Jock Coats and the Anglosphere

I was completely taken aback by something Jock Coats penned today. Jock, for those who don't visit his blog, is one of those rare beasts: a relatively liberal Liberal Democrat; someone who you could imagine not throwing money at the bureaucracy or, on a good day, perhaps even trying his hand at a little discreet liberalisation.

Or at least so I thought, until I read his posting on Britain's role in the world.

Jock has been pondering the way we treat people in the developing world and the claims made in The Great Global Warming Swindle that environmentalists are preventing development in poor countries so as to save us all from the spectre of climate change.

[W]e should put the Commonwealth, far more so than either Europe or transatlantic polity, at the core of our foreign and international development policy for the twenty-first century. Nearly sixty years ago, Churchill suggested that Britain's post-war role in the world ought to be as a link between Europe, America and the Commonwealth. We seem to have put a lot of emphasis on the former two, but for a variety of reasons seem to have quietly dropped the latter.

Well, yes, this is the Anglosphere idea, at least to a large extent - open ourselves up to these countries which have ties of history and culture, the common law tradition and so on. But why, we might ask, have we failed to emphasise the Commonwealth? I'm surprised that I need to point this out. It's the EU innit? We are not allowed to trade openly with the Commonwealth because Brussels says so. And what's the point in having emphasising our relations with someone we can't even trade freely with?

Yes, the intervening decades have seen many upheavals of independence from Empire and those newly "emancipated" nations struggling and jostling to find their position in the world. But let's face it, we are only where we are because of them. Because of the way we colonised them and took from them what we wanted, what would make us materially rich.

The Commonwealth could be a model, modern community of nations, with members from every continent and from every stratum of economic development on the planet, from the very richest to the very poorest, working together under a common aim of redistributing the common wealth within it to ensure that all its peoples attain their full potential.

I'm right with him here, up until that last bit. Redistributing the common wealth? Does he mean this? Has he completely taken leave of his senses? Surely he realises that "redistribution" impoverishes everyone? And is he aware that the "wealth" in the word "commonwealth" has the meaning of "well-being" rather than anything to do with money.

The whole piece makes no sense. We can't have more meaningful relations with the Commonwealth because we're not allowed to, and it would appear that even if we could Jock would want to make base our new relationship around socialism or reparations.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Sceptics win a round of the climate debate

There was a debate held in the US last night (I think) on the subject of climate change. There were some big hitters on both sides, including Richard Lindzen and Philip Stott for the heretics and Gavin Sshmidt and Richard Somerville for the orthodox. There's a transcript up here, which I haven't had a chance to look at yet.

What I did find interesting was the results of the polls held before and after the debate which showed a marked shift towards the sceptic position.

Global warming is not a crisis Date 3/14/2007 Votes Online Poll Before Debate After Debate For 54.76 % 29.88 % 46.22 % Against 41.94 % 57.32 % 42.22 % Undecided 3.30 % 12.80 % 11.56 %

This suggests strongly that when people are exposed to the sceptic position, they form a completely different view of the truth of the global warming hypothesis. 

Carbon dioxide removal

A commenter at Tim Worstall reminds me of a cunning masterplan I developed in a moment of idleness some years ago. If the problem is that a load of carbon stored in an inert form under the ground has been converted to CO2, then the sensible solution is to get it back into an inert form again. Luis Enrique, puts it thusly:

 It would appear to (ignorant) me that a good way of reducing atmospheric C02 would be to replicate the process of how it got underground - i.e. growing lots of trees, cutting them down and burying them as landfill and growing more. repeat. Which is kind of why I no longer care about buying paper from managed forests then chucking it in the bin. Am I making an error here?

I must say this looks flawless to me. Maybe we don't need send our economy back to the dark ages.

So it's OK! We're not doomed after all! 

That 800 year lag

One of the most striking claims of the Great Global Warming Swindle was that in the historic climate record,  the temperature rise preceded the rise in CO2 by approximately 800 years. On the face of it, this is pretty good evidence that temperature is driving CO2 rises rather than the other way round, which is exactly what the heretics claimed in the programme. As far as I can see, its existence is largely undisputed (although I have been pointed to one dissenter).

The orthodox response to this is that CO₂ is a feedback mechanism. Something causes CO₂ to rise. Because CO₂ is a greenhouse gas, it warms the earth, which raises CO₂ levels, which warms the earth further and so on. My initial objection to this was that the cycle should feed back exponentially. Apparently the answer to this is that the supply of CO₂ is l finite, so when it runs out the feedback loop is broken. But nobody actually knows what causes the rise in CO₂ anyway, so we're in the dark as to the details.

