March 10, 2010
Peak Hype
Miserabilist doomers have added "peak phosphorus" to their strand of worry beads. Unremarked and unregulated by the United Nations and other high-level assemblies, the world’s supply of phosphate rock, the dominant source of phosphorus for fertilizer, is being rapidly — and wastefully — drawn down. By most estimates, the best deposits will be gone in 50 to 100 years. This is fortunate. No good can come of politicizing yet another factor of agricultural production by rent seekers and power mad parasites. The idea that "the best deposits" are finite is hardly news and of little significance since the definition of "best" depends on the methods used to mine them and the value of the material being mined. There are vast amounts of phosphate rock that are readily usable when the easiest deposits play out. They would be more expensive to use now, but the cost of mining them in future is speculative at best since technologies will be developed...
March 02, 2010
Groundhog Day
OK, it's more like groundhog decade or something, but I seem to be caught in a hard loop. Many current events are repeats of what has been going on for some time, and I've already said my piece. Fortunately, I forget the specifics after having ranted. Unfortunately, I sometimes stumble on some old post and realize that I have nothing new to say. I have argued repeatedly that scientists, science writers and the media in general as well as politicians that use doom scenarios as wedge issues are the cause of doubt, that they have ruined their own credibility, and that they must rehabilitate themselves by changing their behavior so that they can serve the useful social purpose of informing society. Shouting louder or seeking clever ways to disguise speculation doesn't overcome public distrust of science, it makes it worse. Gilland is wrong that there is "a reluctance to believe anything but scare stories", few believe them anymore than...
February 26, 2010
Bad Decisions
Here's an example of a mechanism of poor decision making. many of the climate modellers I spoke to were keen to point out that simulating the climate with more complex models may well lead to greater uncertainty about what the future holds. That’s because including sources of large feedbacks – such as forests that can expand or die or tundra that can release vast amounts of methane – adds a whole new suite of factors to which the climate can respond. So, it’s quite likely that the next IPCC report will have much larger error bars on its estimates of future temperature or precipitation, compared with AR4. Climatologist Jim Hurrell of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, who is heading up development of the NCAR Earth-system model, had this to say: “It's very likely that the generation of models that will be assessed for the next IPCC report will have a wider spread of possible...
February 22, 2010
Eco-Nonsense
Here's an example of the eco-nonsense that incites backlash. Yet his [Yvo de Boer] departure, is hardly the death knell for international negotiations. It is not proof that such talks are of no value or that the U.N. negotiating framework in place since 1992 should be abandoned. Even Copenhagen, messy as it was, brought rich and poor nations closer together than they had been. And more than 90 countries representing 83 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases promised, at least notionally, to reduce their emissions. Promised? Notionally? I'd say that this is indeed proof that such talks are of no value and that the U.N. negotiating framework in place since 1992 should be abandoned. Even before Copenhagen, global leaders were exploring parallel tracks. Former President George W. Bush brought together some of the big emitters, and President Obama has expanded on this idea with the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, a group of 17 countries that plans...
February 18, 2010
On Stilts
Here's an example of the sort of press release that any thinking science writer could and should rip to shreds. How do we as a society imagine our future? With social and natural environments changing, often quickly, it's difficult to imagine how our society might look a generation or more into the future. How can we then develop robust solutions for the sustainability challenges we face? Courses in sustainability offer insights; still sustainability science remains a developing field of study. We, as a society, do not exist. We are a diverse collection of communities in the lumpiest sense, but each of those communities is also internally diverse. The whole idea of developing robust solutions is nonsense which when examined in any depth turns out to be nothing but stealth advocacy for a narrow set of political preferences justified by sloppy thinking tarted up as science. The solutions are to be found with practitioners, who live, interact and decide in...
February 16, 2010
Aftermath
Thought races ahead of events, as it should, speculating about how the recent climate change scandals will affect policies. Some are concerned that momentum will be lost, the dust will settle, and business as usual will resume. The US media is diligently ignoring the subject in hopes that it will blow over soon, though the UK media has pursued the subject with more vigor. Some are drawing paralleles to the Michael Bellesiles scandal, though it looks more like a Kofi Annan scandal to me. The question then, is "what should we do?" Nothing. At least, in my opinion, we should continue to try to minimize the use of fossil fuels regardless. Burning coal and oil is filthy, and they’re more valuable as chemical feedstocks anyway. We should be building nuclear plants and pursuing efficiencies in the shorter term, while working on better solar (including orbital solar), wind, etc. power supplies for the longer term. That doesn’t mean “hairshirt” environmentalism,...
February 13, 2010
Malpractice
An example of the journalistic malpractice I've been harping about. Since the 1980s agriculture yields have grown in China, as has the nation's use of chemical fertilizers. In 2007, China consumed 32.6 million tonnes of nitrogen fertilizer, a 191% increase over 1981. . . The team's results show that extensive overuse has caused the pH of soil across China to drop by roughly 0.5, with some soils reaching a pH of 5.07 (nearly neutral soils of pH 6-7 are optimal for cereals, such as rice and grain, and other cash crops). By contrast, soil left to its own devices would take at least 100 years to acidify by this amount. . . The solution could be as simple as educating farmers. In Europe and the United States, fertilizer it is now used sparingly owing to an awareness of its environmental effects, including the pollution of rivers and lakes. But Chinese farmers are often unaware of the consequences of over-fertilization....
February 09, 2010
Post Normal
To continue the thread from Fixing Blame about the role of bloggers in the current series of scandals, see this post in which Roger cites a significant essay: Jerry Ravetz, a giant among scholars in the history and philosophy of science and someone who I am happy to call a friend and colleague, has written a thoughtful essay on the remarkable events that have unfolded in climate science of recent months. . . Jerry's article is thoughtful and worth your time. Jerry sends another strong message as well with his choice of venues where he chose to publish the essay. That venue, the What's Up With That? blog, has been persistently raking the muck spewed by politicized science and activists for some time. Ravetz observes: Politics will doubtless survive, for it is not a fiduciary institution; but for science the dangers are real. Climategate is particularly significant because it cannot be blamed on the well-known malign influences from outside...
February 08, 2010
Suicidal Scientists
The IPCC concerns are still simmering, maybe reaching a boil. I've been noticing a lot of comments on ag lists that are only tangentially involved in any of this but have a certain amount of chatty off-topic posts about life in general, including the climate scandals. And this old post from a year ago about Al Gore's abuse of weather events to advance his climate agenda and the reaction to that abuse by the scientific community . . . none . . . has being getting a flurry of hits. The delay in response is not unusual since there was a concerted effort to cover it all up, and I still expect the storm to pass with little permanent damage, but there are some telling events in the news. Goats will be sacrificed. Phil Jones, the University of East Anglia scientist whose stolen emails caused the worldwide ‘climate-gate’ kerfuffle, has told The Sunday Times he contemplated killing himself. ....
January 29, 2010
Diverse Slime
Grass fed beef and biochar aren't the only subjects mired in slime bag arguments. Environmentalism in general and climate change in particular are nothing but slime bag arguments by politicans and rent seekers. It's their business - or organized crime at least. It's their careers, what they do for pay and power. That doesn't mean that there are no legitimate controversies for all of these subjects or that there aren't honest arguments about unknowns as investigation ever so slowly proceeds, it just means that they are exploited by opportunists for gain. We can now add biodiversity to the list of hot slime subjects. The fundamental reason why e-mails were stolen last year from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit was . . . because climate change had reached such a fever pitch of political heat, and if it becomes evident that conserving biodiversity means changing lifestyles, those working in the field must expect debate to reach similar...
January 19, 2010
Life Lies
In Market Democracy I asserted that "there seems to be some insights burbling up in the infosphere that relate to the experts/expertise distinctions discussed in several earlier posts", but that more thought was needed. I'm still reading and thinking, lately about some old wisdom that is being regurgitated and chewed some more. In a review of Elena Gorokhova’s memoir of childhood in the Soviet Union, there’s a quote of her youthful realization about Communism: “The rules are simple…They lie to us, they know we know they’re lying, but they keep lying anyway, and we keep pretending to believe them.” Here in the gathering twilight of 21st Century America, the situation is hardly much different, with one exception: we seem to want the lies, we compete to outdo the power elite with our own tall tales, we luxuriate in the drowning filth of our fabulistic excesses. . . We lie to us, we know we’re lying, we know we know...
January 10, 2010
Political Ecology
In the spirit of Satiable Curiosity, which discussed just-growed stories. Lots of people have written about the collapse of the ancient Maya, often as some kind of "lesson" about how present-day society needs to change for its own survival. A recent theme, pushed by Jared Diamond in particular, but also others, has been that the Maya failed to manage natural resources sustainably. Their political structure couldn't deal with the growth of their population, and short-term decision-making led to ecological collapse. Well, it's easy enough to propose such a sweeping hypothesis, but devilishly hard to test it. And so it's easy to forget that it is just a hypothesis. in the work presented here, the authors’ analysis of a longer sediment core demonstrates that forest cover increased from A.D. 400 to A.D. 900, with arboreal pollen accounting for 59.8–71.0% of the pollen assemblage by approximately A.D. 780–980. The highest levels of deforestation are found about 900 B.C. when, at its...
December 30, 2009
Greater Goblins
We grow accustomed to our monsters, fearing them less over time. Familiarity breeds contempt. So, we continually invent new monsters, or at least shift focus to older and less familiar monsters in order to titillate ourselves. For example, as nuclear power and genetically modified organisms have lost their capacity to terrorize us we have shifted our fear reflexes to climate change and even come to see the old monsters as potential allies in the struggle against the new ones. Another monster that is currently being domesticated and harnessed for draft work is geoengineering. Rivers fed by melting snow and glaciers supply water to over one-sixth of the world's population--well over a billion people. But these sources of water are quickly disappearing: the Himalayan glaciers that feed rivers in India, China, and other Asian countries could be gone in 25 years. Such effects of climate change no longer surprise scientists. But the speed at which they're happening does. "The earth...
December 22, 2009
Glacial Myths
A few weeks ago there was some commentary about the Himalayan glaciers cock-up at the IPCC. The claim was that a paper had been given that predicted the melting of the glaciers by 2350. The IPCC cited the paper in one of its reports but messed up the date, claiming that it was 2035 rather than 2350. (What's a few centuries when there's so much money at stake?) I said: "I've been paying some attention to that, expecting someone to do a definitive analysis of the issue." This is the best so far as I know. It turns out that the 2035 value is not just wrong, but when confronted with the error, the IPCC leadership apparently has refused to look into, clarify or even admit that there may be a problem in its report. In a blog posting today John Nielsen-Gammon, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M, confirms claims first raised by J. Graham Cogley, a glaciologist in...
December 22, 2009
New Sheriff
The delusional are depressed. The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful "deal" so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. . . Why did China, in the words of a UK-based analyst who also spent hours in heads of state meetings, "not only reject targets for itself, but also refuse to allow any other country to take on binding targets?" The analyst, who has attended climate conferences for more than 15 years, concludes that China wants to weaken the climate regulation regime now "in order to avoid the risk that it might be called on to be more ambitious in a few years' time". . . Copenhagen was much worse than just another bad deal, because it illustrated a profound shift in global geopolitics. This is fast becoming China's century, yet its leadership has displayed that multilateral environmental governance is not only not a priority, but is viewed...
December 20, 2009
Post Toasties
In Post-Copenhagen: More Questions than Answers Roger says: On the US political right, I can find almost no reaction to Copenhagen, except for some minor musing on what it might mean for Senate consideration of cap-and-trade in the spring. I would expect to see some triumphalism at the perceived failure of the meeting, and I would doubt that there will be any positive takes (other than "we're happy that it failed"). . . Richard Black of the BBC has an insightful post that explains that even at the most basic technical level, those participating in the international process don't even know what Copenhagen means: It's hard to overstate the size of the mood change that's occurred over the last few months - even over the last two days. . . Does Copenhagen, then, mark not the beginning of a new global climate regime but the end of the vision of global, negotiated climate governance? Is it the end for...
December 18, 2009
Faking It
Governance is becoming more difficult while also getting worse. The trend for many decades has been to ever more oppressive and destructive governance, so it's almost encouraging that governance is also growing ever more difficult to do. Societies grow ever more fractious, stubbornly resistant to authority or control while remaining deeply concerned about the general state of things. As President Obama arrives in Copenhagen hoping to seal an elusive deal on climate change, his approval rating on dealing with global warming has crumbled at home and there is broad opposition to spending taxpayer money to encourage developing nations to curtail their energy use, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. There's also rising public doubt and growing political polarization about what scientists have to say on the environment, and a widespread perception that there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether global warming is happening. But for all the challenges American policymakers have to overcome, nearly...
December 08, 2009
Adam Marx
Adam Smith and Karl Marx disagreed about many things, but they would surely have concurred that the very idea of a ‘carbon market’ is bonkers. The carbon market in 2007 was worth $64billion: how could this be? A market is supposed to be the exchange of products that are the result of somebody’s work, for the satisfaction of somebody else’s needs. Smith stated that the value of the product is proportional to the amount of work expended in it: ‘The real price of everything’, he wrote in the Wealth of Nations, ‘is the toil and trouble of acquiring it’ (1). This goes for markets in bread or tables, iTunes or diamonds, no matter what nature the ‘work’ or how frivolous the ‘need’. But a market in carbon: quoi? Quietly and without fuss, all the rules of classical economics are being torn up – in a way that could be very foolish indeed. As we approach the deal-making at the...
December 08, 2009
eco-Malthusians
Another symptom of sick culture. There was a time when people who measured the value of human life through sombre calculations based on cost-benefit analyses were regarded with suspicion and contempt. Throughout most of history human life has been valued in and of itself; it has been seen as possessing a special quality that could not be reduced to quantities to be measured by misanthropic accountants. Yes, the human body also has a physical dimension, and it can be reduced to its chemical constituents. But isn’t there also something very special about life? Sadly we live in a world where, for many climate crusaders, a photo of 12 beaming babies is somehow a bad thing, a symbol of the problems we face. Why? Because the OPT has discovered that ‘every £4 spent on contraception’ saves ‘one tonne of CO2 being added to global warming’. It claims that the most effective way to fight climate change is to get rich...
December 08, 2009
Nitrogen Foo
Part of climate change sickness is that every issue under the sun is warped by the venal efforts of opportunists to belly up to the slops trough. Nitrogen's role in climate change will be highlighted at an event on 7 December at the COP-15 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Event organisers will be calling for a new assessment of nitrogen and climate, which will identify innovative nitrogen management strategies for global climate change mitigation and associated co-benefits to society. "Nitrogen and climate interactions are not yet adequately included in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment process. There is an urgent need to assess the possibilities of nitrogen management for climate abatement and at the same time increase food security, while minimising environmental and human health impacts." Dr Palm added, "We believe that in tackling nitrogen new opportunities for climate abatement will be created." Accounting for the nitrogen cycle in models that purport to describe the behaviors...
November 30, 2009
Beyond Slime
My attitude about the climate change industry and the recent whistle-blower (presumed) controversy was ho-hum: many have been saying these things for a long time but were ignored or vilified, and though there is an opportunity for insight by a very few intellectually honest thinkers reasoning in good faith little would come of the scandal. Perhaps it will amount to more than I assumed. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering. . . One theme, in addition to those already mentioned about the suppression of dissent, the suppression of data and methods, and the suppression of the unvarnished truth, comes through especially strongly: plain statistical incompetence. . . I'm also surprised by the IPCC's response. Amid the self-justification, I had hoped for a word of apology, or even of censure. (George Monbiot called for Phil Jones to resign, for crying out loud.) At any rate I had expected no more than ordinary evasion. The declaration from Rajendra Pachauri that...
November 22, 2009
Climategate
It’s News On Academia, Not Climate If you knew how academia worked, this news would not surprise you nor change your opinions on global warming. . . It is a shame that academia works this way, and an academia where this stuff didn’t happen would probably be more accurate. But even our flawed academic consensus is usually more accurate than its contrarians, and it is hard to find reliable cheap indicators saying when contrarians are more likely to be right. Well, that's not news either. But there is something that seems extra vile about the way that the climate issue has been so politicized. It's not just academic noogy wars, old academic bulls standing their increasingly antiquated ground, or even the inertia of academic bureaucrats who long ago settled down and digested their own brains. Political madness seems like it has degraded the already low standards of academia. No good can come of this. Update:Peer Review and Scientific Consensus...
November 16, 2009
Aporkalypse
Apologists for the political opportunists who have exploited climate change concerns for power and profit (Al Gore is the poster child) are changing their script a bit in recognition of the abject failure of such efforts to hoodwink society. The effort is very late and still mealy-mouthed but closer to reality. Last month, the Pew Research Center released its latest poll of public attitudes on global warming. On its face, the news was not good: Belief that global warming is occurring had declined from 71 percent in April of 2008 to 56 percent in October — an astonishing drop in just 18 months. The belief that global warming is human-caused declined from 47 percent to 36 percent. While some pollsters questioned these numbers, the Pew statistics are consistent with the findings by Gallup in March that public concern about global warming had declined, that the number of Americans who believed that news about global warming was exaggerated had increased,...
November 08, 2009
Author Emissions
Some low life political activists with extremist views (Peter Singer, Geoff Russell, Barry Brook) object to a tiny part of the article discussed here in Climate Fever. Nicolette Hahn Niman (“The Carnivore’s Dilemma,” Op-Ed, Oct. 31) is simply wrong in suggesting that grass-fed beef produces less methane than feed-lot meat. It is the other way around, with grass-fed animals producing up to three times more methane. Why is that? It's because grass fed ruminants eat cellulose, and digest it to get energy that is not available to other animals. People can't do it, no other type of animal can do it. Any cellulose that they happen to eat passes through them undigested, it's just fiber. But bacteria will digest it eventually, and emit methane. Feed lots use starchy foods such as corn to get animals very fat, very quickly. Such foods are low in cellulose, but the plants that they came from have plenty, and it will be consumed...
November 03, 2009
Climate Fever
Parts of the world are in a frenzy as the revival meeting in Copenhagen approaches. The lunatic fringe is energized and the sleaze brokers in the media are happy to publish their shenanigans. This week an article in The Times of London carried a headline that blared: “Give Up Meat to Save the Planet." . . . the claim that meat (especially beef) is closely linked to global warming has received some credible backing, including by the United Nations and University of Chicago. Both institutions have issued reports that have been widely summarized as condemning meat-eating. But that’s an overly simplistic conclusion to draw from the research. To a rancher like me, who raises cattle, goats and turkeys the traditional way (on grass), the studies show only that the prevailing methods of producing meat — that is, crowding animals together in factory farms, storing their waste in giant lagoons and cutting down forests to grow crops to feed them...
November 03, 2009
Waste Stream
Here's another example of the sort of muddle minded nonsense discussed in Fish Wrap. this time from the CGIAR Climate Exchange: Livestock Crucial for Coping with Climate Change A major global asset, livestock systems occupy 45 percent of the earth’s surface, employ at least 1.3 billion people, and are valued at about US$1.4 trillion. They provide 17 percent of the calories and a third of the protein we consume. . . These statistics, however, hide stark regional differences in how livestock are raised. In poor countries, livestock are raised primarily on small farms or herded by pastoralists. Throughout their (usually long) natural lives, they survive largely on grass and other vegetation, including the stalks, leaves and other “wastes” that remain after food crops have been been harvested. In contrast, livestock in wealthy countries are mostly “factory-farmed.” Using industrial processes, farmers quickly fatten the animals, which in their short lives consume vast quantities of maize and other grains – food...
November 02, 2009
That's Debatable
But not by me. Here is an open invitation to my loudest critics. I'd like to invite ... [them] ... to engage in a substantive debate on the following 10 conclusions that I've reached about the climate issue, based on the fact that the human influence on climate is real, serious and deserving of significant policy attention: There is no greenhouse gas signal in the economic or human toll record of disasters The IPCC has dramatically underestimated the scale of the stabilization challenge. Geoengineering via stratospheric injection or marine cloud whitening is a bad idea. Air capture research is a very good idea. Adaptation is very important and not a trade off with mitigation. Current mitigation policies, at national and international levels, are inevitably doomed to fail. An alternative approach to mitigation from that of the FCCC has better prospects for success. Current technologies are not sufficient to reach mitigation goals. In their political enthusiasm, some leading scientists have...
November 02, 2009
Fish Wrap
IMV one of the reasons that print media is failing is the low standards and low quality of journalists, which reflects back to the education system. The problem isn't always or only that Johnny can't read, it is also that Johnny can't think. As next month’s Copenhagen conference approaches, politicians should not be distracted by the apparently growing volume of sceptical voices challenging the need for global action against climate change. Some of the sceptics may have scientific backgrounds but they are not in the mainstream of contemporary climate research. The real experts – hundreds of scientists worldwide who are examining the link between climate and carbon dioxide emissions – have no doubt that man-made global warming is a real crisis that must be addressed urgently. Nonsense. Scientific dispute should definitely "distract" politicians. It is their duty to pay attention to such disputes and seek to govern well in conditions of ambiguity . . . i.e. real life. When...
October 26, 2009
Climate Bubble
Others have said it before, and likely better, but it seems worth mentioning that the climate change industry and political fellow travelers have inflated an industrial bubble with their irrational exuberance for various exceedingly costly but utterly ineffective climate change policies. Much of it was instrumental, a way for otherwise distasteful policies based in extremist ideology to hitchhike on the climate change bandwagon. This may be why there has been so much wailing and gnashing of teeth about what seems to me to be a small beer objection by the Superfreakonomics folks. For all the blogosphere shouting against our chapter, I have to be honest and say that I just don’t get it. I can’t understand why any environmentalist who really cares about the Earth’s future could say with a straight face that geoengineering doesn’t deserve a seat at the table as the global-warming debate heats up. Oliver dissembles: This mischaracterises the debate/furore/ritual clubbing/whatever (see previous posts). Quite a...
October 20, 2009
Sewer Flutes
As the Democrats continue their free-fall in public opinion - richly deserved IMV - some speculate that the "liberal slime machine" is a cause of this rather than, as Democrats presumably hope, a mitigation. An analysis: For better or worse I have a much better sense of how the liberal slime machine works in practice, having been inside now a bit. This is all the more ironic because I consider myself to be cut from a similar political cloth to many of those who are engaged in all out war against me. Here are a few reflections. Here is how it works. The really giant fish -- public intellectuals like Tom Friedman and Paul Krugman -- confer authority on the big fish of the liberal blogosphere. They do so by applauding the work of the big fish and saying that they trust them. This is a useful exchange because the big fish amplify the writings of the giant fish...
October 19, 2009
The Slime
No, not the one oozing out of the intertubes . . . Algae, not asteroids, were the key to the end of the dinosaurs, say two Clemson University researchers. Geologist James W. Castle and ecotoxicologist John H. Rodgers have published findings that toxin producing algae were a deadly factor in mass extinctions millions of years ago. The research not only provides new insights into the past but also offers a caution about the future. The scientists say that current environmental conditions show significant similarity to times when previous mass extinctions occurred. . . He and Rodgers have spent two years analyzing data from ancient algal deposits — stromatolite structures — finding evidence that blue-green algae, which produce poisons and deplete oxygen, were present in sufficient quantities to kill off untold numbers of plants and animals living on land or in the sea. . . The previous post mentioned research about the Eemian period just 130,000 years ago when temperatures...
October 19, 2009
Geofrakonomics
I won't explain the back story, assuming that you have heard more than enough of the smarmy parts. I understand the strategic political motivation to make all potential technological fixes to global warming seem like wacky, hare-brained, mad-scientist schemes to block the sun, but the more I think that through, the less it looks like responsible politics. Just suppose that some form of climate engineering could (1) do as much or more to slow or halt warming than could regulatory approaches (2) at a much lower cost while (3) posing no special problem of international coordination. Perhaps Avent has already made the case that some technology (or combination of technologies) meeting this description is less likely to emerge in the coming decades than an effective scheme of international carbon emission controls. If he has, I’ve missed it. However, if the success of a primarily technological approach is no less probable to than the success of a primarily global political-regulatory...
September 28, 2009
Bad Faith
A problem with politics in general - and current politcal power holders in particular - is that the objective is not to develop policies that benefit society, it is to sell whatever policies a political group sees as most beneficial to itself, society be damned. The problem with cap and trade lies not in economic theory, but in political realities. Cap and trade cannot work in the real world -- Krugman's means cannot achieve the ends he seeks. He just assumes policy success, which is easy to do in theoretical arguments, but pretty far from the real world where we actually have to live with the policies that emerge from the messy legislative process. If cap and trade cannot work, then it would be logical that we should be exploring other means to reducing emission. But instead, Krugman tries to shut down any discussion of alternative approaches by saying that if you don't accept his means, then you must...
September 10, 2009
Pony Park
Citing a New Scientist article, Anders ruminates on steps to a better world. Evidence based politics Drug legalisation Keep everybody's DNA profile Measure non-wealth progress Research into geoengineering Real carbon taxes Use genetic engineering Stop the current ocean harvesting Pay people for uploading green power onto the grid Four day work weeks I think some of these are very sensible (like shifting to a harm reduction approach for drugs, doing proper geoengineering, use of genetic engineering, sensible ocean management and to price carbon realistically). The big problem is that many of the improvements are based on very strong assumptions about the government . . I would probably add methods of improving government transparency and accountability to the list. The greatest threats to human flourishing today seem to come directly or indirectly from bad governance, corruption and closed societies. Finding ways to overcome that would do a great deal of improving the ability to fix other problems. . . That's...
September 06, 2009
Bad Timing
There seems to be increasing anxiety among climate activists, including those climate scientists who have been doing politics rather than science, that their ruse is being exposed. The UN's World Meteorological Organization called the conference in order to draft a global plan for providing "climate services" to the world: that is, to deliver climate predictions useful to everyone from farmers worried about the next rainy season to doctors trying to predict malaria epidemics and builders of dams, roads and other infrastructure who need to assess the risk of floods and droughts 30 years hence. But some of the climate scientists gathered in Geneva to discuss how this might be done admitted that, on such timescales, natural variability is at least as important as the long-term climate changes from global warming. . . [Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University, Germany] predicted that in the next few years a natural cooling trend would dominate over...
September 05, 2009
Political Failure
That's been a theme of sorts here over the years. Politics is stupid, I often say, and politicians are vile. The current political class has been exposed to an unusual degree, so I hear similar things being said ever more often by ever more people. There are many ways to approach and understand the foolishness of a political approach to life. Consider this: The professor links climate change, resource abundance, agricultural productivity, and water management with a cataclysmic event situated 20 years in the future. It doesn’t take a scientist to tell you that more people will create more demand for water, energy, food, and planning. It doesn’t take a scientist to tell you that if you fail to make plans for the future, you will likely face some sort of problem. So far, so not rocket science, and not applied population biology. But what sort of planning is needed to cope with life in 2030? Why, at this...
August 21, 2009
Yeah, But
The perils of bureaucratic perquisites. Yesterday Dan Lack of NOAA gave a talk to the NCAR media fellows about his work on pollution from shipping, and told us something I found pretty flabbergasting. Last year the International Maritime Organisation, as part of a number of measures aimed at air pollution, decided to do something about the sulphur emissions from shipping by reducing the amount of sulphur dioxide permissible from 4.5% today to 0.5% in 2020. This would have great benefits; sulphate pollution, and associated particulate matter, cause significant health problems. According to a new paper in Environmental Science and Technology by Winebrake et al, if in 2012 the world’s shipping complied with this requirement, the associated sulphate pollution would cause 46,000 premature deaths; if that shipping used today’s higher sulphur fuels the death toll would be 87,000. However, sulphur emissions from shipping have another effect: the sulphate aerosols that form from the gas make the oceans cooler by increasing...
August 14, 2009
Grass Roots
Environmentalism went wrong from the beginning. It's an ism, a movement, primarily a political hack and so subject to all of the nonsense and distortions of any movement as it pursues power and forgets its purposes. It was immediately hijacked by wackos and opportunists. The wackos sought to use environmentalism to advance their obsessions, the opportunists sought power, fame and fortune. Among the multitude of foolish planks in their platform is the anti-meat fetish, recently harnessed to the climate nutter bandwagon. I am dismayed that so many people have been so easily fooled on the meat eating and climate change issue following the UN report. The culprit is not meat eating but rather the excesses of corporate/industrial agriculture. The UN report shows either great ignorance or possibly the influence of the fossil fuel lobby with the intent of confusing the public. It is obviously to someone’s benefit to make meat eating and livestock raising an easily attacked straw man...
August 09, 2009
Broken Magic
I link and quote Pielke Jr.'s work often. He says some of the things that I think, and does so more nicely. The point here, as it is with Al Gore's carbon footprint or any one else's, is not that [Jared] Diamond is a hypocrite or a bad person. Rather the point should be obvious: asceticism does not offer a path to stabilizing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, much less global sustainability (however you'd like to define it). This thought occurs to Diamond's interviewer: But if we can’t supply more or consume less, doesn’t that mean that, like the Easter Islander who chopped down the last tree, thus condemning his civilisation to extinction, we are doomed to drain our oceans of fish and empty our soil of nutrients? “No. It is our choice,” he replies, perhaps subconsciously answering his critics again. “If we continue to operate non-sustainably, then in 50 or 60 years, the US and Japan and...
August 03, 2009
Slow Train
The ineffectual blundering of intellectual posers is center stage for all to see since Obamania swept the country. I speak mostly about agriculture and environmentalism but it's just as obvious in economics and climate politics. Some may argue that it is also clear in diplomacy, foreign relations etc. etc., but that's not my beat. I think that this sums it up well: All That Matters are Targets I doubt that Yvo de Boer, head of the Framework Convention on Climate Change, read my essay on magical solutions. But if so, he was kind enough to provide a great example of the dynamics that I describe in the piece when last week he discussed the details of Australian climate policies. Mr.de Boer explained that the details of Australian climate policies do not really matter, it is the commitment to a target that matters . . . An Australian academic explained that the Australian policies being debated domestically won't succeed without,...
July 28, 2009
Sickly Green
The green "movement" is about greenbacks, currency, not the environment. Deforestation and various land uses account for nearly a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. Among these uses, agriculture is the one that offers the most readily achievable gains in carbon storage, according to a UNEP report released last June. If practices like agroforestry and conservation agriculture were widely adopted, the report says, as much as 2 gigatonnes of carbon could be captured from the atmosphere each year by 2030 – an amount comparable to current emissions from agriculture. In other words, agriculture could be made essentially carbon neutral within two decades, while still providing enough food for a rapidly growing world population. “Saving carbon is not a priority for smallholder farmers,” said Dennis Garrity, director general of the World Agroforestry Centre. What does matter to them, he explained, are the other benefits of green agricultural practices, such as higher crop yields resulting from the use of so-called “fertilizer”...
July 15, 2009
Urban Myths
There are some blogs that I read for snark fodder. They are always wrong yet still popular and so provide material that needs dispute. Here's a regulatory move that I think everyone except industrial livestock farmers can applaud: the federal government is considering restricting the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in livestock. First, let me say that I do raise livestock but not in an industrial manner. I have no dog in this fight. To me, restricting antibiotic use is a legitimate public health measure. Antibiotics have been responsible for much of the increase in human lifespan over the last century, as well as dramatic improvements in the quality of our years. But they have a real collective action problem: the more they're used, the more bacteria resist them. Cheap meat is not worth having your kid die of an antibiotic-resistant infection. Farmers use these things indiscriminately because it allows them to pack the animals into filthy conditions that would...
