Fish biomass 10 times greater than thought (and fish “fix” carbon dioxide from sea water)

February 8, 2014

A new paper suggests that the biomass of mesopelagic fish which dominate the total biomass of fish in the ocean is 10 times higher than previously assumed. Instead of being about 1,000 million tens the researchers suggest it could be 10,000 million tons or even more.

Fish are a critical link in the Carbon cycle and especially the removal – by “fixing” as carbonates – of the carbon dioxide in sea water. They act to neutralise acidity and increase alkilinity. The level of carbon dioxide dissolved in sea water itself affects the capacity of the ocean surface waters to absorb more carbon dioxide. A change – by a factor of 10 – in the fish biomass is a not insignificant change to the carbon fluxes through the ocean and to the carbon cycle.

Xabier Irigoien et al, Large mesopelagic fishes biomass and trophic efficiency in the open ocean. Nature Communications, 2014; 5 DOI:10.1038/ncomms4271

EurekAlert: With a stock estimated at 1,000 million tons so far, mesopelagic fish dominate the total biomass of fish in the ocean. However a team of researchers ….. has found that their abundance could be at least 10 times higher. The results, published in Nature Communications journal, are based on the acoustic observations conducted during the circumnavigation of the Malaspina Expedition. … Mesopelagic fishes, such as lantern fishes (Myctophidae) and cyclothonids (Gonostomatidae), live in the twilight zone of the ocean, between 200 and 1,000 meters deep. They are the most numerous vertebrates of the biosphere, but also the great unknowns of the open ocean, since there are gaps in the knowledge of their biology, ecology, adaptation and global biomass. 

… Xabier Irigoien, researcher from AZTI-Tecnalia and KAUST (Saudi Arabia) and head of this research, states: “The fact that the biomass of mesopelagic fish (and therefore also the total biomass of fishes) is at least 10 times higher than previously thought, has significant implications in the understanding of carbon fluxes in the ocean and the operation of which, so far, we considered ocean deserts”.

Mesopelagic fish come up at night to the upper layers of the ocean to feed, whereas they go back down during the day in order to avoid being detected by their predators. This behaviour speeds up the transport of organic matter into the ocean, the engine of the biological pump that removes CO2 from the atmosphere, because instead of slowly sinking from the surface, it is rapidly transported to 500 and 700 meters deep and released in the form of feces.

Irigoien adds: “Mesopelagic fish accelerate the flux for actively transporting organic matter from the upper layers of the water column, where most of the organic carbon coming from the flow of sedimentary particles is lost. Their role in the biogeochemical cycles of ocean ecosystems and global ocean has to be reconsidered, as it is likely that they are breathing between 1% and 10% of the primary production in deep waters”.

According to researchers, the excretion of material from the surface could partly explain the unexpected microbial respiration registered in these deep layers of the ocean. Mesopelagic fishes would act therefore as a link between plankton and top predators, and they would have a key role in reducing the oxygen from the depths of the open ocean.

The mechanisms by which fish create carbonates and contribute to the “fixing” of carbon dioxide is through feces.

Fish feces reduce ocean CO2 levels

 .. when fish drink seawater they excrete calcium as calcium carbonate — a chalky substance that can make seawater more alkaline and diminish the carbon dioxide in the water. ….. the bulk of the world’s fish species, excluding sharks and rays, produced the carbonate to counter the salt they ingested in seawater. The carbonate binds to the salt and is expelled as pellets, which dissolve in the ocean. … (We) knew before that something in the water was producing carbonate, but believed it came from other sources, such as microscopic marine plankton near the bottom of the food chain. But (we) didn’t understand why they were seeing so much of the carbonate at shallower depths. ……. most conservative estimates suggest three to 15 per cent of the oceans’ carbonates come from fish, but this range could be up to three times higher.

