The switch from ‘scepticism’ to an overtly anti-science, and anti-scientist, position has paid some dividends for the advocates of delusional views on climate change. Although the only wrongdoing in the CRU harassment/hacking campaign was that of the hackers and their allies (more on this soon), the false charges of scientific fraud got much more media attention than their refutation, and the early responses to alleged FOI breaches (including that of some pro-science writers such as George Monbiot) failed to recognise of the deliberately vexatious misuse of FOI by the anti-science group. In this context, the discovery of a genuine error in the 1700 page IPCC Fourth Assessment Report regarding projected changes in glaciers could easily be spun into something much bigger.
It seemed for a little while as if the delusionists had scored another win, when Phil Jones, the scientist who has been most viciously target by the hackers/harassers gave an honest answer to a deliberately loaded question prepared by them and put to him in a BBC interview
BBC: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?
Phil Jones: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods…
This was headlined by the Daily Mail as “Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995?.
But, now it looks as if this is starting to backfire. Anyone who has successfully completed a basic course in statistics knows that “statistically significant” has a special meaning which bears almost no relationship to the usual sense of the term “significant”, and this fact is beginning to sink in.
The statement “there has no statistically significant warming since 1995” can better be stated as “if we ignore all the data before 1995, we don’t have enough data points to reject, with 95 per cent confidence[1], the hypothesis that the observed warming since 1995 has been due to chance variation”. That isn’t true if you replace 1995 with 1994 or any earlier date going back to 1970. It’s clear that those who dreamed up this talking point knew enough stats to realise that they were being deliberately deceptive, and that ignorant “sceptics” would read the statement as saying “no significant warming since 1995”. They were right and the talking point ran through the delusionist commentariat and blogosphere at record speed.
The only problem is that such an obvious lie can be, and has been called out, and is essentially impossible to defend, except by an admission of culpable ignorance or gullibility. Here’s The Economist (not exactly zealous on climate change) responding to the original Daily Mail article (h/t Tim Lambert)
This led to a Daily Mail headline reading: “Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995.”
Since I’ve advocated a more explicit use of the word “lie”, I’ll go ahead and follow my own advice: that Daily Mail headline is a lie. Phil Jones did not say there had been no global warming since 1995; he said the opposite. He said the world had been warming at 0.12°C per decade since 1995. However, over that time frame, he could not quite rule out at the traditional 95% confidence level that the warming since 1995 had not been a random fluke.
Anyone who has even a passing high-school familiarity with statistics should understand the difference between these two statements.
And here’s Brad DeLong skewering Russ Roberts as the lyingest economist alive, then downgrading the charge to one of reckless gullibility when it became clear that Roberts had relied on a Daily Mail headline, thereby making a complete fool of himself.
Looking at the responses of ‘sceptics’ to this episode we can distinguish four or five sets (depending on your views about set theory)
1. Those who originally designed the “no significant warming” talking point. Members of this set are deliberate liars playing on the ignorance and gullibility of their target audience. As far as I can tell, the first to put this line forward was Richard Lindzen of MIT, who put it up in early 2008, tied to the cherry picking “no warming since 1998” claim (see here). Lindzen certainly has the training to know how dishonest this is. More recently, it’s been pushed by Lord Monckton and others, who may perhaps fall into set 2.
2. Those who quoted the question and answer, and took “not statistically significant” to mean “insignificant”. Members of this set have demonstrated, first that they don’t know basic statistics and second that, despite claiming to “make up their own minds” about climate science, they haven’t bothered to acquire even the most basic knowledge necessary to such a task. At a minimum, members of this group are lying to themselves, in the same manner as other exemplars of the Dunning-Kruger effect
3. Those who relied either on the Daily Mail headline, or on the second-hand versions propagated by members of set 2. Members of this set have demonstrated both a high level of gullibility and ignorance of the basic data on climate change, which clearly shows a substantial increase in temperatures since 1995 (whether or not this is statistically significant). Again, they are lying to themselves if they think of what they are doing as “making up their own mind”. Here’s
a graph of the data.
