There’s bad news on the platinum front: AngloPlat’s output has fallen by a quarter. But, says Business Report, there’s a silver lining:

Power cuts and flooding cut platinum output by up to 24%

Cape Town — Power cuts and flooding had resulted in refined platinum production falling as much as 24 percent to 428 600 ounces in the quarter to March, compared to the same period last year, Anglo Platinum said yesterday.

But the power shortages at local platinum mines, which dominate global production, has had a silver lining, as platinum prices shot through the $2 000 (R15 172) an ounce barrier earlier this year to reach a record of $2 255 last month.

Wonder if they’d write the same about food producers. “Bread output is down by a third, and milk production is 25% lower. Lucky their prices went through the roof, so company financials won’t suffer too much.”

Maybe it hasn’t occurred to this reporter that the PR spin from AngloPlat, that price increases made up for production losses, is just that: spin. If they had kept production up, the price would still have increased (albeit by a bit less, perhaps), and AngloPlat results would have been significantly better. You want to sell into rising prices, not sit on the sidelines while your competitors do. Without the production losses, investors would have earned more capital appreciation, which they could have re-invested, which would have improved South Africa’s current account balance, and which would have bolstered overall economic growth.

Instead, the jobs and incomes of mineworkers have been put at risk by lower output. Silver lining? That AngloPlat’s numbers are reasonable despite its inability to exploit rising prices? Tell that to unemployed miners when they can’t put food on the table next month. Perhaps the mineworkers can send a press release to Business Report saying that their second quarter calorie-intake was worse than expected, but in the context of higher unemployment levels in the broader economy they didn’t do too badly, and there’s a silver lining: at least they don’t have to risk the mining safety issues Anglo Platinum management has attributed to the power cuts.

The current rise in food prices is very, very dangerous. Not because food will be more expensive, but because chances are the government will intervene to prevent this.

The unions in South Africa have already called for a food price freeze. This merely serves to show that they didn’t bother paying attention in Economics 101. Nor bothered to witness the results of price controls in our neighbouring no-crisis zone, Zimbabwe. If you cap prices, you cause shortages. Simple. Fact. Nothing can change that except complete nationalisation of the entire supply chain, and even then, the difference will be made up from tax, so lower real incomes will keep the real price of food the same.

The danger is that there are enough communists, socialists, interventionists and developmental-statists in government that they might just listen to the unions. If only to pander to the population and avoid the counter-productive impact of strikes and riots.

A recent commentary by the grandiloquently named Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar, picked up by the Wall Street Journal Asia, makes a good example of India. His conclusion is similar to mine, posted a few weeks ago:

India’s current food price problem isn’t a market failure. Rather, it’s a government failure to allow markets to work. The only sustainable solution is to pull back the subsidies and protections. But sustainability is the last thing on the minds of politicians competing to win the next election with ever-higher subsidies.

It’s a simple truism that in a free market, the solution to high prices is high prices. High prices drive prices down by stimulating production and discouraging unnecessary consumption. It is also true, however, that artificial costs and inefficiencies introduced into the supply chain by government intervention merely serve to perpetuate the supply-demand imbalance.

Our government should indeed take drastic action, by removing any and all regulations, subsidies, tariffs and other red tape from the agricultural sector. It should take drastic action to ensure that any pending land transfers are expedited (or cancelled) as quickly as possible, to prevent otherwise productive commercial farm land lying fallow. It should take drastic action to guarantee farmers — including new farmers on restitution or redistribution lands — gain full title to their property, so they can raise working capital by using their land and equipment as collateral. It should take drastic action to complete its long-overdue audit of state-owned land, and make suitable land available to emerging farmers and communities. And it would do well to take to heart the lessons Aiyar cites from India’s agricultural policy and its history of government intervention.

Everyone asks what government can do. Instead of acting innocent and blaming corporate collusion, this is what the government can do. This is positive action. This is taking the moral high ground. And it had better do these things quickly, or people might start thinking the unions actually have the right idea. I can think of no more dangerous result of food price inflation than that.

I had hoped to blog a few items today, and respond to some comments, but a failed hard drive caused a day-long server outage which affected both my blog and my e-mail access. Let’s just say today didn’t break any traffic records. Hopefully, all is well again. I’ll catch up with comments in due course.

I’m very, very impressed, so far, with the new version of Ubuntu, the Linux distribution created by South Africa’s spacefarer and dot-com rich kid, Mark Shuttleworth. The Hardy Heron, the latest long-term support version of the relatively new OS, is better than ever. The install was the fastest and smoothest I have ever experienced with any operating system, contrary to some earlier versions of Ubuntu, which kept throwing up niggly hitches, some of which would be dealbreakers for newbies.