July 09, 2009
Aporkalypse
David Friedman has the giggles. I find unconvincing the claim that climate change on the scale suggested by the results of the IPCC models would have catastrophic consequences for humans. Obviously one can imagine climate change large enough and fast enough to be a very serious problem—a rapid end of the current interglacial, for example. And if, as I believe is the case, climate is not very well understood, one cannot absolutely rule out such changes. But most of the argument is put in terms not of what might conceivably happen but of what we have good reason to expect to happen, and I think the outer bound of that is provided by the IPCC models. They suggest a temperature increase of about two degrees centigrade over the next hundred years, resulting in a sea level rise of about a foot and a half. What I find implausible is the claim that changes on that scale at that speed...
July 07, 2009
Petard Hoisting
Anyone who has paid attention to climate policy is either depressed or disgusted. Policies have been idiotic and ineffective. The US Waxman-Markey proposal is described by its supporters as a stinker. New direction might be useful. Called How to Get Climate Policy back on Course, the report argues that the recent Japanese ‘Mamizu’ climate strategy is the world’s first to start down this ‘real world’ course in sharp contrast to the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, the UK Climate Change Act and the US Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade legislation. Professor Steve Rayner, Director of InSIS at the University of Oxford, said: ‘The world has centuries of experience in decarbonising its energy supply and Japan has led the world in policy-driven improvements in energy efficiency. These are the models to which we ought to be looking.’ Professor Gwyn Prins, from LSE, said: ‘Worthwhile policy builds upon what we know works and upon what is feasible rather than trying to deploy never-before implemented policies...
July 05, 2009
Char Wonks
One of the short sighted and narrow minded arguments being bandied about by char activists currently is that politicians ought to buy the votes of farmers by promising subsidies for the use of char. Farmers can be bought, as was done with ethanol subsidies, but it's an admission by char advocates that they think that char has little or no real value. If it did then it would not benefit from subsidy. The same was true for ethanol and as has become painfully obvious ethanol is a huge negative for the environment and governance. There are two glaring defects with this sort of advocacy. One is that the threat of subsidy freezes investment. No one wants to jump the gun and take management action that might later be subsidized. They'll delay action so that they can collect rents for doing what they might have done anyway had there been no threat of subsidy. The second defect is that there...
July 02, 2009
Climate Junk
A list of 5 over hyped climate related studies. A leading climate scientist argues that overbroad claims by some researchers—coupled with overblown reporting in the media—can undermine the public's understanding of climate issues. Gavin Schmidt, a NASA climate modeler, author and PM editorial advisor, concurs with the consensus view that the planet's temperature is rising due largely to human activity. But, he says, many news stories prematurely attribute local or regional phenomena to climate change. This can lead to the dissemination of vague, out-of-context or flat-wrong information to the public. This is somewhat ironic since Schmidt is a chief culprit in climate hype, misinformation, obfuscation, selective use of studies and data, and general hysteria. Consider one of the listed hyped studies. The Study /// In early 2006, a study in Nature published surprising results that plants were giving off trace amounts of methane. The Fallout /// We know that methane is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon...
June 26, 2009
Suicide Pact
So far Obama has been an utter failure. The problems are difficult and his administration has not been up to the task. Part of that is political distortion of policies, and part is incompetence. Some think that the worst is yet to come, but immanent. Not since a misguided piece of legislation imposed tariffs that turned a recession into a depression has there been a piece of legislation as bad as Waxman-Markey. . . It's what Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security, might call a "man-caused disaster," a phrase she coined to replace the politically incorrect "terrorist attack." But no terrorist could ever dream of inflicting as much damage as this bill. . . It is the largest tax increase in American history — a tax on all Americans — even the 95% that President Obama pledged would never see a tax increase. It's a political bill that could come to a vote now that a deal was struck...
June 15, 2009
Overshoot
Dark siders - advocates, activists, believers, politicians, opportunists and grifters - are always wrong. They don't reason from evidence to form sensible views, they exploit evidence - spin, omission, selection, exaggeration etc. - to advance their agendas. This isn't just deceitful, isn't just marketing for power and profit, because they confuse themselves as well as their victims, and compound the problem. There are limits. Eventually nonsense positions become impossible for even such posers to hold and they have to convert, be born again, but they don't learn from their mistakes, they just go on as before with a new agenda. If we’re going to avoid climate disaster, we’re going to have start getting a lot more direct. We’re going to have to think about cooling the planet. . . Many of us who have been watching this subject closely have gone from being skeptics to advocates. Very reluctant advocates, to be sure, but advocates nonetheless. What has changed? Quite...
June 12, 2009
Big Dung
Draws flies. Interpol has warned the carbon market will be irresistible to criminal gangs because of the vast amounts of cash to be made. Possible rorts* include under-reporting of carbon emissions by firms and bogus carbon offset schemes. “If someone is rorting it by even 1 per cent a year, we’re talking about many, many millions of dollars,” Mr Torr said. Politicians, thieves, criminals . . . whatever. That's what all of the various climate schemes are about. That's all they are about. * rort: a term used in Australia and New Zealand[1]. It is commonly related to politics, or, more generally, a financial impropriety, particularly relating to a government programme. The term was first recorded in 1919 and is a derivative of the older "rorty" a 19th century London slang word—meaning “fine; splendid; jolly; or boisterous” [2]. The term is also used as a verb to mean the action of defrauding, (e.g.: he rorted the system.). Chicago style....
June 06, 2009
Stuck On Stupid
Have you noticed how stupid people often call others stupid? As we said, headlines - thousands and thousands of them - were generated by the ’cause’ that was least significant in the WHO’s own study. The 0.5% of deaths attributed to climate change amounted to around 150,000, while the causes of the remaining 42,157,155 deaths went largely undiscussed, principally because conventional wisdom informs that ‘climate change is the biggest threat facing mankind’ and ‘climate change is worse for the poor’. The WHO report bases its estimation on the role of climate change in producing conditions which encourage the proliferation of disease vectors: more rain means more stagnant water for mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite, for instance. This seems to be us to be nonsense for two main reasons. First, if we took seriously the issue of malaria, there would have been no deaths caused by it, and many fewer deaths attributable to climate change. Second, the method by...
June 03, 2009
PhosphoFUD
Or, Rock Fertilizer part II. About 3 years ago I did a series of posts about fertilizer that debunked various myths about primary plant nutrients. Ecostalinists that desire to clamp down on humanity glom onto various resource exhaustion myths and trumpet them as the next doom. It's not that any resource is infinite, or that they are free, it's that they are not going to be the cause of agro-doom and we do not need to revert to subsistence agriculture to avoid famine. Quite the opposite in fact, we need continued and accelerated improvements in agricultural technology to meet current demand and expected growth in coming decades. The history of food production makes it quite clear that it was agricultural technology that enabled the escape from Malthusian doom in the past. Reverting to the use of historical methods is suicide. A new article predicting phosphorus doom has been making the rounds on less thoughtful blogs. Phosphorus Famine: The Threat...
May 31, 2009
Wild Walk
As mentioned in previous posts I'm trying to pay more attention to conservative thought. Due to my personal history, cultural origins, yada yada, I've largely ignored them as if I knew what they were about and didn't need to pay attention. Silly idea, that. Also, I've found in the past that minority ideologies that are out of power tend to be more interesting, more creative, more engaged with the current problem set as they thrash about seeking a way into power. They throw off sparks which often die out before landing, but sometimes ignite the underbrush. And so . . . It often seems that advocates are not just biased, they are self righteously biased, as if this was a virtue. They demand to be proven wrong, yet it seems to me that this is a task that they should perform for themselves. What evidence would it take to prove your beliefs wrong? I simply will not reply to...
May 29, 2009
On Message
A main reason why climate change is a low and diminishing concern - along with green goobledygook in general - is that alarmists and advocates are so obviously nonsensical, an embarrassment. Global warming is causing more than 300,000 deaths and about $125 billion in economic losses each year, according to a report by the Global Humanitarian Forum, an organization led by Kofi Annan . . . Roger A. Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who studies disaster trends, said the forum’s report was “a methodological embarrassment” because there was no way to distinguish deaths or economic losses related to human-driven global warming amid the much larger losses resulting from the growth in populations and economic development in vulnerable regions. Dr. Pielke said that “climate change is an important problem requiring our utmost attention.” But the report, he said, “will harm the cause for action on both climate change and disasters because it is so...
May 23, 2009
Tipsy Points
Climate politics is fiction. The climate is real but the politics is fiction. Two species of such fiction stand out. Prof Chu told BBC News he feared the world might be heading towards a tipping point on climate change. This is a fictional argument made for instrumental purposes. Science is all but mute on the subject though there has been a lot of scientistic speculation. Sometimes fiction is prescient, often not, and we should bear this in mind when opportunists try to frighten us into bad policy with such horror tales. With each successive year the news on climate change has not been good and there's a growing sensation that the world and the US in particular has to get moving . . . This is the fictional first step argument that imposes a regulatory structure that does nothing about the problem used to justify it, or even makes things worse. The objective isn't climate change mitigation, it is...
May 17, 2009
As Usual
Our current malaise and Obama's blundering responses have resulted in a great deal of hand wringing and claims of deception by some of those who so foolishly supported the Democrats though it was clearly not in their interests to do so. Accusations of incompetence, corruption, broken promises, outright lies and political shenanigans abound. The unmasking of Democrat happy talk happened sooner and more severely than anticipated, but should not otherwise cause any surprise. Their behavior is consistent with their stated views and previous actions. They are who they are and don't apologize for it. It's a brazen organized crime syndicate that plays the public for suckers. It always has been, it always will be. Republicans are not measurably better, but they are different. The fact that they are courting a constituency that is largely more conservative, traditional and less libertine means that they must be slightly more circumspect about their looting. Don't do it in the street and scare...
May 01, 2009
Newspeak
A few years ago, when liberals were wandering in the wilderness bereft of ideas, lost and directionless after the fall of communism and the apparent triumph of liberalism (real liberalism), they turned to marketing. Since they had no ideas and didn't want any, they devoted themselves to selling the same old ideas with slick marketing. They'd change the words and paint smiles on dead eyed frozen faces, hoping to fool the public into buying goods long past their sell-by dates. They tried "framing" to conceal what they were really selling. It didn't work but eventually the blundering of the right allowed the left back into power though it still had nothing to offer. Nothing has changed. The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is “global warming.” The term turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes . . . Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about “our...
April 22, 2009
Piled Higher
Uncle Stew said: The romantic nature-is-perfect approach is just horse exhaust. The UCS is a major source of such pollutants. . . . according to Failure to Yield, a report by UCS expert Doug Gurian-Sherman released in March 2009. Despite 20 years of research and 13 years of commercialization, genetic engineering has failed to significantly increase U.S. crop yields. It's a silly claim, but has been picked up and repeated by unthinking pundits who have some nebulous squick about genetic engineering, and sympathy for the romantic nature-is-perfect manure that Brand excoriates. But what claims can be made in good faith and good science? Failure to Yield begins by noting that, in the United States, 90 percent of soybeans and 63 percent of the corn crop are biotech varieties. . . . The UCS study distinguishes between intrinsic yield, the highest yield possible under ideal conditions, and operational yield, the yield obtainable in the field taking into account factors like...
April 20, 2009
Faulty Premises
Most nonsense views, when stated clearly, arise from mistaken premises. The error isn't innocent, not simple ignorance, since the faulty premises are carefully selected to conceal the falseness of the argument. Let’s start with some facts. Earth’s human population is already at a level well in excess of that which the eco-system can sustain. In other words, in each period we are now using up more natural resources than the environment produces. We are spending all our biological income, and then running down the capital to cover the rest of our consumption. Do that for too long, and the capital runs out. The issue isn't what you do so much as how you do it. At each phase of development all resources available are consumed, but as time passes and techniques improve more is accomplished with the same resources. The classic example is that something like 60% of humanity would starve to death if we reverted to the primitive...
April 20, 2009
Uncle Stew
Green, for small values of green. Controversial stand: That technology can be green. The book I just finished, “Whole Earth Discipline,” has chapters on why nuclear is green, cities are green, genetic engineering is green. The romantic nature-is-perfect approach is just horse exhaust. This is an attempt to define, or redefine, green. It's irrelevant whether anything is green or not since it's a vague political concept that means whatever some pol can sell it as. It's a distraction from useful efforts to identify and implement smart systems that achieve real objectives. There's an opportunity for some market droid to find some way to package and sell such intelligent approaches as an antidote to the green bubble and its immanent collapse. Then we can pick it apart too, since marketing is they way of failure - always too late, too little or too much, and too silly....
April 20, 2009
O'Nosferutu
Speaking of empty green political rhetoric . . . When everybody seems to have the same big idea, you just know it can only mean trouble. Remember sub-prime mortgages? Now universally excoriated as the spawn of the devil, the proximate cause of the credit crunch and all that followed, a few years back “sub-prime” was everyone’s darling. Financiers loved it because it generated sumptuously high-yielding debt instruments; governments, because it promised to make even the poor into proud property owners. Now business lobbyists and governments on both sides of the Atlantic have got a new big idea. They call it “green jobs”. Leading the pack is, as you might expect, Barack Obama. The president recently defended a vast package of subsidies for renewable energy on the grounds that it would “create millions of additional jobs and entire new industries”. . . There is something almost comical in the [British] government’s belief that the electric car, dependent as it is...
April 20, 2009
No Win
Climatre change politics is merely politics, so even the rhetoric is about rhetoric. If the framing is “costs” of cap and trade legislation, the Republicans will win the political debate, regardless of whose numbers turn out to be right. Of course, the reality is that cap and trade can be designed in any way you’d like with high or low (or zero) costs. But remember that the theoretical basis of cap and trade is that energy prices will increase, so low or zero cost increases will have low or zero effect on emisisons. The political point is that if the debate hinges on costs, Republicans have the upper hand because if Democrats respond with claims of low or zero costs, and if this turns out to be untrue, then such claims will become a political liability. But if the claims of low costs turn out to be true, they will gut the policy from the standpoint of emissions reductions,...
April 08, 2009
Czech Mates
The environmental muddle as a morality play. With only the short term view of economic necessity on one side and the long term view of shielding nature from humanity on the other, the political clash over the environment becomes a morality play, the black hats and the green hats fighting over a stretch of sea. This is the way things are, but not the way they should be. . . That we should reach a point where economic freedom and prosperity is viewed as an opponent of the environment — in opposition to the lessons of history, the facts of today, and a basic understanding of what type of citizen will be able to have the luxury of restraining themselves from overuse — says something about the political dominance of opposition to moderation on environmental policy. For those on the left, it’s worth considering the state of things in the Czech Republic when it comes to the dangers of...
April 07, 2009
Long Odds
A chief defect with believing some theory is that a switch is flipped in the brain that predisposes most people to seek confirmation. A saner response is to be horrified when you realize that you have come to believe something, anything, since it will cost you several IQ points at minimum, and perhaps more. The goal of the GRL paper is to show that the current period of no rise in temperature is, in Revkin’s words, “utterly normal,” and in the words of Easterling and Wehner, “entirely possible” and “likely.” Revkin was duped by the paper, and I suspect many people will be. What the paper is arguing is not that the current period of no-warming is “utterly normal” or “likely” but that such periods of no warming are “likely.” The difference is subtle but critical to understand. I added the bold on current to contrast it with the original emphasis on such. Easterling and Wehner have (purposely?) confused/conflated...
April 06, 2009
Roast Bat
The lunatic fringe has been aroused. Adding charcoal (‘biochar’) to the soil has been proposed as a ‘climate change mitigation’ strategy and as a means of regenerating degraded land. Some even claim that this could sequester so much carbon that the Earth could return to pre-industrial carbon dioxide levels, i.e. that all the global warming caused by fossil fuel burning and ecosystem destruction could be reversed. Such large-scale production of charcoal would require many hundreds of millions of hectares of land for biomass production (primarily tree plantations). This is an attempt to manipulate the biosphere and land use on a vast scale in order to alter the global climate, which makes it a form of ‘geo-engineering’. Well, some may have proposed growing and processing tree plantations for char, but that's a very small part of the whole story, no more realistic than the biofuel opportunists who dream of vast switchgrass acreage for use for the as yet mythical cellulosic...
April 03, 2009
Eco-Ritual
A key reason why so little has been accomplished by the environmental movement - often doing precisely the opposite of what would help - is that there is very little thought spent on the policies they support. Instead they back ritual actions that can, to some, have the appearance of virtue though they lack substance. If wind energy were the one practical and affordable answer to global warming then I would grit my teeth at the loss of the countryside and accept it. But I know that windfarms are no answer to global warming in northern Europe. The Germans, who have invested more than anyone in this form of energy, are finding, according to Der Spiegel, that despite more than 17,000 wind turbines across Germany the nation is emitting more CO2 than before it built them. Why? Because the turbines are only 17% efficient. The wind does not blow at the right speed often enough for them to do...
April 01, 2009
Empty Rhetoric
I've mentioned several previous times that Obama and the Democrats were all hat. It's not that they aren't doing things, it's that they aren't doing helpful things or doing what they claimed they would do if only they were given the keys to the kingdom. Only 8 members of the Senate were willing to go on record saying that they support the purpose of a cap and trade bill, to make carbon-emitting energy more expensive. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) voted for the Thune Amendment had this to say: Any kind of cap-and-trade system that comes forward will not raise energy and gas prices. The Thune Amendment effectively kills cap and trade as a mechanism for reducing emissions. I have little doubt that the legislation will go forward, and it likely will pass in some form and do many things. Its just that reducing emissions won’t be among them. Cap and trade is dead, but the charade will go on. Perhaps....
March 24, 2009
New Moon
Consider the source. Biomass is suddenly the universal answer to our climate and energy problems. Its advocates claim that it will become the primary source of the world’s heating fuel, electricity, road transport fuel (cellulosic ethanol) and aviation fuel (bio-kerosene). Few people stop to wonder how the planet can accommodate these demands and still produce food and preserve wild places. Now an even crazier use of woodchips is being promoted everywhere (including in the Guardian(1)). The great green miracle works like this: we turn the planet’s surface into charcoal. Sorry, not charcoal. We don’t call it that any more. Now we say biochar. The idea is that wood and crop wastes are cooked to release the volatile components (which can be used as fuel), then the residue - the charcoal - is buried in the soil. According to the magical thinkers who promote it, the new miracle stops climate breakdown, replaces gas and petroleum, improves the fertility of the...
March 23, 2009
Drift
I enjoy cross blog conversations that explore an idea space . . . the yes but, yes and, and another thought sort of conversation that isn't a tightly directed or purposeful navigation to some final certainty so much as the complicating fleshing out of a set of related insights. It's more midrash than ordnung. The previous post - with food issues central as you might expect given the theme of this blog - was a peripatetic meditation on the harms that come from either elevating the views of some individual or group to the status of law, or tinkering by authorities to engineer cherished socio-economic outcomes. It meandered from Smith to Ridley to Wilkinson, and now Wilkinson further enlarges the loosely coupled set of comments: Why Climate Alarmism Alarms Me. Matt Ridley . . . states my own view nicely: What the precautionary principle [the idea that when science has not yet determined whether a new product or process...
March 20, 2009
Message Management
Empty gestures, revisited. I have no problem with rejecting the numerous rituals that have sprung up in our era of environmental correctness. It is clear to me that, from the point of view of the environment, recycling is a pointless exercise; but then, its real aim, in the language of green-leaning moral entrepreneurs, is ‘to send a message’. By taking up the act of recycling, even though it is worthless, people become more conscious, apparently, of their wasteful habits and the fragility of the planet. Other ways of ‘sending messages’ to the public include pressuring them to stop using disposable nappies on their children, discouraging the use of plastic bottles and bags, telling people they should turn vegetarian, and getting us all to turn off the lights, stop using our cars and stop having so many children. You don’t need a PhD in climate science to know that these gestures and strictures have only a symbolic significance. They provide...
March 15, 2009
Gap Analysis
Some assembly (and math) required. “It’s not true that all the technologies are available and we just need the political will to deploy them,” he [Nate Lewis of Cal Tech] says. “My concern, and that of most scientists working on energy, is that we are not anywhere close to where we need to be. We are too focused on cutting emissions 20 percent by 2020 . . . The world used 14 trillion watts (14 terawatts) of power in 2006. Assuming minimal population growth (to 9 billion people), slow economic growth (1.6 percent a year, practically recession level) and—this is key—unprecedented energy efficiency (improvements of 500 percent relative to current U.S. levels, worldwide), it will use 28 terawatts in 2050. (In a business-as-usual scenario, we would need 45 terawatts.) Simple physics shows that in order to keep CO2 to 450 ppm, 26.5 of those terawatts must be zero-carbon. That’s a lot of solar, wind, hydro, biofuels and nuclear, especially...
March 13, 2009
More Zing
Here's another attempt to provide "a theoretical justification for irresponsible behaviour." The largest academic conference that has yet been devoted to the subject of climate change finished yesterday in Copenhagen. . . This was not a process initiated and conducted by the world’s governments, there was no systematic synthesis, assessment and review of research findings as in the IPCC, and there was certainly no collective process for the 2,500 researchers gathered in Copenhagen to consider drafts of the six key messages or to offer their own suggestions for what politicians may need to hear. The conference was in fact convened by no established academic or professional body. . . . this conference was organized by the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU), a little-heard-of coalition launched in January 2006 consisting of ten of the world’s self-proclaimed elite universities, including of course the University of Copenhagen. . . we are no further forward after the Copenhagen Conference this week than...
March 06, 2009
Regulation Seeky
One of the main impediments to forming any alliance with garden variety American liberals (or whatever they are called elsewhere) is that they have debilitating psychological defects. The earlier post Brute Force quoted one observation of the problem. finding liberals who oppose any new regulation is almost impossible–no matter what the perverse consequences. . . Unfortunately, once you are ideologically committed to the idea of regulation, you can’t say that a given regulation is bad–or, worse, that maybe doing nothing new would have been the best course. I've always liked Enoch Root's explanation of this malady. "Well, suppose you have a roof with a hole in it. That means it is a leaky roof. It's leaky all the time - even if it's not raining at the moment. But it's only leaking when it happens to be raining. In the same way, morphine-seeky means that you always have this tendency to look for morphine, even if you are not...
March 04, 2009
Alternate Hypocrisy
Very French. Paris announced that from next year it would confiscate over 20 per cent of the billions of euros of European taxpayers’ money paid to its ranch-like cereals farms and divert the cash to hill farmers, grazing land, shepherds and organic agriculture. The announcement brings to an end almost half-a-century of official hypocrisy in which French governments have talked about protecting “family farms” and “quality food” but allowed the bulk of European largesse to flow to chemical-assisted, hedge-free, cereals-ranching in northern, central and eastern France. . . “We have animal rearing farms which are suffering. We have hill areas which are suffering,” he said. Farm subsidies must be reallocated to make the payments “more equitable”, he said. “And because they are fairer, they will be permanent.” Why subsidize any of them? What's fair about subsidies? When you consider the whole issue, including not least trade with other nations, especially developing nations, the cynical manipulation is exposed. France has...
March 03, 2009
More Crap
"Scientists" seem to think that chicken manure is magic. researchers in China have discovered that chicken manure can be used to biodegrade crude oil in contaminated soil. Writing in the International Journal of Environment and Pollution the team explains how bacteria in chicken manure break down 50% more crude oil than soil lacking the guano. . . A more environmentally benign approach is to bioremediation, which uses natural or engineered microbes that can metabolize the organic components of crude oil. Stimulating such microbial degradation in contaminated soil often involves the use of expensive fertilizers containing nitrogen and phosphorus, and again may come with an additional environmental price tag despite the bio label. Soil hardening and a loss of soil quality often accompany this approach. Ma and colleagues suggest that animal waste, and in particular chicken manure, may provide the necessary chemical and microbial initiators to trigger biodegradation of crude oil if applied to contaminated soil. One important factor is...
March 02, 2009
Blinkered View
Much of what I read seems patently absurd. The writing has the form of reasoned argument, but not the content. The writing isn't entirely content free, but the content is narrowly selected for convenience. I predict Obama’s unabashed embrace of throwback, dirigiste, soak-the-rich “liberalism” will not prove popular with generally pro-market, well-to-do voters who crossed over for the first time to pull the lever for a Democratic president. Yet the not-very-religious remain repelled by social conservatism all the same. As I’ve said, it doesn’t matter to me whether the Republicans become more liberal on “values” issues or whether Democrats adopt more sensibly market-oriented social and economic policy. Either way, by signaling the desire of contemporary Democrats to move even further left than is feasible in the U.S., Obama draws attention to the unoccupied space in American politics. The problem with this argument is that the Democrats are so completely illiberal on values issues and so very religious in a...
February 27, 2009
Brain Farts
The fantasy view of natural systems foisted on people by politicans and activists results in nonsense policies. The Australian government has announced a multi-million dollar investment in research on reducing gas emissions from farm animals as part of the fight against global warming. Methane gas from livestock flatulence accounts for about 12 percent of the country's annual greenhouse gas emissions, Agriculture Minister Tony Burke said as he launched the 26.8 million dollar (17.4 million US dollar) project. The emissions from 120 million sheep, cows and goats comprise the country's third-largest source of gases blamed for climate change, he said in a statement received Thursday. A beef cow expells the equivalent of around 1,500 kilograms (3,300 pounds) of carbon per year, the statement said. Most carbon pollution is produced by the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal. Researchers will explore changing diets and chemical and biological controls of stomach bacteria to reduce methane production, as well as...
February 25, 2009
Creeps and Cranks
Again [Britain’s energy and climate change minister, Ed] Miliband has acknowledged that he is a sinner. Today he joined the Right Reverend James Jones, bishop of Liverpool, and the Right Reverend Dr Richard Chartres, bishop of London, to issue a statement calling for a carbon fast this Lent. ... The carbon fast is a semi-conscious attempt to turn environmentalism into a caricature of a religion. The idea of original sin has been reinvented as a wicked act of ‘carbon emission’. There are a number of ways that the green sinner can gain absolution. Those with lots of money can win redemption by purchasing ‘carbon offsets’; the rest of us will have to go through various rituals: recycling garbage, avoiding disposable nappies, using reusable bags, all of which provide proof of our sacrifice and faith. Those most committed to the faith will go further, of course, and stop eating meat and having babies. Those who refuse to embrace any of...
February 24, 2009
Honest Science
In Washington? Never happen. One of the “stealth issue advocates” discussed in the book is John P. Holdren, the Harvard physicist who is awaiting confirmation as Mr. Obama’s science adviser. As you can see in his confirmation hearing in the Senate, he’s a smart and articulate scientist, and says he has abandoned some of his previous neo-Malthusian stances, like his support for “population control measures” and his belief that 280 million Americans would likely be “too many.” But I share Dr. Pielke’s concern about some of the debating tactics used by Dr. Holdren and his allies. Dr. Holdren began his career collaborating with the ecologist Paul Ehrlich, a master of the apocalyptic forecast and the contemptuous argument from authority. When the economist Julian Simon published an article in Science in 1980 questioning ecologists’ gloomy predictions of resource scarcity, Dr. Ehrlich dismissed him as a member of “space-age cargo cult.” Explaining to economists like him that commodities must inevitably become...
February 16, 2009
Burning Bruno
Yet again. It's an old mudge here. I start with the assumption that we are pathetically ignorant, seriously deluded and insufficiently humble. So, a new idea that contradicts common views is always welcome. It might be mistaken, but so are current views, as we will come to understand in due course. I've posted on this theme before. Eccentrics. One sandwich short of a picnic. A screw loose. History is littered with sometimes charming enthusiasts who go a bit over the top, following a line of reasoning beyond the pale, shocking, outraging or just titillating more sober and cautious types. Sometimes they are vindicated as knowledge increases over time and their musings are shown to have been prescient. Hannes Alfven, 1970 Nobel Prize winner in Physics, is one of my favorite examples of this. for much of his career Alfven's ideas were dismissed or treated with condescension. He was often forced to publish his papers in obscure journals; and his...
February 15, 2009
War on Science
By the Democrats, of course, who are the most avid warriors and always have been. [C]onsider the reaction of the scientific community to Al Gore’s invited speech at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) last week (a video can be found here). In his speech Gore attributed a wide range of recent weather events to human-caused climate change including floods in Iowa, Hurricane Ike, and the Australian bush fires. . . How did AAAS and the many scientists in attendance respond to being blatantly misled with scientific untruths in a speech calling for political action? Why, by issuing a press release repeating the misrepresentation: With charts and images, Gore described the immediate nature of the threat . . . A 500-year flood that has wrecked Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Wildfires in Greece that nearly toppled a government, and wildfires this month in Australia that have left scores of people dead and sparked a new national debate about...
February 07, 2009
Hope, Not Change
Shorter M&M The political consensus surrounding climate policy is collapsing. If you are not aware of this fact you will be very soon. The collapse is not due to the cold winter in places you may live or see on the news. It is not due to years without an increase in global temperature. It is not due to the overturning of the scientific consensus on the role of human activity in the global climate system. It is due to the fact that policy makers and their political advisors (some trained as scientists) can no longer avoid the reality that targets for stabilization such as 450 ppm (or even less realistic targets) are simply not achievable with the approach to climate change that has been at the focus of policy for over a decade. Policies that are obviously fictional and fantasy are frequently subject to a rapid collapse. The current shrillness that has been observed by many politically-active climate...
February 04, 2009
Slow Train
Chu chu. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, about whom I’ve heard nothing but good things, was quoted as follows in the L.A. Times: Reporting from Washington — California’s farms and vineyards could vanish by the end of the century, and its major cities could be in jeopardy, if Americans do not act to slow the advance of global warming, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said Tuesday. . . In a worst case, Chu said, up to 90% of the Sierra snowpack could disappear, all but eliminating a natural storage system for water vital to agriculture. “I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen,” he said. “We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.” And, he added, “I don’t actually see how they can keep their cities going” either. Can someone point me to a study suggesting that there will be no more agriculture or cities in California by 2100? Though...
January 30, 2009
Even Pinholier
The Nature blog Climate Feedback seldom has posts of value, but it often has posts cheerleading the dimmest of political arguments. “If someone’s basement floods and they lose their job on the same day, it is certainly an unlucky day. But they would not wait until they found a new job before pumping the basement and fixing the leak.” EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Ditmas channels Joe the Plumber in an open letter to Obama on climate policy (h/t Green Inc.), the day before the EU unveiled its pre-Copenhagen proposal. No, but they would wait until they had something better than a cracked, leaky teacup to bail the basement. There are no pumps. It isn't just that the poor fellows with the flood don't have them, it's that they don't exist. The leaks can't be fixed. There are so many of them that the "fix" is to replumb the house. The unemployed flood victim can't afford that. When you consider...
January 28, 2009
Even More So
The politicization of science and a concerted effort to disinform the public is reaching a fever pitch. Basically, the atmosphere is like a bathtub with a partially opened drain. Carbon dioxide from burning fuels and forests is flowing in twice as fast as it is being absorbed by plants and the ocean, and some of those “sinks” are in fact getting saturated, it appears, meaning that the “drain” is clogging a bit. . . Dr. Sterman and other social scientists assessing climate science and climate policy say that a vital task for President Obama and his climate-energy team (and for scientists and the media), even as they weigh legislation and a treaty and technology, is to educate the public on the bathtub effect. The climate system is not even remotely like a bathtub. There are so many sources and sinks - most of which are not even dimly understood - and so many other factors that either raise of...
January 28, 2009
Pinholier
The politicization of science is increasing. We are entering an new era of seismic change in policy, business, society, technology, finance and our environment, on a scale and speed substantially greater than previous revolutions. The sheer complexity of these interweaving systems is staggering. Much of this change is being driven by "climate science", and in the communications maelstrom there is a real risk that we further alienate "science" across the board. We need more scientists with good media training (and presenting capability) to change the way that all sciences are represented and perceived. We need more journalists with deeper science training - and the time and space to actually communicate across all media. We need to present uncertainty clearly, confidently and in a way that doesn't impede our decision-making. This is a truly sophomoric confusion. This fellow is a tragic victim of the "we" disease, but he may have been predisposed to the affliction by his "background in Astrophysics...
