Firstly, I know. I’ve been bad. I’ve neglected this blog, on account of travel and work pressure. I hope to do a redesign and relaunch some time to make it easier to integrate this blog with my columns and Twitter activity.

That time is not now.

On The Daily Maverick, I recently wrote a column about “fracking” in the Karoo. It was, shall we say, explosive. It got hundreds of comments, many of which I tried to do justice with a reply. It took me four days to write the column, and another three — working 16-hour days — to keep up with the debate. Contrary to the allegations, I do not have the resources of Shell behind me. It’s just me.

However, since then, several posts have appeared challenging my views. Although I thought most of the points were mere rehashes of the great debate at The Daily Maverick, I did write a response to one of them. Since the M&G ThoughtLeader site does not permit comments longer than 250 words, and the author’s own blog doesn’t permit comments at all, some people have asked me to post my response elsewhere. So, here it is. It’s probably best to read them side-by-side:

Allow me to respond, point by point.

* I did not confuse the water use for exploration with total usage. I referred to the former because that is what the Havemann report objects to in calling for a total ban on exploration that could lead to hydraulic fracking. I was clear elsewhere that shale gas production regions typically account for 1.5% of local water use. I noted that this was not insignificant, especially in a dry region. I was also clear that I expect Shell to answer the question of where it will get this water, but that such a demand falls well short of banning drilling, now and forever.

* I did not state that we can trust Shell. What I said was that Shell has a motive not to give the public cause for complaints. I expect Shell to be held to its contractual commitments, just like anyone else.

* Regulatory capture can hardly be blamed on the companies that operate in the regulated space. It happens because of ill-conceived regulation, or outright corruption. Nowhere did I defend this.

* The precautionary principle logically contradicts itself, as I repeatedly stated in the comments to my column (which, despite their extraordinarily high number I kept replying to, as a matter of courtesy and responsibility). It is not possible to prove the absence of risk. Even if it were, not doing something because it might cause harm does not take into account the potential harm caused by not doing it. The precautionary principle says that the precautionary principle cannot be applied because we cannot know the risk of applying the precautionary principle. The point is: show a reasonable expectation of future harm, if you want to ban something. Citing lack of evidence for such harm as a cause to ban something would significantly delay or even block progress.

* If Bob says you stole his chocolate, and you say you didn’t, mere evidence that Bob no longer has his chocolate is not proof that you stole it. I’m sure most of us can see why the logic is perfectly fine.

* Vague allegations, without any specific evidence. Show the evidence.

* Noting that problems are not associated with hydraulic fracturing shows dishonesty, in that the objection is to “fracking”. If drilling is the problem, then say so, so we can argue honestly about the same thing. Of course, that risks having to face the fact that drilling is an even more ordinary activity, about which the risks are well-understood.

* The Environmental Protection Agency is not cited. In fact, doing so would be impossible, because all I said about it was that it would produce preliminary results in late 2012. (I did this to contrast Havemann’s rush job, and to suggest that it might be premature to call for a ban on all future exploration for shale gas.)

* I noted their objectives not to expose bias, but to show that their stated goals go well beyond expressing concern about specific risks. Yes, I’m ideologically a free-market advocate. My other opinions derive from this. I make no apologies for that.

* I attach little value to the greenhouse gas implications of shale gas drilling. Never mind that I don’t believe our own impact on climate change is alarming, but drilling for natural gas is hardly new, and the process against which the TKAG objects does nothing to increase the risk.

* On jobs, all I’d point out is that jobs created by market forces are sustainable. Those created by subsidies and handouts are not jobs, but charity for which everyone else pays tax.

Since you stopped using bullets, allow me to note what I placed in my postscript. I entirely support the right of Karoo farmers to make decisions about their own property. That they do not own their mineral rights, so that Shell does not have to negotiate with them and conclude binding contracts with all the guarantees and compensation clauses farmers might require is not the fault of farmers, nor of Shell, and certainly not of their technique for extracting shale gas. It is the fault of the government.

If you want to object to the powerlessness of Karoo farmers, aim your critique at the right target, and complain about the right problem.

Excuse the lack of formatting. I really am rather swamped at present, as interesting and important as this debate is.

There are serious kinds of political activism, and there are less serious ones. And then there are those that don’t take any effort, and don’t make one jot of difference. Online petitions, such as this one which appears to express concern about media freedom, are among the latter. So I signed it. Sort of. Read on at ITWeb.