From my perspective, this all looks somewhat dodgy. Both methods rely on an initial warming of the earth to produce CO₂ (by a mechanism which isn't understood). The heretical case is that that's the end of the story. Warming produces CO₂. (I assume they argue that any warming from the CO2 is small because, relative to water vapour, the contribution of CO2 to the greenhouse effect is small). The orthodox case, however, imposes a CO₂ feedback on the initial process. This, however, requires another process to prevent the feedback spiralling out of control - one which is inextricably mixed up with whatever started the whole cycle off in the first place.

Which seems, I must say, a tad unconvincing. Certainly not something I'd like to rely on before I took drastic action. The orthodox case seems to fall foul of Occam's razor. 

I must say, I feel certain there must be more to it than this, so if anyone can enlighten me, I'm always keen to hear.  Why is the the heretical case not considered more plausible? What is the flaw in their case which requires imposition of a feedback loop?

As always, I should point out that I'm an interested amateur rather than a professional scientist, and there is a possibility I've got either camp's arguments (and probably both) completely wrong.

The Cultural Revolution

[F]actional fires were fueled by the anger of students frustrated over policies that kept them off the paths of political advancement because the students had the ill fortune to be born to parents who had connections with the Guomindang, the landlords, or the capitalist "exploiters" of the old regime and were therefore classifed as "bad" elements by the [Chinese Communist Party].  There were as well millions of disgrunted urban youths who had been relocated to the countryside during the party campaigns of ealier years, or in line with the plans of Chen Yun and others to save the cost to the state of providing subidized grain suppliers for such city residents. There were those, within the largest cities, who were denied access to the tiny number of elite schools that had become, in effect, "prep schools" for the children of influential party cadres. (With the shortage of colleges in China, and the thickets of complex entrance examinations that still stood in the way of them, only education in this handful of schoools could assure access to higher education.) And finally there were those who felt that party positions were monpolized by the uneducated rural cadres of Mao's forment peasant guerilla days, and that these people should now be eased out to make way for newer and more educated recuits.

Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China.

Somehow, familar. 

The EU is a database state

It's getting increasingly difficult for anyone to argue that the EU is a force for good in this country, its shutting down on BBC Jam notwithstanding. The CAP, the CFP, the bureaucracy, the corruption, the destruction of our common law tradition - these are just a few of the evils that have been inflicted on us by Brussels. There's no sign of it stopping either.

Proposals for a centralised database of fingerprints from across the Continent were revealed yesterday, fuelling fears on all sides of a Big Brother Europe.

The scheme for a computerised collection of personal details drawn from all 27 countries in the EU is the latest in a raft of anticrime measures in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

Britain would be expected to contribute all the details held by police. These include fingerprints of suspects and people released without charge, as well as those convicted of crimes. The plan coincides with the Home Office preparing to expand the range of people fingerprinted to include those caught speeding or dropping litter.

I sit and stare at that last sentence, stupified by it.  We actually seem to be sleepwalking into something out of 1984. I grew up thinking that, as an Englishman, I had won the lottery of life.  I was, by and large, free. I had the rule of law, civil traditions, and policemen who would give you directions when you were lost. But what am I to tell my children now? That if they drop litter, they will be arrested and taken to a police station where their mouths will be swabbed and their DNA taken, to be retained indefinitely and passed around Europe? That these policemen are there to protect them? That they should expect to be monitored by CCTV everywhere they go.

What are they doing to my country?  What the bloody hell are they doing to my country?

Post-normal science

Belmont Club has picked up on Mick Hulme's bizarre "post-normal" science piece in the Guardian and finds that it's just politics in disguise.

Quote of the day

Free Born John

There's a really good post up at Free Born John at the moment. It ranges from sumptuary laws and the tragedy of the commons to immigration.

Read the whole thing. 

Jamming

Let it no be said that I won't give credit where it's due. Following complaints to the EU commission by commercial e-learning providers, the BBC has been forced to suspend its e-learning site called BBC Jam. This looks to have been a classic case of a bureaucracy crowding out the competition. Having started with basic e-learning, the BBC was starting to move into virtual reality leaving no space for commercial providers. When these companies complained to Ofcom, they were ignored. Whether this was because Jam was set up at the instigation of the government remains to be seen.

Perhaps now it's time for ITV and Sky to make the same complaints. 

More here and here. 

Is there such a thing as a global temperature?

This is the question asked in a paper by Essex, McKitrick and Andresen in a fascinating paper which can be found here. (Mathematics alert!). This is my understanding of it - I haven't done any maths since university days, so if I'm wrong I'm sure someone will put me right.

Some quantities, like weight, can be added and therefore averaged. If you take an 2oz mass and a 1 oz mass you can say with certainty that their total mass is 3oz. Because the sum of the two masses means something, you can calculate an avarage of 1.5oz and this figure has a useful meaning also. These kinds of measures are called extensive variables. Pressure, on the other hand, can't be treated in this way. If you add a system at 2 atmospheres to one at 1 atmosphere you don't get a system at 3 atmospheres. Because the sum of the two pressures has no meaning, the average likewise is meaningless. These are called intensive variables.

