June 02, 2004
Overwhelmed by Spam
I have just deleted 231 spam comments from one post alone. As I cannot figure out how to get MT-Blacklist to work, I have no alternative but to close down the comments sections to prevent the site from crashing out of control.
I shall therefore be going through every post manually closing comments over the next few days/ weeks (let's be honest). New posts will have comments open as the exception rather than the rule.
I regret this very much, especially as I hope to start posting again regularly soon.
Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen
Bjorn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus met in Denmark in the last week of May. The project described itself as follows:
“The goal of the Copenhagen Consensus project was to set priorities among a series of proposals for confronting ten great global challenges. These challenges, selected from a wider set of issues identified by the United Nations, are: civil conflicts; climate change; communicable diseases; education; financial stability; governance; hunger and malnutrition; migration; trade reform; and water and sanitation.“A panel of economic experts, comprising eight of the world’s most distinguished economists, was invited to consider these issues. The members were Jagdish Bhagwati of Columbia University, Robert Fogel of the University of Chicago (Nobel laureate), Bruno Frey of the University of Zurich, Justin Yifu Lin of Peking University, Douglass North of Washington University in St Louis (Nobel laureate), Thomas Schelling of the University of Maryland, Vernon Smith of George Mason University (Nobel laureate), and Nancy Stokey of the University of Chicago.”
The project ranked four projects as representing very good value for money. They were: new programs to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS; reducing the prevalence of iron-deficiency anemia by means of food supplements; multilateral and unilateral of tariffs and non-tariff barriers, together with the elimination of agricultural subsidies; and the control and treatment of malaria.
On climate change, the Consensus project considered a paper authored by William R. Cline of the Center for Global Development and Institute for International Economics, which suggested that the benefits of action now on climate change would outweigh the costs by $166 trillion to $94 trillion. However, the only way the paper was able to achieve such a benefit: cost ration was by using an unfeasibly low discount rate for the benefits of 1.5 percent. The panel rejected this economically nonsensical methodology.
In fact the panel ranked all three suggestions for action – an “optimal carbon tax,” a “value-at-risk carbon tax” and the Kyoto protocol as bad investments. The final report summarized:
“The panel looked at three proposals, including the Kyoto Protocol, for dealing with climate change by reducing emissions of carbon. The expert panel regarded all three proposals as having costs that were likely to exceed the benefits. The panel recognized that global warming must be addressed, but agreed that approaches based on too abrupt a shift toward lower emissions of carbon are needlessly expensive. The experts expressed an interest in an alternative, proposed in one of the opponent papers, that envisaged a carbon tax much lower in the first years of implementation than the figures called for in the challenge paper, rising gradually in later years. Such a proposal however was not examined in detail in the presentations put to the panel, and so was not ranked. The panel urged increased funding for research into more affordable carbon-abatement technologies.”
So is this all bad news for climate alarmists? You wouldn't think so if you read the Denver Post:
In addition to oil prices hovering at record levels, some economists say a carbon tax would encourage Americans to curb wasteful energy consumption that contributes to global warming.Three prominent economists appearing here for the global economics conference "Copenhagen Consensus" agreed that the chances of approving a carbon tax during an election year are slim. Consumers would face the tax at the gas pump. ...
A carbon tax would be a more efficient means of addressing problems tied to global warming than many other measures that have won favor on the world stage, according to the economists: William Cline, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics and the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C.; Harvard University professor Robert Mendelsohn; and Stanford University professor Alan Manne.
... While the men agree that a carbon tax would be one financially sound way to fight global warming, they disagree about how high the tax should be.
Quite how this squares with the final report of the consensus project - that three out of the four carbon tax proposals (including Kyoto, a tax in all but name) represent bad value for money, and that the fourth is not developed enough to judge - is beyond me.
