Some actual "science" in the Climate Wars

"Global Warming" has been losing steam (ahem) for some time now as people realize that the dire predictions of environmental Armageddon have not been manifesting as prophesied. Here is one of the biggest Green prophets recanting in the face of facts. I wish this wasn't noteworthy, but here we are.

Two months ago, James Lovelock, the godfather of global warming, gave a startling interview to msnbc.com in which he acknowledged he had been unduly “alarmist” about climate change. The implications were extraordinary.

Lovelock is a world-renowned scientist and environmentalist whose Gaia theory — that the Earth operates as a single, living organism — has had a profound impact on the development of global warming theory.

Unlike many “environmentalists,” who have degrees in political science, Lovelock, until his recent retirement at age 92, was a much-honoured working scientist and academic.

Here's the money part:

Lovelock still believes anthropogenic global warming is occurring and that mankind must lower its greenhouse gas emissions, but says it’s now clear the doomsday predictions, including his own (and Al Gore’s) were incorrect.

He responds to attacks on his revised views by noting that, unlike many climate scientists who fear a loss of government funding if they admit error, as a freelance scientist, he’s never been afraid to revise his theories in the face of new evidence. Indeed, that’s how science advances.

Emphasis mine. If you don't revise your theories in the face of new facts, that's dogma, not science. Therefore the "consensus" on "Climate Change" is... Here's a part I particularly like:

As he puts it, “so-called ‘sustainable development’ … is meaningless drivel … We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally can’t stand windmills at any price.”

I wonder how many of the people who advocate wind power live anywhere near a wind turbine; anecdotally, everyone who lives near them that I've heard of HATES them. The mere sight of them makes me angry, I guess as a symbol of oppressive "Green" religion and a lack of critical thinking.

In any event, Loveleock has been very influential and the hope is that this will undermine the Gores etc. and make some erstwhile environmentalists actually think. I don't hold out a lot of hope for that as the facts were available before, but every little bit helps. More nuclear power and natural gas, and no more wind turbines and solar farms; abundant clean energy is what will allow us to survive. The universe is about what works, not what appeals to your sense of "social justice".

The 11th plague of Egypt?

Holy fuck, here we go:

CTVNews.ca Staff

Date: Sunday Jun. 24, 2012 10:42 AM ET

Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood has defeated former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq in the Egyptian presidential runoff election.

The country's election commission declared Morsi the winner of Egypt's first free elections by a narrow margin over Shafiq, the last prime minister under deposed leader Hosni Mubarak.

The commission said Morsi won with 51.7 per cent of the vote versus 48.3 for Shafiq.

A lot has been said about what will happen with the Arab world's most populous country under the thumb of the Salafists, but I will add my mite to it. I don't have anything original to add to this, but when big bad things happen I should at least acknowledge them.

While I'm here, the mess in Syria is getting more so (messy) especially with them shooting down that Turkish F4 recce plane a few days ago. Turkey is meeting with NATO under Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty while the Syrians strenuously deny any hostile intent. This is as well, as the Turks would smash what is left of Assad's military in short order, and it's possible that Turkey is looking for an excuse to do so. It is unlikely that this will go to Article 5 (an attack on one is an attack on all), but the Turks don't need any help if they decide to go for it.

Lots of fun in the Mediterranean, slightly more than average potential for widespread mayhem in fact. If the Ikwhan manage to implement their entire platform in Egypt, particularly the "kill all the Jews" part there will be a good time had by all. This is facetious of course and possibly misleading, as even a united and motivated Egyptian Army has no chance against Israel and they know it.

As I write this it is still possible that the Egyptian Army will pull an Algeria a la 1991 and say "no, we don't think so" to Islamists running the place. This didn't work so well there (though the gov't/military won in the end) so all bets are off. The only prediction I'm comfortable standing behind right now is that things are unlikely to be boring over there. For the record, "exciting" is not something you want too much of in your life if you're most people, and most people are.

Watch and shoot...

Blank Cheques and the Whirlwind

I am not commenting here on the merits of this particular case, but on the precedent it sets:

In the 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the Navajo Indians and several other tribes must be paid in full for the services they provided in 1994-2001, including education, environmental protection and security.

It said that it was not the fault of the tribes that Congress had imposed a ceiling on such payments because of the lack of funds.

