Let’s just say it, shall we? Environmentalism is incompatible with Capitalism.
The UK’s airline industry, already complaining that no other country has to tolerate an Air Passenger Duty, is desperate to avoid this tax going up.
Curiously the Green Party and the Government have the same line on this: The Airline industry is ‘undertaxed’ (a sure sign they’re about to be squeezed until the pips squeak), and that the taxes better reflect the ‘environmental costs.’
Now unless Whitehall has developed an Economics super computer the size of Australia, I don’t believe for one second they have any clue whatsoever what the ‘environmental costs’ are. Let’s call it what it is – it’s a Sin Tax… one of those ‘Discretionary Purchase Revenue Raising Opportunities’.
The money is not being spent on “Environmental Repairs”. There’s no actual costs imposed on anyone. Nothing to spend money on, nothing to take money for.
I find myself on the side of the airlines:
We are in survival mode… we don’t understand why the UK is still insisting with an air passengers duty that has nothing to do with the environment.
The Green Party disagrees:
But Darren Johnson, from the Green Party, said it was a good thing if people were discouraged from flying.
“We need to be increasing the air passenger duty,” he said. “Aviation is simply not paying its way in terms of the environmental damage it causes.”
You know, let’s start having some numbers. Let’s see exactly what damage is caused by an aeroplane, and let’s work out who’s currently paying for the clean up – and how much they’re spending on it.
Because, really, in any other field, this sort of argument – one that doesn’t make any kind of sense, relying on emotive language and metaphors without any basis in fact or reason – would be brushed aside and crushed as quickly as this kind of bullshit is being accepted.
Environmentalism is starting to feel more and more like a noose tightening around our neck, and I’m getting increasingly concerned by the Green/Red mutual love-in. I don’t know how on earth I reconcile this growing cynicism with membership of the most gung-ho Environmentally friendly mainstream party. I always reasoned that the Lib Dems would never get into power so long as they kept Green issues on their agenda so it wasn’t really anything to worry about – but now Labour’s into the Green thing as a handy revenue raising opportunity and Call Me Dave wants us to ‘Vote Blue to Go Green.’ Another wonderful democratic choice.
Shaun Pilkington said...
13 Jul 09 at 9:46 am
The government wants to restore the 1950s balance where only the *rich* could afford to fly abroad for the sun and the rest had to fester in Blackpool, Bognor and the rest of our grim resort towns. This is simply a case of the governing class seeking to stifle the freedoms of the proles, bathed in a good coat of greenwash.
I mean, all those unwashed drunks have absolutely spoiled Ibiza and the Costa Del Sol, haven’t they?
DavidNcl said...
13 Jul 09 at 10:12 am
“Environmentalism is incompatible with Capitalism.”
Yes. That’s precisly and exactly what it’s about. Environmentalism is the ideology of anti-capitalism or the counter-enlightenment, if you will, quite literally aiming to put the lights out.
Try the review of Bramwell’s Hidden History of Environmentalism here:
How green is your Nazi?
DavidNcl said...
13 Jul 09 at 10:13 am
Hmm, the link went awry somehow
lets just try the literal text of the link
http://www.ecofascism.com/review11.html
wit and wisdom said...
13 Jul 09 at 10:32 am
Environmentalism is in no way the enemy of capitalism. There is a constituency of old lefties who want us to think like this but it simpl;y isn’t true. Rather the enviromental pressures we face to change are the biggest opportunity since someone put a fence round a field in the 18th century and kick started 200 years of growth which transformed the world. Nothing is this zero sum, whatever pundits like our future King (god help us) would have us believe.
Aaron Trevena said...
13 Jul 09 at 10:55 am
I really don’t get this bizarre taxation – it’s not environmental and it penalises travellers on low incomes rather than frequent travellers.
For instance, I’ve flown on A to D rated planes (pollution per mile varying by 100s of %), yet paid the same duty and fees on all of them.
In fact, I suspect this duty is actually environmentally unfriendly – it rewards inefficient airlines that either carry less passengers (at a far higher impact per passenger) or save money by using older planes (that pollute at 2 to 10 times the levels of newer ones).
The only reason newer planes or more efficient is because the price of fuel increased a lot.
If you want to reduce emissions from aviation then you just add a duty to aviation fuel and exempt emergency services and aid groups – fair, simple, actually reduces emissions.
Of course if you’re taxing on emmissions then you need to look at all the shitty old trains, coaches, busses, HGV, ferries, leisure boats and commercial ships and ensure that they all pay a proportional and appropriate duty on fuel (which is of course very tightly linked to emmissions).
I don’t belive the hype on aviation pollution – yes it can cause a noise problem, and yes it’s a noticable chunk of emissions but a non-premium seat on the average plane is less polluting than most cars for the same journey, and is probably comprable to trains or boats.
We can’t reasonably tell people not to travel or not to buy goods, and I don’t think either should be penalised, but I do think it’s reasonable that polluters pay a proportionate tax (even if it’s not ringfence to clean up) as an incentive to reduce their pollution and drive towards cleaner technology (which has proven to work, whenever fuel prices increase).
patently said...
13 Jul 09 at 11:09 am
Environmentalism and Capitalism are perfectly compatible; your own post works towards a capitalist environmentalism by asking who is doing the cleaning and what is the cost of that cleaning.
The sad fact, though, is that environmental and “green” issues generally have been almost entirely captured by the left as an utterly cynical means of raising revenues. By paying an extra tax to Gordon, we achieve all the economic harm but none of the environmental benefit.
Julian H said...
13 Jul 09 at 11:10 am
“Environmentalism is incompatible with Capitalism.”