The usual trouble with an OS upgrade is to decide whether to do a clean install, or choose an upgrade so you can keep what you’ve got. Last time, from the Feisty Fawn to the Gutsy Gibbon, I chose the upgrade, so I thought I’d clear out the cobwebs this time. The serious downside of a clean installation is not so much restoring mail and other settings, which is relatively trivial, but the time-consuming mission of finding, selecting and installing all the applications you had installed before. Granted, since everything is easily accessible in online repositories, it’s not as much of a mission than it would be under another operating system, but still, there are a lot of applications, plugins, utilities, tools, and fonts that accumulate over time. I have occasional use for programs such as QCad, Blender and Wings 3D, for example, and no Ubuntu installation is complete without Nethack and Battle for Wesnoth.

To solve this problem, a trick that worked like a charm is this tip from ArsGeek.

First, get a list of all the packages installed on your system. Type dpkg --get-selections | grep -v deinstall > ubuntu-files to do so. (Now now, don’t fret. The command line isn’t that intimidating, and this could save you hours.)

Save the resulting file somewhere other than where you’re installing your new system. If you want, you can review it in a text editor and delete things you no longer want. It’s probably also a good idea to remove entries you suspect might break a fresh installation, such as kernel files (search for “linux-”), graphics drivers, or other things you know a new installation will provide anyway. While you’re doing this, you’ll note that the list of packages do not have version numbers, so you can be sure you’ll get the latest versions from the new version’s repositories when you reinstall them.

Install the new OS from CD. Unless you’re resizing partitions, this shouldn’t take long. Watch where it wants to install, though. My install script saw a wide expanse of unspoilt hard disk and promptly headed in that direction. I had to point out that I’d prefer my OS to sit on the primary drive, not my shiny new portable one. Boot. Set up your internet connection, if necessary (some types can’t be picked up automatically).

Then put the ubuntu-files you saved earlier back in your home directory, and type the following in a terminal:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo dpkg --set-selections < ubuntu-files

This just primes apt-get, and pumps your complete list of packages back into the package manager, ready for installation. Easiest way to install the selected files is using sudo dselect, which will offer you a menu of options. Just hit “I” to install the lot, go have a coffee (my list of packages to be download was big, and took two hours), and return to a sparkly new system. Unless you installed Sun Java or Microsoft fonts, in which case you get a few dialog boxes that stop everything and scream “PAPERS!”

Another useful thing to know is how to safely backup your home directory, without having to fiddle around with multiple drag-and-drop operations and the ever-present risk that hidden files might get lost. Hidden files in Linux start with a period, and while many are just simple user configuration settings for various applications, they include things like your browser bookmarks, cookies and, most importantly, your mail file. Ignoring hidden files is dangerous. And the solution is a Unix command that’s older than I am: cpio

Create a backup directory somewhere. No, not on the disk or partition to which you’re installing. From your home directory run find . -print | cpio -dumpv destination This will ensure that your hidden files are also backed up, so you can restore the whole lot by doing the same in reverse, or copy selected directories (such as mail) back to your clean installation. Warning: always, always, always double check that your actions had the desired results. It really spoils a shiny new operating system when the first thing you find is that some typo, a full disk, or sheer thoughtlessness, caused you to throw out three years worth of mail archives.

Of course, if you really are terrified by the command line, you have two simpler options:

1. just do a version upgrade rather than a clean install, which is quicker and safer, but could leave old settings and data lying around, or
2. backup your home directory using a graphical backup tool of your choice, do a clean install, a backup restore, and then just go to add/remove programs (or the synaptic package manager) and select the software you want manually.

The Hardy Heron comes with new versions of most software, but I’m most pleased with the fact that Firefox 3.0 beta 5 has been included in the software repositories, in addition to Firefox 2. Even though version 3 isn’t yet final, it reportedly solves a ton of long-standing memory and performance issues. Beagle, the desktop search tool and system hog now also behaves rather more politely.

In all, the entire installation took me maybe 90 minutes, not counting download time. This included restoring all my backed-up data and settings, and installing a boatload (three gig’s worth) of applications. The only company that conspired to irritate me during this process was iBurst, the state-protected cartelco (to coin a term), which charges a right fortune (as I wrote on ITWeb) for supposedly always-on wireless broadband. Ubuntu may be free, but it delivers. And this time it did so without any hitch whatsoever. Well done to the Hardy team. Consider me impressed.

Finally, lest anyone think my preference for open source software suggests I’ve taken leave of my free-market capitalist senses, consider this: would I be a good capitalist if paid through the nose for a vastly inferior and far more limited product, when I can exploit socialists who offer me a world of shiny free stuff instead?

