I’ve got on top of my backlog of work sufficiently to spend a couple of hours updating my UQ website with lots of journal and newspaper articles for 2005. I’m also planning for an update and redesign of the Risk and Sustainable Management Group site in the near future.
Read and enjoy!
Via Jennifer Marohasy, I found this recycling of the infamous doctored Schneider quote, this time by Frank Furedi who writes in the Times Higher Education Supplement
Appeals to a “greater truth” are also prominent in debates about the environment. It is claimed that problems such as global warming are so important that a campaign of fear is justified. Stephen Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University, justified the distortion of evidence in the following terms: “Because we are not just scientists but human beings… as well… we need to capture the public imagination.” He added that “we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified statements and make little mention of any doubts that we have”.
Schneider’s statement was originally quoted in an article in Discover magazine (not available online as far as I can tell). Reading it in full and in context, it’s an unexceptional statement about the difficulties of dealing with the media and their penchant for oversimplication and overdramatisation. However, the history of the quote, and its use by anti-environmentalists is fascinating and, in many ways, a demonstration of Schneider’s point.
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Joanne Jacobs points to this emergency evacuation of Brisbane public transport apparently in response to an anonymous terrorist threat, which appears to have been a false alarm. She notes the way the story evolves in successive news editions.
Dean Parham of the Productivity Commission has written to the Fin to criticise my piece on the (productivity) surge we didn’t have. His letter, with some responses, is over the fold.
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Having gained unchallenged control of Parliament John Howard is displaying the same kind of arrogance that helped to doom Paul Keating after 1993. The huge expenditure on IR ads is one example, as is the general tendency to ram legislation through with no significant scrutiny or debate.
An even more striking instance was on display in Brisbane over the weekend. Howard has long been under pressure to upgrade the Ipswich Motorway, and has now decided that only a partial upgrade will be offered. Nothing surprising in that, and there may be a defensible rationale, though none was offered.
What is surprising is that Howard decided to make the announcement in Brisbane at the Liberal party state conference, with no advance warning for the local Libs, who are, not surprisingly furious. Then, when the Liberal Lord Mayor of Brisbane protested, he apparently got a threatening dressing down from one of Howard’s minders. These stories dominated the local TV news over the weekend.
I can only assume Howard believed that he could pull the local Libs into line in supporting his views, and ignore the inevitable attacks from the State government. If so, he appears to have miscalculated.
I’m surprised by this. Howard warned his colleagues against this kind of thing after the 2004 election victory, but he doesn’t seem to have learned his own lesson.
It’s time, once again for the Monday Message Board. As usual, civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.
With Americans increasingly convinced that the Bush Administration lied to sell the war in Iraq, Bush and his defenders are pushing an idea that’s been refuted quite a few times before, but obviously needs another go. This is the claim that “everyone believed that Saddam had WMD’s”. Hence, it’s argued, even if the Administration misread the evidence, this was an honest mistake, shared by others. The argument is bolstered by citations from the Clinton Administration, Democrats who supported the war and claims about the concurrence of the French and other intelligence services.
For this argument to hold up, it’s obviously necessary that people believed in Saddam’s weapons independently of what they were told by Bush and Blair. After all, the whole point of the criticism is that the Administration’s lies led people to support the war.
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Weekend Reflections is on again, a little late this weekend. Please comment on any topic of interest (civilised discussion and no coarse language, please). Feel free to put in contributions more lengthy than for the Monday Message Board or standard comments.
The two minutes of silence at 11 o’clock was a good time for reflecting both on the bravery and sacrifice of those who have died on war and on the futility and evil of war.
Those who died and all those who endured the horror of war should never be forgotten, both for the fate they suffered and the bravery with which they faced it.
November 11 marks the armistice that brought a temporary end to the first Great War in Europe, a war fought over trivial rivalries between empires that were either destroyed or mortally wounded in the process. The Great War bequeathed us Nazism and Communism, and set the scene for most of the terrible wars that plagued the 20th century. The War was a terrible crime, which carried within it the seeds of even greater crimes. All those who helped to cause and promote it, including the rulers and governments of the time (with a tiny handful of brave exceptions), deserve eternal condemnation.
See also this fine piece at Making Light
The other big November 11 remembrance is the sacking of the Whitlam government 30 years ago. Larvatus Prodeo has a string of great posts about the dismissal, plus links.
The record US trade deficit of $66 billion naturally raises the question “How long can this go on?”, and not in a rhetorical sense. To be more precise, the question is “How long before the US trade deficit starts declining” and my best estimate is “No more than two years”.
The reasoning is simple. Given two more years of growth in the deficit, the annual current account deficit will be around 1 trillion dollars (about 8 per cent of GDP) and accumulated net debt will be pushing 40 per cent of GDP[1]. At this point, the effects of compound interest start to bite, as interest on the accumulated debt adds to the income deficit. If trade deficits continue to grow, or even remain stable, the current account deficit explodes. This can’t continue.
If a trend can’t continue, it won’t. Therefore the US trade deficit must begin to decline, and soon. Flow-on effects to Australia are likely.
To be continued …
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John Quiggin 