4. Those who recognised the dishonesty of the Daily Mail line, but stayed silent out of loyalty. As far as I can tell, most of those on the delusionist side with even basic statistical knowledge (McIntyre, McKitrick and Wegman for example) have kept quiet, in McIntyre’s case linking to the BBC interview without comment and letting his audience draw the necessary silly inferences. If anything remotely comparable had been put forward by a supporter of mainstream science, they would have been all over it.
5. Those genuine sceptics who pointed out the dishonesty of the claim, and called out those on their own side of the debate who promoted it. Obviously, members of this set deserve some serious respect and attention in the future. Unfortunately, the intersection between this set and the set of “sceptics” in the currently prevailing sense appears to be the empty set[2]
So, a challenge to those who think there is a debate to be had here, as opposed to a series of silly talking points to be whacked down with greater or lesser success. Can you
A. Provide a coherent defence of the “no statistically significant warming since 1995” claim. To limit trollery, this should begin with a statement, in your own words, of the basic hypothesis testing framework in which this concept arises? ; or
B. Give an argument as to why anyone should pay any attention to those on the “sceptical” side who have formulated this claim, propagated it in some form or another, or allowed it to pass without comment?
I will award grades to the responses.
Diversions to other talking points, general delusionist rants and so on will be deleted.
fn1. “Reject with 95 per cent confidence” also has a special meaning, subtly different from “reject with 95 per cent probability of being right”, but the difference doesn’t matter much in the current context
fn2. Corrections on this point will be gratefully accepted and prominently publicised.
John Quiggin 
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
The article actually says that there are no hard data to support claims of ghg reductions. The academic cited in the article gives intuition and anecdote in support of his belief (according to the article) that householders use insulation to increase comfort levels and maintain their ghg emissions thereby. Perhaps it would be instructive, in assessing this claim, to imagine the reverse – would removing insulation be likely to lower ghg emissions?
It seems to me that having an insulated house allows householders to choose whether to increase comfort levels or to maintain existing comfort levels and spend the money saved on something else. I’d have thought as a libertarian, TerjeP, you’d have been in favour of the householders having that choice. The argument suggested by the Oz article is analogous to the argument that we shouldn’t give tax cuts to the poor, because they’ll only waste it on grog and cigarettes. Moreover, an increase in comfort without any increase in ghg emissions is surely an unalloyed benefit?
My stated ideal is not on the political menu. And I only have one vote. So it doesn’t come down to what I think is ideal. Currently out of the established parliamentary parties I think the Greens have the best option on the table except for the fact that it is an interim initiative. I think the Liberal proposal is a bit incensere. I think the ALP proposal entails a lot of institutional risk. However this isn’t a swing issue for me in terms of how I may vote so it does not matter a whole lot.
Yes and your point is?
Not even close. The issue is whether this intervention achieves it’s stated aim.
I agree it belongs on the benefit side of the ledger. However this kind of misses the central point.
That is an interesting article. It’s quite correct to point out that insulating homes doesn’t necessarily lower energy consumption. It highlights the complexity of trying to measure and compare mitigation strategies. This is where price signals work IMHO and the sooner pollution is priced realistically the faster optimal solutions will be found and people can make their own decisions using better information. I also don’t think that is the only yard stick to judge the scheme by, but I better stop here before I’m told off again for being off topic.
A. An interesting challenge. However, several flaws in the proposition and ultimately the premise of the loaded question to Prof Jones, makes it an exercise in futility. Which set of data are we testing the for example NCDC or NASA GISS or HadCRUT3. All of which demonstrate increasing warming over the past 11 years. Which data sets? Surface, ocean, troposphere or stratospheric… Do we exclude the natural cooling and heating events during this period? (Elnino and his sister). Or correctly the total energy balance of the globe over this period? The correct answer being an energy imbalance forced by human activity is occuring. Why not test the data over the past decade only, which globally the past decade is the hottest on record, (surface temperature, from memory). The short answer to your challenge is that the claim of “no statistically significant warming since 1995” is it cannot be coherently defended unless of course I cherry pick data to generate the emotive response eg erroneously using troposphere data only. The benefit of monitoring the shorter periods however I would argue test and track the validity of the models, which shows ocean levels and temperature increases (ocean, land, atmospheric and energy balance). Funnily enough are tracking at the upper end of earlier IPCC estimates.