January 24, 2009
Funny Money
"If you thought credit default swaps were ephemeral, just wait until utilities, governments, and financial institutions start to sink wealth into tradable carbon credits." Unless CO2 trading can garner broad political and legal legitimacy, the carbon market may prove to be another brilliantly designed incinerator of capital. Broad political and legal legitimacy won't help since the ideas aren't grounded in reality. Having more believers and laws to punish heretics can delay an eventual catastrophic unraveling, but not prevent it....
January 22, 2009
Foolish Gamble
Many arguments by climate change activists have the form of reasoned analysis, but not the content. I've argued that climate change provides us with a modern version of Pascal's wager: if catastrophic global warming turns out not to happen, the steps we'd take to address it are still worthwhile. Given that there's even a reasonable risk of disruptive climate change, any sensible person should decide to act. It's insurance. The risk of your house burning down is small, yet you carry homeowner's insurance; you don't expect to total your car, but you know that the risk is there, and again, most people carry insurance; you don't expect catastrophic illness to strike you down, but again, you invest in insurance. There is no reason to believe that policies adopted due to climate change fears would be worthwhile, and a great many reasons to believe that they are of no value, or even negative value. Most of the policies enacted so...
January 19, 2009
Pinhole Vision
I've been meaning to compose a post that included thoughts about this Wendell Berry essay, but for now I'm just abstracting one bit of it to make a tenuously related point. People in movements too readily learn to deny to others the rights and privileges they demand for themselves. They too easily become unable to mean their own language, as when a “peace movement” becomes violent. They often become too specialized, as if finally they cannot help taking refuge in the pinhole vision of the institutional intellectuals. They almost always fail to be radical enough, dealing finally in effects rather than causes. Or they deal with single issues or single solutions, as if to assure themselves that they will not be radical enough. Add to that the lack of self knowledge often shown by those in specialized professions. Engineering is a magnificent profession which serves as one of the bases of our civilization. It is constructed upon tried &...
January 18, 2009
Fantasy Land
There's been a kerfuffle about labor standards in (notional) developing nations that I'd been ignoring, but may be worth discussing a bit. Nicholas Kristof writes a depressing column about Cambodian kids who spend their days picking through giant heaps of garbage seeking usable scraps and dreaming of the day when they might be able to work in a sweatshop. I think it’s wrong to say that all consideration of international labor standards is merely aimed at keeping people stuck on the trash heap, but it’s a valuable reminder about the generally limited ability of just saying “no” to things to accomplish what people want. Part of the reason sweatshops exist and attract laborers is that life on the garbage heap is even worse, as is the life of a third world subsistence farmer. If you want to improve things, you need to actually be expanding the set of feasible options, not just arbitrarily closing down one path. Damn straight....
January 04, 2009
Dodgy Dossier
In Death Cult I observed that "In some disturbing ways Holdren represents the core of the Democrats, their truest expression." Said another way: It is unclear what ’scientific stature’ Holdren is supposed to have that is so remarkable. He might have started out as a scientist, but he’s made a career out of science policy. We couldn’t spot any science in list of publications. He’s not particularly noted for his commentary outside of the climate debate, famous only really for getting things wrong when teaming up with the Godfather of neo-Malthusianism, Paul Ehrlich. But there’s something even more curious about the Observer’s commentary - that Holdren’s appointment is supposed to be some kind of victory for ’science’ after the Bush administration. This highlights the vacuity of Bush’s critics (that’s no defence of Bush, by the way). As we can see, this ’science’, isn’t science. It is catastrophism (via environmental determinism and the precautionary principle), with almost no scientific basis....
January 02, 2009
Dimocrats
During the election campaign I boggled about seemingly intelligent and putatively educated people swooning over Obama's empty rhetoric. He pandered this way and that incoherently, but that was all they wished for. The problem is that his incoherent promises can't be kept, and that was perfectly clear all along. “At the end of the day,” Mr. Shapiro said in an e-mail statement, “the advisers will be charged with implementing President-elect Obama’s strong targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80 percent by 2050. However, the president-elect appointed a cabinet with diverse views and looks forward to strong debate within the cabinet on how best to achieve those outcomes.” . . . In a forum at the Brookings Institution a year ago, Mr. Summers said the current moment on climate change was analogous to that on health care in 1992: Everyone agreed that the current system...
December 10, 2008
Even Dirtier
The earlier post Dirt Nerd alluded to information in a Nat Geo article by Charles Mann, but didn't actually quote that bit. Dazhai is in a geological anomaly called the Loess Plateau. For eon upon eon winds have swept across the deserts to the west, blowing grit and sand into central China. The millennia of dust fall have covered the region with vast heaps of packed silt—loess, geologists call it—some of them hundreds of feet deep. China's Loess Plateau is about the size of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands combined. For centuries the silt piles have been washing away into the Yellow River—a natural process that has exacerbated, thanks to the Dazhai Way, into arguably the worst soil erosion problem in the world. The article goes on to describe the consequences of central command for agriculture, which has severely harmed China's land. How bad is the problem? A new study says almost forty percent of China is losing soil...
December 10, 2008
More Rent
The creeps and cranks are out in force at Poznan, as expected, but they have unfortunately discovered biochar. . . . the coalition is hoping to capitalize on the capacity of the continent's ecosystems to store massive amounts of carbon through reduced deforestation, reforestation, low-impact farming methods and restoration of soil carbon through processes like biochar. . . Largely excluded to date from mechanisms that compensate countries for reducing emissions, the African Climate Solution is calling for "the expansion of eligibility of resources beyond REDD to include the full range of bio-carbon in the climate change negotiations." The group believes that financial incentives for mitigating climate change can simultaneously lift some of the world's poorest out of poverty. . . The initiative — which calls itself "a REDD-Agriculture, Forestry and Sustainable Land Use (AFOLU) Bio-carbon Coalition" — has developed a framework for the creation of an African Fund that would "provide a sustainable carbon financing mechanism suitable for investments...
December 09, 2008
Dumbopolis
I watched the episode on food from the infotainment series Ecopolis. It featured a remarkably dim "scientist" Daniel Kammen, as an expert on energy and emissions issues choosing among various proposed schemes for feeding the population of an imagined future city of 18 million. The base assumption was that trucking in enough food to feed everyone would result in a lot of carbon emissions. None of the proposed schemes considered the possibility of transportation systems that do not have such emissions. Instead they focused on exceedingly improbable ideas such as rebuilding the whole city to support urban high rise agriculture without soil. Their example was lettuce grown with its bare roots being sprayed periodically with a nutrient bath. OK, its just entertainment and politics rather than any sort of serious presentation and discussion, but it was so ignorant that the socially destructive consequences are serious. People who have no real information believe this crap. One of the ideas for...
December 07, 2008
Black Rent
More about the politicization of biochar. In Poznan, around 700 environmental activists marched through the streets over the weekend demanding negotiators get real in efforts to formulate a post-Kyoto deal. And in a side event, scientist and promoter Johannes Lehman from Cornell University made a push for how plant waste heated at high temps (called "biochar") might be a super-effective CO2 storage method (and less expensive, perhaps, than CCS?). We could avoid tons and tons of emissions if activists and political rent seekers would refrain from mobbing congeries of political opportunists and bureaucrats. But they are encouraged by some of those oportunists. Lehmann estimated that under ambitious scenarios biochar could store 1 billion tons of carbon annually -- equivalent to more than 10 percent of global carbon emissions, which amounted to 8.5 billion tons in 2007. Under a conservative scenario the technique could store 0.2 billion tons of carbon annually, he said. That would still require heating without oxygen...
December 02, 2008
Old News
A recurring theme has been the decline of journalism as it loses its monopoly of news and transitions to fashion, gossip and politics. Journalism has always been mostly about such ephemeral things, and now it is becoming solely about them. One of the things that most irks me about journalists is that they manufacture myths. My coverage has evolved. Climate change is not the story of our time. Climate change is a subset of the story of our time, which is that we are coming of age on a finite planet and only just now recognizing that it is finite. . . how can we make a transition to a sort of stabilized and still prosperous relationship with the Earth and each other is the story of our time. . . And it’s a story about conflict. It’s a story about the fact that there are a billion teenagers on planet earth right now. A hundred thirty years ago...
November 30, 2008
Better Focus
A key point of the previous post is that political efforts focus on emissions reduction rather than their elimination through better technology, and that this is so because emissions control can provide a revenue stream and increased power, the true aims of politicians. A similar pattern exists for CO2 sequestration. Politicians dream of major projects to capture carbon from fossil fuels, especially coal, and store it. This is another power and profit lever for governments. But, as with the mistaken energy focus, this is a mistaken carbon sequestration focus. The carbon that we should be concerned about is that which is already in the air. There's plenty of it - enough to have caused some change already and cause more change in future as the inertia of the climate system is overcome by time. This means air capture rather than smokestack capture. An old post discussed a Freeman Dyson review of some recent global warming books and found them...
November 29, 2008
Gimme Money
Bureaucrats are money grubbers above all else. Put aside the familiar arguments - that the science is clear, that climate change represents an indisputable existential threat to the planet, and that every day we do not act the problem grows worse. Well, they are familiar arguments, but still nonsensical. It isn't just when we do not act that the problems grow worse, it is also when we do act that climate threats grow worse. At a time when the global economy is sputtering, we need growth. At a time when unemployment in many nations is rising, we need new jobs. At a time when poverty threatens to overtake hundreds of millions of people, especially in the least developed world, we need the promise of prosperity. This possibility is at our fingertips. Economists at the United Nations call for a Green New Deal - a deliberate echo of the energizing vision of President Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression of...
November 24, 2008
More Slime
Continuing the peripatetic rant about motivated reasoning. Soil organic matter is what makes dirt fertile and able to support plant life – both of which are especially important for agriculture. Organic matter retains water in the soil and prevents erosion. Natural processes of decomposition of soil organic matter provide plants and microbes with the energy source and water they need to grow, and carbon is released into the atmosphere as a by-product of this process. Warming temperatures are expected to speed up this process which will increase the amount of CO2 that is transferred to the atmosphere. "From the perspective of agriculture, we can't afford to lose carbon from the soil because it will change soil fertility and enhance erosion" says Simpson. "Alternatively, consider all the carbon locked up in permafrost in the Arctic. We also need to understand what will happen to the stored carbon when microbes become more active under warmer temperatures." Soil organic matter is not...
November 23, 2008
Even Less
I noted in Semi-Literate that political arguments masquerading as economic arguments masquerading as environmental arguments were nonsensical in that they were not grounded in reality. No matter who wins these kind of contests nothing is accomplished. A third way is a find a middle ground. You’re allowed to emit some sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere so that industrial production can continue, but an unlimited amount so as to prevent the acid rain situation from getting out of control. The “green” proposal for carbon dioxide is essentially similar to this. It’s important, economically, that we allow there to be some carbon emissions. But it’s also important that we not have unlimited levels of greenhouse gases making the world hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter with all sorts of deleterious consequences for people’s lives. There’s nothing intrinsic to the idea of free markets or property rights that forces anyone to adopt the “free for all” view. And there’s certainly nothing...
November 14, 2008
Ugly Ducklings
One of the weird but predictable results of momentum in climate change advocacy is that every study that can somehow be linked to it, however implausibly, now contains speculation of climate impacts. But now there is something newer if not better: financial disaster. The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crisis less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we have fewer failures, but when they occur … [no deletion here] I shiver at the thought. I rephrase here: we will have fewer but more severe crises. The rarer the event, the less we know about its odds. It mean[s] that we know less and less about the possibility of a crisis. . . What has this...
November 09, 2008
Traction
Politics is merely entertainment, a particularly ugly sort of entertainment in my view. It accomplishes nothing in the sense of improving the human condition or achieving any other stated goals, but it consumes resources and creates social friction. For example: The sudden collapse of the carbon price mirrors the rout in the wider commodity markets. Carbon peaked in July, its price summit occurring within 10 days of the peak in the crude oil price. . . It is a terrible irony that one aim of creating a carbon market was to provide a measure of certainty to the energy industry in estimating the future price of carbon for the purpose of planning investments in new power generators. Estimates of the price at which carbon capture and storage technology might be economically viable vary between E40 and E60 a tonne. Suffice it to say we are nowhere near these levels. More political action is needed, Cameron says, with smaller carbon...
October 28, 2008
Basic Plumbing
Journalists, especially science writers it seems, have a lot of trouble grasping seemingly simple issues. Here's the background: research Sterman published last year with co-author Linda Booth Sweeney of Harvard found that even MIT grad students make rudimentary mistakes when asked how to stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Nisbet sums up: In the experiment, MIT students with advanced training in either the sciences or economics were asked to read descriptions from the IPCC summary for policymakers that depicted the long term accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. When asked then to sketch what they estimated to be the emissions path needed to stabilize atmospheric CO2, nearly 2/3 of the elite MIT students erroneously reasoned that greenhouse gas emissions can stabilize even though emissions would continue to exceed the rate of removal from the atmosphere. The students typically thought that stabilizing carbon dioxide emissions at current levels would likewise stabilize carbon dioxide concentrations at current levels. The right answer is...
October 13, 2008
Monkey Bunk
While we're on the subject - again - of nonsense narratives . . . Bonobos live only in the lowland forest south of the river Congo, and, along with chimpanzees, they are humans' closest relatives. Bonobos are perhaps best known for their promiscuity: sexual acts both within and between the sexes are a common means of greeting, resolving conflicts, or reconciling after conflicts. The researchers made the discovery that these free-loving primates also hunt and kill other primates while they were studying a bonobo population living in LuiKotale, Salonga National Park, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They had been observing the bonobos there for the last five years, which is what made the new observations possible. Although Hohmann's team did have prior evidence for monkey hunting by bonobos, it came exclusively from indirect studies of fresh fecal samples—one of which contained the digit of a black mangabey. Yet, in the absence of direct behavioral observations, it was not...
October 13, 2008
Strange Spins
Much of what I read about agriculture is a convoluted narrative in service of some activist agenda. There is sometimes a smattering of real information underneath the cruft, but it is fragmented and selected to advance the agenda rather than inform the reader. The first hybrid cauliflower was introduced in 1983. Before that time production was based on seed from open-pollinated populations raised on farms by growers who often specialized in seed production for their neighbours. While conventional growers were quick to adopt the range of F1 hybrids that the seed companies offered, organic farmers found themselves increasingly neglected. They want seed breeders to respect both “the natural characteristics of species” and the “integrity of the organism”. The F1 hybrids, which require a form of male sterility developed by fusing two different types of cell, do neither. But conventional seed breeders do not find it worthwhile to develop varieties for organic farmers, a small market that actively seeks diversity...
October 10, 2008
Boosters
It's interesting in a twisted sort of way how fads arise and persist for a while until the obvious finally penetrates the fevered brains of victims. . . . the biofuel genie is out of the bottle and he’s here to stay. As a society’s wealth increases, its energy consumption rises far more quickly than its food consumption - in fact, food consumption eventually plateaus because people can only fit so much into their stomachs. This very fact is leading to a revolution — the result of which will be that, in the future, we will view fuel as a more important outcome from growing crops than food. This is complete nonsense that results from confusing energy with liquid fuel for transportation. A society could become filthy rich and need no liquid fuel but it would still need a great deal of energy. The idea of growing crops for liquid fuel is silly at every level. A solar cell,...
September 30, 2008
Bumper Crop
As noted recently in Captivating, and many previous posts as well, the politics of limits and empty symbolic gestures is a loser since reality can only be ignored and denied for so long before it is obvious to even the dimmest that the emperor is buck nekid. As the election enters its endgame, Democrats and their environmental allies face a political challenge they could hardly have imagined just a few months ago. America's growing dependence on fossil fuels, once viewed as a Democratic trump card held alongside the Iraq war and the deflating economy, has become a lodestone instead. . . Democrats and greens ended up in this predicament because they believed their own press clippings -- or, perhaps more accurately, Al Gore's. After the release of the documentary film and book "An Inconvenient Truth," greens convinced themselves that U.S. public opinion on climate change had shifted dramatically, despite having no empirical evidence that was the case. . ....
September 23, 2008
As Usual
My main gripe about climate nutters has been that they exaggerate the threat in order to stampede society into adopting regulatory systems that would be useless for climate change mitigation yet would be injurious in other ways, for a net negative result that would amplify the harms of climate change. They are part of the problem, not the solution. There has been some progress as the mitigation narrative has foundered on the rocks of better science that makes it plain that there are no mechanisms to achieve adequate mitigation and so efforts should focus on adaptation, as sensible analysts have been saying for years. But, they still get it wrong. The Economist published an article this past week titled “Adapt or die” [subscription needed]. . . A focus on critical resources (e.g. energy, food, water, medical support) which is local and regionally focused, is a much more effective framework to assist society in reducing the risks from the diverse...
September 17, 2008
Twaddle
There's a lot of it around these days, much of it of the politicized financial variety. But it seems to me that a great deal of environmental "science" is also politicized twaddle. The four-year study involved native Oklahoma tall grass prairie ecosystems that were sealed inside four, living-room-sized environment chambers. The dozen 12-ton, six-foot-deep plots were extracted intact from the University of Oklahoma's prairie research facility near Norman, Okla., in order to minimize the disturbance of plants and soil bacteria. Inside the DRI's sunlit-controlled EcoCELL chambers, scientists replicated the daily and seasonal changes in temperature, and rainfall that occur in the wild. In the second year of the study, half of the plots were subjected to temperatures typical of a normal year, and the other half were subjected to abnormally warm temperatures -- on the order of those predicted to occur later this century by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In the third year of the study, temperatures...
September 12, 2008
Go Ponder
Marcelino responds to Tyler's question: "What are our personal obligations toward the environment?" We are part of the environment. Other people are part of my environment. I am part of the environment of other people and of many other organisms such as the bacteria that live in my gut, the birds that nest in my building, or the plants that live in some distant rainforest. The question whether we have obligations towards "the environment" doesn't make sense. [Tyler continues:] Climate change is not the last environmental burden we will place on the world and probably not even the biggest such burden, but fewer people does mean less human pressure along many environmental dimensions, present and future. "Burden?" "Human pressure?" I understand that these are just metaphors, but metaphors for what? The choice of words suggests a world in which "the environment" is better off if not touched by us the outsiders, and the well-being of "the environment" is above...
September 07, 2008
Zealots
The UN is a bad joke which keeps getting worse. The abject foolishness of its leadership, especially regarding climate, makes it ever more difficult to develop useful policies. Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which last year earned a joint share of the Nobel Peace Prize, said that people should then go on to reduce their meat consumption even further. His comments are the most controversial advice yet provided by the panel on how individuals can help tackle global warning. Pachauri, who was re-elected the panel's chairman for a second six-year term last week, said diet change was important because of the huge greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental problems - including habitat destruction - associated with rearing cattle and other animals. It was relatively easy to change eating habits compared to changing means of transport, he said. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation has estimated that meat production accounts for nearly...
August 24, 2008
Funny Farm
Environmentalists, and those in the media infected with this malady, enjoy horror stories and use such fantasies as arguments for inflicting harm on society that they want to do in any event. It's an excuse, rather than a reason. Last week there was a report published in the Journal of Science that stated that the number of these ocean dead zones around the world has doubled every decade since the 1960s. There are now some 400 coastal areas that periodically or perpetually become dead due to oxygen starved bottom waters. While the size of these dead zones is small relative to the total surface of the oceans, they account for a significant percentage of ocean waters that support commercial shellfish and fish species. This is due to the fact that these zones occur in areas that have historically been prime fishing grounds since these grounds are close to dense human populations. . . We humans know that all life...
August 15, 2008
Burning Bruno
Again. I've written on this before, more than once. I think it's a huge issue and is a key part of my disgust with the gaggle of political and cultural thugs in the left/Democrat/environmentalist organized crime syndicate. Long-time observers of public debates about environmental threats know that skeptics about such matters tend to move, over time, through three stages. First, they tell you you’re wrong and they can prove it. (In this case, “Climate isn’t changing in unusual ways or, if it is, human activities are not the cause.”) Then they tell you you’re right but it doesn’t matter. (”OK, it’s changing and humans are playing a role, but it won’t do much harm.”) Finally, they tell you it matters but it’s too late to do anything about it. (”Yes, climate disruption is going to do some real damage, but it’s too late, too difficult, or too costly to avoid that, so we’ll just have to hunker down and...
August 10, 2008
Dissolve
A few days ago Norm posted A delusion revived. Here's a blast from the past in the present. Writing at Monthly Review, Gregory Esteven revives a perspective on the transition to socialism that used sometimes to be called 'catastrophist'. Pared down to its essentials his thesis is that the left saved capitalism. . . But those days are now over, thinks Esteven. The good news for socialists - or should that be the bad news? - is that 'the more humane version of capitalism is irreconcilable with globalization'. It's 'not at all clear whether capitalism can continue to be reformed'; and 'it seems that the time to revive the socialist project has arrived'. Keeping the socialist project alive is fine by me, but this isn't an attractive or compelling way of doing it (leave aside the fact that the inability of capitalism to change and adapt is a theme long past its sell-by date). For it does rather look...
July 10, 2008
Media Skew
A series of posts at Prometheus amplify and extend the theme of the previous post here - science war is merely politics and is practiced by all politicians. Andy [Revkin] writes, breathlessly: Vice President Dick Cheney’s office was involved in removing statements on health risks posed by global warming from a draft of a health official’s Senate testimony last year, a former senior government environmental official said on Tuesday. Watergate this is not. In fact, the editing of testimony probably occurs just about every time that an employee of the executive branch is set to testify before Congress, and this has been standard operating procedure for decades. The more significant the issue the higher up the chain of command the review takes place. The procedure is clearly outlined in OMB Circular-21 (PDF): Unless a specific exemption is approved by OMB, materials subject to OMB clearance include: All budget justifications and budget-related oversight materials; Testimony before and letters to congressional...
July 08, 2008
War on Science
I've posted many times before about sleazoid Democrats and their Republican war on science nonsense, noting that politicians of all stripes are guilty and that if anything Democrats have prosecuted the war most vigorously. If we hope to have reality based policies we need to denounce these nutters for their attempts to conceal the predations of their favored politicians. For example: If you weren't living under a scientific rock for the last 20 years, you know that everyone from environmental groups to Senator and then Vice-President Al Gore believed biofuels were the renewable way to cut dependence on foreign oil and have a cleaner environment. If you weren't living under a scientific rock for the last 20 years and know anything about how biofuels are made you always knew that was complete hoopie, but it wasn't until a Republican president and Congress agreed they were good that everyone knew they must be terribly wrong. But biofuels are not as...
July 07, 2008
Swamp Thing
Wetlands are comparatively inhospitable for humans, so much so that land management activities such as draining swamps have come to symbolize improvement in many human affairs. Draining the swamps means civilization, gentrification, and unmitigated public good. It creates useful farm land, controls pests such as disease carrying mosquitoes, and creates navigable waterways where previously there was only impassable wilderness. Examples of large scale swamp projects in US history - New Orleans, Florida, California and the coastal states of the southeast - are stories of the rise of health, wealth and civic pride. But, on second thought, maybe wetlands were even more valuable in unimproved condition. In an important scientific paper in 1997, Robert Costanza et al estimated that in terms of ‘ecosystem services’ provided (waste treatment, food, water supply, recreation), wetlands, on a per hectare basis, are the most valuable ecosystems on Earth – many are worth up to $30,000 per hectare annually. . . But the most under-valued...
July 05, 2008
Charitable Deduction
I try to avoid politicized climate nutters even when they are posting about things that interest me, but it's not possible for me to avoid them completely. Everyone on this list subscribes because he or she believes that biochar has the potential to ease the climate crisis. Which is why I resigned from the list. It was mostly tedious and futile debates about politics. The referenced post was collected and reposted elsewhere or I would never have seen it. But how great is that potential? It seems pretty clear that we will never be able to bury enough biochar each year to match the amount of fossil carbon being taken out of the earth. In any case, what would be the point? Instead of digging up coal and burning it we could burn the biochar instead. Well, lots of carbon is already recaptured by living things in the soil and seas as well as chemical reactions with minerals. It...
July 04, 2008
Liberty Feast
Holidays, for common people of modest means, often means feasting. There will be a lot of cook outs today in the USA, sometimes with families gathered from far flung locations (though less so than in the past), a lot of alcohol consumed, as well as fire and explosions. Good phun for some - beef, beer and bombs. A fair number of bullets will be fired as well, more for the explosive sound than anything else. So, news of this World Bank report sharply contrasts with the mood of the day. Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian. The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body. That doesn't mean that it is true, or makes even minimal sense, as we have seen...
June 26, 2008
More Immorality
At this point one can be fairly well assured that moral claims mask immoral objectives. There are rare exceptions in this, as in everything, but it is seldom the case when part of public rhetoric. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a co-sponsor of the bill, has called it "the world's most far-reaching program to fight global warming." It is indeed policy on a grand scale. It would slow American economic growth by trillions of dollars over the next half-century. But in terms of temperature, the result will be negligible if China and India don't also commit to reducing their emissions, and it will be only slightly more significant if they do. By itself, Lieberman-Warner would postpone the temperature increase projected for 2050 by about two years. Politicians favor the cap-and-trade system because it is an indirect tax that disguises the true costs of reducing carbon emissions. It also gives lawmakers an opportunity to control the number and distribution of emissions...
June 18, 2008
Rope-A-Dope
Recent events have given some conservatives hope that AGW will, in the end, be an issue that they leverage for political benefit. I argued three things: (1) anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is real, (2) current projections of its expected impact are wildly uncertain, but are not sufficient to justify the costs of an aggressive emissions reduction program, and (3) conservatives have an unseen political opportunity to win on the issue by pointing this out. . . proponents of emissions reductions will respond with four arguments: (1) inflate the analyzed costs of global warming by claiming the science actually now says things will be even worse than we previously thought, (2) inflate the analyzed costs of global warming by embedding indefensible discount rate assumptions in the black box of econometric calculations used by economists to conduct the cost-benefit analysis, (3) deflate the analyzed costs of emissions mitigation by claiming a free lunch – that there is a cost-free or low-cost...
June 10, 2008
Harm's Way
In an earlier post I objected to the idea that James Hansen could in any way be considered an authority on "where humanity should aim with its GHG reduction efforts" since he had no relevant expertise and has repeatedly demonstrated a propensity for playing loose with truth to advance his agenda. He's a slimebag in other words. He's not the only one. As my colleague Andy Revkin reported, the influential NASA climate scientist James Hansen is now pushing for a new approach to cutting greenhouse emissions. Instead of the cap-and-trade approach pushed by some politicians and environmentalists — and rejected in the Senate last week — he’s urging a “tax-and-dividend”: a carbon tax whose revenues would all be directly returned to citizens. The money would be divided equally, so that people who use less energy than average — like lower-income people — would get back more than they spend. Do lower income people use less energy? New York Times...
June 10, 2008
Hot Soot
It seems to me that climate hysterics - sometimes including those who claim to be climate scientists - are just making stuff up. Some admit that they exaggerate findings for political effect. It's hard to know what is going on. No good comes of this of course, as any semi-sensible person with the intellectual maturity of an 8 year old knows, but it's not about good. The consequences are worse than just bad policy and wasted resources, it hampers the discovery process. For example: Recent studies now show that soot - in the air as aerosol brown clouds and on the ice as dirty snow - has contributed a significant amount to global warming in both the air on and on the ground. Over the vast Pacific soot-ladened brown clouds have been recently found to cause up to 40 percent (60 percent of CO2's effect) of the observed warming anomalies, alone accounting for 12 percent of all of the...
June 07, 2008
Intertext
Discouraging whispers. Jim [Manzi] has actually made two different points, both of which I agree with: 1) The political economy of the US will not allow a Pigovian tax on carbon. 2) Even if you could herd all the political cats into the carbon tax paddock, pricing carbon as a textbook externality is so difficult as to be futile. . . Jim’s convinced me that there is no workable price instrument at our disposal, leaving us with cap-and-trade as the only remaining option. Just because it’s the other option presented doesn’t make it right, but nor does the fact that politicians like cap and trade make it the worst idea in the world. A cap and trade program with all the necessary bells and whistles (an initial auction, a liquid market, tradability, bankability, etc.) would be a simpler and more transparent way to reduce aggregate US CO2 emissions if that’s what we decide to do. The precedent for a...
June 07, 2008
More Air
The emissions nutters seem horribly dense, and so make ridiculous statements, but it isn't lack of intelligence that troubles them, it's tunnel vision. The point was illustrated by a recent decision by the Virginia State Corporation Commission, which regulates utilities, to turn down an application by the Appalachian Power Company to build a plant that would have captured 90 percent of its carbon and deposited it nearly two miles underground, at a well that it dug in 2003. The applicant’s parent was American Electric Power, one of the nation’s largest coal users, and perhaps the most technically able. But the company is a regulated utility and spends money only when it can be reimbursed. The Virginia commission said that it was “neither reasonable nor prudent” for the company to build the plant, and the risks for ratepayers were too great, because costs were uncertain, perhaps double that of a standard coal plant. . . Thus an approach that makes...
June 07, 2008
Unforced Errors
Here's an example of the sort of sloppy thinking that plagues environmental punditry, especially when climate is involved. [via Tyler, who bought it uncritically] The average American household burns through about 8.1 metric tons of greenhouse gases as a result of food consumption. By contrast, if your house has a car that gets 25 mpg and you drive 12,000 miles a year, that produces 4.4 metric tons of greenhouse gases. . . two Carnegie Mellon researchers recently broke down the carbon footprint of foods, and their findings were a bit surprising. 83 percent of emissions came from the growth and production of the food itself. Only 11 percent came from transportation, and even then, only 4 percent came from the transportation between grower and seller (which is the part that eating local helps cut). . . the striking takeaway is that "on average, replacing just 21 percent of the red meat in the 'typical' diet with fish or chicken...
June 02, 2008
Energy Hermits
The lunatic fringe of the eco-tard movement thinks it is becoming fashionable. Being "off the grid" is under-rated. . . I was reminded of it again over the weekend while reading a piece in the LA Times about the Post Ranch Inn . . . What caught me, in particular, in reading the piece was how the Post Ranch Inn is going solar and "off the grid", and how that was presented as a good thing, not just something you might do as a nutter in rural Montana. It seems being "off the grid" has crossed over from being something done at the fringes to something laudable and desirable. It's just ignorance and fuzzy thinking, but it may be true that it is increasingly fashionable. More's the pity. The late Marty Bender was quite clear about this, as noted in this old post. a mature understanding of the power grid is necessary. Society is necessarily networked and power is...
May 29, 2008
Bad Form
Vaclav Klaus - who has a book out: Blue Planet in Green Shackles - talks about his reasons for writing it. The whole process is already in the hands of those who are not interested in rational ideas and arguments. It is in the hands of climatologists and other related scientists who are highly motivated to look in one direction only because a large number of academic careers has evolved around the idea of man-made global warming. It is, further, in the hands of politicians who maximize the number of votes they seek to get from the electorate. It is also - as a consequence of political decisions - in the hands of bureaucrats of national and more often of international institutions who try to maximize their budgets and years of careers as well regardless the costs, truth and rationality. It is in the hands of rent-seeking businesspeople who are - given the existing policies - interested in the...