The Australian, a newspaper in, well, Oz, reports that global warming appears to have stopped in 1998, that 2007 saw a 0.7°C drop in temperature, and that sunspot activity suggests we may be entering a period of global cooling again. Despite the mass hysteria at Al Gore’s hot air concerts.

Sorry to ruin the fun, but the ice age cometh

[…] Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously. […]

Then a regular reader (hat tip: Hard Rain) sent me a post by Tim Blair, an Australian blogger, which saved me half the trouble. He covers the subject more than just well, and includes a reference to my favourite¹ Czech physicist, Luboš Motl. Lumo, as he signs his posts, noted that despite what the media believes sells well on climate change (panic! doom!), the Amazon.com bestseller list begs to differ.

Lumo also has an interesting titbit on Al Gore’s film. Remember those ice cliffs that he waxed so lyrical about? When he almost got tears in his eyes over their spectacular beauty, and the thought that one day, they might be gone? The producers of the alarmist blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow must be proud. After all, they made the computer-generated images.

I have often said (though I’m not sure whether I’ve written) that by 2030 or so we’ll all be worried about the next ice age. Warming appears to have reached a peak in 1998, and solar activity appears to be heading for a new low. As the Australian (article, not blogger) suggests, solar output is more closely correlated to temperatures measured on earth than atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, which anyway seem to be an effect of global warming, not a cause. Solar activity also accounts for the strange up-down-up temperature trend (despite steadily rising carbon dioxide) of the 20th century, as well as for the 1000-year temperature maxima and minima that Michael Mann tried to erase for the benefit of the UN IPCC.

This point about the influence of the sun on climate (well duh!) is made in several books on the subject, and is summarised well in The Great Global Warming Swindle, an excellent polemic made for Channel 4 in Britain last year. (You can buy it on DVD, or if you’re lucky download it from Google Video. It’s well worth watching, if you haven’t yet seen it.)

It would seem that the ice age alarmism is starting already, just as global warming alarmism started just about when Newsweek published its infamous cooling panic story in 1975. Pity Newsweek recanted in 2006. Upon publishing a story by Sharon Begley on the global warming “denial machine”, for “Newsweek Project Green”, the editor wrote:

Our story is not a piece of lefty cant. […] In 2040, will the editor of NEWSWEEK hold up this week’s issue as an alarmist and discredited report in the tradition of 1975’s “global cooling” story? One can hope, for that would mean America and the rest of the world had reversed the effects of warming so quickly that climate change will seem as rare and remote as polio. But I fear our successors will find that our concerns were the right ones, and that we were on the safest of scientific ground this week. Denying reality does not make it go away. Facts, as John Adams said, are stubborn things.

No, it didn’t take until 2040. It took just a couple of weeks, before this story itself was shredded by an editorial which described it as a “moral crusade”, “self-righteous indignation”, a “vast oversimplification” and “a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading”. And that was just Newsweek’s self-criticism. Guess they should have stuck to their global cooling guns in the first place.

Good thing they call it “climate change” now, so the media can sensationalise, we can panic, and bureaucrats and activists can claim our money, no matter what happens.

Update: After all that, I forgot to add the link right at the top of the post, to The Australian. Fixed now.

1. True, I don’t think I know more than one. [↩]

The US government (and popular media) has a long history of blaming oil companies for “excessive profits” when the oil price is high. They don’t particularly care that when the oil price is low, oil companies risk huge losses, or that massive, long-term industrial investment projects can only be justified by future profits. No, every time Americans suffer at the pump, or think they do, oil companies are hauled before Congress to testify about their “price gouging”.

Turns out that they make less profit than you’d think, as Sterling T. Terrell shows eloquently in an article here. It’s a must-read, because it makes the price of fuel at the pump really, really simple. Taking into account inflation and tax, and despite higher demand from growing economies, higher demand from countries buying in currencies other than dollars, and restricted supply because of draconian environmental restrictions on exploiting domestic oil resources in the US, it turns out Americans aren’t paying all that much at all. Of the excess over base costs, two thirds goes to the government in the form of taxes. The “record profits” of billions of dollars that you hear about on TV might sound like a lot, but once you work it out in terms of the value of a typical oil company’s asset base, the volumes of product supplied, the cost base, and total revenues, they’re not “record profits” at all. Even water utilities make more profit, as do many other industries.

He argues, correctly, that price caps will lead, inevitably, to shortages. But that doesn’t stop politicians, here and abroad, from expressing grave concern about the impact of the high oil price on consumers. Smoothing the political path for intervention, no doubt.