File:Oceanic divisions.svg

Oceanic divisions (Wikipedia)

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Posted in Animals, Oceans, Wildlife | Comments Off on Fish biomass 10 times greater than thought (and fish “fix” carbon dioxide from sea water)

Great Lakes ice cover approaching highest levels for twenty years

February 8, 2014

The Great Lakes ice cover on 7th February had reached 78% and will continue increasing in the coming days – at least until the 3rd week of February (Source: NOAA).

Gl Ice 7th February 2014 NOAA

Gl Ice 7th February 2014 NOAA

Having a high ice cover is apparently a “good thing” . Jeff Masters writes:

The increased ice coverage on the Great Lakes this winter is good news for water levels on the lakes, which are still struggling to recover from some record lows recorded at this time last year. During January 2013, water levels on Lake Michigan and Lake Huron fell to their all-time lowest values since record keeping began in 1918, 29 inches below the long-term average. While the water levels recovered substantially during 2013, which was one of the wettest years in Michigan’s history, water levels were still a foot below average at the beginning of 2014. The above average ice cover this winter will reduce evaporation from the Great Lakes, keeping water loss lower than in recent winters. 

I suppose one can have too much of a good thing and that being completely frozen for too long a time is not a “good thing”.

Historically the ice cover is approaching the highest levels seen for over 20 years. (From Canadian Ice Service)

Great Lakes Ice february 4th 2014 - Canadian Ice Service

Great Lakes Ice february 4th 2014 – Canadian Ice Service

If there is a global warming (or global cooling) signal in this chart – I can’t see it. The natural variations are of an amplitude which hides any such signal – if it exists. Whenever weather observations – however extreme – are still within the envelope of what has been observed before it only shows that such observations are not unprecedented and must be taken as to be within natural variations. And if what is observed has also been observed before the industrial revolution – say 200 years ago – then industrialisation cannot be blamed.

Meteorologist Mark Torregrossa writes:

Ice continued to build this past week on the Great Lakes due to the cold air and temperatures staying below freezing, and Lake Superior’s new record shows it.

The lake is 92 percent frozen, toppling a 20-year-old record of 91 percent set on Feb. 5, 1994. That statistic helped total Great Lakes ice cover soar, and we can expect to see more form in coming days.

The air temperatures this past week averaged around five degrees below normal for the Great Lakes area. This amount of deviation from normal means it was a fairly cold week.

….. 

Lake Superior

Lake Superior is almost frozen over as of yesterday February 5, 2014. Lake Superior is 92 percent covered with ice now. The ice has increased rapidly in the past week, from 76 percent ice cover on January 30, 2014. The high resolution satellite picture from February 3, 2014 shows all of the ice cover on Lake Superior. The current ice cover on Lake Superior is the highest amount ever for February 5. In 1994, Lake Superior was reportedly 91 percent covered in ice.

Lake Michigan

Lake Michigan is now 51 percent covered with ice, as opposed to 42 percent at this time last week. Coyotes were seen walking on the ice just offshore of Chicago this week. This makes us wonder if the lakes freeze over totally, will animals from Canada be able to cross over Lake Huron or Lake Superior, and enter Michigan. It is thought that this is how the last wolverine spotted in Michigan made it into Michigan. Lake Michigan has been covered with more ice on this date in the past. In 1977 and 1996, Lake Michigan was up to 74 percent ice covered.

Lake Huron

Ice cover on Lake Huron rocketed up an additional 14 percent this week, climbing to a total ice cover of 86 percent. If the ice continues to build at that rate in this next week, Lake Huron could be almost frozen over, or frozen over by the end of next week. People ice fishing are reporting 24 inches of ice on Saginaw Bay near Bay City. Lake Huron has been as much at 95 percent covered in ice on this date back in 1981 and 1994.

Lake Erie

Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, with an average depth of 62 feet and a maximum depth of 210 feet. It also has the least volume of any Great Lake, with 116 cubic miles of water. So it should come as no surprise that Lake Erie currently has the highest percentage of ice cover. Lake Erie is 96 percent covered with ice. Last week at this time Lake Erie had 94 percent ice cover. Erie was entirely ice covered on February 5, 1996.