"The government was obligated to pay the tribes' contract support costs in full," the court said in the ruling.

The federal payments reportedly covered between 77% and 92% of the costs, depriving the plaintiffs of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The verdict is a major victory for the tribes, the BBC's Paul Adams in Washington reports.

But the decision also has implications for contractors in general, as the court said the government has to abide by its promises, our correspondent says.

If a service had been performed, the court said, then it was not good enough simply to say the money was not there.

Emphasis mine in the last sentence. I'm no lawyer, but in all civilized places contracts are taken seriously and they should be. The problem is twofold; promises and expectations

Promises first. Politicians/governments make these as a matter of course, and I don't see any end coming to that anytime soon so I guess I'm done with fold 1. Fold two is really the crux, as democratic governments cater to voter expectations via the promises mentioned above. Again, this case seems pretty straight-forward, but the final sentence shows the road to socialist penury that many nations are already on.

The general consensus (right wrong or wherever in-between) on how the EU PIGS got where they mostly (but Greece and Spain in particular) are today is a tale of unreasonable expectations. It's nice to retire at 50 on a secure pension, but not reasonable since you will not likely have put enough money aside for the next 25-40 years of your probable life. If this is the case, whose responsibility is it to pay your way? On what basis is this liability assigned, your "rights"?

In Canada we like our health care system, at least when we're not complaining about wait times and what it doesn't cover. As a society we have decided overwhelmingly that the taxes required to ensure that people aren't bankrupted by the birth of a child or an emergency appendectomy are worthwhile. You pay taxes (more accurately, are a citizen), you are covered, and nobody, not even cynical contrarians like me complain about it until non-citizens are seen to be sponging services that haven't paid into.

Even that is merely a bug in the system. People get the government they deserve, and if that's the case the Greeks in particular are in aggregate a lazy, grasping bunch. "Austerity" is the buzz-word these days, and people are voting against it all over the place, France most recently kicking Sarkozy and his belt-tightening to the curb in favour of Hollande's socialists. Apparently the French think there is still a vein of other peoples' money to be tapped for their short workweeks.

I am lightly slandering entire countries but have no fear, I don't play favourites and will dish it to my motherland should it become appropriate. At this point I will point out the forgotten detail of Austerity: it is merely living within your financial means.

Who is to blame for the current state of perpetual imminent collapse of the international monetary system (again)? The Rich? They may have influence, but the 1% are still only 1% of the electorate and the ballot box balances that influence, if enough of the other 99% choose to use it. OK then, the government? Pusillanimous politicians and parties only concerned about their political survival indeed heed the siren call of the electorate as long as it'll keep them in power, so I'll lay some blame here.

That incidentally is the best argument for rich people with a sense of national service (hereditary or otherwise) being politicians; if they don't need the money and the pension plan they are more able to make difficult/unpopular decisions. Since that is a fantasy of days gone by, the bulk of the blame for people getting hosed by government policy is indeed the people themselves. Yes, we don't know what's good for us in the long run and suffer for all the easy-credit bubbles and Ponzi schemes.

This is no surprise since by definition (Statisticians, leave me alone on the terminology) half of the population is of below-average intelligence by whatever measure you choose to use. Of the right side of the curve, a lot are mentally and/or physically lazy, just plain greedy or entitled because they are too smart for their own good. It is the job of the productive class (crossing IQ divisions) to keep the system going despite various disincentives (e.g. taxes) from entitlement-minded members of the political and electorate class.

The argument for low taxes is that it incentivizes people to live and work in your precinct. To the eternal consternation of commies of all shades, places with low taxes are typically the places closest to a balanced budget. This is because the low taxes mean that the Socialists haven't taken over, and people are still spending their own money, and not other peoples'. Don't give your government a blank cheque that your taxes can't cover. It's your fault if they overspend for more than one term of government, if they sow the wind you'll reap the whirlwind.

Better than all other forms of government, except...

In view of the mob violence which is the increasingly prevalent hallmark of modern "democracy", I saw this and thought it'd make a good counterpoint to the default "Democracy at any cost" school.

Books have been written about it, films have been made about it: Rwanda is best known for a genocide that claimed more than half a million lives in 1994.

