Despatches from the Department of the Bleeding Obvious

The University of East Anglia broke the law. Everybody knew it, and now the obvious has a redundant seal of approval. By not answering Freedom of Information requests, the UEA contravened the FOI act and could have been prosecuted. Since the cover-up was exposed only a few months ago and no complaint was officially lodged, everything is now under a statute of limitations.

Lesson to everyone: if you want it, you have to pester. If pestering doesn't work, get an official paper trail going. My Russian experience teaches that a stamped paper speaks for a thousand words. It could have meant jail bars for a few UEA bigwigs.

To add insult to injury hardly anyone has lost their job, their reputation, their grants or their zealous self-righteous arrogance. The mere deletion of raw data is grounds for invalidating a thesis; why can't the same stringency be applied to policy-forming documents?

Maldives save up for the future

The newly-elected President of the Maldives has announced that part of the country's tourism revenues will be saved up for buying up land somewhere else in case the ocean floods the sandy cays that make up the archipelago. Properly administered, this savings account might turn out to be a great investment, but not for the reasons its founders envision.

Since global warming and oceans rising have something in common with the Armageddon, Nessie, the Yeti and Elvis being alive Maldivians will find themselves in a few years time with either a massive gold pot or some potentially profitable developed land.

The Maldives will NOT be flooded. It would be a giant pity for the whole world (the islands are GORGEOUS). The new President is pragmatic enough to realize that Maldivians abandoning inter-island air transport for fighting climate change will do next to nothing for their islands, except probably annoy tourists facing long rocky transfers. Nevertheless, it is always good to save up for a rainy day. With the current economic downturn comparisons to the islands' monsoon season are more than appropriate.

Why economics is the answer

And why Stephane Dion should consider a similar approach to priority-making.

The Copenhagen Consensus, far from jumping on bandwagons and joining senseless scaremongering tactics, groups several prominent economists in order to determine global priorities. The peculiarity of this exercise is the focus on the economics of intervention, rather than other considerations. Cost-benefit analysis may sound insensitive, but it does yield a very commonsensical priority list. They're back, for CC2008.

The outcome of the 2004 Copenhagen Consensus can be found here. This year's topics are Disease, Water & Sanitation, Education, Women & Development, Global Warming, Air Pollution, Malnutrition, Trade Barriers, Conflicts and Terrorism. You can make your own ranking on the Times website.

What's so special about the Copenhagen Consensus? Its 2004 ranking sent the Kyoto accord rock bottom in the priority list, dismissing current climate change strategies as too costly for no benefit, whereas tackling diseases, malnutrition and trade barriers monopolized the top five. It is a politically unbiased recommendation for enhancing development while minimizing the costs associated with it. Rather than feeding dreams and delusions, the Consensus crunches numbers, which are less opinable than the IPCC's scaremongering.

The Times presents some of the criticism aimed at the Consensus:

Further criticism has been directed at the merit of considering these issues purely in terms of cost and benefit. Factors such as social justice, ecological stewardship and political acceptability are also important, but are exceptionally difficult to price.

These factors are also highly irrelevant. The best social justice is not dying of an avoidable disease and having food on your table, not being arrested for no reason and being free from the threat of conflict. Political acceptability, instead, relies on appeasing lobbies which currently set public policy, such as the farm subsidy and CAP lobby. Money speaks louder than politics, thus cold hard data from the Copenhagen Consensus is more likely to ring the right bells in the heads of policymakers than half-baked political arguments that stand no chance against the lobby powers.

Dion should get a bunch of Canadian economists together and let them set his priorities. Maybe then he wouldn't be committing the Carbon Tax political suicide.

Further reading:

http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com

A carbon tax alternative that smells

Edmonton Journal (via Canada.com) posts a proposal that would allow the government to hit non-efficient use of fuel without necessarily imposing a carbon tax. I happen to agree with the author that setting a low limit on the price of fuel and offsetting the artificial imbalance by cutting other taxes would definitely avoid the stalls in efficiency developments we saw during earlier fuel price hikes.

It still remains, however, a government meddling. Minimum prices are first and foremost against consumers. Good intentions regarding the environment do not justify imposing a system of values upon the defenceless citizen who has to fill up at the pump. Coming from Italy where certain goods have a government-imposed minimum price I fume at such aberrations being exported elsewhere. Expensive fuel encourages user efficiency, while cheap fuel should encourage efficient extraction. With environmental legislation as it is, cutting corners by polluting more to produce gas cheaper isn't an option anymore.