May 19, 2008
Weird Science
I'm baffled by the number of sites that claim to be about science but that are mostly, or only, about politics. Climate Feedback was mentioned in Rare Lucidity, and here's "Scientificblogging". Man-Made Nitrogen Now Implicated In Global Warming. The paper in Science compares emissions of nitrogen compounds in the year 1860, before humans had a great impact on pollution emissions, with current emissions. Today pollutant nitrogen deposition to the oceans accounts for about ten percent of the draw-down of CO2 from the atmosphere to the ocean. However, the deposition of these pollutants also results in the increased emissions of nitrous oxide, N2O, which is also a potent greenhouse gas. The net effect is that the N2O emissions offset about one-third of the effects of the increased drawdown of CO2 due to pollution deposition. hmmm, doesn't that say that nitrogen reduces net effects? The press release, Study in Science cites impact of anthropogenic nitrogen on ocean biology, atmospheric CO2, has...
May 19, 2008
Missed Again
Here's a recent example of the muddled thinking that comes from green mental baggage, what Pinker (discussed in earlier posts) criticized as false bioethics of Romantics and Greens that "tend to idealize the natural and demonize technology". Haven't we done enough to the poor tomato? We've turned the voluptuous fruit into a pale imitation of itself: the average supermarket tomato, turned red with ethylene, tastes like, well, nothing. And now we have to genetically modify it for the sake of ketchup? At a research farm in California, scientists for H.J. Heinz Co. are also cautiously eyeing their young tomato plants. Their goal, however, is a little more specific. Heinz is trying to breed a sweeter tomato in order to cut down on the costly corn syrup now used in its ketchup. It's one response to the soaring price of corn, caused in part by the ethanol boom. The tastelessness of our fruits and vegetables (at least when compared to...
May 16, 2008
Rare Lucidity
Most of the posts at Climate Feedback have been bog standard political advocacy that blink reality. An exception: Population: elephant in the greenhouse? A projected 9 billion people will have to share a warming planet by 2050, yet as Kerri Smith writes in Nature Reports Climate Change this week, the climatic effects of their rising numbers and shifting demographics has received surprisingly little study. . . it’s becoming clear that the problem is more complex than a ticking ‘population bomb’. Numbers are exploding in the world’s poorest societies - a trend that CIA chief Michael V. Hayden recently chose above climate or energy issues as one of the key changes facing the 21st century. . . And this month's headlines show how far-reaching the links are between slowing population growth and preventing climate-induced crises, Meyerson added in an email: Each million/billion [people] we add puts more people in the path of natural disasters such as the recent Asian cyclone...
May 14, 2008
Dash for Cash
Those in the climate business make a move to loot the treasury. The meeting called for an ongoing project aimed at understanding and modelling the climate system well enough to provide the sorts of prediction that policy-makers and other stakeholders need — or, at the very least, to show why such prediction might not, in fact, be achievable. Key to this project would be one or more dedicated facilities offering world-class computational resources to the climate-modelling community. . . After all, the fastest computers are nearly always paid for out of the world's public purses, often for use in areas of national security such as communications intelligence or nuclear weapons design. And climate prediction is a national security issue if ever there was one. If funding agencies were to embrace such a goal, the implications would go well beyond money. Profound changes would be required of the community itself. Because the cost over a decade or more might easily...
May 04, 2008
Quiet Altruists
It's not just the Brits that are barmy, it's an international problem. Robin Hanson posts about an OpEd: . . . top universities accept hundreds of individuals who have demonstrated the highest levels of citizenship. These teenagers have volunteered in more food banks, sponsored more fundraisers and lobbied more officials than any previous generation. ... Sometimes some of these students will denounce world hunger but be unfriendly to the homeless. They will debate environmental policy but never offer to take out the trash. They will believe vehemently in many causes but roll their eyes when reminded to be humble, to be generous and to "do what is right." It is these people, though, who often climb America's ladder of success. They rise to the top, partly on their own merits yet also partly on the backs of equally deserving but "nicer" people who let them steal the spotlight. ... Watching the race for the presidency, I cannot help but...
April 20, 2008
More Dorks
Even those who have at last gotten some glimmer of comprehension about natural systems cling to their old ways. Their analyses have been demolished, but they have not yet abandoned unworkable prescriptions. Mr. Bush . . . set a target for halting the growth in carbon dioxide emissions by 2025, without specific mandates to achieve that, and in the meantime he blasted proposed Senate legislation for tougher measures as unnecessary. Unnecessary? When scientists detect accelerating melting in the Arctic and confidently predict centuries of coastal retreats and climate shifts, endangering the only planet we have? . . . Unnecessary since they would be insufficient, ineffective, just feel good wanking for the twittering set. imagine that we instituted a brutally high gas tax that reduced emissions from American vehicles by 25 percent. That would be a stunning achievement — and in just nine months, China’s increased emissions would have more than made up the difference. . . “If we approach...
April 19, 2008
Part Duh
More about enviro-dorks. Even before Kyoto, policy experts were considering an enticing concept: “avoided deforestation.” After all, existing rain forests, in particular, are crucial carbon sinks, and from Indonesia to Brazil, they are being cut down — mainly for grazing land and timber. This doesn’t just lead to the loss of a carbon sink; in many cases the forests are cleared by burning, which itself pours carbon into the atmosphere. It’s widely reckoned that global carbon emissions would be 20 percent lower were it not for the destruction of forests and the resulting loss of their carbon-storage capacity. It's actually soybeans and palm oil plantations that are replacing rain forests, but even so there is no real loss of carbon-storage capacity. More carbon could be stored in the soil than in the forest, and it could be done in a truly durable way. If the biomass from the forest, and wastes from continuing operations, were returned to the soil...
April 19, 2008
Enviro-Dorks
Or perhaps enviro-whiners. Tell me: How did it come to pass that virtue — a quality that for most of history has generally been deemed, well, a virtue — became a mark of liberal softheadedness? How peculiar, that doing the right thing by the environment — buying the hybrid, eating like a locavore — should now set you up for the Ed Begley Jr. treatment. The answer is obvious: being a green fashion victim is not virtuous, it is softheaded at best but likely worse. It accomplishes no more than changing your hat color. That isn't virtue, it's dim wits. There are so many stories we can tell ourselves to justify doing nothing, but perhaps the most insidious is that, whatever we do manage to do, it will be too little too late. Climate change is upon us, and it has arrived well ahead of schedule. Scientists’ projections that seemed dire a decade ago turn out to have been...
April 17, 2008
Truer Knowledge
Many posts here complain about poor experimental design. Most of them focus on natural systems, and a lot of those focus on climate change related issues. Recently, Sweet Nothings took issue with a study that jacked up the CO2 in a part of a field of soya, and then complained that insect predation increased. A realistic experiment, one that might yield useful information, would control for invasion from outside areas, and make changes slowly, as they would be in reality, since life adapts to change. Here's a new example of this type of problem. The main threat to many marine organisms is not global warming but ocean acidification, as carbon dioxide from the air dissolves into the water and turns into carbonic acid. Acid dissolves calcium carbonate in the skeletons of corals, for example; many scientists fear that acidification of the oceans will kill many, if not most, coral reefs by the end of the century. Similar concerns have...
April 13, 2008
Rootless Bloviation
About food. As Becker points out, Paul Ehrlich and others predicted in the 1970s (beginning with the first "Earth Day," in 1970) mass starvation as a result of continuing population growth. They were wrong, in part by failing to predict the Green Revolution, which greatly reduced the cost of food production. The situation today is different. The green revolution is misunderstood. The development and/or introduction of new food crops and new cultivars of old crops isn't novel, isn't revolutionary. It has happened repeatedly in the past and will happen again in future. New materials and methods for increasing soil fertility have also happened repeatedly in the past, and will happen again in future. It is no accident that these advances do not happen before time, before they are needed. So long as a given agronomic system is good enough, it will endure. When it isn't, it changes. The demand for agricultural products has grown, though not as a result...
April 11, 2008
Myth Makers
Why did Gintis call those who lie with statistics slimebags? You may say that they are well-intentioned, but that does not change the fact that they are liars out to mislead the uniformed. . . . how are we to identify and solve social problems if we do not know what they are? That earlier post faulted Krugman for pervasive slimebaggery, but the NYT in general is slimebag central for many of the issues I care about. The world has seen the first international conference on manufacturing meat. This is the process, tested so far only at laboratory scale, of growing pork, chicken, or beef through cell culture in vats instead of raising and slaughtering animals. My colleague Mark Bittman wrote a fine piece recently about the greenhouse-gas consequences of conventional meat production. Fine article? Just this week, the president of Brazil announced emergency measures to halt the burning and cutting of the country’s rain forests for crop and...
April 09, 2008
Half Way
The environmental movement, mired in bad analyses and even worse prescriptions, is in turmoil. . . . a funny thing has happened over the last several years, as opinion about the reality and urgency of the climate crisis has "tipped." The consensus that would allegedly result once broad public acceptance of anthropogenic climate change was achieved has fractured. . . . . . a variety of scientific and economic analysis has come out, not from opponents of action to address climate change but from supporters, suggesting that the policy framework developed by environmentalists in the early 1990's to address climate change will not be capable of achieving its objectives. . . . . . the IPCC may have vastly underestimated the likely growth of carbon emissions over the next century, and thus underestimated the scale of the technology challenge necessary to stabilize carbon levels in the atmosphere, and a raft of studies and other analysis suggesting that carbon caps,...
April 07, 2008
Slimebags
Gintis explains in a review of Thomas Sowell's Economic Facts and Fallacies. Everyone interested in economic and social policy should read this, and his other writings. Sowell is best as showing how statistics can mislead. For instance, he says "It is an undisputed fact that the average real income...of American households rose by only 6 percent over the entire period from 1969 to 1996...But it is an equally undisputed fact that the average real income per person in the United States rose by 51 percent over that very same period." (p. 125) Both are true because average household size decreased dramatically over the period, with more elderly couples and fewer children per married couple in the later period. Nota bene: commentators who give the household change while ignoring the individual change are slimebags. You may say that they are well-intentioned, but that does not change the fact that they are liars out to mislead the uniformed. Sowell often manages...
April 07, 2008
Green Ham
As usual, societies are being fleeced by governments and industries in the name of a crisis. By giving away greenhouse-gas emissions permits for free, Europe may hand power companies windfall profits of up to 71 billion euros—about $100 billion—and undermine the fight to curb emissions. . . In Europe, utilities have gotten almost all their emission permits for free, yet electricity rates have risen as if utilities had to pay for their permits. Utilities say that’s only natural, reflecting the “opportunity cost” they incur in not being able to sell their permits into the market. . . That’s why Europe plans to sell the permits starting in 2013—though several countries and many utilities are screaming to keep the free handouts. Cap-and-Trade? Surely you jest....
April 07, 2008
How Else?
The green exploitation industry is spinning in confusion lately as it becomes ever more necessary to retreat from some of their silliest advocacy positions - such as ethanol. “Dangerous Assumptions,” as it is titled, has been covered extensively by the mainstream media as a warning about ‘underplaying’ climate change. The environmental press, however, has attacked it for blandly pushing technology investment without taking into account the current technologies that could be deployed to fight climate change. Joseph Romm, over at Grist, for example, calls for more deployments of existing technologies over more R&D. What he, and a lot in the environmental movement miss, is that clean technologies, especially new energy tech, require a lot of development long after they are conceived or patented. Take the majority of industries that E2T follows–cellulosic ethanol, algae biodiesel, thin film solar PV–and it becomes clear that much of this technology still exists in journals and papers, not in the marketplace yet. Saying that...
April 02, 2008
Goose and Gander
Muddled thinking about climate change faith. [via Instapundit] When a panel of scientists addressed the ethical implications of geoengineering at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in February in Boston, it was a clear sign of how far this seemingly out-there field has advanced toward legitimacy. While no proposed geoengineering fixes have yet been tested on a global scale, all of them have the irresistible lure of immediacy. Once deposited, CO2 can linger in the atmosphere for more than 100 years, meaning it will take decades or centuries for emissions-reduction policies to cool the planet significantly. Geoengineering, on the other hand, could potentially send global temperatures back to preindustrial levels within only a few years, bringing the Arctic melt to a screeching halt and keeping extreme weather patterns and rising sea levels associated with warming in check. "Every simulation that's been done shows that geoengineering doesn't bring the climate back perfectly," says Ken Caldeira, an...
March 26, 2008
Poli Tards
Many Green Tards are also, perhaps primarily, Political Tards. . . . an assistant professor in the Truman School of Public Affairs at MU, recently surveyed 1,000 adults concerning their attitudes about the environment. The survey polled respondents about their levels of concern for the environment and preferences for government action to address a wide set of environmental issues. A strong majority of the public expressed general concern about the environment. According to the survey, the top three issues that the public wants the government to address are protecting community drinking water, reducing pollution of U.S. rivers and lakes, and improving urban air pollution issues like smog. In the survey, global warming ranks eighth in importance. . . the best predictor of individuals’ environmental preferences is their political attributes. They examined the relationship between party identification and political ideology and support for action to address environmental problems. “The survey reinforced the stark differences in people’s environmental attitudes, depending on...
March 22, 2008
Dimonomics
I read a lot of crack pot arguments on the net, as do you. It's the net. Still, I'm surprised and disappointed at how many of them come from supposedly educated folks of supposedly more than average intelligence. Education and intelligence aren't much help it seems, except in getting a gig. See this supposed rebuttal to the brain dead ideas of Steven Levitt that driving is better than walking, from an environmental perspective, since food is more harmful than fossil fuels. One would not expect a man of Mr Levitt's analytical ability to buy this argument, delightfully counterintuitive as it is. It seems to assume an awful lot: that the distance traveled is neither too short or too long, that the calories are entirely replaced, that the replacement calories come from animal products, that the car gets greater than 24 miles to the gallon, that the car does not contribute to congestion, thereby slowing other drivers and increasing emissions,...
March 17, 2008
95% Kosher
The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. [I]t seems odd that after hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising and $20 billion in sales, no one is sure what organic food is. There are two sides to the organic food issue to most people; genetics and chemicals. . . There are people rightfully concerned that genetic modification of fruits or vegetables can lead to unknown consequences. . . In looking at the history of agriculture, almost everything is 'genetically modified', they just use a different name for it. . . Professor Lee Silver . . . put it much more succinctly than I can: ... organic food is defined not by any material substance in the food itself, but instead by the "holistic" methods used on organic farms. Furthermore, the physical attributes of the product and any effects it might have on environment or health are explicitly excluded from U.S., European, and international definitions. The implicit, unproven...
March 11, 2008
Tis A Gift
A current example of the harm resulting from backward looking politics and moralities is in the news. [via FuturePundit] The growth in China's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is far outpacing previous estimates, making the goal of stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gases much more difficult, according to a new analysis by economists at the University of California, Berkeley, and UC San Diego. Previous estimates, including those used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, say the region that includes China will see a 2.5 to 5 percent annual increase in CO2 emissions, the largest contributor to atmospheric greenhouse gases, between 2004 and 2010. The new UC analysis puts that annual growth rate for China to at least 11 percent for the same time period. The politics of limits and the ethics or moralities of simplification and self-denial blink reality. If emissions are a problem then local reductions in the comparatively sparsely populated developed world are simply irrelevant. The overwhelming majority of...
March 10, 2008
Natural Rhythm
Since I'm involved in agriculture rather than manufacturing or service I don't pay much attention to clocks. What matters is the sun, and that's quite variable at this latitude. I rise with the birds, who anticipate sunrise and shriek their joy, and tend my animals who are more than ready to begin their day too. And, like them, I rest during the day when it is too long, and often too warm, but work again in the late afternoon and evening with the lingering light of mid summer. Still, I have to deal with the rest of the world and they are clock watchers. It's a real pain for them that clocks change due to political shenanigans. If you cursed daylight savings time for throwing a wrench in your schedule this weekend, you have Congress to thank. It extended daylight savings time last year by four weeks, citing claims of reduced crime, fewer automobile accidents, more light for summer...
March 01, 2008
Farsight
Charlie Stross boggles at the difficulty a modern SF writer has in plausibly predicting near futures in fiction. Here, in a nutshell, is why writing near-future SF has become so difficult. Say you want to set a story 30 years out, and as part of your world-building exercise you want to work out what technologies will be in widespread use by the time of the story. Back in 1900 to 1950 you could do so with a fair degree of accuracy; pick a couple of embryonic technologies and assume they'll be widespread (automobiles, aircraft, television): maybe throw in a couple of wildcards for good measure (wrist-watch telephones), and you're there. But today, that 30-year window is inaccessible. Even a 15-year horizon is pushing it. Something new could come along tomorrow and overrun the entire developed world before 2023. He bases this conclusion on evidence of the time compression for technology spread. In the day it took a century for...
February 20, 2008
Toxic Watermelons
One of the glaring weaknesses of climate change hysterics is their lack of comprehension of climate change. This isn't only true for the uninformed majority, it is also true for advocacy groups and many scientists. Their arguments are unpersuasive even when one is sympathetic to the thesis. Climate Science has reported that the narrow focus on carbon emissions as the dominate threat to society and the environment has unleashed unanticipated consequences (e.g., see Has The IPCC Produced A Hydra?). A recent (February 8, 2008) New York Time article by Elisabeth Rosenthal Biofuels Deemed A Greenhouse Threat provide yet another example of the inappropriate and inaccurate focus on just one human influence on the climate system. An excerpt from the article summarizes the issue, Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded. “This land...
February 04, 2008
Forests and Trees
Anti-humanist political activists have been foaming about deforestation for decades. Several different types of activist use the same data to support their biases. The best solution to this problem? Free contraceptives and other forms of birth control to everyone in the world. We have too many people. We aren't going to persuade them all to consume less. They will gobble up more and more habitat. Since large chunks of our elites have decided (in a sort of madness of the intellectual crowds) that anthropogenic global warming (now renamed as Climate Change as part of that madness) is the biggest problem facing the planet they have decided that habitat loss must be seen through the lens of global warming (er, climate change). I suspect that they are in basic agreement but have different emphases. They can't imagine really mobilizing to stop the problem of habitat destruction unless they can shout "Climate Change!" It is not enough for them to say...
January 29, 2008
Liberal Myths
Timothy thinks and thinks about ways to improve academia so that it begins to deliver the semi-mythic liberal arts education. This is in part a response to criticism of the state of universities and calls for external regulation to overcome what some see as structural factors that inhibit progress and genuine intellectual engagement, and in part a desire to improve individual outcomes independent of concerns about narrowness or indoctrination. If I don’t want to have a test of a fixed body of knowledge, but I agree that we ought to have benchmarks, what represents the bull’s eye? I figure that if you can identify a successful embodiment of the liberal arts in professional and personal life, and the person who represents that successful standard feels that the content of their education produced ways of thinking about the world that led to that success, you might have a better idea about what kinds of courses and teaching approaches would favor...
January 22, 2008
Reasonably Wrong
Often when I read economists I find their reasoning to be good though their conclusions are false. This happens not only with economists, I just read them often so they provide abundant examples. If we know that the earth is warming, but are uncertain about how fast and with what effects on climates worldwide, what are the most urgent steps that we should take to address it? One, of course, is to keep studying climate phenomena and their ecological impact. Another is to promote research and development aimed at remediation. We urgently need to understand what alternatives to fossil fuels there will be, how much energy can be conserved, how to extract CO2 from the atmosphere, and, if necessary, how to increase the earth’s albedo, its reflectance of incoming sunlight. One way to ensure the necessary R&D is to rely on the market to finance and direct the work by using taxes, subsidies, rationing, and – most important –...
January 16, 2008
Good Grief
Great effort has gone into politicizing education. Kids end up highly indoctrinated, but poorly educated. Nearly three out of four students surveyed in the annual Lemelson-MIT Invention Index think high-tech inventions can help solve issues such as climate change and natural-resource depletion within the next 10 years—and 64 percent of them think they could come up with the a-ha moment themselves, compared to 38 percent of adults. The problem? A majority of United States teens say their science education is lacking and that they aren’t prepared to pursue careers in engineering and technology. All dressed up and nowhere to go. If those responsible for failing to educate the kids actually cared about the issues they spend so much effort politicizing they couldn't help but realize that they are working at cross purposes to their stated objectives. School authorities’ cancellation of a talk that a Nobel laureate climate researcher was to have given to high school students has deeply divided...
January 14, 2008
Even Bigger Pics
In Bigger Pictures the selective use of factoids to support advocacy was noted and questioned since doing so misleads people and often results in mistaken views or bad policies. More. Corn doesn’t grow like a weed. Modern corn farming involves heavy inputs of nitrogen fertilizer (made with natural gas), applications of herbicides and other chemicals (made mostly from oil), heavy machinery (which runs on diesel) and transportation (diesel again). Converting the corn into fuel requires still more energy. The ratio of how much energy is used to make ethanol versus how much it delivers is known as the energy balance, and calculating it is surprisingly complex. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory states that, “Today, 1 Btu of fossil energy consumed in producing and delivering corn ethanol results in 1.3 Btu of usable energy in your fuel tank.” Even that modest payback may be overstated. Skeptics cite the research of Cornell University professor David Pimentel, who estimates that it takes...
January 10, 2008
Power Drinks
The illusion of action and competence is what politics is about. Offering a tangible plan that promises this tax incentive, that fact-finding commission, this reinvestment project, this funding for retraining doesn’t reach people who perceive the present as a slum left behind by a low-rent version of Benjamin’s angel of history. In fact, all it does is convince them that the candidate with the plans is one of those folks with his hands on the levers, one of them who always seems to come out on top. . . There isn’t a policy package that can straightforwardly address some of the underlying structural changes in the global political economy that affect Peoria as surely as they affect Shenzen. Your wonkish arms are too short to box with that god. I don’t think anyone is the master of these changes, even though some people and social classes and systems have way more power to direct what is happening than others....
December 26, 2007
Green E. D.
It's true, greens can't perform. Worse, they try to prevent others from doing so by smearing fud on everything. Japan . . . Flirts With Environmental Disaster Fifty-five million years ago the world's climate was catastrophically changed when volcanoes melted natural gas frozen in the seabed. Now Japan plans to drill for the same icy crystals to end its reliance on imported energy. . . Japan is joining the U.S. and Canada in test drilling for methane even as scientists express concerns about any uncontrolled release of the frozen chemical. Some researchers blame the greenhouse gas for triggering a global firestorm that helped wipe out the dinosaurs. They just want to huddle together under the bed and whine. Others don't have these defects. In the West, this potential fuel from the ocean floor has for the most part been the stuff of fantasy. But it's a different story in Asia. The People's Republic of China is investing millions to...
December 18, 2007
More Piling On
Shorter Muck&Mystery Much of climate debate is exactly backwards. Advocates are spending far too much time arguing over how important that it is that others change their behavior, usually in ways that those doing the advocating would want regardless of climate change. In this way climate change becomes not a problem to be solved but a political weapon in service of other goals. The alternative to the dominant approach to climate change would be to initiate those steps that will actually make a difference, thus enabling political compromise. As Dan Sarewitz and I have often argued it is often technological advances that enable compromise rather than vice versa. And in the case of climate change those steps that will actually make a difference begin with making the costs of producing alternative energy cheaper than fossil fuels (as Shellenberger and Nordhaus have argued, and now Google), and working to make people and ecosystems more resilient/less vulnerable to climate impacts. Of...
December 17, 2007
Piling On
You might not know it from media reports and the self congratulation of advocates but Bali was a bust. The Bali global warming talks ended in nothing, but that didn't stop European leaders from pointing to the bright side: the U.S. was booed. Here's Wash Post: "As we saw in the room today, the political price for blocking things has come up in recent months," said Connie Hedegaard, the Danish climate and energy minister, whose government will host the 2009 treaty talks. Hedegaard was referring to boos the U.S. representative got after rejecting emissions reductions goals and timetables. But having diplomats boo each other would seem to indicate a new nadir, not a new peak, in climate negotiations. (At least WWF's climate head was honest, acknowledging that, "in the process, we lost substance.") The truth is that those countries that ratified Kyoto haven't any more reduced their emissions than the U.S. Those countries that have did so for reasons...
December 13, 2007
Earth to Bali
It may seem rude to interrupt the Bali fantasy, but reality will rear its ugly head at some point. Better now. Here's a recipe to head off the worst effects of global warming: Start with 30 new nuclear power plants around the world. Add 17,0000 wind turbines, 400 biomass power plants, two hydroelectric dams the size of China's Three Gorges Dam, and 42 coal or natural gas power plants equipped with still-experimental systems to sequester their carbon dioxide emissions underground. Build everything in 2013. Repeat every year until 2030. It's an intentionally implausible plan presented this week by the International Energy Agency to make a point: For all the talk about emissions reductions, the actual work is way beyond what the world can achieve. As delegates from 190 countries gather here on the Indonesian island of Bali to negotiate a "road map" for the successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming, some experts are wondering whether the...
December 13, 2007
Dim Economics
I grow increasingly displeased with the low quality output from The Economist, especially its blog. DEBATES over energy policy have an odd way of turning typical ideological stereotypes on their heads. This peculiar effect has recently been on display as the handful of conservative leaders and pundits who acknowledge the threat of warming have offered their policy prescriptions. Strikingly, given the source (remember Newt Gingrich?), conservative plans lean heavily on government funding for technology research, relying upon the wisdom of central planners to spot the most promising avenues for innovation. Wrong, cry liberal critics. We can only hope to halt warming through carbon pricing, which will slow energy demand growth and allow the market to find the best technological investments. This is false. The ideologies are playing out as usual. Conservatives wish to keep the dead hand of government out of the market and statists want ever tighter control. Conservatives aren't against government. They have always been happy to...
December 11, 2007
Blurred Vision
They never had good vision, and they are getting very old now. They still embrace the situation though: Be realistic - demand the impossible!. Environmental groups and the European Union are calling for a more stringent 25%–40% reduction in greenhouse gases under 1990 levels by 2020 to be included in the agreement reached in Bali. This range is mentioned in the draft text of the agreement. . . But a group of nations including the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan is opposed to including this specific range in the final output from the two-week conference — even as a guide. . . “The spirit of Kyoto is dying,” says Kimiko Hirata of the Kiko Network — a Japanese non-governmental organisation dedicated to implementing the Kyoto Protocol — who was in Bali today. . . Just a day after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore were formally awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo for their...
December 11, 2007
Chickens and Eggs
Lest you are worried that I have gone over to the darkside, here is some red blooded climate scepticism. I've been expecting some to balance all the pixels being spent on the Bali holiday junket. First, more model criticism. A new study comparing the composite output of 22 leading global climate models with actual climate data finds that the models do an unsatisfactory job of mimicking climate change in key portions of the atmosphere. . . “The usual discussion is whether the climate model forecasts of Earth’s climate 100 years or so into the future are realistic,” said the lead author, Dr. David H. Douglass from the University of Rochester. “Here we have something more fundamental: Can the models accurately explain the climate from the recent past? “It seems that the answer is no.” . . . “The last 25 years constitute a period of more complete and accurate observations, and more realistic modeling efforts,” said Dr. Fred Singer...
December 07, 2007
Next Screen
Climate change advocates are stuck on stupid. The "global" problem of climate change is endlessly discussed, but rarely looked at in a cold light. The crux of the matter is that all of us, everywhere, share this same monumental problem. To prosper we need energy security; but if we persist in using fossil-fuels with current technologies, our prosperity will founder. Cold light? Well, I suppose you could call it that if by cold you mean mental inactivity, as in dead. It isn't certain that by continuing to use fossil fuels that our prosperity will founder. It could even be the opposite. It isn't clear that the air can't be processed to remove some carbon, and it isn't clear that some of the other mechanisms lumped together as geo-engineering won't relieve pressures. It isn't even clear that the net result of warming will not be positive, though there would be huge change as climate zones shifted. The roadmap drawn up...
December 03, 2007
Tunnel Vision
I've argued in many previous posts against narrow views. This is one of the chief defects of the environmental movement, dating from decades ago when planning and systems thinking were touted as answers to various social ills. The inability to get useful and timely information to drive the simplistic models of the planners doomed the approach to failure, but that's not the only defect. In all cases the projects weren't even remotely plausible unless the systems described were narrowly bounded cartoon versions of reality. You can sell something like that to the gullible, but it can't possibly work. Advocates began with some vision, some fantasy about a simplified world that they found compelling, and worked back from that vision, discarding any contrary information and unknowable aspects, to construct their models. After decades of futility and defeat most have abandoned the idea of being able to usefully model these systems, no matter how powerful their computers have become, and now...
November 30, 2007
Bum's Rush
The increasingly loud and hysterical claims of the eco-feudalists in the run up to Bali is an example of why we can benefit from listening to some of the views of those like O'Neill and Gintis. Consider: O'Neill: [L]et’s first deal with the luddites, locavores and eco-feudalists who have given anti-capitalism a bad name. Gintis: [A] truly progressive movement must built on technical progress that is impeded by the reigning powers that be . . . not the beggar-thy-neighbor, zero-sum-game sort of redistribution favored by Krugman. An eco-feudalist: Time is running out. And while talking is key, demonstrating a willingness to take action is desperately urgent. An ambitious, robust and fair deal on climate change will have three key elements: a firm commitment from the north to push for a 2-degree target, backed up by credible domestic measures the provision of big developing-country emitters with the technology, investment and incentives to go for low-carbon growth an increased focus on...
November 26, 2007
Just Listen
I feel that I am misunderstood. That's my fault of course for not speaking clearly. Fortunately, Herb Gintis speaks. This is what I would say if I could speak clearly. [via Free Exchange] "Being progressive,'' says Paul Krugman in the concluding pages of The Conscience of a Liberal, "means being partisan." Like Krugman, my training lies in economics, but unlike Krugman, I am not partisan. Rather, I take a policy orientation to social issues: there are problems to be solved in order to enhance the lives of citizens, and it is our job to discover and publicize solutions to these problems. Krugman's partisan stance only clouds the issues. I'm not an economist, but I think that any other discipline would serve as well here, and Krugman could be replaced by any number of partisans since they are as thick as thieves. The idea that partisanship trumps good policy is the glaring defect with Krugman and those other partisans. For...
November 21, 2007
Hissy Fit
Here's an example of the silliness and political chicanery noted in Much Ado. How does a high-level federal policymaker go on and on about energy policy, energy "balance," energy technology, clean coal, etc. without the slightest nod to climate change? . . . Senator Cornyn's op-ed does one thing: it paints very clearly the climate policy battle lines, and provides a strong reality check for the attitudes that are and are not changing. If you can't get a U.S. Senator to deign to mention climate in a 700-word piece on energy balance, you can see dirt flying from the trenches as they get dug deeper. And the opposite. If you can't get a climate hysteric to deign to mention economics and geopolitics in a blog rant, you can see dirt flying from the trenches as they get dug deeper. When you read the article without the hysteria and political agenda it's merely a bland political position that at best...
November 19, 2007
Much Ado
About exceedingly little. Locavore, for those of you who missed its Oxford Word of the Year coming out party, refers to an individual attempting to maintain a diet of locally produced food--with local generally assumed to mean within about 100 miles. Many wonderful qualities are (dubiously) ascribed to locavorism, including increased happiness in agricultural communities and rejuvenated local economies, but the primary selling point appears to be a reduction in global carbon emissions. . . Or so the thinking goes. In fact, emissions per unit of food depend heavily on how the food is shipped. . . Mr Harford [Undercover Economist and recent addition to the economics blogosphere] continues: Two-thirds of the social costs of the food distribution system have nothing directly to do with the environment at all: They are attributable to accidents and congestion. More than half of those costs are caused by driving to the shops. My socially responsible advice to you, then, is not to...
