Dull

Your humble host has spent the last hour trawling the web for interesting global warming snippets with which to regale you this morning...with a complete lack of success. Perhaps global warming has been cancelled for today. 

Perhaps it's just me though - it's snowing outside and having not seen green for two months I'm a bit fed up of it.

In the meantime, here's something that pricked my interest on my internet travels - a posting on the Spectator site reporting on a talk given by an economist of the Austrian school. The subject was the reasons for the economic crash. What struck me was not only how odd it is to see an MSM publication addressing heavy topics like Austrian economics, but also how many of the Spectator's readers had responded with comments. There seems to be a real interest, although whether driven by "we aren't taken in by the blame-the-bankers narrative" or just a desire for more demanding material, I can't say.

Greenery BC

More evidence that greens are in retreat, with candidates for the premier's job in British Columbia sounding distinctly cool on the idea of ever-increasing green taxes.

If there was any doubt that the climate-change push is in retreat, have a look at the race in British Columbia to replace outgoing Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell.

Candidates for the premier's job are raising questions about whether the province should rethink its climate-change program, one of the most aggressive in North America.

It's the first positive sign for business that B.C. is not going to continue to strike out on its own with environmental regulation and put large sectors of its economy at a severe disadvantage.

Bob Carter on carbon tax

In the same issue of Quadrant as the Walter Starck article I mentioned in the last post comes a piece from Bob Carter on the Australian government's hopes for a carbon tax. Bob is not impressed.

Bob has also sent me the following letter, which he submitted for publication in the Australian. It wasn't published.

Combet's hot air tax: no seasonal break for the climate commissars

To the degree that statements such as those made by BMO’s Dr. Sligo represent the views of the professional meteorological community, that community has now moved beyond parody and demands to be ridiculed. Can it really be the case that amidst the hurricane of Green spin about global warming, not a single bureaucrat or government politician in Canberra has retained a functioning bullshit detector? 

Remarkably, in enunciating their “eleven principles”, the Canberra MCCC managed to evade entirely any mention of the underpinning scientific justification for introducing a tax on carbon dioxide. That is, of course, because there is none (which is doubtless why only one, tame, scientist was included as a member of the committee in the first place). 

As the government will discover from its focus groups over the next few months, no matter how hard Mr. Combet tries to spin it as beneficial, they will introduce a carbon dioxide tax at their considerable electoral peril. 

For where global warming alarmism is concerned, the good news is that the bullshit detectors of the Australian electorate are both alive and activated.

Starck message

Walter Starck surveys the global economy and wonders about the focus on climate change.

All over the developed world, governments have committed to unfunded liabilities and fostered a proliferation of bureaucracy which their increasingly uncompetitive productive sectors cannot sustain. Most are now running on empty with no credit left, no plan B and no apparent recognition that the path they are on leads only to the edge of a cliff.

Greens don't like technology

Stephen Budiansky wonders why environmentalists dislike economic activity so much. In passing he notes Prof Kevin Anderson's contribution to this blog the other day, and is very amused.

Chasing Rainbows

My review of Tim Worstall's book, Chasing Rainbows, has been slightly delayed, the reason being that my copy has been purloined by the missus. Now this is a rather remarkable thing, as 'er indoors more normally reads Aga-sagas and other genres of girl book. Economics just isn't really her thing.

But that's the nice thing about Chasing Rainbows - as a primer in environmental economics, it's wonderfully approachable, with Tim's good humour and good sense suffusing the whole thing. It's also admirably concise, running to little over a hundred pages, so few people are likely to be frightened off on that score.

Click to read more ...

Advancing hard astern

Congratulations to Nicholas Stern who has been awarded the Leontief Prize for "Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought".

Is it just me that thinks that this award is a pretty damning indictment of the corruption of academia?

Report here.

Science cuts

There is dismay across the science community at the prospect of 20% cuts in funding. Martin Rees has been holding forth on the subject:

20 per cent cuts are the "game over" scenario, which would cause irreversible destruction and be "very tragic", said Rees.

