Despite my expectations of a bit more free time, I’ve been scrambling all week, and much of my blogging time has been spent dealing with comment spam and similar nuisances. So, although I noticed Tim Dunlop hadn’t posted for a while, I didn’t get around to emailing him, and I also didn’t tour Ozplogistan as I do when I have free time. Imagine my surprise when I found out he’s spent the week at Tim Blair’s. I’ll be interested to read the comments threads, again when I get time. Meanwhile, Tim D is back on air and blogging up a storm.
Two in one
Today is a bit of a red letter day for me as the late email brought in my second journal article acceptance for the day: the first time I’ve managed this, I think, though I’ve had three rejections in the same day before now. So no more work for me; it’s time to uncork the Hentschke’s Hensckes!Henschke’s
Weekend reflections
This regular feature is back again. The idea is that, over the weekend, you should post your thoughts in a more leisurely fashion than in ordinary comments or the Monday Message Board.
Please post your thoughts on any topic, at whatever length seems appropriate to you. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.
Amity and co-operation
Like others, I suspect, I’ve been puzzled by the Howard government’s unwillingness to sign the apparently obligation-free treaty of amity and co-operation with our Asian neighbours. Rex Ringschott points to a possible explanation.
Manifestation
Assuming there are no car crashes or political scandals in the next couple of hours, Brisbane-based readers might catch a glimpse of me on the Channel Ten news at 5:00pm, talking about oil prices. Nothing you haven’t already read here on the blog, of course.
A request for help
In the discussion over Michael Duffy’s SMH article, we had a lot of trouble with a survey supposedly showing that 25 per cent of climate scientists doubted the reality of anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change. We’ve tracked the survey downhere and it appears that the relevant question is number 40
Climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes.
Respondents have to answer on a 7 point Likert scale from Strongly agree to Stongly disagree
Tim Lambert observes that this was an online survey, which may raise doubts about the sample frame, though it appears that Dennis Bray, who ran the survey, tried to keep participation limited to those in the study population.
Brian Bahnisch comments
To me the question is too open-ended. Surely any rational, logical scientist would see that “climate change� has been going on a lot longer than we have been walking upright.
It is also possible to think that anthropogenic causes are less than natural ones, but still a significant, indeed critical, influence.
How does he count the fence-sitters who marked “4�?
and I share these concerns.
Anyway, the immediate problem is that Bray has set up some fancy code to display the survey results and neither Brian or I can make it work. It appears to be set for either Mozilla or Windows IE. Can anyone find the results and advise me.
Update Thanks to TIm Lambert, who has located what appear to be the results to Question 40 here The number giving “Disagree” responses (29 per cent) roughly matches the 25 per cent cited by Duffy, who was apparently relying on a second-hand and not very reliable source. But, as we’ve seen the description of the question given by Duffy was incorrect, as was the date of the survey and the description of the sample population, not to mention the characterisation of the thinktank where the results were presented.
There’s obviously a big difference between “the modest warming of the past 150 years is due to human activity” (Duffy’s description) and “Climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes” (Bray’s actual question) and neither represents the IPCC position, which is that at least some of the warming observed over the last 50 years is anthropogenic and that, under current policies, this warming will continue. For appropriate time scales (say, as short as an El Nino cycle or longer than 1000 years) it seems pretty clear that natural causes are dominant, so it’s perfectly reasonable to disagree with, or give a “Can’t answer” response to Bray’s question, while agreeing with the IPCC view.
A couple of thoughts on oil
he price of oil is stlll around $50, and there’s no reason to expect it to fall in a hurry. In particular, if China revalues the renminbi yuan, as is commonly expected, there will be a corresponding fall in the effective price of oil, both for suppliers and for consumers in China and other countries that revalue, for any given $US price. This probably doesn’t matter much on the supply side – everyone is pumping as hard as they can and will probably keep doing so. But China’s demand is probably quite price sensitive, and a reduction in the price could keep demand higher, even in the face of a slowdown in exports to the US.
