Government is forging ahead with a series of raids on defenceless consumers, with a green tax on everything that moves. Needless to say, I’m opposed, on a whole host of grounds: Green tax: another raid is coming

Someone sent me a video that was supposed to convince me of the truth of global warming. It didn’t. At The Daily Maverick: Global warmism needs a fisking.

Having returned from a highly successful trip to Austin, Texas, for South by South West (see my coverage here), it’s back to the routine of weekly columns for ITWeb and The Daily Maverick.

I dubbed the new communications minister, retired head of the defence force Siphiwe Nyanda, “General Surprise” when he was appointed. It’s been suggested to me that a more apt nickname would be General Disappointment. I agree.

Last weekend, we sat in the dark, contemplating the great challenges we face in saving the planet. As if the planet needs saving, and we’re the saints to do it. this, naturally,
prompted a column for The Daily Maverick.

Last week’s column for The Daily Maverick was about how the news keeps getting better on the climate change front. The dominoes keep falling, and they appear to be gathering speed.

My previous columns on the subject of climate change prompted an extraordinary rant from a cognitive science student named Michael Meadon. Perhaps in pursuance of his research, he looked at my face and concluded that I’m not entitled to an opinion.

It is too tempting not to rebut. Read Meadon’s post first, then read on: Read the rest of this entry »

Published yesterday on The Daily Maverick, my latest column: Pray Copenhagen fails. I really do hope the UN’s climate shindig fails. It will save millions of lives and trillions of dollars. If we’re serious about solving global problems like hunger, disease and poverty, we should not give corrupt politicians the power to loot taxpayers and line the pockets of special interests on the basis of a dubious premise.

We should be angry at the fraud committed by the crowd over at East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, as I discuss in today’s column at The Daily Maverick. One would have thought everyone in the mainstream media would have loved a piece of the action, unravelling such a juicy fraud and exposing how their readers have been had by the socialist elite in academia and the power-hungry politicians who hide behind the “science” they cook up. But then, the media has been complicit, arguing that objectivity and balance did not require them to remain critical and skeptical about man-made global warming alarmism. In future, I’ll judge my news media by what they make of this story. For softheaded mantras chanted while dancing around trippy fairy-circles, you need mushrooms and matches. Like newspapers, you can get them at most convenience stores.

My recent column in The Daily Maverick on the scandal at the East Anglia University Climatic Research Unit, which calls anthropogenic global warming into question, elicited this published response. While I hope the final demand, that I be dismissed, was meant tongue-in-cheek, it is a particularly silly joke to make when one of the charges against the CRU scientists is that they got a critical editor at a peer-review journal fired. My reply appears below the letter, which attacks my column for “distortion and innuendo”.

Hi all. It’s been over a year, and I keep getting asked when (or if) I’ll ever get around to blogging again. The answer is: I’m not blogging, but I am writing. This gives me little reason to blog and some good reasons not to.

Most Thursdays (and occasionally at other times) you can find a column on technology or telecommunications at ITWeb. Every Tuesday, my column on politics, economics and (anti-)environmentalism is published at the phoenix that rose from the ashes of Branko Brkic’s dearly departed Maverick magazine: The Daily Maverick. I also still write a monthly column for Brainstorm magazine, where the then-editor Brkic first convinced me to write opinion, and where current editor Samantha Perry continues to tolerate my invariably overdue mutterings.

Here’s what I’ve been up to since I stopped blogging, written while The Daily Maverick was still in pre-launch beta testing: Going cold turkey.

Since its launch, I’ve taken up one of my favourite cudgels: Too late to cool it? This week I penned a piece on the temerity of leftwingers who claim to oppose fascism: The irony of the left. I have many ideas lined up to fuel future arguments, so keep an eye on The Daily Maverick. Moreover, it is home to an eclectic group of brilliant reporters, photographers, analysts, commentators and columnists who offer some of the finest reading matter available on the South African internet. It is a pleasure and an honour to be published alongside them.

Elsewhere, this rant on power plugs for Brainstorm magazine elicited some vigorous nodding from readers, many of whom, unsurprisingly, share my pain.

Though a promising challenger has recently appeared (here’s to you, Duncan McLeod), ITWeb has for 15 years been the backbone and daily staple of the South African tech and telecoms scene. Among my recent ITWeb columns are an opinion about which commenters appeared to miss the point somewhat: Sure, fund the SABC with tax, an argument about who might be producing primary reporting in the future: Reviving the leisured classes, and a story about a man, The chief incompetence officer, which may yet have repercussions.