But in the ensuing years, quiet changes have taken place there. So much so that "The Economist" magazine now asks: is Rwanda "Africa's Singapore?" The World Bank ranks it 45th in the world for ease of doing business, higher than any African country barring South Africa and Mauritius. And Transparency International says it is less corrupt than Greece or Italy.

A (post-Apartheid) Sub-Saharan society with less corruption than two EU members? I wish it was hard to believe, especially considering that Greece and Italy are "democracies", but something else is at work here. In fact, in Paul Kagame we see a pretty good example of that rarest of good governments, the Benevolent Despot.

"Benevolent" does not mean he's a saint, by any stretch. Considering how he came to power there were and remain a lot of heads to be cracked in a notoriously volatile part of the world, so I'm sure Amnesty International won't be giving him a gold star. The scale to measure a Benevolent Despot against the garden variety ones is much like the scale of judgment in the Egyptian underworld; all the bad you do should weigh no more than a feather (although I hear they used a pretty big feather).

There are a lot of places that could use a BD, and historical precedents are any good king, etc. Tito in Yugoslavia is a reasonably contemporary example. All of these occurrences, rare as they are, must be viewed through the lens of their environment, not some armchair human-rights mouthpiece. The world is what it is, most frequently not what you'd like it to be, especially if you get all of your learning from a narrow range of Utopian politically correct sources. The "Arithmetic" of the Frontier that I model this blog on (and as much of my life as I can) is "whatever works is right".

Let's take a situation which is not currently entirely out of control, Tunisia. This is the epicentre of the "Arab Spring" and as Arab countries go, particularly considering the overall state of the world economy, it was in pretty good shape under Zine El Abedine Ben Ali. There was a fairly reasonable level of corruption (real-world assessment), but no freedom of the press. This is a case of "what have you done for me lately", as for the first 20 or so years of his rule he was voted in with massive majorities, and his policies made Tunisia on of the most vibrant economies in the region.

The problem with Tunisia, like all Muslim(ish) countries is that they have too many kids, leading to "youth" unemployment. This is a deliberate plan as it was for the Catholics until recently to out-produce the infidels, but that's an aside. I will lay a significant sum of money against whatever replaces Ben Ali being better overall than what his system managed.

A surprising number of people with nice comfy lives in soft Western countries consider a free press more important than stability, at least in other countries. If the recent foolishness in Montreal was to persist or even better, escalate, being able to blog about it without the secret police (CSIS, I guess?) kicking in your door will likely be a lesser priority than having enough food in the house and/or getting to work to make a living.

Ideally you have stability and freedom of the press, etc. but if you're in a rough neighbourhood which is more important? I personally think that an inability to tolerate criticism is the mark of an insecure leader, and showing weakness in any regard is dangerous when you're on top. If I were despoting somewhere I would let the press say what they want (as long as it's true and they spell my name right) and not waste my scarce secret police resources on hassling journalists. There are plenty of other people who need visits from them, the ones who advocate violence, and secret police are just what is needed for that bunch.

Keep the gears engaged, the lights on and the food rolling in to the distribution centres; that's what keeps people alive and reasonably comfortable, and that's my measure of success. I would indeed make a few bad actors disappear for that, and I have at least some respect for anyone who can hit those benchmarks. Even (especially, to be honest) if some (deserving) heads get cracked for it. Democracy is indeed only one range of options out of many.

Risk Management and Civilization

The title link is to the oil spill from a pipeline in Alberta in the last week. There is the usual bashing of "Harper" and "Big Oil" but as it came the same week as the following I saw some blog synchronicity:

Japan must restart two nuclear reactors to protect the country's economy and livelihoods, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has said in a televised broadcast.

Measures to ensure the safety of two reactors at western Japan's Ohi nuclear plant have been undertaken, he said.

Since last year's Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japan's 50 reactors have been shut down for routine maintenance.

The crisis fuelled immense public opposition to nuclear power, but Japan is facing a summer of power shortages.

The leftist Utopian mindset is that we should get something for nothing, whether it be services (rioting "students" in Montreal this spring) or "Green" energy. Shit ain't like that, as Newton encapsulated many moons ago. There are reactions to actions, and while these can and should be be mitigated when possible, changing anything from one state to another will have a range of effects, not all of which we want.