It doesn’t need to be. Capitalism creates wealth and new technologies which creates more efficient means of production that use up less of our environmental resources. Meanwhile well-defined property rights and the rule of law reduce pollution; notably countries with the worst environmental destruction are those with large governments and a weak (or nonexistant) property rights.
asquith said...
13 Jul 09 at 11:10 am
“I don’t know how on earth I reconcile this growing cynicism with membership of the most gung-ho Environmentally friendly mainstream party”
I think I can figure it out. You’ve joined a mainstream party because you realise an ideologically pure right-wing libertarian party is never going to command any kind of support amongst inhabitants of the real world.
Bloggertarianism prevails on the internet but not anywhere else: witness the online surge of support for Ron Paul, which came to nothing in an actial electoral contest, & I think it’s safe to say your LPUK pals are heading for a good solid kicking in Norwich North.
Despite your occasional bursts of optimism, you know this in your heart of hearts, which is why you’re still here.
Joe Otten said...
13 Jul 09 at 11:15 am
I don’t see why environmental taxes should be spent on “environmental repairs”. Such repairs should have to compete fairly with all other demands on the public purse.
Anyway, Charlotte, I’m not clear quite what your position here is. Is it:
a) that climate change is cobblers
b) that climate change is real, but the cost per unit CO2 is unknown, and therefore cannot be charged for
c) that climate change is real, and even if the cost per unit CO2 were known, it should not be charged for, perhaps because
c.i) pigouvian taxes crowd out moral incentives
c.ii) transport merits counterbalancing pigouvian subsidies
c.iii) all taxes are harmful whether they discourage harmful activity or not, and we won’t see any of the money back in cuts in other taxes
c.iv) harm is irrelevant, unless a specific identifiable property right is infringed, no activity should be interfered with.
d) we are already paying above the pigouvian rate in taxes on air travel, and that charging the pigouvian rate would be justified.
?
Tristan said...
13 Jul 09 at 1:23 pm
Oh dear Charlotte…
As usual this depends.
Capitalism, as the far left tend to mean it is incompatible with environmentalism. Indeed, state capitalism is most responsible for environmental disasters and degradation (not just the massive disasters on a Chernobyl scale, but also things like the extent of the use of the internal combustion engine)
Capitalism as the liberal right tend to mean it, ie free market capitalism, is perfectly compatible with environmentalism and given lack of regulation designed to help industry and other special interests would probably help the environment far more.
The problem is, the green movement is mostly rooted in neo-malthusian anti-humanism. Its deeply reactionary (the Green Party started off as a party for the deep conservative right – advocating women should stay at home and look after the children for example).
Add in dishonesty from politically motivated scientists and you get a lovely mess
Laurence Boyce said...
13 Jul 09 at 2:24 pm
“I don’t know how on earth I reconcile this growing cynicism with membership of the most gung-ho Environmentally friendly mainstream party.”
Well, you could always add it to the list of all the other stuff we can’t reconcile with Lib Demmery.
Shaun Pilkington said...
13 Jul 09 at 3:55 pm
Asquith,
Have you ever thought that libertarians doing what you have described basically should have the courage of their convictions and form their own party. Maybe like LPUK. Or is the actual problem, and as a libertarian I accept that I suffer from it, that while we have certain ‘liberties’ in common, we are far too diverse to marshal together effectively? Like herding cats?
Joe, why does Charlotte’s ‘position; matter? Does it change the thrust of her critique, which seems to be about playing numbers games to ‘prove’ your point? And, of course, the absence of concrete values for things we have proudly legislated markets for, like ‘carbon units’?
Or was it just me who found the G8’s ‘no more than 2 degrees’ statement a wee bit King Canutish (’this tide shall rise no higher than my ankle, by God!’)?
Joe Otten said...
13 Jul 09 at 4:24 pm
Shaun, the position matters if there is any chance of moving beyond putting the boot in, to putting forward a better alternative.
Shaun Pilkington said...
13 Jul 09 at 4:42 pm
That’s tricky Joe. Did the kid who pointed out that the Emperor wore no clothes propose a viable alternative to his leader’s clothing delusion? Do you necessarily have to propose a solution to point out that something is wrong? Do Jurors need to say what defendants should’ve done instead of glassing their victim? And how is that arrive at?
To point out that the Green Lobby plays fast and loose with scientific method or that the ex-totalitarians from the RCP infest the UK’s Green Party hardly seems like ‘putting the boot in’… A better alternative, I’d argue, would be proper scientific investigation without oversight or spin from people who either believe that humans should be reduced in number to < 1bn (that’s generous, actually they’d like about 80% of us to vanish), in man made climate change (belief ain’t the trick – give me science, not science driven by theory withing parametres driven by ideologues), or who *ahem* used to *ahem* believe in soviet style controls to lead to a utopia in the last 15 years but who have now shifted that desire to tell us how to live into a totalitarian greenwash filter.
Tom James said...
13 Jul 09 at 9:20 pm
Capitalism is not incompatible with environmentalism.
The problem is simple: capitalism is based on the private ownership of resources, but the environment is a commons-good that no one “owns”, as such no individual or corporation has an incentive to protect it.
The solution is equally simple: improve ownership structures such that commons goods are a accounted for in the value of private property.
So when I buy the the freehold on a property I am also purchasing a guarantee that this property will not suffer from the effects of environmental degredation caused by the industrial activity of others.
Dumping carbon dioxide in my slice of atmosphere (and hence causing potential negative side-effects on the economic and monetary value of my property due to climate change etc) is equivalent to taking a cricket-bat to my double-glazing.
Ergo venting carbon dioxide and other pollutants should be discouraged and corporations and individuals should be inentivised to reduce their output of same.