B. B. We should not give any attention to those whom have formulated this claim, however it is a moot point the narrative does not stack up against the actual response or the verified data, it is purely emotive. The premise that the deniers have shot themselves in the foot – as much as I wish to agree, is a false dichotomy as the headline claim by the Tele is emotive. What do the average 5p a week punters wish to believe? That the “greatest threat to our existence” is real or not real. Those in the latter will cling to an argument that sounds coherent, which is why scientific quackery is so prominent. Furthermore, why is it that where (excluding glaciers melting by 2035), each and every time the denialist’s claims of global warming stopped, measurement inaccuracies, statistical anomalies are proven to be incorrect or found original findings were an understatement are not given the front page.
PS. Sorry JQ Nuclear energy NO! Environmentally does not pass the simple test of what do you do with the waste? Another form of pollution where future generations will pay the consequences.
The basic problem with this talk about the null hypothesis is that it ignores the science. Statistic analysis considers the data independently from any underlying theory but any good scientific analysis will use the best available theory. If the numbers represented some process for which not much theory exists – say, the number times the word “xylophone” is used in first novels per year, we might conclude that the rise of the “xylophone first novel” may be abating, with certain statistical .
However, when the numbers represent the global temperature record, we can actually say that they are entirely consistent with the current understanding of the physics of global temperature processes. Refutation of physical theory requires results that are actually inconsistent with it. It would take a lot more than a flatish decade to overturn the physics. The claim that the temperature record refutes AGW actually depends on cluelessness about the underlying physics.
But by cleverly using the statistics puts doubt in certainty behind the science which is a powerful tool in the political sphere. For example the link http://jhubert.livejournal.com/181274.html (make your own determination about the voracity of the calculation), demonstrates a contrived selection of data by Monckton to demonstrate the earth is actually cooling and calculations are wrong. Monckton Craftily starting at a higher than average temp month and extrapolating the linear temp graph to period prior to the temperature raising again. Even though Monckton can be proven to be wrong and ethically questionable the damage is already done. The average punter, lobbyists, astroturfers, biased media, politicians of questionable sense did and can latch onto the selective use of the data to cast doubt about the physics behind the rational of AGW. Does not matter whether the science is correct or not to the “deniers”.
@Hal9000
The article and the ideas of the economist displayed in it, are simply one more example of an economist being very clever and indulging in sophistry to suggest what, if there were solid evidence for it, would be a surprising result. Very similar to the famous, but non replicatable idea, floated in the ’70s that safer cars, and regulation to increase the safety of car drivers and passengers, actually increases the frequency and magnitude of their injuries (due to the ‘safety’ making the drivers drive more dangerously). This is the sort of creative rubbish that yields a cheap publication, and talking point, but does nothing to tackle any real world problem, and otherwise, holds economists and economics up to the ridicule and contempt with which they are held in many quarters. That said, what a fine piece of work!
@Freelander
When i get a moment, i plan a piece demolishing this line of research, which is exactly as you describe it, silly-clever schoolboy libertarianism done by people old and smart enough to know better.
@jquiggin
Very good idea.
A friend of mine believes that when economics started to lose its way was in the ’70s when a series of these ‘silly-clever schoolboy libertarian’ papers started to be rewarded by academic publication, discussion and citation, which spawned the wasted efforts of a generation of imitators.
Along these lines, I have often thought that the reason that there are few Kangaroos within the city limits of Sydney can be explained by the high price of land in Sydney. Although many Kangaroos have large pockets, it is well know that they are rather deficient in income, their paws being ill suited to commerce. Thus, being poor, the price of land has driven them out of the city. (Apparently there were Kangaroos there a couple of hundred years ago when land prices were lower.) Also in contrast, Kangaroos can be still be sighted in Canberra where land prices are not quite as exorbitant. I rest my case.
And Freelander, the Kangaroos loose in your back paddock are countless. I rest my case 😉
@jquiggin
You donty mean Terje do you JQ? I mean with an eight year old that he doesnt let watch the ABC in favour of commercials “because he is worried what the ABC might do to his kid’s mind”…I really think thats a classic case of a silly clever schoolboy libertarian old enough to know better. But then you cant often convince old bikies to give up their colours either.