That is where the mitigation strategies come in because radical environmentalist cant aside, the era of rampant pollution is past. Air and water are cleaner (in the developed world) than they were 40 years ago, and it's because of improved practices and technology. This brings us to Diminishing Returns and Risk Management.

It's difficult to ascribe priority to one or the other as I can make an argument either way, but for purposes of this post I'll give Risk Management planning priority. I'll also give my own interpretation of RM which is as follows: with a particular end-state in mind (affordable energy, for example) you decide what will do more damage, the various ways of producing it or the effects of not having it.

I'm sure that's close enough for unpaid work (e.g. here) to work with, and the position of the Japanese PM re: reactors is pretty much a textbook example of risk management. With all reasonable (more on that in a bit) precautions taken, the damage to society would be far greater if the power generation is foregone than the risk presented by the possibility of accident in the production of it.

It's NOT about wringing ones' hands about the worst-case-scenario and assuming that (however unlikely it is) will be what happens. In this case, something pretty close to the worst case happened at Fukushima, and as much of a mess as it is NOBODY HAS DIED because of the radiation released from it. This is after an old (and sub-optimally designed) fission reactor was completely overwhelmed by a massive natural disaster which itself killed over 15,000 people leveled a number of small cities and actually changed the elevation of those seaside areas.

There aren't a lot of ways in which that could get worse in terms of what happened in the end result at the reactor complex itself. The Wikipedia link seems (at tme of writing) well balanced, and even the worst-case reputable estimate for lifetime cancer increase amoungst those exposed (100 cases) pales in comparison to the devastation wrought by any good-sized quake in Japan. Fukushima was rated at the same level of "devastation" as Chernobyl which is questionable at the very least from the point of view of fatalities.

Chernobyl was indeed the worst case (see link above) and I notice that the world has not ended, save for the <300 people who died as a direct result of it. Risk Management in the USSR was a very blunt instrument, leading to bad designs like the RMBK reactors. Three Mile Island marked the death knell of the American nuclear power program and NOBODY even got measurably sick from it.

The word for the reaction to all of these events is "panic". I'm not a fan of panic, but there are times when some healthy caution is in order when things go wrong. It breaks, you fix it, you carry on. You do it with your car (or bike if you're a real Green hardcase), you don't say "OMG, it broke and it could fail catastrophically, cars/bikes must be banned!"

Back to the oil spill. These have happened thousands of times in the last 100+ years and again, the world has yet to end as we know it or otherwise. I am not a fan of industrial accidents, but a certain failure rate is the price of doing anything that accomplishes anything. We take reasonable precautions, the state of "reasonable" being a moving target depending on time and perspective.

Enter Diminishing Returns. Of course if we have no rules we see all sorts of short-term gain behaviour which is why unbridled capitalism is a bad idea. That said, the "worker's paradise" of the USSR and satellite Commie states made a MUCH bigger mess of the environment than the Evil Capitalist West. At a certain point in trying to improve something you will hit that point when a further 1% improvement in x will require increasingly more effort past the diminishing returns point than what led to it.

It happens with schoolwork, it happens at work and it gets to the point where further improvement is either impossible or would be uneconomical in effort or expense. Zero-defect is what we seem to expect these days, and that 's not the way things work. The key to keeping the wheels on is to not getting bogged down striving for perfection, but to keep moving forward as best we can.

Cheap clean energy is the key to the future, and the dividing line on the global warming/climate change seems to involve the definition of what is cheap and what exactly is clean. Right now natural gas seems to split the difference with only radical anti-CO2 wingnuts having a problem with it. The supposed "environmentally friendly" sources of wind and solar are anything but, and hydrocarbon based energy will be with us for the foreseeable future. As we will also be around for the (by definition) foreseeable future, we have to do the best we can to not "shit where we eat".

The best we can do will never completely eliminate human error or materials failure. We can however keep improving things as long as we keep things in perspective and keep the people who are producing what we need honest. People aren't good at thinking rationally about stuff so we'll make a mess of it, but in the meantime we'll keep the lights on and our food coming to us by making as few errors as possible while not making it impossible for people to do the things we need them to. Mistakes will be made, but clean them up, learn the appropriate lessons and keep moving forward.

