The problem with fear

It often comes up in arguments about global warming, Y2k bugs and nuclear armageddon. People feel vindicated in sending and propagating alarmist arguments, whether or not the aftermath ends up completely benign or not. For the Y2k bug for instance, people who wildly exaggerated the dangers felt that it turned out well at least in part because fear focused peoples minds to fixing the problems. I will argue right here and now that widespread fear is neither sufficient nor necessary to "fix" global warming (I'm using the word fix loosely, to indicate the avoidance of civilisation threatening disaster). The example I am going to use is Easter Island and the emptying of the Aral sea. These are the kind of situations we are trying to avoid with the Earth in a sense. There was very likely widespread fear in both of these cases. The math/science was not very hard to work out and well within the grasp of the citizens involved. The problem on Easter Island was in one sense statutory - given the location of the island, human nature, and the technologies and cultures they had at the time, the island was doomed from when the first settlement took place. The problem is easily described in game theory as the "tragedy of the commons", and the various "fixes" are completely "structural" in nature. They generally involve some kind of "ownership" of the common resource (ownership leads to good stewardship by correctly valuing it), and a central arbitration of competing interests on the resource. In other words if applied to global warming, the Kyoto protocol, carbon trading, and the continuing measurement and tracking of all the variables is vital and probably sufficient if it doesn't completely break down in acrimony. The continuing risk is both cheaters, and a lack of central authority which may enforce aspects in the future. Fear, as it stands may not even be helpful, as it breeds mistrust of any future central arbitrer.

School Uniforms

I've already discussed this before here but if you are looking to buy school uniforms but are worried about exploitation, you should think about all the school products we get that are imported from overseas, and how we can over-think this and realise that using our purchase choices is too indirect a technique to lessen crimes of exploitation. Exploitation in Australia tends to only be possible within the context of organised crime. In other words, to force someone to work for well under the going rate (with the job market the way it is) they would have to be locked up. It is ironic that the local prisoners labour on sewing machines.
I suggest when looking for school uniforms to search for the best quality. Quality demonstrates attention to detail and pride in one's work. This only happens where the sewer is comfortable, happy and satisfied with the conditions of employment. Unhappy workers can easily sabotage the interests of the employer without risk of getting found.

Tight job market advantages

The flip side of a tight job market is that there is less angst about job security. Employees are just as happy to be classed casual, will leave at the slightest whim without fear of unemployment, and have way less fear of asking the boss for a favour, time off or whatever. Change of scenery, rather than destitution is the only challenge.

That sucking sound

It's Townsville inhaling labour from all over Australia and around the world.

New Year Resolutions

I had been stumped for new years resolutions for years - so I asked my therapist (no really!). She made me realise that goals are good, and there was just a few simple guidelines about them. ie. they must be achievable, it had to be something I was interested in achieving, there should be just a hint of satisfaction or challenge about them, and that they can be given enough priority in the context of day to day activities. It came to me clear as day once I realised all this. I am resolving to join Townsville Brass. Whether I end up the conductor, become a soloist or just have a minor part in their second or third tier bands doesn't really matter. I've been away from it for so long (while people I knew when I was there over 15 years ago are still there), that it will have the "prodigal son returns" feel to it. I am looking forward to the first practice on the 24th of January.

half Milosevich, half Rachel Hunter hmmm....

http://www.myheritage.com

Freakonomics

I am not sure if it means I am intolerant of "other" world views, but reading a book that matches my own has overcome my general avoidance of books in general. I could describe its style as rambling, which matches my own style of argument. However, I guess that the concept of disproving some conventional wisdoms is absolutely necessary, but I would like it to go further and use the discoveries as assumptions to come to even more startling conclusions. With the abortion link, "modern" economies that attempt "prohibition" as pre Rowe vs Wade US or Romania become increasingly "unstable" due to the intergenerational positive feedbacks. I think one can come to this conclusion without necessarily coming to moral conclusions. Even as this book manages to disprove many conventional wisdoms, there are a thousand other conventional wisdoms that don't lend themselves to data mining at all. For instance, school results don't seem to be affected by changing schools, but other less measurable things are very likely to be affected. For instance, our choice of school change for our children had nothing to do with our desire for better school results, but a more subtle desire for better "life" results. It does make a mockery of peoples stated reasons for changing schools however. Every time I mention how good the reputation of the new school is, they tell or ask how many OP 1's they get. I hope that challenging conventional wisdoms becomes a worldwide habit. Other ones to work on - "War is bad", "Doctor visits make you live longer", "chicken bones should not be fed to dogs", "Global warming is the most serious global environmental problem". In that sense, does Levitt have a more important message than Lomborg? Probably. Levitt challenges conventional wisdoms overall and asks us to look at motives behind experts in general. Lomborg principally concentrates on environmental activists/experts and questions their record on excessive fearmongering and looks at a more pure economic approach, without also addressing the non-monetary aspects of environmental motives and where they may lead us both in a negative direction or a positive one.