The most straightforward way of doing this is to tax pollutant-production heavily.
Which is what the greens and Labour want to do.
The Nameless Libertarian said...
13 Jul 09 at 9:33 pm
The Environmental movement has been adopted by young “Hug a Husky” Cameron and the Labour party simply because it is another source of income. I seem to remember one of the essays in “The Orange Book” arguing that any genuine environmental tax should be revenue neutral; this rush to environmentalism is anything but revenue neutral. As paranoid as it sounds, the main parties can’t tax the air we breathe, but the environmentalist movement gives them a chance to tax the air we fly through.
Joe Otten said...
13 Jul 09 at 10:12 pm
Shaun, you don’t seem to be distinguishing between the neo-Malthusians and mainstream science. I agree with what you say about the Green Party. But the Green Party is as anti-science as they come, and a million miles away from being the political wing of mainstream science, whether we are talking climate change, medical research or whatever.
The best evidence we have indicates that global warming is a serious problem, and the mainstream political reaction to this is to do very little about it. Green taxes are a small proportion of taxation.
It is difficult to see how you got the opposite impression on both counts.
Charlotte Gore said...
14 Jul 09 at 1:12 am
In reply to Joe, my position is always against Sin Taxes but in this particular case it’s the idea that there’s some quantifiable damage being done that requires certain groups to hand over what is, in effect, guilt money… and the lucky beneficiary is the state.
Ian B said...
14 Jul 09 at 5:24 am
Well the point is for me, there’s no use trying to have a rational discussion about this, because the other side are crazy. I mean, genuinely barmy, as mad as a box of frogs, off with the faeries. What we have here is a hegemonic belief system, and that is impervious to rational discussion. It’s rather like living in sixteenth century Europe and hoping to get a rational debate about whether God exists. It won’t happen. They’ll either ignore you, or burn you at the stake. Because people with crazy ideas are always utterly certain that they’re right.
These taxes aren’t meant to serve a rational purpose. They’re faith based. Anyone hoping to gain access to political power is required to believe them, just as in sixteenth century Europe you had to be a good Christian of whatever denomination was the current fashion.
I don’t have any suggestions here. I think we’re f*cked, really. Just saying, you know.
Ian B said...
14 Jul 09 at 5:42 am
The best evidence we have indicates that global warming is a serious problem,
The problem with that is that the best evidence we have regarding institutional science itself is that it has succumbed to mysticism, so the science it produces is entirely unreliable as a guide to the natural world. Broadly speaking, the argument goes that science, the system, is no longer practicing science, the method; it follows the outward form, but not the substance.
Science aspires to be objective, value free and self-correcting. However this is hampered by the reality that its practicioners are human beings. It is akin to saying that judges are intended to be objective and value free- but in reality we all recognise that a “liberal” judge will make different judgements to a “conservative” judge- and if we look e.g. at the example of the US Suprement Court, it’s judgements are effectively predictable in advance simply by a survey of the numbers of liberals and conservatives serving upon it. Rather than reaching an objective assessment of the law, the judge forms an opinion and then seeks to justify that opinion in terms of the law, while maintaining an appearance of objective reasoning.
One does not have to study the scientific system too deeply to recognise that its purported self correcting mechanisms do not actually exist; it is merely stated that they do. There are no checks and balances. It is interesting to note that scientists and academics in general are more likely to be of a progressivist/left political opinion than others, and thus generally support and promote regulation in all things- except in their own field, in which they strenuously resist any suggestion of regulation as political inteference in academic freedom. In reality, in the every increasing number of situations in which science directly controls public policy, there is every right for the public to be able to enquire into the processes that are forming the policies imposed upon them. It is also worth noting that the scientific fields which most affect public policy- such as the social sciences, environmental sciences, and medicine- are the soft sciences which are the most vulnerable to bias and mysticism. Peer review is quite useless in this regard, as with all self policing. Consideration of the scientific worth of a crop circle article, in a crop circle journal, peer reviewed by other crop circle researchers, illustrates why.
It may be argued that only a watchman is qualified to watch a watchman. Perhaps that is true. But that does not make the watchmen more trustworthy- it should merely remind us that no level of scepticism is too great.
Charlotte Gore said...
14 Jul 09 at 8:17 am
Of course, just saying, it’s very true that free markets have tended to make things more efficient over time. Pollution is waste, after all. Think how much cleaner modern cars are compared with older cars, how much cleaner modern electric trains are compared with the hideous diesels we use in this country and the coal powered trains that came before.
I think what Ian B’s saying is right. This is a belief system we’re up against, one that is seriously threatening any hope of economic recovery. This ‘green jobs’ and ‘green industries of the future’ business is a load of arse – there’s no buyers, no producers – the Government’s just going to use ‘Green’ as an excuse to create jobs for the sake of it, producing things that aren’t as good as the things they’re trying to replace.
Joe Otten said...
14 Jul 09 at 9:29 am
OK, Charlotte, but what is wrong, in principle with guilty money? As opposed, say, to banning the guilty practise and taxing only wealth creation. Can there never be a minor harm to others, not severe enough to ban, but sufficiently severe to attract a modest financial cost?
Ian B, I don’t recognise your picture of science. Sure, no people or institutions are perfect. But the principle self-correcting mechanism of science is evidence. Are you saying that evidence doesn’t exist – that scientists are no longer doing experiments or gathering data? And are you saying this just about climate science, or about every field? Do biologists believe evolution merely because they are atheist communists, and does the evidence actually favour creationism?
