Posts tagged…Evidence
Six out of ten in UK doubt climate change is ‘settled science’
Sun, Jun 22 2008First it was the Irish rejecting an overblown and incomprehensible Lisbon treaty on the consolidation of the EU's political machinery. Now it's the British public who are failing to live up to their leaders' expectations.
"Ipsos MORI polled 1,039 adults and found that six out of 10 agreed that 'many scientific experts still question if humans are contributing to climate change', and that four out…
Read more…Aids campaign a moral panic
Sun, Jun 15 2008"It is time to recognise that the Aids scare was one of the most distorted, duplicitous and cynical public health panics of the past 30 years. Instead of being treated as a sexually transmitted disease that affected certain high-risk communities, and which should be vociferously [sic, 'vigorously'?] tackled by the medical authorities, the 'war against Aids' was turned into moral…
Climate Change, Trade and Competitiveness
Sat, Jun 14 2008The papers from a recent Brookings Institution conference on the trade, production and 'competitiveness' impacts of emissions controls and border-tax adjustments are now available (thanks to Simon Lester for the pointer). There's some evidence that border-tax adjustments related to 'carbon taxes' (at feasible rates) would be more trouble to administer and collect than they'd be worth.
Border-tax…
The empricist’s telescope
Thu, Jun 12 2008
"E pur si muove". It seems there's no proof that Galileo ever said this ("And yet…it [the earth] moves, after all").
But it's one of those stories that should be true. Dragged before the Inquisition, Galileo was forced to recant his apparent dissent from the "settled science" of the unmoving earth and the orbiting sun. If he didn't mutter this famous phrase after his recantation, then he should…Science, dogma and dissent: Ross Garnaut’s Heinz Arndt lecture
Mon, Jun 09 2008What a disappointment.
I hoped that Prof. Garnaut would use his Heinz Arndt Lecture to describe the balance he intended to strike in his recommendations between evidence for risky climate change and a growing body of evidence that the risks are low to moderate (at most). Given his well-known views, I expected to find the balance tilted in favor of the former but I hoped to find that it would be…
Gin, Television, and Social Surplus
Wed, May 14 2008Clay Shirky's clever twist on a familiar point about the 'social surplus' frittered away watching television (but not by Wikipedia?).
"And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that's 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every…
Australia’s export performance—should we be worried?
Sat, Apr 19 2008
The Australian government's Review of Export Policies and Programs has apparently been prompted by concerns about export performance.
"While exports exhibited strong growth in the period 1980-2001, reflecting technological changes and important domestic policy initiatives such as the lowering of tariff barriers and the introduction of pro-competition policies, in recent years there has been a…
World Climate Report
Sat, Feb 09 2008Lower-atmosphere temperatures have not increased in 7 years and 2008 has started with a cooling trend
"We can't imagine that the global temperatures will stay down forever, but the last 7+ years does provide a clear example that the rate of temperature change is not simply going up and up and up. In fact, the rate of change seems to be slowing" (World Climate Report)
Design of a multilateral regime for emissions trading
Sat, Mar 10 2007
The most difficult questions about the management of climate change are not about taxes or trading but about the weakness of multilateral regimes. Their recent history should worry anyone who wants a global answer to a problem of managing a global commons.
In my submission to the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Emissions Trading I draw some lessons from the history of multilateral trade and…