What better treatment for a prize-winning gravity-driven lamp concept than a take-down-and-send-up? Daniel Rutter, an Australian journalist and blogger, is the author of this cutting use of elementary physics to debunk a patent-pending floor lamp designed by a Virginia Tech masters student (!). It won the second prize in a green gadget competition (!!).

A sample of Rutter’s observations:

It’s a funky looking thing, which was widely reported around the gadget blogs, and was alleged by its designer, Clay Moulton, to give the equivalent light output of a 40-watt incandescent bulb for four hours from the energy of a weight dropping about four feet, or 122cm. When the weight gets to the bottom, you just lift it back to the top and away you go again.

Now, it stands to reason that a mere 1.2-metre drop isn’t going to give you forty actual watts for four hours unless the weight is incredibly heavy. Ignoring losses, it would by definition take forty watts of power over another four hours to lift the weight back up again, which is 160 watt-hours, which is quite a lot. A normal adult human in reasonable shape can manage about 75 watts of output when pedalling away on a bike connected to a generator; it’d take more than two hours of such pedalling to raise that weight back to the top of the Gravia light’s tube, if the weight were heavy enough to make a constant 40 watts on the way back down.

So I just assumed the lamp’s brightness was greatly overstated, and wasn’t even four-watts-of-LEDs-that-are-sort-of-equivalent-to-forty-watts-of-incandescent. But since they’d clearly actually made the thing and it’d won an award, I presumed it did work, if only as a night-light. Fair enough.

But neither Clay Moulton nor anybody else has, actually, built a Gravia. The damn thing doesn’t exist.

[…]

The original press release about the Gravia on the Virginia Tech site now also contains a disclaimer from Moulton, though without any mention of him giving back the prize. I think it’s worth mentioning one line he uses on both pages, though: “I was told it was not possible given current LED’s, but given the rapid pace of innovation in low powered lighting, it would be a conceptual challenge.”

Yes, Mr Moulton, it certainly bloody would be a “conceptual challenge” to make a lamp that produces more than thirty times as much light as the laws of physics say is possible from the energy you put into it. That would be a pretty damn impressive achievement. I propose Virginia Tech not permit you to graduate until you do it. How’s that grab you?

Ouch. Let’s see what the US Patent and Trademark Office makes of this thing. Bet they issue a patent.

(Hat tip: Kriek Jooste.)

Leon Jacobs alerted me to the hilarious story of a delusional nut named Mark Boyle.

Boyle used to run an organic food company, until he sampled too much of his own merchandise and decided the world should do away with money. Presumably, the owners of the organic food company disagreed. So now Boyle is on a pilgrimage.

Travelling under the name “Saoirse”, which means “freedom” in Gaelic, Boyle won’t stoop to dirtying his hands with grubby money. Instead, he decided to travel the world on foot, subsisting only on peace and love. (And, presumably, a way to blog about it.) His intended destination was Mahatma Ghandi’s birthplace, in India.

Tushar Kanna, an Indian who commented on his blog was rather skeptical of this pilgrimage: “I really dunno what kind of haloed idea of India you have. … I feel if you want to explore India, board onto the next flight to take an enriching experience back home. The country as such is fantastic — a treasure trove of cultures bound to create a single nation. But if you just want to experience poverty, I’d recommend you to rather serve in the slums of Kolkata or Mumbai. Man, you’re really wasting two precious years of your life. … when I told my friends about you in school they passed it off as a story of a crazy foreigner with nothing else to do.”

You can see where this is going, can’t you? Hint: it’s not India. He got as far as Calais before the universe, in which he had placed his trust, told him not to be so daft. That’s where he discovered not only that the French have the audacity of speaking French, but that they don’t particularly like jobless, homeless backpackers, freeloading in their country. Oh, sorry. Calling him a “freeloader” is “harmful to the cause“, it’s unfair, and it’s the exact opposite of “accepting the gifts of the universe”. (By which he means getting some sap to buy him a ferry ticket, and giving him her daughter.)

Not only did the French speak French, but they didn’t much care to trade food for his valuable friendship. Worse, his offers of labour didn’t sell very well in a socialist republic where employment has been curtailed by decades of dirigisme and rigueur, which regulated and protected the unemployment rate until… well, let’s just say France stopped publishing an official unemployment rate.

So Boyle and his buddies made “a really brave decision — to go home”. What poor Britain doesn’t have to put up with. Boyle will now walk around his native country, learning French. Not that I can see why, if the French didn’t like him speaking English (and sleeping in their toilets), the average resident of English seaside towns will love him speaking French. Besides, they don’t speak French in Italy, Turkey, Iran and India, so this is going to be one long tour.