Where does this leave us? A carbon tax is a con which will further endanger the economy. A minimum fuel price, however, will have subtler effects causing the same damage. If the price of fuel never comes down this piece of legislation would be useless (a Liberal specialty). Set the limit too high and the tax cuts in other areas to balance the grab would divert all government money towards compensating Canadians being defrauded at the pump. If the Liberals dare impose such a threshold their pet boondoggles would be starved of tax dollars.

Where does this leave Stephane Dion? In a bind. Persisting in carbon tax advocacy is political suicide, while pulling the plug on the policy will further portray him as a feeble leader. Switching to a minimum price, however, will only make matters worse, for high minimum prices will starve the government of money (or the consumers) and low minimums will be so useless hiding the policy failure would be a challenging task.

When the blame hunt goes too far

This would be funny if it wasn't sad: blame the world's problems on fat people. Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have suggested that obese people are to partly blame both for the global food crisis and global warming, because they need more calories (thus requiring more food) and because they are more likely to use transport, thus causing emissions through private car use or by placing an additional strain on public transportation systems.

I have the highest respect for LSHTM, and some of my friends hold degrees from that respectable institution. However this demonstrates that either their recruitment standards have hit rock bottom or economics and climate aren't their cup of tea.

The association between higher calorie consumption and reduced food supply to the world's poor is as far-fetched as linking global warming to pirates. Taking certain parts of the southern US as a case study, high rates of obesity are caused mainly by high fat content due to frying everything fryable, a legacy of poor food supply that required addition of calories in order to ensure survival. The food "crisis" is due to rising prices of staples such as rice and wheat, not frying oil. Claim dismissed.

Moreover, the influence of agriculture on rising fuel costs is certainly not due to obese people eating unhealthily, as most of the unhealthy diet is processed food rather than crops. If we compare increased agricultural fuel demand to the increased demand in China and India in general, the contribution of increased agricultural production (if any) is negligible. Costs of fuel used to feed obese people are NOT causing higher food prices for the world's poor. Claim dismissed.

The next claim, that obese people cause greater strain on transportation systems, is just as miscalculated as the previous one. Although morbidly obese people might place higher strains on small private cars but not SUVs, the additional weight of several obese people on a BUS is negligible in proportion to the total weight of the bus itself and its average-weighing passengers. If we got obese people off public transport the total carbon savings wouldn't justify such discrimination. Claim dismissed.

Obese people place a strain on healthcare systems, that's the problem. The LSHTM should focus more on helping the world by aiding the fight against diseases such as malaria, cholera, dengue and other ailments that afflict the world's poor.

More climate scaremongering

A report by Reuters environment correspondent Deborah Zabarenko, taken on by the Globe and Mail today, cites a "vast global study" matched in proportion only by its falsity.

"When you look at all of the glaciers and all of the snowpack and all of the birds laying eggs earlier and all of the plants having spring earlier across a continent, then we see we can detect anthropogenic signals," said Cynthia Rosenzweig of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

I don't see it. Weather is warmer (maybe). So the local flora and fauna adapt, in order to exploit the favorable conditions. Nothing anthropogenic so far. Among the quoted changes due to global warming we find the following:

-- SOUTH AMERICA: Glacier wastage in Peru; melting Patagonia ice fields contributing to sea-level rise.

If all of Patagonia melted down the combined sea level rise would be negligible. If the whole of Antarctica did, that'd be a problem. The report merely uses notions we have been pre-programmed to be alarmed by to convey a very weak argument.

Climate is changing, we don't know for sure why. Scaring us with weak or inexistent correlations is not contributing to reducing the so-called global warming. Hiding this weakness under veils of vastity, inclusiveness, data pool breadth and confusing language (read the quotes in the report, they're insane) does the cause of climatologist advocacy no good.

Is Al Gore drooling now?

I like John McCain. However his latest courting of environmentally-concerned voters is a little too much territory conceded to the scaremongers. (Reuters)

In remarks he prepared to give at a wind technology firm in Portland, Oregon, on Monday, the Arizona senator said he would seek international accords to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and would offer an incentive system to make businesses in the United States cleaner.

"The facts of global warming demand our urgent attention, especially in Washington," McCain said in remarks he planned to give at the Vestas Wind Technology plant.