Discussion of or comments on my columns are best posted on the publishers’ respective sites, not only because they buy my bread and beer, but also because I’m more likely to read and respond there. I’ll post alerts of new articles and columns over here, however, so the many friends (and enemies) I’ve made here can follow me wherever I write. Speaking of following, I’m @IvoVegter.

Of course, the archives remain intact, and contain some 218 041 words in 520 posts, with 1 331 comments. Some of the topics I tackled, or responses I promised (but never wrote) will no doubt surface again on ITWeb, in Brainstorm or on The Daily Maverick.

Thank you all for reading and, most importantly, arguing with me. You’ve been a whetstone for my blade: sharpening my arguments, but innocent of how rashly I wield them. You rock — dangerous communists included.

In a remarkable editorial over the weekend, Australian scientist David Evans renews his argument against government-mandated restrictions on carbon emissions, noting that there is little evidence to show they have anything to do with climate change.

If you’ve followed my sporadic coverage of climate change alarmism, you may recall him as a scientist who worked on carbon accounting for the Australian government, and changed his mind once he saw the evidence on which global warming alarmism was (or rather, was not) based.

Evans was one of the signatories of the open letter to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon, on the occasion of the climate change junket in Bali, late last year. He was among several people who weren’t welcome. He has written a paper (link in PDF) in support of his position that CO₂ does not cause global warming, has written a more accessible alternative, and has also penned a remarkable confession: I Was On the Global Warming Gravy Train.

His editorial is worth reading in full, but here are some key points:

When I started that job [of writing Australia’s carbon accounting model] in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO₂ is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.

The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:

1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it. […]

2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.

3. The satellites that measure the world’s temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). […]

4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.

None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.

[…]

Until now the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming.

So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.

In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn’t noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.

[…]

The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.

[…]

The onus should be on those who want to change things to provide evidence for why the changes are necessary. The Australian public is eventually going to have to be told the evidence anyway, so it might as well be told before wrecking the economy.

Don’t expect any of this to make an ounce of difference. To turn a typical alarmist point against them, too many people are invested in the climate alarmism lobby. Some merely for its value in obtaining public money for research, but others, like Al Gore, quite literally. Politicians love the idea of climate change, because it gives them at once an opportunity to appear saintly and selfless, and an excuse to impose measures that increase their power and reward their political benefactors. Many companies buy into it because it gives them marketing collateral, and allows them to gain a slice of a “green” products pie that is expect to top $688 billion by 2010 (link in PDF), not to mention all the spinoffs from trade in an entirely new class of assets — carbon credits — simply conjured out of thin air by governments. The media loves it because, well, scary stories sell magazines.

Expect David Evans to be attacked over everything except the substance of his arguments, by all these people with undeniable vested interests of their own.

But he is right: if climate alarmists demand that the world drastically limit its use of fossil energy, and significantly increase the cost of production — which is the stuff that provide people with food, housing and healthcare, and lift the poor out of poverty — the onus is on them to prove why he is wrong and their solution is unavoidably necessary. And even if he is wrong, they should show why there is no alternative solution to large-scale, invasive government regulation, such as relying on technological innovation and free markets to solve whatever problems people might encounter as a result of global warming.

Their plan is a staggering price to pay for mere precaution, especially when it appears that their fears are based on little more than elaborate speculation. In fact, the precautionary principle — that self-contradictory rule to which environmentalists so often appeal — itself cautions against their grand, megalomaniacal, but ultimately vain schemes to change the climate. But it won’t stop them trying to run your life, scare your children and rob you blind.

Update: Fixed a missing close quote that cut half the paragraph starting with, “Don’t expect any of this to make an ounce of difference.” Proof-reading is under-rated and sadly neglected, on occasion. My apologies.

If you really care about global warming, there are a whole bunch of things you probably think you shouldn’t be doing that you should, and vice versa. The environmental religion of the modern age, in which an angry Gaia will punish us for our sinful ways, but we can redeem ourselves by sacrifice and self-denial, has spawned a mythology of classical proportions. The problem is that many of those myths, spouted as accepted wisdom by an uncritical media and special-interest activists, appear to be just plain wrong.