Illustrating the depth of this idiot’s delusion is his comment on a group of Ethiopian refugees he found in France. Apparently, his message about the moneyless life doesn’t apply to people who don’t have money. Especially not when they’re Ethiopians escaping “from Iraq and Afghanistan”. This level of geographic confusion doesn’t bode well for his hope that the next time he hits the road he’ll be more attuned to local culture. Let alone being more attuned to human nature.

Moral of the story? Lay off the organic nuts, lest you become one.

It’s unnerving how often one is faced with declarations about the desirability of fewer people on earth, in response to criticisms of environmentalist politicking. Fewer of us, so the reasoning goes, would improve quality of life, and would be good for the environment.

Forgive me for not joining this little death cult. Forty years ago almost to the day, an obscure lapidopterist named Paul Ehrlich generalised Malthusian theories about population growth in butterflies, and published a book which essentially replaced all occurrences of the word “insect” with “human”. The Population Bomb exploded (sorry) upon the world. It made hysterical predictions of exponential population growth that would inevitably lead to catastrophic resource depletion and mass starvation in the 1970s. As if the coming ice age didn’t cause enough stress. Ehrlich’s book advocated radical population control measures. The apocalyptic over-population vision was reinforced by a best-selling book published by the Club of Rome in 1972, entitled The Limits to Growth, in which the collapse of human development and population was predicted as a result of exponential growth in demand for limited resources. The failure of these prophesies of doom hasn’t changed the authors’ minds. They went on to write further books, renewing their end-of-the-world predictions, the most amusing being Beyond the Limits, published in 1993.

Yet resources stubbornly refused to be exhausted. In 1990, Paul Ehrlich mailed economist Julian Simon a cheque for $576.07, as a result of a 1980 futures contract on five metals of Ehrlich’s choosing. Both agreed that market prices were an adequate proxy for scarcity, and since Ehrlich predicted more scarcity, he would have made a profit on the $1 000 futures contract had prices risen. Instead, all declined, by an average of more than 50%, and Ehrlich spectacularly lost his bet.

Likewise, people stubbornly refused to starve en masse. Not only has the proportion of people suffering malnourishment declined to a third of the 1970 level of 35%, but the absolute number is down from over 900 million to 400 million, despite the inconvenient truth that the world’s population doubled over the same period, and despite the fact that this population growth was heavily biased towards to the poor world to boot.

Thanks to the consistent and often spectacular failure of such predictions of developmental disaster, it has become clear that the earth can sustain rather more people than expected. Why is this so? Because population growth isn’t exponential after all. It doesn’t simply grow until resources are depleted, at which point Gaia takes Mathusian revenge and decimates the parasite that is homo sapiens. (This suggests that terms like “parasite”, “virus” and “cancer”, which are habitually used by Gaia’s death cultists to describe you and me and humanity in general, might not be entirely fair either.)

In fact, global human population is likely to stabilise over time. Already, global population growth is slowing, both in relative and absolute terms, and the UNDP estimates that the total population of Earth will reach a plateau of around 11 billion people, ca. 2200. Why is this so? Because as more people get more prosperous, life expectancy increases and mortality rates decline. As a result, people tend to have fewer children, and the children they do have contribute to this prosperity, rather than detract from it.

And why can the earth sustain this? Why have resources become less scarce rather than more scarce? Because Earth is pretty large, for one, and because production isn’t a zero-sum game that simply depletes resources in a one-to-one relationship with population size. What Julian Simon understood is that the price mechanism militates against the uncontrolled exploitation environmentalists fear, because scarcity is priced into our ability to use resources productively. And again, the more prosperous we get, the more we invest in sustainability, the more sophisticated and technically skilled we get at resource management, the more we care about a healthy and productive environment, and the more we value future sustainability over present consumption. And the fewer children we have.

As the rich world amply demonstrates, successful economic development is not the problem, it’s the solution to uncontrolled population growth and unmanaged resource exploitation. There’s no reason why the same would not hold true for the developing world. Opposing their development, on mistaken sustainability grounds, is not only a selfish type of neo-colonialism on the part of the rich world’s environmentalists, but it strikes me as pretty misanthropic.

