Against anti-science.

Seldom has public perception been more out of line with the facts. The public in Britain and Europe seems unaware of the astonishing success of GM crops in the rest of the world. No new agricultural technology in recent times has spread faster and more widely. Only a decade after their commercial introduction, GM crops are now cultivated in 22 countries on over 100m hectares (an area more than four times the size of Britain) by over 10m farmers, of whom 9m are resource-poor farmers in developing countries. . .

The alleged risk to health from GM crops is still the main reason for public disquiet—something nurtured by statements by environmental NGOs, who in 2002 even persuaded the Zambian government to reject food aid from the US at a time of famine because some of it was derived from GM crops. This allegation of harm has been so soundly and frequently refuted that when it is repeated, the temptation is to despair. But unless the charge is confronted, contradicted and disproved whenever it is made, its credibility will persist. The fact is that there is not a shred of any evidence of risk to human health from GM crops. Every academy of science, representing the views of the world's leading experts—the Indian, Chinese, Mexican, Brazilian, French and American academies as well as the Royal Society, which has published four separate reports on the issue—has confirmed this. Independent inquiries have found that the risk from GM crops is no greater than that from conventionally grown crops that do not have to undergo such testing. In 2001, the research directorate of the EU commission released a summary of 81 scientific studies financed by the EU itself—not by private industry—conducted over a 15-year period, to determine whether GM products were unsafe or insufficiently tested: none found evidence of harm to humans or to the environment.

Whenever I hear some wanker claim that those on the right, Republicans in the USA, are waging a war against science or some such thing, I wonder how they can be so blind. It isn't as if those on the left, Democrats in the USA, are any better. In fact, they have been at it longer and do their war more comprehensively. Between the two factions quite a lot of science is simply ignored in service of nonsensical political objectives.

Speaking of Long Waves . . .

The Kyoto Protocol is a symbolically important expression of governments' concern about climate change. But as an instrument for achieving emissions reductions, it has failed1. It has produced no demonstrable reductions in emissions or even in anticipated emissions growth. And it pays no more than token attention to the needs of societies to adapt to existing climate change. . .

Kyoto has failed in several ways, not just in its lack of success in slowing global warming, but also because it has stifled discussion of alternative policy approaches that could both combat climate change and adapt to its unavoidable consequences. As Kyoto became a litmus test of political correctness, those who were concerned about climate change, but sceptical of the top-down approach adopted by the protocol were sternly admonished that "Kyoto is the only game in town". . .

Already, in the post-Kyoto discussions, we are witnessing that well-documented human response to failure, especially where political or emotional capital is involved, which is to insist on more of what is not working . . .

See Unanimous Fallacies for more discussion of the Concorde fallacy, the inability to abandon projects in which much has been invested, and which would disrupt hard won group consciousness. We need a 12 step program for Kyoto advocates.

Misunderstanding the free rider problem.

This phenomenon, known as the free rider problem, is ubiquitous whenever you have a combination of a public good and the need for collective action. Researchers have thought a lot about how groups can get around the problem. . .

A couple of weeks ago the U.N. Security Council unanimously declared its abhorrence for the military clampdown in Burma against Buddhist monks campaigning for human rights and democracy. The conundrum, though, is why such unanimity rarely translates into action that makes any concrete difference.

"Everyone agreeing on something is not sufficient to cause action -- that's the free rider problem," said Stephen Gent, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

No, that's something else. The free rider problem is only tenuously connected to "public good" and "collective action", and only if it is twisted and tortured studiously. The reason it is difficult to take action against nations that abuse their subjects is purely political. Nations jockey for advantage against one another, and against their internal political opponents, with little or no regard for the suffering of strangers in other nations.

But Michael Barnett, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota and the author of "Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda," argues the problem is not collective inaction, but that most nations do not really care that much about repression in faraway places.

True.

Pot, kettle etc.

The cynical explanation for the persistence of the supply-side dogma is that it’s simply cover for cutting taxes for the rich. But the supply-side orthodoxy has flourished for other reasons, too. To begin with, the absurd idea that tax cuts pay for themselves is based on an idea that is not at all absurd, which is that tax rates can have an impact on people’s behavior. Increase taxes too much, and people may work less (since they get to keep less of the income they earn) and invest less (since their gains will be taxed more heavily), and so the economy will grow more slowly. The opposite can happen if you cut taxes. (How much of an impact tax rates have—and how high taxes have to get before they have an impact—is a subject of much debate in economics, but it’s inarguable that they do matter.) What supply-siders have done is start with that reasonable idea and extrapolate it to unreasonable lengths.

They’re aided in that extrapolation by the simple fact that the American economy grows over time. As a result, even if you cut taxes the federal government will eventually take in more tax revenue than it once did. And that allows supply-siders to fashion a spurious syllogism: taxes were cut in 2001, government revenues are higher in 2007 than they were in 2001, therefore the tax cuts increased revenue. The comparison that really matters in analyzing the impact of the tax cuts, of course, is not between government revenue in 2001 and government revenue in 2007. It’s the comparison between actual tax revenue in 2007 and what tax revenue would have been in 2007 had there been no tax cuts in 2001.

The fallacy here is assuming that it is possible to determine "what tax revenue would have been in 2007 had there been no tax cuts in 2001" since "tax rates can have an impact on people’s behavior". Over time these behavior changes can have profound and lasting consequences for economies, even altering the life course of those who grow up under a given tax regime. Extrapolating reasonable ideas to unreasonable lengths is ubiquitous in politics. Your task, Mr. Phelps, is to understand the messy complexity of simplified campaign slogans.

Victory Gardens

In our own country, it was a one-two punch of cataclysms – the Great Depression, followed by World War II — that brought Big Government to the United States and then consolidated its hold. The unprecedented economic collapse made traditional American attitudes of laissez faire and individual responsibility seem hopelessly outdated; by contrast, the frenetic activity of the New Deal, regardless of the decidedly mixed results, projected boldness and vigor and hope. The subsequent mass mobilization for total war reinforced the shift in political culture.

Those who long for the comparatively egalitarian 50s, with strong unions and limited individualism, should consider the steep price of such social conformity. It was based on disaster and maintained by oppression. No thanks, I'll pass on that.

Skimming life

Google's like the brain I never had, the knowledge I never acquired. Its continued existence seems utterly implausible. But so long as it's around, I don't need to really read anything. I just need to catalogue the existence of things I might one day read. I don't so much study web sites as scan for impressions, for markers, for key words I'll need if I want to return. I don't need the knowledge so much as a vague outline of what the knowledge is and how to get back. . .

It is easy for those of us in the business of punditry to overplay these phenomena; most of the world doesn't spend hours crawling through hundreds of web items, later to filter the content into connected themes publishable as blog posts. We are the few and the lucky. It is nonetheless clear that vast amounts of information are available cheaply and easily to anyone with an internet connection.

This is sufficient for punditry and snappy dinner conversation, but to learn new things, understand linked issues, and synthesize insightful approaches to current issues still requires a long slog through difficult material. It takes time and great energy to nudge the mind out of well worn grooves and so avoid merely repeating old errors. At some point you have to sit and read, then ponder and discuss, or you are doomed to confirming existing biases. Nothing is revealed.