November 19, 2007
The Obvious
Paying attention to politics is unrewarding. Those who practice it seem to be intellectually challenged, save for a sort of venal craftiness, and those who support it descend to that level even though they may demonstrate high capabilities in other areas. So, to repeat the obvious for the benefit of politicians and political supporters: [U]ntil now the Nobel Peace Prize has been clearly recognized as a political award. The award to the IPCC thus implies that the IPCC is not a predominately scientific, but is in fact a political process: the award equates the scientific study of climate change with political advocacy. As we already knew. The IPCC is a political advocacy group like all other UN groups. That's all the UN is or ever has been, and it's a low sort of politics that reflects the low sort of politics of the world, especially Europe which still struggles to find its way in the world after centuries of...
October 27, 2007
Old Time Religion
Regulation religion that is. I have no problem with Stossel pointing out uncertainties in our understanding of climate, or even arguing in an opinion piece that "the debate is not over." But I'm not at all certain his viewers understood that his "Give Me a Break" segment on global warming was not actually journalism but straight up bloviation. Stossel is clearly motivated less by a desire to follow the truth than by blind allegiance to a laissez-faire ideology. Since the free market alone probably cannot solve global warming, Stossel's ideology likely will prevent him from ever acknolwedging even the possibility of a threat from anthropogenic climate change. He is therefore disqualified from covering this issue as a journalist. Disqualified? What kind of idiocy is that? And the regulation advocates are motivated by a desire to follow the truth? Hardly. Stossel's sins are no greater than those who have alternative beliefs. Blind allegiance to a totalitarian ideology, like that supported...
October 12, 2007
Nurse Ratchet
Here's a not very insightful discussion of a quoted passage from Break Through by Shellenberger and Nordhaus, the Death of Environmentalism twins. The passage: “In America, the political left and political right have conspired to create a culture and politics of victimization, and all the benefits of resentment and cynicism have accrued to the right. That’s because resentment and apocalypse are weapons that can be used only to advance a politics of resentment and apocalypse. They are the weapons of the reactionary and the conservative — of people who fear and resist the future. Just as environmentalists believe they can create a great ecological politics out of apocalypse, liberals believe they can create a great progressive politics out of resentment; they cannot. Grievance and victimization make us smaller and less generous and can thus serve only reactionaries and conservatives.” My emphasis. S&N have been humming this tune for quite a while. ...the stalemate over addressing global warming highlights the...
October 08, 2007
Caplan's Fallacy
Something must be done. This is something. Therefore, this must be done. Robin Hanson quotes Caplan in Regulation Ratchet. [I]t seems biased to call for more regulation given a certain cue, without calling for less regulation given some other cue. If we all agreed we have too little regulation, then we should just add more regardless of whether news is good or bad. This bias would seem to produce a regulation ratchet: increased regulation after bad times, but little change after good times. Of course this by itself doesn't say if we have too much or not enough regulation; it just says the time trend is wrong. Perhaps this regulation ratchet arises from a hindsight bias, i.e., an illusion that regulators could have foreseen current crises, combined with a tendency to more often think "something must be done" in bad times, combined with Caplan's fallacy . . . The regulation ratchet is bad at every level and time scale,...
October 07, 2007
Panacea Traps
Thanks to an unnamed angel I have been reading the articles in a PNAS special feature: Going Beyond Panaceas. The abstract from the lead perspectives article sums up. In the context of governance of human–environment interactions, a panacea refers to a blueprint for a single type of governance system (e.g., government ownership, privatization, community property) that is applied to all environmental problems. The aim of this special feature is to provide theoretical analysis and empirical evidence to caution against the tendency, when confronted with pervasive uncertainty, to believe that scholars can generate simple models of linked social– ecological systems and deduce general solutions to the overuse of resources. Practitioners and scholars who fall into panacea traps falsely assume that all problems of resource governance can be represented by a small set of simple models, because they falsely perceive that the preferences and perceptions of most resource users are the same. Readers of this special feature will become acquainted with...
October 01, 2007
Loopy Economics
OK, it's not real economics, just pseudo-economic punditry. Mr Sachs writes that the world faces a growing triple threat--rising food prices, conversion of food into fuel, and global warming--which will hit those living in the least developed nations hardest. It isn't particularly difficult to see where he's coming from. Wheat prices have been navigating unknown territory recently, due in part to high food demand but also to reduced wheat acreage in response to high prices, and high subsidies, for fuel crops. It seems that it's been a bad year for Australian wheat growers as well. The Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Research Economics (ABARE) today released its latest crop forecast as drought grips much of southern Australia. "Winter grain production in 2007/08 is forecast to total 25.6 million tonnes," the forecast said. "Even though this amount is well above last year's drought affected crop, it will be around 27 per cent below the five year average." The forecast for...
September 30, 2007
More Assumptions
A post from a few days ago, Assume Something, lamented the low and declining public credibility about the environmental community, and the scientific discourse more generally due to deliberate manipulation of information to advance political and cultural agendas. A case in point. Projecting Heat-Related Mortality Impacts Under a Changing Climate in the New York City Region -- Knowlton et al., 10.2105/AJPH.2006.102947 American Journal of Public Health analyses the effect of climate change on heat-related premature mortality. They get increases in the 2050s between 47% to 95%, with a mean 70% increase compared with the 1990s, and a decrease of these estimates by 25% due to acclimatization (i.e. being used to it, more use of air conditioning). . . What I'd like to see is a validation of this method by using 1963 US data on mortality and air conditioning use in today's climate. In 1963 domestic air conditioning had just recently become affordable and was still a middle class...
September 16, 2007
Assume Something
Anything. Determine your heart's desire, and assume that it is true. First, any model, by virtue of being a reasonable expression of a particular worldview, is necessarily incomplete and contingent. Second, because models immediately become part of the dialog that they are drawn from, they reflexively affect that dialog in ways which are essentially impossible to predict, and which invalidate the assumptions that underlie the model. Thus, modern science requires models, but all models are necessarily normative, partial and contingent, and most models reflexively falsify their assumptions, and thus invalidate their predictions. Needless to say, this conundrum poses significant problems for the scientific discourse going forward. Do all models reflexively falsify their assumptions, or it is just the ones that deal with politically contentious issues? Note, however, that the problem of models arises primarily from their misuse in discourse, rather than from models themselves. That models are contingent and normative does not mean they are wrong in themselves. But...
September 14, 2007
Double Muddle
Reading the contorted arguments pf politicized economists (and their pseudo-environmentalist supporters) is amusing. One implication of the Earth system’s deep nonlinearities is that estimates of climatic parameters based on observations from the recent past are unreliable for making forecasts about the state of the world at CO2 concentrations of 560 p.p.m. or higher. Moreover, the nonlinearities mean that doing more of a bad deal (Kyoto) may well be very good. These truths seem to escape Lomborg. His cost–benefit analysis involves only point estimates of variables (interpreted variously as ‘most likely’, ‘expected’, and so forth), implying that he believes we shouldn’t buy insurance against potentially enormous losses resulting from climate change. His concerns over the prevalence of malaria, undernutrition and HIV in today’s world show that he is an egalitarian. There is, then, an internal contradiction in his value system, because if you are averse to inequality you should also be averse to uncertainty. May well be very good? Is...
September 10, 2007
Misère
I read a lot of "best sentence of the day" posts. Au contraire. . . The strongest argument against significant action is not from cost-benefit analysis in the narrow sense, but simply that we are not very good at producing international public goods. Especially when it comes to extended, intertemporal collective action problems directed against small probability events, with unclear periodic feedback, and dealing with the Chinese and the Indians, who feel they have the right to pollute as much as we did, and also with the not-nearly-as-cooperative-as-they-might-sound Europeans. . . This one is better. This argument sounds immoral and indeed perhaps is immoral -- "we're ruining things for others, yet if we tried to fix things we would ruin the fixing, so let's do nothing." Yet I do not think this issue should be disregarded. If I can't open up my computer, dissemble it, and then put it back together again, surely my repair plans should take that...
August 29, 2007
Mind Death
The notion that political activism deadens the mind has been mooted in several earlier posts. (BTW, that idea didn't originate with me, but I forget where I first encountered it.) An aspect of that was part of the discussion of Dyson's essay in Necessary Heresy. It bears repeating: [T]he experts who talk publicly about politically contentious questions tend to speak more clearly than they think. They make confident predictions about the future, and end up believing their own predictions. Their predictions become dogmas which they do not question. Here's a recent example. Matt Nisbet has a good paper out now about polling results on global warming. . . The polling supports what we've been saying for a while: the public is there. They believe (even if they think the scientific consensus isn't as strong as it really is). . . So why are we (through our electeds) still not doing anything about it then? Because even the public realizes...
August 22, 2007
Kill Them All
The climate change farce is growing ever worse. Now Moose belches are being cited as a cause of climate change. [via Instapundit -> News & Comment] Norway is concerned that its national animal, the moose, is harming the climate by emitting an estimated 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year through its belching and farting. Norwegian newspapers, citing research from Norway's technical university, said a motorist would have to drive 13,000 kilometers in a car to emit as much CO2 as a moose does in a year. Bacteria in a moose's stomach create methane gas which is considered even more destructive to the environment than carbon dioxide gas. Cows pose the same problem . . . Norway has some 120,000 moose but an estimated 35,000 are expected to be killed in this year's moose hunting season, which starts on September 25 . . . Well, climate is always changing, and there have been moose around for a long time,...
August 15, 2007
Necessary Heresy
I have a healthy respect for my ignorance. Everything I know is wrong. But, I don't think I'm as ignorant as many others who are proud of their knowledge. This gives me an unfair advantage sometimes, and at other times makes me a sucker for contrarian and heretical thought. In the modern world, science and society often interact in a perverse way. We live in a technological society, and technology causes political problems. The politicians and the public expect science to provide answers to the problems. Scientific experts are paid and encouraged to provide answers. The public does not have much use for a scientist who says, “Sorry, but we don’t know”. The public prefers to listen to scientists who give confident answers to questions and make confident predictions of what will happen as a result of human activities. So it happens that the experts who talk publicly about politically contentious questions tend to speak more clearly than they...
July 27, 2007
Boutique Fuels
Several pundits have discussed this Jesse Ausubel opinion piece that flatly denounces several flavors of renewable energy systems and proposes increased use of nuclear power instead. This article is an example. Ausubel . . . says the key renewable energy sources, including sun, wind, and biomass, would all require vast amounts of land if developed up to large scale production – unlike nuclear power. That land would be far better left alone, he says. Renewables are "boutique fuels" says Ausubel, of Rockefeller University in New York, US. "They look attractive when they are quite small. But if we start producing renewable energy on a large scale, the fallout is going to be horrible." Instead, Ausubel argues for renewed development of nuclear. "If we want to minimise the rape of nature, the best energy solution is increased efficiency, natural gas with carbon capture, and nuclear power." Critics point out that there are some misleading assumptions in Ausubel's analysis. John Turner...
July 12, 2007
More Cranks
Creeps and Cranks noted the small and diminishing leftist extreme that clings to paleo-socialist ideas and so doubts climate change as being a capitalist plot. The marquee slogan in the new cold war on global warming is that the scientific consensus is virtually unanimous. This is utterly false. The overwhelming majority of climate computer modelers, the beneficiaries of the $2 billion-a-year global warming grant industry, certainly believe in it but not necessarily most real climate scientists-people qualified in atmospheric physics, climatology and meteorology. It was noted that "this puts them in a similar position to some of the right, not allies precisely but singing some of the same hymns, from different hymnals, and so unintentionally supporting one another." For example: I've long thought that the anthropogenic global warming/overwhelming scientific alarmism campaign involves a nexus between politics and marketing, and that to this end, the average person (especially in the United States) is being kept in the dark as much...
July 04, 2007
Clerk Spoor
I too read Tyler's recent link to a muddled and ahistorical account of the conflicts about water in the Klamath area. I considered debunking it, but really, this is widely available information. Only willful ignorance*, political cynicism or, well, whatever, could have resulted in the vacuous arguments being made. Today Tyler links to a rebuttal. Someone made the effort. It is unfortunately characterized as a conflict between libertarian and authoritarian world views. This is only part of the problem. Those nuturing either bias would have to reach different conclusions if they simply considered the data available. It clearly contradicts the authoritarian view while also revealing that there are insufficient mechanisms in place for a libertarian solution. It may be that either approach could "fix" things, though that is improbable. Eric, the debunker, did a nice job of grounding the discussion in reality. According to this article, "Starting in the 1920s, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation drained most of Tule...
June 10, 2007
Creeps and Cranks
One of the fascinating threads of reaction to the politicization of climate change is on the hard left. One of the better known proponents of this view is Alexander Cockburn, a Scot with a socialist father, who grew up in Ireland and moved to America, and has worked as a journalist for numerous leftist publications. He describes himself as a muckraker with all the right enemies. He has an unusual combination of positions since he opposed the wars of recent decades and the "global warming myth", as he sees it. Dissidents Against Dogma. [via Catallarchy] We should never be more vigilant than at the moment a new dogma is being installed. The claque endorsing what is now dignified as "the mainstream theory" of global warming stretches all the way from radical greens through Al Gore to George W. Bush, who signed on at the end of May. The left has been swept along, entranced by the allure of weather...
June 07, 2007
American Way
Europe's knee jerk response to problems, such as climate change, is to hector businesses and individuals to "behave better". This is because their societies are stagnant, do not innovate and have no churn, no competition that allows newcomers entry, advancement and even dominance, however temporary. But in America . . . The open frontier view was captured by a Silicon Valley representative in the room. He stood up to announce that "clean tech" would be to this decade what high-tech was to the 1990s. The companies that would revolutionize our energy usage, he claimed, were now being funded by venture capitalists, and the Ciscos, Microsofts and Googles of the next decade would be the companies that solved the energy puzzle. We hadn't heard of any of them now, he insisted, but they would be huge. Is he right? Maybe. Who cares? It's his money, and the money of his colleagues in the Valley. The point is, if there's a...
May 31, 2007
Blowing Smoke
Lars Smith summarizes a Stratfor article. The realists are winning. In the EU they have been greatly strengthened by the demonstrated willingness of Russia to use energy for political blackmail. The idealists are in the impossible position of simultaneously arguing that climate change represents the possible end of the world, but that the situation is not so dire that we need to turn to nuclear energy or “clean coal” technology. From the article: On one hand are the idealists who have pressed for energy policies that dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, that work only toward renewable energy sources and that do not include either nuclear power or coal. They did not come all this way to see the revival of nuclear power, the perfection of “clean coal” technology or drastic subsidies for ethanol producers. Their activism was driven by a desire to spur a new economy. However, they are the ones who simultaneously say that climate change represents the...
May 12, 2007
Mental Rut
As noted in many previous posts I find agrichar to be very interesting, and applaud the work of researchers who are attempting to better understand how it improves soil, how to produce it most effectively and its relationship to soil microorganisms. But that doesn't immunize them from criticism when they go over to the dark side. Johannes Lehmann, writing in a Nature commentary, engages in some counterproductive rent seeking. To meet the challenges of global climate change, greenhouse-gas emissions must be reduced. Emissions from fossil fuels are the largest contributor to the anthropogenic greenhouse effect, so a reduction in fossil-energy use is a clear priority. Yet, because some emissions will be unavoidable, a responsible strategy also means actively withdrawing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Such carbon sequestration faces multi-faceted challenges: the net withdrawal of carbon dioxide must be long term and substantial, the process must be accountable and must have a low risk of rapid or large-scale leakage. One...
May 09, 2007
Piled Higher
The possession of advanced degrees, participation in institutions, and recognition do not necessarily indicate any useful knowledge or reasoning skills. Often it seems to merely indicate indoctrination. [A] high proportion of energy, industrial and transportation emissions is generated by urban areas. Although most of the electricity and fuels are produced outside cities, they are aimed at satisfying cities’ “thirst” of energy. Therefore, urban areas place a huge burden not only on the absorptive capacity of the local environment; Nonsense. Cities can be very energy efficient on a per capita basis, it's just that there are a lot of people jammed cheek by jowl into them. More importantly, energy use is an indication of a high quality of life, something that we should desire for all humans. The implied criticism of calling it a “thirst”, as if it was a vice or an addiction like alcoholism, is entirely mistaken. [U]rban centers concentrate a large proportion of coastal and other populations...
May 04, 2007
Expert Texpert
Don't you think the joker laughs at you-oo-oo? This week in Nature we have a news story on an attempt to follow up Frank Keppler's work on methane produced aerobically by green plants which we published early last year (news story | paper). The Keppler piece, which suggested that methane emissions from green plants were a significant but previously unappreciated factor in global methane emissions, caused quit a lot of fuss, understandably, in the media -- since methane is a greenhouse gas which, over short time horizons, is about 75 times more powerful than -- and quite a lot of befuddlement among plant scientists. If it were true, it would have significant implications for the way that people model methane production, and the levels of production that one might predict in a warming world. The debate rumbled on last year (another news report, this time by my colleague Quirin). The new work that Tom Dueck and colleagues have published...
April 22, 2007
Whacko Day
It's that time again, and this seems to be a plague year for environmental psychoses. Even the empty headed upper crust socialites have jumped on the tacky green bandwagon, yet again showing their total lack of style or grace. There are two main points I have been pressing about this disease: one is that the activists have no true concern for the environment - the real environment not the mythical one they agonize about, and the other is that the predictions of pundits and activists are simply laughable, yet we do not hold them accountable when their hysterical predictions are shown by the passage of time to be every bit as insane as wiser commentators noted when those predictions were made. It's not about the environment, it's merely politics. For a classic account of the idiocy of this quasi-religious political festival see this old Ron Bailey article from 2000. Earth Day, Then and Now. How did the doomsters get...
April 15, 2007
Military Intelligence
I know, it's an oxymoron, and we have a recent example of the problem. The effects of global warming, the study said, could lead to large-scale migrations, increased border tensions, the spread of disease and conflicts over food and water. All could lead to direct involvement by the United States military. The report recommends that climate change be integrated into the nation’s security strategies and says the United States “should commit to a stronger national and international role to help stabilize climate changes at levels that will avoid significant disruption to global security and stability.” "Stabilize climate changes". What are these folks smoking!? In March, a report from the Global Business Network, which advises intelligence agencies and the Pentagon on occasion, concluded, among other things, that rising seas and more powerful storms could eventually generate unrest as crowded regions like Bangladesh’s sinking delta become less habitable. One of the authors of the report, Peter Schwartz, a consultant who studies...
April 07, 2007
Dirty Secrets II
I'm out of touch, out of step with pop culture and consciousness. My social reader isn't well calibrated. One part of the problem (not the only part) is that I assume that common knowledge includes long known information about the state of things. Big mistake. Waterlog reported on this truly stunning finding. Shipping produces twice as much carbon as aviation, is growing faster, and was not even addressed by Kyoto. This has been known and talked about widely for over a decade. And it isn't just CO2 emissions from shipping that are a concern, their sulfur emissions are perhaps even more of a problem. That mindless hustles like Kyoto don't include either air or ocean transport is no surprise since they are not about reducing emissions, they are about authoritarian statist power grabs. These emissions omissions aren't the end of the drab story since the figures for transport don't include shipping on rivers and canals. That's not a big...
April 01, 2007
Just So
One of the sillier ideas that is being repeated around the net is that some object or species uses humans to perpetuate itself. The genesis seems to be in the selfish gene idea and its permutations - memes, cows, dogs, solar cells, whatever. Now someone has applied the notion to crops, not for the first time, specifically lucerne, as exploiters of humans. I’m abusing Smith’s point here, but I can’t help but marvel at the evolutionary success of the alfalfa plant. It started in Iran in the bronze age, and here it is, spread out over more than 4,000 acres of desert in the Middle Rio Grande Valley, making a good life for itself in this desert environment by exploiting our taste for milk and beef. First, the alfalfa’s got to tame the river. The annual runoff can flood the whole valley floor, so the alfalfa got us to build levees and a big dam upstream to hold back...
March 15, 2007
Greenish Brown
Smart money hedges its bets. Silicon Valley’s technology investors have taken to the ramparts, threatening to tear down the oil and gas industries’ dominance with innovations that use ethanol, solar and wind. . . For all the boasting in the region about investing in clean technologies, there have also been a smaller number of bets in companies set up to promote the development of fossil fuels — the source of many of the problems their other investments are meant to fix. . . “High prices of oil facilitate more oil discoveries and more innovations that get more money out of oil,” he said. In Silicon Valley, there’s a word for that kind of investment. "It’s called browntech," said Erik Straser, a partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures. One of that venture firm’s investments is in a start-up called Panasas, which has developed computer storage technology to help oil companies become hyperefficient at finding new places to explore. Mohr Davidow invests...
March 10, 2007
Buyer Beware
Let's talk more about the ideas discussed in Easy Mark that expose the deceits of food labeling and food fads in general. Here's an example of such deceits. When you think of agriculture as “co-evolution”, where “clever grasses get us to deforest the world and plant grasses,” agriculture looks very different. Pollan says he’d always thought of lawns as somewhat conformist and totalitarian, the mower reducing everything to the same size. But now he realizes he’s “a dupe of the lawn,” helping it fight its battle against the trees. He warns that the discussions we’ve had today about ethanol and biofuel shows that “ethanol is the ultimate victory of corn over us, corn bending us to its will.” hmmm, how did those grasses evolve in the first place? With no lawn mowers or people to plant seed the grasses still did a bang up job of evolving. In fact, humanity lives off grass - maize, rice, wheat, oats and...
March 09, 2007
Nobs and Yobs
You may have noticed a few earlier posts that referenced Frank Furedi articles. Some commenters (OK one, Tim) reminded me that he's, uh, an odd fellow with a checkered past. I know that of course, but still find some of his writings stimulating, and his arguments not easily refuted. Brian Micklethwait says something similar, but better. Living Marxism were one of those creepy outfits that then said you should only refer to them as LM, without saying what LM used to stand for. Sort of like BAT (who were absolutely not British American Tobacco you understand, definitely not, no relation whatsoever at all blah blah blah), only political. Then when that was greeted with the derision and contempt that it deserved, they dumped even the LM crap, and called themselves the Institute of Ideas. I do not trust them further than I can spit them. But, for their own bonkers cult reasons, they are very ambitious and worldly wise,...
March 08, 2007
Easy Mark
Let us review. A system designed to advise a captive audience about the features and quality of available products would look a lot more like Consumer Reports than the world of advertising we see. But this situation isn't especially puzzling - we understand that neither those who make ads nor those who watch them have product information as their primary goal. Ad makers want to sell, and ad watchers want to be entertained. For example: It is the same market flaw that gives us beautiful flawless large red apples in supermarkets - with no taste. To get the old intense flavour varieties that everyone loves when they taste, we would have to choose small bruised discoloured apples when we shop, and leave the flawless big red apples with no taste in the bins. But collectively we do not, and the market responds. So I am puzzled why seemingly bright and caring folks fall for these gimmicks and become shills...
February 21, 2007
Mind Killing
The notion that "people go funny in the head when talking about politics", from Politics is the Mind-Killer, has abundant support. We saw it, and continue to see it, in the Iraq war controversy as well as climate change non-debate. [W]e may . . . be in a situation where analysis is viewed as being more useful as a tool of persuasion than clarifying the consequences of a wide range of alternative courses of action. In such a situation policy analyses will be far less important than the political dynamics. A recent example of such a situation that will be familiar to most readers is when the Bush Administration decided to invade Iraq and then fixed the intelligence to meet the policy. Any analysis that supported invasion, regardless of its intellectual merits, then became "right" even if for the "wrong reasons." Sure, some policy analyses were still needed after that decision, for instance, to determine whether 110,000 versus 130,000...
February 15, 2007
Money Trees
There's been some talk about "green varnish". By this I mean the greening of the conservative parties of the Anglo-Saxon world. This strategy is a mainly PR driven restyling of conservative parties in the European fashion that has transpired over the last ten years or so. What Australia's, Canada's and America's political right is beginning to learn from their British counterparts (and have had to learn under pressure from political opponents) is the need for environmental camouflage - in more or less exactly the same mode socialist, labour and even traditional free market liberals have painted themselves in populist green varnish. Now that everyone is outdoing each other in green spin and rhetoric, now that every single government on the planet is clamouring for the green vote (left, right and centre), it has become increasingly frustrating for the political left to attack their opponents on environmental credentials. This is one of the reasons why the ostensible conversion of Presidents...
February 11, 2007
Interesting Grafs
It's been a long, hard work week, and in my line of work that means all seven days - week after week, month after month, year after year. I'm tired, sore, hungry and cold. Normal in other words. My poor old brain is tired too, so I'm going to cheese out today and just point at things that seem interesting, and that I may return to, and speak about, when less tired. Richard Posner, from a response to responses on comments he made about climate change. You follow the thought threads if you're interested. The global warming skeptics point out that there are natural climate fluctuations, that anticapitalists are enthusiastic beaters of the drum for action against global warming, and that global warming would have good effects on agriculture in northern climes. These points are correct, but do not support the skeptical position. The existence of natural climate fluctuations increases the risk from human-caused global warming, because increased atmospheric...
February 09, 2007
Burning Bruno
I start with the assumption that we are pathetically ignorant, seriously deluded and insufficiently humble. So, a new idea that contradicts common views is always welcome. It might be mistaken, but so are current views, as we will come to understand in due course. I've posted on this theme before. Eccentrics. One sandwich short of a picnic. A screw loose. History is littered with sometimes charming enthusiasts who go a bit over the top, following a line of reasoning beyond the pale, shocking, outraging or just titillating more sober and cautious types. Sometimes they are vindicated as knowledge increases over time and their musings are shown to have been prescient. Hannes Alfven, 1970 Nobel Prize winner in Physics, is one of my favorite examples of this. for much of his career Alfven's ideas were dismissed or treated with condescension. He was often forced to publish his papers in obscure journals; and his work was continuously disputed for many years...
February 05, 2007
Half Bath
It seems to me that scholars are often even more confused about climate change than non-scholars. Public attitudes about climate change reveal a contradiction. Surveys show most Americans believe climate change poses serious risks but also that reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions sufficient to stabilize atmospheric GHG concentrations can be deferred until there is greater evidence that climate change is harmful. This is push polling rather than evidence gathering. We see this all the time when confronted with some survey that asks confused questions and provides no sensible answer choices. "None of the above" almost always seems more correct than any of the choices given for the poorly formed question. In this case - yes, climate change is a risk - but we have no useful information about the causes. Emphasis on useful. Much of the hesitation to embrace policies for emissions reductions are that they aren't known to be effective. It's not clear that this is a...
February 04, 2007
Gaia Nostradamus
Lovelock is a hoot. He's way over the top but his rants are things of beauty. To save what it can, Lovelock believes, the world must embark on a completely different path. Most important, it must abandon the notion of "green romanticism." Lovelock has nothing but ridicule for environmentalists' favorite issues, such as "sustainable development" and "renewable energy," calling them "well-meaning nonsense." He is convinced that wind and solar energy will never be even remotely capable of meeting worldwide energy needs. In China alone, for example, a new large coal power plant is put into operation every five days, imposing additional burdens on the atmosphere. The only solution, according to Lovelock, is the massive expansion of nuclear energy worldwide. A reliable supply of electricity, says Lovelock, is the key issue when it comes to survival on a warmer planet. He loses no sleep over the risks of nuclear power. "Show me the mass graves of Chernobyl," he demands provocatively....
February 02, 2007
Extra, Extra!
Global Warming: The Missing Headline Talk about the danger of rising sea levels, at least in my experience, is usually accompanied by verbal images of Florida flooding, Manhattan and London under water, and similar catastrophes. If the IPCC figures are correct, the upper end of the range of what might actually happen is a rise of less than a meter over a century--considerably less than the distance between high tide and low. Popular talk about global warming, again in my experience, is usually put in terms quite a bit more apocalyptic than the IPCC's upper estimate of four degrees Celsius by 2100. So far the only report I have seen is on CNN, but I will be pleasantly surprised if any newspaper headlines the story with "Global Warming a Wet Firecracker? International Panel finds temperature and sea level effects over the next century real but small." Real but small? I suppose that a 3 foot rise in sea level...
February 01, 2007
Green B&B
There's been a lot of talk about strange coalitions - Baptists and bootleggers - pursuing a variety of policies lately. One is the joint effort of paleo-socialist ideologues (AKA Baptists) and CEOs of major corporations (AKA bootleggers) to increase minimum wages. The involvement of ideologues makes sense, not that their policies make sense, but the involvement of bootleggers needs some splainin. The thing is that the bootleggers wouldn't actually be harmed by the increase, since they already pay above the proposed new rates for the most part, but their smaller competitors would be harmed. When this is added to the perceived public relations benefits it makes sense too, not that their policies make any real sense. This isn't new or unusual - the Baptists and bootleggers coalition wasn't a one off thing - but democratic societies seems to be suckers for this sort of foolishness. It's the same sort of thing discussed in the earlier post Cheese Food where...
January 31, 2007
SOS, Again
Robin Hanson links an NYT article about the history of scientific prizes, as opposed to grants, as the funding mechanism for scientific invention and progress. Back in the 1700s, prizes were a fairly common way to reward innovation. ... Eventually, though, prizes began to be replaced by grants that awarded money upfront. Some of this was for good reason. As science became more advanced, scientists often needed to buy expensive equipment and hire a staff before having any chance of making a discovery. But grants also became popular for a less worthy reason: they made life easier for the government bureaucrats who oversaw them and for the scientists who received them. . . "Bureaucracies like a steady flow of money, not uncertainty," said Mr. Hanson, who worked as a physicist at NASA before becoming an economist. "But prizes are often more effective if what you want is scientific progress." ... These are the two essential advantages of prizes. They...
January 30, 2007
The Green Fairy
When you support "green" fantasies the green fairy leaves a present under your pillow - a lump of coal. It's a twisted cluster grope of several nonsense tales used to frighten or bribe children. Just a few years ago, politicians and environmental groups in the Netherlands were thrilled by the early and rapid adoption of “sustainable energy,” achieved in part by coaxing electrical plants to use biofuel — in particular, palm oil from Southeast Asia. Spurred by government subsidies, energy companies became so enthusiastic that they designed generators that ran exclusively on the oil, which in theory would be cleaner than fossil fuels like coal because it is derived from plants. But last year, when scientists studied practices at palm plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia, this green fairy tale began to look more like an environmental nightmare. Rising demand for palm oil in Europe brought about the clearing of huge tracts of Southeast Asian rainforest and the overuse of...
January 16, 2007
Whispered Out
This post began as an update to the previous but it grew too long. One of the topics in Tim Burke's post-holiday survey is the insufficiently nuanced nature of environmentalism in general and climate advocacy in particular. One of the things that frustrates me about the overall public discussion of global warming is that the factionalization of the debate leaves me feeling like I don’t have a team to cheer for. . . the dogmatism of a lot of environmentalist discourse about global warming drives me nuts in certain ways. Most notably, in the way that extremely specific public policy solutions to the problem get intrinsically coupled to the empirical documentation of the problem, often in a way that borders on dishonesty. . . Before I find any policy recommendations convincing, I need to have some sense that the recommenders are thoughtful about the nature of complex systems in general, and aware of the fundamental practical and epistemological problems...
January 15, 2007
Egg Walking
There seems to be an increasing number of voices gingerly speaking up about the crass exploitation of climate change by ideologues with ulterior motives. [via Prometheus and via Biopolitical -> The Reality-Based Community] People can easily see economic motives to bend the facts and abuse the science. Ideological motives are less readily apparent, but no less real; and, for quite a few people, environmentalism has become a matter of not just ideology but quasi-religious zealotry. . . Most journalists and pundits have limited knowledge of science; as a result, they tend to pick whichever science best suits their political prejudices. Both science and journalism deserve better. Perhaps we can start by remembering that an ideological crusade can be as strong an inducement to bend the truth as the profit motive. Sheesh. That's an understatement. Why does everyone tip-toe around as if they were afraid they would wake the baby? Ideologues have made a complete mess of this issue. Using...