I did a crude (haha) calculation myself, using various data obtained from Stats SA and the Department of Minerals and Energy Affairs. Starting with a 1998 base price of R2.28, which is what a litre of 91-octane unleaded used to cost inland, I compared the actual price to the inflation-adjusted price. For actual price I stuck to the highest octane available, as new levels (93 and 95) were introduced. If R2.28 is adjusted by inflation (average annual CPIX), the average fuel price in 2007 would have been R4.45. The average price in 2007 was actually R6.75. For the sake of simplicity, let’s put all of that disparity down to the steep oil price rise of recent years.

But we are a global leader in the production of synthetic fuel from coal. Sorry, says Sasol, we can’t give it to you cheaper than the government price. As a result, Sasol’s after-tax net profit margins, at 17%, are much higher than the 9.5% profit margin of US oil companies. Synfuel, however, accounts for only 30% or so of its business, but generates about 55% of the company’s profits. So the profit margin of the synfuels division alone is almost twice as high again, just because its costs are independent of the oil price, but its prices are determined by government and rise as the oil price goes up. So in reality, Sasol’s synfuel makes 3.3 times the profit that a typical US oil company makes. And the US companies are the ones being hauled before public hearings!

Profits would not be an issue in a free market, but they are an issue when they are made by a private monopoly in a highly-regulated, price-controlled sector. Worse than government-sponsored profits for Sasol, however, is that more than 20% of the fuel price goes towards unnecessary taxes (as opposed to the Road Accident Fund, which for all its bureaucratic chaos and mismanagement, is a more defensible levy). Take that arbitrary tax away, and the inflation-adjusted fuel price at the end of 2007 could have been R3.73, or if you account for the disparity between the inflation-adjusted price and the actual price — reflecting, in my simplification, the recent oil price rise — it could have been R5.29. (Disclaimer: So says the back of my envelope; corrections or refinements to this rough calculation would be welcome.)

Instead of R6.75 on average for 2007, we could have paid R5.29, and that’s without any change to the Sasol price policy or reduction in the price of oil. What effect might such a massive saving in transport cost have on food prices and general price inflation? Why does the government think it’s a good idea to tax fuel, and to keep raising those taxes?

Some might argue that fuel taxes discourage consumption, and therefore they are good for the environment. But fuel demand is notoriously inflexible. Face it, you’ve got to get to work, and producers have got to get bread and milk to the supermarket, no matter what the fuel price is. So the effect of taxation on demand is fractional. If you’re going to incur costs in the economy by using the fiscus to fund environmental improvement, almost any other investment would get you higher returns than fuel taxes.

So we have the absurd situation that on one hand, the US is holding hearings in populist efforts to claw back money from companies whose prices aren’t regulated, whose operations are bound by a myriad laws, and whose profits are by no means excessive. On the other, South Africa is doing nothing about sky-high monopoly profits that are a direct gift from the government, and which raise costs for every industry sector, limit economic growth, reduce our ability to alleviate poverty and create jobs, and limit our options in dealing with the energy crisis. And neither country has considered that of all the idiotic tax ideas a rapacious government can think of, slapping 20% taxes on fuel is possibly the worst. [Correction: that should read “27.2% taxes”. 27.2% tax results in a 21.4% share of tax in the final price, which I rounded to 20% here.]

Some economists say that South Africa is not headed for recession, despite the worldwide financial crisis, the weakening global economy, the critical shortage of electricity, and the rising oil price. I’m fairly pessimistic, however. I think the electricity crisis alone will be enough to cause a recession, because its effects permeate the economy. But even if the Bolt Effect, as I like to call it, is not as bad as I surmise, I’d be far more inclined to believe the optimists if the government were less keen to skim the cream off what’s left of the economy by taxing a basic commodity such as fuel.

Meanwhile, you have until this Friday, 25 April 2008, to comment on price cap proposals (Government Gazette link in PDF) on liquified petroleum gas. I’ve written about this before. If you want to know why you can’t find that nice cheap LPG at your local petrol station, look no further than government’s insistence on regulating every price in sight.

And every time we get shortages, or price inflation, or both, we wonder why. It’s because (and Mandy de Waal’s comment yesterday is a case in point) we simply don’t trust the profit motive as a driver of efficient capital allocation. We simply don’t trust the price mechanism to regulate supply and demand. In the end, we don’t trust our people with their freedom.

But really, do go read Terrell’s article. Evidence once more that Economics 101 is, well, elementary.

