Tuesday
2nd
February
2010
Leaked climate change emails scientist 'hid' data flaws
Key study by East Anglia professor Phil Jones was based on suspect figures
How the location of weather stations in China undermines data
Fred Pearce - The Guardian
Phil Jones, the beleaguered British climate scientist at the centre of the leaked emails controversy, is facing fresh claims that he sought to hide problems in key temperature data on which some of his work was based.
A Guardian investigation of thousands of emails and documents apparently hacked from the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit has found evidence that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed and that documents relating to them could not be produced.
Jones and a collaborator have been accused by a climate change sceptic and researcher of scientific fraud for attempting to suppress data that could cast doubt on a key 1990 study on the effect of cities on warming – a hotly contested issue.
Today the Guardian reveals how Jones withheld the information requested under freedom of information laws. Subsequently a senior colleague told him he feared that Jones's collaborator, Wei-Chyung Wang of the University at Albany, had "screwed up".
The revelations on the inadequacies of the 1990 paper do not undermine the case that humans are causing climate change, and other studies have produced similar findings. But they do call into question the probity of some climate change science.
The apparent attempts to cover up problems with temperature data from the Chinese weather stations provide the first link between the email scandal and the UN's embattled climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as a paper based on the measurements was used to bolster IPCC statements about rapid global warming in recent decades.
Wang was cleared of scientific fraud by his university, but new information brought to light today indicates at least one senior colleague had serious concerns about the affair.
It also emerges that documents which Wang claimed would exonerate him and Jones did not exist.
The revelations come at a torrid time for climate science, with the IPPC suffering heavy criticism for its use of information that had not been rigorously checked – in particular a false claim that all Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035 – and UEA having been criticised last week by the deputy information commissioner for refusing valid requests for data under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Guardian has learned that of 105 freedom of information requests to the university concerning the climatic research unit (CRU), which Jones headed up to the end of December, only 10 had been released in full.
The temperature data from the Chinese weather stations measured the warming there over the past half century and appeared in a 1990 paper in the prestigious journal Nature, which was cited by the IPCC's latest report in 2007.
Climate change sceptics asked the UEA, via FOI requests, for location data for the 84 weather stations in eastern China, half of which were urban and half rural.
The history of where the weather stations were sited was crucial to Jones and Wang's 1990 study, as it concluded the rising temperatures recorded in China were the result of global climate changes rather the warming effects of expanding cities.
The IPCC's 2007 report used the study to justify the claim that "any urban-related trend" in global temperatures was small. Jones was one of two "coordinating lead authors" for the relevant chapter.
The leaked emails from the CRU reveal that the former director of the unit, Tom Wigley, harboured grave doubts about the cover-up of the shortcomings in Jones and Wang's work. Wigley was in charge of CRU when the original paper was published. "Were you taking W-CW [Wang] on trust?" he asked Jones. He continued: "Why, why, why did you and W-CW not simply say this right at the start?"
Jones said he was not able to comment on the story.
Wang said: "I have been exonerated by my university on all the charges. When we started on the paper we had all the station location details in order to identify our network, but we cannot find them any more.
"Some of the location changes were probably only a few metres, and where they were more we corrected for them."
In an interview with the Observer on Sunday Ed Miliband, the climate change secretary, warned of the danger of a public backlash against mainstream climate science over claims that scientists manipulated data. He declared a "battle" against the "siren voices" who denied global warming was real or caused by humans. "It's right that there's rigour applied to all the reports about climate change, but I think it would be wrong that when a mistake is made it's somehow used to undermine the overwhelming picture that's there," he said.
Last week the Information Commissioner's Office – the body that administers the Freedom of Information Act – said the University of East Anglia had flouted the rules in its handling of an FOI request in May 2008.
Days after receiving the request for information from the British climate change sceptic David Holland, Jones asked Prof Mike Mann of Pennsylvania State University in the United States: "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4? Keith will do likewise.
"Can you also email Gene [Eugene Wahl, a paleoclimatologist in Boulder, Colorado] and get him to do the same ... We will be getting Caspar [Ammann, also from Boulder] to do the same."
The University of East Anglia says that no emails were deleted following this exchange.
Strange case of moving weather posts and a scientist under siege
In the first part of a major investigation of the so-called 'climategate' emails, one of Britain's top science writers reveals how researchers tried to hide flaws in a key study
Fred Pearce - Guardian
It is difficult to imagine a more bizarre academic dispute. Where exactly are 42 weather monitoring stations in remote parts of rural China?
But the argument over the weather stations, and how it affects an important set of data on global warming, has led to accusations of scientific fraud and may yet result in a significant revision of a scientific paper that is still cited by the UN's top climate science body.
It also further calls into question the integrity of the scientist at the centre of the scandal over hacked climate emails, the director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), Dr Phil Jones. The emails suggest that he helped to cover up flaws in temperature data from China that underpinned his research on the strength of recent global warming.
The Guardian has learned that crucial data obtained by American scientists from Chinese collaborators cannot be verified because documents containing them no longer exist. And what data is available suggests that the findings are fundamentally flawed.
Jones and his Chinese-American colleague Wei-Chyung Wang, of the University at Albany in New York, are being accused of scientific fraud by an independent British researcher over the contents of a research paper back in 1990.
That paper, which was published in the prestigious journal Nature, claimed to answer an important question in climate change science: how much of the warming seen in recent decades is due to the local effects of spreading cities, rather than global warming?
It is well-known that the concrete, bricks and asphalt of urban areas absorb more heat than the countryside. They result in cities being warmer than the countryside, especially at night.
So the question is whether rising mercury is simply a result of thermometers once in the countryside gradually finding themselves in expanding urban areas.
The pair, with four fellow researchers, concluded that the urban influence was negligible. Some of their most compelling evidence came from a study of temperature data from eastern China, a region urbanising fast even then.