January 13, 2007
Responsibility
Cap and trade approaches to climate change are irresponsible because they can't work. They are merely political ploys designed to deceive the public into granting broad powers to governments in return for illusory climate security. It looks increasingly likely that we will be fooled again. Under the proposed legislation, greenhouse gas emissions would be cut from 6,100 metric tons of carbon equivalent in 2004 to about 2,100 metric tons in 2050. In his remarks to the Senate on the bill, Senator McCain asserted that there are five essential elements to “any responsible climate change measure”: Rational, mandatory emission reduction targets and timetables. It must be goal oriented, and have both environmental and economic integrity. We need policy that will produce necessary outcomes, not merely check political boxes. The goal must be feasible and based on sound science. A market-based cap and trade system. It must limit greenhouse gas emissions and allow the trading of emission credits to drive enterprise,...
January 11, 2007
One Cheer
Daniel Sarewitz and Roger Pielke, Jr. have a new chapter in press that will be published in Controversies in Science and Technology, Volume 2, edited by Daniel Lee Kleinman, Karen Cloud-Hansen, Christina Matta, and Jo Handelsman. (prepublication version here in PDF) Their chapter, The Steps Not Yet Taken, has useful insights. Our central point is simple: protecting people and the environment from the impacts of climate is a different problem from reducing greenhouse gas emissions to combat global warming. The policies that have resulted from combining these two problems are, as a consequence, failing to meaningfully address either problem. Policies to reduce global warming must be pursued independently of policies to reduce climate impacts. Good point. Confusing these problems with one another, and then prescribing policies that address that confused muddle, has failed and must fail. First we explain why the Kyoto Protocol is not achieving its environmentally modest goals, a failure that has no connection to the refusal...
January 09, 2007
Dark Climate
Self-deception has been a topic of late, here and many other places, recently discussed here in Political Failure, which pulled quotes from a Cowen paper, Self-Deception as the Root of Political Failure. By self-deception I mean individual behavior that disregards, throws out, or reinterprets freely available information. Individuals frequently treat their personal values as a kind of ideal point, and assume that the pursuit of those values also yield the best practical outcome. Discussions elsewhere have parsed this a bit finer, making a distinction between non-scholars (i.e. stupid people), who simply avoid knowing anything of subjects about which they nonetheless have opinions, and scholars, who carefully select dollops of information that support their views and ignore contrary information. I suspect that we stupid people do some of each, and that scholars do so as well. For example, consider this: On RealClimate, Michael Mann has a good explanation of what is going on with North America’s unusual winter weather. He...
December 20, 2006
World Class
The earlier post Politics is Stupid commented on the self-defeating policies of the US regarding ethanol production. The quoted article noted that: Our current policy is absurd even by Washington standards: Congress is paying billions in subsidies to get us to use more ethanol, while keeping in place tariffs and quotas that guarantee that we’ll use less. To be really world class, stupid politics must be international. Even as hundreds of millions of dollars from the program are devoted to the refrigerant industry, countries in sub-Saharan Africa, which were originally envisioned as big beneficiaries of emissions trading, are receiving almost nothing. Just four nations — China, India, Brazil and South Korea — are collecting four-fifths of the payments under the program, with China alone collecting almost half. Two-thirds of the payments are going to projects to eliminate HFC-23. Those payments also illustrate conflicting goals under Kyoto and the Montreal Protocol, a 1987 agreement that requires the phasing out of...
December 14, 2006
Bull Dookey
I was going to ignore this muddled FAO article promoted by FuturePundit since it was so silly, full of nonsense I'd disputed and refuted before. But, since Instapundit snarked it maybe it's worth the effort to do again. Deforestation, greenhouse gases. The livestock sector is by far the single largest anthropogenic user of land. Grazing occupies 26 percent of the Earth's terrestrial surface, while feed crop production requires about a third of all arable land. Expansion of grazing land for livestock is a key factor in deforestation, especially in Latin America: some 70 percent of previously forested land in the Amazon is used as pasture, and feed crops cover a large part of the reminder. About 70 percent of all grazing land in dry areas is considered degraded, mostly because of overgrazing, compaction and erosion attributable to livestock activity. Nonsense. Grazing is done often on marginal lands that could not be cropped because it is too dry or rocky...
December 11, 2006
Food Fashions
These are similar to food fetishes but more ephemeral. “What I hear as I talk to people is this phenomenal sense of despair about their inability to do anything about climate change, or the disparity between rich and poor,” she says. “But when they go into a grocery store they can do something—they can make decisions about what they are buying and send a very clear message.” hmmm, not exactly. The message sent isn't likely to be the one intended, as it mainly identifies the tards trying to use food fashions as political semiotics, as idiots. . . . the idea that organic farming is better for the environment is “ridiculous” because organic farming produces lower yields and therefore requires more land under cultivation to produce the same amount of food. . . organic farming actually requires more energy per tonne of food produced, because yields are lower and weeds are kept at bay by ploughing. . . only...
December 09, 2006
Unholy Visions
“All our fashionable worries and all our prevailing dogmas will probably be obsolete in 50 years” -- Freeman Dyson Marcelino Fuentes takes issue with the quasi-religious nature of the environmental movement. David W. Orr writes in Conservation Biology: All over the Earth a great turning in the evolution of humankind has begun. [...] Our capacities to learn, reason, and even empathize are growing quickly. We now know ourselves to be a part of a larger story of life in the universe and are beginning to understand what that will require of us. All over the Earth humans are engaged in a momentous conversation about the terms and conditions that must be met to sustain life [...] Is the battle for decency won? No, but in time, I submit that it will be. [...] The angels of our better nature are growing more powerful in human affairs. There is now a global movement to protect species, stabilize the climate, preserve...
December 02, 2006
Social Decay
Last month in Stern Critique, which considered Bjorn Lomborg's critique of the Stern Review, the observation of Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, U.K. that "activists and the media have pushed climate alarmism so over the top that climate scientists have become the new climate sceptics" prompted this remark: Now it's time for economists to step up and join climate scientists in the effort to control this blaze which threatens far worse harm to the world than climate change. That has been happening. A major focus of the debate among economists has been the discount rate Stern used to determine the cost of global warming. This may seem to be arcane neeping but Arnold Kling translates. Let me see if I can explain the economics to people who find Greek letters intimidating. . . He follows that with a story line in which Robyn Crusoe on her island debates the merits of eating all...
November 24, 2006
Politics is Stupid
Even when folks are confused about why this is so. [via Cafe Hayek] Our current policy is absurd even by Washington standards: Congress is paying billions in subsidies to get us to use more ethanol, while keeping in place tariffs and quotas that guarantee that we’ll use less. Fake out. It's a good thing that we use less since it makes no energy or environmental sense to use ethanol at all. It's even more absurd than Surowiecki realizes because he drank the Kool-Aid. In recent years, as politicians have tried to deal with high gas prices, concerns about global warming, and America’s dependence on OPEC, a new savior has been found: ethanol. Ethanol has all sorts of virtues. When it’s blended with gasoline, it reduces greenhouse-gas emissions. Unlike fossil fuels, it doesn’t get depleted over time, since it’s made from biomass. And sources of ethanol can be found all over the world, unlike those of oil, which are mostly...
November 07, 2006
Gaia Goop
Remember when they laughed at the fellow who said that trees make smog? And since then we have discovered that they emit methane as well. Ocean phytoplankton do too, and that may be significant. Discovery of the new link between clouds and the biosphere grew out of efforts to explain increased cloud cover observed over an area of the Southern Ocean where a large bloom of phytoplankton was occurring. Based on satellite data, the researchers hypothesized that airborne particles produced by oxidation of the chemical isoprene – which is emitted by the phytoplankton – may have contributed to a doubling of cloud droplet concentrations seen over a large area of ocean off the eastern coast of South America. Using complex numerical models, they estimated that the resulting increase in cloudiness reduced the absorption of sunlight by an amount comparable to what has been measured in highly polluted areas of the globe. If confirmed by field studies, this connection between...
November 06, 2006
Parlez-vous?
Patri rips. In order for it to truly be a problem worth governmental action now, we need the following confluence of events: Radical Islam truly is a growing and evil movement, not just one that happens to be in the news these days because of Iraq. Radical Islam continues to grow, while retaining its evilness We can do something now to nip it in the bud (ie action now is worth much more than action later) Our selfish, bureaucratic, incompetent government finds that something That same government correctly implements the something This is what’s known in the gambling world as a “Parlay” - meaning that a sequence of things must all be true. The final probability is P(1) * P(2 given 1) * P(3 given 1 and 2) etc. And as a skeptical libertarian, I am awfully suspicious of 4 and 5. Even if you convinced me that 1, 2, and 3 had an 80% chance each of being...
November 06, 2006
Stern Critique
Initially I assumed that this Bjorn Lomborg critique of the Stern Review was another voice nit-picking the numbers, another update to the earlier post Jobs Programs. But it seems truly devastating to the Stern Review, which increasingly seems to be the worst sort of politicized crap. Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, U.K., lamented that politicians, activists and the media have pushed climate alarmism so over the top that climate scientists have become the new climate sceptics, those who dispute and debunk popular hysteria. Now it's time for economists to step up and join climate scientists in the effort to control this blaze which threatens far worse harm to the world than climate change. We all want a better world. But we must not let ourselves be swept up in making a bad investment, simply because we have been scared by sensationalist headlines. . . The review tells us that we should make significant...
November 03, 2006
Future So Bright
We may need shades. For the past year, Angel has been looking at ways to cool the Earth in an emergency. He's been studying the practicality of deploying a space sunshade in a global warming crisis, a crisis where it becomes clear that Earth is unmistakably headed for disastrous climate change within a decade or two. . . Angel is now publishing a first detailed, scholarly paper, "Feasibility of cooling the Earth with a cloud of small spacecraft near L1," in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The plan would be to launch a constellation of trillions of small free-flying spacecraft a million miles above Earth into an orbit aligned with the sun, called the L-1 orbit. The spacecraft would form a long, cylindrical cloud with a diameter about half that of Earth, and about 10 times longer. About 10 percent of the sunlight passing through the 60,000-mile length of the cloud, pointing lengthwise between the Earth...
October 29, 2006
Klutz Politics
Klutz. I always liked that word. It sounds like what it means. (There's science, e.g. Phonosemantics, for that too. Neural basis etc.) A klutz is a person who is clumsy, foolish, inept, or accident-prone. The term is perhaps derived from the Yiddish . . . klots ('wooden beam'), cognate with the German klotz, meaning a "block" or "lump". Politics is not agile, not gracile. Institutions are clumsy, unwieldy, slow to respond. Klutzy. They haven't finished yesterday's problems when they need to be working on tomorrow. It isn't solvable, isn't subject to reform. The reforms will be for yesterday's problem. It doesn't matter what political creed holds power. They all are the same in this respect. The harder governments work to plan and organize the worse it gets. This just increases the time it takes for a new problem to wend its way through the system and influence direction. The ship of state has an ocean sized turning radius. Stocks,...
October 29, 2006
Jobs Programs
The latest wheeze of climate hysterics is the Stern Review. Climate change could cut global growth by a fifth, costing up to £3.68 trillion in total, unless drastic action is taken, a review is to warn. But taking action now would cost just 1% of global gross domestic product, economist Sir Nicholas Stern says. Without action up to 200 million people could become refugees as their homes are hit by drought or flood, he adds. Chancellor Gordon Brown is to promise the UK will lead the international response to tackle climate change. Mr Brown is to say of the government-commissioned report: "The truth is, we must tackle climate change internationally, or we will not tackle it at all." The Stern Review, which is published on Monday, will say the key to solving the crisis is getting the big polluting countries, such as the US and China, to cut their emissions. Sir Nicholas will say the polluters must be made...
October 25, 2006
Civil Hysteria
One of the tricks used by academics is to say cutting things with an oily tongue, as if avoiding direct speech is somehow more civil. Well, perhaps, in some neighborhoods, for very small values of civil, but in others it compounds the insult. It's political behavior - sales speak. That this is offensive to many isn't the worst bit. By being evasive sloppy arguments are masked, making them more difficult for even the person making the argument to see. The possibility of a large hurricane wreaking havoc on the Louisiana coast has been known for years. Everything from infrastructure damage to long-term flooding of New Orleans to the enormous refugee problem was foreseen in excruciatingly accurate detail. We also knew the things we could do to reduce the impact of a killer hurricane. We could shore up the levees, for example, or work to recover the disappearing wetlands and barrier islands that shield New Orleans from storms. But these...
October 21, 2006
Medieval Politics
There's been a furor recently about some of the viler climate change hysterics advocating the capture, show trial and hanging of those who have doubts about the current political consensus regarding climate change. I think it would be a more honest expression of the sentiment if we burned them at the stake after torturing them for a while trying force them to recant their heresies. We'll burn them in any case but it would be good for their souls to recant before death. This should be broadcast to "the masses" in gory detail. I hadn't intended to comment on this crushingly stupid turn of events but noticed that for some reason, perhaps related in some way, there's been a lot of hits on an old post, Must I believe?. The joking caricature - "I'm a scientist, I don't believe in anything" - almost fits me. Almost, but I'm not a scientist. The rest is pretty close. I like the...
October 20, 2006
Sales Pitches
We have real environmental problems. We always have had them, we always will have them. In each era there are issues that become pressing. Some of them seem solvable while others don't. We focus on the ones that we think we can do something about, and attribute the others to God, or gods or nature or something, and so not within our ken and of no interest to hustlers grifters and politicians. Same thing. Evangelists come out of the woodwork and from under every rock to sell their looney policies. Some attract a following and have great personal success, but nothing comes of their looney ideas except personal fame and wealth. One of them, James Lovelock, was discussed at some length in an earlier post. His views are a mix of the sensible and the senseless. Brian Hayes said it best: Given the persistence of life on Earth, I'm sympathetic to the idea that the global ecosystem must be...
October 07, 2006
Muck Fires
This is the second most frequent search string used to get here (the first is "agricultural problems") though I've never written about them. I've written about forest and grassland fires (see Smokey Terror and Chaparral for examples), and muck is abundant, so I get hits. The Brits call manure muck. That usage is less common elsewhere apparently but it's common around here. It's also often called mud. Muck can catch fire. When dried it has long been used for fuel in some parts of the world where there's little wood, and it's possible for stored muck to catch too. But the term "muck fire" most often refers to an underground fire burning in or below a layer of duff in a marshy or peaty area with layers of incompletely decomposed organic matter. A peat bog fire in other words. It's a perennial news item in Florida which has lots of swamps and frequent droughts which dry the peat enough...
September 19, 2006
Climate Fantasies
Back40 fisking Pielke fisking Gore. Al Gore gave a major speech on climate policy yesterday at NYU. Here are some excerpts and my reactions: On the nature of climate policy debates: Merely engaging in high-minded debates about theoretical future reductions while continuing to steadily increase emissions represents a self-delusional and reckless approach. In some ways, that approach is worse than doing nothing at all, because it lulls the gullible into thinking that something is actually being done when in fact it is not. I could not agree more. I don't agree. None of the techniques we have at present are sufficient to the problem and most of the policies proposed make things worse. It is doing those ineffectual things, such as Kyoto, that "lulls the gullible into thinking that something is actually being done when in fact it is not". These are the type of things that politicians and advocates, such as Gore, do instead of useful commentary or...
September 13, 2006
If, Dog, Rabbit
Climate hustlers amaze me. It seems now that every one who can climb aboard the climate gravy train is eager to do so, and will warp research and findings to fit that agenda. Researchers from Stanford and the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology conducted the experiment in about two fenced-off acres of the 1,189-acre Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. The experiment was designed to simulate environmental conditions within the range that climate experts predict may exist 100 years from now--a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide; a temperature rise of 2 degrees Fahrenheit; a 50 percent increase in precipitation; and increased nitrogen deposition--as a likely byproduct of fossil-fuel burning. Scientists applied each of the four experimental treatments--elevated carbon dioxide, warming, increased precipitation and nitrogen deposition--to intact grassland plots both singly and in all possible combinations. The experiment included control plots that did not receive any treatments. Each of 16 possible scenarios was replicated eight times to allow the researchers to...
September 13, 2006
Constraint and Collapse
Speaking of confederacies of dunces . . . I was pretty surprised to find still un-reviewed on WC and to find only one post back in 2003 discussing its core idea of "Contraction and Convergence" as the way to `solve' climate change. . . "Economic growth is a tool for improving quality of life and well-being, but it is often forgotten that it was never meant to be an end in itself...any economic approach that endangers the future of the planet, as our current model is doing, is unacceptable no matter how much wealth is generated.' Thus the principle of Contraction and Convergence. A limit must be agreed on how much CO2 can be allowed to exist within the atmosphere, and a timescale is calculated to reach this. Secondly, global convergence towards this date involves converging towards equal per capita shares of emissions. In his world, the only equitable way of limiting our emissions - and thus the only...
September 12, 2006
Dark Tales
More about dark siders and their intellectual errors. As Gintis said: "many untrue beliefs have proliferated in even the most advanced societies." [via Prometheus] "Honestly, I don't think anyone's changed their mind," said Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University. "To me, this looks like the same people saying the same thing over and over again." Earlier this year, Klotzbach published a paper suggesting that, despite a rise in ocean temperatures during the last 20 years, hurricane activity worldwide has decreased. When Klotzbach published his paper, however, he did not issue a press release or organize a teleconference. This week's PNAS article was accompanied by a teleconference with Correll, Wigley and two other prominent hurricane scientists, Kerry Emanuel and Greg Holland. "What concerns me," Klotzbach said, "is the politicization of this issue." Pielke unpacks this a bit. The teleconference being referred to was organized by a group called Resource Media which describes itself as "dedicated to making...
July 28, 2006
Money Honey
The earlier post, Common Prediction asserted: The error is in assuming that the work of these scientists is for sale, that they would deliver the conclusions desired for a price. If this is this case then all scientists, no matter what their positions, are paid flacks who conveniently deliver the desired results depending on the funding source. The proponents of climate change are even more guilty, since they get more money, than the opponents. This is nonsense. That was in response to a breathless expose by political advocate Katherine Ellison claiming that the funding of climate change skeptics came from big oil and coal concerns and that that was "shocking". Now the NYT and the politicized blogosphere is atwitter about the funding of Patrick J. Michaels. Dr. Michaels told Western business leaders last year that he was running out of money for his analyses of other scientists’ global warming research. So a Colorado utility organized a collection campaign for...
July 24, 2006
Pinch Me
I must be dreaming. Today's New York Times reports that 10 scientists involved in the sometimes acrimonious debate over hurricanes and global warming have prepared a statement that places their debate into policy context. The statement is simple yet surprising. As the Atlantic hurricane season gets underway, the possible influence of climate change on hurricane activity is receiving renewed attention. While the debate on this issue is of considerable scientific and societal interest and concern, it should in no event detract from the main hurricane problem facing the United States: the ever-growing concentration of population and wealth in vulnerable coastal regions. These demographic trends are setting us up for rapidly increasing human and economic losses from hurricane disasters, especially in this era of heightened activity. Scores of scientists and engineers had warned of the threat to New Orleans long before climate change was seriously considered, and a Katrina-like storm or worse was (and is) inevitable even in a stable...
July 20, 2006
Politicians Argue
One of the more misleading phrases used by journalists, activists and politicians is "scientists argue" or "scientists say", sometimes juiced up a bit as "top scientists say". Closer examination shows that it's really journalists, activists and politicians say, though some of them may also be scientists. The Senate majority leader is a doctor, but when he speaks about policy he is a politician. If the usage was properly qualified as "some scientists say" it would be more accurate though less persuasive for authoritarians. I suspect that's why it is not often done. The world needs a new global organisation dedicated to stemming the loss of plant and animal species. That is the argument put forward by a group of eminent academics in this week's edition of the journal Nature. They call for the establishment of an Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity (IPB) to parallel the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Eminent? That's not helpful. But it is appropriate when...
July 09, 2006
Language Camouflage
We've heard a lot about divides of various sorts, and some about the rural/urban divide. One theme often heard comes from urban activists wondering why rural people are so stupid that they vote against their own interests, at least as seen (and misunderstood) by those activists. Another theme is gleeful anticipation of the hollowing out of the country as rural people give up and go to eke out some sort of existence on the margins of urban enclaves, and farmers teach their kids to leave home and work in cities rather than go into farming. The average age of farmers is in the upper fifties. Much of this anti-rural attitude comes from urban Democrats incensed that rural people voted Republican in large numbers in recent times since the culture war jettisoned working and rural people from the Democratic party, with sneers and insults about cousin marriage for good measure. Theodore Roosevelt IV (yes, that TR) argues that though pundits...
July 06, 2006
Better Red . . .
. . . than dead, or so the arguments from a class of intellectually suspect supporters of Soviet communism argued during the cold war. Their fear of nuclear war prompted them to prefer capitulation to continued resistance of communist efforts to conquer the planet. So they argued that communism wasn't so bad and capitalism had flaws, down playing the horrors of totalitarian rule while exaggerating the defects of liberty. Their thinking was skewed from rationality by their fears. With hindsight this is obvious. Some have a certain morbid fascination with dissecting the mind and character of such quislings. It wasn't a one off event, it's an enduring category well populated still. The threat isn't nuclear war now, it's climate change, and the role of the heavy in the drama isn't played by communists, it's played by green hysterics. All else is identical. Society is divided along the same lines, often with the same people. Veteran communist sympathizers who advocated...
July 05, 2006
Shame and Revenge
The Gelernter essay referenced in Happy Birthday makes a point worth expanding a bit: Twentieth-century totalitarianism was created (not only but in large part) by shame. Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany were born out of humiliating defeat in the First World War: Germany beat Russia (Russian communism followed); the allies beat Germany (Nazism followed). Defeat and shame were not the only forces at work, but we can't understand the 20th century without them. Nor can we understand today's radical Islamic terrorism and totalitarianism (totalitarians being terrorists who have already got what they want) without understanding the central role of defeat and shame. And, Revenge too . . . The panel's discussions were based on themes set by Professor James Lovelock in his latest book The Revenge of Gaia. The book argues that human society, through greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of environmental degradation, has brought the natural world to the brink of a crisis. Temperatures will rise, Professor...
July 05, 2006
Common Prediction
Well, it's not so much that it is a common prediction as that it is a pedestrian response, and that is common. Jim Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has suggested that within ten years climate change could reach a point of no return. Yet outside of scientific circles, very few public figures have dared to imagine, much less advocate, policies adequate to this challenge. A glaring exception is Ross Gelbspan, a 66-year-old retired newspaper journalist turned lonely missionary, whom former Vice President Al Gore has compared to Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, and the other great muckraking reformists of the early twentieth century. With his two landmark books on climate change, his high-level contacts among scientists and politicians, and his unflagging conviction, Gelbspan has been shuttling around the country and abroad, giving lectures and interviews and writing articles to promote a drastic project called the World Energy Modernization Plan. The plan dwarfs the Kyoto protocol and...
July 05, 2006
Rare Prediction
What's so rare about Robert J. Samuelson's prediction from nearly a decade ago is that it is correct. Global warming may or may not be the great environmental crisis of the next century, but -- regardless of whether it is or isn't -- we won't do much about it. We will (I am sure) argue ferociously over it and may even, as a nation, make some fairly solemn-sounding commitments to avoid it. But the more dramatic and meaningful these commitments seem, the less likely they are to be observed. Little will be done. . . . Global warming promises to become a gushing source of national hypocrisy. - Robert J. Samuelson, WaPo, July 1997 Nailed it. What is he saying now? Al Gore calls global warming an "inconvenient truth," as if merely recognizing it could put us on a path to a solution. That's an illusion. The real truth is that we don't know enough to relieve global warming,...
June 26, 2006
Better Late
The climate change community has been an abject failure thus far. It misunderstood the problem, its causes and feasible responses. They all pulled the same old rusty tools out of their very sparse kits and tried to misuse them again. Regulations? Hah! Taxes? Hah! Minty fresh visions? Yeech! Finally some are beginning to think. Their proposals were relegated to the fringes of climate science. Few journals would publish them. Few government agencies would pay for feasibility studies. Environmentalists and mainstream scientists said the focus should be on reducing greenhouse gases and preventing global warming in the first place. But now, in a major reversal, some of the world's most prominent scientists say the proposals deserve a serious look because of growing concerns about global warming. Worried about a potential planetary crisis, these leaders are calling on governments and scientific groups to study exotic ways to reduce global warming, seeing them as possible fallback positions if the planet eventually needs...
June 14, 2006
Arnold Does Climate
It's a bit worrisome that I find that many of the most rational and sensible takes on climate change come from economists. In a better world it would be environmentalists, ecologists and such that would have the saner views since it is their business to be focused on such issues. The earlier post Tyler Does Climate is one example that points to an economist's reasoned analysis. Here's another. I am starting to appreciate how extremely model-dependent the field of climate forecasting is. That is not a good thing. As I wrote here, "The complexity of the process far exceeds the availability of data needed to verify the model. Even a broad consensus may prove fragile." Under the circumstances, I think that the language that climate forecasters should be using ought to be careful and cautious about what they claim to know. The argument for trying to control carbon dioxide emissions is actually quite subtle and nuanced. The argument would...
May 30, 2006
Hair of the Dog
Or, in for a penny, in for a pound. It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that the federal government has no business in land use regulation, that decisions about what should be built and where must be made at the local level, where people understand their landscapes and have a strong vested interest in doing the right thing. . . This view is wrong, at least according to Bruce Babbitt and Roger G. Kennedy. In new books, they say the federal government has long played a powerful role in local land use decisions. But its influence has been disguised — as tax deductions for mortgages, as highway programs or as logging concessions. Both senior officials in the Clinton administration, Mr. Babbitt, former interior secretary, and Mr. Kennedy, who headed the National Park Service, cite different examples and offer different suggestions. Their underlying message, however, is the same. If development has scarred American landscapes and shredded ecosystems — and...
May 30, 2006
Froggy Thinking
The main point made in the previous post is that it isn't helpful to focus intently on a problem such as climate change, or on a narrow aspect of that narrow problem. It's a recipe for failure since the faulty analyses will bring faulty responses. Those who have spent so much time, effort and resources (including GHG emissions) beating that drum have much to answer for, and now that the unwashed hordes are reacting the consequences of those faulty analyses will be amplified. Scientists, economists, environmentalists and a growing rank of business leaders warn that corporate America needs to move more quickly or it will face the consequences: higher energy prices, a potential cost for carbon pollution and, eventually, products that will have trouble competing globally because other countries are reducing emissions. The United States is responsible for a quarter of all the carbon dioxide sent into the atmosphere each year. It has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the...
May 30, 2006
Tyler Does Climate
Here's a semi-interesting summation of climate change issues by an economist, an 8 point list of current views subject to change with new evidence. 1. It is by now pointless to deny that global warming is man-made to a considerable degree. It may be for an economist, but not for scientists. The sticking point is "considerable degree". We don't know that and there are some difficult issues left unexplained. There is a steady stream of new evidence as scientists from a variety of disciplines make contributions - everything from soil scientists to marine biologists as well as geologists and climatologists. Their work is important because the carbon cycle is not well understood. We can't explain why there isn't more carbon in the air since we have emitted so much. Where does it go? We have some knowledge and theories but this is a great grey area. Is there a time delay reaction? Will the earth adjust to the emissions...
May 22, 2006
Ugly Attention
Conveniently, here's a recent example of cynical opportunism by a climate hysteric, Alex "the poseur" Steffen at world whingeing - please donate now and buy my book. It attempts to spin recent remarks by noted climate scientist and technology guru President George Bush into a statement of support for climate hysteria. Bush said: [I]n my judgment we need to set aside whether or not greenhouse gases have been caused by mankind or because of natural effects and focus on the technologies that will enable us to live better lives and at the same time protect the environment. Which is exactly what he has been saying all along. "Live better lives" means continued economic expansion. Technological development to enable this has been his chosen path. "Protect the environment" is meaningless happy talk in that it is an inevitable byproduct of the technological and economic development he seeks. Bush is a politician so none of this is surprising or out of...
May 22, 2006
Life Pollution
It's been somewhat amusing to observe the dueling narratives of global warming hysterics and their antagonists. The meaningless dispute has been going on for a long time with long periods of relative quiet interrupted by episodes of high dudgeon conflict, and periodic deflations as some ill conceived and poorly executed program collapses. Recent events in this tawdry story include the deflation of the Kyoto protocol at the last meeting in Montreal, the collapse of European carbon markets and efforts by the British government to revive nuclear power as the only feasible replacement for base load power generation facilities that use natural gas. It's becoming scarce, expensive and subject to political brinkmanship, and the obvious alternative, coal, is unlikely to be clean enough. Canada, which has missed its Kyoto commitments cynically made by a previous administration though there was never any hope of meeting them, has mooted the idea of withdrawing from Kyoto. Australia has increasingly made light of the...
May 15, 2006
Blind Ambition
The most foolish and destructive segment of the political class is that which seeks to develop and promote "visions", narratives that spin a yarn about some cherished future that can be achieved if only extraordinary powers are granted to government. They justify this unseemly behavior with "visions" of doom and crisis. They select negative information about the present and warn of dire futures that will occur if they are not given power. It has worked in the past, monsters have seized control of societies, but it's getting harder to do. According to a recent study published in the May issue of SAGE Publications' journal, American Politics Research, researchers conclude that young Americans' political views are negatively impacted by watching the popular The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which airs late night on Comedy Central as a 'fake-news program.' . . The study was conducted utilizing video clips from The Daily Show and CBS Evening News, a more mainstream television...
May 09, 2006
Fantasy Economics
It's frustrating when someone is struggling to make a point that may be valid but they stumble and fail to make it. A lot of the reason that subsistence farming entails so much misery, however, is that we've decided for some reason that it's a really good idea to offer subsidies to farmers in this country (subsidies which, for the record, mostly benefit agribusiness and not the nice folks whose farms I pass every day on my drive to work). By subsidizing relatively rich American farmers, we make it impossible for farmers in developing nations to compete. Nonsense. The US only subsidizes a few commodities, and almost none of them compete with subsistence farmers anywhere. It is large agribusinesses in comparatively wealthy middle tier countries that are impacted by US subsidies. This isn't a justification for US subsidies, but let's damn them for their real harms rather than making up stuff. The US is a small market for such...
April 11, 2006
Looney Pop-Climatology
I've been lying doggo on the recent counter-flurry of climate articles that balance, sort of, a preceding flurry of climate hysteria. Tim Haab makes it too funny to avoid. Scientists: Global warming is a problem Me: No it isn't Scientists: Yes it is Me: No it isn't Scientists: Yes it is Me: OK, maybe it is Scientist: No it isn't Tim likens it to a Daffy and Bugs exchange but I hear Monty Python. Philip rounds up a commentary and provides links to relevant material including this bracing brain cleansing by Scott Burgess. . . . it's worth asking just what engendered the myth of consensus. Paleoclimatologist Bob Carter, in an separate Sunday Telegraph article - one which incidentally points out that there's been exactly zero global temperature rise since 1998 - offers a possible explanation: "There are other reasons, too, why the public hears so little in detail from those scientists who approach climate change issues rationally, the...
April 04, 2006
Nearly Sensible
I haven't pointed to the Environmental Economics blog, even though I read it, and even though Lynne Kiesling has posted there on rare occasion, because it's usually either vague and nonsensical or explicit and nonsensical. The subject is important but the authors don't seem to have a useful grasp of it. I continue reading just in case someone comes to his senses or finds his voice. This one isn't so bad, and it explains some of the vagueness that detracts so much from the posts. I have been unclear as to where I stand on the global warming broohaha. Part of that is intentional as I have found that we get more discussion when I am vague then when I'm specific. The rest of the post is a dialog involving two perspectives, the differing views of the author depending on which hat he is wearing. His Internal Human view is typical brain-dead muddle and his Internal Economist is typical...