Terje Says:
“My stated ideal is not on the political menu.”
Then why not just STFU, instead of whining on and on and on and on about it? It’s just tedious rubbish.
Terje wants a pony, knows he won’t get one, and tells about it at least fifty times a day.
And we all know that if someone actually offered Terje a pony, he’d whine that he wanted a pink one, with horns, wings and a rocket propulsion system.
SJ, no personal criticism, please
Hal9000 @1, p2 and Freelander @10, p2.
Re: Insulation and ghg emissions.
“It seems to me that having an insulated house allows householders to choose whether to increase comfort levels or to maintain existing comfort levels and spend the money saved on something else.” (Hal9000)
The same, IMO valid, argument applies to ETS and carbon taxes. Unless a budget constraint is binding, higher energy prices do not influence energy consumption of individuals or companies with some slack. This is not silly schoolboy economics.
It is much too early to empirically examine the effect of insulation on energy consumption because the program is not completed and, at least in NSW, energy bills for households are quaterly. It would seem to me that at least one year of data is required before a study can be made because people may need a bit of time to get used to the changed circumstances.
One commenter mentioned that ‘we saved water but not energy’. There were and still are quantitative water restrictions.
Incidentally, smoking is sometimes mentioned as another externality which justifies higher taxes. I’d like to mention that the externality (side-smoke) of cigarette smoking is regulated not through prices but through quantity restrictions by location (prohibition to smoke in specified locations or circumstances). As far as I am concerned, the tax on cigarettes is a tax grab, partly perhaps justified through medical expensens. The word partly should be underlined.
I am for either ETS or a carbon tax (depending on circumstances) not because of the price effects on middleclass and rich individuals but because of the corporate sector, including goverment agencies. I understand that both options allow for transfer payments to low income people (ie those with a currently binding budget constraint).
I am aware that this post is off-topic but so are the original posts to which I respond.
Pr Q said:
Enough already of blaming climate delusionists for the slackening of public belief in AGW and support for climate change mitigation. Climate denialists, although no doubt dim-witted and ill-willed, do perform a kind of social function in that they force climate scientists to be vigilant about their own errors and construct a better case to convince the public.
The main reason for the increase in climate fatalism in the public is NOT because of climate skepticism amongst the delusionists. It is because climate policy scientists have failed to properly articulate a convincing solution to the problem or organize an executive agency at the highest level.
The cap-and-trade form of mitigation looks fine in economic theory but is a dud in political practice. I have been saying this for years and perhaps now Pr Q is slowly realizing that this policy is too complicated, hard to monitor and prone to rorts.
Carbon taxing, rather than carbon trading, is the better way to go. People understand tax. And a competent minister can enforce it, look at the way Howard made the GST a goer, the public took its medicine without complaint. This is after he publicly rejected GST.
A little bit more Machiavellianism and a little less moralism would go along way.
‘Unless a budget constraint is binding, higher energy prices do not influence energy consumption of individuals or companies with some slack.’
Are you making this claim about energy specifically, or about all goods and services? If the former, why is energy special? If the latter, you are rejecting both the whole of economic theory and a massive body of empirical evidence which suggests that individuals and companies do respond to prices.
@Jack Strocchi
https://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2010/01/27/the-circuit-breaker/
@Jack Strocchi
The evidence suggests otherwise. Rather, as CRU suggests, honest scientists responded to the multi-barrelled assault from the zombie armies conjured into being by the filth merchant gang by circling the wagons. One can certainly empathise. If all you get is bile and slander, and one wants to do important research, one could easily be forgiven for doing this.
Really, if there is blame to be cast about, it ought to fall on all those amongst us who failed to stand up for the science and to send the delusionals back from the swamps from which they oozed.
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
Jack is quite right and lately a few scientific higher ups have been admitting that they have dropped the PR ball and that science needs to be better at advising the public.
There’s also the problem that science is complex, difficult and slow whereas uninformed egotistical assertions come pretty easy to just about all of us.
My claim relates to all marketable commodities and non-financial services with qualifications indicated by one example (smoking which has an addictive properties; there are others). I mentioned energy because of the ‘debate’ on this thread in relation to a newspaper article about the alleged ineffectiveness of the insulation program regarding ghg emission reduction.