May 30, 2004
Clout
A year ago, Lady Drake and I were in South Dakota. On our previous visit to Lady Drake's mother, we'd ended up with a pair of free tickets to anywhere in the lower 48 states, and after some thinking about where we wanted to go on our 2003 trip we decided that instead of doing a short break in a city, we wanted to do something different. So we decided to go and see Mt Rushmore and buffalo. Its a decision that I'm very glad we made, for we had a wonderful time. Since the time of George Armstrong Custer people have been visiting the Black Hills and sending back reports of their overwhelming beauty, and I can only say that they have been right. And South Dakota definitely felt like our kind of place - from the banners in Rapid City Airport welcoming the 28th Bomb Wing back from Iraq, or the fact that the airport shows Fox not CNN, to the free newspaper we picked up in a gas station in Hill City, which contained articles laying into the UN and environmentalists! Plus there was plenty to do - from visiting Mt Rushmore and Crazy Horse mountain or the wonderful Custer state park, to driving back onto the plains and out to the Badlands. No, we can't recommend it enough. If you have the opportunity to go there, do it - you won't regret it.
South Dakota has been in my thoughts again lately because of the imminent special election for the state's lone House seat to be held on Tuesday, and of course the impending Senate clash in the autumn. To those who've not been paying attention, in November 2002 former Republican governor Bill Janklow was elected to the House of Representatives, defeating Democrat Stephanie Herseth. Then, last year Janklow sped through a red light, killing someone. After being convicted of manslaughter and sent to prison, Janklow resigned his seat and Herseth was immediately the favourite to win. The Republicans settled on State Legislator Larry Diedrich to try the uphill struggle to hold the seat. This race has become one of the biggest in the country, with out of state donations pouring in for both campaigns, especially as Herseth's lead has dwindled into single figures.
The thing is, while some might characterise this as a litmus test of public opinion, the campaign has run more like a GOP primary. Herseth claims to oppose partial-birth abortion and support both the Iraq war and the Bush tax cuts. Her campaign has been extremely careful to avoid all references to the national Democratic party (positively avoiding links to John Kerry as these pictures attest) and even to Senate Minority leader Daschle despite his position as de-facto head of the South Dakota Democrats. In short she has campaigned as a conservative Democrat - and that seems to be giving her the edge.
The essence of the Republican campaign has been that Herseth is not telling the truth. After all, she is a Georgetown educated lawyer who lives in DC. It is possible that she really is an old style conservative Democrat despite that, but given where her backing is coming from there's a reasonable chance that she is playing the game of being one thing in South Dakota, and another entirely in DC. Which as a strategy has a lot going for it - since it exactly matches Tom Daschle's m.o.
It will probably be enough. Despite a late surge Diedrich will probably lose, though it should be borne in mind that whoever wins will face the voters again in November.
South Dakota is one of the most Republican states in the country, yet both of its Senators are Democrats, so a Herseth victory would make the entirety of the congressional delegation Democrat, in a state that Bush will take with an enormous majority. That is already the case in North Dakota, where the ghastly Byron Dorgan* will be re-elected because the local GOP are too useless to put up a strong candidate. But there is more to this situation than just the ineptness of the Republicans.
I think a part of it is that the Democrats were until recently what used in the UK to be called "the natural party of government". The Dakotas are highly reliant on agriculture and the facts are that (a) agriculture is heavily reliant on politicians in Washington bringing home the bacon and (b) Democrats are far far better at parliamentary manoevering than Republicans, and therefore tend to be more successful than the GOP at (a), and (c) that as the "governing party" the Democrats have tended to be in a better position to deal out the pork. In a single word, this is what the Daschle campaign calls 'clout' - the commodity he trades off as Minority leader, and which is key to his own re-election bid.
But I think a far bigger part of the success of Herseth, Dorgan and others is this: The public is presented with a conservative Democrat, and that is what the public wants to see. I think there are an awful lot of people, particularly in the red states, who would like to be able to vote Democrat, but who recognise that right now the Democrats are far too close to the John Kerry / Ted Kennedy end of the spectrum for comfort.
I hope that people are wrong and that Stephanie Herseth really is a conservative Democrat, and not just posing as one to get elected. If she does win it will be because of her stance as a Bush Democrat that will have done it. And I think that same factor will probably be the undoing of Tom Daschle - for as leader of the Democrats in the Senate and architect of their obstruction programme he cannot pose as conservative Democrat, the way he did in 1986 when he was first elected.
Of course, undermining his 'clout' would probably help too. Daschle's opponent, former congressman John Thune who lost the 2002 senate race by 500 votes is polling within the margin of error of Daschle and has yet to run an advert. Back in 1986, then chairman of the Senate Agriculture committee, Robert Byrd (D-KKK), let South Dakota voters know he had reserved a place for Daschle should they elect him. Maybe Thad Cochran (R-MS) should return the compliment.