Lake Ontario

Lake Ontario is an interesting lake. It is the smallest Great Lake when it comes to surface area, but actually holds more than three times the amount of water when compared to Lake Erie. The average depth of Lake Ontario is 283 feet, making it the second deepest Great Lake behind Lake Superior. The deepest spot in Lake Ontario is 802 feet. The ice cover on Lake Ontario is the lowest of any of the Great Lakes, with only 32 percent covered in ice. Last week at this time, Lake Ontario had 27 percent ice cover. Lake Ontario has been covered with as much as 79 percent ice up to this point in the winter in 1994.

 

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Posted in Climate, Weather, Winter | 1 Comment »

Academic backstabbing, misconduct, conspiracy and much, much more at Purdue University

February 7, 2014

The Purdue University School of Nuclear Engineering is the unlikely location for a tangled, sordid tale which I cannot make much sense of.

Professor Rusi Taleyarkhan is either a somewhat naive victim of a nasty conspiracy or he is guilty of academic misconduct and has received his just deserts. But his primary anatgonist was Professor Lefteri Tsoukalas once the head of the School of Nuclear Engineering but who was forced to resign as head by Purdue. Purdue removed Taleyarkhan’s endowed professorship, reduced his salary, and limited his duties with students. There is a murky connection between a journalist Eugenie Reich and Tsoukalas while Reich was promoting her book about scientific misconduct and there was some form of cooperation between them and a number of others to accuse Taleyarkhan.

Once I got this far I gave up.

There is quite obviously a great deal of muck in the Purdue University School of Nuclear Engineering. The University is probably vacillating between support for the warring academics. The role of  the journalist is what adds to the possibility of a nasty conspiracy.

It seems too tawdry to waste much time on though, of course, some careers are being destroyed and someone is – or both are – indulging in defamation.

The New Energy Times has a whole series of articles on the subject. They seem to feel that Talayarkhan has been badly wronged. This article in TwoCircles also takes that position. Tsoukalas puts his position in a letter provided to the New York Times (in 2007).

Oh what a tangled web they weave. It’s all about low-energy, table-top fusion — so it is all probably a hurricane in a thimble. I cannot help observing that cold fusion and claims of misconduct generally seem to go hand-in-hand!

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Nuland rant indicates heavy US advice to (or direction of) Ukraine opposition

February 7, 2014

For once it was not the NSA bugging some European leader. Presumably it was the Russians bugging US diplomats. Victoria Nuland the US diplomat for European and Eurasian affairs reportedly said ‘Fuck the EU’ while speaking of the Ukraine crisis with the US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. 

Марионетки Майдана

I will not be surprised if this recording disappears from You Tube if the US applies pressure – through the horse has bolted.

The US like many others may be frustrated with the EU but what is fairly clear is that the US is very actively advising – if not directing – the Ukraine opposition.The modern version of the Great Game being played out in Syria and Ukraine.

BBC: A voice resembling that of Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland refers to the EU using a graphic swear word, in a conversation apparently with to the US ambassador to Ukraine. The US said Ms Nuland had “apologised for these reported comments”.

The EU and US are involved in talks to end months of unrest in Ukraine. …. 

Russia has been widely accused of intervening in Ukraine, using its economic clout to persuade Mr Yanukovych to abandon closer ties with Brussels. Russia has itself accused Washington and the EU of meddling in Ukraine. 

The 4min 10sec video was entitled “Maidan’s puppets” in Russian – a reference to the square in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, where pro-EU protests have been held for months. A transcription of the whole conversation was also posted in Russian.

At one point, the female speaker mentions the UN and its possible role in trying to find a solution to the Ukraine stand-off.

She says: “So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and have the UN help glue it and you know…” she then uses the graphic swear word about the EU.