Indeed. Your post @8 should be repeated ‘everywhere’, ‘everyday’, until it sinks in. Donald Oats also wrote a few nice posts, which should also be repeated. These so-called climate sceptics are, IMHO, false sceptics because they took ownership of a term which has a well established meaning in all research areas that involve reasoning and a scientific mind if not a full scientific method due to it being impossible to apply due to ethical considerations (eg economics).
Somewhat OT, but David Brin (yes, that David Brin, the libertarian SF author) has written an excellent blog on how to distinguish between real and pseudo sceptics.
I helped make a video before the 2007 election where we asked people in the streets of Canberra if they thought the building boom in Canberra was linked to growth in the government beaurocracy and if they thought claims by Labor that it would slash the size of the federal public service were likely to come true. Most were doubtful on the latter and we got a mixed response to the former. Having read a headline recently that says that Canberra house prices may soon be higher than those in Sydney it seems that the less wealthy kangaroos will be forced out by the growth of government. So I suppose that’s one more thing that they have displaced. 😉
Scientists are interested in understanding the universe. This is hard enough in itself, and although many scientists are quite good at explaining their findings to non-specialists, they rarely have any special skills in policy development, or in the many other areas that influence the application of an understanding of the physical universe to some practical or political end.
It’s a bit much to blame scientists for the deluge of rubbish around AGW. Any number can explain the basics clearly and patiently, and continue to do so. If we as a society would rather believe in magic or shut our eyes, there is not much more they can do. Really up to us.
Scientists (like those at Scripps) accept the blame and see the need to improve their technique.
Fran Barlow@#23 said:
No. The problem the public has with climate change knowledge is not with the science, or even the anti-scientists. It is that they cannot see a clear way forward and so have turned off.
Most members of the public accept the science that says carbon pollution is heating the planet and that this will cause environmental damage. Few of them take seriously the rantings of Monkton et al.
The public will respond when they feel the pain of climate change coupled with a plausible, cost-effective policy of pain control. To do that they need an energy tax regime, some green gadgets that work and most of all, a sense of global team work.
It is politicians and policy makers who have failed to organize a proper global climate control agency, have not articulates a clear strategic vision and whose cap-and-trade policy seems dubious at best. Leadership in a democracy is usually only as good as followership. But climate policy is different in that it is pretty technical and requires a broad and far-sighted vision to bring the public along.
Gore has done a pretty good job, but being an academic at heart he was captivated by cap-and-trade.
Stuffing around with a complicated cap-and-trade policy has cost the policy makers 5-10 years of needless argy-bargy. Not to mention playing into the hands of financial elites who just love another trading scheme. I for one do not want the future of the planet’s climate put at the tender mercy of Goldman Sachs et al.
A simple carbon tax would have got the ball rolling, funded useful renewable technology to get up and running and would generally have acclimatized the public to paying more for clean energy.
The message for economic ecologics: If you build it they will come.
@Jack Strocchi
Realistically that is way too late. We have to have a good foundational system bedded down and making substantial progress within five years, but nothing that can indubitably called “climate change pain” will hit Australia much before then. There will be stuff that will be pointed too — another bad bushfire season — but that’s too transient to work
I remain convinced that an ETS centred system (though not the proposed one) would be the best approach. It seems a perfectly simple concept and most resistant to white-anting. That said, some sort of tax system for liquid fuels with a rebate for those buying approved biofuels might be part of such a system. Another alternative would be road usage charges that reflected things like vehicle tare, emissions, time of day, alternative transport options, driver competence and so forth replacing the existing excise system. Ideally you could tie this in with a driverID and GPS-supported traffic tracking and infringement system and use the funds to develop more centrally located quality public housing and more efficient public transport …
Jack is pretty spot on in my book. The only two things that the government could administer or deploy effectively are a tax on CO2e emissions from power stations and transport fuels. And getting out of the way on technologies such as nuclear.
p.s. I know some of you think it is my fault that we don’t have a global cap and trade scheme ushering in a solar revolution but it really isn’t my fault. The problem is ambitious symbolic over reach. Live with it.