Yet Gaia’s suicide cultists sound like they would consider a culling spree desirable. They sound like they want to stop the developing world from either developing or growing. Not to say that industrial development is desirable at any cost. That’s clearly not true. But the Gaiists are always willing to sacrifice any industrialisation, development or human activity in favour of environmental protection, no matter how necessary the development is, or how tenuous the environmental danger is. Many of them stand ready to use any means — vandalism, legislative force, high seas piracy, emotional blackmail, outright lies — to achieve their anti-social aims.

Even assuming that one can handle the rather sociopathic notion of reducing the earth’s population by a few billion and leaving the remainder poorer than they are today, such a situation would be unlikely to relieve the pressure on animal populations and environmental resources that really are deserving of protection.

On the contrary. Some of the worst historical environmental damage was caused on a planet peopled by only a fraction of today’s population, at only a fraction of today’s living standards. The evidence simply doesn’t bear out the theory. With fewer people around, well-meaning do-gooders would still be fretting about some messianic mission of “saving” the planet, but ironically, they’d have a harder time doing so.

The environment turns out to be pretty robust. In general (as opposed to localised exceptions) the image of a fragile, super-sensitive system that could be tipped into disaster by the slightest human (as opposed to natural) disturbance, is simply false.

The environment is, of course, very much worth caring about and investing in, even if only for purely selfish reasons of maintaining a productive resource base. One doesn’t, however, achieve this by getting hysterical about human population and its use of natural resources. One doesn’t save, say, the tiger, by discrediting endangered species protection with ill-conceived, politically-motivated and unnecessary listings of emotional-appeal icons such as the polar bear. One doesn’t achieve a better world by activist obstructionism, designed solely to limit the economic development the world, and halt the modern world’s remarkable progress towards longer, healthier and more prosperous lives for all.

And one certainly doesn’t earn the buy-in of other people when you’re telling them that the world would be better off without them.

The other day, I encountered a new mother, who was all apologetic for having contributed to the population. I told her that her kid would either produce more than it would consume, or die. Therefore, it would be a net benefit to the world. How tragic that she couldn’t conceive of her child being anything other than a burden to humanity.

The US Fish & Wildlife Service is considering listing the polar bear as a threatened species, under that country’s Endangered Species Act.

Before blasting this idea as an underhanded ploy by evil environmentalists, it is worth considering the exact meaning of the terms in question. The US criteria are not quite consistent with those of the World Conservation Union (which the cognoscenti abbreviate as IUCN). The latter maintains the famous (or infamous, considering how few of its members have actually gone extinct) Red List of Threatened Species, in which “critically endangered”, “endangered” and “vulnerable”, describing an extremely high, very high or high risk of extinction respectively, are collectively known as “threatened”. By contrast, a “threatened” species under the US law means any species which is “likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range”, and an “endangered” species is one “which is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range”. Also, there is much more scope for discretion under the US rules, while the IUCN criteria for the different categories are very specific.

So, on what grounds should the polar bear be listed as threatened? Among the US agency’s own research, a population forecast says much depends on 45-, 75- or 100-year predictions of the extent of Arctic sea ice, and even then, there’s much uncertainty. Besides, that analysis (PDF) has come under attack (PDF) for serious flaws in its methods and analysis. Turns out that after a few years of slight decline in Arctic sea ice coverage, this winter’s Arctic ice is back to normal levels. (Via Anthony Watts, who links to the useful University of Illinois Cryosphere Today site. It also has a cute story about a stolen polar bear photo, reproduced above, which Al Gore and the media used to tell yet another lie: “They cling precariously to the top of what is left of the ice floe, their fragile grip the perfect symbol of the tragedy of global warming.” Sob sob. Hat-tip: Hard Rain.)

What about polar bear population? Well, it’s pretty much stable, it appears. A National Center for Policy Analysis report entitled Polar Bears on Thin Ice? Not Really!, says that only two of the twenty or so population groups are in decline, which hardly gels with “throughout all or a significant portion of its range”. There’s a picture alongside. The chart illustrates the polar bear populations that are growing, declining, stable and unknown. Hardly looks like a threatened species, does it?

In fact, although the Red List includes the polar bear (and the hippo, which is responsible for more human deaths in Africa than any other large animal), I can’t see which of the criteria it actually meets. The Inuit around Hudson Bay are saying more need to be hunted, because their population is increasing, and in an amusingly headlined article, “Advertisers urged to kill off polar bears,” James Murray reports on a study that finds advertisers should eschew cute pictures of polar bears to burnish their green image.