The male replies: “We’ve got to do something to make it stick together, because you can be pretty sure that if it does start to gain altitude the Russians will be working behind the scenes to try to torpedo it.”

The two officials also discuss frankly the merits of the three main Ukrainian opposition leaders – Vitaly Klitschko, Arseniy Yatseniuk and Oleh Tyahnybok.

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Is PwC plagiarising Andreff’s Sochi Olympic result predictions?

February 7, 2014

In November last year I posted about this paper which used economic factors to develop a model for Olympics medal results and then used the model to predict medals won at the Sochi Winter Olympics starting today. Today Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) have with great fanfare made their predictions for the winter Olympics. In their press release they make no mention of this earlier paper

W Andreff, Economic development as major determinant of Olympic medal wins: predicting performances of Russian and Chinese teams at Sochi Games, in Int. J. Economic Policy in Emerging Economies, 2013, 6, 314-340.

The PwC predictions are slightly different but remarkably similar to the results published by Andreff. They claim to have looked at the same factors as Andreff did. They make the same prediction of home advantage for Russia as Andreff did. I don’t have access to their full report but their press release makes absolutely no reference to the earlier paper and seeks to take credit for the analysis. If their report makes no acknowledgement of the work by Andreff then it does look very much like plagiarism by PwC. Even if their “econometric” model has been developed independently, it is still a plagiarism of ideas if an acknowledgement of Andreff’s analysis has not been made.

Andreff Result Predictions:

Medal predictions Sochi 2014 - M Andreff

Medal predictions Sochi 2014 – M Andreff

PWC Medal Predictions

PWC sochi predictions

PWC sochi predictions

Press Release via ConsultantNews:

London, 31 Jan 2014As with the Summer Olympics, home advantage could play a key part in how the Winter Olympics medals are shared out next month – with hosts Russia looking set to capture a record haul.

But the hosts – along with close rivals Germany, Canada, Austria and Norway – will have their work cut out to catch the US team. Further down the table, after their London 2012 Olympics success, the GB team may have to settle for just a couple of medals. And unfortunately the cool Jamaican bobsled team don’t even make it into the running. 

Once again, economists at PwC have used their skills to project the likely medal tally – this time for the Olympic Winter Games at Sochi starting on 7 February. Their analysis is based on econometric modelling, testing the historic correlation between a range of socio-economic metrics and historic medal success.

The modelling results show that the size of the economy is significant in determining success, with total GDP appearing as a significant variable. However, a large economy is not sufficient on its own for a strong performance. Climate is an important factor, with snow coverage and the number of ski resorts per head having a significant and positive impact on medal shares.

Larger, developed countries with the right climate dominate the top of the projected medals table; but Austria and Norway demonstrate that a smaller economy is not a barrier to success, with a greater estimated medal haul than countries such as China and France.

William Zimmern, PwC economist, said: “While this is a light-hearted analysis, it makes an important point of how organisations can use economic techniques to help make better business decisions. The purpose of our model is not to forecast medal totals with complete accuracy, but rather to increase the predictive power of medal projections over and above using historic medal results alone.

The model allows us to make better, more confident and more informed forecasts. Businesses can use similar techniques to do the same.”

Home advantage – PwC

We used regression analysis to produce the results in Table 1, employing a Tobit model to estimate medal share for the 28 countries which have won at least one medal in the last three Winter Olympics. The variables used were total GDP, ski resorts per head, level of snow coverage, medal shares in the previous two Winter Olympics, and dummies for countries with a “tradition” of winter sports and for host countries.

I have worked with PwC many times during my career. They are very effective but they are not slow in trying to take credit wherever they can – even if it is undeserved. And their ethics are generally as lacking as is endemic in their industry (audit/consultancy).  A little bit of plagiarism by PwC – and not for the first time – would not be a great surprise.

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Posted in Academic misconduct, Business, Sport | 1 Comment »

Wind Turbines by xkcd (but who will be Don Quixote?)

February 6, 2014

Among xkcd‘s better ones.