There’s a ton of hype over the crisis in food prices. Apparently, food is too expensive. One would think this constitutes a “price signal”, but no, whenever something is too expensive or too cheap, NGO activists, special-interest lobbyists and populist media argue that “government must do something”. This is untrue as often as it is true that “government must stop doing something”.

In this case, it could probably stop slashing and burning our food.

I argued some of the reasons for food inflation in a previous post, and noted in particular that biofuel subsidies are perverse incentives, and eliminating them is the first answer to the misguided, knee-jerk question about what government can do. (The second is to drop all other tariffs, levies and subsidies, first on agriculture, and then on fuel, which constitutes a major input cost for producers.)

South Africa has a national biofuels strategy that is barely out of its diapers, complete with taxpayer-funded subsidies, imminent fuel-composition mandates and government-owned shares in private companies. (The company I have in mind, in which the government took a 25% stake in 2005, has been too busy spending taxpayer money to bother constructing a website.) So that first answer will probably be the last to be considered by the motley crew of interventionists, statists, socialists and marxists that populate our government. Reflection, review and self-criticism aren’t among their strong points.

Let’s see how the rich US is faring with biofuel. Two Washington Post writers today write of what they call ethanol’s failed promise (via Blue Crab Boulevard, which also has news of, wait for it, food shortages and panic hoarding, right there in the rich ol’ US of A). Neither of the writers lack in green credentials, and in fact, they cite environmental concerns and energy use before noting the impact on food supply:

These “food-to-fuel” mandates [i.e. ethanol subsidies and fuel composition laws] were meant to move America toward energy independence and mitigate global climate change. But the evidence irrefutably demonstrates that this policy is not delivering on either goal. In fact, it is causing environmental harm and contributing to a growing global food crisis…..

[…] It is now abundantly clear that food-to-fuel mandates are leading to increased environmental damage. First, producing ethanol requires huge amounts of energy — most of which comes from coal. Second, the production process creates a number of hazardous byproducts, and some production facilities are reportedly dumping these in local water sources. Third, food-to-fuel mandates are helping drive up the price of agricultural staples, leading to significant changes in land use with major environmental harm.

If the United States can’t afford ethanol subsidies, why on earth is South Africa hell-bent on burning its food stocks for fuel? When the biofuels strategy was first adopted, maize prices were low, and a surplus was being produced. Biofuel, said the government, would “soak up” that surplus. I’m no expert on the state of our agricultural markets or on prices of specific farm produce, but elementary economics suggests that if a surplus causes low prices, but farmers are not induced by the price mechanism to switch to different, more profitable crops, because they can sell their surplus to the government’s pet biofuels makers instead, this might explain why the supply of food is now under pressure.

Not to mention this business of “requiring huge amounts of energy”. My electricity will probably be cut two hours from now, for four hours. This can happen two or three times a week. What for? To produce ethanol? So we can run our cars on biofuel while the poor go hungry? So we can bash SUV owners for driving environmentally-friendly food-guzzlers?

Meanwhile, the UN too is dithering, waffling about how the Green Revolution that has halved world hunger since the 1960s was actually a failure, and we should all switch to organic farming. Yeah, that’ll help. Let the poor eat boutique honey. Douglas Southgate, of the Free Market Foundation, has a more elaborate take on its latest sustainable agriculture report (the link might only work for a week). And South Africa’s policy makers simply swallow what the green lobby and the UN wonks feed us.

Sometimes, the depth of insanity among government bureaucrats, whether American, South African, or global, is truly amazing. Slash and burn, guys. Go ahead. Good intentions never fed anyone, but then, hunger victims don’t vote.

This would be very funny, if it didn’t concern such a grave subject. The only good thing is this fellow had the balls to admit it. And maybe that he is making a small contribution to a more pleasant and productive climate. Here’s the Angry African on the Loose:

So you see. I am a traitor. The people in South Africa is ashamed of me. They will deny knowing me. They will call me names. They will tell their children and the children of their children what happens to people when they leave the hallowed shores of South Africa. The softening of African men. The shame it brings to families. The weakening of the bloodline. The acts of a traitor…

I am sorry my fellow South Africans. I am truly sorry. I beg you for forgiveness. I am but a weak man. Who gave in to temptation. A man who knows to little. A pathetic excuse of a man.

Brave, but I doubt there can be any forgiveness. For the full, awful story, click here. And for the Angry African, I hope the image above haunts you forever. (Said image comes courtesy of Chuck Cage at the excellent Toolmonger blog.)

PS: The angry traitor may earn a small measure of redemption, for reminding me of this wonderful lesson in witty column writing: Oxfamming the whole black world by Binyavanga Wainaina.