The paper became a key reference source for the conclusions of succeeding reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – including a chapter in the 2007 one co-authored by Jones. It said that globally "the urbanisation influence … is, at most, an order of magnitude less than the warming seen on a century timescale". In other words, it is tiny.
But many climate sceptics did not believe the claim. They were convinced that the urban effect was much bigger, even though it might not change the overall story of global warming too much. After all, two-thirds of the planet is covered by ocean, and the oceans are warming, too.
But when Jones turned down requests from them to reveal details about the location of the 84 Chinese weather stations used in the study, arguing that it would be "unduly burdensome", they concluded that he was covering up the error.
And when, in 2007, Jones finally released what location data he had, British amateur climate analyst and former City banker Doug Keenan accused Jones and Wang of fraud.
He pointed out that the data showed that 49 of the Chinese meteorological stations had no histories of their location or other details. These mysterious stations included 40 of the 42 rural stations. Of the rest, 18 had certainly been moved during the story period, perhaps invalidating their data.
Keenan told the Guardian: "The worst case was a station that moved five times over a distance of 41 kilometres"; hence, for those stations, the claim made in the paper that "there were 'few if any changes' to locations is a fabrication". He demanded that Jones retract his claims about the Chinese data.
The emails, which first emerged online in November last year following a hack of the university's computer systems that is being investigated by police, reveal that Jones was hurt, angry and uncertain about the allegations. "It is all malicious … I seem to be a marked man now," he wrote in April 2007.
Another email from him said: "My problem is I don't know the best course of action … I know I'm on the right side and honest, but I seem to be telling myself this more often recently!"
An American colleague, and frequent contributor to the leaked emails, Dr Mike Mann at Pennsylvania State University, advised him: "This crowd of charlatans … look for one little thing they can say is wrong, and thus generalise that the science is entirely compromised. The last thing you want to do is help them by feeding the fire. Best thing is to ignore them completely."
Another colleague, Kevin Trenberth at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, urged a fightback. "The response should try to somehow label these guys and [sic] lazy and incompetent and unable to do the huge amount of work it takes to construct such a database."
In August 2007, Keenan submitted a formal complaint about Wang to Wang's employers. The university launched an inquiry. Reporting in May 2008, it found "no evidence of the alleged fabrication of results" and exonerated him. But it did not publish its detailed findings, and refused to give a copy to Keenan.
By then, Keenan had published his charges in Energy & Environment, a peer-reviewed journal edited by a Hull University geographer, Dr Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen.
The paper was largely ignored at the time, but Guardian investigations of the hacked emails now reveal that there was concern among Jones's colleagues about Wang's missing data – and the apparent efforts by Jones and Wang over several years to cover this up.
Those concerns were most cogently expressed to Jones by his ex-boss, and former head of the CRU, Dr Tom Wigley. In August 2007, Wigley warned Jones by email: "It seems to me that Keenan has a valid point. The statements in the papers that he quotes seem to be incorrect statements, and that someone (W-C W at the very least) must have known at the time that they were incorrect."
Wigley was concerned partly because he had been director of the CRU when the original paper was published in 1990. As he told Jones later, in 2009: "The buck should eventually stop with me."
Wigley put to Jones the allegations made by the sceptics. "Wang had been claiming the existence of such exonerating documents for nearly a year, but he has not been able to produce them. Additionally, there was a report published in 1991 (with a second version in 1997) explicitly stating that no such documents exist."
This is believed to be a report from the US department of energy, which obtained the original Chinese temperature data.
Wang's defence to the university inquiry says that he had got the Chinese temperature data from a Chinese colleague, although she is not an author on the 1990 Nature paper.
Wang's defence explains that the colleague had lost her notes on many station locations during a series of office moves. Nonetheless, "based on her recollections", she could provide information on 41 of the 49 stations.
In all, that meant that no fewer than 51 of the 84 stations had been moved during the 30-year study period, 25 had not moved, and eight she could not recollect.
Wang, however, maintained to the university that the 1990 paper's claim that "few, if any" stations had moved was true. The inquiry apparently agreed.
Wigley, in his May 2009 email to Jones, said of Wang: "I have always thought W-C W was a rather sloppy scientist. I would …not be surprised if he screwed up here … Were you taking W-C W on trust? Why, why, why did you and W-C W not simply say this right at the start? Perhaps it's not too late." There is no evidence of any doubts being raised over Wang's previous work.
Jones told the Guardian he was not able to comment on the allegations. Wang said: "I have been exonerated by my university on all the charges. When we started on the paper we had all the station location details in order to identify our network, but we cannot find them any more. Some of the location changes were probably only a few metres, and where they were more we corrected for them."
The story has a startling postscript. In 2008, Jones prepared a paper for the Journal of Geophysical Research re-examining temperatures in eastern China. It found that, far from being negligible, the urban heat phenomenon was responsible for 40% of the warming seen in eastern China between 1951 and 2004.
This does not flatly contradict Jones's 1990 paper. The timeframe for the new analysis is different. But it raises serious new questions about one of the most widely referenced papers on global warming, and about the IPCC's reliance on its conclusions.
It is important to keep this in perspective, however. This dramatic revision of the estimated impact of urbanisation on temperatures in China does not change the global picture of temperature trends. There is plenty of evidence of global warming, not least from oceans far from urban influences. A review of recent studies published online in December by David Parker of the Met Office concludes that, even allowing for Jones's new data, "global near-surface temperature trends have not been greatly affected by urban warming trends."
Keenan accepts that his allegations do not on their own change the global picture. But he told the Guardian: "My interest in all this arises from concern about research integrity, rather than about global warming per se. Jones knew there were serious problems with the Chinese research, yet continued to rely upon the research in his work, including allowing it to be cited in the IPCC report."
The emails
From sceptic Doug Keenan to Dr Wei-Chyung Wang and Prof Phil Jones – 20 April 2007
"I ask you to retract your GRL paper, in full, and to retract the claims made in Nature about the Chinese data. If you do not do so, I intend to publicly submit an allegation of research misconduct to your university at Albany."
