When I first heard that Cyclone Sidr was shaping up to be a category four or five monster, these lyrics came to mind:

“I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumours, but I think that God’s got a sick sense of humour; and when I die, I expect to find him laughing.” — Depeche Mode, Blasphemous Rumours (1984)

That night, I said to a friend: “I wonder if God sits there going, ‘Ooh, nastiness. Now where can I send this thing? Honduras? Madagascar? No wait, I know, Bangladesh! Muhahaha.’”

Having thought about it, I must admit I was wrong, on a number of grounds — not counting any metaphysical objections of blasphemy.

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If there was any doubt about the mainstream media’s agenda, this piece from the BBC should lay them to rest. It cites ten global warming skeptic arguments, and provides counter-arguments. Note the image caption: Unravelling the skeptics, which links to an article by the BBC’s environment correspondent who claims he’s not entirely sure what the arguments against the political consensus on global warming actually are.

This is not reporting. This is nothing less than partisan advocacy.

For its rebuttals, it relies on information supplied by Gavin Schmidt, who calls a significant correction of the most relied-upon temperature data — maintained by the organisation that employs him — “another ado about nothing“, who is a co-contributor at RealClimate.org with Michael Mann (he of the broken hockey-stick), and who claims to welcome openness in the debate but refuses to admit Steve McIntyre to the same debate.

The arguments are notable only for their vagueness, and for the patchy nature (at best) of the rebuttals. Worse, it omits the biggest and best of the skeptics’ arguments: that the direct and indirect costs of government programmes to curb global warming will exceed any claimed benefits even if they were to accrue, alternatively that the cost-benefit of spending resources on climate change is considerably worse than the cost-benefit of directing those same resources towards any number of other global problems.

I’ve considered most of the specific arguments in previous posts on the subject. Check under the climate change category for a selection. One day, should I find myself casting about for some productive procrastination, I may fisk the “news” in this article in particular.

But whatever you do, whether or not the BBC is right, and whether or not you believe them, do not mistake it for “news”. It’s BBC News, which is a different animal altogether.

I just started reading The Pursuit of Reason, a history of The Economist researched and written over a ten-year period by Ruth Dudley Edwards and published on the occasion of its 150th anniversary in 1993. It’s a great read, and James Wilson, the founding editor, has a lot to contribute on the subject of free markets and free trade.

The paper was founded with the purpose of documenting the harm done by government tariffs, restrictions and subsidies, and arguing in favour of a laissez-faire political economy. It relied heavily on statistics and clear reasoning. It was uncompromising. Wrote Wilson in the issue of 13 February 1846:

The more we reflect upon the experience of the past — the more we watch what is now going forward in this country, the more irresistibly are we brought to the conclusion that the only functions which a government can exercise with advantage to society are those connected with the maintenance of order, the peace and security of life and property, and the raising of the necessary funds for those objects; and, moreover, that whenever a government or the legislature step beyond those simple duties, they do so at the hazard of doing much more mischief than good.

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In a new paper, published in the journal Energy & Environment, Craig Loehle reconstructs the 2000-year temperature record without using tree rings as a proxy. He gets the following trend. Note the prominence of the medieval warm period and the little ice age, both of which are conspicuously absent from Mann’s hockey stick and various other reconstructions favoured by alarmists such as Al Gore.

He discusses in detail the reasons for omitting the abundant tree ring proxies. Here’s the abstract:

Historical data provide a baseline for judging how anomalous recent temperature changes are and for assessing the degree to which organisms are likely to be adversely affected by current or future warming. Climate histories are commonly reconstructed from a variety of sources, including ice cores, tree rings, and sediment. Tree-ring data, being the most abundant for recent centuries, tend to dominate reconstructions. There are reasons to believe that tree ring data may not properly capture long-term climate changes. In this study, eighteen 2000-year-long series were obtained that were not based on tree ring data. Data in each series were smoothed with a 30-year running mean. All data were then converted to anomalies by subtracting the mean of each series from that series. The overall mean series was then computed by simple averaging. The mean time series shows quite coherent structure. The mean series shows the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA) quite clearly, with the MWP being approximately 0.3°C warmer than 20th century values at these eighteen sites.

A lengthy and forthright discussion by people considerably more qualified than I am, and with participation from Loehle himself, can be found at Steve McIntyre’s ClimateAudit site. It’s worth reading before picking holes in the paper.

Update: Something just occurred to me. The pronounced warm period prior to the year 1000 is missing from most reconstructions I’ve seen, because they all cover only the last 1000 years. Those charts, when they haven’t been piped through Michael Mann’s hockey stick maker, include the medieval warm period around 1200-1300 and little ice age around 1700-1800. Turns out if you go back just a little bit more, you get an even higher temperature peak than the medieval warm period. One wonders if the data endpoint selection for the “usual” charts is deliberate.

Resolution Recycling used to just collect waste paper, but as of recently offers a complete household rubbish recycling service. You dump your recyclables into a custom wheelie bin that’s a flashy blue and lime green, so the neighbours know how very special you are, and they collect it, sort it, and recycle it.

