A good read on global warming

Why you should not be a sceptic from the WSJ.


Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est

The ALP does listen to me

Great little video on Tony Abbott by the ALP



However, I take the credit. I blogged the idea on 22 August! (And the clip includes a news item dated 28 August).

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Climate science and the philosophy of science

No sooner had I completed the BNet debate than I received a missive from my protagonist with a link to new NASA research and a speech originally given in March. (Note: See below - I have been corrected by an anonymous commentor - this is not NASA research but merely uses satellite data)

The debate was intended to be about the difficulty of getting any reform through, but wound up being a debate on climate change. Buried in the midst of that was actually a debate about the nature of "science".

Scientists themselves claim a privileged position for what they do by asserting that it is based on "the facts", that there is some essential linkage between the theory they espouse and all the observations anyone has ever made. So in the context of the debate on climate change each side now abuses the other over the science. When they manage to get away from the perjorative terms such as "alarmists", "warmists", "sceptics" or "denialists" both sides wrap themselves in science. One side says here is our model and here is the confirmatory evidence, the other side explains the limitations of the model and finds other data that they claim contradicts the conclusion.

My protagonist went so far as to say that we shouldn't believe the theory because there had been no definitive experiment to prove it. I pointed out that the only way to do that was to do nothing and just wait to see what happens!

This view is the old inductivist view of science, that science knows what it knows because we infer from repeated examples a universal truth. This was replaced by the positivist theory of verifiability that the theory was confirmed by observations that matched conclusions of the application of the theory.

The problem is verifiability still looks like induction. Popper proposed that the real test wasn't to simply do experiments to confirm a theory but to disprove it by "falsification". Ultimately it was this theory that created a philosophical foundation for a distinction between religion and science, since the propositions of the former are not really capable of generating falsification experiments.

This theory was then itself "falsified" by the work of Thomas Kuhn who, as a historian of science demonstrated that scientists happily continue to use "falsified" theories in the absence of anything better. He described a process of revolutions from theory to theory. Paul Feyerabend went further and noted that in reality scientists use multiple and inconsistent theories.

He did not however promote Anything Goes as a prescriptive rule but more as a statement of fact that there is no rationalist conception of scientific method.

Ultimately Feyerabend agrees with modern day inductivists like David Stove and James Franklin. Formalistically it can be described as a Bayesian approach (see The Theory that Would not Die).

This comes down to saying "Given the circumstances are such that this theory can be applied, it is highly likely that this is the outcome". Very seldom are observations definitive either way.

So let's come to climate science. Firstly as Ziggy Switowski reminds us today it originally is a very old theory based on fairly simple statistical physics that has been adapted massively to deal with the far more complex environment of climate. Noting this he observes;

And as with any model, if you torment the assumptions enough, you can generate any forecast you like. There is plenty of evidence for this in some of our policy making and on both sides of the climate change debate.

One clear difficulty is that this ARE climate models - and it was climate models from which the "butterfly effect" was first named. That is the observation that complex models can be highly dependent on initial conditions. It has a corollary that observations that disagree with predictions can be not inconsistent with the model.

What it does do is leave open this kind of quibbling about the significance of individual observations.

But back to the bits kindly forwarded by Chris Golis.

Firstly the impressive speech by David Evans - whose claim to fame is an understanding of the kinds of complex systems we are discussing. He rightly points out that part of the warming theory is that rising temperatures from the carbon dioxide effect are presumed to increase the atmospheric moisture, and this multiplier is critical to the model.

Evans then goes on to note that weather balloons haven't found a predicted "hot spot" above the tropics. He then rightly notes that any long lasting system contains natural "dampening effects", he asserts however that the this observation proves such dampening occurs in the climate system.

The second item suggests that the NASA studies show that more heat is lost to space from the top of the atmosphere than climate models suggest. This could be the cause of what Evans asserts to be an observation. However, it could equally be wrong, or simply evidence that something else is wrong in the model because an error in the heat exchange at the top would presumably also effect the models that supposedly work to explain thousands of years of stability.

So, where are we. Evans asserts;

You see, in science empirical evidence always trumps theory, no matter how much you are in love with the theory. If theory and evidence disagree, real scientists scrap the theory. But official climate science ignored the crucial weather balloon evidence, and other subsequent evidence that backs it up, and instead clung to their carbon dioxide theory — this just happens to keep them in high-paying jobs with lavish research grants, and gives great political power to their government masters.

This makes climate science a great conspiracy theory - but not of the left but od self-interested scientists and bureaucrats. That such things can happen is evidenced by 90% of theoretical physicists pursuing string theory.

