RedStateEclectic

Death Threats and the Green Blob

Image credit and more on another green blob.

Again, let me emphasise that participation in political competition, political engagement, and hence the work of politicians are of the essence in defending the system of liberty that underlies our civilization.

Just ponder these words of a politician:

…However, I leave the post with great misgivings about the power and irresponsibility of - to coin a phrase - the Green Blob. By this I mean the mutually supportive network of environmental pressure groups, renewable energy companies and some public officials who keep each other well supplied with lavish funds, scare stories and green tape. This tangled triangle of unelected busybodies claims to have the interests of the planet and the countryside at heart, but it is increasingly clear that it is focusing on the wrong issues and doing real harm while profiting handsomely. Local conservationists on the ground do wonderful work to protect and improve wild landscapes, as do farmers, rural businesses and ordinary people. They are a world away from the highly paid globe-trotters of the Green Blob who besieged me with their self-serving demands, many of which would have harmed the natural environment. I soon realised that the greens and their industrial and bureaucratic allies are used to getting things their own way. I received more death threats in a few months at Defra than I ever did as secretary of state for Northern Ireland…

The source.

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Eco-Theocracy

Australia Repeals Carbon Tax

Politics is important for freedom:

As of today, Australia no longer has the most expensive “carbon” price in the world. The voters didn’t ask for a tax in 2010,  but it was forced on them in 2011. They rejected it wholeheartedly in 2013 but it still has taken months to start unwinding this completely pointless piece of symbolism which aimed to change the weather. The machinery of democracy may be slow, but this is a win for voters.
11:15am EST today: The Australian Senate passes the carbon tax repeal bill.

“Australia has become the first country in the world to abolish a price on carbon, with the Senate passing the Abbott government’s repeal bills 39 votes to 32.“ SMH

Now we need to turn off the tap to all the other green gravy rent-seekers who ignore the evidence.

The source.

This is a case of what I like to call "Freedom bites back", the meaning of which I explain in The Corridor of Success.

It is also shows that

conviction politicians are rewarded when their ideas have economic merit—and are clearly explained—to the electorate. Republicans should take note.

The source.

 

See also Science Sick from Too Much Bad Politics.

Capitalism - Best Friend of Sustainability

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The Coyote argues succinctly:

Environmentalists seem to all feel that capitalism is the enemy of sustainability, but in fact capitalism is the greatest system to promote sustainability that has ever been devised. Every single resource has a price that reflects its relative scarcity as compared to demand. Scarcer resources have higher prices that automatically promote conservation and seeking of substitutes. So an analysis of an investment's ability to return its cost is in effect a sustainability analysis. What environmentalists don't like is that wind does not cover the cost of its resources, in other words it does not produce enough power to justify the scarce resources it uses. Screwing around with that to only look at some of the resources is just dishonest.

The source.

The Environmental Wisdom of Your Wallet - Locavores Get It Wrong

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Liberty is a great method to further and lift to success the wisdom that is randomly available among humankind, and a means to reduce to a minimum the society-wide contagion of the errors to which we all are so prone.

High-yield agriculture and long-distance trade have long delivered a similar outcome—more abundant and affordable food with reduced environmental impact—on a global scale…. So prepare your meal from the most affordable food you can find to do both your wallet and the planet a favor.

As the Marxist theorist Karl Kautsky observed in 1899 in his classic On the Agrarian Question,

As long as any rural economy is self-sufficient it has to produce everything which it needs, irrespective of whether the soil is suitable or not. Grain has to be cultivated on infertile, stony and steeply sloping ground as well as on rich soils.

In time though, the development of better production areas such as the Canadian Prairies removed the need to keep producing grain on poorer soils, “and where circumstances were favorable it was taken off the land and replaced by other types of agricultural production” such as orchards, beef cattle, and dairy cows. Exporting food items from production locations where water was abundant to consumers living in regions where it wasn’t similarly removed the need to drain surface waters and aquifers in many drier parts of the world. [...]

Unfortunately, in our carbon emissions-obsessed era, local food activists (or locavores) have embraced the notion of “food miles,” or the distance food items travel from farms to consumers, as the be all and end all of the environmental impact of agricultural production. As has been repeatedly and rigorously documented in numerous life cycle assessment (LCA) studies, however, the distance traveled by food is a worthless indicator of sustainable development.

Among other issues, producing food typically requires (much) more energy than moving it around, especially when significant amounts of heating and/or cold-protection technologies, irrigation water, fertilizers, pesticides, and other inputs are required to grow things in one region, but not in another. Reducing food miles typically means a greater environmental footprint given the use of additional resources in less desirable locations.