Great idea, isn’t it? After all, paper is among the least sensible things to recycle, both from a pure environmental point of view and from a commercial perspective. Branching out makes so much sense. This way, the company can make a lot of money buying waste that includes the really good stuff, like aluminium, plastic and glass — material that manufacturers will actually pay for.

So how much do you think they’d pay you for doing them the favour of gathering, separating and making available your recyclable garbage? Not a cent, sucker. They’re not paying you. You get to pay them.

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• This column was first published on 8 October 2007 in Maverick, a South African business magazine. The rest of the magazine is much better, so if you’d like to subscribe, simply contact them via e-mail.

Why does Al Gore bang the climate change drum? Because he’s a scientist, certain that his theory is true? Or because he’s a politician, and scary predictions have always persuaded people to put their faith in the ability of the prophets to save them from doom?

You don’t bet on uncertainty if you’re a politician. So if climate change and its causes are uncertain, what exactly is it that Al Gore betting on?

When Paul Ehrlich warned about the coming population explosion in 1968, he said it would lead to mass starvation by the mid-1970s. “Nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate,” he wrote. But death rates had already been in decline in both the rich and poor world, for 100 years, and have continued declining since.

Moreover, fertility rates had long been going down in the rich world, and a similar decline had already begun in the developing world too. It is now estimated that global population, far from rising uncontrollably as Ehrlich predicted, will never exceed 10 billion. He warned about a crisis that was already being addressed, naturally.

In 1998, the UN compared the Y2K problem to the impact of an earth-asteroid collision, which “demands worldwide strategic mobilisation…similar to the effort required by World War II.”

So Y2K required food rationing, confiscatory taxes, central planning and martial law? It’s unsurprising that this is what an organisation of governments would promote. When the new millennium arrived, the UN said: “The governments…can congratulate themselves for passing the Y2K challenge.”

The only problem is that the governments did nothing. Well, not much. Of the total US spend on Y2K, the US government’s contribution amounted to about five percent. The problem was already in hand when the dire warnings of a “meltdown of civilisation” (I kid you not) were rife. People aren’t stupid.

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What happens when American tourists go to the moon? They play golf. What happens when Japanese tourists go to the moon? You get high-resolution photographs, HDTV broadcasts and YouTube videos of “earth-rise” and “earth-set” as seen from their orbiting tour bus.

These pictures were taken from the lunar orbiter Kaguya, operated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Of course, they could only be taken from an orbiter, since the moon always shows the same face to the earth, so there’s no such thing, really, as an “earth-rise” or “earth-set” on the moon.¹ Click through for full-size (1920×1080) photographs.

The crater in the foreground of the second image is Shackleton crater, the permanently-dark and cold polar area where the next NASA moon mission intends sending a lander in the hope of finding ice of some description. If all goes according to plan, it will touch down on the mound to the left of the crater (see annotated image), which, unlike Shackleton crater itself, always receives sunlight (and consequently, solar power). If you look at the earth carefully, you’ll note that Australia is not down-under, it’s onnnn… TOP!

The images, along with diagrams and movies can be downloaded from JAXA’s website. A news report is here.

Update: Added a footnote about lunar librations, and added an annotated image showing features in the earth-set image.

1. It’s been brought to my attention that though strictly true, this statement isn’t strictly true. The inclination of the moon’s axis relative to that of the earth, and the perspective change due to the moon’s rotation around the earth means that we can see 59% of the face of the moon, so there’s a significant part of the surface of the moon from which apparent “earth-rise” or “earth-set” would be visible. For more, see this animation and explanation of “lunar libration”. [↩]

Since I’m laid up in bed with a rather annoying flu that managed to switch off both body and mind, I figured I’d pass the time and break the silence with links to the half-dozen most popular posts on my blog, as per Google Analytics. They represent a gratifying mix of subjects, ranging from the environment to economic theory, from social networks to media freedom, from silly bureaucrats to great press photographs. In order of popularity:

1. 10 reasons to reject global warming — A summary of why I can’t accept the orthodox view that global warming is a crisis that requires large-scale government intervention. This item has not only been the most popular, despite being published only three weeks ago, but it recorded a surprisingly high average of 24 minutes spent on the page. It was a follow-up to a column published in Maverick magazine, entitled Global warming is a hoax. In some ways, the second attempt turned out to be the column I had actually set out to write.
2. Child labour: the baby dragon — This was a response to a question asked in the comments to an earlier post, which simply argued that import restrictions on Chinese goods, while protecting narrow interests, are not in the broad interests of South African consumers. “But what about child labour?” came the question. My response, namely that the description of such practices is an over-generalisation, that blanket condemnation is simplistic, and that either way, our objection can better be expressed in individual, targeted, specific boycotts rather than state-enforced punishment against an entire foreign country at the cost of local consumers, prompted a fair bit of outrage. As it would, when you see things only in black-and-white, and when every problem only has one, statist, solution.
3. This is a poke-free zone — Despite deriving some benefits from Facebook, the popular social network that attracted hundreds of thousands of South Africans in the space of just a few months, the signal-to-noise ratio had been declining, and I vowed to leave for good the day Microsoft got involved. It did. I left.
4. Info Scandal II — A cautionary tale about what happens when politicians and civil servants own media interests and try to buy out a major newspaper critical of the government. A follow-up post noted a significant difference, pointed out by Anton Harber, between the proposed buyout of Johnnic Communications (soon to be called Avusa) and the original Info Scandal of 1978.
5. The candyman can’t — Who needs to invent jokes when politically-correct bureaucrats will hand them to you on custom-printed signs?
6. The life and death of Kevin Carter — An old article about the late Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer stirred recollections of the years of South Africa’s transition to democracy. It occurred to me that many of my memories from that time aren’t memories at all. They’re Kevin Carter’s photographs.

