xanthippa, the book is now printed in 17,000 copies only so it will disappear rapidly.

bn.com, http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Blue-Planet-in-Green-Shackles/Vaclav-Klaus/e/9781889865096/

has its ISBN codes:

* ISBN: 1889865095
* ISBN-13: 9781889865096
* Format: Paperback, 100pp
* Pub. Date: May 2008

Thank you, Mr. Motl!

Finally, here is a head of state who has actual scientific credentials! O.K., he’s not a physicist like Mr. Motl, but, Vaclav Klaus is pretty close: he may have been a mere economist (though a respected professor thereof), but he did spend most of his life at the Czech Academy of Sciences. Once politics no longer shackled his career (oh, I love how I worked that ’shackled’ word in…sorry, it does not take much to amuse me…), he worked at Prognostics at the Academy of Science…. meaning, his professional expertise is in looking at scientific theories, understanding their implication, and then evaluating their long-term economic impact.

This means that President Klaus, more than any other world leader today, is eminently qualified to assess the IPCC report, both in what it says and in what the ‘remedial measures’ currently being implemented will have. I, for one, am very curious to read what he has to say. I wish that the World’s leaders would be, too!

Here is a link to Mr. Klaus’ speaking notes for the Washington D.C. release of his book:

“The whole process is already in the hands of those who are not interested in rational ideas and arguments.”

“The real debate should be about costs and benefits of alternative human actions, about how to rationally deal with the unknown future, about what kind and size of solidarity with much wealthier future generations is justified, about the size of externalities and their eventual appropriate “internalization”, about how much to trust the impersonal functioning of the markets in solving any human problem, including global warming and how much to distrust the very visible hand of very human politicians and their bureaucrats. Some of these questions are touched upon in my book. “

I, for one, am very curious to read what he has to say. Excuse me, I have to go talk to my local bookstore now…. in the meantime, here is Glenn Beck’s interview with Mr. Klaus on the topic of Global Warming activism:

Aspergers and writing - sentences

Writing a sentence seems like a simple thing - just figure out who is doing what, and write it!  Right.  Except it is not that simple for an Aspie…

This seems incomprehensible to many teachers, parents, and any ‘outside observers’.  How come an Aspie is fully capable of presenting a coherent, detailed explanation of something without any preparation, but when asked to write a sentence or two on that same topic, they are unable to produce one?  How come that when asked a question, an Aspie student can speak for 15 minutes, giving exhaustive, accurate answer, but will only put down a single word as a response to the same question on a written test?

It does not seem credible - to the teachers or parents - that this could be possible.  ‘Just write down what you said!’ tends to be the response/command/advice, but it just does not work like that.  I do not know how or why, but I have seen it and experienced it.  Needless to say, this only leads to very high levels of frustration among both sides…

Many professionals in this field are studying this, and doubtlessly, there are many excellent theories about why or how this occurs.  I do not attempt to address that here - I just hope to look at the mechanics of how this can be overcome… at least, a tiny little bit!

First, the way language is taught is terribly important.  It can mean the difference between practical illiteracy (at least, in the ‘output’ phase) on the one hand, and ‘functionality’ on the other.  How can this be so?

Aspies tend to like to follow rules.  Perhaps not everyone’s rules, perhaps they have a lot of difficulty decoding social rules, but - once a rule is understood and accepted, Aspies tend to derive comfort from adhering to them.  This is true for language.

It is unfortunate that the current ‘model’ for teaching English (as a first language) in much of North America is the ‘whole language’ approach:  this is the hairebrained idea that children will simply ‘absorb’ the rules of English when they are ‘exposed’ to them.  Perhaps this may work for a small minority of kids.  It certainly makes the teaching less laborious, because the teacher does not have to actually teach grammar, correct grammatical errors in written work (we are looking for substance, not grammar…).  And, much more often than I would have liked, I have come across teachers who are not even able to follow simple rules of grammar themselves!

This is a major problem for Aspies:  the rules are difficult to ‘absorb’ - especially when the teacher does not use proper grammar….  Constructing a proper sentence then becomes quite bewildering.  Yet, many Aspies can master written language quite well, so there must be something else going on here.