Another issue is that the distance travelled by food matters less than the mode of transportation. For instance, shipping food halfway around the world on a container ship often has a smaller footprint per item carried than a short trip by car to a grocery store to buy a small quantity of these items. [...]

Advances in transportation and conservation technologies have also historically increased the importation of perishable food items produced at different latitudes and decreased local food production and storage, in the process delivering greater freshness, lower costs, and reduced energy consumption.

Importing New Zealand apples in the northern hemisphere in April rather than preserving local apples picked in September in cold storage for several months, for example, has advantages. Not only is freshness improved, spoilage is reduced. And storage costs, mainly the need to maintain higher than normal CO2 concentrations, lower than ambient temperatures to inhibit spoilage, or higher than ambient temperatures to prevent freezing, are avoided.

Conclusion

While agricultural markets are not perfect, due to numerous subsidies and barriers to trade, market prices factor in the environmental impact of food production by including the additional costs from less desirable production locals.

The source

See also Iowa-Grown Toyotas.

The "Precautionary" Principle

Acting precautiously is not the same as ensuring risklessness. Put differently, precaution depends on a sense of proportion, a sensible trade-off between cost and remaining risk. In political debate one often hears of the "precautionary principle", but rarely is the reference accompanied by a clear and sensible account of the cost-benefit relations attending the "precaution" in question. Often one ends up with a lot of pre(-payment) and little caution in the way of what one is paying for.

Of course, calls for unspecified or all-out "precaution" are an indispensable part of the statist's toolbox.

Next time you hear of the "precautionary principle" or "Earth day" remember what Edward Calabrese has to say below:

The first Earth Day, in 1970, was celebrated after a wave of environmentalism swept the nation. Many give credit to Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring, which popularized the notion of large-scale chemical pollution, for igniting the movement.

But she was really feeding off of a concept developed a few years earlier. The “precautionary principle” was conceptualized when the National Academy of Sciences proposed a radical change in the risk assessment of exposure to radiation and carcinogens. It recommended changing the regulatory paradigm from a “threshold dose” model to a linear one.

The threshold paradigm was what one might call common sense. It held that humans could tolerate small doses of things that, in larger doses, could be harmful.

Sunlight is a perfect example. Low doses are actually required for survival, as ultraviolet radiation — the same general type that causes sunburn — catalyzes the formation of Vitamin D. But, as is obvious to anyone who lives in a sun-drenched area, excessive exposure can lead to death in the near term (from dehydration) or the longer term (from skin cancer).

The “linear model” assumes that just a single molecule of a carcinogen or a single ionization from an X-ray can induce cancer. The enthusiasm spawned by Earth Day soon gave us brand new regulatory agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The EPA routinely applies the linear model to carcinogens.

“Environmental regulations based on the “linear model” are having a negative impact, not only on societal costs, but on our health as well.”

The linear model is a case study in the unintended consequences of the desire to do good. In this case, an ideologically driven scientist, Nobel Prize laureate Herman Muller, whose research formed the basis for EPA’s model, led the charge. A very powerful figure in health physics, he is now known to have marginalized and obstructed the publication of any research that provided evidence counter to the linear model.

If that sounds like the way senior climate scientists were found to behave in the famous 2009 “Climate-gate” emails, it should.

The regulatory agencies fell in line, as did a compliant scientific community and a media that was afraid to dig deeper. Every country followed the U.S.’ lead.

The linear model is rigid, absolute and wrong. We now know that there are so many flaws or holes in the linear dose response model that it looks more like Swiss cheese. The resulting environmental regulations are having a negative impact, not only on societal costs, but on our health as well.

The source.

See alo Hormesis versus Leviathan.

Lunch with the Heretics ...

 

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... or, as I prefer to call them, the modern Galileos, unrelenting defenders of the best evidence and theories they are capable of coming up with.

Ever since watching The Great Global Warming Swindle, I think, in 2007, I have followed and admired the work of Nir Shaviv and Richard Lindzen, who appear in the documentary. The ideas of Henrik Svensmark play a central role in the film. Soon I also became aware and appreciative of Henrik's pathbreaking research, recounted in Svensmark: The Cloud Mystery.

Yesterday I had the extraordinary privilege and pleasure of having lunch and wonderful conversations with the three of them, at a climate conference in my city of birth, Mannheim.