From Jones to Dr Kevin Trenberth
"I seem to be the marked man now !"
From Prof Michael Mann to Jones
"This is all too predictable. This crowd of charlatans is always looking for one thing they can harp on, where people w/ little knowledge of the facts might be able to be convinced that there is a controversy. They can't take on the whole of the science, so they look for one little thing they can say is wrong, and thus generalise that the science is entirely compromised."
From Trenberth to Jones and Mann – 21 April 2007
"I am sure you know that this is not about the science. It is an attack to "undermine the science in some way. In that regard I don't think you can ignore it all … the response should try to somehow label these guys lazy and incompetent and unable to do the huge amount of work it takes to construct such a database."
From Prof Tom Wigley to Jones – 4 May 2009
"I have always thought W-C W [Wang] was a rather sloppy scientist. I therefore would not be surprised if he screwed up here … Why, why, why did you and W-C W not simply say this right at the start? Perhaps it's not too late? I realise that Keenan is just a troublemaker and out to waste time, so I apologize for continuing to waste your time on this, Phil. However, I *am* concerned because all this happened under my watch as director of CRU and, although this is unlikely, the buck eventually should stop with me."
Climate Fools Day rallies the heretics
Climate change: The sun and the oceans do not lie
Climate Confusion
Climate chaos is inevitable. We can only avert oblivion
I'm a sceptic now, says ex-NASA climate boss
Skeptic's guide to debunking global warming
Inhofe Begins "Climategate" Investigation in US
Politicians fight to keep America's moon mission alive
Richard Luscombe
The announcement of an end to immediate ambitions for an American to again reach the moon, on the seventh anniversary of the Columbia space shuttle disaster, sets the stage for a furious battle in Congress over US manned space exploration.
Politicians from Florida, Texas and Alabama, three states that have lost thousands of jobs in the space industry from this year's planned retirement of the ageing shuttle fleet, promised a fight to keep the moon programme, Constellation, alive.
"They are replacing lost shuttle jobs too slowly, risking US leadership in space to China and Russia, and relying too heavily on unproven companies," said Bill Nelson, a Democratic Senator for Florida and former astronaut who flew one mission in 1986.
Michael Griffin, who resigned as Nasa chief when Obama took office, branded the plan "disastrous", likening it to Richard Nixon's cancellation of the Apollo programme in the 1970s. "It means that essentially the US has decided that they're not going to be a significant player in human space flight for the foreseeable future," he told The Washington Post.
Nasa has already spent more than $9bn on Constellation, including testing the Ares I rocket that was to have replaced the shuttle as transport from Earth to the international space station and beyond. The programme was "based largely on existing technologies, over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation", according to Obama's budget report.
"The truth is that we were not on a path to get back to the moon's surface," said Charles Bolden, the new Nasa administrator.
"There will be challenges as a result of cancelling Constellation, [but] the funding for Nasa is increasing, so we expect to support as many if not more jobs." The budget gives Nasa $19bn for 2011, and $100bn over the next five years; the proposal also extends the international space station until 2020.
Moonwalking - 40 year on who will be next
Apollo 11 astronauts call for mission to Mars
Reach for the moon
The Great Moon Hoax
Outrage as Pope attacks UK equality laws ahead of state visit
Carolyn Churchill - Herald Scotland - 2nd February 2010
Pope Benedict has sparked a furious reaction from equality campaigners by saying that UK legislation designed to protect against discrimination threatens religious freedom and violates natural law.
As the Pope publicly confirmed his first visit to Britain, he told a group of bishops at the Vatican that some laws imposed “unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs”.
His remarks have been interpreted as an attack on the Sexual Orientation Regulations that forced Catholic adoption agencies to consider gay couples as potential adoptive parents.
The Government also suffered defeats in the House of Lords last week after churches voiced concerns that the provisiowns of the flagship Equality Bill could expose them to legal challenges if they refused to employ sexually active gay people and transsexuals.
The Pope said: “Your country is well-known for its firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all members of society.
“Yet, as you have rightly pointed out, the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs.
“In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed.”
Equality campaigners criticised the comments and the National Secular Society said it was organising a protest against the Pope’s visit, which was confirmed almost a year after he was invited to Britain by Gordon Brown.
Carl Watt, director of Stonewall Scotland, said: “The Equality Bill is a good thing – where it impacts upon the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people it ensures they are treated as fairly as anyone else. It does not curb the freedom of religious groups.”
Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said the Pope’s comments amounted to a “coded attack on the legal rights granted to women and gay people”. He said: “He seems to be defending discrimination by religious institutions and demanding that they should be above the law.”
Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, said: “We have no objection to him coming as a spiritual leader but we do have a problem with him coming to Britain as a head of state. We don’t believe that the Vatican should have that degree of power and we don’t believe the Government should be paying for a formal visit.
“The doctrine that the Vatican and the Pope promotes is very much contrary to what the vast majority of people believe is appropriate, including many Catholics. His views on homosexuality and birth control are totally unrepresentative and this [visit] gives him a platform, which we don’t think is appropriate.”
The controversy comes amid divisions within the church in Scotland over the traditional Latin Mass, which is being championed by the Vatican.
Figures compiled by the Archdiocese of Glasgow ahead of the Pope’s visit revealed only 26 out of 52,000 practising Catholics in Scotland’s largest diocese choose to take part in the traditional form of worship.
The Pope was yesterday addressing bishops from England and Wales who were on a five-yearly visit to the Vatican. Scotland’s Catholic bishops will travel to Rome for their week-long “ad limina” visit tomorrow.
Scottish Catholic Media Office spokesman Peter Kearney said: “We certainly share these same concerns that have been raised by the Pope. While this legislation would advance the rights of some minorities, it would effectively remove the rights of others, such as faith groups.”
High-ranking bishops 'apathetic' about Pope's visit to Scotland
Will the Pope ban gay clergy?