Perhaps there is a different part of the brain that controls verbal and written expression.  Or, perhaps many Aspies consider things that are ‘written’ to be ‘permanent’ - and therefore there is a much higher level of perfection that is required.  I have asked many adult Aspies who have tremendous difficulties writing things, and there seem to be striking similarities among most of them.

First, the idea.  That is the easy part.  In other words, the Aspie knows what he (the friends I questioned were all men) wants to write.  The problem comes in the how to write it:  they will put a word down, wonder if it is the most accurate one - and start ‘googling’ it. Wikipedia probably has some pretty good definitons of this - you should check it…. 

OK, refocus.  Now you have the correct word.  So, how do you fit it into the sentence correctly?  Is that the right grammar?  Perhaps you should ‘google’ that….

 

OK, refocus.  You now have a noun and a verb, most likely in the proper grammatical structure.  But it is nowhere near sufficient to capture the meaning…  Perhaps it is time for lunch.

And so it goes.  Not very productive, but, eventually, some semblance of a sentence will be produced.

So, how can one help a child learn to overcome this?

My personal exerience gave me some insight.  I was lucky enough to be able to reproduce patterns - sound patterns and picture patterns.  This helped me get selected for a language school when I was 8 years old… and while I was struggling to write basic sentences in my native tonngue, miraculously, I did not experience the same problem in the new languages.

Perhaps advice from a teacher helped: 

‘Do not write what you want to say, write what you are able to say!’

With a limited vocabulary of less than 50 words, and only a rudimentary rules of how to construct a sentence according to the new language’s rules, the prospect of ‘writing a sentence’ became more managable!  With only a limited number of permutations possible, selecting the best possible combination of them which most effectively gets the point across became easy!

When my older son got to a point in his schooling where he was expected to construct more than just simple sentences, he started having a problem.  Trying to help him, I realized that he only had a very basic (and somewhat flawed) idea of how English grammar works….

Solution?

Basic textbook of Latin!

The reasons for selecting Latin were many:  from loan words down.  But the most important reason was that the Latin grammar was very explicitly spelled out - and that the endings of the words would change, depending on what role in the sentence that word played.  This is very key - it reinforces the rules of grammar, and helps figure out how to use them to construct a sentence.

My goal was not to teach my son Latin.  As a matter of fact, we spent no effort on memorizing vocabulary - we only focused on learning the rules for ‘flexing’ the words:  what does a particular ending mean - and what it tells us about the role this word plays in the sentence.  This skill was then easy to transpose into English sentence composition.

Yes - sentence composition.  Because that is how it has to be approached - this word is the subject.  This word describes the subject.  This word is the verb.  This word describes the verb….  and so on.

For younger kids, it might help to use tools:  on small, rectangular pieces of card paper, print a limited number of words related to the topic the child needs to write a sentence about.  Depending on the kid, start with 20-30.  Separate them according to their role in the sentence - it migh be very helpful to colour code them.  Nouns in one colour, verbs on another, pronouns, adverbs…so on.  Or, just separate them into piles. 

Then, when the child needs to write a sentence, let her/him pick out the right words and ‘build’ the sentence out of the ‘card words’.  Since only a very limited number of words are available, the child must be told the task is not to ‘answer the question’ - because that might seem impossible!  Explain to the child that the goal is to ‘build the best possible answer out of these words.  It will not be perfect - and it is not expected to be! Make it a game to try to create the best ‘best fit’ that could be done from this set of ‘card words’.

Once the sentence is created, the child can copy it - and use it as the answer. 

The word-pool can be altered, based on the topic. It can be increased or decreased, based on the child’s needs:  the more difficulties, the fewer words to pick from.  It is a tedious process, but it does work - or, at least, it worked in several instances when I have used it (not just with my own kids). 

My personal opinion is that it teaches several things: 

• By limiting the pool of words, it makes ‘finding the right word’ easier - by making it OK to settle for the ‘best available word’.
• By forcing the use of ‘different types’ (as signified by colours/piles of words, based on role played in the sentence) of words, the Aspie reinforces the proper use of grammar
• This exercise builds one’s confidence in their ability to form sentences - which is much more important than most educators acknowledge.
• Perhaps most importantly, it creates the habit to ‘write what you can, not what you want to’

It is not perfect, but this might help overcome the obsessive need to only write an ‘impossibly perfect’ sentence…

Learning to write is not easy for people with Asperger syndrome.  There are many obstacles in  their way:  from mechanical difficulties, to ‘holding onto their thought long enough to write it down’.  Add the desire for perfectioninsm in written expression…. 