For more on South Dakota, check out these blogs:
* The man whose grandstanding killed the terrorism-futures market study.
May 28, 2004
Handling the truth
I've been pretty busy of late and not had the chance to compose any posts, however Lady Drake has been moved to put pen to paper by the interminable prattling of the usual suspects on the Abu Ghraib affair:
I have recently been thinking about the scene in A Few Good Men, where Tom Cruise says he wants the TRUTH and Jack Nicholson yells back "you can't handle the truth". I was hoping for a Nicholson style outbreak when Rumsfield et al where being questioned by the Senate. I want him to yell it at every pontificating journalist and opinionista. Hell, I want to yell it from the roof tops. The truth is war is a hard, messy, deadly affair. It is not a romantic game of bravery and daring. It is a hard slog, that is trying at the best of times and wrenching and torturous and terrifying most of the time.
The Abu Ghraib Affair, bothers me because it reflects badly on men and women who serve boldly and with honor. Truthfully, I can't summon outrage on behalf of Ba'athist thugs who had a few snapshots taken in "compromising" positions, especially considering that they are prisoners for being card carrrying members and the muscle men of a regime that had rape rooms and gassed its own people. A bit of me thinks they deserve worse - but not at the expense of our reputation and the honor of the uniform. However, if those pictures were not produced for the entertainment of a very few soldiers, but a result of military orders to use as intelligence tools, fine with me. If a naked and humilated thug means saving the lives of a few good men, fine with me. In fact bring it on.
And that is where one's ability to handle the truth really becomes important. I think we should do almost anything to win this war, and to protect ourselves and our interests. And I really do mean almost anything. If we have to invade Saudi and execute every member of the house of Saud and all the clerics it supports to curb the Wahabbi threat, so be it. If we have to be mean and ensure that the worst elements of global society have a nasty, brutish and short life, bring it on. They offer little to the world but misery and pain and if we send them to meet their maker, it is worth my tax money.
If that is our plan, even on a limited scale, and I think"a policy of preemptive force" is pol speak for it, we should be honest about it. It is not in our interest to be nice , it is in our interest to be feared because no matter what we do we will be hated.
I take it as given that there are people who are vile, corrupt, murdering, raping thugs. They can be found in all segments of every society. There are bad guys bent on destruction, evil geniuses, and power mongers, and if we want the world to be a safe place it is our job as superpower to play super hero. Those who can't accept the first can see no justification in the latter. It is easier for the liberal guilt suffering occupants of stylish lofts, executive McMansions, the Hollywood Hills, and red brick university dorms to blame the victim than accept that their world view is wrong. If September 11 is our fault it will be easier to correct, because we are enlightened people who want everyone to love us and each other...
Correcting that is near impossible when the enemy or as they see it "aggrieved parties" don't want to talk, and still really want you to die.
Whilst our "talk it out" culture can have real benefits, there are limits to its usefulness. And if these people could handle the truth they would be the first to admit it.
May 27, 2004
Chettering classes
I did a live chat today for globalwarming.org on the subject of the Kyoto protocol. For the moment, you can access it at Global Warming Live Chat.
May 25, 2004
Attacked by Greenpeace
Nice of them to notice me at last. They have a go at me in their press release, Big screen vs big oil:
Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) dislikes the film almost as much as he dislikes Al Gore. He claims that the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is guilty of bad science when it warns about global warming, and trots out a panel of four "experts" sponsored by the "Cooler Heads Coalition" to prove it. He neglects to mention that the Cooler Heads Coalition was started by his own institute, or that CEI is funded by... no, wait ... surely this is coincidence? ExxonMobil again!Not a word about my arguments, merely an ad hom attack. They can do better than this, surely, unless actually engaging with the objections raised by the - genuine - experts I cite would be devastating to their argument.
Oh. Of course.
BTW, if you need an explanation for this latest posting hiatus, the current media frenzy over the movie and Russia provide it. The tidal wave caused by global warming alarmism has hit me...
Talking of Russia, you can read my take on President Putin's recent announcement here.
May 21, 2004
Hybrid not hardy
Forgot to post my TCS column this week: Rude Awakening for Hybrid Dreamers looks at the reality behind the dream of hybrid-electric cars.
May 19, 2004
I'm in The Guardian again...
