While we’re on the subject of climate change, I ran across a statement made by James Lovelock, described as a “celebrated Green guru[1]”, that “only nuclear power can now halt global warming”. The core point is

He now believes recent climatic events have shown the warming of the atmosphere is proceeding even more rapidly than the scientists of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) thought it would, in their last report in 2001.

On that basis, he says, there is simply not enough time for renewable energy, such as wind, wave and solar power – the favoured solution of the Green movement – to take the place of the coal, gas and oil-fired power stations whose waste gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), is causing the atmosphere to warm.

I agree with Lovelock’s analysis up to a point, but there is a big problem that he has overlooked.
Read More »

Like Jon Mandle, I was repulsed by Garrett Hardin’s 1974 article Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor The idea that large sections of humanity were doomed and should be abandoned forthwith was quite popular at the time. The Paddock brothers prominently advocated a policy of “triage”, cutting off aid immediately to countries like India which were, they argued, doomed to starvation in any case. Judging by this 1996 interview, Hardin (who died last year) didn’t change his views much over time.

Having reacted against this piece by Hardin, I was glad to discover that his more famous contribution to the environment debate, the Tragedy of the Commons was, in historical terms, a load of tripe.
Read More »

Update 30/4As this one still seems to be alive, having veered from the Murray to libertarianism to the appropriate mode of address for yours truly, I thought I’d move it back up to the top of the page

The most important representative of party-line science in Australia is the Institute of Public Affairs[1], which models its approach closely on that of rightwing thinktanks in the US[2]. It has promoted critics of scientific research on passive smoking , funded by the tobacco industry, (for an IPA defence of this practice, read here), critics of scientific research on global warming (funded by the fossil fuel industry), and has more generally bagged scientists and research organisations whose research produces commercially inconvenient findings. Targets have included the World Health Organization, the National Health and Medical Research Council and of course, the International Panel on Climate Change, as well as many individual scientists.

The mode is identical to that of Milloy and Tech Central Station. Where the general scientific basis is strong (as in arguments about the safety of GM foods) opponents are assailed as anti-scientific irrationalists. Where it is weak (as in the cases of smoking and global warming) the IPA demands equal time for sceptics, even sceptics who have done no original research and have no relevant qualifications. The strategy is one of selective citation of evidence that supports a predetermined outcome, mixed with protestations of support for open inquiry and the scientific method. As far as I know, the IPA has never found a case where the evidence supports more environmental regulation, or even a continuation of existing regulations.

The latest target of the IPA, and one close to home for me[3], is the sustainable management of the Murray-Darling Basin.
Read More »

I’ve previously observed that it’s now virtually impossible to be an orthodox Republican (or an Australian follower of Republican ideology) and believe in science. To be counted as one of the faithful, it’s necessary to take a party-line view on scientific issues ranging from global warming to epidemiology to evolution. One aspect of this, which I’ve pointed to in the past, is the proliferation of “junk science’ sites, which, while purporting to defend science, act like trial lawyers, selecting (and if necessary distorting) the evidence that supports the party line, while ignoring or libelling any researcher whose findings are politically inconvenient[1].

The eponymous Junk Science site of Stephen Milloy sets the pattern here, but it has largely been eclipsed by Tech Central Station, an Astroturf operation, run by James K. Glassman and featuring such luminaries as David Legates, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas. A pretty good list of other party-line sites can be found by looking at Stephen Milloy’s recommended links, though by some mistake the list of recommendations includes the (entirely reputable) American Meteorological Society [I didn’t check every single recommendation, so there may be other similar cases, but the majority are clearly advocacy sites].
Read More »

The big threat to the worlds environment as a whole is global warming. The best-bet projections prepared by the International Panel on Climate Change suggest that, in the absence of substantial action to mitigate global warming, global temperatures would probably increase by about 1 degree C between now and 2050 and by a further 1 degree C between 2050 and 2100.
Read More »

Via reader Gangle, I came across this Disinfopedia entry, which indicates that three of seven board members of Lomborg’s Environmental Insitute Assessment have resigned in protest at the Copenhagen Consensus conference he is organising. Two others resigned at the same time “to take up other assignments”. The original story is from the Copenhagen Post

Lomborg’s renewed expression of concern with development issues, and belief that they should take priority over responses to global warming, is of interest in view of the fact that the Danish government that set up the Institute, and installed Lomborg as its head (despite his lack of any relevant qualification) has repeatedly cut foreign aid. As a political appointee of the government, Lomborg can be presumed to endorse its policies unless he dissents from them publicly.