The other thought that occurred to me relates to climate change. Although there are a variety of ways in which we could mitigate climate change, the simplest would be to double the price of carbon-based fuels. This would certainly reduce demand significantly in the long run (I’ll try and update this with some estimates soon). On the other hand, there’s a lot of concern about the short-run macroeconomic impacts of such an increase.
Well we’ve seen a doubling of oil prices, and substantial increases in coal and gas prices over the past few years, and any macroeconomic impact is undetectable amid the general noise. The cases aren’t perfectly comparable of course, notably
* the rising price has been driven by increased demand, not imposed exogenously
* the effect of rising market prices is to redistribute income to oil-producing countries, and increase trade deficits. This effect wouldn’t arise with carbon taxes and would be much smaller with tradeable permits
Still, the evidence is against the idea that higher energy prices would bring the economy to a grinding halt. Rather, the response so far seems to be a textbook case of orderly adjustment, as people gradually shift away from gas-guzzling vehicles, look again at energy saving options and so on. So far the response has been small, but over time (if supply declines and prices stay high) more substantial responses can be expected.
GW Bingo
Tim Lambert introduces Global Warming Sceptic Bingo. List the discredited arguments put forward by any given sceptic/contrarian/denialist. When you get four in a row, you win. Allow me to suggest another column for Tim’s card with the following entries (refutations of claims are indicated by #)
Uses bogus Schneider quote #
Claims IPCC projections are way off because of incorrect exchange rate conversions #
Claims Kyoto will be economically ruinous #
Relies on Copenhagen Consensus #
15 years of TidBITS
Macintosh fans will want to read this 15-year retrospective from Adam Engst who’s the leading figure behind on of the longest-running online publications in existence, Mac newsletter TidBITS
I bought one of the first 128K Macs in 1984, and like Adam, I’ve bought 20 or so of them in the intervening period, seven or eight of which are alive and in use among my extended family (the oldest, a PowerMac 8500 from 1995 is in use solely as a floppy disk reader, but most of the others are used on a daily basis). I can endorse Adam’s observation that the working life of a Mac, at around seven years, is quite a bit longer than that of the average Windows machine.
The last fifteen years have seen highs and lows for the Mac, but with the massive cash flow from the iPod and the apparent crossover effect on Mac sales, the future looks pretty bright.
Duffy and Carter on Counterpoint (updated)
Michael Duffy has run a second climate change show on Counterpoint, responding to critics of his SMH column and earlier show. His guest was Bob Carter, whom he described in his SMH column as an “environmental scientist”. The ABC site description is “Research Professor of Geology … geologist and environmental scientist, an adjunct research professor at James Cook University, and he specialises in climate change.” which is still an inaccurate description, as you can see here[1]. It would be more accurate to describe Carter as a prominent research geologist with a personal interest in the issue of climate change, and a strongly-held view that Kyoto is a bad idea.
As regards the major issues, I see little evidence to suggest that Carter is any better informed than I am. He claims, presumably relying on the increasingly absurd McKitrick and McIntyre, that “the hockey stick [showing rapidly rising temperatures over the last 100 years] is broken”, and then goes on to recycle long-exploded claims about urban heat islands and satellite data, all of which have been addressed in detail on this blog .
Duffy’s performance on this issue has been disgraceful. If he did the same thing pushing creationism[2] he would surely have been sacked, or at least pressured to put on some real experts.
fn1. A few of the papers listed for Carter are relevant to paleo-climate issues, and he’s well qualified to make the point, as he does in the show, that climate has varied over time. But since that’s not in dispute, it can only be used (as it is by Duffy) as a straw man to attack unnamed critics of his previous shows.
fn2. Fun Factoid: As I’ll argue in a bit more detail later on, the great majority of climate change sceptics, globally speaking, are also creationists – why doesn’t Duffy give them a go on his program?. Feel free to supply your own examples, counterexamples and statistical arguments in the meantime.