Of these, my own favourite is the Kevin Carter piece. Like the item on William F. Deedes and the post on Isambard Kingdom Brunel (and the follow-up column it sparked), they reflect the pleasure I take in history and the great people that populate it.

Sounds like every central banker. I whipped up a couple of simplified graphics that illustrate, quite dramatically, the impact of fiat money, government price controls on credit, and inflationary money supply policy. One might call it the curse of the central banker.

(Adapted from charts originally created by Michael W. Hodges, based on data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.)

No wonder the issues in the US election campaign are turning towards economic concerns. Not only are there some (economic concerns, that is), but the core Bush-bashing issue of his presidency is starting to look rather limp. MoveOn.org had to turn to vicious slander in its effort to discredit the Congressional testimony of General Petreaus as propaganda for the White House. The media has, in general, been fairly reliably opposed to the Iraq war. Reporters have consistently hedged good news with bad, and are usually skeptical of any news of progress. Some outright suppress it, revelling in predictions of the inglorious defeat of the US-led coalition.

Yet the orthodox view of Iraq as a disaster is under threat. Even the BBC is pointing to statistics that — across the board, it says — show the situation in Iraq is improving:

Is Iraq getting better? The statistics say so, across the board.

Over the past three months, there has been a sharp and sustained drop in all forms of violence. The figures for dead and wounded, military and civilian, have also greatly improved.

All across Baghdad, which has seen the worst of the violence, streets are springing back to life. Shops and restaurants which closed down are back in business.

People walk in crowded streets in the evening, when just a few months ago they would have been huddled behind locked doors in their homes.

Everybody agrees that things are much better.

Except the BBC, of course:

But is the improvement only skin deep? And will it last once the American troops, whose “surge” has clearly made a difference, begin to scale down?

Several quotations in the article do support the view that security, progress and peace in Iraq remain dependent on coalition forces and reconstruction efforts. Which leads to only one conclusion: those calling for a rapid withdrawal (including presidential candidates that do) are willing to give up the gains made, condemn Iraq to rule by partisan or insurgent militias, and sacrifice the peace and prosperity of Iraqis on the altar of political expediency. Perversely, if that happens they’ll get to say, “I told you so,” instead of paying the price for their betrayal. I hope the American people won’t let that happen.

If I were Australian, and John Clarke weren’t a New Zealander, and he really were a politician, he’d probably get my vote. Here’s a video of a wonderfully deadpan Clarke and Dawe skit based on a minor controversy over the possible cause of death of a whale near where an oil company was preparing to do seismic testing. The news report gives the required background, and then Brian Dawe interviews “minister” John Clarke about it on ABC Australia’s satirical show, The 7.30 Report.

No surprise that in a recent interview, Clarke cites the Goons among his comic heroes.

Used to be, people complained that the news media were too fixated on death and disaster.

“Chief,” the cub reporter would say, “there’s been a shootout at the mall.” “Anyone dead?” would come the reply.

“Sir, there’s been a car accident.” — “Get any pictures of blood, corpses or solitary shoes?”

“Hey boss, the church is on fire.” — “It ain’t Sunday, there won’t be any people inside.”

Luckily, in our enlightened age, human deaths and misery are just, well, incidental. After all, we’re only harming the planet.

“Oil spill in Black Sea” read a headline last night on the CNN International news ticker. The station has been trumpeting Planet in Peril in big scary letters, with dark theme music and ominous lightning flashes, like some Frankenstein rerun, but this appeared to be real news. I wait to hear if the news is good or bad. It’s worse. It’s terrible. It turns out several ships ran aground in a severe storm in the strait connecting the Sea of Azov with the Black Sea, causing a fuel oil spill. Could be the worst environmental disaster in decades.

By the end of the report, the alert viewer will learn one of those colourful details that modern editors insist reporters insert, to add a just the right touch of fluffy emotion to an otherwise hard, factual, depressing piece. There, as an afterthought, and not even worthy of a mention in the later summary of the news, you learn about the fate of the sailors on the stricken ships: two confirmed dead, dozens missing.

After all, nobody really cares about manual labourers somewhere in central Asia who don’t even speak English. It’s not like they were Western tourists or anything. They don’t really count on CNN. Why headline the piece “Maritime disaster in Black Sea”, or “Sailors dead, missing in storm”, or “30 missing in half-dozen shipwrecks”?

That would be hysterical. Sheer sensationalist alarmism.

(A few more people have been confirmed dead since, and the human tragedy finally made it into the headline.)