I’ve always wondered why the warbloggers among us are so convinced that inspections can’t possibly work, given their successes in the past. In some cases, it’s clear that they just want a pretext for invasion, but in others they simply appear to have forgotten.

For example, Glenn Reynolds links to Oz warblogger Paul Wright who asks what happens if the weapons inspectors, by some miracle, actually find something? Reynolds continues “His rather chilling answer suggests that either (1) the powers-that-be have no real expectation that this will come to pass; or (2) they haven’t thought about this hard enough. I’m guessing it’s (1).”James Lileks goes over much the same hypothetical ground

These would be fascinating hypotheses to kick around, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s already happened

• Dj Nadi Girls Power 015

. As Michael O’Hanlon of Slate notes, inspections are the only reason Saddam doesn’t already have the bomb:

“As is well known, Iraq was disturbingly close – perhaps only months away – from building a nuclear weapon at the time of Desert Storm. After Israel bombed its Osirak nuclear reactor a decade earlier, Iraq had embarked on a program to develop less visible technologies for enriching uranium from domestic and possibly foreign sources?its “basement bomb” project. In numerous ways, this effort resembled the difficult and tedious approach taken in the 1940s during the Manhattan Project in the United States, particularly the effort to build uranium-235 devices such as the one dropped on Hiroshima. U.N. inspectors found and destroyed most of the equipment believed to have been involved in Iraq’s effort before the Gulf War of 1991.”

To restate the obvious, inspections will only work with free and unfettered access, and it’s up to the Security Council to ensure this.

Yet another commenting failure. I’m pretty much resigned to moving on from Haloscan. Please send any suggestions by email. For those who don’t feel like typing an address, visit my website (behind a firewall and apparently safe from spiders) and click on the link there.

I haven’t checked Scott Wickstein’s blog for a week or so, since he announced a hiatus, due to pressures of “work, family and having a life”. But he’s obviously found it easier to “delegate some responsibilities” than to kick the blogging habit. When I checked back, I found a very well-thought out response to my post on Pinochet and Brezhnev.

Yesterday Steven den Beste was quibbling about the meaning of “unconditional”. Today, he’s proposing an all-out war against the entire Arab culture, noting “I am forthrightly proposing what some might call cultural genocide”.

Leaving aside the scary implications of all this (as his critic Hesiod
notes, try reading the post with “Jew” substituted for “Arab” at every occurrence, and some corresponding changes of cultural stereotype), this kind of wild mood swing is a caricature of the Bush administration’s stance on Iraq.

The result is that we know Bush wants war, but is it to:
(i) stop terrorism,
(ii) remove an evil dictator,
(iii) get rid of WMDs,
(iv) enforce UN resolutions,
(v) forcibly convert the Arabs
(vi) democratise the Middle East
(vii) secure a free flow of oil
(viii) stimulate the US economy
or
(ix)settle an old family feud?

All but (ix) have been seriously put forward by advocates of war within or close to the Bush Administration, and plenty of people outside the Administration suspect (ix) is the truth. If all these objectives could be pursued at once, there would be no problem, but there’s clearly a lot of conflict between them.

Warwick McKibbin has kindly supplied me with the present value calculations to permit an assessment of his model results. The idea of a present value is to reduce a series of future gains and losses to a single present day value, the amount that would have to be invested (or borrowed) at a given rate of interest to yield an equivalent flow. The rate of interest in Warwick ‘s model is 5 per cent. There are four main scenarios in the model.
The first is the Business As Usual case in which no countries ratify Kyoto or do anything about global warming. This provides a baseline, but is of no real interest since most countries have already ratified.
n the other scenarios, it is assumed that everyone except the US ratifies. The second is one in which Australia ratifies, but where no account is taken of measures the government has already taken to reduce emissions at low economic cost. The third is one in which Australia ratifies, and account is taken of existing measures. The fourth is one in which Australia does not ratify.

The crucial issue is the difference between ratifying and not ratifying

Warwick supplied me with estimates expressed in terms of US dollars of present value, but it’s more useful to convert these to percentage losses. Warwick estimates that (not taking existing measures into account), ratification will reduce the present value of income for the period 2000-2050 by 0.34 per cent, from $US14401 billion to $US14352 billion. If existing measures are taken into account, the loss from ratification falls to 0.16 per cent. I think the estimate with measures is more appropriate since the policies are already in place, but Warwick has argued that the ‘without measures’ estimate is more robust.

All of the net loss is incurred after 2020. For the period 2000-2020, the present value of income is almost identical in all three scenarios (ratification without measures comes out slightly ahead, but the difference is negligible).

To get a feel for the magnitudes, it’s useful to observe that 0.16 per cent of GDP is equal to two weeks’ economic growth. In other words, suppose that we all took two weeks off to watch the Olympics. During those two weeks the economy kept producing the same level of output but there was no growth in productivity. Suppose that after the two weeks were finished the economy returned to the previous rate of growth, but that the growth missed in those two weeks was not regained. This would be roughly the impact that Warwick is modelling. Actually, since there’s no net impact before 2020, a closer parallel would be that nothing happened until 2020 and that we missed four weeks growth then.