See also The Vision of the Anointed and Science in the Public Square, Global Warming - Best Summary, Scientists Not Intersted in Science, One of the Most Bizarre Collective Dellusions to Ever Grip the Human Race, Green Metamorphosis, Science Sick from Too Much Bad Politics, Man-Made CO2 Does Not Drive Climate Change, Liberty's Vacant Preserve - the Environment.

Meerkats of Botswana

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Adorable grassroots activism.

 

Humans can be pretty useful fellows at times.

Liberty's Vacant Preserve - the Environment

Environmental issues are the natural preserve for the (classical) liberal. Yet, this is not well understood among us "on the right".

In countless contributions to this blog, I have argued that ecological order is emergent order. The idea of evolution has been discovered by (classically) liberal thinkers. It underlies their ecological vision, according to which not only extra-human nature but human society too represents an ecological habitat.

The species of free, peaceful, and affluent humans is a constantly endangered species; it is in need of environmental protection. Looking after and protecting our free society is a matter of environmental awareness.

'The environment' has no meaning independent of human conceptions of it.

A free society is the best basis for (i) a genuine discourse about the environment as well as (ii) responsible and effective comportment vis-à-vis nature, whose central and most important agents are human beings capable of understanding, demanding, and practicing freedom.

If man does not assert his role as integral part of nature, the rest of nature will not do the job for him. Extra-human nature is indifferent to the fate and well-being of man. In fact, it is remarkably hostile to human needs, unless man subjects extra-human nature to his requirements.

In the modern world, this task requires us to realise that the ecological order of a free society is supremely capable of keeping the entirety of nature (i.e. men amongst themselves and their relationship with extra-human nature) in proper balance. Yet:

For many people, “conservative environmentalism” sounds oxymoronic. Since the rise of environmentalism in the 1960s, the Left has mostly managed to claim the moral high ground. They get to be for clean air, clean water, and saving the whales; for harmony with nature; and against pollution, deforestation, species extinction, and other bad things.

In response, conservatives have often let themselves be cast as the heavy in the Left’s morality tale, stuck talking about cost-benefit analyses and questioning whether low level exposure to some unpronounceable chemical compound is really so bad. But while these arguments and intellectually sounds and even controlling, they sound cold and bloodless.

The idea of a “conservative environmentalist” can raise skeptical hackles from those on the Right as well. All too often, self-described conservative environmentalists have quickly devolved into Me Too-ism, in which liberal policy prescriptions are simply repackaged as conservative, with an occasional quote from Burke or Hayek thrown in for flavoring.

Yet there is also a tradition of authentic free-market environmentalism, represented by such notables as Terry Anderson, Julian Simon, Bruce Yandle, and Robert Gordon. They have sought to use free market principles and insights to address and solve pressing environmental concerns.

Furthermore, in addressing free market solutions to environmental challenges, Jesiah Neely presents an argument analogous to my position with regard to civil society and art expressed in Gains Crisis and Gains Enhancement in the Arts.

It’s an economic commonplace that people tend to take better care of things they own. There is a reason why cattle, unlike the buffalo, are not at risk of extinction.

Entrepreneurship, innovation, and response to consumer demand have historically proven to be much better at meeting people’s needs than government command and control. That is as true when it comes to environmental goals as when it comes to economic goals. While new technologies and increased efficiency contributed to massive declines in harmful pollutants in the U.S., the old Soviet Union created some of the world’s greatest environmental calamities.

The free market is such a superior system, that oftentimes it can beat government regulation without even trying. In 2009, the U.S. Congress declined to pass a massive cap and trade bill. Yet the U.S. is now on track to meet the reduction targets contained in the Kyoto Protocol not through any government action, but through ordinary market developments. By contrast, the European Union’s cap and trade scheme has been beset by numerous problems.

Conclusion

Despite a sound theoretical and empirical case, many are reluctant to apply market principles, as well as Public Choice insights into government failure to environmental policy. Today, more than one billion people lack access to clean drinking water and reliable electricity. This is not because of industrial pollution, but because those services are provided by corrupt government-run monopolies.

There’s a reason millions in the developing world have cell phones (a late 20^th Century technology) but not reliable electricity (a late 19^th Century technology). One is provided chiefly by the market, while the other is provided (or not provided) chiefly by government.

This must change. Conservatives and libertarians should not be afraid to stake out the moral high ground on environmental issues, and to show how their principles can produce a positive vision that is both environmentally friendly and authentically free market.

The source.

Turn on the Stars

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The power of myths is as strong today as it has ever been. One of the great catastrophes of our lifetime is the demonisation of nuclear energy and the attendant neglect of research and technological development in this area of science. However, things may be changing.