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
Far be it for me to minimise your central role in preventing “a global cap and trade scheme ushering in a solar revolution”, but I hadn’t actually thought it was solely your fault.
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
Is there more you want to share? What else have you been putting the kibosh on?
Fran Barlow@#33
Its never too late. The CPT (Carbon Polllution Tax) is the pain, although peak oil price hikes and bush-fires serve as proxies. Once its embedded an noisy interest groups (farmers, miners) are suitably compensated then no one will mind.
Fran Barlow said:
If ETS is “perfectly simple” then why do the general public have so much trouble warming to it? And “resistant to white-anting” is exactly the opposite of the truth. It is notoriously easy to white-ant with give-away permits, dodgy monitoring and rent-seeking by traders.
Fran Barlow said:
This endless shopping list and grab-bag approach to energy transformation is part of the problem, not solution. You might have at least mentioned nukes. If the US Navy can run all its capital ships on nukes I don’t see why its such a problem to install afew on-shore.
The core problem is converting the base-load power generating systems for the high-IQ manafacturing centres of South and East Asian industrial giants. To get their elites on-side we must concentrate on using the funds from CPT to finance the changeover from exhaustible to renewable energy.
Carbon mitigation is a war and war strategy in a democracy should be simple and direct. Whack a big carbon tax on hydro-carbon energy straight-away. Sell it by saying it kills two birds with one stone: funds Asian renewable energy and gets us away from financing Arab sheiks with their white-elephants and jihadist hobbies.
More generally what we need is bold political leadership based on unified team-spirit. This is something that the Left has been noticeably poor at delivering. It is absurdly focused on process and bureaucratically guidelining everything to within an inch of its life. And its obsession with diversity at all costs weakens the national unity needed for communal sacrifice. And don’t get me started on our astronomical rates of immigration. Exactly how is that meant to relieve stress on the environment, not to mention other parts of the Body Politic.
Lefties: put your own house in order before blaming it all on the cranks.
@Jack Strocchi
I disagree. Getting started too late is probable.
Because the current scheme is a dog’s breakfast that doesn’t seem to do much and hands out megabucks to polluters. Even then, most support it.
I disagree. The government could print more money or more share certificates but they don’t because money is property. What we need is a system that gives no free certificates and ensures all that are given for offsets have integrity. Taxes on the other hand, you can forgive …
I have to laugh … being attacked for not mentioning nukes? …
I’m not sure what your last paras are trying to achieve.
For the record, I am not opposed to carbon taxes as an interim measure but in the long run I see them as less politcally viable and less technically feasible to a multi-jurisdictional trading system.
@Jack Strocchi
That’s right – the reason nothing is being done about AGW is because of all the bolshie anti-nuclear treehugging greenies and the supporters of ETS’s who can’t explain to the voting half-wits the merits of the scheme. All I can say to you is – what a whingy grab back of red herrings! The fact that an orchestrated campaign of nit-picking BS has being going on for more than a decade is all just a harmless happenstance.
@Jack Strocchi
And Murdoch is only interested in provided “fair and balanced” news. Not.
Fran Barlow@#39
“Dogs breakfast” is a feature, not bug, from the point of view of the cap-and-trade operators. The problem with cap-and-trade in the concept, not current execution. The scheme is suffering dwindling public support in all major jurisdictions – the more people know about it the less they like it.
Fran Barlow said:
This is the triumph of hope over experience. Mindlessly chanting “what we need…” is not going to bring the tooth fairy to your pillow, let alone make cap-and-trade work effectively. On the other hand, “taxes are inevitable”, at least according to one proven organizational expert.
Fran Barlow said:
Laugh all you want, you are the person whose wish-list is all over the place like a mad womans underclothes.
Nukes are a proven source of clean energy. Unfortunately the Left developed an allergy against them, no doubt because they formed an essential part of the arsenal of democracy in the Cold War. The Hard Left was on the losing side of that one, so perhaps its time to learn to love the Bomb, or at least its generators.
Fran Barlow said:
You should get an academy award for playing dumb. I am abusing Leftists for pursuing crazy immigration and integration policies that subvert conservation efforts.