Wired magazine goes to the actual science — remember science? — and makes some proposals for those who really care about climate change, and think not only that reducing carbon emissions will actually help, but delude themselves that it is possible to reduce them enough to make even a little dent in anticipated warming.

Here is its list, each of which is explored further in a separate article:

• Live in Cities: Urban Living Is Kinder to the Planet Than the Suburban Lifestyle
• A/C Is OK: Air-Conditioning Actually Emits Less C02 Than Heating
• Organics Are Not the Answer: Surprise! Conventional Agriculture Can Be Easier on the Planet
• Farm the Forests: Old-Growth Forests Can Actually Contribute to Global Warming
• China Is the Solution: The People’s Republic Leads the Way in Alternative-Energy Hardware
• Accept Genetic Engineering: Superefficient Frankencrops Could Put a Real Dent in Greenhouse Gas Emissions
• Carbon Trading Doesn’t Work: Carbon Credits Were a Great Idea, But the Benefits Are Illusory
• Embrace Nuclear Power: Face It. Nukes Are the Most Climate-Friendly Industrial-Scale Form of Energy
• Used Cars — Not Hybrids: Don’t Buy That New Prius! Test-Drive a Used Car Instead
• Prepare for the Worst: Climate Change Is Inevitable. Get Used to It

It doesn’t say all of these are good ideas, of course. There are excellent reasons to slash-and-burn overgrown, bug-infested jungles, to plant more productive crops, sure. But there are also plenty excellent reasons not to cut down old-growth forests. However, if your policy goal is to reduce carbon emissions, which seems to be the sole fetish of environmentalists and policy makers, then all of these points, including razing the rainforests, are valid.

Meanwhile, the US Congress is about to debate a cap-and-trade scheme that will vastly expand government powers and revenue, cost consumers trillions in bureaucratic red tape, tax and lost economic growth, and achieve very little indeed. In welcoming an open floor debate on these mushy measures, the Wall Street Journal writes:

The vehicle is a bill that principal sponsors Joe Lieberman and John Warner are calling “landmark legislation.” They’re too modest. Warner-Lieberman would impose the most extensive government reorganization of the American economy since the 1930s.

Ouch. Nothing like a fat bureaucracy to infringe on the liberty and prosperity of the people. Nothing like a first-country moral crusade to give developing-country leaders ideas to foist upon their long-suffering people. Nothing like an overbearing state to hold down the development of the poor.

As if $130 oil isn’t reason enough to consider more fuel-efficient cars, reduce energy usage in industry and invest in alternative energy sources.

While we wait for this legislative disaster, however, would the disciples of St Al please report to the consistory, so they can get cracking on Wired’s measures?

(Hat tip: Climate Skeptic.)

The decision to add the polar bear to the list of threatened species, on the basis that global warming threatens its habitat, is dangerous, and it’s going to hit Americans — and anyone who buys American products or relies on American investment capital — in their pockets. Not only trade, but similar decisions made by other countries or by international bodies, will spread this damage worldwide.

Environmentalists failed to convince the US legislature to enact draconian new laws to enforce costly measures whose benefits are at best speculative. Having failed to make their case, they fall back on what appears to be an innocent and even noble regulatory decision. They know listing the polar bear as threatened opens the door for litigation to enforce their ideas about carbon dioxide emissions on others, on the basis that any such emissions contribute to the destruction of the polar bear’s habitat.

Bloomberg’s Kevin Hassett says “this action will almost surely go down in history as the turning point in the global warming debate”. In an editorial titled Polar Bear Ruling to Bring Tsunami of Lawsuits, he writes:

Environmental groups are already preparing legal challenges. Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity told USA Today last week that the Endangered Species Act requires agencies now to address greenhouse gases, and warned that “we can and will go to court to enforce the law.”

Not only big companies will feel it. In theory, they could sue you for the car you drive, or the air-con you install in your home. And you won’t have a big company’s crack squad of expensive lawyers to protect you from the attack dogs of the green left. In short, this is a big deal. A very big deal.

At least we can comfort ourselves with the knowledge that these superior beings (environmentalists, not polar bears) are obviously smarter than the rest of us, and care more too. So perverting the judiciary to achieve their political aims is a small thing when they’re saving the world from certain destruction. In fact, perhaps we should start a Fascist Party, so they can protect us from ourselves.

The poor panda, which really is endangered, had no chance. It was never, ever, going to be this profitable to the cause.