You seem to be saying that you don’t trust individual scientists because most of them are left-wing, and therefore are biassed in favour of results that make regulation seem necessary. But what would you do if you were a scientist and got yourself one of these results? Would you abandon your political values?
Can I suggest that your political values are weakly held if they can be threatened by mere empirical science. We don’t want environmental problems to exist, but it is one thing to wish it were different, and quite another to merely believe what you want to believe.
Ian B said...
14 Jul 09 at 9:54 am
Well, I’m saying that on the issue of self-interested bias, we should be suspicious. Nobody would call me paranoid for saying we should be suspicious of a commercial enterprise whose scientific studies magically support what they want to be true- we should simply extend that principle, properly, to everyone. Bias does not disprove a result, but it is a good reason for caution. A Green organisation is not looking for honest results on climate, for instance. They are looking for proof of anthropogenic climate change. That’s just a fact.
The problem is, there is no self-correcting method in science. There would be if it were performed by disinterested robots, but it isn’t, it is performed by human beings who, like all human beings, take a view of the world that best suits them. Ignoring political bias, a scientist with great ego-investment in a particular theory does not want to be disproved. When there is significant ego-investment by an entire scientific community, they will naturally work to block a correction to their erroneous theory, and there are myriad ways to do this- blocking funding, unofficially blacklisting dissenters and so on. This is how human institutions work. The fabled self-correcting mechanism isn’t there.
Suppose for a moment that AGW is wrong. Thousands of scientists and billions of dollars of funding and, most importantly, enormous amounts of credibility, depend on it being true. If it were shown to be false, the reputations of all those scientists who have declared it incontrovertibly true will be dashed beyond salvation. They have an enormous incentive now to keep the theory going whatever the science may actually say. Anyone who has staked their reputation on being right- even in quite trivial everyday matters- knows this. It’s human nature.
Now in theory, that cannot stand against “evidence”. The problem is, the scientific method is supposed to be sceptical- that is, nothing is proven. Instad, we have scientists claiming certainty, and saying nobody can disprove them. But this is a classic fallacy. We cannot prove that crop circles are not made by aliens either. This simply isn’t science that can be knocked down with a disproof, since any contradiction is simply incorporated into the theory. If it gets hotter, it’s AGW. If it gets colder, it’s AGW. The signal being sought is smaller than the noise. It looks very strongly like pathological science on a massive scale.
Basically, this isn’t empirical science. It is opinion being read into the data and presented as science, because it is scientists doing it.
Joe Otten said...
14 Jul 09 at 10:37 am
Ian, do you see the parallel I made with biologists and creationism?
Of course there is institutional inertia in science, and a reluctance to discard pet theories. But this is no reason to believe in geocentrism, creationism, crystal healing, phlogiston or climate denialism.
I’ve read Popper – I know all about the ad hoc alterations to a theory to save it from otherwise refuting evidence. But if you count it being colder than expected one year as a refutation, then if it is hotter than expected the next year is that a refutation of your position? No – the theory never made these specific weather predictions that you get in the newspapers. Nonetheless the predicted warming effect is observable and observed, when you compare the predictions of the complete climate model with observed temperatures, constrasted with the predictions of the climate model omitting the CO2 effect.
Is that not evidence?
CO2 absorbs infrared in the lab. Is that evidence? The mathematics of how this translates to the atmosphere can be demonstrated in 20 minutes on a blackboard. If there were a mistake in the maths, someone would have spotted it by now.
Paraphrasing Popper again, there is no limit to how much nitpicking you can do of any scientific evidence, but there comes a point where you must make a judgement that it is reasonable to accept the evidence you have. Clearly you don’t want to know about global warming, so you have chosen to nitpick for ever. But that is not making a reasonable judgement, not a standard you can apply with any consistency, it is a recipe for ignoring any evidence you don’t like.
Ian B said...
14 Jul 09 at 11:02 am
But this is no reason to believe in geocentrism, creationism, crystal healing, phlogiston or climate denialism.
Hmm, nice parallel there. You know full well that AGW rationalists are not promoting any of those silly old theories (though it’s interesting to note the correlation between strong AGW belief and crystal healing, aromatherapy, homeopathy, vitalism, etc).
No – the theory never made these specific weather predictions that you get in the newspapers.
As I said, it makes no falsifiable predictions at all. In Popperian terms, it isn’t science. In more practical terms, it’s impossible to disprove something which makes no specific claim other than a vague prediction.
That in itself is something worth noting. AGW isn’t a theory. It is a prediction, based on science. Natural Selection is a theory, the Big Bang is a theory. AGW is simply a prediction. That is to say, it is like using evolutionary reasoning to predict that in a few million years, polar bears will be aquatic. It may be true, or it may not be true. It’s not in the same league as a theory.
Nonetheless the predicted warming effect is observable and observed, when you compare the predictions of the complete climate model with observed temperatures, constrasted with the predictions of the climate model omitting the CO2 effect.
Except that that isn’t true either. The climate model makes no predictions other than “the global metric will get warmer”. It makes no qualitative prediction. NEither is it clear that the global metric is partiuclarly significant. The observed temperatures may show an effect- though the amount of processing and corrections required to the data are so great that it may not show anything but filtered noise, since the signal is actually much smaller than the errors in the data- and a rival hypothesis- that the climate naturally changes over time- also predicts temperature variation, so the correlation, if it exists, does not distinguish between these hypotheses, so again this is not very useful evidence.
CO2 absorbs infrared in the lab. Is that evidence? The mathematics of how this translates to the atmosphere can be demonstrated in 20 minutes on a blackboard. If there were a mistake in the maths, someone would have spotted it by now.