I will spell it out to you in simple terms. Carbon pollution mitigation is a public good. The provision of public goods require compulsory communal action in order to minimize free-riders. The more unified the community, the easier it is to push through laws that require everyone to make a modest sacrifice. The more diversified the community, the harder. For a more complicated exposition of the problem see Kenneth Arrow “Impossibility Theorem”.
An implication of this theory is that public goods are easier to provide in unified nations (say Sweden or Poland) and harder to provide in diversified nations (USA). Which is in fact what we see.
Not. Rocket. Science.
Fran Barlow said:
Political viability is already looking shaky, as I have predicted from the get-go. And what can be more technically feasible than a series of national taxes put into a global fund?
Your faith in Goldman Sachs et al is truly touching. Already there is evidence that organized crime is rorting the cap-and-trade system.
Wall Street is simply a more efficient and established form of the same scam. It blows my mind that Leftists, who you would think would be the last people to trust a financial market trading scheme, are giving cap-and-trade such a free pass.
The more general problem is post-modern liberalism which prioritizes individual autonomy over institutional authority. There is already way too much free-for-all in this area. If there is hope it lies in the long-term thinking conformist nerds of the PRC.
Jack Strocchi@43 said:
Correction. The problem with cap-and-trade is in political practice, not economic theory.
But politics is a domain subject to laws, just like economics. And the political theory of cap-and-trade policy wonks is the same old Platonic idealism that infects most academics and bureaucrats.
What we need is Machiavellian realism to perceive the way that the trading world really works. And it works by churn, whipping up trade and profiteering from arbitrage.
So a proper conception of carbon mitigation policy requires a scheme that cuts out the middleman.
John Quiggin@#22 linked:
Yes, I noticed that but I had the decency to avoid making any exasperated jeers for this belated turn-about. Not feeling so charitable today.
Whilst not a complete back-flip I would classify PrQ’s conversion from carbon trading to carbon taxing as a half-twist with pike.
@rog
Rog’s link is an example of proof by contradictory citation, one of the dishonest techniques used by anti-scientists. This is what the link actually says:
I don’t see too much “acceptance of blame” there.
@Jack Strocchi
Actually, what seems to be happening is that the space to do cognitive dissonance is widening. I doubt many people really believe the deniers, but the number of people who feel that their immediate interests are threatened by structural change has been heightened by the GFC, and the lavish coverage to the delusionals in the press has allowed those who want an excuse to wave a more impressive figleaf. As I understand it, the main arguments against cap and trade are “Al Gore — isn’t he fat?” and “aren’t carbon traders evil?” and “isn’t skepticism part of science?”.
Taxes are the stuff of electoral arbitrage. In theory nobody loses if taxes are cut though of course we know in practice lots do. So the level of the tax and who it is levied on are not givens. It is much harder to prejudice the value of emissions certificates because they are tradeable commodities. The business community gets wedged. That’s why the opponents of action prefer carbon taxes. These are politically weak, likely to be low and can be defeated through lobbying.
You don’t say? Gosh, I’ll have to read up on nuclear power and get back here with my findings. If only it had occurred to me to include that in my ideas … Oh well … at least you’ve brought me up to speed …
Simply bizarre, given that the USSR was the other side of that Cold War and had nuclear weapons, and China also acquired them. It was the soft left that got most bothered by nuclear power, for reasons that had more to do with pacifism and the thought that the USSR might one day use nuclear weapons against the US, or someone else might get involved in an exchange like India and Pakistan or S Africa. In any event bombs and nuclear power are quite different things.
So, Fortress Australia is it Jack? Do you have a ready reckoner on who should be kept out to keep the xenophobes happy? As far as I know, the “left” has no specific immigration policy. Some, but not a majority believe in open borders and some are bothered by Australia’s population increasing at all. Personally, I see no problem with Australia having a slightly bigger share of the world population than it has now, though in the longer run (say 150 years) I’d like to imagine world population would decline to about 5 billion and Australia’s with it. If Australia did get near zero carbon, that would be a good thing because the people coming here would be living better and emitting less per unit of GDP.