Alternative Energy Revolution

Alternative Energy Revolution

But who can take the role of Don Quixote?

and will he repair the turbines or just kill them all off?

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Intrusive ads are counter-productive – at least with me

February 6, 2014

I must be representative of some consumers since I do buy stuff.

I even buy quite a lot of stuff on-line. Tickets of any kind (theatre, airline, museum, train, football, hockey bus ……), books, music, electrical and electronic gadgets and a host of small articles capable of being delivered by post. We book hotels on-line and sometimes pay on-line as well. We generally don’t buy food or clothes on-line but we do sometimes (at least my wife does) respond to the flyers dropped into our letter box by local retailers. Nearly all automotive products or materials for house repairs are bought physically and not on-line though we may have searched on-line.

But what I observe is that when I buy-on line it is from sites that I know or for which I have searched on-line. Never by clicking on an ad at another site. Even when I search I always hop over the paid ads which show up at the top of the search results. For a store to show up in a search result is much more important in getting my custom than in their advertising having been seen on another site. I cannot recall a single instance in the last year of buying something in response to an on-line ad. But what I also observe is that there is some threshold level of intrusiveness which leads me to remove sites from my bookmarks. If a site directs me first to full-page ads which I have to click away – and especially if they make it difficult to find the “close” button – then those sites get removed from my bookmark lists. I don’t watch videos on-line if their ads don’t disappear within 5 seconds. If my mouse, when hovering over text, brings up too many intrusive ads then the entire site gets onto my “black-list”. I don’t mind registering for some services at some sites but if that process takes longer than about 30 seconds (perhaps a minute) then that site never gets visited again.  Of course it could be that some of the on-line ads are having a subliminal effect and reinforce my perceptions when I search for on-line stores – but it is not very likely.

Even on TV and especially since the break for commercials is so long (in Sweden a commercial break lasts 6 minutes and there are not many ads of high quality), the commercial break either leads me to surf other channels or to go do something else. In the last year or two I notice that there are more TV programmes that I watch only up to the first commercial break because I then go and do something else and never get back in time to watch the rest of the programme. If it is a sporting or political event, then I may well return to the programme – after the commercial break. In any event the people paying vast sums for making and airing the commercials do not capture my attention. If anything they create a resentment in me since I am either a “captive audience” or am being coerced to view their “nonsense”. And it is the resentment which leads to the content being classified in my mind as “nonsense”. I never watch TV shopping channels but they clearly don’t have me as their target audience. The very existence of the commercials is leading me to strategies to avoid them!

My behaviour is surely influenced by the presence of ads on-line and commercials on TV. However, the behaviour engendered in me is nearly always counter-productive from the viewpoint of the advertiser. Maybe I am an untypical consumer – but I doubt it.  Which makes me wonder how effective some of this advertising is?

Certainly advertising agencies and the industry in general will never admit that there can be too much advertising. They get paid for exposure (or apparent exposure) and not for sales achieved. They don’t suffer any penalty for resentment caused or customers driven away. But I would suggest that there is a threshold – very low in my case – at which on-line advertising and commercials on TV become counter-productive.

I get virtually no text ads on my phone. I stopped using Facebook and Twitter some months ago so at least I am not harassed by their ads. But from what I hear, the intrusiveness of the ads on the social media are now leading to some people reducing their use and, in some cases, ending their use of social media. Social media and their business models are still evolving but the assumption that advertising revenues can keep increasing forever is fundamentally flawed.

BBC: Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

Microblogging site Twitter has reported a net loss of $645m (£396m) for 2013, just three months after its flotation on the New York Stock Exchange. The loss was expected by analysts, who highlighted Twitter’s revenues, which rose 110% last year to reach $665m.

But a reported slow growth in user numbers was a bigger concern for investors. Twitter averaged 241 million monthly users in the last quarter of the year, up just 3.8% on the previous quarter. That represents a slowdown compared with a growth rate of 10% seen at the beginning of 2013. Timeline views were down nearly 7%, suggesting users were refreshing their feeds less often.

