Archive for December, 2009
Climate change a belated round up
Making use of the fact that I seem to have some free time, I thought I’d try to pull together some of the various articles that have been written about Copenhagen and Anthropogenic Global Warming (as I believe it’s now correct to call it – or is it Anthropogenic climate change today?). As it seems to be terribly relevant to state ones qualifications for having an opinion in the matter (though most of the politicians making the decisions have no science background but they’ll still spend the money) I shall state for the record that I’ve no experience in computer modelling or climatology but I did read physics (and failed the mathematics components hugely). I’ve also not read many of the emails or looked at the data, so I’m probably as well informed as most of the politicians at Copenhagen.
So that all out of the way I should probably also state my current position on the whole climate change thing. Firstly I utterly believe that the climate changes (I’m not currently under a mile or so of ice which is a big hint), also it’s obvious that human activity (as well as natural) activity can influence weather conditions on both a local and global level. The important questions as I see it are:
1) Is the current science sufficiently good to base significant action on?
2) What should that action be?
So onto the quality of the science*, from what’s been revealed from CRU the conclusions they’ve been coming up with have to be considered doubtful at best. As discussed on Devils Kitchen some of the leaked data suggests that the models and data they are using are not documented or well understood. However as they’re producing results similar to other groups then it must all be ok – I hope the problem with this is obvious. I know that academia is very different to the commercial world, but undocumented code of this nature where they’re working out what the data probably is based on what the output produces is not an acceptable basis on what to base decisions that will cost billions of pounds. Even as a student I was expected to use version control and document what I did and where the data came from. Which brings us to another problem, they no longer have the original data, – they just have “corrected” data but don’t seem to know what the corrections where. Again things may have changed since my undergraduate days, but back then throwing away raw data was a big no no. How can they check the “normalisations” they’ve made as more data is acquired if they don’t have the data they started from, and worse don’t seem to know how they got from the raw data to the data they’re now using? I would also note that I’ve not yet seen much by way of a response reported that went along the lines of “no problem we can get the raw data back from here, here and there”, it does look as though this data and the transformations it’s been subjected to are lost to the mists of time.
These are the sort of mistake that would have got my poor undergrad efforts thrown out with a firm admonition to only come back when I have the raw data as well. There is some suggestion from people that have looked at the leaked data in more detail that you’ll get a global warming graph regardless of what data you put in **. The pedant general has a good over view of how the peer review process should normally work and how it seems to be working or rather not working in this case. So it would seem that the science isn’t settled, that we’ve got an awful lot yet to do to determine: if human activity is causing catastrophic climate change, if it’s unprecedneted and if both are the case is CO2 the main culprit. Coverage in the media is increasing but is still mainly from from politicians and people within the green movement labelling anyone with questions climate change deniers or ‘climate saboteurs’ – which doesn’t really lend itself to calm debate.
So I can’t currently trust the science to show that we’re heading head first towards our doom, but following the precautionary principle it may still be a good idea to do something about possible climate change. So the question is what, well reducing energy usage and being more efficient are “no brainers” both actions save money and improve quality of life so they make sense no matter what the climate is doing. But that’s not all that’s being proposed by Copenhagen and the like, we also it seems need the big stick of taxes to save the planet.***
Carbon trading is a currently favoured option, it will make lots of money for the carbon traders, gives governments a new currency to swap amongst themselves and will only work if both the entire world (or at least a majority of it) joins in and if the potential catastrophic climate change is actually due to CO2. Oh and the trading also needs to be genuine which there are already problems with as it’s ripe for carousel fraud. The other option is to tax activities that cause pollution such that you have sufficient funds to repair the damage caused, the green tax escalator on fuel duty being an obvious example. If no amount of cot will repair the damage then obvious the activity should be banned out right. However as explained in the Register the tax on petrol is already way more than the estimated cost of damage and the current cap and trade system is a mish mash of different caps for different systems. If CO2 is the problem then a single cap on CO2 makes sense as it doesn’t really matter what causes it. Also as observed in the same article they’re double dipping, taxing on usage as well as imposing a cap and trade scheme, which does make it look an awful lot like a tax raising and/or social control scam. So given the ineffectiveness of actions being proposed and the questionable nature of the science that suggests we’re heading for catastrophe it would seem to make sense to look at adaptation rather than mitigation, and maybe use all this money we suddenly seem to have spare to address global warming to address simpler problems like: malaria, provision of clean water and universal education – all of which we know how to do and which we also know will definitely save life and improve the quality of life for millions.
update Devils kitchen looks further into the cost of increasing fuel costs to the third world and highlights that the IPCC recommend adaptation for the A1 scenarios of climate change.