Last time I pointed this out, a number of commenters argued that Lomborg could not fairly be accused of hypocrisy, since the Institute was concerned only with environmental issues, and Lomborg could not be expected to agree with the government on issues outside his area of responsibility. I felt that, at the very least, I had failed to make my case convincing, and decided instead to take Lomborg at face value (start here and work back).

It now appears, however, that development and aid issues are within the Institute’s remit, though the departing board members apparently disagreed that they should be. The Copenhagen Post story cites Environmental Minister Hans Christian Schmidt saying “It is regrettable that the board members cannot stay at their posts and work on with the project,” said. “I am surprised as the conference seems to fit in perfectly with the institute’s aims.”

Reader Mike Martin points to an initiative called the Copenhangen Consensus being promoted by The Economist and Bjorn Lomborg’s Environmental Assessment Institute in which nine economists, including four Nobel prizewinners, are supposed to set priorities for global challenges, notably including global warming and sanitation and water. As regular readers will know, one of Lomborg’s favorite arguments is that money spent on mitigating global warming would be better allocated to clean water, a point on which I’ve repeatedly challenged his consistency and sincerity. (Start here and work back).

So who’s on the panel. The list is (with Nobel prizewinners indicated by asterisks)

1. Jagdish Bhagwati
2. Robert Fogel*
3. Bruno Frey
4. James Heckman*
5. Justin Yifu Lin
6. Douglass North*
7. Thomas Schelling
8. Vernon L. Smith*
9. Nancy Stokey

What can we say about this list? The Nobel prizewinners are obviously eminent, but they’re not the names that spring to the front of my mind when I think about a question like setting global priorities for development and the environment. Heckman is a micro-econometrician, Smith is an experimenter, focusing on micro issues, and Fogel and North are economic historians (North’s ideas are relevant to the big-picture issues of growth and development, so he’s a partial exception, but only a partial one).

The problem becomes clearer when I consider the names of those Nobelists who would be obvious candidates, including Kenneth Arrow, Joseph Stiglitz, James Mirrlees, Robert Solow and Amartya Sen. All of these economists have made extensive contributions to the theory of economic growth and development, and all have been keenly interested in environmental issues. Unfortunately for Lomborg, though, all except Mirrlees[1] are strong supporters of action to mitigate global warming. Having looked at the absentees, I look back at the list of inclusions and note that the one thing they have in common is that they are all generally regarded as right-wing.

It might be argued that Arrow and the others, having already expressed a viewpoint, have been excluded for that reason. But Schelling and Bhagwati have been equally active in the debate, Schelling arguing that global warming is not a big problem and Bhagwati on the free-trade side of the trade and environment debate.

Of the remaining panellists, Frey is a public choice theorists whose views are consistent with those I’ve mentioned above. I’ve only seen one paper by Lin (on reform in China) but that also seemed consistent. I’ve only ever read technical papers by Stokey (very good ones, I should say) so I can’t comment on her views.

All things considered, I will be very surprised if this panel comes up with the conclusion that mitigating global warming should be a high priority for the world.

Update: As several commentators have noted, we have yet to see what conclusion the panel reaches. If, contrary to my expectation, the panel correctly concludes that a global emissions trading system for greenhouse gases would both contribute to the mitigation of global warming and, by transferring tens of billions of dollars to poor countries, facilitate meeting the other challenges, I’ll happily, if a bit shamefacedly, take back everything I’ve said in criticism of Lomborg.

fn1. Mirrlees was very critical of the Club of Rome as I recall, and this might lead to the supposition that he would support Lomborg’s viewpoint. But it was pretty hard for an economist not to be criticial of the Club of Rome. Perhaps readers can advise if Mirrlees has taken a public position on the issue of global warming.

This NYT story shows the similarity between Australia’s water problems and those of the Western US. There as here, rights originally allocated to irrigators for little or nothing are being bought back at substantially higher values.

The San Diego district will pay market prices for the water, or about $258 per acre-foot at the outset. The farmers typically pay only delivery fees for their water, which amount to $15 or $20 per acre-foot.

If my arithmetic is correct, the market price quoted here is about $A300/ML while the farm delivery price is around $A20/ML. An acre-foot (enough to put a foot of water on an acre of land) is about 1.2 ML (a megalitre enough to put 10cm of water on a hectare of land) and in purchasing-power-parity terms, an Australian dollar is worth about $US0.70 which, coincidentally, is close to the current market exchange rate.