“What this report will do is it will question how mainstream is Twitter as a platform,” said Arvind Bhatia, an analyst at Sterne, Agee & Leach.

Shares fell as much as 12% in after-hours trading on Wednesday.

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Posted in Behaviour, Business, Media | 1 Comment »

Queensland switches back to coal

February 5, 2014

Once upon a time Australia had among the lowest electricity costs in the world but that was in the days where the market was not distorted by carbon taxes, mandatory renewable energy targets and subsidies for solar power. Coal prices are declining while gas prives are rising. This from The Australian as Queensland goes the way of Germany:

QUEENSLAND’S largest power generator will today declare that Australia is one of the world’s most expensive countries for energy and warn that the electricity market is being distorted by the carbon tax, mandatory renewables target and solar-rooftop subsidies.

After Stanwell took the extraordinary step yesterday of announcing it would mothball its biggest gas-fired power station and resurrect a coal facility built in the 1980s – sparking predictions that gas-fired power plants would be withdrawn in other states – it will today call for a scaling back of the renewable energy target.

Before the introduction of the carbon tax, the RET scheme and solar feed-in tariffs, the abundance of coal had made Australia a source of low-cost electricity, the company will say. “These policies appear to have been implemented for ideological reasons with little analysis of the impact on electricity prices and economic growth,” Stanwell chief executive officer Richard Van Breda will say.

Stanwell will issue its warnings as part of its submission to the federal government’s energy white paper, being developed by Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane.

The submission will caution that a raft of energy policies is eroding Australia’s competitiveness in manufacturing, which is a sensitive issue for the government amid internal tensions over taxpayer handouts to businesses, including SPC Ardmona.

Yesterday, Stanwell revealed it would withdraw its Swanbank E power station, near Ipswich west of Brisbane, from service for up to three years from October so it could sell the gas rather than use it in electricity generation. …….. A unit at the Tarong coal power station – in cold storage since late 2012 – will be returned to service later this year.

….. Germany is shifting back to more coal-fired electricity generation, reopening some of its dirtiest brown-coalmines that have been closed since reunification, despite having spearheaded Europe’s push into renewable energy. China has plans to add another 860 million tonnes of coal production by 2015. ………  

Stanwell’s energy white paper submission will raise concerns that the surge in rooftop solar panels has increased the capacity of the market, making cheaper coal-fired power stations run less efficiently. It says solar feed-in tariffs (state government schemes) have resulted in high ongoing costs for network infrastructure. …

 

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Posted in Australia, Coal, Energy, Gas | 2 Comments »

Putin’s Sochi is “ready” but journalists are missing their basic luxuries!

February 5, 2014

Putin’s winter games open in Sochi on Friday and journalists have started arriving. But Putin is probably a little indignant that they are nowhere near as hardy as he is and expect all manner of luxuries ranging from

View image on Twitter

Twitter image Harry Reekie @CNN

  • one room per person (Putinities can manage with 11/room)
  • curtains
  • toilet paper
  • heating
  • internet
  • elevators that work
  • running water
  • hotel lobbies
  • reception desk
  • water safe to wash in
  • water safe to drink
  • flooring
View image on Twitter

Twitter image @wyshynski

Reuters: Russian officials have declared Sochi ready for the Games, on which President Vladimir Putin has staked his and his country’s reputation. But days before they open on Friday, the organizers acknowledge that not all the new hotels are ready, despite the Games’ $50-billion price tag. ……. 

macho putin

Although no athletes are affected, officials from two countries said they were turned away when they arrived at night in Krasnaya Polyana because their hotels were not ready. They too have been temporarily moved elsewhere.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has urged the Russian organizers to sort out the problems quickly and says only about three percent of the newly built accommodation – around 700 rooms – are not ready for guests.

Macho Putin is not impressed by these namby-pamby types. 