Battle of the Bulge

Today I'm aiming in the general direction of the future of Western countries, staying close to home (Canada, specifically Quebec) to look at the demographic imbalance and expectations for the future.  In other words, wherever this takes me.  According to Statistics Canada, deaths will start to outnumber births in Canada c. 2030, i.e. the near future.  A quarter-century after that the population is projected to be about 42 million.  Here looks like a good spot to wander into the minefield of immigration policy so I shall start there.

It is obvious to sensible people (a rare breed, alas) that we need immigrants, but not just anyone.  Criminals, the mentally or seriously ill, the just plain stupid, we can grow our own, we don't need to import them.  We are looking for people with some kind of skill and/or a good general education including a functional knowledge of English or French (but really English for anywhere outside of Quebec, let's face it) and a desire and ability to go where the work is.

I remember a university class over 20 years ago where this subject came up, and I said something to the effect of the above.  I was promptly branded a "racist" for wanting people with education and skills, the accuser's (stated) assumption that these people could only come from Europe.  As I said not word one about source country, who exactly is the racist here?  I dismembered her quite handily in the brief debate which followed but I'm sure she's running some government department or molding young minds somewhere these days.

The young (and not-so-young) minds marching around Montreal right now are looking into the yawning chasm of the Boomer- Gen X - Gen Y crossover and those working on useless Humanities degrees (the bulk of the ones on the streets) are wondering what's in it (the system) for them.  Good question, but I don't think rampaging through the streets and getting yourself a criminal record is going to improve your prospects.

They are bafflingly getting more support these days, and I suppose we can lay this at the Premier's feet.  The "emergency law" they passed was redundant and just gave the protesters something to rally against.  These things need to be dealt with firmly from the get-go and the vacillation of the government in the early days allowed things to get out of hand.

That however is tactical, and it's the strategic situation which needs looking at.  There is currently a bulge in the population creating an oversupply of labour.  However, just like the bulge which a snake's meal creates, this will eventually pass.  The question is "when" and the answer is not encouraging for these "students".  The tail end of the Baby Boom hit 15 years old (entry to the workforce) in 1981, which means they won't hit the new retirement age of 67 until 2033.

Ouch.  This is not to say that there will be no labour mobility in the next 20 years, but with the general shift in the economy to less labour-intensive modes of production will mean that expanding economy or no, the job opportunities will not be there for many for quite a while.  What do I know, things could change, right?

If I could make accurate economic forecasts I wouldn't be writing my anonymous blog for almost no audience so we can assume there are things I don't know.  Regardless of the accuracy of my model, I would like to see what exactly these protesters intend to happen.  Don't like Bill 78? I've scant sympathy as there is nothing in that "excessive" and "abuse of power" law which will inconvenience anyone who's not invading classrooms and blocking traffic.  The government is corrupt?  No shocker that, but we have a mechanism for throwing the bums out every 4-5 years, so build up a party and get your platform of free education and unicorns for all elected in Charest's place.

All of these movements are problems without viable solutions.  If any of these people can look around at Europe (Greece et al) and remain under the illusion that there is an inexhaustible supply of other peoples' money to pay for their free tuition it's just as well they're not in school right now since education is wasted on them.  Education to me of course means information containing facts, not the hippie/radical feminist/Marxist bullshit the Gender Studies etc. faculty teaches so no wonder expectations are so divorced from reality.

One can rail against the preceding generations for stacking things in their actuarial favour but I fail to see what good that will do the following generations.  Mine (X) is the generation which will bear the brunt of this as we expected to retire at 65 or earlier and now won't be able to.  Life's hard, and we will reap the whirlwind.  It will be a LOT worse for those following us if things aren't reined under control now, and running huge deficits will not accomplish that.  As sad as it is to say, we all have to accept that the skies are not as blue for us as they were for our Boomer parents and grandparents.

Solutions?  Not exactly, but a repeal of the rampant credentialism and grade inflation which has entrenched since the 1960s would be a start.  If it is made attractive once again for companies to hire apprentices or "mail room" level people straight from Secondary school a great deal of money and student debt could be saved.  The days of a "Company" job for life are gone, but something like that could come back with advantages (stability for those who want it) for Labour and Capital.  If it worked before, a version of it could work again.  Banging pots in the streets is not going to help anything unless it by itself can smarten up people and therefore the government that supports it.  I'm not betting on that.