Well, that’s it then. The Al Gore Inc special interest lobby has won another victory. The US has declared the polar bear to be an endangered a threatened species. So from today, global waffling alarmists can cite the doomed polar bear in support of their doctrinaire opposition to energy production, industrial projects and economic development.

Care to make further strides in reducing poverty, increasing life expectancy, growing prosperity and improving quality of life? Sorry, poor pretty polar bear cubs with small plaintive voices will stand astride history yelling, “Stop!” This is what, these days, they call “progressive”.

Yesterday’s press release was to the point:

Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne today announced that he is accepting the recommendation of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The listing is based on the best available science, which shows that loss of sea ice threatens and will likely continue to threaten polar bear habitat. This loss of habitat puts polar bears at risk of becoming endangered in the foreseeable future, the standard established by the ESA for designating a threatened species.

I’ve pointed out in considerable detail before, polar bears should not be listed by any reasonable interpretation of the various criteria that apply. The motives for listing them as endangered threatened — opposition to oil exploration and pathological fear of climate change — are also quite explicitly stated by the green lobby. The only possible scientific reason for listing them (the reason cited by Kempthorne) is wild speculation about future changes in their habitat, combined with the assumption that polar bears won’t bother to adapt to their environment, if it did indeed change.

But here’s what’s really happening to the population:

(Studies, in chronological order, are by: IUCN, Schuhmacher, DeMaster & Stirling, Nowak & Paradiso, Watson, Garner, Truett & Johnson, Schliebe, Lunn et al, IUCN, IUCN. Background photograph is by Steve Amstrup of the US Geological Service.)

Alarmists have a nasty habit of citing the high estimate in 1996, and the low estimate in 2006, to make their case for being alarmed. This technique, of carefully selecting time intervals to “prove” a dubious point by noting changes from an outlier, is a very common and simple means of lying with statistics. Given these studies, the more honest interpreter would use the longest available data series along with the most conservative estimates, to guess at a doubling in the population in the last 40 years. Or, if you prefer, you can assume the early research for technical reasons to be incomplete and inaccurate, and argue that the population appears stable at worst. However, that would appear to be unnecessarily pessimistic, as this article from last year points out:

“There aren’t just a few more bears. There are a … lot more bears,” biologist Mitchell Taylor told the Nunatsiaq News of Iqaluit in the Arctic territory of Nunavut. Earlier, in a long telephone conversation, Dr. Taylor explained his conviction that threats to polar bears from global warming are exaggerated and that their numbers are increasing. He has studied the animals for the Nunavut government for two decades.

Native wisdom, usually treated with great reverence by the environmentalist left, is undoubtedly a crock of self-serving lies in this case:

Inuit hunters make their own estimates of the polar bear population based on the number of animals they encounter on their travels. Taylor says scientists have ignored the anecdotal evidence of the Inuit, who say bear numbers were rising. Inuits also report more polar bears wandering into their towns and villages, where they are a threat to children.

“I’m pretty sure the numbers [of polar bears] are climbing,” says Pitselak Pudlat, an Inuit hunter and manager of the Aiviq Hunters and Trappers Organization at Cape Dorset, Baffin Island. “During the winter there were polar bears coming into town.”

(To be fair, note the chart in my earlier post, which shows growing, stable and declining populations.)

I reckon if the environmentalists are really so concerned about tiny areas of industrial activity in the vast wildernesses of the Arctic, they should just ship the fluffy little maneaters to the Antarctic. It’s uninhabited by people, full of nutritious food, and the ice is getting thicker, over there.

This suggestion is, admittedly, not as funny as the pathetic caveat Kempthorne, having caved to the pressure groups, adds to his press release:

In making the announcement, Kempthorne said, “I am also announcing that this listing decision will be accompanied by administrative guidance and a rule that defines the scope of impact my decision will have, in order to protect the polar bear while limiting the unintended harm to the society and economy of the United States.”

Good luck, Mr Kempthorne. You have a polar bear’s chance in hell. Perhaps you can get a job with Al Gore’s investment company, though. The self-serving capitalists of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers certainly owe you one. Maybe he’ll let you be a roadie on his next great rock star tour.

Update: The term “endangered” is a catch-all term (as in “Endangered Species Act”), but also indicates a particular classification, different from “threatened”. I have read the US Endangered Species Act (and its IUCN counterpart), and should have known to be less careless with these terms. Corrected where necessary.