Listing a species that isn’t actually endangered is likely to do as much harm to noble conservation efforts as did Norman Myers’s 1979 statement, based on supposition alone, that 40 000 species would go extinct per year until 2000. Didn’t happen. Yet it was repeated in Al Gore’s 1993 book, Earth in the Balance, and is only one among many hyperbolic prophesies of mass extinction, which simply have not come true, and don’t look likely to happen in the foreseeable future either. They’re a bit like the cults who predict the end of the world. They’ve never been right, but of course, that only strengthens their faith that they have to be right sometime soon.

Despite the lack of evidence that the polar bear is, in fact, threatened, Brendon Frazier of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, says it should be listed not as threatened, but as endangered. In this AFP article, he explains the reason why:

“An endangered listing can affect the sell-off of the oil drilling rights,” Brandon Frazier, a spokesman for global animal welfare group International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) said. “The authorities would have to get approval through the Fish and Wildlife Service to conduct drilling if there is an endangered species that inhabits the area.” […]

US lawmakers have proposed listing the polar bear as “threatened”, but IFAW said that did not go far enough. “A ‘threatened’ listing leaves open the possibility for exemptions and doesn’t shut loopholes, such as the one that allows Americans to trophy-hunt for polar bears in Canada and bring their heads and hides back to the US,” Frazier told AFP.

So there’s your reason. Anything to stop the big, bad oil companies from drilling. If the polar bear is under threat, the reason is climate change, which in turn is caused by evil humans, who dare pursue industrial development, scientific advance and economic progress.

That’s what they’re fighting for. If the polar bear gets listed as threatened, this can be used to stop almost any new industrial development, anywhere. Even if the impact is so tenuous nothing but global warming alarmism can rationalise it. If the polar bear gets listed as endangered, then so is the growth in prosperity that has fueled the rising quality of life among rich and poor alike. It’s not about the polar bear. It’s about us. It is, to quote William F. Buckley, about standing athwart history, yelling “Stop!”.

Now who’s the conservative?

Sparkling writing. Very funny. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll suspend your sense of propriety for a moment, permit me to introduce Ndumiso Ngcobo, who raises matters of grave import for the future of science and the environment.

The medicine-registration leaflet of herbal remedies provide unexpected amusement. Outside politics, one wonders, can less be said in more formal-sounding words?

I’m one of those people who enjoy bitters. Not just rock shandy, not just sweet Jägermeister. Not just the light aromatic aperitif-style stuff, but heavy stomach bitters, as an after-dinner or night-cap digestif. The stronger, the better. There’s nothing quite like sipping a small glass of Fernet-Branca, Unicum or Underberg along with a tall glass of ice water.

Jurgen Gothe, an upstanding member of the Canadian cognoscenti, writes a fine paean to all things bitter, in All hail Fernet-Branca, the foulest liqueur on Earth. Hail, indeed.

So it was with some pleasure that I discovered, in my local pharmacy, a concoction known as Schweden-Bitter, made by PharmaNatura, “the natural medicine company”. Despite its relatively low price (compared to, say, Fernet-Branca), it compares pretty well to digestif bitters you’d find in the better bars or liquor stores around town. It’s less smooth and rounded, perhaps, but look, this is supposed to be medicine. Forget castor oil. This is the stuff I’d feed to moaning brats complaining about mysterious stomach pains to get off the homework hook.

Still, Schweden-Bitter isn’t a scheduled drug, or anything. So it was with some surprise that I discovered a package insert, just as the law requires of real medicine. Apparently, it is classified in the pharmacopoeia as “A. 34 Other”. Seeking somewhat greater clarity, I turned to the pharmacological action, which is described thus:

This preparation is designed to correct imbalances within the unhealthy body and so enables the organism itself to overcome the disease condition. The constituents in their indicated form work accordingly.

Okiedokey, then. Glad we cleared that up. A friend, who’ll remain nameless, said: “You see, that makes perfect sense to me.” But then, I’ve long ago given up arguing with them about what does and doesn’t make sense.

There’s more. After all, this is a very official and quite formal medicine registration notice, as required by Act 101/1965.

Side-effects and special precautions:

None known.

Known symptoms of overdosage and particulars of its treatment:

None.

Now I’m no doctor, and I have no clue what any of the 20 curiously-named herbs from which this “ethanolic extract” is distilled might do to a person, in great quantities. And to be fair to the makers, it is not recommended to exceed the maximum dosage of a teaspoonful four times a day.