April 03, 2006
Good Dog, Happy man
A comment tossed off In Sleeping Furiously alluded to the secret weapon of Islam: fecundity. This is a topic getting some attention lately as the immigration and assimilation problems in Europe are at long last subjected to some honest inquiry, and as US immigration policy gets increased scrutiny. There are several drivers for cultural conflict on this issue. European cultures - which includes the US too - have been obsessed by breeding for decades, a confluence of a number of streams of thought ranging from concerns about human population to a pathological distaste for masculinity - except in women. Muslim cultures are equally obsessed but have entirely different prescriptions for management of the issue. A gross oversimplification from which to launch a discussion might be that European cultures seek to emasculate men - circumcising, repressing, and ridiculing masculine expression - while Muslim cultures seek to dehumanize women - circumcising, repressing, and ridiculing unto death any expression of female sexuality....
March 23, 2006
Wetter and Wilder
Dirty Business discussed some of the deceits of water opportunists seeking to benefit from our perennial concerns for fresh water. Dark Siders discussed the mess scientists have made of themselves by degenerating into activism and so losing their credibility just as journalists, lawyers, academics and environmentalists have done. In an update to R.I.P. a study was cited that complained about the fact that climate models make dumb assumptions about agriculture even though it is the single greatest terraforming activity on the planet. "Nearly all models used to predict climate changes either ignore agriculture altogether or assume that farmers behave the same way through time," That article goes on to discuss some issues relevant to all the above, tying together a number of ideas and complaints voiced previously. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization, the net increase in global cropland during the last 50 years has been about 10 percent. But in existing cropland, over the same period, farmers...
March 23, 2006
R.I.P.
It's official, the global warming hysteria movement is dead. One team, using computer models of climate and ice, found that by about 2100, average temperatures could be 4 degrees warmer than today and that over the coming centuries, the world's oceans could rise 13 to 20 feet . . . Many experts say there are still uncertainties about timing, extent and causes. But Jonathan T. Overpeck of the University of Arizona, a lead author of one of the studies, said the new findings made a strong case for the danger of failing to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases. These brain dead pronouncements are very strong evidence that global warming, and the author of this nonsense - Andrew Revkin, are dead. One team, using a model, could be 4 degrees, by about 2100, over the coming centuries . . . What a collection of wheezes assembled solely for instrumental purposes, to advocate CO2 regulation. They're...
February 20, 2006
Desperate Whingers
After the Kyoto debacle in Montreal - the world showed no appetite for more bureaucratic Kyoto style wanking - and Blair's change of tack, explicitly recognizing that no nation would hamstring itself to reduce emissions, the climate hysteria industry deflated for a while. More recently a lot of effort has been expended by those with the most to lose if that industry truly collapses. When the eco-apocalypse meets the New Testament apocalypse, you know something is up. That something is a sense of political desperation among climate change alarmists, as the world slowly turns against them. If there is any subject more certain than the federal budget process to bring on eye-glaze, it is global warming and the drearily repetitive argument about the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The issue combines the worst of wonky numerology (parts per million of various gases, complex computer models, opaque cost-benefit analyses), an alphabet soup of unctuous international bureaucracies (IPCC, UNFCCC,...
February 09, 2006
Creeps and Cranks
The recent WTO ruling that European discrimination against GMOs violates international trade rules was a surprise to me. I expected they would get away with it. Part of that ruling was the assertion that European discrimination wasn't based on science. Some argue that science isn't the issue, that democracy is the issue. If they want to ban GMOs then that's their choice and the WTO shouldn't force them down their throats. But, this isn't a democracy issue. You don't get to pick and choose which rules you will follow in a democracy, you get to work to change them using democratic processes. Alternatively, you can move to a different location with different rules or, as in this case since it is a world institution, withdraw and pay the price of your convictions. Others argue that though GMO opposition isn't scientific that it is none the less valid in some sense because people are alientated from science and modernity for...
February 03, 2006
Artless Whingeing
Some wonder why the M.A. landed with a thud. [via Resilience Science blog] When the huge report first emerged last spring after four years, $24 million and the efforts of more than 1,300 scientists in 95 countries, it made headlines elsewhere. In December, it was awarded a Zayed Prize, something like an environmentalist Nobel. Here in North America, though, the media barely registered its existence. What a dirty shame. The U.N.-backed Millennium Assessment is the most thorough survey of global ecosystems ever undertaken. It's also the first report of its kind to link ecosystem health to human well-being, and in so doing, strikes the rich, rich vein of human self-interest. Showing people what's in it for them is a great way to get something done. A first pass answer to the question of why it was largely ignored is that it has the stench of the UN about it, but it isn't as if there wasn't a lot of...
January 24, 2006
Cognitive Kaleidoscope
An interesting bit of fMRI research reveals that emotion rather than reason determines human response to political information. We knew that but it's nice to see the light show as areas of the brain light up while people "reason" about their interests. Once partisans had come to completely biased conclusions -- essentially finding ways to ignore information that could not be rationally discounted -- not only did circuits that mediate negative emotions like sadness and disgust turn off, but subjects got a blast of activation in circuits involved in reward -- similar to what addicts receive when they get their fix, Westen explains. You can lie to yourself more easily than anyone else. And it feels good too. It isn't just political views that cause this response of course, it's all of our vested interests, anything we seek to promote, sell, convince or persuade others to do or believe. Business, religion and the like are affected as much as...
January 19, 2006
Lester The Molester
Brown that is, perennial millennial nut case, a repeat offender who committed the Worldwatch Institute and the Earth Policy Institute while spamming the world with his doom, gloom, and mistaken analyses and prescriptions. S.O.S. Jamais Cascio at World Whingeing points to Brown's newest book and swoons: Brown has just come out with Plan B 2.0, updating the original work, and it looks to be one of the better summations of the WorldChanging perspective yet in print . . . Just like peas and carrots. This is a representative example of Brown's pervasive confusion. Like earlier civilizations that got into environmental trouble, we can decide to stay with business as usual and watch our modern economy decline and eventually collapse, or we can consciously move onto a new path, one that will sustain economic progress. In this situation, no action is actually a decision to stay on the decline-and-collapse path. Rubbish. The future is not a binary system. No one...
January 18, 2006
Wonk Wank
This is another politics is stupid post. As we've seen repeatedly, most recently in the NOLA fiasco, federal government department heads are not the sharpest knives in the drawer. They are ceremonial weapons that fail when you try to actually use them. For example: Six former heads of the Environmental Protection Agency, including five who served Republican presidents, said Wednesday that the Bush administration needs to act more aggressively to limit the emission of greenhouse gases linked to climate change. . . The agency's Annual Energy Outlook for 2006, which was released last month, showed that carbon emissions from inside the United States are projected to increase by 37 percent by 2030. . . What are the projected increases for other nations? What are the projections for the world? If US emissions didn't increase at all by 2030 would that have any affect on climate? They are making nonsense arguments by considering only a single nation and by not...
January 18, 2006
Nonsense Polls
Polls always seem to be stealth advocacy, a sneaky way for activists to argue for their views. This is clearly obvious when the polls are done by political parties but only slightly less clear when done by others. Public support for environmental protection in the United States as a federal government priority has dropped substantially since 2001, a researcher from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, has found after analyzing results from a prominent annual public opinion survey. . . with the exception of wanting Washington to focus on job creation, the public is less interested in a range of domestic priorities, including crime prevention and health care management. Pew's annual survey asks U.S. residents to rank – from "top priority" to "should not be done" – a set of domestic priorities for the executive and congressional branches. Besides protecting the environment, the priorities are crime reduction, job creation, managed health care, national debt pay-down, federal income tax...
January 15, 2006
Recycling Blues
Pious greens and fellow travelers have spent decades propagandizing domestic recycling. They burned a lot of energy, squandered a lot of resources, and alienated large segments of society while turning the majority into sneaks. Recycling gets a lot of lip service, but when all the wastes are counted it has done little to address the target issues. This is a good example of a repeated phenomenon. Priggish greens nag society to read scripture and sacrifice, but the overwhelming majority continue to live sensibly instead, though they are careful to keep it hidden. They live normal lives but don't do it in the street and scare the horses. They are modern Victorians, chaste in public but raunchy in private, too sensible to fight the power but also too sensible to cooperate with dumb ideas. Today this is called the 4/40 gap: "roughly 40% of consumers say they're willing to buy greener products, but only 4% actually does" so. It seems...
January 12, 2006
Adult Supervision
Bill "we're all gonna die" McKibben is frustrated. But twice last week I acted in ways entirely out of character. I signed a letter criticizing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his New York Times op-ed opposing the big Cape Wind project. And I wrote a few paragraphs disparaging the most powerful of my local environmental groups, the Adirondack Council, for the way they'd worked on clean-air issues. Both criticisms were respectful -- I am my mother's son -- but they were also stern. . . They were also, at some level, divisive. In both cases, you could truthfully say I was willing to inflict a little damage on an important part of the environmental movement. It doesn't mean, I hope, that I'm growing a mean streak. I think it means something else: that the environmental movement is reaching an important point of division, between those who truly get global warming, and those who don't. By get, I don't mean...
January 10, 2006
Hex Death
One of the segments of the article discussed in Simple Minded was about the harm that has been done by intentional exaggeration of threats. . . . according to the UN report in 2005 . . . "the largest public health problem created by the accident" is the "damaging psychological impact [due] to a lack of accurate information…[manifesting] as negative self-assessments of health, belief in a shortened life expectancy, lack of initiative, and dependency on assistance from the state." In other words, the greatest damage to the people of Chernobyl was caused by bad information. These people weren’t blighted by radiation so much as by terrifying but false information. We ought to ponder, for a minute, exactly what that implies. We demand strict controls on radiation because it is such a health hazard. But Chernobyl suggests that false information can be a health hazard as damaging as radiation. I am not saying radiation is not a threat. I am...
December 15, 2005
Can't Touch This
One of the less savory aspects of moral posturing about technological issues is that some subjects are taboo. Currently air capture of CO2 is a political third rail of climate policy. Here is why: For most of those people opposed to greenhouse gas regulation advocating air capture would require first admitting that greenhouse gases ought to be reduced in the first place, an admission that most on this side of the debate have avoided. When so-called climate skeptics start advocating air capture (which I have to believe can't be too far off), then you will have a sign that the climate debate is really changing. If such a transformation occurs, then we have the irony of seeing the climate skeptics become the technology advocates and the greenhouse gas regulation advocates become technology skeptics. Why? For most of those people who support greenhouse gas regulations, even admitting the possibility of air capture is anathema, because it would undercut the entire...
December 13, 2005
Moral Posturing
As usual Don Boudreaux is that rare, calm, sensible voice speaking at a conversational volume and in pleasant tones about a contentious issue. Let’s assume that global warming is happening and that it’s caused by modern human industry and commerce. Is there a case to be made for the United States government to continue to avoid signing the Kyoto Protocol? More generally, is there a case to be made to shrug our shoulders and say “best not to do anything through government about global warming”? I think so. One legitimate reason for refusing to endorse massive, worldwide government-led efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions is that any such effort will inevitably be politicized. Even if the possibility exists for such regulation to make the world a better place, this possibility is remote compared to the likelihood that grandstanding politicians, special-interest groups, arrogant environmentalists who are intolerant of commercial values, and well-meaning but misinformed voters will combine to generate policies that...
December 10, 2005
Post-Modern Politics
. . . as Philip called it, but here in the toolies we call a spade a fucking shovel, and lies are damned lies. the Bush administration, which rejects the emissions cutbacks of the current Kyoto Protocol, accepted only a watered-down proposal to enter an exploratory global "dialogue" on future steps to combat climate change. That proposal specifically rules out "negotiations leading to new commitments." . . The parallel tracks represented a mixed result for the pivotal two-week U.N. conference on global warming, doing little to close the climate gap between Washington on one side, and Europe, Japan and other supporters of the Kyoto Protocol on the other. "These countries are willing to take the leadership," Swiss delegate Bruno Oberle said of the Kyoto nations. "But they are not able to solve the problem. We need the support of the United States -- but also of the big emerging countries," a reference to China and other poorer industrializing nations...
December 09, 2005
The Real Issue
The political posturing and meaningless speeches are drawing to a frenzied close in Montreal. The Bush administration is wary of new commitments. It rejected Kyoto in 2001 saying it would damage the US economy. Former US President Bill Clinton has made a strong plea for acceptance. Addressing the conference at the invitation of the City of Montreal, he said to loud applause that there should be a "serious commitment to a clean-energy future". If existing clean energy and energy conservation technologies were applied in full, Mr Clinton said, the US could "meet and surpass the Kyoto targets easily in a way that would strengthen, not weaken, [its] economy". Clinton had 8 years and a booming economy. He did nothing. His prescription, to conserve energy and apply clean energy technologies in full, might meet Kyoto targets without economic harm, but there would be other things that don't get done. This matters because meeting Kyoto targets would do nothing at all...
December 07, 2005
Maroons
It's a break from yellow and fits the Revkin pieces well. Annie Petsonk, a representative of Environmental Defense, a private group, said that without prompt new actions by the United States to ratchet down emissions, the long-lived gases would build in the atmosphere creating a far larger challenge for all countries in a couple of decades. “We need to do more and we need to keep that pace,” she said. “It’s sort of like getting your reading done when you’re in college. You can do a little bit the first night, the second night, and each night after that, or you can do what I did, which is you can wait until the end of the semester.” With greenhouse gases, she said, the enormous buildup in several decades would require extremely deep cuts in emissions to avoid concentrations that would dangerously warm the Earth. “The consequences of even 10 years of delay could be enormous,” she said. mmmm, I...
December 07, 2005
Even Yellower
The dingbat claims by politicized scientists noted previously in Yellow Science aren't rare. Here's an example. Absent any climate policy, scientists have found a 70 percent chance of shutting down the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic Ocean over the next 200 years, with a 45 percent probability of this occurring in this century. The likelihood decreases with mitigation, but even the most rigorous immediate climate policy would still leave a 25 percent chance of a thermohaline collapse. Gee, it seems that these folks have a crystal ball that can see the future and confidently pronounce that only a climate policy will prevent doom. What's a climate policy? They then used an extended, but simplified, model to represent the wide range of behavior of the thermohaline circulation. By combining the simple model with an economic model, they could estimate the likelihood of a shutdown between now and 2205, both with and without the policy intervention of a carbon tax...
December 07, 2005
ID Recovered
Revkin is back in his usual rut. Under pressure from other industrialized countries at talks here on global warming, the Bush administration announced on Tuesday that it had signed an agreement with a coalition of energy companies to build a prototype coal-burning power plant with no emissions. Well, no, pressure isn't the issue. The project, called FutureGen, has been in planning stages since 2003. It's no secret and has long been anticipated. What galls the climate nutters is that it is a good example of the sort of things we can do that are effective rather than merely pious. Environmental advocates at the talks criticized the announcement, saying it was intended to distract from continuing efforts by the American delegation to block discussion of new international commitments to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases that scientists link to global warming. "You are watching 163 nations do an elaborate dance to try to make progress when the...
December 06, 2005
Yellow Science
Politicized scientists have the nasty habit of making public claims that are only true for special situations without noting the special situations, or burying them below the fold. Growing more forests in United States could contribute to global warming Planting trees across the United States and Europe to absorb some of the carbon dioxide emitted by the burning of fossil fuels may just outweigh the positive effects of sequestering that CO². So, activist scientist Ken Caldeira concludes: . . . in terms of climate change, we should focus our efforts on things that can really make a difference, like improving efficiency and developing new sources of clean energy. But what does the study really show? Using climate models, researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Carnegie Institution Department of Global Ecology have found that forests in the mid-latitude regions of the Earth, present a more complicated picture. Trees in these areas tend to warm the Earth in...
December 06, 2005
Blind Spots
This mudge, like the previous one Lost In Space, is about picking apart the fussy little knots folks tie themselves into which prevent them from saying sensible things. The new candidate insight to explain this malfunction is that the self-disabled speaker can't see the problem and doesn't realize they are uttering nonsense. Consider this brief rant of Dave Iverson at Forest Policy - Forest Practice. My local paper ran this FrontPage headline Friday, "And now here's the Grand Canyon, thanks to…" The article was subtitled "National parks seeking corporate sponsorship." No doubt supporters believe they are just looking to honor those they refer to affectionately as 'corporate partners.' But many, including me, think this is yet-another nightmare brought to us by those who have no vision of or desire for 'public use.' This is the same bunch who have no idea of the good that comes from holding some public space apart from the constant drumbeat of corporatism—pounded incessantly...
December 03, 2005
ID Theft
Someone has written a sensible article in the NYT claiming to be Andrew Revkin, but Revkin would never say sensible things like this. Today, in the middle of new global warming talks in Montreal, there is a sense that the whole idea of global agreements to cut greenhouse gases won't work. . . in the years after the protocol was announced, developing countries, including the fast-growing giants China and India, have held firm on their insistence that they would accept no emissions cuts, even though they are likely to be the world's dominant source of greenhouse gases in coming years. Their refusal helped fuel strong opposition to the treaty in the United States Senate and its eventual rejection by President Bush. . . Some veterans of climate diplomacy and science now say that perhaps the entire architecture of the climate treaty process might be flawed. The basic template came out of the first international pact intended to protect the...
December 01, 2005
Wrong Number
Jon points to this Jonathan Adler post at The Commons about a story in The New York Times which chronicles the efforts of Republican state representative from southern Utah, Michael E. Noel, a former Bureau of Land Management employee, to stop an Arizona environmental group, Grand Canyon Trust, from buying out local rancher's grazing allotments on the Colorado plateau in Utah. Noel says: . . . the loss of the grazing allotments would hurt ranching, which would in turn deprive the area's young people of the character-building chance to work on the land. "Yes, it's a free market to buy and sell," Mr. Noel said recently. "But if you buy it, you use it." By retiring the lands, he said, the trust is reneging on an implicit agreement, and "if we allow that to occur, we go down the path of eliminating all grazing on public lands." Adler protests: Perhaps so, but this is a change being brought about...
November 29, 2005
Diminished Capacity
There's a certain amount of chortling today as the latest UN climate boondoggle opens in Montreal. Not only is Canada the poster child for empty gestures - talking emissions reductions while hugely increasing them - its government has fallen amid corruption scandals, and will most probably be replaced by one much less likely to champion empty climate gestures. In the UK Tony Blair has been mooting ideas for a more rational approach to emissions, trying to edge popular thinking more toward the sensible goal of producing sufficient energy to power the nation robustly using non-carbon technologies - meaning nuclear energy of course. The chief impediment to rational thinking about emissions is that authoritarian nations, and authoritarian thinkers within even the least authoritarian nations such as the US, are stuck on stupid, unable to break the bad habit of responding to threats by hunkering down. Authoritarian people are trained to the whip and habitually cringe. They get nervous and fearful...
November 23, 2005
Rain Dance
Dave Greene at BaySense ponders biofuels. From the NewScientist (via Drudge): From the orangutan reserves of Borneo to the Brazilian Amazon, virgin forest is being razed to grow palm oil and soybeans to fuel cars and power stations in Europe and North America. And surging prices are likely to accelerate the destruction... The rush to make energy from vegetable oils is being driven in part by European Union laws requiring conventional fuels to be blended with biofuels, and by subsidies equivalent to 20 pence a litre. The chief pull quote from that NewScientist article: “Once again we are trying to solve our environmental problems by dumping them on developing countries” That's a point I've been making for a few years as the biofuel fetish has grown stronger. See Bio-Fuelish and Resource Discovery for examples of earlier posts, but the ideas are scattered throughout all posts dealing with energy, agriculture and climate. It isn't just that more land is being...
October 22, 2005
Native Humans
Have you ever noticed how a subject that catches your attention suddenly seems to be everywhere? Once you see one of something it seems that every rock you turn over has another specimen. Today I found a hybrid of two of the beasties I've been seeing everywhere for some time. One of the beasts is the convert, like the American ex-communists from the Bernard DeVoto essay referenced in an update to Actively Stupid. The landscape seems littered with shrill evangelists of various stripes who have been born again... and again and again as they crash and burn in one frenetic but ill-conceived enthusiasm after another. The other beast is the nativist, those who see humans as unusual animals that are necessary parts of ecologies rather than alien invaders. Wes Jackson in his book Becoming Native to This Place is an example but one I have quoted repeatedly is Wendell Berry's mudge about land use from Private Property and the...
October 21, 2005
Actively Stupid
A thread running through many posts here and at Crumb Trail has been the stupidity of activists, especially environmental activists but not exclusively. A recent crumb, Club Sierra, discussed the fact that more and more people decline to identify themselves as environmentalists though they remain supportive of the environment. The problem is that stupid and mean spirited activists are stinking up the place. This isn't unique to environmentalism - the same thing happened with unionism, feminism and civil rights. It's a natural progression that results from movement dynamics. Ideas ossify into ideology and sincere, good hearted initiators drift away while less savory types come to dominate. Another recent crumb, Brain Death, discussed how pseudo-environmentalists had allowed aspects of their ideology to become diametrically opposed to the environment, so that the things they were advocating were environmentally harmful as well as repellent to a large segment of society. In Slow Learners this was the focus. Environmentalism is pan-ideological, not left...
October 09, 2005
Slow Learners
Jon points to a speech given by Bill Moyers, one of the nastiest of pseudo-green posers, approvingly. Whatever one thinks about his politics, his journalism, and the political storms he has weathered in his career, and especially in recent years, this speech is a story of a journey worth taking with Moyers. He walks through the valley of the shadow of death and up the mountain to see the other side. Whether one abides with Moyers or parts ways somewhere along the path, his vision of journalism resounds. The speech is a revealing look at the diseases of the environmental movement. Yes, I know: the environmental community has stumbled on many fronts. All of us in this room have heard and reported the charges: that the rhetoric is alarmist and the ideology polarizing; that command-and-control regulation produces bureaucratic bungles, slows economic growth, and delays technological advances that save lives; that what began as a grassroots movement has now become...
September 05, 2005
Utter Depravity
Several other posts talked of vultures, hyenas, enviro-predators, power-monsters and the general immoral exploitation of Katrina. Here is something worse if only because it does all of the ugly things at once. We also know that Katrina was just a foretaste of what we should expect in the coming years. We are changing the weather with the pollution we spew from tailpipes and smokestacks, and the bill for that irresponsibility is starting to come due. No, NOLA has lived under this exact threat for decades, rolling the dice that it wouldn't happen this year. We are not changing the weather. We are changing the climate, we think, and are still trying to think through how weather might be affected by a changed climate. Katrina was a watershed moment. From here on out, the debate is over. Everything has changed, at least as dramatically as in wake of 9-11. From this moment forward, there is simply no ethical way to...
September 04, 2005
Politicized Politicization
One of the themes here has been the politicization of science, especially the natural sciences that affect the environment. One of the issues in that theme has been the belated focus this subject has been given by environmentalists, and then only to attack the Bush administration. Among the worst offenders has been the Union of Concerned Scientists, and lately the science writer Chris Mooney who has finally published his long threatened book on the subject titled, wait for it, "The Republican War on Science". It's good that the politicization of science has become a front burner topic, but the attempts of Democratic activists such as the UCS (i.e. Paul Ehrlich and company) and Mooney are backfiring. When intellectually honest people focus on the subject, especially when supplied with information by opponents of the Democrats, it becomes clear to all that there is not only nothing new about the politicization of science, but that the Democrats invented the modern version...
September 03, 2005
Flesh Wounds
I was a bit puzzled about why the political and environmental predators referred to in the previous post so quickly and completely punked themselves about Katrina. Mickey Kaus [via Glenn Reynolds] has a useful explanation. I think it's because the hurricane and its New Orleans aftermath at least seemed to solve a big problem for anti-Bush commentators and politicians. Previously, they couldn't grouse about the Iraq War without seeming defeatist (and anti-liberationist and maybe even selfishly isolationist). . . Katrina gives them a way to talk about Iraq without talking about Iraq. The same thing happens for every event or conflict, but Katrina had them peeing their pants in excitement that they were finally going to have a free fire zone where they could vent their hatred without being singed by the blowback and eventually pummeled senseless, again, after they shot their wads prematurely and inaccurately. It is certainly the best opportunity for mindless hate spewing that has come...
August 31, 2005
After The Flood
The discussion of Katrina continues, some of it technical and some of it political or ethical, as we expect for events of this magnitude that reveal much about the functioning of our institutions. The latest in Roger Pielke Jr.'s series of posts touches several bases, both scientific and political, and offers some Unsolicited Media Advice. As I read about many instances of the immoral exploitation of Katrina's impacts to advance a political agenda, it seems to me that there is a good opportunity for the media to contribute constructively to this issue. So Prometheus-reading reporters, by all means ask your experts if Katrina is a result of global warming. But don't stop there. Please also ask the following question: "If the US (or the world) were to begin taking more aggressive actions on emissions reductions, when could we expect to see the effects of such policies in the impacts of future hurricanes, and how large would those effects be?"...
July 03, 2005
Further Discussion
The defects in the environmental movement as well as the institutions and policies that have come about as a consequence of it that were discussed a bit in Catch-42 and The Undiscussable are all the more pertinent today. Gaylord Nelson. . . has died at the age of 89. After 14 years in Wisconsin politics, Gaylord Nelson was elected to the US Senate in 1962, where he pushed conservation policies until he was defeated in 1980. He founded Earth Day as an environmental demonstration in the tradition of peaceful protests that had sprung up against the Vietnam War. Carson's Silent Spring was published in 1962, the same year that Nelson began his Senate career. The politicization of the environment, which divided the nation on an inherently apolitical issue that affects everyone, was Nelson's explicit objective. As he tells it: . . . the idea for Earth Day evolved over a period of seven years starting in 1962. For several...
June 27, 2005
Off Broadway
The world economy is highly integrated. That's a good thing, something that gives us common interests and motivation to get along - not that we are doing well at getting along or have ever done so in the past. Still, it's good to have shared interests and it's good to talk them up. We sink or swim together and this gives us all an interest in one another's internal affairs. For example, Europe's mismanagement of its economy is a drag on the economies of the whole rest of the world. Something similar can be said about Japan. Both have been underperforming for a decade or more at great cost to everyone else as well as themselves. The idea of any economy having security is mistaken when it does not explicitly include its trading partners as well as their partners. Yet we frequently hear this sort of nonsensical idea. Four years ago, on the eve of 9/11, the need to...
June 11, 2005
Betrayed Trust
The Senate Hearings about Conservation Easement problems discussed a little in previous posts have released the results of its investigation of The Nature Conservancy. Jon and Pat have given the subject more coverage than I have and Pat has a long post about it. The report paints a picture of an organization that's gotten so big, and so successful, it lost sight of why it was formed in the first place. . . But TNC isn't the only reason the Senate began investigating. It has become clear that some people have been abusing the law that allows tax deductions for conservation easements. . . Though TNC, and undoubtedly many others, have abused the system in myriad ways, supporters are concerned that policy makers will react too strongly. Easements are effective because they allow land to stay in private hands, and give the trusts more bang for their buck. Far fewer acres would be conserved, and smaller trusts simply wouldn't...
May 14, 2005
Mystified Obscurity
Stentor Danielson has an interesting post at debitage, Humans Improving the Environment, and Relativism in Practice. Perhaps the most interesting piece of political ecology that has been produced thus far is the work of James Fairhead and Melissa Leach, who challenge some prevailing notions of environmental degradation in Africa. Along the border between the Sahelian savanna and the tropical rain forests in west Africa, we find numerous patches of forest amid grassland. The prevailing notion among government and development agency personnel was that human activity had destroyed large swaths of forest, turning it into savanna through indiscriminate burning, farming, and overgrazing. They rushed to slap restrictions on the use of the remaining bits of forest, hoping to preserve them from destruction by limiting human activity. Through some careful use of historical sources, Fairhead and Leach found that just the opposite was true. The areas in question were "naturally" pure savanna, and human activity had created the forest patches. See...
April 17, 2005
Progress & Revolution
One of the direst failings of those who see politics as a theology of salvation (see Groupies) is disdain for progress - only revolution will bring salvation. . . . all too much of the effort from business, government and NGOs has focused on mitigating the problem, making things less bad, slowing the rate of decline of the regenerative capacity of the living systems that sustain human culture and economy. Bill McDonough offers the simple and compelling metaphor of merely slowing down a car that's going in the wrong direction, instead of turning it around. Apart from the false premise that we are going in the wrong direction there is complete dismissal of progress, as if this was wasted effort. Once you shrug off the theology this makes no sense at all. When we have a big picture, long time frame perspective - the only useful one for issues as large as environmental preservation and remediation while living on...
April 08, 2005
Cool Hunting
Stewart Brand has made a career of cool hunting. While not creative himself he has a gift for recognizing those who are and popularizing them. Though he doesn't understand the relevant issues and can be remarkably dim in his own writing (see Agricultural Problems, near the end), he has a good grasp of the obvious though he travels in circles that lack this skill. Now, nearly a decade after careful thinkers have reached similar conclusions, Brand is speaking Environmental Heresies. [via GlennReynolds.com] Over the next ten years, I predict, the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbanization, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power. Reversals of this sort have occurred before. Wildfire went from universal menace in mid-20th century to honored natural force and forestry tool now, from “Only you can prevent forest fires!” to let-burn policies and prescribed fires for understory management. Better late than never I suppose....
March 18, 2005
Fantasy Land
The conclusion of another post, Half Baked, that political approaches to climate change using current technologies are empty exercises for the benefit of ideologues and bureaucrats, is similar to Roger Pielke's take. Science magazine has published two articles this week that suggest that “the wheels of global climate change are in motion, and there is little we can do to stop them, at least in the short-term.” These articles, which no doubt are quality science done by accomplished researchers, suggest to me that discussion of climate change increasingly recirculates the same stories and same reactions – a clear sign of gridlock... I’ve seen no interpretations that suggest that the new studies suggest that we need a fundamentally new approach to climate. But he points to this Steve Rayner piece that is relevant. No one suggests that the global emissions reductions envisaged in the Kyoto targets will come anywhere close to limiting emissions at levels that would stabilize anthropogenic greenhouse...
March 06, 2005
Charm School
People should be beautiful in every way--in their faces, in the way they dress, in their thoughts, and in their innermost selves. -- Anton Chekhov But if you can't be beautiful, fake it. At least that seems to be the current fashion in liberal fashions. In a previuous post, Another Brick, the ideas of George Lakoff, attempting to hoodwink the public with linguistic jiu jitsu, were ridiculed: This is a dead end, a part of the laughably naive nonsense we hear about reframing the discussion, hoodwinking the public with linguistic jiu jitsu. It's self-punking again, as noted in The Man Who Framed Himself: How George Lakoff got trapped in his own metaphors. Like Lakoff, any number of pundits have embarrassed themselves trying to come up with new ways to frame issues to sell them to a sceptical public. The problem is that times have passed them by. They are like aging tarts with big hair in prom dresses who...
February 15, 2005
Drab Green
This post represents the worst aspects of the environment industry. He's not just all hat, he advocates all hat, marketing environmentalism as nothing more than marketing, arguing that results don't matter and that image is everything. With the right metaphors anything can be sold. If we all holds hands and concentrate we can levitate the Pentagon... or not, but the point is just to hold hands anyway. Pointless poser. As more and more serious thinkers in many nations around the world consider realistic options for reducing the use of fossil fuels, nuclear power is mentioned increasingly often as the only technology we have that can provide enough power at a fast enough rate to deflect the trajectory of climate change predicted by the models on which the whole issue is based. Maybe the models are wrong. Maybe we don't have even a rudimentary grasp of the issues and the models are merely exercises in modelling. Perhaps we can muddle...
