Year: 2008

Smokescreen

John Quiggin36 Comments

As I’ve said in the past, I’m tired of stoushes with global warming delusionists, and of blogwars more generally. I’ve adopted a policy of banning/deleting trolls here, and, as far as possible, ignoring them elsewhere. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel I could ignore Graham Young’s attack on me, Robyn Williams, Tim Lambert and others in Online Opinion of which he is Chief Editor. OLO has made a valuable contribution to Australian public debate, and has a well-justified reputation for serious discussion (despite Young’s propensity for publishing silly anti-science pieces on climate change). That reputation will be trashed if it becomes a platform for intemperate and partisan rants (violations of Godwin’s Law are a pretty good indication of this, in my view).

I did write to Young to attempt a resolution, and sent him a lot of links and documents trying to explain why (contrary to his claims) I thought it was appropriate to report Fred Singer’s close involvement with the tobacco industry, and its relationship to his role in the global warming debate (prominent now, but even more so in the 1990s when he and Fred Seitz got the organised delusionist movement going with the Leipzig Declaration and Oregon Petition)[1][2]. However, apart from the offer of a reply (if I want to say that I’m not a brownshirt, I can do so here in much less than 800 words, and have done), he wasn’t interested.

At this point, I’m going to let the documents speak for themselves. Over the fold, I’ve linked and quoted an article from the American Journal of Public Health, and two (of many) documents from tobacco company archives, released as part of a settlement of litigation against them by US state governments. If any readers feel that I’ve been unfairly selective here, I invite you, as I did Graham, to Google “Fred Singer” + tobacco, or search the archives yourself.

That’s it from me on this. If readers’ comments indicate general agreement that I’ve unfairly traduced Singer’s reputation, I’ll retract. Perhaps, if the evidence appears convincing to most, Young might respond appropriately.

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New book on uncertainty

John Quiggin5 Comments

Sorry for putting up a second plug in a few days, but it seems as if, after the usual delays, quite a few things of mine are coming out that might be of broader interest than most of my academic work. I’m a contributor to a new book, Uncertainty and Risk: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Gabrielle Bammer and Mike Smithson. It’s discussed in this piece on the ABC website, which talks about Rumsfeld and ‘unknown unknowns’, a topic I’ve talked about before (here at Crooked Timber and here on this blog).

There’s lots of interesting views of uncertainty, in all sorts of fields, from statistics to jazz. You can watch a slowTV video (parts 1 and 2) or hear a more complete podcast of the book launch, with a public lecture on uncertainty and intelligence (in the CIA sense) by Michael Wesley.

One thing that is, unfortunately, certain is that the price of the book will be far too high for all but the keenest readers, so you’ll probably have to wait for it to reach the library if you want to read it – there’s not even “Search Inside” on Amazon.


"Uncertainty and Risk: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (The Earthscan Risk in Society Series)" (Earthscan Publications Ltd.)

You can, however, get 15 per cent off the UK price (save ten quid!) with this flyer

updateHere’s an extended ‘teaser‘ (4.4 Mb) with TOC and one chapter. More to come at the website of the book.

Burma appeal final

John Quiggin1 Comment

I’ve just sent off my donation to the Burma appeal. I’m reposting the final tally drawn up by James at Club Troppo. We never quite worked out which site gave most, but I’m happy to declare it a glorious tie. Thanks again to everyone who helped.

Burma summary

Many thanks to the readers who responded to our joint Burma campaign with John Quiggin by donating to aid agencies assisting the victims of Cyclone Nargis. They include:

Dylan Nicholson (100), John Warburton (100), Kim Weatherall (150), Stephen Luntz (350), Robert Merkel (100), Laura (50), Declan Kuch (50), Andrew Bennetts (200), S. Obeyesekere (100), Kj (90), Simon Rumble (100), Jed (100), Nicole Milazzo (90), Titus (200), Lindsay Jones (100), Michael D (50), Michael Stanley (100), Jack Strocchi (50), Penguinunearthed (200), Ian Gould (100), Julian Quennell (100), anon (50), Joe (250), Mark Lilywhite (200), Dan Woods (70), Cathy (50), Susan Hogan (100), Helen Smart (100), NPOV (100), Joe D (50), CFQ (100), an anonymous donor (100), and a bloke from Eudlo (200).There was also a very generous donation from Courtney and Adam, whose amount they requested not be disclosed.

Of the above, John and I reckon $4280 to be documented or as good as documented. Club Troppo writers and affiliates will match this at fifty cents to the dollar, as promised. These include: Geoff Honnor, Jim Belshaw, Legal Eagle, Patrick Fitzgerald, Margaret Farrell, Saint, Patrick Garson, Ingolf Eide, Nicholas Gruen, Ken Parish and myself.

John is paying an additional fifty cents, that is, $2,140 from his own funds.

The total raised from the effort is thus $8,560.

Arabella Imhoff informs me that she and some friends raised $1750 for a group operating Burma. John was notified of some other large donations too, and although we weren’t able to include these amounts in the total matched, we are happy to acknowledge them.

Congratulations all round. At this stage We’ll just have to hope that the money gets through. If not, the agencies in question presumably will put it to good use somewhere. I’ll try to update on this later in the week.