But if we go to the real conception of science, theories that are probably true when applied where the assumptions are appropriate - the theory of global warming is still a serious risk. What we do know is that we are taking the CO2 concentration higher than it has ever been, that in the past this correlates to warming and that there are models that predict it will irreversibly happen in response to human CO2 emissions.

Why wouldn't you decide as a planet to really work hard on using different energy sources to reduce atmospheric carbon?

The only answers I hear are because of some kind of theory of economic damage. Memo to my fellow Australians - if we want to capitalise on our current boom we need to invent the energy sources of the future, and research cheaper energy transport (hydrogen).


NOTE: The "NASA research" is in fact a paper by two University of Alabama in Huntsville academics. It attempts to reconcile certain observations on actual heat exchange to modelled heat exchange and concludes;

We are still faced with a rather large discrepancy in the time-lagged regression coefficients between the radiative signatures displayed by the real climate system in satellite data versus the climate models. While this discrepancy is nominally in the direction of lower climate sensitivity of the real climate system, there are a variety of parameters other than feedback affecting the lag regression statistics which make accurate feedback diagnosis difficult. These include the amount of non-radiative versus radiative forcing, how periodic the temperature and radiative balance variations are, the depth of the mixed layer, etc., all of which preclude any quantitative estimate of how large the feedback difference is.

This is somewhat more equivocal than the way it was first reported. This was by James Taylor from the Heartland Institute - an avowed free market think tank (in the classic US right wing model) - and did misrepresent the research.


Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est

Front door - back door

Took a really enjoyable circular weekende trip - Canberra to Batemans Bay to Sydney. Took us through Braidwood on Saturday morning - market day.

I bit my tongue when two old blokes (that means about my age) were agreeing with each other about how the Gillard government is destroying us, what with climate change and illegal immigrants. One said to the other "I have no problem with taking refugees from the camps - they just have to come in through the front door".

It made me think of a new map of the world published by The Guardian to show the new country of South Sudan.

Bottom right shows source and destination of the world's refugees. 3 million Afghan, 1.7 million Iraqi refugees. Pakistan has received 1.9 M, Iran 1 M and Syria 1 M. Do the rednecks who talk of front and back doors understand that there is no such thing as the "front door" for a refugee? This is not orderly migration - these are people uprooting themselves and fleeing.

Where it becomes most depressing is when the refugee question and climate change are discussed by the same people. See we don't want climate change policies that "export jobs" or require us to reduce emissions if developing countries don't have to.

if you want to stop the global movement of people looking for a better life, you at least need to make their life better where they are.

We've discovered that invasions to plant democracy don't work. We also know that the IMF/World Bank economic prescriptions don't work. But what does?

I'm really keen to hear some conversations on that.
Note. Thanks to Jessica Irvine for tweeting about the spreadsheet porn of The Guardian which is how I found the map.

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You have to read this....

While I think I held up well in the BNet debate I really did nowhere near as well as this piece in - of all places - today's The Punch (that is a News Limited title).

It outlines the deception of the Monckton/Plimer/Carter line - which goes;

That the world is not warming, even if it was warming it’s not human activity driving it, and even if human activity is driving global warming, doing nothing at all about it is the best solution.

It explains neatly the rhetoric style that blends "fact and fiction in such a way that, to the uninformed listener, what they say can seem both reasonable and reassuring" and "unconstrained by the need to actually tell the truth, and with a gift for cherrypicking facts that support their world-view (especially when taken out of context) they rattle off non-sequiturs and utter nonsense to support their main argument."

More importantly it explains the long history of the theory, that there has been no evidence mounted against it, and why the country with the highest per capita emissions on the planet should act.

Read it. Get others to read it. Blog about it. Link it on Facebook and Twitter.





Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est

BNet debate

An interesting experience this week. A couple of blog posts - in particular on reform - resulted in an invitation to debate a carbon tax opponent with the view to a discussion on whether change is possible.

The debate unfortunately stayed on climate change. I had a bit of fun - especially at the start when my opponent said he'd "studied natural science for 2 years" at Cambridge and then told us how many Nobel prizes they earned.

It was fun.

It was, however, a real pity that we didn't spend more time on the basis of debate. I also think I scored a win on the myth of John Howard and the GST. The public voted strategically for a Senate that would vote against the GST - the beginning of the end for the Australian Democrats was Meg Lees GST deal and ratting on her voters.

I was actually hoping, given the interviewer, to use the conservative reaction to the NBN as another example. They same strategy has been used against the NBN....a whole string of different and inconsistent alternatives.