Pope Benedict XVI
Nothing can erase Tony Blair's failure
George Galloway
Robin Cook, the novelist, would have to stretch his imagination to create a plot which comes half way to matching that in which his namesake tragically featured.
The Chilcot Inquiry, on the principle that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, is edging into the light one of the darkest chapters in contemporary British history.
Secret notes and promises between a swivel-eyed, messianic Prime Minister and a simian, swaggering US President on a dusty Texas ranch.
The swift and unexpected death of Swivel-eyes' main rival on a Scottish mountain top conveniently occurred just as the plotters' scheme reached its climax. And that would have been that, if the plot had prospered. Alas, it led to the deaths of a million people and the spreading of fanaticism and hatred right across the world.
Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook can't, unfortunately, be with us to testify.
Spry, skinny and still in his honeymoon period, climbing mountains for fun, he had a fatal heart attack well out of reach of the paramedics atop a Munro.
Possessed of many secrets, it's likely Cook could have sunk this whole Iraq enterprise and emerged as Britain's honourable Prime Minister.
I'm not saying they done him in, but the novelist surely would.
This week, we must make do with Clare Short, Robin's less principled amanuensis who resigned from the Cabinet many weeks too late and has been nursing her wrath ever since.
Clare liked to party in Parliament, but now she sits, like me, a party of one on the opposition benches beside me.
It seems she will try to exculpate Prime Minister Gordon Brown, claiming he was too preoccupied with other things, not least his decades-long struggle for the leadership of Labour, a patrimony he believes was stolen from him over the breadsticks in a north London bistro. What a novel all this would make.
For what it's worth, I suspect Short is right that Brown was marginalised over the war and was quite content to be so.
I see him pacing the battlements of Elsinore like the Prince of Denmark procrastinating about whether to join the war party or not.
I suspect his calculus of risk came up with the conclusion that he could have been collateral damage if the bloody treason had prospered.
In the Scottish play, Macbeth discovers that not all of the perfumes of Arabia will expunge the damned spot.
Blair knows by now nothing is ever going to erase the catastrophic failure in which he is up to his neck and will drown his legacy far into history. As he sat in Chilcot's cramped little room, I recalled from elsewhere in Macbeth how loose his garments now hung about him like a giant's robes on a dwarfish thief.
Chávez urged to resign
A group of former supporters of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has called on him to resign.
In a statement published in local newspapers, the group says that after 11 years in power Mr Chávez has lost his legitimacy. The group includes former foreign minister Luis Alfonso Davila, former defence minister Raul Isaias Baduel, Hermann Escarra - one of the main drafters of the new Chavez-era constitution - and two men who were at Chavez's side during the failed 1992 military coup; Yoel Acosta and Jesus Urdaneta.
They accuse the president of an "autocratic, totalitarian and self-centered way of governing" and point to his "utterly careless use of language ... which lays bare a soul that is intolerant, petty, hateful and resentful."
In the past months, Venezuela has seen an increasing number of anti-Chávez demonstrations. The president says the protesters want to destabilise the government.
Newspaper claims FARC to branch out in Europe
The Colombian newspaper El Tiempo reports that the militant group FARC plans to open an office in Europe. Potential locations for the new branch are Amsterdam, Brussels or Paris. El Tiempo says its report is based on an e-mail intercepted by the Colombian secret services.
The newspaper writes that FARC intends to use its European office to make contact with young left-wing extremists youths. A large meeting with FARC sympathisers is thought to be planned for next month. The Colombian militant group is on an EU list of terrorist organisations and cannot simply open an office in Europe. El Tiempo reports that it is therefore using a radical left-wing Venezuelan movement as a cover. The movement called the Bolivian Continental Coordinator is seen as a political branch of the FARC and is not mentioned on any list of terrorist organisations.
Vote of no confidence in Tory economic policies
Poll lead slips to 7 points as vast majority of voters say Cameron should be clearer
about plans for cuts
Andrew Grice - The Independent
Labour is closing the gap with the Conservatives amid public doubts about David Cameron's economic policies, according to a poll for The Independent.
The ComRes survey found that 82 per cent of people want Mr Cameron to be clearer about what he would do on the economy – including 82 per cent of Tory supporters. Only 24 per cent believe the recession would have ended sooner if the Tories had been in power, while 69 per cent do not.
The findings came as the Tories tried to fight off Labour claims that Mr Cameron had made a U-turn over when cuts in public spending should start. The Tory leader has denied that his party would make "swingeing cuts" in the 2010-11 financial year after official figures last week showed only a fragile economic recovery. George Osborne, the shadow Chancellor, who has promised early cuts, will seek to end the apparent confusion in a keynote speech today. According to ComRes, the Tories' nine-point lead over Labour has dropped to seven points in the past month. It puts the Tories on 38 per cent (unchanged since last month), Labour on 31 per cent (up two points), the Liberal Democrats on 19 per cent (no change) and other parties on 12 per cent (down two). If repeated at a general election, these figures would leave Mr Cameron 24 seats short of an overall majority in a hung parliament.
Ukraine PM attacks 'coward' rival
Dmitry Solovyov - The Independent
Ukraine's Yulia Tymoshenko relished a solo performance on television last night, heaping insults on arch foe Viktor Yanukovych after he shunned a prime-time debate with her ahead of a presidential run-off.
Facing an empty rostrum where Mr Yanukovych should have stood in their scheduled 100-minute duel, the Prime Minister Ms Tymoshenko branded him "a common coward" for not turning up. "I believe that an empty spot is exactly what he is," said Ms Tymoshenko, wearing her trademark braids. "And although he is absent from here, I can feel his smell. This is the smell of fear. I do not want a common coward to become the next leader of our nation," she said.
Opposition leader Mr Yanukovych, the frontrunner in next Sunday's poll, yesterday declined to take part in the debate with Ms Tymoshenko, calling her election vows "dirt and evil".
The Prime Minister's personal attack on her 59-year-old rival appeared to rule out any alliance between them after the election.
