Among the scientists taking a public position sceptical of global warming, Richard Lindzen has always seemed the most credible. Unlike nearly all “sceptics”, he’s a real climate scientist who has done significant research on climate change, and, also unlike most of them, there’s no* evidence that he has a partisan or financial axe to grind. His view that the evidence on climate change is insufficient to include that the observed increase in temperature is due to human activity therefore seems like one that should be taken seriously.

Or it would do if it were not for a 2001 Newsweek interview (no good link available, but Google a sentence or two and you can find it) What’s interesting here is not the (now somewhat out of date) statement of Lindzen’s views on climate change, but the following paragraph

Lindzen clearly relishes the role of naysayer. He’ll even expound on how weakly lung cancer is linked to cigarette smoking. He speaks in full, impeccably logical paragraphs, and he punctuates his measured cadences with thoughtful drags on a cigarette.

Anyone who could draw this conclusion in the light of the evidence, and act on it as Lindzen has done, is clearly useless as a source of advice on any issue involving the analysis of statistical evidence.

Lindzen argues that we should be equally sceptical about both climate change and the link between smoking and cancer, but his argument can just as easily be turned around. If you accept Lindzen’s ‘impeccably logical’ view that the two arguments are comparable, you reach the conclusion that the link between human activity and climate change is now so well-established that it makes about as much sense to doubt it as to doubt the relationship between smoking and lung cancer, that is, no sense at all.
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A few weeks ago, I chaired a session at the Water ’06 Conference. Among the speakers there was the Chairman of the National Water Commission, Ken Matthews, who raised a number of claims often made about water issues that would require future community debate and discussion. These included:

1 that recycled water will never be acceptable in Australia for household use
2 that additional urban water supplies should not be sourced through market purchases from irrigators
3 that additional water for the environment should be sourced from the market only after all alternatives have been exhausted
4 that urban water use restrictions introduced during the drought should continue indefinitely into the future
5 that any water not abstracted for consumptive use is necessarily doing good to the environment
6 that uniform water quality and pricing should be maintained across all urban water users including industrial users, and
7 that water and sewerage are natural monopolies and should therefore be provided by governments.

There’s a bit more here (hat tip, David Adamson). Of these, I disagree with 1-4, and broadly agree with 7. Propositions 5 and 6 are too complex for a Yes-No answer.

Update I should add, if it’s not obvious that Matthews means to imply that all of these propositions are both widely accepted and overdue for sceptical scrutiny.

Like Henry George’s theory of land taxation, Peak Oil seems to be one of those ideas, reasonable enough in itself, and modest in scope, that attracts a cult following in which it becomes the answer to all kinds of questions. This piece in Salon gives a tour of some of the wilder fringes (apparently serious people suggesting we are going back to the 13th century for example), and indicates the need for a correction.
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It appears the Cyclone Wati, which had followed the path of Larry won’t hit Australia after all (at least, that’s the best guess at present). But with the shift in the Southern Oscillation from El Nino to La Nina and the long-term effects of global warming starting to become apparent, we can expect more severe cyclones for at least the next few years, and a general increase in the severity of storms and similar events. It’s too late to prevent this happening (though we can mitigate the process over the long term) so we’ll have to adapt.

Today is Malaria Action Day. Coturnix has a bunch of links.

Over at Deltoid, Tim Lambert is holding a malaria appeal for The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. It’s the same deal as those we’ve had here. Tim will match contributions up to $300. Go on over and give what you can.

I’ve been arguing for some time that we won’t have a coherent water policy until governments accept the need to buy water back for the environment. Here’s a good example