I love the line "the most chilling thing was an Indian telling me that bringing this in would make us the white trash of Asia". No evidence as to whether this was a credible analyst, just a "dispassionate observer".

Anyway I had fun. Have a listen.

Link courtesy of BTalk on BNET.com (http://www.bnet.com/topics/btalk+australia).

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Direct versus representational democracy

BOF is conducting an inquiry into recall elections, the idea of which is that a sufficiently high demand - as measured by a petition - requires a government to call an election.

In NSW part of the motivation for this was the perceived problem of how long it took to get rid of the post-Iemms Labor Government. One could suggest that a reversion to three year terms might be a better start.

But it reminds one of the distinction between direct and representational democracy. Whether people understand it or not, the latter is what we have. You are meant to choose people you trust to represent you, who when faced with the need for change because of change facts, are likely to decide the same way you would.

Because this can't be perfect and because voters change and politicians change we have regular new elections.

That's why Julia Gillard has introduced a carbon tax not an ETS, despite the latter being her preference and position before the election. The position was not the one that garnered a majority.

Tony Abbott has been calling for a plebiscite or an election on the carbon tax. But that isn't how it works. We don't allow one parliament to bind another for exactly these circumstances - governments govern if they get the support of the parliament and we re-judge them at the next election.

He now is reported as saying that a vote for Abbott to repeal the tax will be a guarantee of two elections because he'll call a double dissolution if he has to to repeal it.

This gives the PM the opportunity to now lay out the position.

If Mr Abbott agrees to stop calling for an election now and recognises the way the parliamentary system works she will introduce the tax and, if passed, implement it from July 1. She will then be happy to campaign on the carbon tax once people have seen its effect. Further she will commit the ALP to supporting the coalition in a repeal of the tax if she loses the election. But all she asks is that people be given the chance to assess the tax on its real effects not the scare campaign.


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Climate Change and a new Conservatism

I have elsewhere addressed commentary that focuses on the idea of need for reform as if it were an end in itself, and in particular the idea that the reform needed was more "microeconomic" reform.

In an earlier piece I labelled the NBN and addressing climate change as great Gillard reforms.

Today Shaun Carney writing for the Fairfax press declares a wider death of the "reform era" and hence the struggle that Gillard will face. In doing so he notes the incredible shift in support over the last four years on the proposition of a price on carbon.

Today I want to suggest we need some clarity of language to discuss the issue, and then see how various campaigners operate in this space.

The first language to define are the three policy stances of "reactionary", "conservative" and "progressive". These are all stances in the way policy should respond to change, and hence how policy should respond.

A reactionary believes that the new changes and problems we face are due to errors in our earlier responses and hence seeks a return to an earlier policy. Work Choices can be fairly described as reactionary - based as it was on the H R Nicholls society and its fixation on the Harvester judgement.

A conservative believes that the new changes and problems we face are possibly transitory, certainly not as great a threat as imagined and that things will sort themselves out. A neo-liberal faith in markets can be seen as a mark of a conservative, they might acknowledge a crisis but that it is better to let the market work through the problem than to intervene.

A progressive believes that the new changes and problems we face require new solutions and that good public policy is made by rapid and targeted response. The words attributed to Keynes "When the facts change, I change my mind" typify this approach. The embrace of competition policy and free trade in the 1980s was progressive not reactionary, as the kind of market envisioned had not existed before.

These three terms actually define different concepts than the concepts of Right and Left. These terms more correctly refer to the policy position taken on the issue of equity. The Left are typically the champions of "social justice", a desire for which leads to calls for greater intervention by the state in the organisation of economic affairs.

Given that the starting point for modern western political philosophy was first a feudal system and then an imperial system, the political Right has historically been made up of reactionaries and conservatives, while the Left in advocating change is progressive.

The importance of the distinction can perhaps be seen in the politics of climate change. The move to put a price on carbon is politically right not left biased - because the "efficiency of markets" is antithetical to equity. It is however progressive.

The response of many environmentalists is a call for less energy consumption - a simpler life, embracing permaculture, home veggie patches and local markets. This looks largely a policy of the Left in that it focuses on equity, but it is also reactionary - it harks back to "simpler times".

The third kind of response is the conservative response. That can range from Nick Minchin's view that there is no problem (it is all a Left conspiracy) or that action by us alone is insufficient (a kind of Left argument that action by us is inequitable).

Where politics gets interesting is how the three strands of reaction, conservatism and progress interact. The development of democracy in the UK offers many great examples of how strange coalitions formed between the three groups - which often coincided with the interests of aristocracy, the middle class and the workers.