The most reasoned thing I’ve seen so far is this which probably represents the position I hold. What’s currently being proposed as a preventative measure for something which may or may not be happening is likely to do far more harm than it’s going to prevent and there are better things we could be spending the money on. But I may well be wrong it’s a complex issue, < ahref="http://captainranty.blogspot.com/2009/12/climateshite.html">Captain Ranty has a slightly stronger view on the matter, and it is worth remembering that 10 years ago we were all scared of a new ice age.
Finally yet Devils Kitchen has also pulled together a lot of stuff about the CRU leak, including a link to an incredible timeline pdf.
update 2 Another good post over on Samizdata covering problems with the models, what could be done to make the science trustworthy and some potential game changers.
(hmm that was all a bit rambling, terribly sorry).
* Yes I am well aware that those are cherry picked quotes
** Yes I do know that that’s a joke article -so’s this
*** Actually the planet doesn’t need saving, it’ll do just fine. Keeping the planet suitable for human life and our current quality of living is a different matter.
Photography in public places the battle continues
You can tell that the problem with the police harassing photographers for taking pictures in public places is getting serious when 365 establishment photographer write a letter to the Telegraph (hat tip Samizdata). If things get much worse they’ll write to the editor of the Times and use green ink. Now I’m not convinced this will do much good as the disconnect appears to be between the 646 that sit and make laws and those that implement them on the streets as they see fit.
The letter quite reasonably points out that if you were up to no good, you’d probably just use google street view, a camera phone or at most a small compact of some sort and not a hulking great SLR on a tripod. They even make the radical claim that the presensce of such a visible camera might make people thing twice about doing no good in case the very visible human operator took thier photo. Which if you think about it would explain why the police (and news agencies) appeal to the public for any photo’s after major incidents. Though as various commenatators have observed the letter does smell rather of special pleading – that the police shouldn’t pick on “proper” photographers with expensive equipment but feel free to infringe the rights and liberties of those scruffy plebs with the cheap nasty cameras.
Since the anti-terrorism laws have come into force making it allowable to stop and search people, and making it an offence to take photographs “liable to be of use to terrorists”. The police, PCSO and various security gaurds have been using it as an excuse to harrass or beat photographers that have been taking pictures in public of pretty much anything. Just taking photo’s of the outside of iconic landmarks can make you a terror suspect if the local security goons take against you. Of course this has been going on for a while now and has even been debated in parliament back in April 2009 by MP’s who’ve been stopped themselves. There have also been numerous blogs and articles written about it and public demonstrations organised. The home office issued a circular in August 2009 clarifying the situation and restating that it’s not illegal to take photogrpahs in public places, nor is taking photographs on it’s own grounds (if they really think you’re a terrorist they need to use section 43 not section 44). The Met office also updated their guidelines in September also stating that generally people shouldn’t be stopped from taking photographs. Yet despite this ongoing restating of the fact that normal people are in fact allowed to take photographs in public of retty much whatever they like, photographers are still getting routinely stopped. So really I’m expecting this letter to have about as much imapct as the facebook group.
What will probably also have no effect is another demo on 23rd Jan 2010 but still we must keep trying.
Of course on the flip side of this the police are using traffic cameras to harass and limit movement of peaceful protesters as well as building up a photographic data base of people at protests, but they really hate being filmed
Trafigura a belated update
Again rather late with getting round to posting this update, but for completeness sake I think it best not over looked. Sadly it seems that Trafigura and carter-fuck have had thier day in court and the BBC have issued an apology in open court., as well as £250,000. the full apology from newsnight can be found here. The gist of the statement is basically that experts hadn’t been able to find any link between being exposed to highly toxic slops and “deaths, miscarriages and chronic and long-term injuries”. Of course you might be inclined to still think that perhaps shipping such toxic slops to a poor african nation to be dumped rather than dealing with it in proper facilities isn’t the most ethical, pleasant or enviromentally sound thing to do. But that of course wasn’t the matter before the court.