Nobody disputes that. But the atmosphere is not simply a box of CO2. It is a complex dynamical system. CO2 is a trace gas, a very minor component. Even the AGWH relies on feedbacks to create a significant effect. In such a system, you can’t just look at the behaviour of one component and linearly generalise. It doesn’t work that way.
Paraphrasing Popper again, there is no limit to how much nitpicking you can do of any scientific evidence, but there comes a point where you must make a judgement that it is reasonable to accept the evidence you have.
The key point here is that the more important the matter is, the more certain you need to be. In science with no public influence, scientists may be as lax as they like. If the Big Bang is wrong, red faces all round but no harm done. But dependent on AGW science is enormous matters of public policy and trillions of dollars- the entire future development of our species. You would think that in such a situation there would be an immense desire to get the right answer, and hordes of nitpickers fine-toothed combing the data, would you not? You’d expect great scepticism and a thorough evaluation of the reliability of the science.
And yet that isn’t happening. One of the things that influenced me into scepticism (I am naturally a science supporter, or was anyway, and wanted to believe, once) was the fact that nobody is checking the science. The IPCC collate and report it, but do not check it. The only checking of the papers on which AGW is based is at the journal stage- which is basically the editor asking some friends if the paper looks okay to them. After that- nothing, nada. Now that might be good enough for science, when there is no big deal if you are wrong outside the scientific community, but it is an enormous issue when it becomes as important to the world in general as AGW.
To use the famous Hocky Stick example; when the paper was published, the data on which it was based was not published, nor the specific statistical methodology used (the paper simply reported “a novel method”). Nobody could have checked whether the results were correct, since nobody had the data to do so. Neither could another team try to replicate it, and indeed nobody cared to do so anyway. The peer reviewers were close associates of the paper’s authors.
It then got to the IPCC stage, and was simply reported, again without any checking whatsoever. The same is true for all the other science in IPCC reports. There is no checking regime, no auditing of the data.
That just is not good enough, and it is not “nitpicking for ever” to say that this is woefully inadequate for a matter which has enormous impact for every human being on the planet. Six billion people, dependent on the say-so of half a dozen scientists. You would not trust a company’s accounts if the company would not release them and just told you their friends had had a look and they looked fine to them. This matter is far more important than that.
Ian B said...
14 Jul 09 at 11:03 am
Again, I fails at HTML :’(
Joe Otten said...
14 Jul 09 at 11:20 am
Well I didn’t know that climate denialists weren’t generally creationists – I would guess quite a few are. And it seems to be based, at least in part, on a distrust of the godless communism of biologists.
Yes, many Greens are supporters of anti-science quackery, but they’re not supporters of hard climate science, they’re constantly attacking it for complacency and cover up. They complain about political pressure to water down findings. They do, in short, what you do.
But yes, as you say, the more important the question, the better we should do the science. So, yes, we should have more (better paid? tenured?) climate scientists, replicating more studies, doing more original studies, etc, etc. (Are you sure you are calling for this?)
And at any given point, policy should be informed by the best evidence we have so far, with confidence intervals, estimates of the probabilities and costs of best-case, worst-case and other scenarios, the costs of remedial action, etc.
The alternative, your suggestion, that we act instead on a hunch that if the science were done properly, the findings would be totally different, is deeply irrational.
Roger Thornhill said...
14 Jul 09 at 11:27 am
A flight from London to Glasgow costs less than a train for the same journey. Maybe it is because of all the infrastructure needed, the repairs, machines, fuel, staff, platforms…
And the environmental impact of all those bodies needed to run the railway?
But then again even this argument is not sensible, for it implies agreement of the bogus Greenwash.
Joe Otten said...
14 Jul 09 at 11:32 am
Sorry, I missed this: and a rival hypothesis- that the climate naturally changes over time- also predicts temperature variation,
Yeah, but that’s not actually the rival hypothesis. The point of climate modelling is that the data available drives estimates of the impact of CO2 and of all the other factors. That the other factors are non-zero is agreed by both sides, and supported by the data.
The hypotheses here would be that the impact of CO2 is zero, or that it is positive. If the estimate derived from the model is positive, and statistically significant, which it is, then this is evidence for GW and against climate denialism.
Ian B said...
14 Jul 09 at 11:36 am
Well I didn’t know that climate denialists weren’t generally creationists – I would guess quite a few are. And it seems to be based, at least in part, on a distrust of the godless communism of biologists.
Don’t be an ass.
Yes, many Greens are supporters of anti-science quackery, but they’re not supporters of hard climate science, they’re constantly attacking it for complacency and cover up. They complain about political pressure to water down findings. They do, in short, what you do.
Hmm. I haven’t seen much of that. The normal modus operandi is demanding a return to the Dark Ages, while chanting the mantra “peer reviewed science, peer reviewed science!”
But yes, as you say, the more important the question, the better we should do the science. So, yes, we should have more (better paid? tenured?) climate scientists, replicating more studies, doing more original studies, etc, etc. (Are you sure you are calling for this?)
No, I’m saying that the institutional methods of the scientific community are ill-suited to important matters of public policy, and a checking regime needs to be introduced as the very least step. Just as if there were concern over, say, the behaviour of companies or the police you wouldn’t seek self regulation or ask them to do more of the same, you’d demand external regulation with a remit to be thorough and hostile.
And at any given point, policy should be informed by the best evidence we have so far, with confidence intervals, estimates of the probabilities and costs of best-case, worst-case and other scenarios, the costs of remedial action, etc.
No, this isn’t that kind of an issue. You’re presuming the hypothesis is true. What is required is to presume it is not true until extremely convincing, thoroughly checked evidence is presented. Until that point, there is no case to answer and no issue to address.