Researchers in California made a great leap toward creating a source of virtually unlimited energy this past year as they strive to harness the power of nuclear fusion—the same process that powers stars like our sun.

Scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) announced that in the last year “for the first time the energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel.” This is a significant step toward an energy source that would be plentiful and environmentally friendly.

Currently, nuclear energy is produced through fission, where the nucleus of an atom is split apart, releasing enormous amounts of energy. In nuclear fusion, the nuclei of atoms fuse together and create massive amounts of energy. While scientists can create fusion; for example, a hydrogen bomb which is also known as a fusion bomb uses the power of nuclear fission—so, a nuclear bomb—in order to achieve fusion. The holy grail in nuclear fusion research is to find a method of causing fusion that takes less energy than the fusion reaction creates, which they call “ignition.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, attempting to replicate the condition inside of a star has been no easy task for scientists.

If they can find a way to utilize the power of nuclear fusion, however, the implications for human progress are greater than the power of a thousand nuclear bombs. First of all, nuclear fusion would be effective; Just one gram deuterium and tritium—the fuel used in fusion— produce nearly 10 million times the amount of energy a gram of fossil fuels produces and there’s enough deuterium (found in water) on earth for tens of thousands to millions of years. By all accounts, fusion is a safer form of energy production, as there is virtually no chance of a meltdown and radiation is non-issue. As Dr Alejaldre, a researcher working at Iter—a French project attempting to produce controlled fusion, described it “a Fukushima-like accident is impossible at Iter because the fusion reaction is fundamentally safe. Any disturbance from ideal conditions and the reaction will stop. A runaway nuclear reaction and a core meltdown are simply not possible.”

Additionally, the radiation produced by fusion is many orders of magnitude less than with nuclear fission and unlike with fission, fusion requires no shipments of radioactive material into or out of the plant—it is created and burned within the power plant. Furthermore, while the waste produced by nuclear fission remains dangerously radioactive for millions of years, fusion reactions produce no radioactive waste and the radioactive elements used in fusion have a much shorter half-life—only 12.3 years.

The researchers at the Lawrence Livermore lab aimed the world’s most powerful laser at a pea-sized target containing nuclear fuel and created a fusion reaction, but only for a fraction of a second:

The NIF uses a system of 192 laser beams to heat deuterium and tritium atoms held inside a capsule the size of a ball-bearing, which is placed inside a cryogenically cooled, pencil-eraser-sized cylinder called a “hohlraum” (German for “hollow room”). The energy from the laser’s pulse subjects the deuterium-tritium fuel to pressures and temperatures approaching the conditions at the center of the sun.

In essence, they created a mini star in their lab. While they weren’t able to produce more power than the experiment consumed—they didn’t achieve ignition—they are getting closer with each experiment. Whether it’s the United State’s project, the French experiments, or another country, creating a viable controlled fusion reaction would be a huge leap forward for all of human kind.

The source.

See also Turn out the Stars, and Fukushhima - Sobering Up in Japan.

The Politics of Bigotry - Little Oil vs Big Green

The most unnerving experience for a critically inquiring mind today is the overpowering regime of "truth" by repetition, a regime based on the habit of turning untruth into truth simply by uttering a proposal at a frequency exceeding by several orders of magnitude the number of occasions to refute it. It's a matter of quantity trumping quality. Combine this with an uncontrolled explosion of supposed rights, and what you get is large-scale corruption in the service of greed. Avaritia for all, ranging from privileged access to sought after jobs for women to billions in indulgence payments to unecological ecologists.

It simply pays to be bigoted.

See also Equality - The Robber's Excuse and Green Metamorphosis.

The reason this case is so important is because it very nearly didn't happen. Though environmental activists like Michael Mann, James Hansen and Al Gore often like to claim that their enemies are in the pay of Big Oil, the truth is the exact opposite.

Few corporate entities pump quite so much money into environmental causes as the Big Oil companies - Shell sponsored the Guardian's environment pages; BP invested heavily in renewables as part of its Beyond Petroleum rebranding under the card-carrying greenie CEO Lord Browne - because for years they have been running scared of the green movement, because they're big enough to wear the additional costs of green regulation and because it suits them to "greenwash" their image.

What none of them seems to have learned is that when you pay Danegeld to your natural enemy it only makes him greedy for more of the same.

This is why we should all be applauding the decision by Chevron's CEO John S Watson ... to fight this case.

Make sure to read the article.