Temperature, as you might suspect, is an intensive measure. This means that when you add two temperatures together, the answer cannot be a temperature. It's meaningless. As the authors point out, dividing this meaningless sum by the number of components cannot give you an answer which has a meaning.

If the average of temperatures is not a temperature, then perhaps it's an index - a number which tracks whatever it is that drives the climate? If this is the case, then it is presumably necessary to describe how the average of temperatures - a statistic - is driven by the underlying climate driver, or at least to show some correlation between the two. They also need to demonstrate that the statistical measure they have chosen is better than any other measure they could have chosen. These alternative measures might well demonstrate a completely different trend to the average.

A third alternative is that the average is neither a temperature or an index, but a proxy for energy. But unfortunately there appear to be problems with this argument too. For a start, to do so is to use an intensive measure as a proxy for an extensive one. Secondly, the relationship between energy and climate is not understood. How then is it possible to know that the average of temperatures is a valid proxy?

It's not instantly obvious to the lay reader, but there are lots of different kinds of means. We're used to dealing with arithmetical means ("averages") but you can also have geometric means, harmonic means and any number of other means. For some systems, physics suggests which is the correct one to use. But, alas, this is not the case for global temperature.

As if to rub this point in, the paper demonstrates that there are in fact an infinite number of different means for global temperature. Which, they ask, is the correct one? Why has the scientific community alighted on the mean it has? They go on to show that, for the same set of data, different means can show a rising trend or a falling one. In other words, if a different averaging method to the one used in climate science had been chosen, we might now be having a crisis about global cooling... again.

It's a fascinating piece of work, some of which is beyond my understanding. If you are mathematically inclined, do take a look and tell me what you think.

Reading the news backwards

It's said by many expert investors that the best way to read a set of annual accounts is backwards. This is because the bits that management don't want you to notice are tucked away right at the end. They hope that by the time you've read the three pages on pension schemes, you'll be fast asleep and will completely miss the contingent liability that's about to swallow the company.

It might well be advisable to read press reports on global warming in the same way. Here's a classic of the kind from the Associated Press on the subject of land loss on the east coast of England:

Climate change spurs coastal defense retreat yells the headline in the Courier News, reporting from Happisburgh in Norfolk. We're all doomed!! seems to be the subplot. There are lots of stories of houses falling into the sea, land no longer being protected because sea levels are going to rise, concerned villagers feeling cheated. It's all because of global warming you see! Cue interviews with European environment official, quote from Stern review and so on. Cause and effect duly insinuated into readers' heads (but no outright declaration of course)...

...and then right at the end the get out:

Happisburgh, on the East Anglia coast, always has been vulnerable, and accounts of houses, lighthouses or farmland collapsing into the sea date back to the early 19th century.

I call this dishonest, but then I'm just a heretic.

Trot TV

Al Gore has launched a new internet TV channel to rival 18 Doughty Street, or as its opponents like to call it, Tory TV. Its called current.tv, and promises wall to wall hagiography of departed communists and hourly reminiscing for the days of the three day week.

Actually, I made that last bit up.

Personally I look on this as another nail in the coffin of the BBC so I'm quite happy to see the newcomer. 

More details here. 

Light bulbs

There is a marvellous debunking of the EU's proposed ban on incandescent light bulbs over at EU Referendum.

• Something like 50% of light fittings in the UK will have to be thrown on a scrap heap and replaced because they can't be used with the "long-life" CFL lightbulbs that are to replace the incandescents.
• CFLs can't be used with security lights or dimmer switches. These will have to be scrapped too.
• They use much more power to make, in a process which uses toxic materials including mercury vapour.
• If they are switched on and off as required, they don't last as long as claimed.
• If you don't switch them on and off as required but leave them on, the proclaimed energy saving is largely lost.

The similarity between this and the recycling scam is remarkable. A vast and expensive gesture turns out to be a waste. A pattern looks to be establishing itself: environmentalism is bad for the environment.

Can we trust anything the BBC says?

Certainly not on environmental matters, anyway. I've just heard some idiot reporter on the 10 o'clock news declaring that rising sea levels around Norfolk are causing the land to fall into the sea. This completely flies in the face of the well-understood fact that the east of England is sinking.

Incidentally, I posted the following onto the editor's blog on the BBC website:

It is worth remembering Jeremy Paxman's now legendary quote on the BBC's attitude to the climate change debate.

"People who know a lot more than I do may be right when they claim that [global warming] is the consequence of our own behaviour. I assume that this is why the BBC's coverage of the issue abandoned the pretence of impartiality long ago"

The BBC is an environmental campaigning organisation. Full stop.

It didn't make it past the moderators, despite the fact that there were only 12 comments (now 18).  This is what a public service broadcaster does, apparently.