One often hears that opponents of climate change alarmism are “deniers” (a slur intended to recall Holocaust denial), are oil-company-funded (as if energy companies don’t need those dollars to polish their green image), are limited to a lunatic fringe (as if lunatic fringes host international conferences and write appeals to the United Nations) and most importantly, claim that they get their facts wrong (ironic, considering the many inconsistencies in alarmism “science”).

Now one alarmist expresses his surprise at the debate on a green website he started. He thought he’d have to cast the net wide to find skeptics, but in reality, is having to actively recruit people willing and able to defend the climate catastrophe orthodoxy. And it’s the “able” part that appears to present the most serious problems. Skeptics are better prepared, better informed and better read than alarmists. They quote better science and argue their cases more effectively, he laments.

I seldom quote entire posts, but this makes for pretty amazing reading:

When I launched the TalkClimateChange forums last year, I was initially worried as to where I would find people who didn’t believe in global warming. I had planned to create a furious debate, but in my experience global warming was such a universally accepted issue that I expected to have to dredge the slums of the internet in order to find a couple of deniers who could keep the argument thriving.

The first few days were slow going, but following a brief write-up of my site by Junk Science I was swamped by climate skeptics who did a good job of frightening off the few brave Greens who slogged out the debate with. Whilst there was a lot of rubbish written, the truth was that they didn’t so much frighten the Greens away — they comprehensively demolished them with a more in depth understanding of the science, cleverly thought out arguments, and some very smart answers. If you want to learn about the physics of convection currents, gas chromatography, or any number of climate science topics then read some of the early debates on TalkClimateChange. I didn’t believe a word of it, but I had to admit that these guys were good.

In the following months the situation hardly changed. As the forum continued to grow, as the blog began to catch traffic, and as I continued to try and recruit green members I continued to be disappointed with the debate. In short, and I am sorry to say it, anti-greens (Reds, as we call them) appear to be more willing to comment, more structured, more able to quote peer reviewed research, more apparently rational and apparently wider read and better informed.

And it’s not just TalkClimateChange. Since we re-launched the forums on Green Options and promoted the “Live Debate” on Nuclear Power, the pro-nuclear crowd have outclassed the few brave souls that have attempted to take them on (with the exception of our own Matt from TalkClimateChange). So how can this be? Where are all these bright Green champions, and why have I failed to recruit them into the debate? Either it’s down to poor online marketing skills, or there is something else missing. I’ve considered a range of theories as to the problem, none of which seem to fit — such as:

Greens are less educated? Nope.
Greens have less time? Nope.
Greens are a little reticent? Nope.
Greens are less intelligent? Definitely nope.
Greens are less passionate? Absolutely nope.
Greens have less at stake? Clearly not.

The only feasible explanation that I can come up with so far is that perhaps Greens are less invested in the status quo, and therefore less motivated to protect it? The other possibility is that we are all completely wrong and we’re deluded — please tell me this isn’t so. So I am hoping that La Marguerite [where this piece was posted — Ivo], with its insightful host and enlightened readership may be able to help shed some light on this peculiar phenomenon?

The post was written by a fellow named Mark, and he promises a follow-up next week right about now. I picked it up via Tom Nelson via Climate Skeptic.

It raises a lot of interesting points, not least about the sheltered cocoon of comfort in which the green left lives, and in which their PC fashions and prejudices appear to be “universally accepted”.

In one way, he’s right. Those who don’t believe we’re headed for certain apocalypse unless we act now are indeed “invested in the status quo, and therefore … motivated to protect it”. That’s the status quo in which humans are free from costly government bureaucracy, free to own their property and improve it, free to pursue health, prosperity and progress as they subjectively define it, and free to invest their capital to ensure sustainable resource use in the future. This is the status quo which has created a large middle class, has built prosperity that only a century ago would have been undreamed of, has supported substantial population growth despite the alarmist predictions of scientists and the media, has reduced poverty rates and improved the quality of life of rich and poor alike, has doubled life expectancy in 100 years. The status quo which has enjoyed the prosperity to invest in improving the quality of the environment, in contrast, for example, to the state-controlled economies of the Soviet Union, or the poor economies of the developing world, in both of which pollution has been far, far worse than in the capitalist West. And this is the status quo where people are free to continue building on these trends without sacrificing their productivity and future prosperity to a global climate change industry that has more vested interest than any oil company has ever had.

In the final analysis, I’ll stick my neck out and say, yup, “we are all completely wrong and we’re deluded” is pretty much spot-on. Sorry, my good man.

It’s what you might call “milking it”:

Canned writer David Bullard has apologised to readers of a column that got him axed for racism. But now he plans to sue the Sunday Times for breaching labour law.