So far so good …
So you are arguing that it’s migrants of non-Euro ethnicity that are stopping us from acting? You know I haven’t heard that opposition to action was especially strong amongst people Hanson would like to punt. The people I hear of most commonly look very white to me. Who knew Wilson Tuckey and Nick Minchin and Ian Plimer and Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt were secret ethnos? Ok … let’s punt them.
National taxes into a global fund you say? Well that will get the xenophobes on side for sure. The standing of the UN is nearly as high as that of Al Gore. I’ve never heard anyone complain that our taxes were going to the UN … oh wait … err I have … but just once or twice … so that should be hunky dory.
If I had my way, the end users — the public — would be issued with a quota of carbon credits which they could trade or use or buy on the market. They’d need to use these to buy stuff with net carbon dioxide emissions in them. We would use the money raised by selling them to set up local services, housign and transport to which we would give people means-tested access — so as to ensure that the poor and lower middle class were looked after. Every good and service would have to have its LCA-based Co2 profile on it and they would swipe their smart card through a reader as they purchased. Very simple.
The system would encourage economical use of power, avoiding waste, car pooling, and so forth. There would be a serious demand for low carbon power, such as nuclear in that context. And the cap could be adjusted every year. People who saved their certificates would be sitting on a valuable commodity so lowering the cap would be a popular move. Since imports would be at a disadvantage, efficient local businesses would like it.
@Fran Barlow
Here we go again Fran
” It was the soft left that got most bothered by nuclear power, for reasons that had more to do with pacifism ”
Rubbish Fran. People – much more widely than the “soft left” have concerns and aversions to nuclear energy because of the problem of contamination, waste and nuclear accidents. It has nothing to do with “pacifism” but its also no accident that those countries that have niclear energy also have an abundance of nuclear weapons storage facilities nearby.
That is no accident and its not a byproduct of clean energy facilities either. You dont get it when it comes to people’s entirely justifiable abhorrence to nuclear energy do you Fran?
Its not just the soft left but the soft right clean energy, to save us from the environmental damage from fossil fuel burning. To others its the dangerous and uncontrollable fire used to put out a more controllable fire.
If nuclear the best we can do to counter global warming and environmental damage we are all doomed anyway. We are second best in everything. We are failures because we cant win. Bring it on. Ill die saying I told you so…or maybe my grandkids will die…but does it really matter anymore? The faster our destruction…the more might be saved from ourselves and our stupid greed, irrational overconsumption, ecxessively comfortable “entitled” lifestyles and “solve my energy problems right now” mentality.
Lets sacrifice te majority for the minority with nuclear energy Fran?. Man’s best hope of survival (to have less of us and a few more dead or ill or dying?)?
It might work. Lets just pepper the globe with nuclear energy plants and see who mutates first? Its so utilitarian. It would appeal to a certain mindset. Its so rationally efficient its almost beautiful in its purity.
Terje, you still appear to support or at least sympathise with attacks on climate science and scientists. Maybe it’s more a case of not being fully convinced so wait and see (doubt and delay) than outright denial. Or of perhaps thinking the smoke denialism generates indicates a real fire in climate science rather than a problem with those generating that smoke.
Sorry, I just don’t believe you really take climate change seriously; certainly not enough to condemn those who, without any serious science based cause, promote doubt, denial and delay – and worse, deliberately distort and defame to promote that cause. I note that you evade the question of the ethics of making what selected scientists say amongst themselves, however obtained, an issue, rather than the preeminence of results of published science and it’s conclusions. The conclusions haven’t been changed, with or without tree ring proxies. Only public perceptions have changed and in ways that encourage and entrench active opposition to action on climate change. I fail to see that it’s been a positive that will improve our response to this world changing issue.
@Alice
The whole nuclear thing is just a diversion and an exercise in baiting in the Australian context. How it ends up being some kind of bargaining chip in the AGW debate is beyond bizarre. And now Jack Strocchi is adding in multiculturalism as well. Taking the science seriously on AGW is a separate matter from the debate about mitigation strategies and the two really shouldn’t be mixed.
IMHO if the technology can be used safely, economically and effectively to reduce greenhouse gas emissions then those promoting the technology should be able to make their case in comparison to other mitigation strategies, but people whose main bag is promoting nuclear above everything else (including excepting the AGW theory) strike me as high suspect.