10 per cent is the "slash and burn" option with "serious consequences".

Constant cash, a reduction in real terms, "could be accommodated".

If only we weren't spending all that money on subsidising the windfarms that scientists say we need.

Budiansky on farmers' markets

A wonderful post from Stephen Budiansky on the subject of farmers' markets, organic food and the like.

The language of the huckster pervades this business; to look at most of the websites and literature of local/organic/sustainable sellers you'd think they wouldn't dream of taking your money, so noble is their calling ("We are in the redemption business: healing the land, healing the food, healing the economy, and healing the culture," reads one typical specimen). Old rule of commercial interaction: when someone says it's not about money . . . it's about money.

Do read the whole thing, it's a joy from beginning to end.

The irrational polemicist

George Monbiot has written the most extraordinary review of the book I'm currently reading - Matt Ridley's Rational Optimist. I'm not sure I've ever read such a bilious review of a book before, and certainly few that have been devoted quite so much space to ad hominems. If anything, Monbiot comes over as slightly deranged. Ridley has nevertheless posted a polite and detailed rebuttal here (James Delingpole weighs in here). But despite appearing to be the rantings of a lunatic, Monbiot's is still an interesting piece - mainly for what it leaves out.

Click to read more ...

Lovelock, AGW and democracy

James Lovelock in the Guardian

One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is "modern democracy", he added. "Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while."

Update on Mar 29, 2010 by Bishop Hill

The full transcript is here. It will make painful reading for AGW proponents.

The insanity of greenery

This from a correspondent:

A German aristocrat of my acquaintance has figured out that the price he will be paid for the output of a solar panel is so high compared with the price he will pay for his input of normal electricity, that he is thinking of rigging up powerful arc lamps to shine on solar panels on his extensive roof.

State-run banks

Now that the Royal Bank of Scotland is in government control, the public can be sure that the rough edges of capitalism will be smoothed off and a more gentle caring approach will be taken to debts.

INDEPENDENT Anger as RBS pulls plug on girls’ school

Richard Tol on Stern

I'm very pleased to have had a comment by the eminent economist Richard Tol (even it is was to tell me that I was wrong about the Stern Report - the report was still flawed, but not for the reasons I had put forward).

Here's what he says:

Stern managed to focus the discussion about the Stern Review on the discount rate used. The issue is not that Stern argues for a particular discount rate. That is his right as a a citizen of a democratic country. The issue is that he used a single discount rate (without performing a sensitivity analysis) and that he used a discount rate that differs from the discount rate typically used by his own, democratically-elected government. And all without alerting the reader. Stern's use of the discount rate is a clear case of manipulation.

The sloppiness of the Stern Review is perhaps best illustrated with its assessment of an optimal climate policy. (By the way, the Stern Review concludes that the previously formulated long-term target of the UK government is exactly right.) Stern's "optimum" does not meet the first-order conditions. In the optimum, marginal costs should equal marginal benefits. Stern recommends that greenhouse gas concentrations be stabilized at 550 ppm CO2eq, but at that point his (faulty) estimates of marginal costs do not equal his (faulty) estimates of the marginal benefits.

When I pressed him over this, the paraphrased reply was that Newton and Leibnitz are so passe.

The subsequent discussion is very interesting too. In essence Stern is arguing that a philosopher king should tell us what is right, while Tol is making the libertarian case - that ordinary people should choose their own way. Global warming enthusiasts should be clear, both to themselves and to the public they seek to persuade, that this is their intention.

Which brings me back to my original point: Stern should be strongly criticised for not making this clear to his readers, and Ed Stourton, one of the most senior journalists at the BBC should hang his head in shame for precisely the same reason.

More market fixing

Timmy notes that attempts by the government to fix prices in the medicines market have had the inevitable consequences: shortages of medicines. Pharmaceutical companies no longer want to sell to banana republics like the UK where the price they receive is artificially held down. So they are selling to first world countries instead.

Still at least they're not messing up something really important, like some governments have.