“I couldn’t comprehend that it would be offensive to so many people and that’s what the apology was about,” Bullard, 55, said on Friday.

“It’s driven home that the days of apartheid, which I never suffered under, are still real to people. And one has to be sensitive to that.”

[…] Bullard now plans to sue Sunday Times publisher Avusa in the labour court for two years of lost income.

If you think “milking it” is too harsh, here’s the final line from Justine Gerardy’s excellent interview with him:

“From a commercial point of view, it’s been phenomenal — you couldn’t have bought the publicity.”

(Hat tip goes to jc for picking up and forwarding the story.)

“The mark of an educated mind is the ability to entertain a thought without accepting it.” That’s one lesson to take from the Big Bad Bullard Barney.

The quotation is attributed to Aristotle. He noted another mark of an educated mind: “to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible.”

Last week, I posted (here and on ThoughtLeader) the argument I thought David Bullard was attempting to stir, namely that colonialism, for all its evils, had benefits too. In particular, that in many places it established institutions and infrastructure that formed the basis for later prosperity growth. This may or may not be a valid argument, but despite Bullard’s careless and condescending approach to the subject, it seemed worthy of discussion among civilised, intelligent people. (As it happens, I was wrong: Bullard didn’t intend to go that far. He told Lerato Mbele on CNBC Africa on Thursday morning that he intended only to say we shouldn’t keep blaming present ills on past injustices. But first, he went to see his lawyer.)

As often happens with controversial subjects, the argument quickly turned absolutist, divisive, and personal.

Sadly so. It would be not only more polite and entertaining, but also more instructive, to suppose that someone who raises an interesting argument might wish to discuss its merits and implications, rather than stating it as cold fact or firm belief so partisans can shout each other down. Why would they raise the debate if the issue was simple and settled in their own mind? It seems reasonable to assume they’re able to see more nuances than just a simplistic, binary distinction between good and evil.

It seems fair to assume it isn’t very likely they run down neighbourhood cats in their spare time. I’m sure Bullard doesn’t, for example. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, at least.

Anyway, the argument on colonialism, which I hadn’t thought much about until I read it in an editorial by an Indian economist a few years ago, was put forward for consideration.

If parts of the argument appeal to me, that is irrelevant. I may well be wrong, but that is also irrelevant. The merits of, perspectives on and conclusions from the argument is what matters in public debate. In a public forum such as a blog, anyone is welcome to try to convince readers the argument is invalid. I dare say they won’t do so by calling their opponents Holocaust deniers or unreconstructed racists.

I did not, for example, state a conclusion on whether colonialism was, on balance, good or bad. On the contrary, I noted several caveats, several grave iniquities of colonialism. Yet half the responses, both in support and in opposition, seemed to assume that even just raising the argument was tantamount to unequivocal support of colonialism. On the contrary, there isn’t even an intellectual need to reach a definitive good-or-evil conclusion. The subject is far too complex for such a simplistic judgement, it would involve exactness that simply is not in the nature of the subject, and the point is moot in a world that has moved on and looks toward future progress.

Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India, in 2005 said the following:

Today, with the balance and perspective offered by the passage of time and the benefit of hindsight, it is possible for an Indian Prime Minister to assert that India’s experience with Britain had its beneficial consequences too. Our notions of the rule of law, of a Constitutional government, of a free press, of a professional civil service, of modern universities and research laboratories have all been fashioned in the crucible where an age old civilisation met the dominant Empire of the day.

These are all elements which we still value and cherish. Our judiciary, our legal system, our bureaucracy and our police are all great institutions, derived from British-Indian administration and they have served the country well.

Just look at him, in those colonial clothes! He must be a racist lapdog of British imperialism who thinks Indians are an inferior race!

Or is it possible to consider that his statement does not amount to nostalgia for colonialism? That it does not claim Indians could never have built these institutions and infrastructure without the British Raj?

Lest this post reopens the colonialism argument, let’s consider a few different examples.

Roe vs Wade is a 1973 ruling by the courts in the US. Based on the constitutional right to privacy, it ruled that a woman had a broad and unequivocal right to choose to have an abortion, no matter what the circumstances before the foetal viability, and for the sake of her health afterwards. Since “health” was defined very broadly, the legal hurdle for third-trimester abortions was set low.

Some people argue that this ruling is wrong. They base their argument on the fact that the US constitution says nothing about abortion, and that there is a clear conflict between the constitutional right to life and other legal rights. By ruling as it did, the court created a sweeping legal right where none existed before. Such a decision, opponents argue, should have been made by the people’s elected representatives in the legislature, and not by appointed judges from the bench.