Mr Yanukovych, whose support base is in the east and south, won the first round of the election with 35 per cent of vote, 10 per cent ahead of Ms Tymoshenko. But she can make up this ground if she strengthens her position in western and central regions.
Mr Yanukovych, who often stumbles over his words and prefers scripted speeches to project himself, told voters he would abstain from a public debate to avoid Ms Tymoshenko's "torrents of dirt and evil". "I believe that concrete deeds and the word that one gives is more important than sweet and pleasing phrases. This is why I deem it indecent to be dragged into empty talk and compete in lies in the run-up to the election," he said.
Ms Tymoshenko led the 2004 "Orange Revolution" sparked by a rigged election in which Mr Yanukovych was denied victory.
Ukraine's Gold-Plaited Comeback Kid
Herbal remedies 'can work against heart disease drugs'
David Rose - The Times
Herbal remedies taken by millions of Britons can pose a serious risk to health by interfering with medicines commonly prescribed for heart disease, doctors say.
Warnings that supplements such as St John’s wort, ginkgo biloba and garlic can diminish the effectiveness of drugs or cause dangerous side-effects for certain patients have been restated by researchers in the United States.
Interactions with medicines could cause “devastating effects” in vulnerable patients such as the elderly, people with liver or kidney problems, or those at greater risk of bleeding, they said.
Writing in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, the researchers added that patients did not always inform their doctors if they were taking herbal supplements, and doctors did not always ask.
Arshad Jahangir, Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic Arizona, who reviewed studies published from 1966 to 2008 on the interactions between herbal remedies and drugs, said: “Many people have a false sense of security about these herbal products because they are seen as ‘natural’. But ‘natural’ doesn’t always mean they are safe.”
St John’s wort, commonly taken for depression, anxiety and sleep disorders, is known to interfere with medication prescribed for irregular heartbeat, high blood pressure or high cholesterol, he said. Ginkgo biloba, which is said to improve circulation, raises the risk of excessive bleeding in those taking warfarin or aspirin. Garlic, taken in high concentrations in pills, could also interfere with warfarin.
Professor Jahangir said: “Patients, physicians, pharmacists and other healthcare providers need to know about the potential harm these herbs can have.”
Almost half of the British population tries complementary medicine at some point in their lives, and more than £450 million a year is spent on such treatments.
The British Heart Foundation said that some common products could react dangerously with heart medicines, “so people should always check with their doctor before taking them”. From next year European law will dictate that sales of all herbal remedies will need to be licensed by the Government. But until then, the foundation said, “the provenance of many herbal remedies is unclear, particularly those bought over the internet and even those found in some health-food outlets”.
Cathy Ross, a Cardiac Nurse at the charity, said: “This review highlights the problem of increasing numbers of people taking herbal medicines assuming that natural or herbal implies that they are safe.
“Many commonly used herbal or natural preparations including St John’s wort and Ginkgo will interact with medicines commonly prescribed to treat heart and circulatory disease and should be avoided.
“Everyone should discuss with their doctor all other remedies that they are taking or wish to take.”
Alternative therapy degree attack
S A D
Branches of Boots carry shelves of remedies
Lies, damn lies and 'counterknowledge'
Israel feels under siege. Like a victim. An underdog
Robert Fisk - The Independent
Anyone who is anyone in Israel will come to Herzliya this week for a conference about the state of the Jewish nation. Our correspondent joined them and found a climate of unprecedented insecurity – and paranoia
So the propaganda war is on. Forget Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the 15,000 Lebanese and Palestinian dead. Forget the Sabra and Shatila massacre that same year by Israel's militia allies as their troops watched. Erase the Qana massacre of 1996 – 106 Lebanese killed by Israeli shellfire, more than half of them children – and delete the 1,500 in the 2006 Lebanon war. And forget, of course, the more than 1,300 Palestinians slaughtered by Israel in Gaza last year (and the 13 Israelis killed by Hamas at that time) after Hamas rockets fell on Sderot. Israel – if you believe the security elite of Israel's right wing here in Herzliya – is now under an even more dangerous, near-unprecedented attack.
Britain – this came yesterday from Israel's ambassador in London, no less – is "a battlefield" in which Israel's enemies wish to "de-legitimise" the 62-year-old Jewish state.
Even Israel's erstwhile friend, that fine Jewish judge Richard Goldstone, is now, in the words of one of Israel's staunchest American-Jewish supporters, Al Dershowitz, an "absolute traitor to the Jewish people" and "an evil, evil man". (Headlines for this, of course, in Israel yesterday.)
Israel under siege. That was the dreary, familiar, hopelessly misunderstood theme at the 10th annual Herzliya conference of diplomats, Israeli civil servants, military gold braid and government yesterday.
Israel the underdog. Israel the victim. Israel whose state-of-the-art, more-moral-than-any-other army was now in danger of seeing its generals arraigned on war crimes charges if they set foot in Europe.
Heaven forbid that Israeli officers should ever be accused of atrocities! The Jerusalem Post yesterday carried a photograph of Kadima leader Tzipi Livni looking at a Krakow poster abusing her as "wanted for war crimes in Gaza". Forget that she did nothing as Foreign Minister when the Israelis rained phosphorus on Gaza. This whole judicial attack on Israel was an abuse, a deliberate use of international law to de-legitimise the state of Israel – like all the other condemnation of Israel. Would that it was. This current identity crisis is indeed a tragedy for Israel – though not in the way that its right-wing government now suggests.
I remember all too well how, after the disastrous Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, a huge London conference sought to find out how Israeli "propaganda" failed. Never mind the slaughter of the Lebanese and the growing Israeli military casualties. How come Israel's message didn't get across? How come the anti-Semitic press was allowed to get away with such calumny? It was an identikit forum to this week's Herzliya confab.
Today we must forget Operation Cast Lead against Gaza and its savage casualties. We must condemn the Goldstone Report for its unspeakable lies – that the army of good may have committed war crimes against the terrorists of evil – and realise that Israel only wanted peace.