"Good stewardship, prudence, and simple common sense demand that we act to meet the challenge, and act quickly," he added.

Thinking of cutting worldwide greenhouse gas emissions is delusional, and McCain shouldn't feed the delusions of people duped by Al Gore who are generally trying to find answers to questions they can no longer ignore. Advocating clean technology is a sound policy without the "global warming" and "worldwide challenge" bells and whistles. The Cap and Trade system he proposes is workable, nuclear energy works just fine and no international accord can stop China's or India's emissions, if anything because they have the world's two vastest populations to spare on the altar of tiger growth.

Don't get carried away with the appealing to America-loving Democrats.

Let's all move to Greenland

Terrific Timesonline article on the road Greenland has embarked on. Secession from Denmark is now a prospect, but not only is this the most commonsensical secession I've ever contemplated, but Greenland would be shielded from some of the hottest enviro-fascist arguments we are peddled everyday.

The plan, which has been drawn up by a committee of politicians from Denmark and Greenland, envisages the phasing out of subsidies from Copenhagen as the huge island makes increasing use of its rich mineral and oil resources under a thick layer of ice.

Under the terms of the plan the country would eventually keep all the revenue from mineral and oil exploitation. To begin with the islanders will be allowed the first €10 million earned each year from the country’s resources. When it starts to earn more than that – if and when multinational energy companies invest – the Danish subsidies will be capped. By the time Greenland earns €800 million a year, the money from Denmark will stop. There would then be no obstacle to independence.

Doesn't this sound like one of the most enlightened independence paths ever? No animosity, no rampant blind nationalism, no nonsense. Just nplain economics and development. The two parties cannot agree on some key policy aspects, e.g. seal hunting, therefore it's best if they began to part ways.

Not only Greenland is a good experiment in commonsensical nation-building, but the new-born nation may be quite exciting to live in.

when Greenland makes the final break it will rank as one of the most politically incorrect states in the international community.

Whalemeat figures large in its traditional cooking and its hunters enthusiastically track down some of the cud-dliest animals on the planet, including polar bears, seals and walruses. Even the seats of the lounge at Nuuk airport are covered in seal skin.

As for global warming, Greenlanders cannot get enough of it. [...] “It will improve fishing and above all make it easier to drill for oil and gas. The US geological survey calculates that the greatest unused oil reserves on Earth are in the Greenland waters – and they are in the east, where the ice is melting fastest.”

A nation that drills holes in its own sea to exploit its natural resources, agrees to phasing out government subsidies, hunts whatever it wants to hunt and actually likes the idea of ice melting?
I Love It!

The tough life of a skeptic

The Heartland Institute sent an educational package to over 200 Canadian schools, with material detailing the other side of the global warming debate. Without delving into an analysis of the content (because I haven't seen it), the words of a school teacher, interviewed by the Gazzette, kind of upset me:

"It took me a while to figure out what they were up to," said Eric Betteridge, who teaches at Hillcrest High School in Ottawa.

"I would be concerned because it was well written, and if somebody hadn't been aware of what the general consensus is among climatologists about global warming, you would begin to think, 'Wow, somebody's giving me the wrong story here.' "

Being afraid of losing people's minds unless they had been exposed to your arguments first is an unequivocal sign of weakness. Furthermore, the reference to consensus among climatologists (add an -ology to anything these days and you've got a PhD in it) is eery. Basically students in schools are expected to conform to a consensus of fallible mortal beings just because it's a consensus.

Global warming IS the wrong story. If the world's getting hotter, why does it snow in Baghdad? If this consensus tyranny wasn't enough, the Heartland Institute actually provides the letters schoolkids were encouraged to send to them by their teacher. They make a disturbing read indeed. Heartland's comment is simple:

Particularly troubling about the students’ letters, in light of the principles outlined in the official Science Framework for California Public Schools, Kindergarten through Grade Twelve, by the California State Board of Education (2004), is the children’s utter certainty that they know everything there is to know about global warming, that there is nothing left to learn.

One wrote, “We’ve read article about global warming. And we know all the facts.”

Another said:

“Natural disasters have quadrupled in 20 years, 53 bird species face extinction, World must fix climate in 10 years, Air pollution shrinks fetus size. THIS IS CAUSED BY GLOBAL WARMING!!!”

'Nuf said!