Reading Freakonomics cover to cover

It is so easy to read books in which the world view matches one's own. Nearly finished it in one day.

If water was bananas

Due to the suddenness of the onset of drought, retail prices of water are expected to be up to 10 times greater than normal. Therefore the price for one thousand litres of drinking quality water will go up from an average of $1.20 to an estimated $12.00 per thousand litres. Just think about that for an average family of four who drink a litre of water each (+ dogs) that is nearly .8 of a cent a day just for drinking water! Add in the hygene necessities like washing and cleaning clothes that goes up to 5 cents a day! It is no wonder that people are fretting about the crisis. In a thirld world country droughts like this bring ruin and famine. Thankfully for us it just means spending a little less on our lifestyle this Christmas. Luxuries like watering the lawn for an hour will go up from $2 to about $20. Looks like another miserable summer with brown lawns again, except for the lucky rich. Thankfully, the higher water prices will make it worth while to truck in supplies from areas with plenty of water, or to pay rent on recent new pipelines.

If bananas were water

Shortages of bananas would lead to harsher and harsher restrictions. Level 1 restrictions would mean we are only allowed to eat bananas on our allocated days based on odds and evens. Voluntary reductions would be encouraged and a "banana wise" campaign launched. By level three restrictions we would only be allowed to consume them at certain times on our allocated days. By this time, fines would be imposed on people eating them outside these times. These restrictions are important because although most bananas are eaten when people can do without, sometimes the nutrients obtained can be a matter of life and death.

The Universe insists I Blog

But in the meantime look for my comments at RealClimate:)

RealClimate:)

False economies:(. Having posted several times in the realclimate forum, I sense a culture, one feature of which is economic naivety. When anyone new posts, many forum contributors feel that you are either for them or against them. For a serious answer to a challenge, it seems that you have to structure it such that you take their "climate world view" as gospel for a starting point.
So far, my challenge to the scientists there to the scientific validity of attributing deaths due to weather events (demonstrably a chaotic system) to changes in climate remains unanswered. Causality is on tenuous ground here, unlike geologic temperature records, extreme weather event statistics are available for an infinitesmally small time period. It is impossible to know whether extreme weather events (drought,floods,hurricanes) are more or less prevalent in previous times of higher CO2 and temperatures. If ocean temperatures were deterministically generating them, they should be more easily forecast year by year using ocean thermometers than they are. It is entirely plausible that high enough temperatures may suppress more extreme events than are caused.

Could be as much as (enter own exaggeration)

This is one of the themes from Bjorn Lomborg's infamous book. It is not lying - It isn't even necessarily an exaggeration, but it encourages people to only talk about alarming figures that are at the far edge of expectations. It doesn't help that the media only reports the alarming "Coulds" and ignore the opposite (eg. any economist which states - there could actually be no net cost to the world due to global warming.) Basically, the outside chance of avertable complete global catastrophe should at least be considered against the possibility that global warming could prevent something that would otherwise cause complete global catastrophe. Basically, putting my scientist hat on, 1)we should concentrate the most on the middle of expectations, 2) note that global conflict, trade and other dynamics will greatly influence trend lines and 3) Make sure the myriad other environmental risks are given sufficient priority and scrutiny.

Banana Republic

Dr. Clam said...
Rereading your post reminds me- have you read Jared Diamond's "Collapse: How Societies Chose to Succeed or Fail" yet? Apparently both the Easter Islanders and the Norse colonists on Greenland began their precipitous slides toward disaster when they allowed banana imports from overseas. Amazing but true!

3:12 PM

Hence the term "Banana Republic" resonates true :). I kind of want to read the book, but I fear it is absolutely great on accurate history and makes grand points about the environment, but fails to abstract a technical theory from it. I feel that to apply what we learn from distinct (separate) cases from history, we have to abstract mathematical models (or at least game theory models) that explain what is happening. It is of absolutely no consequence if the author allows the reader to come to whatever conclusion they like such as - "That means we've got to stop killing whales, right?" or some general environmental platitude like: Lets dramatically subsidise renewable energy.

Without even reading the various examples in the book, I still think they correlate closely to the "tragedy of the commons". Game theory can be used to simulate those examples - then similarities can be compared to the modern world to see if certain fish stocks are going to become extinct, whether pollution is destined to keep increasing, whether drought in Africa is going to cause mass famine etc. EnviroGeometeorologists can predict future temperature rises all they like, but have they even thought of applying game theory to see how the reactions and/or competitive pressure and fears of disaster change the likely future. In a few short years, the world seems to have gone from a free for all for using resources as economy dictates, to a fractured world where fear in some has completely changed the resource economies, while the relatively resource poor have continued to demand them.