February 12, 2005
Ghost Dance
One of the most significant contrasts in the debate about environmental care is between those who prize the public gesture above all and those who demand significant, measurable change. The environmental movement is and always has been merely gesture politics, satisfied to pass laws or obtain judicial rulings that satisfy their demands on paper but never progress to actual measurement and monitoring. The continuing destruction of western US forests noted in Mama's Rules, where "preservationists" presided over the destruction of the very environments they were charged with preserving, is an obvious example of the general problem discussed in Mouse-based Monitoring and other posts. ...are the efforts of conservation organizations so lavishly funded by concerned donors effective? Are they actually doing conservation? No one knows and conservation organizations have no ways to find out. The standard requirements of every other sort of organization - from businesses to governments - for measuring, monitoring and auditing were entirely alien to conservation organizations....
February 07, 2005
Lemony New Doom
Humans are remarkably adaptable. Not in a physical sense but in a behavioral sense. Cultural evolution long ago outstripped physical evolution as the primary means of adaptation for humans. They don't reinvent themselves out of whole cloth so much as noodle a bit at the margins - it's evolution not revolution - but the stages are so rapid that incremental change adds up to great change in comparatively short order, compared to physical evolution that is. Still, progress is slow from the perspective of any short lived individual, almost imperceptible except in hindsight. That slowness is exacerbated by the yearning for continuity which gives rise to interpretation. Old ways aren't changed so much as redescribed and where the practices don't match the rhetoric words are more likely to be redefined than practices altered. This new post by Nicole-Ann Boyer is a case study of this behavior pattern. The intent is to celebrate a new religion, a break with the...
February 07, 2005
Organized Fear
Prometheus has published a translation from the original German of an essay by Hans Von Storch and Nico Stehr, a climatologist and a sociologist, that first appeared in Der Speigel. It examines the bizarre obsession with climate catastrophe that has captured the minds of many. It begins by pointing out the recent extraction of climatologists from obscurity by political interests which has thrust them into a media spotlight. The dry scientific arguments, not being telegenic enough, are fluffed by P.R. teams in an ever escalating sequence of exaggerations in the attempt to hold the attention of the public. It uses a contrast between TDAT and State of Fear to make some points. Despite a good deal of factually untrue - and thus all the more striking - compression, Crichton has quite correctly observed the dynamic of the paths of communication among scientists, environmentalist organizations, the state and the civilian population. For there is indeed a serious problem for the...
January 25, 2005
Green Accounting
Unsophisticated environmentalists and unsophisticated geo-political thinkers have joined forces to promote useless policies. Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy and another neocon who championed the war, has been speaking regularly in Washington about fuel efficiency and plant-based bio-fuels. The alliance of hawks and environmentalists is new but not entirely surprising. The environmentalists are worried about global warming and air pollution. But Woolsey and Gaffney—both members of the Project for the New American Century, which began advocating military action against Saddam Hussein back in 1998—are going green for geopolitical reasons, not environmental ones. They seek to reduce the flow of American dollars to oil-rich Islamic theocracies, Saudi Arabia in particular... Neocons and greens first hitched up in the fall, when they jointly backed a proposal put forward by the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a Washington-based think tank that tracks energy and security issues. (Woolsey is on the IAGS advisory board.) The IAGS plan...
January 23, 2005
Meet The New Boss
Same as the old boss. Revulsion at the behavior of environmentalists is often deeply felt but merely feigned by some in an effort to distance themselves from the losing side in order to maintain political viability. This opinion piece, lauded by Nature Noted, is an example. I was repelled to hear radicals chant -- "Hey, Bush, we know you! Your Daddy was a killer, too!" -- as the president's limo passed by... Did this indulgent, vile protest win any friends or allies? It didn't... As well, what good was done by the rally at Seattle Central Community College, the inevitable march downtown and the predictable oratory? It's happened so often that Pine Street deserves a new name: "Boulevard of Left-Wing Bluster."... Street-corner rhetoric won't stop rollbacks in environmental protection, or slicing and dicing of the social safety net that Franklin D. Roosevelt began to erect 72 years ago... The political left in Seattle is used to talking only to...
January 09, 2005
Fashion Crime
Gil Friend, CEO of Natural Logic, an eco-business consultancy, blogs here but has contributed this post to World Whingeing. Two weeks ago, writing about the European Union's product take back and product content regulations, I observed that many companies' sustainability initiatives are hampered by a pervasive and deeply wrong-headed assumption: that designing and delivering better, more efficient, less toxic, more recyclable products would necessarily cost more money and yield less profit... First, there's the great power of "we've always done it this way," with its impact on habits (of thought as well as of action), on cost analysis methods, on capital budgets... Second, change is not easy, and is inescapably multi-dimensional -- change in technology, processes, roles, ways of thinking, and more -- can demand investment, in time and money, that conflict with other perceived needs... Third, business is hampered by analytical methodologies that fail to accurately capture and value the full spectrum of costs and benefits... Friend argues...
December 10, 2004
Socioecology
A recent article in World Watch Magazine, A Challenge to Conservationists by Marc Chapin, berates international conservation NGOs for deviation from earlier practices. As corporate and government money flow into the three big international organizations that dominate the world’s conservation agenda, their programs have been marked by growing conflicts of interest—and by a disturbing neglect of the indigenous peoples whose land they are in business to protect... In June 2003, representatives of major foundations concerned with the planet’s threatened biodiversity* gathered in South Dakota for a meeting of the Consultative Group on Biodiversity. On the second evening, after dinner, several of the attendees met to discuss a problem about which they had become increasingly disturbed. In recent years, their foundations had given millions of dollars of support to nonprofit conservation organizations, and had even helped some of those groups get launched. Now, however, there were indications that three of the largest of these organizations —World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Conservation...
November 30, 2004
All the Wrong Places
Paleo-environmentalists, reeling from their most recent political rejections and withering funding, are looking for clues about how to proceed. Alex "the poseur" Steffen, mentioned in the previous post, tries to grapple with real reality. As the leader of a national coalition of environmental groups puts it, "we've lost quite a few steps on the opposition." Polls suggest she's right: "the number of Americans who agree with the statement, “To preserve people’s jobs in this country, we must accept higher levels of pollution in the future,” increased from 17 percent in 1996 to 26 percent in 2000. The number of Americans who agreed that, “Most of the people actively involved in environmental groups are extremists, not reasonable people,” leapt from 32 percent in 1996 to 41 percent in 2000."... When Americans think about the environmentalism now, research shows, they all too often think: elitist; anti-jobs, anti-business, anti-technology; more concerned with critters than people (willing, for instance to sacrifice loggers and...
November 24, 2004
Loose Cannons
Several previous posts have discussed the falseness of the environmental movement and its harmful effects on the environment and society. There is no concern about the damage to the environment or society since those in the movement merely use it as a wedge issue to advance their steam age political ideas and would gladly burn the world down to spite their opponents even if they never gain power. It has also been noted that those in the environment business are similarly deceitful though their motivations are personal gain - donations, payments and grants as reward for providing the politicians with talking points. A recent example of the worst aspects of this behavior is on display in the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), a report that claims to document dire and unprecedented changes in the arctic. The findings are precise but inaccurate because it was carefully constructed to deceive. The warming trend in the arctic over the past forty years...
November 17, 2004
Works A Treat
An earlier post, Treaty Foo, discussed the difference between international treaties that work and those that don't, in particular contrasting the Montreal CFC protocol with Kyoto. The treaty worked because the big players, such as the US, would benefit in excess of their costs from their own efforts even if no one else cooperated, and alternatives to CFCs were available. All the treaty did was add international legitimacy to what the US and other developed nations wanted. It allowed them to bully smaller nations and so gain even more than they would have on their own. None of the other environmental treaties are like this and so they fail, just as all other types of treaties during the whole of history have failed when impacts are disproportionate. Any entity that suffers losses or forgoes gains will sooner or later break their treaties. They must or the stakeholders will change the management team, replacing them with more sensible members. Now...
November 17, 2004
Magical Thinking
A problem with politicized authoritarians is that they believe in magic, in effect believe in a sky daddy that can save them from whatever if they only demand it. That this hasn't worked anywhere or anywhen since they learned to wipe their own butts does not deter them. This is part of a presentation given by Sherwood F. Rowland of U.C. Irvine: In order to stabilize the increase in carbon dioxide (at a much higher level than it is now), we would need to cut back 60% of our output. Conservation can help, but it is unlikely that conservation itself can take us to a sustainable situation. Alternative carbon free energy sources like solar, nuclear, and wind must be explored, but we must understand that we are in a situation that requires immediate action. This is what Joi Ito concludes after hearing that presentation: One important "take-away" from this meeting was that global warming and the risk did not...
November 05, 2004
Pirates of America
South America that is, but continuing the tradition of developing countries having a parasitical relationship with developed countries, giving charters to privateers to literally steal from others but since they are chartered it is not considered a crime. This continue until the country is developed enough to be victimized by others, at which point they become born again, law abiding citizens. This Wired article, another Julian Dibbell fantasy in the "Zippy" mold but with south of the border spices and vices, illuminates the twisty little confusions that come from trying to describe and explain systems while ignoring the bulk of their attributes. The preservation and expansion of the information commons has long been a cause of hackers, academics, and the odd technoliterate librarian, but in the world's fifth-largest country it is fast becoming national doctrine. And the implications hardly end with free samba: Brazil, in its approach to drug patents, in its support for the free software movement, and...
November 02, 2004
Against The Poor
The main reason to oppose the environmental movement and the entrenched institutions that have emerged is that they are bad for the environment, but it may be more compelling to recognize that they are more than bad, they are deadly for those least able to survive bad policy. This opinion piece speaks to the problem. [via Arts and Letters Daily] In a world where we cannot deal with all the problems at the same time, we need to ask: what should we do first? This was the question answered by the Copenhagen Consensus, a project that brought together 38 of the world's top economists to set up a list of the global priorities. They looked at the main challenges to humanity, and the many solutions that we already have, analysing both their benefits but also their price tag. By using cost-benefit analysis the expert panel of economists found that HIV/Aids, hunger, free trade and malaria were the world's top...
October 21, 2004
Quack Science
A main factor contributing to doubt about dire predictions of ecological doom is that the claims are sometimes nonsense. The public is wary of all pronouncements because so many are obviously false. If you have knowledge of any issue you will hear claims you know to be false, which plants seeds of doubt about claims made in other fields that you may not be able to debunk. If they lie about this then they may be lying about that. This press release from Cornell is an example. In a world plagued by shortages of water, three facts stand out in an analysis by Cornell University ecologists: Less than 1 percent of water on the planet is fresh water; agriculture in the United States consumes 80 percent of the available fresh water each year; and 60 percent of U.S. water intended for crop irrigation never reaches the crops. Water is redistributed rather than consumed. Farmers sometimes drain land, turning swamp...
September 24, 2004
Cash Drought
Some segments of the politicized environmental movement are suffering cash flow problems as donor institutions and individuals shift their support to other endeavors. There's some soul searching going on to understand what went wrong and how to fix it. This essay, Rethinking Green Philanthropy, by a pair of long time activists is an example. [via: Conservation News] Green philanthropy in the United States is in trouble. And not for just the obvious reasons of the downturn in the stock markets... Have we noticed that we have been losing most of the political and ecological battles over the last ten years while we continue to approach grantmaking in the mode of 10, 20 and 30 years ago? The authors, Peter M. Lavigne and David W. Orr, blame the donors, accusing them of being myopic and fickle, supporting short term targeted interventions and shifting their priorities with current fashion rather than investing heavily in organization and infrastructure. Painfully, major institutional donations...
September 19, 2004
Popular Thinking
The continuous and increasing ineffectiveness of global institutions such as the UN stems in part from clinging to antiquated ideologies and in part from the use of primitive mental tools. The State of World Population 2004 report has examples of this, especially in the Population and Environment section. It is worth noting that this organization has been wrong repeatedly in its population projections and has repeatedly revised them. There's no shame in being wrong but it is instructive, revealing that their models are inadequate and their assumptions are false. They don't know what they are doing and this report should be discounted appropriately, but it's what we have to work with. There is a link between environmental stress and population size but it isn't simple or obvious. People are not like wildebeests, locked into instinctual and relatively invariant behaviors by biology. Culture can mask the plasticity of humans, make them seem less creative and adaptable, but cultures evolve too,...
September 16, 2004
DO Something!
Blair isn't the only politician hoping to gain or increase power by exploiting climate change. In the US John McCain and Joe Lieberman, perennial losers for the presidential nomination of their their respective parties, have hitched their wagons to this issue. "We cannot afford to ignore an issue that is not static," said committee chairman John McCain (R-Arizona). "We need to take action that extends well beyond eloquent speeches and includes meaningful actions such as real reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases." McCain, along with Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Connecticut), has already sponsored the Climate Stewardship Act (SB139), which would limit greenhouse-gas emissions in the United States. It failed to pass in 2003, but McCain and Lieberman are pushing for another vote in 2004. The problem is that reducing emissions of GHGs is NOT a meaningful action and advocating it IS just an opportunity for speechifying. By the IPCC's own estimates a Kyoto like program would have almost no...
September 07, 2004
Treaty Foo
There's a lot of fuzzy, simplistic thinking on the subject of international treaties and other forms of regulation. Advocates for nanny state and nanny world approaches to common problems fail to examine their biases when making claims for the feasibility of regulatory approaches, so their arguments are empty, but perhaps more importantly they are truly clueless about human behavior and simply can't comprehend what they observe. Consider this review by Frances Cairncross of the work of Scott Barrett. Many people assumed that Montreal’s [ozone treaty] success in curbing CFCs could be replicated for other treaties, such as those on biodiversity or greenhouse gasses. They were wrong. “They failed,” says Barrett, “to realize that international environmental problems do not come with one-size-fits-all solutions... The fundamental reason for Montreal’s success, despite the fact that it demands so much from so many parties, is that it reversed the incentives to free ride...The treaty included both sticks and carrots: punishments for countries that...
July 29, 2004
Payment In Kind
The tragedy of politicized environmentalism is that the politics is more important than the environmentalism. When push comes to shove, as it always does in politics, politicized environmentalists will sacrifice the environment to gain power. The past few decades of this sort of behavior has repeatedly harmed the environment as well as alienating a large portion of the public. Western forest environments are an instructive example of the problem and this Salon article is an example of the way politics displaces environmental thinking precluding sensible policy. The town of Hayfork, which sits in the middle of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest 200 miles north of San Francisco, is similar to thousands of other rural communities in the West that have faced economic crisis over the past decade. Like all other communities situated next to the forest, Hayfork also faces the threat of wildfire every summer and fall. But, paradoxically, fire and a planned shift to forest-restoration-based jobs sparked a ray...
July 08, 2004
Politics As Usual
Chris Mooney, a political advocate attempting to do politics using science, and hoping to profit from book and article sales pitching red meat to radical paleo-leftists, has a recent post repeating previous nonsense. [via The Loom] Kurt Gottfried, Chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Gottfried kicked things off by giving the history of the UCS's previous battle with the Bush administration over the issue of science politicization, which occurred earlier this year. He noted that the administration dismissed UCS's charges then, necessitating the group's new investigation and report. Mooney isn't concerned with science at all, he's merely a Kerry supporter seeking ways to advance his politics and sell his writing. In previous posts, Witch Hunts and Sword Swallowers, he made the same attacks, using the same references from politicized pseudo-science groups such as UCS. As noted in another post, The President's Council, the UCS isn't a respectable apolitical science organization, it is a political advocacy group with such...
July 02, 2004
Arms Race
Elsewhere the post Mental Rice Cakes pointed and laughed at "breathless announcements of climate effects by doom mongers". That guild, a self selected kind of anti-mensa, works in many related fields, and can always be found in close proximity to the word "unsustainable". See this press release for an example. As people remake the world's landscapes, cutting forests, draining wetlands, building roads and dams, and pushing the margins of cities ever outward, infectious diseases are gaining new toeholds, cropping up in new places and new hosts, and posing an ever-increasing risk to human and animal health... "Many of our current activities, primarily for economic development, have some major adverse health effects," says Jonathan A. Patz, the lead author of the report, and a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor in the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE) of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the department of population health sciences. Indeed, a detailed understanding of the influence of...
June 29, 2004
Endless Challenges
I like MacLeod's The Early Days of a Better Nation. Yes, it's somewhat bi-polar, alternating insightful comments with emotional outbursts, and has that impotently alienated stance of the old though bright child, but I find it useful anyway. This post, Surveying Information Age Warfare, is an interesting example. It responds to a paper, War in the 21st Century, by the late Paul Hirst, a thinker well loved by many for his public evolution of thought as he developed from an early committment to paleo-socialism to something less economically clueless. Unfortunately, he died too soon and incompletely evolved. The Hirst paper is a litany of despair about our future relieved only by his conclusion that at least we won't have major war between powers. Instead we will have universal and ceaseless local wars of Darwinian struggle to survive in a world degraded by environmental collapse etc. - the standard position of intellectual retreat for the displaced survivors of socialism. MacLeod...
June 23, 2004
This Year's Girl
There have been many blog posts about the new release, version 3.0, of the NCAR climate model CCSM3 (Community Climate System Model version 3). It has a few tweaks and gets different results than previous versions. Version 4 will too as will every new version or alternative model since a great deal of such models is based on immature science, fudge factors and assumptions. It is simultaneously a marvelous thing that organizes much current knowledge about atmospheric, oceanic and terrestrial processes, and an ultimately useless laboratory curiosity that may in some future develop into a tool. Its only current use is in politics. This post at worldchanging is a good example. It is unremarkable, neither as rabidly pro or con as many others, but neatly demonstrates a sort of naive boosterism and obdurate refusal to think clearly that defines one segment of the chattering class. wordlchanging is a group blog that includes several fellow travelers in this band of...
June 21, 2004
Doing Laps
Perhaps the biggest impediment to progress in environmental improvement has been command and control regulation that attempts to define complex socio-ecological systems in simplistic terms, propose specific interventions and predict results based on those too simple system definitions. The typical scenario is to assemble a committee of experts who survey a system, note specific methods for improvement, which are them mandated. It is the French approach, the bureaucratic approach. By specifying methods regulators undermine creative and inventive efforts of the real experts, the practitioners. Knowing that their ideas will be ignored they stop thinking about how to do their work well and devote their energies to managing regulations and regulators. This is precisely what anyone who thinks about it for a moment should expect. The incentives are skewed to rewarding cleverly skirting regulation and against true innovation. Worse, resources are consumed by compliance preventing alternative investment. The effects are so profound and pervasive that the culture and staff of...
June 10, 2004
Yellow Science
Sheesh! Stop me before I do economics again! And make it a required subject for environmentalists and ecologists so they won't say such silly things. Society is losing $2.4 billion per year because the Colorado River's water no longer flows all the way to the Gulf of California, says a University of Arizona researcher... "What I've done is estimate what's the value to society if you just leave the water in the river. Human populations are losing that value when the water is diverted for other purposes."... Flessa suggests that an environmental impact, or mitigation fee, should be included in the price of water. The money from mitigation fees could be used for ecosystem restoration in the Delta. He said one way to use the money would be to purchase farmland and let it go fallow. Another way would be a forbearance agreement in which the farmer is paid not to grow crops. In either case, water that would...
April 22, 2004
Twilight Zone
Universe: WASHINGTON, April 20 — The first major federal assessment of the oceans in a generation endorsed on Tuesday the gloomy scientific view of the nation's deteriorating coastal waters and offered a mosaic of 250 recommendations to reverse the decline, including a call for local and international action to curb the overfishing that has depleted fish stocks worldwide. The report, by a commission whose 16 members were appointed by President Bush, also suggested increasingly stringent curbs on nutrient-rich runoff pollution that threatens to strangle the ecosystems of the Chesapeake Bay and creates a huge seasonal "dead zone" where the Mississippi River empties into the Gulf of Mexico. Alternative Universe: BAL HARBOUR, Fla., April 20 — Senator John Kerry accused the Bush administration Tuesday of "playing dirty" in what he described as its undoing of 30 years of environmental regulation, and declared that ocean pollution was jeopardizing Florida's vital tourism industry. Universe: Linda Candler, a spokeswoman for the National Fisheries...
April 18, 2004
Useful Bickering
The earlier post, Social Vandals, excoriated the brain dead policies advocated by a looney alliance of naive leftists and sophomoric libertarians that has evolved over time. This old post, Strange Bed Fellows, written in October of 2002 not long after the collapse of talks at WSSD, was an early effort to illuminate the dimly lit boudoir. Oxfam's position on coffee, a crop not produced in rich countries, advocates price controls to redistribute wealth from rich consuming countries to poor producing countries. Subsidies, tariffs and production quotas as well as moral extortion are the tools to effect redistribution. Oxfam's apparent inconsistency is not the interesting part of this, politics is not about consistency. The interesting part is that if all the world's cotton, like coffee, was produced in poor countries they would still be poor. Libertarian bleating about rich world tariffs, subsidies and quotas misses the mark by failing to understand the free-trade system they advocate. Commodity production is not...
April 16, 2004
Social Vandals
This silly Guardian article [via Samizdata] repeats the Oxfam nonsense bandied about during the Cancun talks. The agricultural subsidy attacked this time is sugar. It is difficult to find anything in the European Union more perverse than its continuing subsidy of sugar. It fails every test miserably. It is economic madness since the EU is shelling out hundreds of millions of taxpayers' money - that could be used to reduce its growing budget deficit - to grow crops at a loss that could be better grown elsewhere. It is immoral because subsidies prevent poor countries from growing sugar that would create hundreds of thousands of jobs. It is also unhealthy because it is encouraging the subsidised output of a product that the World Health Organisation, courageously - in view of the vested interests attacking it - says we should be cutting back on. The idiocy of the piece derives from the intellectual failures of Oxfam, which is consistently ignorant...
April 02, 2004
Own Goals
Last month a study was published that did a statistical analysis of 40 years of observations by volunteers of selected bird, butterfly and plant species native to Britain. The study was marketed as bolstering the Sixth Extinction Hypothesis, the notion that 'the biological world is approaching the sixth major extinction event in its history'. The last such extinction event occurred 65 million years ago when most dinosaurs became extinct. Some are disappointed that the study didn't get much commentary. The usual suspects tootled the horn of doom briefly but didn't draw much attention from either supporters or detractors. In The Dog That Didn't Bark In The Night The Loom asks: I've ... been searching for criticisms, but to my surprise I can't find a single mention of the study in outlets that have attacked these sorts of studies in the past. Could it be that these folks are hoping that this study just disappears if they don't call attention...
March 31, 2004
Tell a Friend
A defining characteristic of paleo-Progressives is confused thinking and argument in which they contradict themselves, apparently without understanding that they have done so. This rant by Kenny Ausubel is a recent example. This new world is being born right now before our eyes. It mimics the decentralized intelligence of living systems, the innate democracy of life... What's called for is strong government leadership to reboot the system. What is Ausubel recommending, a decentralized intelligence that mimics living systems or a centralized command and control authoritarian system reminiscent of the steam age? It is clear from the rest of the rant that Ausubel's affections are for authoritarian, even fascist totalitarian systems, so long as they are simpatico with his values, so long as he is the supreme leader. Ausubel seems to have a problem thinking large thoughts, he's unable to scale up insights gleened from examination of small natural systems to the size of societies. The fascinating and admirable nature...
March 23, 2004
Interests, Benefits
The previous post stated that changes in thinking about environmental preservation and remediation policy increasingly embraced by the current US administration deserved careful thought. After decades of muddled policy divorced from material reality the US is proposing insightful policies that use the nature of material reality as an ally to achieve superior and durable environmental remediation. This Conservation In Practice article Making Conservation Profitable by Katherine Ellison and Gretchen C. Daily, is one of their most popular, most reprinted articles. It describes the still controversial efforts of some environmental activists to harness the interests of individuals and organizations. Philanthropy and government regulations alone simply aren't up to the task of rescuing nature, and it's time for some well designed appeals to people's self-interest. This isn't a new idea. The earlier post, Mouse-based Monitoring referenced an old Wendell Berry essay, Private Property and the Common Wealth, which made a similar argument. The answer is obvious: you cannot get good care...
March 21, 2004
Hedonic Materiality
This SciDevNet editorial, The politics of science advice, by David Dickson demonstrates the muddled nature of current political posing about science. The Bush administration has been accused of ignoring the scientific community on issues such as global warming, while the UK government's chief scientific advisor has been urged to exercise constraint in his comments on the issue. What's going on? Dickson develops a thesis that science advisors should be careful to distinguish between science and their personal political opinions in public statements to avoid leaving the impression that their political opinions are science based or somehow credible due to their science association. What upset the UK government, however — and raises deeper issues both about the formulation of 'science advice' and the way it is perceived and used — was not a directly scientific judgement by King. Rather it was his statement in his article in Science that "climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing...
March 12, 2004
Dangerously Cautious
Jon asks: It is the Stalinist crab story that really boggles the mind. How is it that we can figure out how overfishing depletes stocks but we can't use that knowledge to control an invasive species? And a tasty one at that. We know just how to handle the crabs but European fishing rules are so convoluted and unresponsive that fishermen are prevented from doing what they know. These are after all just King Crabs, a nutritious and delicious food that commands a high price. As noted in the Telegraph article Jon links: For years the Norwegian government has ignored the underwater advance, undecided whether to treat the crabs as a resource or a pest. The animal's legs are considered a delicacy and fetch top dollar in Japan and America. Even in Oslo, consumers pay around 200 Norwegian kronor (£15) a pound. Served with bread, butter, lemon and mayonnaise, the taste and texture of the crab meat is comparable...
March 03, 2004
Older, Not Wiser
This interview in Grist Magazine (via Conservation News) of James Gustave Speth, dean of Yale's environment school, reveals an aspect of the problems with the environmental movement noted in the earlier post Natural Theology; the failure to learn from past experience. Speth still thinks that society can be changed by a cadre of committed agents with strong leadership, even though the 20th century made clear what prior history showed many times; you can't predictably change society, it changes itself as it will. Well being is an emergent property of healthy systems rather than an engineered result. Speth's anachronistic views are clear in this interview exchange Grist: What could the environmental movement be doing better or differently to attract new people? Speth: One thing is clear: The needed changes will not simply happen. No hidden hand is guiding technology or the economy toward sustainability. The issues on the global environmental agenda are precisely the type of issues -- long-term, chronic,...
March 01, 2004
Natural Theology
This Wired article, Eco-Traitor, about Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace who left the organization in 1986, encapsulates some of the problems that plague the "environmental movement". First of all, Moore argued, total dioxin emissions have dropped 90 percent since 1970, to levels safely below those that cause health problems. Furthermore, dioxins are not some newfangled product of the industrial age. They've been around as long as fire. If the council wanted to make a real difference, he said, it could ban backyard burning, which spews nearly 60 times more dioxins than PVC manufacturing, or residential fireplaces, which emit 10 times more. Throughout his presentation, Moore made barbed references to the devious forces behind the legislation, the same pack of Luddites who "hijacked a considerable portion of the environmental movement back in the mid-'80s and who have become very clever at using green language to cloak campaigns that have more to do with anti-industrialism, antiglobalization, anticorporate, all of those...
January 17, 2004
Watching the Watchers
Tyler Cowen posts at The Volokh Conspiracy about the IRS audit of The Nature Conservancy The tax records of the institution are considered a complete mess. The institution has over $3 billion in assets, so this is hardly a small matter. At least one of the lessons is simple: know something about the non-profits you support. This area is just ripe for institutional failure. Too many donors would rather look the other way and pat themselves on the back for their generosity. They do not want to hear bad news, which is one reason why news about bad non-profits often remains hidden for so long. Feeling good about oneself is a worthy endeavor, but it also can interfere with the smooth functioning of voluntary institutions. The earlier post Mouse-based Monitoring spoke of the ineffectiveness of conservation NGOs due to their lack of common management practices to measure, monitor and report about operations. It is starting to look like the problem...
January 12, 2004
Witch Hunts
One of the bizarre inversions of sensible discussion of scientific issues has been in the news recently; the claim that the current US government has politicized science "more than any previous government". As noted in dnE ehT ... toN this has long been a favorite sport the world over so it seems worth questioning the political objectives of current critics. A good example of this sort of political speech pretending to be valid scientific criticism can be found in Chris Mooney's recent post Amen, Brother. George W. Bush has played politics with science like no other president before or since--and these abuses, even if not electorally crucial, could have devastating long term consequences. The absurdity of this comment given the history of politicized science in the US as well as the rest of the world is laughable if we think of it as scientific criticism but makes sense seen as political and commercial speech. Mooney confesses this. I might...
December 28, 2003
Atonement
In a typical year end ritual - making a list and checking it twice, resolution and atonement, taking stock, inventory, the urge to embalm and encapsulate the old year before burying it - we have this list of books from the Easterblogg (via CCB). One book on his list, The Beast in the Garden, prompted this response. Nature would be baffled by the notion that Homo sapiens preservationists want animals that attack people not only exempt from hunting but assisted in expanding their ranges and, inevitably, attacking more people. Nature operates on kill-or-be-killed; to nature, it would seem perfectly natural to gun down mountain lions and grizzlies on sight. The Beast in the Garden makes the case for reasonable preservation of predators, but also goes into detail on the sickening number of greener-than-thou types who, in the wake of the Colorado death, showed more sympathy for the lion than the boy. There was green fury that the lion was...
December 12, 2003
dnE ehT ... toN
Andrew Zolli reports that on May 28th of next year The Day After Tomorrow, an environmental disaster movie featuring abrupt climate change, will be released by Fox to a blizzard of publicity and media events. It had to happen, it's a proven revenue generating formula as well as being politically, if not scientifically, sound. Phillip Stott at EnviroSpin Watch recently linked this Caltech Michelin Lecture by Michael Crichton which traced a history of sloppy thinking and pseudo-science accompanied by massive media efforts and political opportunism. It's nothing new in history but seems to have become more media savvy though less intellectually or scientifically defensible in recent decades. Crighton blames Frank Drake for fathering this recent line of opportunistic science poseurs because of his Ozma project and the false but exciting signal from space he detected and the subsequent organization of the SETI conference. His original sin was the Drake equation. N=N*fp ne fl fi fc fL A nonsense equation...
November 26, 2003
Mouse-based Monitoring
While conservation organizations truly do need to rise to existing levels of governance - measuring, monitoring and auditing - there is another level beyond that needs to be understood and prepared for, that should be an influence on current policies to allow graceful evolution to even better methods once the current massive disorder has been reduced.
November 13, 2003
Of Raleigh and Wright
The deeply flawed political screed in the Guardian article by Matthew Engel posted about previously follows the dead fish picture with a diatribe against home building in the Outer Banks of N. Carolina that is historically inane, especially in this centennial year of the Wright brothers' historic first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in the Outer Banks
November 06, 2003
Mutuality
It's useful to remember who we are and who we aspire to be when we are tempted to indulge in politicized scapegoating for partisan advantage. When the campaigns are over we still have to bed down cheek by jowl with opponents and rely on them to perform their social duties, to engage in the mutuality that makes civilization possible.
November 06, 2003
Ignorantia Affectata
Formulating useful and effective environmental policy requires long term thinking, anticipating the future consequences of present behavior, but it also benefits from understanding the events that created present conditions.
November 05, 2003
Rhetorical Rubble
We can make suggestions and offer small assistance to overcome barriers to achievement of what Stuart Kauffman calls the "adjacent possible". Of the many states adjacent to our present state some seem more desirable than others. We can help select from that menu of possible choices but we can't rewrite the menu.
November 01, 2003
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