For the last decade or so, the Brisbane Institute has played a prominent and constructive role in the intellectual life of this city. I’ve attended, and sometimes spoken at, quite a few of its functions. But I just got the news that the Institute is presenting a piece billed as an attack on Al Gore and presented by Jay Lehr of the US based Heartland Institute.

Even judged against the low bar set by climate delusionists in general, the Heartland Institute is a disgrace. Its most notable achievement was the publication of a list purporting to be of scientists whose work contradicted mainstream climate science. Such lists, common in the delusionists attempts to deny that they are pushing fringe science, usually contain large numbers of name with few or no relevant qualifications. The Heartland list was different. It contained the names of lots of genuine scientists, but misrepresented their position. Even when scientists protested against this misrepresentation, Heartland refused to take their names off the list on the basis that they (a bunch of rightwing hacks with no qualifications whatsoever) were better placed to interpret the results of scientific research than were the authors of that research.

The Heartland Institute has no legitimate place in public life and anyone who works for or with it brands themselves as a charlatan. It is to be hoped that the Brisbane Institute’s decision to promote Heartland’s lies is the result of a negligent failure to check on the credibility of their speakers rather than a decision to legitimise this body. Still, I suspect it will be a while before I am willing to work any more with them.

(Hat tip: Mike Smith)

That’s the title of my Fin piece on Thursday (over the fold). As happens more or less routinely, it attracted a letter from Des Moore, formerly prominent as a Treasury official, then a rightwing economist, and now a climate science delusionist. Strikingly, and like most advocates of inaction, Moore doesn’t bother to debate the economics, where he would at least have some credibility as a commentator, if not much of a case. Instead, he recycles a bunch of the usual delusionist talking points.

It goes without saying that Moore has no qualifications relevant to climate science (I don’t either, but then I don’t set myself up as being able to refute the experts). What’s even more striking is that he, like so many delusionists, seems to be totally ignorant of basic statistical principles, and even to have forgotten stuff he must have been at least vaguely aware of in his former career as an economist. What else can be said about his repetition of the claim that “global warming stopped in 1998”? Every economist knows that you can’t measure trends properly without taking account of cyclical fluctuations about those trends. The worst thing you can do is take a peak to trough measurement.

As delusionists were very keen to point out at the time, 1998 was an extreme El Nino year, when temperatures rose well above the long-run (increasing) trend. Fortunately, we haven’t had such an extreme since then, and 2008 saw a fairly strong La Nina, which provides Moore and others with their talking point.

But eyeballing the data shows the obvious trend,

and anyone with a simple regression function on their spreadsheet can confirm it.

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Via Paul Krugman and the Financial Times news that the World Trade Organization has indicated that it will endorse border taxes on imports from countries that don’t participate in an international agreement to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

That means the end of the free rider problem. Provided the big players (US, EU and China) sign up to an agreement, any country that chooses to hold out will be committing economic suicide. And, in the initial bargaining between the developed countries and China, the pressure on China to reach an agreement has been greatly increased.

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The Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act bill, establishing an emissions trading scheme for the US, has been passed by the US House of Representatives. The vote was close, and depended on the last vestiges of bipartisanship, with the 219-212 majority depending on 8 Republicans willing to save the planet (44 Democrats voted against, a few because they thought the bill was too weak). Since good actions by Republicans are so rare nowadays, I’ll salute all eight, as listed here Bono Mack (Calif), Castle (Del.), LoBiondo (NJ), McHugh (NY), Reichert (Wash.), Smith (NJ), Lance (NJ), Kirk (Ill.). My guess is that the narrowness of the majority is a little misleading. In cases like this, the Administration cuts enough deals to get a majority, but usually has a few votes in reserve.

I have no idea how things will go in the Senate, but I’m feeling optimistic that the bill will pass in the end. The Lieberman-Warner bill got 48 votes in 2008 (including 7 Reps) and the Senate is a lot better now than it was then.

Of course, this good news has the implication that Australia could be left at the back of the pack, among the last developed countries to sign on to emissions trading. That’s the price of having a delusional and disfunctional opposition, and of the Labor backroom deals that managed to give Steven Fielding the balance of power in the Senate.