Related posts:

Sochi Winter Olympics: Champions of Corruption

Economic model predicts Olympic medals at 2014 Sochi winter games

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Give all your students an A+ and lose your job

February 4, 2014
Denis Rancourt

Denis Rancourt

Denis Rancourt is a recognised researcher and he may even be an excellent physics teacher for all I know. But he either suffers from wanting to be a “martyr” for the cause of “no competition in education” or is just plain lazy and couldn’t be bothered to go to the trouble of grading his students.

I am inclined to believe it is the latter together with a desire for the limelight.

Ottawa citizen:

Denis Rancourt has lost his bid to reclaim his job as a professor at the University of Ottawa. ….  arbitrator Claude Foisy concluded he had no reason to intervene in the university’s 2009 decision to fire Rancourt, then a tenured physics professor, for defying its orders to grade his students objectively.

The university dismissed Rancourt after he awarded A+ marks to all 23 students who completed an advanced physics course he taught in the winter of 2008. The university had earlier issued him a letter of reprimand for awarding A+ marks to virtually everyone in a first-year physics course he gave in 2007. As well, Rancourt’s dean, the late André Lalonde, gave him “clear and unequivocal direction” in March 2008 that he must not grant every student in his courses a grade of A+ based only on their attendance at class.

Rancourt, ……  testified that he’d come to believe that traditional methods of teaching and evaluating physics students were ineffective. Learning physics, he said, must be anchored in self-motivation. Key to his “student-centred” pedagogical method, he testified, was allowing students to learn free of the stress produced by the traditional method of grading and ranking.

…… Foisy noted that the university had opposed Rancourt’s evaluation method “every step of the way.” Lalonde testified that it would undermine the university’s reputation, causing it to be seen as a “Mickey Mouse university,” and was prejudicial to students graded in the traditional manner.

Foisy agreed, even accepting Lalonde’s characterization of Rancourt’s failure to objectively evaluate his students as “a form of academic fraud. This, in my opinion, is a very serious breach of his obligations as a university professor.”

Even though Rancourt was “well aware” of the university’s opposition to his method of evaluation, “he continued to defy the administration,” Foisy said. “Is the dismissal the appropriate remedy in the circumstances? The short answer is yes.”

The arbitrator rejected arguments that Rancourt’s teaching methods were protected by academic freedom, freedom of expression and his tenure status.

“Academic freedom is not so wide as to shield a professor from actions or behaviour that cannot be construed as a reasonable exercise of his responsibilities,” he said.

Foisy did uphold one of Rancourt’s grievances, ordering the university to remove any mention of a disciplinary letter dated Nov. 20, 2007, from Rancourt’s record. The letter blamed Rancourt for not having taught the content of an approved course.

But he rejected Rancourt’s demands for a written apology, monetary reparations and help in partially recovering lost time and career advancement.

joanne st lewis

joanne st lewis

Rancourt is not a stranger to controversy.  He claims that he was fired for political reasons rather than for his teaching methods, but that does not seem to have cut much ice with the arbitrator. His own blog is here and there does seem to be a touch of paranoia. In fact reading his blog suggests he is more interested in publicity through controversy than actually in teaching. He is also being sued for libel by Joanne St. Lewis a Law Professor at the University of Ottawa, after Rancourt referred to her as university president Allan Rock’s “House Negro” on his blog.

From my own experience – though not in a classroom – it was always very difficult to get my managers to objectively grade the performance of their subordinates. Poor performance ratings in a department reflected also on the manager’s own competence. And in my experience it was the goodness of the manager which determined whether he got the balance right in the application of stress to improve the performance of his subordinates or if he went over the top and caused a burn-out. But I have no doubt that performance ratings – done right – improved performance in the work place.

And I am quite sure that much of the poor performance of students reflects on the teacher’s ability to teach. An element of competition and stress is – in my experience – necessary for learning.

Which leaves me without much sympathy for Denis Rancourt.

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