The significance now of this analysis is the claim of Carney that we face a new conservatism. It is my contention that what we are seeing is the use of a well-worn playbook from the conservatives on this issue.

The best prior example to look at was simply the republic debate. In the early phases of the push for a republic the conservatives demanded the progressives be specific about their model before they were prepared to debate it. Once a model was chosen the conservatives successfully attacked the model because it was conservative - the attack on "the politician's republic" ignored the fact that it modelled the reality of how Governor-Generals are already chosen.

In the climate change debate the conservative response really did wait for the firm proposals to emerge before reacting. In the process they allowed those wanting change free range to express their different stances. Those stances range all the way from the most market oriented (emissions trading) through carbon tax through various levels of non-market "direct action" proposals. A strand of the Left favours direct action. The Greens actually sank the Rudd ETS because they don't trust the market mechanism. This week we still saw a respected competition commentator adopting the Left anti-market view.

While allowing the progressives to diverge, the conservatives have taken up the cudgels to question the need for action. First there are the attacks on the principle that there is climate change, or if there is that it is man made.

The Fairfax press gave sceptic Bob carter two cracks at this recently.

These attacks do highlight an error of the hubris of the scientists - a detailed debate about actual warming is the wrong debate. The discussion needs to be that if the theory is right, by the time temperature changes become significant enough to be conclusive proof the opportunity for all action will be over. That is that conservatism as a philosophy needs to be attacked, we simply can't risk waiting to see.

Carter does try to attack the underlying theory, but as Sou notes this is where he fails. But there are still too few people making defences like this one rather than simple abuse.

As a last crazy act the conservatives are embracing the Left policy of direct action - but only for the reason identified by Malcolm Turnbull. Direct action is the easiest policy to unpick, it is progress that permits future reaction.

The Australian public has not become more conservative, it is just that they understand more about convincing the public and playing to their base fears. Declaring loudly that "the science proves it" doesn't cut it in a world where many don't "believe in evolution", where the health risk of mobile phones is assessed using the logic "I have cancer, I used a mobile phone, therefore my phone caused my cancer".

The progressives need to repeat the fact that by the time the evidence on climate change becomes irrefutably conclusive it will be too late.

When the standard of scientific debate is to assert that because CO2 is a colourless odourless gas it cannot be poisonous you need to use more than just science to win.

Finally, the ALP finds this a particular challenge since it hasn't tried to market a philosophical stance for about thirty years!

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A grab-bag

Firstly from The Conversation one for the maths nerds. A simple description of the P vs NP problem which hinges on the question of difficulty...and is worth a read if you want to understand something of the limits of mathematics.

I could add at this point the fact that this problem is one that could be used by heterodox economists against mathematics - that once you make the economic model sufficiently detailed to be useful it becomes a "difficult" problem and it is easier to simply check the answers provided through verbal reasoning.

Alan Knight writing for the National Times echoes my conclusion that Sky News can't be allowed anywhere near the Australian Network.

Hawker Brittan's Justin di Lollo raises an important question about the regulation of lobbyists. Lobbyists are defined in regulation to exclude in-house lobbyists, other professions that might meet with government officials and representatives of industry associations.

The problem is that it is really hard to define who in a firm is actually a lobbyist, since we will send all kinds of managers into meetings with government.

Personally I think the law change in NSW proposed by Barry O'Farrell to exclude lobbyists as a class from appointment to Boards etc is the error. But on the more general question of transparency of lobbying activity the simplest thing would be to simply make the appointment schedules of Ministers, their staff and senior officials public. This could be limited to appointments and calls initiated by the external party so as not to hinder Government's ability to be informed.

The perhaps wackiest of the lot today is Tony Abbott's claim that the carbon tax won't pass the Parliament as ALP members will rat.

Ratting like that is permanent - not one off. These would be people casting their lot to bring down an ALP Government in the hope of retaining their seat. History has shown the electorate can be very unforgiving of the rat. So far the ALP has been solid in denying the story.

But as a problem the issue facing all MPs right now has a touch of the "P vs NP" problem. How difficult is it to respond to climate change in a way that is effective and can bring the public along? Gillard and co have taken the neo-classical approach of using the price mechanism, Abbott wants direct action...the centralist/statist approach.

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Politics, Economics and Climate Change

Following the idiotic controversy over the comments of Kevin Rudd on climate change it is time for some more analysis of the fundamentals.

Writing in the SMH today Jessica Irvine did a very good job of describing the difference between "income effects" and "substitution effects" of a tax on a specific good, and how you could both impose a tax and pay compensation and hence get a change in behaviour.