Godwin quinella

John Quiggin65 Comments

Just about everybody these days knows about Godwin’s Law, and its standard corollary, that the first person to introduce an allusion to the Nazis into an Internet debate automatically loses. Not, it would seem, Graham Young, chief editor of Online Opinion. In the course of an article denouncing the ABC’s Robyn Williams, he takes a sideswipe at me, calling me a brownshirt. Not content with his automatic loss, he goes for the quinella in this companion post, accusing Williams of being a communist.[1] Bizarrely, Young admits in comments that this allegation (now widely reproduced on the Internet) is untrue, but does not bother to correct the post, let along apologise.

The cause of all this: making some critical observations about various global warming “skeptics”. Young doesn’t (and can’t) deny the truth of these observations, which I suppose is why he feels the need to crank up his rhetoric to the point of this spectacular double Godwin with pike. Rather he complains that pointing such facts out is “not nice”.

I’ll be back with more on this later, I expect, but for the moment I’ll settle for the automatic win.

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In praise of Rachel Carson – Bate responds

John Quiggin6 Comments

Roger Bate of Africa Fighting Malaria has responded to my article with Tim Lambert defending Rachel Carson against the claim that she promoted a ban on DDT that has killed millions of people. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t like the article, and says we’ve overstated the extent of his work for the tobacco industry, though he doesn’t deny working for them. Since we’ve already debated that point with a commenter in the previous thread (the evidence is here with more detail here), I won’t go over it again, except to agree that we could have said more about the extent to which Bate has moved away from his initial position and his links with the tobacco lobby.

Instead I want to start with a focus on the areas of agreement which turn out to be surprisingly large. Most notably, Bate states

there are many ill-informed arguments for the use of DDT to be found, especially online. I may not have done enough in the early years of this decade to respond to those excesses, and may even occasionally indulged in them myself, but for many years I have tried to be logical.

He makes no attempt to defend Steven Milloy, the main target of our article, or his many imitators in the media and blogosphere (some Australian examples here and here.)

Bate also endorses Carson’s warnings on the dangers of overuse of agrochemicals, of which DDT was a major component, and the ban on agricultural use of DDT. He doesn’t challenge any of the points made in the article about the failure of the attempt to eradicate malaria using DDT, or about the role of resistance.

In fact, the only factual error he claims (leaving aside disputes about AFM and its funding) actually supports our case. The article stated that the public health exemption from the US ban on DDT had apparently never been used, and the word “apparently” was dropped in editing. Bate points out that DDT has been used in the US on a number of occasions, so that even the fallback claim of a “de facto” ban, pushed by many blogospheric promoters of the DDT ban story, is not true.

Finally, Bate’s article largely confirms our point that the origins of stories about the mythical DDT ban lie in the leadup to the Stockholm convention, during which, as we noted, some environmental groups pushed for the setting of a target date for DDT to be phased out, but ultimately agreed to preserve the DDT exemption. The link so commonly drawn to the US ban in 1972 is entirely spurious.
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Wind

John Quiggin68 Comments

It’s hard to know how to keep up with news on the problem of mitigating CO2 emissions – there’s just so much happening – so I’m just going to jot down a few thoughts. This piece on wind power in Salon by Joseph Romm has a couple of particularly interesting snippets I want to jot down.

* since 2000, Europe has added 47 GW of new wind energy, but only 9.6 GW of coal and a mere 1.2 GW of nuclear
* The carbon price required for large scale expansion in wind power (to 20 per cent of all US electricity by 2030) is estimated at $50/ton

Given our larger area of land per person, I’d imagine the economics in Australia would be at least as favorable. Ignoring for the moment the demand response, the revenue associated with permits sold at $50/ton in Australia would be about $25 billion (given current emissions around 500 million tonnes). Taking account of an emissions reduction of at least 20 per cent*, revenue would be $20 billion (enough to fund the abolition of payroll tax and a reasonably generous compensation program for low-income households). The net welfare loss would be much less than this – given the many problems with payroll tax, there might even be a net gain.

* The Salon article is only on electricity, but there are comparable savings to be made in other areas.

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Money Ruins Everything

John Quiggin16 Comments

Dan Hunter and I have a paper coming out in the Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal, which economic and technical innovation is increasingly based on developments that don’t rely on economic incentive or public provision. The main examples, obvious enough for readers here, include open source software, blogs and associated technical and social innovations, and wikis. Abstract and links to SSRN over the fold.
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Burma Appeal preliminary results

John Quiggin4 Comments

We’re still awaiting some final confirmations, but the total amount promised by readers in the Burma appeal, which closed a couple of days ago, is a bit over $4000. My calculation show that this blog is marginally ahead of Troppo, but seasoned election-watchers will know that results can change with recounts and similar. Anyway, it’s been an overwhelmingly generous response. With our matching contribution raising the total to $8000, it’s the most successful fundraiser ever for this blog, which has now (with assistance from Troppo and many others) raised over $20 000 in total for appeals of this kind.

The situation in Burma remains disastrous, with natural calamity confounded by a government that seems utterly unconcerned with anything except the maintenance of its own power. Still, with pressure coming from the entire world, including ASEAN neighbors who’ve previously been inclined to give the junta a free pass, I’m sure the help to which we are contributing will get through in the end. It will still be sorely needed when it arrives.