Opening up peer reviews

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In a short interview with Patrick J. Michaels (Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies at the Cato Institute) an interesting idea came up that could go some way to improving the way science is discussed and understood in this country. His suggestion is that along with the article, the peer reviews of articles should be available to the public at large.

When studying MSc International Relations at LSE, I attended meetings with fellow students to review articles for the Millennium Journal of International Studies. This process made clear the central problem of leaving the review process behind closed doors, as much of the peer reviews would vary widely on their judgement of the original article. After much discussion, we voted on its fate. If it was to be published, all dissent was neatly swept under the carpet.

If, as Patrick J. Michaels argues, peer reviews were made available with each article, interested parties would be able to dig a little deeper and quicker behind the facts than they do at present. They could be published on the internet as it has proven to be ideally suited to questioning the veracity of scientific claims.

With peer reviews to draw upon, another source would be added with which to question shaky science (such as the many predictions around the field of global warming). The anonymity afforded by this process will also be a counterweight to the fear to speak out publicly against the establishment, whether for fear of damaged reputation, career or financial position.

Although such a move would be unlikely to stop many of  the scientific stories that grab the major media headlines, it would certainly be a welcome step towards greater openess and honesty. Of course, this step should be entirely at the discretion of each publisher, though if one moves, others will surely follow.

Optimists and pessimists

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I have long thought that mainstream environmentalism is essentially a belief system for pessimists. In their eyes, we are on a downward path from some idealised golden age, and things can only get worse. This seems to be an inbuilt human trait, as each generation seems to find reasons why things were better when they were young and why the next generation (perhaps with their own children as exceptions) are taking society to hell in a handbasket. The green movement gives a pseudo-scientific gloss to this.

Of course, it is arguable that the discontent we all feel at times is what drives the human race to innovate and change things. Nothing is ever perfect and, as we make an improvement in one area, we often create other problems or have the leisure to find something else which needs fixing. The fact that greater prosperity doesn't necessarily make us any happier is sometimes used as an argument against continued economic growth; putting environmental goals before economic ones.

Now the Social Issues Research Council has published a report which suggests that, as a nation, Brits are more optimistic than we might believe. But, being Brits, we are very self-effacing about this and don't really want to admit it. Nevertheless, in my (optimistic) view, this seems to confirm my feeling that the majority of people worry less about the big environmental issues than does a vocal and influential cadre of pessimists.

Guest author Martin Livermore is the Director of The Scientific Alliance

Recycling authoritarianism

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In a brilliant review of a number of recently published books on the politics of climate change, Steven F. Hayward considers the radical and apocalyptic concepts contained within them.

The arguments are similar to the ideas expressed by Vaclav Klaus: that many greens are disguised totalitarians. Of course, many leftist greens are recognizing that the present financial crisis could dismantle the policies that they want put into force. As such, to compete their visions are getting worse.

A large number of radical environmentalists are putting forward arguments for the eradication of the human species. This Malthusian panic scenario often spirals from the simple fact that human breathing has a carbon footprint. The argument follows that the earth would be better off if all humankind stopped breathing, and so we have such books as The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.

The greens are re-emerging as full-scale authoritarians. The good news is that these ideologues are running out of new ideas and are now recycling old ones, the problem is that these recycled ideas are the kind that many had hoped the US and Western Europe had put in their dustbins of history.

Take a slow train to nowhere

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The usual course of innovation and technology is an upwardly direction, or forward, or more simply: a natural course of progress and improvement. Unless of course you are dealing with something that has had over 165 years of government involvement in which case it has a tendency to remain the same: poor. And the latest government announcement on new trains for two of Britain’s principal railway lines proves this point.

The East Coast Main Line is currently operating trains that have been in service for nearly 20 years and can travel at 125 mph, the Great Western Main Line is operating trains that have been in service for nearly 30 years and can travel at 125mph. The government has announced that Hitachi are to supply trains for an order worth £7.5bn; trains that can travel at a top speed of 125mph. There’s progress for you, government style.

Combine this with the Conservative’s rail transport plans and you can see that in a decades time we’ll be enthusiastically discussing how Britain’s rail network is the envy of the world; in a similar vein to how the NHS was lauded over. Politicians will never learn that it is their meddling that inhibits and destroys. If the Conservatives want a comprehensive plan for allowing railways to compete, they should abolish the Department of Transport, Network Rail, the ORR and complete the sale of the rail network into private hands.

If transport companies wish to run rail services then they should run them in their entirety, track, carriage, station and especially ticket pricing. The governing establishment needs to stand aside and allow the railways to expand or contract naturally and perhaps then we can see innovation begin to flow. Until then rail customers will remain firmly shunted into a siding.

It's even worse than we thought...

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According to a recent piece on the BBC website "The severity of global warming over the next century will be much worse than previously believed, a leading climate scientist has warned." In this case, Professor Chris Field has told the American National Academy of Sciences meeting that, since greenhouse gas emissions have been rising more rapidly than expected (a statement which in itself deserves to be questioned), the predicted 1.1 to 6.4 degree Celsius average temperature rise over the next century is likely to be a serious underestimate.