But I do know what a concoction that contains 40% alcohol per volume could do, and I can guarantee you, this piece of paper isn’t going to get me off the hook if I have a few tots of this good stuff and get behind the wheel. I’m also fairly convinced alcohol has symptoms of overdosage (though I am, of course, entirely innocent of the particulars of its treatment).

Now, let’s assume a tot of this stuff to be equivalent to a standard drink, which is about right, given the alcohol content. Based on the information on alcohol overdose kindly published by John Brick, Ph.D., M.A., F.A.P.A., of the Rutgers University Centre for Alcohol Studies (when I grow up, that’s where I want to work), consuming a bottle (500ml) of this stuff in four hours has a 50% chance of killing a 90kg man.

I’d think death is a fairly significant symptom of overdosage, though I can see why they’d omit the particulars of its treatment.

Now, for that tot I just photographed. Your health!

“Taser” is a trade name for any of a range of stun guns used by law enforcement officers and soldiers to inflict non-lethal force. Now, a CBS report says the United Nations has described Tasers as a form of torture, after several deaths have been attributed to their use.

The UN has completely lost the plot, here, both on the facts and on PR.

First, torture is an interrogation technique in which pain or suffering is inflicted on a subject to persuade them to disclose information. It doesn’t extract very convincing confessions, but can force subjects to disclose other information, which may prove useful and may save lives. Either way, torture isn’t very useful at all if the subject dies. Killing is not the point of torture.

Second, Tasers are intended to subdue suspects, not kill them, nor to extract information. They are intended to incapacitate a subject. This is not torture, either in intent or effect. It does, however, make Tasers a useful alternative to guns, which deliver lethal force and imperil innocent bystanders. It also makes them useful as a weapon in situations where force is required, but lethal force is not justifiable. Of course, that Tasers sometimes turn out to be lethal is rather problematic. Of course, this problem must be addressed sooner rather than later, either by limiting their use to situations in which lethal force would normally be authorised, or by fixing them so the risk of killing a subject is much lower.

However, a simplistic label of “torture”, and a simplistic call for a ban on Tasers will leave law enforcement little choice but to revert to billy-clubs and guns as their only options. Is a beating with a billy-club really more palatable than a disabling electric shock, when administered to a suspect who resists arrest? Isn’t that “torture” too? And as for guns, some reports suggest that they’re even more lethal than Tasers.

Most importantly, however, rashly throwing about the word “torture”, without any apparent thought, dangerously devalues the term. With such shrill activism, fit only for the tabloid press, the UN is crying wolf. If it gets so hysterical on this issue, why would it attract serious attention when one day it raises the alarm over real torture? Is it any wonder so few people take the UN seriously these days?

What a great post over at Murder of Ravens:

Whenever I fill my pipe – perhaps a Sasieni made back in the 1920’s out of briar that was 100 years old back then–with a fine matured Virginia, sit back, light up, see the ember glowing in the bowl, and taste the exquisite flavor, my mind and soul find peace. There really is nothing to compare to the taste of the Virginia, the feel of the warm briar in my hand, and the visual beauty of the finely grained wood. They all combine into one of the most satisfying sensory experiences known to man.

(Via Nuke Gingrich.)

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.

This bunch of eco-minded brand merchants in San Francisco (where else?) operate a website which, besides for acres of vacuous and only mildly funny verbiage, sells stickers, shirts and other gear promoting the use of bicycles by everyone except goats. They’re serious about this, and if I were a goat rights campaigner, I’d be grateful.

Here’s their company hymn:

BIKING KICKS ASS
Biking is fun. Biking is fast.
Biking is quiet. Biking is cool.
Biking is healthy. Biking is simple.
Biking costs less for us.
Biking costs less for our cities.
Biking costs less for the planet.
Go ride a bike. And spread the word.

To some pious people, the sensual perfection to the left is the epitome of evil.

To these pious people, the sensual perfection to the right is the epitome of evil.

So what do you think their slogan would be? As religious folk sing the praises of chastity and modesty, you’d expect this lot to extol the virtues of high — nay, infinite — miles per gallon, right?

Wrong.

They called it Zero Per Gallon.

If they mean zero miles per gallon, the slogan would make a fitting bumper sticker for a Hummer. And if they mean zero dollars per gallon, as their nonsensical merchandise suggests, everyone could afford to drive one. In fact, I think I’ll get me a t-shirt, just to poke fun at them.

Kudos to the arithmetically challenged goat-haters, however, for exploiting the gullibility of cyclists who read the exhortation to “Be righteous! Be contemptuous!” and think, “Yup, that’s what I want to be when I grow up.”