The unemployment rate is too goddam low!

As a business manager, I got used to the times when I would put an ad in the paper and you would interview a few people for a job. You would get one or two that you wondered why they didn't already have a job. Nowadays, just to get *one* applicant, I had to advertise higher than award rates; and the applicants are interviewing me! They have a list of current job offers and dictate their terms if I am interested to have the pleasure of their service. Businesses suffer in this way when the economy is going so well. It is of little comfort that you can more easily downsize when it is so hard to find and keep staff at all.

Schicksalstag 9/11

17th anniversary of Germany's "day of fate". So - How's the new world order going? Some of the wounds of WWII were healed, but the emergent uni-polar world has lost direction. The affluent peaceful lifestyle of the West is much more able to be held hostage by militarily insignificant actions. Threats from known enemies have given way to weasel attacks.

Where has that month gone

I've been so meaning to write things so often in the last few weeks, but I am having trouble keeping sane enough (if that makes any sense). Once, I did a whole post, proofread it and thought *What am I thinking; I can't write that!*. If you are interested, it was somewhat about the benefits of importing bananas to the local banana farmers, the benefits of eliminating tariffs on clothing for local manufacturers, and the necessity to marginal employees of banning unfair dismissal lawsuits.

Basically, in North Queensland, it is taboo to say that banana imports can lead to anything other than unmitigated disaster.

It is taboo also within the clothing industry, to say that there should be no protection from imports.

It is also taboo to think that unfair dismissal lawsuits hurt most the people it is designed to protect.

It is highly foolish of me to think I can make any headway into relaxing these taboos.

Environmental policy - Carbon trading good, reducing food miles bad

If you have doubts about the merits of carbon trading I suggest you read the following link selling hot air. Not only does it seem that greenhouse emissions trading is working to reduce emissions, but that the side benefit is increased energy prices in areas like Europe (which is further enabling further CO2 reductions), and a large transfer of associated money from the first world to the third world (albeit mainly China) on UN approved project of greenhouse emmission reduction. This brings me to the issue of reducing food miles. This always smacked to me of import restrictions by stealth, just like disease quarantine barriers to banana imports. I think that there should be as little restriction as possible on food imports, because these are critical to pull the third world out of poverty. Third world poverty is what will make them so much more susceptible to future natural disasters. Foreign aid is so paternalistic compared to opening of trade and migrant labour barriers.

Signing Kyoto seems also to be fairly meaningless, as it is being used as a reference line for Australia and the US which didn't sign it, and is being ignored if not flagrantly overrun by countries like Canada, which did.

Climate Change Again

Bringing this subject up again has been prompted by this Survey of the environment which seems to contradict its own previous conclusions of just a couple of years ago (especially re Lomborg conclusions). The survey has concluded that the precautionary principle should apply and has implied a lifting of carbon reduction priority in comparison with the Copenhagen Consensus. Part of this reasoning is that some forward predictors seem to be becoming more accurate. Also, some things that will probably reduce CO2 overall are potentially costless (with that I mean global Carbon trading *NOT* voluntary measures). I am a little disturbed that "the Economist" seems to have taken up the paradigm of the environmental scientists and seem to have forgotten that there is more to making the world a better place than stopping global warming.

Anyway, I just wanted to clear up that the reason I, as an individual disagree with voluntary reductions for the benefit of the environment. It is thus: The "net" result of an individual taking the trouble to reduce say fossil fuel usage is not the associated reduction in usage due to market factors. In practice, the non-use of a resource, means that there is more for "someone else" to use. Me using less water during a drought means that there is less pressure for everyone else to use less water. Net result: I needn't have bothered putting myself out. The costs of voluntary reductions are real, substantial, but invisible. 99 times out of a hundred the net result seems positive, but the reduced demand gives an equal and opposite reaction that reduces the price of the resource such that the net usage is the same as it would have been without the measures. If you can understand the crux of the argument - this is why I rail against the promotion of selflessness and voluntary reduction measures. It is a huge exercise in self-congratulation and kidding oneself.

On Carbon trading however, even though I don't see much point in the environmental priority of it but there is one HUGE plus with global carbon trading. People will see that "Globalisation" is a force for good. Trade of EVERYTHING should be global, including carbon emmissions.

Rail against brand snobbery

There has been several experiences within the sales team at Cueldee where local schools or businesses have pretty much disrespected our local, family oriented business, while heaping praise on big-name competing brand(s) such as Kombat, Canterbury, Peerless etc. Now, this is perfectly understandable coming from someone from a metropolitan area far away, but it kind of bites when it comes from a teacher at a school I've been a student at, or where my children attend. I have also seen this kind of brand snobbery coming from other local business owners.