In It's a hell of a town, The Guardian quotes my views on The Day After Tomorrow and New York City. Nice of them, even if they made it look like they interviewed me rather than just quoted from an NRO piece...
May 17, 2004
Property rights? Meaningless to New Labour
This story made me seethe openly today. I mean, just read this:
"Property is theft." This phrase came to mind last week when David Kidney, a Labour back-bench MP, popped up on the radio to pronounce that he intended to move an amendment to the Housing Bill now before Parliament to allow the compulsory requisition of empty properties. ...Keith Hill, the housing minister, hinted strongly that when the Bill goes to the House of Lords shortly, he will bring forward a government amendment to enable councils to assume the management of long-term empty and derelict homes without the owners' permission.
Local authorities will be empowered to take over properties left vacant for six months or more if the owners, without good reason, refuse grant offers to repair and rent them. The intention is to tackle the under-supply of homes in both the owner-occupied and rented sectors. Councils would carry out repairs if required and the property would revert to the owner once the cost of any renovation had been recovered.
In related news, the New Labour government will requisition any cooking equipment unused for 6 months. Those mandolins and steamers used only a few times a year will become Government property and will be used to feed the homeless julienned potatoes and spotted dick.
Those who have not enjoyed conjugal relations in a while should start to feel especially nervous.
It's funny because it's true
Roger Pielke Jr has the definitive template for a media climate change story at his well-recommended science policy blog, Prometheus.
Russian Scientists Reject Kyoto
Reuters AlertNet - Russia's top scientists tell Putin to kill Kyoto, reports Reuters. Note that this is an official report from the Russian Academy of Sciences to the President of the Russian Federation. The reports as yet are slim on the scientific details, but it is clear that the scientists do not believe that the Kyoto Protocol will acheive anything meaningful.
We can assume, therefore, that any talk of there being a scientific consensus that Kyoto is necessary for the planet is mere cant. The representative body of Russian science has rejected this energy suppression plan as a means of mitigating climate change.
I wonder whether any mainstream media outlet (ie outside this specialist Reuters wire) will report this?
Cross-posted to The Commons.
Indian upheavals
Given that the Indians have decided to bring back the deeply corrupt and terminally socialist Congress party, maybe the dreaded outsourcing will start to be less of an issue. After all the ousted-BJP was largely responsible for creating the Indian IT miracle by abandoning the uber-protectionist trade policies of old and with yet another Gandhi taking over there seems little hope for further liberalisation any time soon.
May 16, 2004
Pip-pip
It is an article of faith to the Tory isolationists that the one thing the war proves above all is that the Americans don't know how to run a colony. Everything would be so much better if it were handed over to us Brits. It pains me to say that the evidence suggests that the exact opposite might be the case.
It would be one thing if the British Establishment were still filled with old-colonial hands , but since the last sizable patch of dirt to get independence (Zimbabwe) was handed over a quarter-century ago (and in any case it had been in revolt for over a decade before that) they are a bit thin on the ground these days.
No, the outsize and eccentric figures of the Empire have passed into history, and now the establishment is filled with dull corporatist metropolitans. Thus it is that it seems to have been a Briton's influence that has lumbered Iraq with a BBC-on-steroids. Instead of privatising the CPA-backed newspaper, Iraq is to have a 'Public Service Broadcaster' combined with a government run newspaper. Just what they need to set them apart from the rest of the Arab world, eh what old thing?
Lazy Journalism redux
Sky News is of course better and more balanced than the BBC, but I think that just reflects a more professional grade of editorial staff. Sky's journalists are often just as likely to opt for laziness over accuracy.
"George Bush has accused Syria of continuing to occupy Lebanon and pursuing weapons of mass destruction."
What's with this accuse business? Syria does, as a point of fact, "occupy" the Lebanon. The media don't say things like "Mahmoud al-Jihadi today accused the US of occupying Iraq" because there's no dispute that the US and Britain are occupying it, so why the sceptical tone here?
And as for the WMD angle, whatever the controversy surrounding Iraq's weapons programmes, it is also a point of fact that Syria has large stockpiles of Chemical Weapons. There is no dispute over that. Sky will have a subscription to Janes and the author of this piece could have looked it up and confirmed it there. By not bothering to do their job properly they impart a sceptical spin to this story that it does not deserve.