In reality, Israel has made a series of terrible diplomatic mistakes. I'm not talking about the humiliation heaped on the Turkish ambassador by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon – he, too, was at Herzliya. I'm not referring to the preposterous complaints by Ron Prossor, the Israeli ambassador to Britain, that in times of crisis there was "a cacophany of voices from Israel", rather than a single voice.
No, Israel's gravest mistake in recent years was to refuse to contribute to Goldstone's report on the 2008-09 slaughter in Gaza. A "foolish boycott", the daily Haaretz called it. A disaster, according to Israel's liberal left, who rightly spotted that it placed Israel on the level of Hamas.
I have sat through hours of the Herzliya conference – it ends with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cheerleading for the masses tomorrow night – and the Goldstone Report and the fear of "de-legitimisation" has run like a thread through almost every debate.
I sat next to an Israeli PhD student yesterday who shook his head in despair. "I and my friends are filled with terrible disappointment when we hear these statements from our government. What can we say? What can we do?" It was an enlightening comment. Is this not what millions of British people said when Tony Blair took them to war on a sheaf of lies in 2003?
One of the most distressing moments at Herzliya came when Lorna Fitzsimons, former Labour MP and now head of Bicom, a British-based pro-Israeli think-tank, pointed out that "public opinion does not influence foreign policy in Britain. Foreign policy is an elite issue." Deal with the elite, and the proles will follow – that was the implication. "Our enemies are going out to international courts where we are not supreme," she said.
And that, in a sense, said it all. International legitimacy is what Israel demands. And as a state it is legitimate. It was voted into existence by the United Nations. And, as the Israeli historian Avi Shlaim has said, its creation may not have been just – but it was legitimate. Yet when an international juridical team invited Israel to participate in its inquiries, Mr Netanyahu smugly refused.
In this sense, the Gaza war proved what is so deeply troubling about the current Israeli body politic. It wants the world to recognise its democracy – however flawed this may be – but it will not join the world when asked to account for its behaviour in Gaza.It claims to be a light among the nations but will not let anyone look too closely at that light, to examine its fuel and to look precisely at what it illuminates.
Goldstone, Goldstone, Goldstone. The eminent lawyer who so bravely sought justice for the murdered and raped victims of the Serbs in the Bosnian war – and whose bravery inspired the world, including Israel, at that time – has been on the lips of every Israeli government apologist at Herzliya.
Tzipi Livni spoke of him. So did Yossi Gal, the Israeli foreign affairs ministry director-general. He spoke of the "attempt to use the Goldstone Report to push Israel to the margins of legitimacy". So did Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations. He noted that the US administration had been "overwhelmingly responsive" – ie dismissive – of the Goldstone Report. Even the mouse-like US ambassador to Israel, James Cunningham, suggested that the Goldstone Report might be used as an attempt to de-legitimise Israel.
What is this nonsense? After the 1982 massacre of Sabra and Shatila Palestinians, Israel appointed a government commission of inquiry. The Kahan Commission's report was not perfect – but what other Middle Eastern nation would examine its sins so courageously? It stated that the then Defence Minister Ariel Sharon's responsibility – he had sent in the Lebanese militias – was "personal". This report did not expunge Israel's guilt but it proved that it was a worthy state, one that was prepared to confront this slaughter with honesty rather than abuse.
Alas, no Kahan Commissions for Israel today. No judgment for Gaza. Just a slap on the wrist for a couple of officers who used phosphorus and a criminal charge against a soldier for stealing credit cards.
As it happens, I met Goldstone after he was appointed head of the war crimes tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia in The Hague. A palpably decent, honest man, he said that the world had grown tired of allowing governments to commit war crimes with impunity. He was talking, of course, about Milosevic. He wrote a book on the same lines, warmly praised by Israel. But now he is the earthquake beneath Israel's legitimacy.
I dropped by the eminently sensible Israeli army reserve colonel Shaul Arieli at his NGO's office in Tel Aviv yesterday afternoon and discussed the attempts to arrest Israeli military officers for war crimes if they visited Britain and other European countries.
"All this is much more disturbing to us today than it was a few years ago," he said. "We are afraid of this trend after Operation Cast Lead. It affects the image of Israel all over the world, not just for military officers. If they were charged, it would show that the state of Israel couldn't protect its soldiers. I am sure that the Goldstone Report affects these things."
All of which suggests that the real earthquake beneath Israel, the real danger to its image and standing and legitimacy, is a nation called Israel.
Critics of Israel fuelling hatred
Standing against a tide of hatred - recent views on anti-semitism
Will Israel Die
Treasury loses as top earners dodge 50p tax
Suzy Jagger and Roland Watson - The Times
High earners will cost the public purse hundreds of millions of pounds through tax dodges as they avoid the new 50p rate of income tax, a minister indicated yesterday.
Lord Myners, the City Minister, said that the Treasury had “significantly reduced” its estimate of the revenue to be earned from the historic change.
He said that he believed that the new top rate, due to come into force this April, would still generate extra income from the wealthiest 2 per cent of the national workforce. But he cast doubt on whether the Treasury would pocket the £1.13 billion it has earmarked for 2010, and the £2.5 billion it hopes to raise in 2011. “We still believe it will be beneficial,” he said.
Lord Myners told peers that “behavioural consequences of the new higher rate of taxation” — shorthand for tax avoidance — had forced the Treasury to lower its expectations.
Treasury sources insisted that Lord Myners was only stating what the Government had already known and accounted for, that people would wriggle around the rules. But his comments, in answer to questions in the Lords, will refuel the controversy over Gordon Brown’s decision to abandon a manifesto pledge by increasing the top rate of tax from 40 per cent.
Mike Warburton, senior tax adviser at Grant Thornton, one of Britain’s biggest accounting firms, said that clients were pursuing four main ways to avoid paying half their salary in tax: bumping up this year’s pay; storing up pay in their firm to be drawn down at a later date; leaving the country; or choosing to pay it to charity rather than the taxman.