She notes that Tony Abbott has said "At best it's a giant money-go-round" but retorts "Sorry Tony, but good economists know better."

In this she is putting more economic theory around the straight-forward explanation that I praised the PM for in her appearance on Q&A.

But is the economics as simple as that? There are two ways of pricing carbon - one is the straight tax, the other is emissions trading. The latter is the ultimate economic orthodoxy on dealing with a negative externality. We lost that because the Greens didn't support it, not because of the coalition.

The Greens have preferred the tax route because they want to spend money directly on climate abatement programs. Gillard has been forced to go the direct tax route because that is the price of Greens support.

All of which makes the slagging off about the Greens and economics interesting. Gillard thinks they "wrongly reject the moral imperative to a strong economy", Albanese says they "tend to be a grab-bag of issues, tend not to have a coherent policy that adds up" while (M) Ferguson says they want to "sit under the tree and weave baskets with no jobs".

Yet the Greens are closer in their policies to the prescriptions of the Henry tax review than anyone else on death duties, health rebates,and higher taxes on super profits.

The criticism of either emissions trading or a carbon tax has a very wide support base - because people just don't understand how it works.

Frank Stilwell in a thoughtful piece outlined a very good reason for this lack of belief in response to price. He wrote;

In the real world market responses can operate quite differently. For example, you would expect to see a market disincentive incentive effect happening now as the price of petrol rises to $1.50 a litre and beyond. However, I don't observe less crowded roads. The availability of good, readily available alternatives to the car is a precondition for getting people to switch. And those alternatives do not just arise spontaneously.

To put it bluntly - for their to be a substitution effect there has to be a satisfactory substitute. In the case of carbon those substitutes will take time to be available.

Industry has argued that it won't make the investments in the alternatives until there is certainty on the price for carbon. But as Henry Ergas has neatly argued (yes I said that)there are reasons why investors should not have faith in the price for carbon being increased to reach the desired levels.

There is nothing in the mere fact of introducing an MBM that irrevocably commits to steadily and progressively increasing the implied tax on emissions. Moreover, it would not be rational for a potential investor in technology development today to assume such an increase in the implied tax rate would indeed occur.

This can be seen by considering two broad scenarios.

In the first, the technologies needed to dramatically reduce emissions do not become available in the relevant future. In that event, it is implausible that governments, merely so as to honour commitments made many years earlier, would increase tax rates on emissions to levels that would cripple their economies. Rather, the likelihood is that any commitments made would be revised or ignored, so that effective tax rates on emissions would remain low.

In contrast, in the second scenario new effectively decarbonised technologies become available at some relevant future date. In that event, governments could, if they so chose, abide by commitments to substantially increase the tax on carbon; however, it is still unclear whether they would do so.

This is quite simply because once those technologies are available, even a modest tax will suffice to create an incentive for their deployment in the marketplace.

While much of this is the kind of reasoning Jessica Irvine pointed out explains why an economist will not bend down to pick up a $100 note (if it were really someone would have already picked it up). But it does flag the fact that there are plenty of reasons why the tax MAY NOT (rather than will not) have the desired behavioural effect on R&D investment.

The error here is probably in thinking that the solution has to be exclusively one or the other - either pricing carbon or merely regulating industry, or regulating down output while compensating for investment in alternatives (the latter being as best I can understand the Abbott alternative).

It seems to me that the best outcome is a bit of everything.

Oh, and one final point for the "we shouldn't act unilaterally brigade". Irrespective of climate change the world's fossil fuel reserves continue to decline. Investing now in creating new energy industries from Australia's abundant resources is the way to building new comparative advantage for the future.

Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est

Scientists be humble

I've just come from a lunch at which US science journalist and author Chris Mooney spoke about the war on science in the US. At the end a question was asked what advice Chris would give a young scientist on what to do to combat he war.

He replied "be prepared". I think the better answer is "be humble." Science has taken to lecturing evryone else, the worst example being the approach of the "new atheists". Scientists need to acknowledge that their "knowledge" is fallible, that it is not absolute truth but just the closest we have to something we can believe is true. On the very day of the speech an elephant in Sydney gave birth to a baby that had been pronounced dead by the veterinary experts - was it as dead as Lazarus.

The physics of Newton is wrong, the evolution of Darwin is wrong.

In the climate change debate scientists need to be humble and NOT say the science proves that the planet is warming and instead say there is a complete theory that is well supported by evidence. The two possible errors are to not act and the theory is right, or to act but the theory is wrong. It is not hard to demonstrate that these risks are assymetric, and that action is required.

Science, be humble and you wll be more successful in policy.