Following the suggestions of professionals who know the child is the best way to help him or her learn to overcome the difficulties which are part and parcel of Aspergers.  Yet, if nothing seems to work, frustration levels are building, the child is unhappy… I know there were times when I would have tried just about anything!  And letting the child help sort the words just might take an edge off the frustration.

Blue Planet in Green Shackes

Finally, there is a release date for the much-awaited English version of Czech President’s Vaclav Klaus’ book,

‘BLUE PLANET IN GREEN SHACKLES 

What is endangered:  Climate of Freedom?’

President Klaus will be presenting it on May 27th, 2008 at the National Press Club in Washington D.C..

Thanks to Lubos Motl from ‘The Reference Frame’ for the tip!

Yet another reason to skip the Beijing Olympics

As if continuing to opress its population were not enough!

As if forcing women to undergo ‘abortions’ against their will were not enough! 

As if China’s continuous disregard for the environment were not enough!

As if its exploitation of Africa were not enough!

After all - all these things could not possibly outweigh our desire to ‘not dissapoint our athletes - or so we have been told by so many apologists…. 

Now, we have another reason for not going to the Olympic games in Beijing.  And this one actually poses danger to the athletes - and all the spectators - themselves!  No, not just the smog, or something equally long-term.  We are talking about real, immediate, physical danger.  And not just to them alone, but to everyone back home when they return, especially the kids.

What, do you say, could this be?

The National Post has an interesting article about the outbreak of the infectious hand-mouth-foot disease (HMFD) in China!  According to CDC, HMFD can be caused by several different viruses, some of them mild, some potentially deadly, especially to children.  The National Post article says this outbreak is caused by EV71, of which the CDC says:

“Another cause of HFMD, EV71 may also cause viral meningitis and, rarely, more serious diseases, such as encephalitis, or a poliomyelitis-like paralysis. EV71 encephalitis may be fatal. Cases of fatal encephalitis occurred during outbreaks of HFMD in Malaysia in 1997 and in Taiwan in 1998.”

This disease can be spread by such innoculous means as cutlery not washed in hot enough water (CDC).  It is usualy only serious for children and people with weakened health, but strong adults (like, say, athletes) can become infected without becoming symptomatic, and spread the virus for several weeks (like, say, when they return home to their kids).

In other words, the athletes and millions of Olympic spectators could become infected, without being symptomatic.  Most visitors and athletes would likely fly home - and airplanes, with their re-circulated air, are perfect incubators for infectious pathogens… ask any nurse! Once home, all these people will celbrate, hug and kiss their kids, relatives, friends….get together to show photos and talk….

This sounds like an ‘ideal’ way to spread this disease!

Oh, but China would take all precautions to contain the infection, right?  Ask world’s leading experts to help them do all it takes to protect its own citizens as well as Olympic athletes and visitors?  Right?

As luck would have it, Taiwan is seen as having some of the best expertise in containing this disease - they have successfully done it two times recently!  Nice and close - except that…  China is not willing to accept help! 

Not only has it refused Taiwanese experts entry, it has also banned Taiwanese journalists.  Its own official newspapers are not exactly forthcoming with information on the epidemic…  Nice to see how well they are handling it…their traditional way of deny, deny, deny!  No problem here!  Yeah, and you expect us to trust any assurances after this, too?  Some track record!

It would be foolish to allow people to attend the Olympics in the midst of a deadly epidemic (and children in China have died during this outbreak already).  Or, in the least, governments which allow its citizens to travel to the Beijing Olympics MUST, as a matter of national health policy, establish quarantine areas where anyone returning from Beijing will have to be detained for several weeks, until any danger of spreading the disease has passed (both athletes and visitors).

Now, this is a thoroughly NON-POLITICAL reason not to go to this Olympics! 

It would not be a political boycot.  Rather, it would be a prudent and responsible policy to prevent the worldwide spread of a disease that kills children.

Will THIS be enough to make the world do the right thing?