“People are taking obvious avoidance measures because they are not prepared to pay 50 per cent tax,” Mr Warburton said.
“People were prepared to pay 40 per cent but the Treasury don’t seem to understand what drives people. The minister has at last admitted that the 50 per cent tax rate was a blatantly political measure and not designed to raise new revenues. This is all to do with the politics of envy.”
Lord Myners said that there were “very small numbers of people” who appeared to have moved abroad as a result of the tax change.
He justified the change, saying: “It is a matter of meeting the finance requirements at a time when the public sector has a very large deficit. The broadest shoulders must quite rightly bear the greatest burden.”
The decision to impose the new 50p rate, announced by Alistair Darling last April, was a watershed moment for a Labour government that had made it a badge of honour not to increase income tax rates.
Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, and Lord Myners have both said that they are keen to reduce the 50 per cent top rate of tax once Britain’s £178 billion budget deficit has been significantly reduced and the country’s finances are put on a more stable footing.
One Treasury source said: “The Government has always clearly said that the projected yield from the higher rate was based on cautious assumptions and factored in behavioural changes.”
From April this year, the change means that any workers earning more than £150,000 a year will be subject to a 50 per cent top level of income tax. They will also lose their personal allowance once pay hits £100,000. This means that workers earning from about £100,000 to £125,000 will pay an effective tax rate of 60 per cent.
Both Labour and the Tories have indicated that the 50p tax rate could not be reduced immediately because the public finances are so precarious.
The looming introduction of the tax, and the old Labour sentiments it arouses, come as Lord Mandelson has won an internal battle to fight the election campaign on a platform of aspiration rather than class war.
It's time to end tax breaks for the super-rich
Some business news at Sunday 17th January 2010
Economics and politcs
Our widening wealth gap
People should be forced to look after grandparents
to repay them for free childcare
Christopher Hope - Telegraph
Children should be forced to care for their elderly parents and grandparents, one of Britain's most senior family lawyers will say.
In a lecture, Baroness Deech will suggest it should be be enforced as a payback for the 'free' childcare support they provide.
She will say: “In return for all that grandparents do, should there not be an obligation to keep them, and to keep parents, and reciprocate the care that was given by them to children and grandchildren in their youth?”
Lady Deech, the chairman of the Bar Standards Board, which regulates the work of barristers, says the increasing number of working women means that more grandparents are being asked to provide free childcare.
She will say: “This places particular burdens on grandparents who may need to work themselves, but feel obliged to help out the younger generation.
“They are assuming burdens which deprive them of their own chance to continue to earn a living, and for which they are not compensated, and the childcare they give is no doubt at some cost to them.
“There is a dearth of affordable childcare and an attempt to meet it by conscripting grandmothers.”
Four out of five children receive some care from their grandparents, while five million grandparents spend three days a week caring for them, she says.
Seven out of 10 grandparents give financial support to their grandchildren while £470million is set aside every year into trust funds.
In the latest speech in a series on family law at Gresham College in London she will point to historical precedents for forcing children to care for their parents, such as the 400-year-old Poor Law.
This required sons to support their parents and grandparents throughout their lives, while for daughters the obligation only lasted until they married. This law was repealed in England and Wales in 1948, and in Scotland in 1985.
Lady Deech, a professor of law at Gresham College, will point out that legal obligations still exist in other countries, such as in France where there is “limited duty to support members of the wider family, known as l’obligation alimentaire”.
In Singapore, the Maintenance of Parents Act 1995 means that anyone aged over 60, who cannot maintain themselves adequately, “can apply for an order that their child should do so via periodical payments or a lump sum”.
Lady Deech warns that, with 20 per cent of pensioners in Britain living below the poverty line, the situation may worsen with “fewer earners to support the growing retired population”.
However she admits there are some problems with her idea as forcing children to care for their grandparents clashes with the state’s existing duty of care for older people.
She says it would also “give rise to arguments within families about the sharing of help and resources [and] might deprive older people of state benefits now available to them".
A legal obligation "would certainly become a burden on the women in the family, whose independence and career progression would take a setback”.
Lady Deech will also suggest granting the same tax rights to sisters who live together, as married and gay couples.
She will point to the example of two sisters Joyce and Sybil Burden from Wiltshire who lost a battle at the European Court of Human Rights in 2008.
Under current tax law, the surviving sister faced a £108,000 inheritance tax bill as soon as the other sister died.
She will say: “The sensible reform would be grant deferral of inheritance tax to any two family members who are co-dependent and… the option of civil partnership or marriage is not open to them.”
Campaigners welcomed the attempt to focus attention on the free childcare support which grandparents provide for free.
Michelle Mitchell, charity director for Age Concern and Help the Aged, said: “It's important families and society generally recognise and celebrate the valuable contribution they make.
"As hundreds of thousands of grandparents are taking on the role as full-time carer for their grandchildren, families must ensure
grandparents are not taking on unfair financial burdens, particularly in these tough economic times.
“The Government urgently needs to provide greater financial support for older people to ensure grandparents are not pushed into poverty through taking on caring responsibilities."
Baby Talk: The fuss about parenthood.
Family life in modern China
Care costs
Was swine flu ever a real threat?
Mark Honigsbaum - Telegraph
With one scientist alleging a World Health Organization 'conspiracy' that was a bonanza for drug firms, Mark Honigsbaum asks if H1N1 could have been handled differently.
It's been a good week for drug companies and an even better one for conspiracy theorists. Last Tuesday, angered by the bumper rise in profits being reported by vaccine manufacturers as the incidence of swine flu plummets, the former head of health at the Council for Europe accused the World Health Organization of "faking" the pandemic.
"It looks like the WHO is under the influence of industry," Dr Wolfgang Wodarg told a hearing in Strasbourg. "It was stated in panic-stricken terms that this was a flu that could threaten humanity. This is why billions of medications were bought."