The alternative, your suggestion, that we act instead on a hunch that if the science were done properly, the findings would be totally different, is deeply irrational.
No, the ones with the “hunch” are the AGW promoters, at this stage. Scepticism regarding an unproven claim is no more a “hunch” than scepticism towards the hypothesis that crop circles are messages from aliens. As I’m sure you know, science works, or is supposed to work, such that the null hypothesis is favoured until evidence demonstrates otherwise. There are an infinite number of hypotheses that might be true. We cannot proceed presuming that they are true until disproved, which in most cases is impossible anyway.
When we factor in our knowledge of the social forces at work within science, society and politics to this unlikely hypothesis, the sensible answer is that its likelihood of ultimately proving to be true is small. We should thus presume the null hypothesis, and do nothing at all.
Ian B said...
14 Jul 09 at 11:45 am
If the estimate derived from the model is positive, and statistically significant, which it is, then this is evidence for GW and against climate denialism.
It is impossible to produce a simplified model of a dynamical system which produces meaningful output, since it is impossible to know what effects the factors not modelled would have had on the output. There is no climate model available to us from which we can draw evidential conclusions. All we have are toy models of imaginary much simplified toy atmospheres, which cannot replicate the real behaviour of the real atmosphere of planet Earth- though they can be tweaked to create the illusion that they do.
Joe Otten said...
14 Jul 09 at 12:03 pm
Ian,
Rather than resorting to insults, perhaps you can explain to me why godless communist biologists are trustworthy on the subject of evolution, but “generally left-wing” climate scientists are not.
You should ignore the Greens – everybody else does. Mainstream parties are looking at things like nuclear power, renewable energy and energy efficiency – not Dark Age values at all. Nuclear and renewables may be expensive, but not as expensive as, say, a recession. And the odd recession doesn’t send us back to the Dark Ages.
No, I’m saying that the institutional methods of the scientific community are ill-suited to important matters of public policy, and a checking regime needs to be introduced
OK, but whoever you have replicating the studies of climate scientists will be, also, climate scientists, by virtue of the fact that they are doing climate science.
But sure, if you can think of better designs for scientific institutions, let’s hear it. I don’t doubt there are things that could be improved. Peer review is pretty feeble.
(Meanwhile until scientific institutions have been fixed, I will consider the Big Bang theory unproven and believe in Steady State.)
No, this isn’t that kind of an issue. You’re presuming the hypothesis is true. What is required is to presume it is not true until extremely convincing, thoroughly checked evidence is presented.
Well you’re wrong on both counts – the evidence is that good, it’s not an assumption but a conclusion. Also if there is only a modest probability that a hypothesis is true, the rational course is to compare the expected losses, with the cost of “insurance”. Not to ignore it altogether.
Now the Greens may interpret “insurance” as returning to the Dark Ages, but that is no reason for you to agree with them. Nobody else does. Paying a bit more for energy is all we’re talking about.
Joe Otten said...
14 Jul 09 at 12:20 pm
Ian
It is impossible to produce a simplified model of a dynamical system which produces meaningful output,… which cannot replicate the real behaviour of the real atmosphere of planet Earth- though they can be tweaked to create the illusion that they do.
Yawn, so mathematical modelling of the climate is impossible (although you magically know what it would say about CO2 if it were possible) – in fact by this argument all mathematical modelling of any real world process is impossible.
Sorry this is just baloney. Exact predictions are impossible. Very simple models will give better than pure-noise predictions, and more complex models will give better predictions – as long as you have enough data that you don’t “overmodel”.
A good parallel would be with investment decisions. A) you know nothing about a stock. B) you know one fact about a company’s quality that isn’t known in the market / a simple model based on one factor C) you know many facts about a company’s quality / a complex model based on many factors.
We have a good complex climate model and so are well placed to make investment decisions relating to CO2 reduction (C). But even an investor in situation B is better informed than the market and will make a profit in the long run.
You want to put off any investment decision until we know exactly what the share price will be.
Ian B said...
14 Jul 09 at 12:32 pm
Well Joe, on the subject of insults maybe you could stop with the “climate denialists” (an insulting term) and the likening of rational sceptics such as myself to anti-science loonies. For instance the insinuation via “godless communist biologists” and references to creationism that I am some kind of religiously motivated nut.
Well, Joe, I’m an atheist. I am a naturally pro-science person and, for the record, the period some years ago when I concluded that something was profoundly wrong with institutional science was actually rather difficult for me, like the difficulty accepting your spouse is cheating or a religious person doubting their faith, since my natural instinct is to be arguing a pro-science position in the face of creationists et al. The recognition that science as practised is very divergent from science, the method, and in particular accepting that some areas of science appear to be entirely off the rails wasn’t easy- not least because saying so leads to attitudes from other people like yours.
But anyway. I don’t care whether biologists are trustworthy. I don’t need to trust biologists. I understand the theory of natural selection for myself. I don’t have to ask authority whether it is true or not. You need to bear in mind that the most dangerous position in the world to be in is having to trust somebody else.
I have already explained the social forces acting in the areas of science we are discussing, upon climatologists for instance, and don’t need to repeat that. I brought up the left-winginess of academics not as “therefore they are untrustworthy” but to show the inconsistency that such persons clamour for intervention in all aspects of society except their own club, whose independence they jealously guard. This leads one to raise an eyebrow. After all, they have nothing to fear if they’ve nothing to hide, righty?
OK, but whoever you have replicating the studies of climate scientists will be, also, climate scientists, by virtue of the fact that they are doing climate science.