For more details go read Old Holborn’s take on the matter.
Of church bells and minarets
A bit late to the party with this one, and not that much to add except that when it comes to the Swiss passing a law to ban minarets we should remove the beam in our own eye rather than worrying about the mote in another countries.
For a bit of background as this is rather late after the immediate fuss has died down, the Swiss have decided that four minarets is quite enough and they’d not like any more. As far as I can tell they don’t care who wants to build them or why. Generally speaking I’m with Archbishop Cranmer on this one in thinking it a lot of fuss about not much. The Swiss from what I can gather are quite keen on restricting all sorts of things, but seem to be generally o.k. with this so that they choose to ban a specific architectural feature currently popular with a particular sect isn’t really a big deal. But segments of our press and commentariate seem to thing it’s a horrible beastly thing ushering in a new age of intolerance. Which just makes me wonder why these same people are quite happy that closer to home there is specific legislation preventing a specific religious group from naming their places of worship as they see fit, from it’s followers holding the same jobs as those of other religions are allowed and even from using traditional methods for summoning it’s devotees to prayer.
This disparity was raised in Parliament as recently as 2007, but at the time many people who are now upset with the Swiss were inclined to dismiss it as unimportant, due to the small scale of people it. The Swiss action which affected about 5% of the population caused Amnesty international to warn that violated freedom of religion but are oddly quiet on laws in this country which actually mention a religion explicitly rather than being confined to an architectural feature. Why are they not then up in arms about existing laws which are explicitly targeting a single relgion but are instead happy for this government to be merely ‘“ready to consider” changing the law‘?
If I were of a cynical mind I would have to wonder if the specific religions invovled in both incidents is what makes the difference? Though of course the more likely explanation is that a new law in another country is far more exciting than repealing old unjust laws close to home. that however doesn’t make it any less hypocritical.
Update A Guest post on More to life than shoes gives a Swiss take on thier view on the recent vote.
Carter-Fuck and Trafigura at it again
So it seems that the worlds most loved law firm, Carter-Fuck, are up to their normal tricks again on behalf of that bastion of environmental concern Trafigura.
My attention has been drawn to this post by Richard Wilson, it would seem that Carter-Fuck would really much rather we didn’t see a Panorama report on the wast they dumped on the Ivory Coast. So via yet another gagging order forcing the BBC to take down this video from their web site.
Richard Wilson has a PDF capture of the Panorama site from googles cache before it got Carter-Fucked.
(Anonymong copy)
The story is also being reported by The New Satesman
Do spread the word, to make sure that Trafigura get the sort of publicity they deserve on this issue. After all dumping large amounts of toxic chemicals on poor nations that can’t deal with it just to save money, really isn’t a terribly nice thing to do.
Welcome to Lisbon
Yesterday very late in the day I posted a link to Captain Ranty’s summary of what we were about to lose under the Lisbon treaty. I like I suspect many other people have never read the 294 pages that make up the Lisbon treaty, and so (much to my shame) wasn’t aware of just what it meant. Now it’s in force so we’ll be fighting to regain what has been lost rather than to defend what we have, which is always a much trickier battle. Archbishop Cranmer as ever provides a nice historical perspective.
To understand just what this treaty means to us, and to the rest of Europe as it isn’t good for anyone except the unelected elite that now rule us, go and read the very succinct (just 6,000+ words) commentary on the Lisbon treaty over at Katabasis, then when you’ve done that and calmed down read it again. The implications of this “rationalising” treaty are really quite troubling (to put it mildly), but I do wonder as have many other people if the treaty is constitutional. I don’t think it makes much difference if it isn’t all the time we just choose between red or blue big statists, but as Leg Iron has often observed we do have alternatives. Perhaps the time has come to form some unholy alliances as Snowolf suggests. It would take a lot of nose holding, but short of who knows how many years of this new state followed by a more violent upheaval a single purpose alliance of many small parties may be our best hope. Elect anyone on a mandate of a chance to get out and the promise that as soon as we’re out another election would follow, it seems like a good option to me.
(I may update this further as I get my head round what’s actually just happened)
UK terror threat status
- Severe 2010/01/25