Exhibit number one, says Dr Wodarg, is the WHO's decision to soften its definition of a pandemic last April, shortly before the emergence of the H1N1 virus. By eliminating the requirement that influenza pandemics should cause "enormous morbidity and death", the WHO provoked an unnecessary "scare" that conveniently triggered the activation of "sleeping" contracts with vaccine manufacturers. Yet since the WHO's declaration of a pandemic in June, swine flu has caused just 14,000 deaths worldwide – a fraction of the number who die from seasonal flu every year. This month, the Department of Health reported that cases had fallen to such a low rate that it was cancelling its weekly press briefings.
Like all conspiracy theorists, Wodarg started with the question "Cui bono?" and served up a plausible bad guy. For its part, the WHO vigorously denies the allegations and says Wodarg is "trivialising" what for millions of people has been a very serious problem.
So who is right? Was swine flu ever a genuine pandemic threat, or was it all a lot of (very expensive) fuss about nothing? And what are the lessons for the future? When, in late March, residents of La Gloria, in Mexico, began complaining of peculiar fevers, aches and sore throats, no one took much notice at first. The Mexican government, like the WHO, was focused on a different threat: bird flu. Following the re-emergence of the H5N1 avian virus in 2005, the WHO had drawn up a comprehensive pandemic plan, complete with a phased alert system, to be activated in the event that the virus, which had a mortality rate as high as 60 per cent, began spreading widely in human populations.
"The concern was that if bird flu suddenly went pandemic, it could trigger mortality on a massive scale," explains John Oxford, professor of virology at Barts and The London Hospital. "The last thing anyone was expecting at that point was a pig virus from Mexico."
It seems odd to recall now, but the massive stockpiles of Tamiflu which have come in for so much criticism were originally purchased for bird flu. Indeed, it wasn't until two Californian children developed flu-like illnesses in mid-April that officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta realised that a new swine flu virus was on the loose.
Scientists quickly began joining the dots, and when the CDC confirmed that the H1N1 subtype from the Californian cases was identical to a virus isolated from a five-year-old boy in the La Gloria outbreak, it automatically triggered a "phase five" alert.
At around the same time, the WHO published those new guidance notes, deleting the requirement that pandemic strains should cause "enormous morbidity and death". This was part of an ongoing review of how it should define a pandemic. Henceforth, all that would be required was "sustained" transmission in at least two different parts of the world at the same time. The result was that on June 11, when it became clear that swine flu had spread to more than 70 countries, the WHO had no option but to declare a pandemic.
But Wendy Barclay, professor of virology at Imperial College London, who was present at many of the meetings where the change of definition was discussed, says it is a "nonsense" to make out, as Wodarg does, that it was a conspiracy. "The timing was coincidental," she says. "The WHO was considering the change long before swine flu." And in view of the initial reports from Mexico, which suggested unusual mortality patterns among young adults, she believes the WHO was right to call for the fast-track manufacture of vaccines. "The drug companies should be applauded for delivering the vaccines in record time," she says.
Peter Openshaw, the director of the Centre for Respiratory Infection at Imperial College London, agrees with that verdict, pointing out that the fear at the time was that swine flu could prove as deadly as the 1918 "Spanish" influenza, another strain of H1N1 that killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide. Although he has reservations about the definition change, saying that pandemics should also be required to meet a "severity threshold", he argues that "on balance it would have been irresponsible not to have taken the measures we did".
Having said that, Prof Openshaw admits there are some things that should be done better next time. The Department of Health's prediction in July that as many as 65,000 Britons could die over the winter was wrong, because scientists did not have accurate data. Initial reports suggested the virus was less widespread than it was, artificially elevating the death rate. However, a study just published in The Lancet, based on more extensive tests conducted over the summer, shows that, at that time, as many as one in three people in Britain were carrying the virus, 10 times more than could be estimated from the data available from hospitals and surgeries. As a result, the fatality rate has now been downgraded to a paltry 0.03 per cent, meaning that swine flu is 100 times less lethal than Spanish flu. "What we didn't know at the time was that there were a large number of asymptomatic carriers," explains Prof Openshaw.
Having said that, swine flu has tended to target people between the ages of 15 and 45, a group not normally at risk from seasonal flu, which has, the experts say, fully justified the NHS's decision to provide early treatment with Tamiflu. In the United States, points out Prof Openshaw, those infected did not get antivirals until much later, and admissions of young adults to intensive care units have been far higher.
In fact, if anything, he believes we need to deliver antivirals and vaccines even faster next time – which is why he would like to see the NHS "iron out the bottlenecks" in its distribution system. That is a message seconded by Prof Oxford, who points to the "salutary" experience of Ukraine, where a huge surge in swine flu infections late last year brought the country's medical system to its knees and had politicians scrabbling for supplies of Tamiflu and vaccines.
Prof Oxford also warns that the winter flu season is by no means over, and that vaccination could prove vital if, as he expects, H1N1 returns next year. "Swine flu is behaving in classic Darwinian fashion," he says. "It has already displaced 99 per cent of the other flu viruses out there. My worry is that when it gets into the elderly next year, we could see many more deaths." So far there have been 390 deaths in the UK.
No doubt Wodarg and his supporters will see this as a further example of scaremongering. The issue, they say, is not whether swine flu poses a risk but whether the risk is big enough to justify the diversion of precious funds to influenza vaccines, when diseases such as heart disease and hypertension kill many more people each year. And the row is not likely to be resolved any time soon. Although the government is now holding talks with GlaxoSmithKline to find a way of disposing of 60 million unwanted doses of vaccine, analysts predict that it and other vaccine manufacturers stand to make windfall profits of around £4 billion.
Yet rather than looking for scapegoats, Prof Barclay says we should be grateful that the pandemic turned out to be so mild. "In many ways, swine flu has been a dress rehearsal," she says. "Next time, we may not be so fortunate."
Babies to get swine flu jab... even though it hasn't been tested
Swine Flu May Be Human Error; WHO Probes Scientist's Claim
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