Last night I had the pleasure of speaking at the Brisbane launch of Ben McNeil’s The Clean Industrial Revolution

, held at the Red Sea Gallery in Fortitude Valley. It’s rare to find a book I agree with so thoroughly. Ben gets the economic balance just right: stabilising the global climate means a lot more than turning off light bulbs and having shorter showers, but it doesn’t mean we can’t have steadily increasing prosperity in poor countries as well as those that are already rich. But, ignoring the way the world is going, and trying to hang on to a coal-based economy will mean missing out on those opportunities, unless we can find a way to turn the rhetoric of clean coal (that is, carbon capture and sequestration into a reality). Like me, Ben is agnostic on the prospects for CCS, and concerned that it seems to used more as a basis for wishful thinking about avoiding change than about a serious commitment to develop and implement a workable solution if one can be found. Finally, the book gets it right on the role of markets: without markets and a proper price for carbon nothing will be achieved, but we need to do a lot more than set a price and leave the market to work. If you only buy one book on climate change, this should be it.

Eastern Promises download

I’ll be talking on Climate Change in a Changing Economy: The Risks and Rewards for the New Farm Neighbourhood Centre ‘Politics in the Pub’ on Tuesday 2nd June 7-9pm, at the Brisbane Powerhouse, New Farm.

More here

• Two for the Money the movie F/X2 full movie

At this point in the debate over climate change, I doubt that any standard process of argument (reference to scientific research, analysis of data, refutation on Internet-derived talking points and so on) is likely to shift the views of those who accept some version of the anti-science position on this topic. Certainly, I don’t intend to try any further.

But, it seems useful for a number of reasons to try to understand why people take and hold such positions. In some cases, it may be that, where rational debate on the scientific merits has failed, some other mode of argument or persuasion might work. More generally, in any political process, it’s useful to understand the opposition.

Here’s a first attempt at a taxonomy, which I started in this Tim Lambert thread

. Looking at those who have either propounded or accepted anti-science views on this topic, nearly all appear to fit into one or more of the following categories

* Tribalists
* Ideologists
* Hacks
* Irresponsible contrarian
* Emeritus disease

Update John Mashey has a related taxonomy here

Further update The discussion has convinced me that I need to add a further category, that of irresponsible contrarian. I’d previously applied this to Richard Lindzen, see below, so it was a mistake not to have this category.

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Thanks to the rain that is still falling heavily, the water stored in Brisbane’s dams has now reached 60 per cent of their capacity. That was to have been the trigger for a relaxation of the (very stringent) water restrictions now in place, but the Water Commission has now decided* that regardless of how much water there is, the restrictions will remain until December.

This strikes me as a very foolish decision. The restrictions are socially very costly, and the risks associated with their removal very small. The construction of the water grid and the existence of a recycling plant (to be used if supplies fall below 40 per cent), combined with a sustained reduction in use, mean that the risk of a sharp decline in availability is small, and the restrictions could always be reimposed if necessary.

On the other hand, there is a significant risk that the water we are saving will end up being released to flow out to sea. The only dam in the system with any significant capacity remaining is Wivenhoe, which was built for flood control. Once it reaches 70 per cent capacity or thereabouts (that would correspond to about 80 per cent for the system as a whole) the operators will have to open the gates. More rain like we are seeing now, combined with an early and heavy wet season, would see this level reached by December or even earlier.

I’m not sure if this decision is related to the restructuring of the water industry, which has been modelled on the approach used for electricity. The electricity reforms have scarcely been an unqualified success and water is a very different commodity, so I’m dubious about the merits of this idea, which looks like a stalking horse for privatisation. Or maybe (though again I can’t see the rationale) the restrictions are being maintained to ensure that the Traveston Dam project isn’t derailed. The only other explanation for the decision is hair-shirt bloody-mindedness, which is plausible enough I suppose. I can’t really connect these dots.

*Elizabeth Nosworthy, identified with the promised relaxation, has been given the boot as Water Commisssioner.