Not necessarily. For instance, their statistical work- on which much of the dubious science in climate, medicine etc is based- can be checked better not by other climatologists, but by statisticians, who are more removed from having a bias (being outside the field in question) and will also have a more thorough deep understanding of proper application of statistical methods. There is concern from us “deniers” that many people in science are using statistical methods as a black box without fully comprehending the subtleties- jam the data into it and if you get p<.05 you’ve scored a goal, send out press release to Daily Mail. Having the science dissected by experts in other fields would certainly help. Climatologists are statistical experts, doctors aren’t either. Etc.
There are better ways to audit science than the current system, which is, well, no auditing whatsoever.
Meanwhile until scientific institutions have been fixed, I will consider the Big Bang theory unproven and believe in Steady State.
And there’s no problem with that. You see, nobody’s demanding communisation of the world economy on the basis of the Big Bang. That’s the whole point.
Well you’re wrong on both counts – the evidence is that good, it’s not an assumption but a conclusion.
No it isn’t. I don’t believe you’ve looked at it very closely.
You should ignore the Greens – everybody else does.
If only that were true. You seem to be trying to write a false narrative here, by using “GReens” to refer to extremist very Deep Greens, you sly devil you, so you can then say “we don’t listen to those nuts”. Greenism is now mainstream- all the parties subscribe to it, as does the UN, EU etc, and it is endemic in the academic community. We all know that. Stop being disingenuous. When mainstream politicians are declaring the barmy intention to reduce carbon “emissions” by 80%(!), to pretend that greenism is a minor fringe idea is pure denialism.
Ian B said...
14 Jul 09 at 12:36 pm
Yawn, so mathematical modelling of the climate is impossible (although you magically know what it would say about CO2 if it were possible) – in fact by this argument all mathematical modelling of any real world process is impossible.
If it’s non-linear, and you can’t accurately model every significant factor in the system, then yes, getting quantitative predictions from any model is indeed impossible.
DavidNcl said...
14 Jul 09 at 1:05 pm
Perhaps some readers might care to look at a “denier” web site and judge for themselves what these odd people have to say?
Whats up with that
Some of you may also enjoy this popular account of the scientific method in practice:
Caspar and the jesus paper
Joe Otten said...
14 Jul 09 at 1:35 pm
Ian,
Why is ‘climate denialist’ insulting? What would be an accurate term for you from my point of view?
What has become mainstream is not “Greenism”, deep or shallow, but a genuine concern for the environment, and that is a good thing. Mostly it is expressed in largely irrelevant or tokenistic ways – recycling, carrier bags, etc – and that is a bit pointless. But there are some moves to low carbon energy, which are to be welcomed. If our leaders were as earnest on the issue as the hype suggests, there would be much bigger moves thant there are. France was able to switch to mostly nuclear electricity years ago, which shows what is possible.
More statisticians, yes, by all means. But the soundness of the statistics is only one link in the chain. Independent replication of results is still the gold standard.
Charlotte Gore said...
14 Jul 09 at 2:10 pm
I think it’s because it sounds a lot like, ‘holocaust denier’ that people object to it, and why people use it.
It’s a frame, one that it sets up objective reality as being that man-made climate change leading to extinction of human race as inarguable fact and that you have ‘people’, and ‘people that deny it’. Linguistically it says, “this person is in denial”
The corollary would be to refer to people on the opposite side as ‘climate believers’ which, again, linguistically stresses the faith element. There’s people, and ‘people who believe in climate change’ which obviously sounds very different.
It’s cheap labelling for the purpose of framing opponents and I think, Joe, it’s actually beneath you.
Charlotte Gore said...
14 Jul 09 at 2:12 pm
Having said that you did ask Ian what he’d rather be called, but I think in general labelling isn’t very helpful.
Joe Otten said...
14 Jul 09 at 2:48 pm
:shrugs. I am a homoeopathy denier, a god denier, etc.
Bishop Hill said...
14 Jul 09 at 8:06 pm
If you are trying to be offensive to someone who questions AGW you will use the term “denier” or perhaps “denialist”. If you are trying to engage with them, a better term would be “lukewarmer”.
Joe Otten said...
14 Jul 09 at 9:01 pm
I’ve not heard much here that’s lukewarm.
Scott said...
15 Jul 09 at 1:14 am
Joe has this idea that if he posts on Charlotte’s blog that the Green are “not supporters of hard climate science” that it’s true. It’s not. We support climate science. He continues to imply that the Greens don’t look at things like “renewable energy and energy efficiency – not Dark Age values at all” when we put this front and centre in all of our policies. He’s in favour of using nuclear, we’re opposed to nuclear, end of. Nuclear will take 9 years to come online, when we only have 9 years to act to limit runaway climate change. We should focus attempts to limit runaway climate change on energy efficiency and rewewables, not CCS and nuclear power, since ee and renewables will be the ones to make the potential difference over the next 9 years.
With APD, if you look at it, the people flying are overwhelming AB in social class, i.e. the same people are flying as 10 years ago, but they are flying 6x a year, rather than 2x a year. This idea that the poor are flying more isn’t true. We have options, whether it’s an overnight ferry to Holland or trains to Brussels and Paris. We can invest further in those options. We can look at air travel as a once a year thing. The idea that we have the inalienable right to fly 4x a year to stag nights in Estonia is interesting, but not quite true. We just have to get in the rhythm of taking two weeks of holidays, and if we want to spend it in Brasov, we allot 10 days, and 1 1/2 days by train out, and 1 1/2 days back.
Joe Otten said...
15 Jul 09 at 1:47 am
Scott, where in the IPCC corpus do you get your 9 years to limit runaway climate change figure from?
Alex said...
19 Jul 09 at 3:06 am
Is Environmentalism is incompatible with Capitalism? No.