In current monetary terms, 0.34 per cent of GDP is around $2 billion per year, 0.16 per cent is around $1 billion per year. By contrast the Great Barrier Reef, which will almost certainly be severely damaged if global warming is not controlled, is estimated to contribute around $2 billion a year in economic benefits alone. Of course, Kyoto alone will not solve global warming, but equally the Reef represents only a fraction of the ecosystems that will be damaged or destroyed if warming is allowed to proceed, without even considering coastline shifts, increased cyclone intensity, and the huge impact on poorer countries.

Seeking to shore up support for his position on Iraq (whatever that turns out to be), Tony Blair has called for redistribution of wealth. As the Guardian notes, ‘ it was one of the first times the prime minister has used the word “redistribute” unprompted – it was previously a taboo expression in New Labour.’
As far as I can see, there is now nothing left of the Third Way other than an attachment to Public-Private Partnerships (for my take on PPPs, look here or here). Blair has now accepted the need for higher taxes to fund both improved services and redistribution of wealth. In other words, he’s now an old-style social democrat, just a very wishy-washy one.

A while ago, Ken Parish made the point that normally calm and sensible bloggers tended to get emotional and unreasonable when the topic of global warming came up. He was talking about Kyoto supporters like me and Don Arthur, but the same point can be made about Ken himself. Once this issue comes up, he is prone to misrepresentations and dodgy arguments he would never use in any other context. Consider, for example, this claim “Anyone would think from reading John Quiggin’s blog that his ANU colleague Warwick McKibbin supports Australia’s ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.”
The post in question begins by describing Warwick as ‘a leading critic of Kyoto’, describes the results of his modelling of the impacts of ratification and concludes “Although I disagree with Warwick’s policy position on Kyoto, I compliment him for keeping his independence as a modeller. The government clearly didn’t like his results one bit.”
I’d love to see Ken’s explanation of how this can be read as saying that “Warwick McKibbin supports Australia’s ratification of the Kyoto Protocol”
To be as charitable as I can on this, it appears that Ken has failed to grasp the distinction between saying that Warwick’s model results support ratification, and saying that Warwick himself supports it. The model results are in the public domain and anyone competent to analyse them is free to do so and draw the appropriate inferences. The government’s decision to bury the report with a 6pm Friday release is a pretty good guide to the inferences that they drew.
The model results are ambiguous. Australia initially benefits from ratification (with existing measures) relative to nonratification, but loses from 2015 onwards. The standard way of resolving this is to reduce the flow of gains and losses to a discounted present value. There are, however, choices that must be made in terms of the scenarios that are used and the time period for the projections. I am discussing these questions with Warwick McKibbin presently, and will report soon.
Update Ken has posted a gracious concession that he hadn’t read my post carefully enough before his criticism. I’m looking forward to a resumption of constructive debate, and will have something to say before long.

Greg Sheridan] has quite a thoughtful piece on Iraq. The kicker, accurate but embarrassing, is:

“Oh, and by the way, Canberra will in the end support whatever the US does, just as it would have done if Kim Beazley were PM and not Howard.”

Having read the various warblogger and other critiques of the Iraqi offer on weapons inspection, it seems to be that the critique contains three main points, one strong, one weak and one silly

Strong: Does an offer “to allow the return of the United Nations weapons inspectors to Iraq without conditions” mean “without conditions of the kind that led to the withdrawal of the inspectors in the past” (that is, free and unfettered access) or does it merely mean “without preconditions”. This clearly needs to be resolved.

Weak: The statement “Iraq is ready to discuss the practical arrangements necessary for the immediate resumption of inspections,” can be read can be read to allow for an indefinite period of “discussion”. But the UN has already said the inspectors could be on the ground in three weeks. If the discussions drag on much longer than this, the offer will be discredited.

Silly: The letter mentions the lifting of sanctions and some warbloggers have presented this as a new demand. But the whole point of the sanctions was to compel compliance with the UN resolutions. If Iraq complies to the satisfaction of the Security Council, they sanctions must be lifted. If the Iraqi government asserts that it is ready to comply, then it is perfectly reasonable to refer to ‘ a comprehensive solution that includes the lifting of sanctions imposed in Iraq’

As far as I can see I am in agreement with John Howard at this point. The Security Council should pass a resolution demanding full and unfettered access for weapons inspectors, and full disclosure of past and present programs. If the Iraqi government doesn’t accept this, then it will be time to let loose the dogs of war. If they do accept it, then the appropriate stance is one of vigilant monitoring rather than sabre-rattling.

Janet Albrechtsen lists me as one of the top 5 left commentators in need of correction (all write for Fairfax, I note)

“Where are the attacks on commentators on the other side of the political divide ? Robert Manne, Hugh Mackay, Phillip Adams, Adele Horin, John Quiggin?”

She’s talking about Media Watch, but where are the attacks from right-wing bloggers that are so liberally handed out to Manne, Mackay and Adams? Maybe I’m safe because I publish in one of the handful of newspapers whose website requires subscription. I usually put my articles up on my site at the end of each month, but maybe that’s not immediate enough for blogging. Anyway, if anyone wants to answer Janet’s call, I’d be more than happy for a site to be established where my articles could be criticised, and would look forward to the resulting debate (Please, no TNA members or associates).