Obviously, moral conservatives and religious opponents of abortion use this argument. It suits their political agenda to overturn the ruling that made it legal. I happen to agree with the argument, purely on principles of law and political philosophy. There are good reasons for separation of powers between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, and this ruling crosses that line. It does not interpret law, but writes it.

Given the knowledge that I oppose the Roe vs Wade ruling, would you think I’m pro-life (anti-abortion), or pro-choice (in favour of abortion)?

It surprises many people to discover that, bar a few important caveats for the purposes of this argument, I am pro-choice. I oppose the Roe vs Wade ruling because of legal principle, not because of its substance. I would want that question to come before an elected legislature, to be openly debated, and decided according to the will of the people. I would want that decision to be pro-choice. If that is indeed the outcome, opponents would have suffered a fair, democratic defeat. If not, I would accept an anti-abortion decision in the knowledge that democratic principles were preserved. Moreover, I’d take comfort in the fact that should society change its mind in future, and wish to change the law, it would not be blocked by legal precedent declaring such legislative decisions to be unconstitutional.

How about the death penalty? As a white guy, affected by and deeply concerned about crime, you might think I’d support the death penalty. Let’s establish a few facts in support of that view. First, I’m no bleeding heart. I have little sympathy for the scum that murder and rape and victimise our townships and suburbs. More importantly, I accept the pro-death-penalty argument that honest, innocent and hardworking taxpayers should not have to support the life imprisonment of such murderous scum. But even though I agree with that argument, I oppose the death penalty. Not, I might add, because I have reached definitive conclusions on whether the state should have the right to kill citizens, whether the risk of executing innocent people outweighs the benefit of executing the guilty, or whether the death penalty would be an effective deterrent. Such questions are, to my mind, preceded by the more mundane consideration that if you can’t catch criminals, can’t prosecute them and can’t keep them in jail, it is premature even to begin debating the likely success of reintroducing the death penalty, and the complex philosophical conundrums posed by something like the death penalty. Supporting the death penalty, in my opinion, is putting the cart before the horse.

Or let’s take another common source of generalisations: party affiliation. In South Africa, ANC supporters include communists, unionists, welfare statists, left-liberals, black racists, non-racists, crony capitalists, market-oriented capitalists, and a few classical liberals. I’d have much in common with some of them, and strongly oppose the views of others. Likewise, DA supporters include left-liberals, welfare statists, white racists, free-market capitalists, classical liberals and chihuahuas. When they gain power, they’ll include crony capitalists too.

In the US, the Republican Party is aptly named the “Grand Old Party”, and is commonly described as a “big tent”. That’s because the GOP includes libertarians of both the Austrian School, such as Ron Paul, and the Chicago School, such as Alan Greenspan. It includes religious conservatives like Mike Huckabee, religious nuts like Pat Buchanan, and non-religious social conservatives. It includes foreign policy hawks who envision a global Pax Americana, but it also includes small-government isolationists and libertarian pacifists. It includes big-government conservatives and crony capitalists. It includes socially conservative minority groups who believe in the American Dream and don’t believe the welfare state is it. It includes rural rednecks and sophisticated urban capitalists. It includes sophisticated rural capitalists, and urban rednecks too. It includes xenophobic nativists and free traders. There’s a big ol’ rumble going on in that there big tent. Likewise, the Democrats include a disparate collection of unionists, socialists, free-market liberals, marxists, free traders, anti-free-traders, big-government welfare statists, and spending hawks. If someone tells you they support the Republicans, or the Democrats, which of these many conflicting positions would you assume to be their policy positions and philosophical beliefs?

The point of this long list of examples is this: It does not improve the quality of discussion, on a blog or anywhere else, to assume that someone who presents an argument for debate necessarily accepts it. Or if they do, that this implies a more general stereotypical, partisan or extremist position. It neither addresses the merits, nor raises the tone, to get personal, denounce someone’s character, or reduce their argument to simplistic caricature.

Those who do this end up demonstrating only one thing. That while their opponent is able to entertain a thought without accepting it, and can rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits, they sadly lack these marks of an educated mind.

More even than George W Bush (Hail to the Chief!), the man everybody loves to despise is Dick Cheney. So what’s this all about? A standing ovation to welcome him? Laughter and mirth? Is it, to pilfer a line from Cheney’s speech, some right-wing gathering of bitter men who cling to their guns? Nope, this is the assembled media. Could he, belatedly, be winning them over?

Part one:

Part two:

The full transcript of this very amusing talk before the Radio Television Correspondent’s dinner can be found here. It’s better in the reading, if you don’t have the time/bandwidth for the video. Cheney really was joking about his natural charm and charisma.