Is Environmentalism is incompatible with laissez-faire Capitalism? Yes.
Markets can be regulated towards a specific societal goal. And they need to be in order to be compatible with Environmentalism.
Charlotte, you might want to look up “externalities”, as the environment is one of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
“Of course, just saying, it’s very true that free markets have tended to make things more efficient over time. Pollution is waste, after all. Think how much cleaner modern cars are compared with older cars, how much cleaner modern electric trains are compared with the hideous diesels we use in this country and the coal powered trains that came before.”
Yes and those industries have never had any input from the government whatsoever.
You only need to look at fuel consumption in cars in the US to see what happens when the government doesn’t get involved.
And the idea that “free markets have tended to make things more efficient over time” is not that great an insight. Free markets or not, things weren’t going to get worse were they? Pretty much the only way is up.
“Suppose for a moment that AGW is wrong. Thousands of scientists and billions of dollars of funding and, most importantly, enormous amounts of credibility, depend on it being true. If it were shown to be false, the reputations of all those scientists who have declared it incontrovertibly true will be dashed beyond salvation. They have an enormous incentive now to keep the theory going whatever the science may actually say. Anyone who has staked their reputation on being right- even in quite trivial everyday matters- knows this. It’s human nature.”
And just one scientist, just a single one, who came out and showed climate change to be a massive fraud, is all that is needed to end it. They would be world famous, maybe inline with Einstein, if they did so. Why wouldn’t they?
Do you also believe the moon landings were faked?
“Now in theory, that cannot stand against “evidence”. The problem is, the scientific method is supposed to be sceptical- that is, nothing is proven. Instad, we have scientists claiming certainty, and saying nobody can disprove them. But this is a classic fallacy. We cannot prove that crop circles are not made by aliens either. This simply isn’t science that can be knocked down with a disproof, since any contradiction is simply incorporated into the theory. If it gets hotter, it’s AGW. If it gets colder, it’s AGW. The signal being sought is smaller than the noise. It looks very strongly like pathological science on a massive scale.”
Yes science is skeptical. Yes science can’t prove anything. But no-one truly thinks that AGW has been “proved”. Scientists do say something like “AGW is happening”, but that is just short hand for “AGW is happening at the 95% (at least) confidence level”, in the same way that saying “We evolved” is short hand for “It’s extremely likely that we evolved”. This is how the English language works. If you want all the error bars, then go read the papers, but even that won’t be the whole story, because what if, instead of humans causing climate change, it’s actually caused by the invisible pink unicorn?
You can’t prove any statement about the empirical world, so when someone asks you how your day was, do you reply “Work was rubbish, at least I’m 99.9999% certain it was” and other such clarifications, or do you speak like a normal human being?
“As I said, it makes no falsifiable predictions at all. In Popperian terms, it isn’t science. In more practical terms, it’s impossible to disprove something which makes no specific claim other than a vague prediction.”
AGW makes no falsifiable predictions? How is “the global surface temperature will probably rise a further 1.1 to 6.4 °C (2.0 to 11.5 °F) during the twenty-first century” not a falsifiable prediction? If the temperature doesn’t rise then it’s falsified.
If it is falsified, then obviously future predictions need to be altered. Maybe it warmed more? Revise upward. Maybe it warmed less? Revise downward, and clearly AGW is less drastic than once thought. Maybe it didn’t warm at all. Complete revision required. That’s how science works.
“That in itself is something worth noting. AGW isn’t a theory. It is a prediction, based on science. Natural Selection is a theory, the Big Bang is a theory. AGW is simply a prediction. That is to say, it is like using evolutionary reasoning to predict that in a few million years, polar bears will be aquatic. It may be true, or it may not be true. It’s not in the same league as a theory.”
AGW is a theory. And it’s a theory that produces several predictions, all of which are testable and falsifiable. Evolution is a theory. But it also makes predictions e.g. if you separate a population of a species into two habitats, then after a suitable length of time (I’m no biologist so I don’t know how long) mating between two organisms, one from each group, will not produce fertile offspring. That’s a prediction. There are many more, and more detailed and precise ones than that, but none have been falsified for evolution so far.
You also make the mistake of assuming that AGW is some event that scientists say will happen in future. No, it’s happening now as well, as has been for about 100 years.
“Greenism is now mainstream- all the parties subscribe to it, as does the UN, EU etc, and it is endemic in the academic community.”
Maybe there’s a reason for that? Like, I don’t know, that the science is correct? You say you argue that you use science against creationists, but why don’t you believe in AGW? To you oppose all science that has policy implications? So none of economics is right? And we shouldn’t listen to doctors or physiologists studying different diseases, because since their work has policy implications, it must be biased and wrong and leftist.
If you’re not a climate scientist, you don’t get to accuse climate scientists of being biased and committing mass fraud like a conspiratorial nut. Otherwise why should creationists believe in evolution?
Charlotte Gore said...
19 Jul 09 at 3:16 am
I’m not going to reply to everything – it’s 3 in the morning. But I did want to pick up on this:
What happened? Well, GM went bankrupt, that’s what happened. The price of gasoline meant they couldn’t get away with shitty, inefficient cars that burned fuel for the sheer perverse hell of it.
As for the rest, I don’t believe that global warming is a 100% certainty, nor do I believe anyone can accurately quantify what any effect might be. Is there enough evidence to justify switching to a command economy as the only means of saving all life on earth? Because, really, that’s what we’re talking about here. Different motivation but same end result. Environmental impact might be something the market cannot correct for, but that doesn’t meant to say politicians have suddenly acquired the capacity and ability to run a command economy no matter how urgently they feel they must.