And Prof Fields is not alone in his predictions of catastrophe. James Lovelock, proposer of the Gaia theory and catastrophist-in-chief, no longer talks of global warming, but global heating. He believes mankind's malign influence has gone too far to be reversible, that investment in renewable energy generation is a waste of time (I wouldn't disagree with that) and that remnants of the human race will only survive in polar regions and a few favoured islands such as the UK and New Zealand.

The only problem is that the doom-mongering is all based on the unproven hypothesis that anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide are having a dominant effect on climate. However, in the past ten years, there has been no rise in average temperatures and no evidence (other than the output of flawed computer models) to suggest that mainstream climate science is right. It is equally plausible that the quiet period of solar activity which started recently (as shown by a dearth of sunspots) will be lead to a cooling of the climate, as has always been the case in the past. Adam Smith himself noted the increased price of wheat in times of low sunspot numbers.

Time will tell, but in the meantime expect more scary headlines based on selective use of evidence by scientists convinced their theory is right.

Guest author Martin Livermore is the Director of The Scientific Alliance

Purblind idiocy

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How did we end up being ruled by those who simply do not know what they are talking about?

Lord Turner, the chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, said people would be given personal flight limits to lower pollution from the aviation industry.

"We will have to constrain demand in an absolute sense, with people not allowed to make as many journeys as they could in an unconstrained manner," he told the Commons environmental audit committee.

Leave aside for a moment that such limits will clearly not affect the Noble Lord when he flies off to some climate change junket, nor his accompanying civil servants. Let us also accept the entire "scientific consensus" on climate change as represented by the IPCC.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing at all, in any of this that says that aviation needs to be restricted in any manner. It is true that the IPCC says that carbon emissions should be restrained: but that is not to say that aviation must be.

The different sources of emissions provide us with goods and services of differing values. We want, if we are indeed to reduce emissions, to reduce those which produce the least value to us in those goods and services. It might be that the deep and heavy ploughing necessary for organic farming produces the least value, it might be urban car transport, it could indeed be aviation. But value, utility, is in the eye of the beholder, not the supplier and most certainly not the bureaucrat.

Whatever the limits we put on emissions and however we do that, through caps or through taxes, the way to do it is still to allow the individual to decide which method of emitting provides them with the greatest utility. In this manner we solve climate change at the least diminution of our wealth. Rather than, say, an unelected quangocrat forcing us to accord to his values and judgement of our own utility.

Two minor problems here

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Camilla Cavendish doesn't spot the two minor problems we have with this dash for green energy.

Going low-carbon is no longer a seminar subject for caring greens. It's a real live competition to beat the oil regimes and make profits, in which the new environmentalists will be alpha males.

The first is of course that there are no profits here. If there were profits then that would mean that, entirely unaided by taxation, cap and trade or legislation/regulation, energy sources other than fossil fuels would be cheaper or more convenient than those fossil fuels. Our very problem about the whole issue is that this is not true. There are no profits in green energy systems, there are only losses. We might disguise those losses via regulation and or legislation, cap and trade or taxes, but they are losses all the same, not profits.

The second problem is that Britain risks being "left behind" in some manner. We must therefore, as the US subsidizes massively, subsidize so here as well, for we are in competition. Which is the very opposite of the truth. At present there are only losses, as above. Now it might be that after spending some billions, perhaps even trillions, a better and cheaper energy generation system will be designed. But the correct reaction from ourselves should be that once someone has indeed designed such we go and buy it from them.

There's absolutely no reason at all that we should be gouging ourselves as taxpayers to make such subsidies when the Americans seem so happy to pay for it themselves.

Environmentalism, population and carrying capacity

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Scratch an environmentalist, and you will often find they believe that there are just too many of our species. This comes through overtly in organisations such as the Optimum Population Trust, which thinks that the population of the UK should be managed down to no more than 30 million. It also lies behind much of the current fuss over climate change: fewer people, less energy, less carbon.

Of course, many of us would probably find it more comfortable if there were fewer people around, but that's different from saying that there is some "optimum" population. The concept is underpinned and justified by measures such as the carrying capacity of the Earth. The Global Footprint Network tells us that we are currently using the resources provided by 1.3 planets. Like any measure, this figure will depend on the assumptions made, but the message is that we either cannot sustain the current world population or must consume fewer natural resources each year.

This is the latest incarnation of Malthusian thinking, and to me suggests a narrow view of life and a lack of confidence in the adaptability and flexibility of the human race. The whole philosophy of sustainability relies on us continuing to progress along the same path as we have in recent decades. It's really a first shot at global planning and, like all attempts at central planning, is deeply flawed.

The reality is that, when there are pressures for change – rising oil prices, reduced food security, etc – we find ways round them. The green revolution of the second half of the twentieth century made nonsense of Ehrlich's predictions of famine and disaster. Private sector development of new and efficient alternatives to the internal combustion engine (in parallel with continued efficiency gains for conventional engines) will lead to a new generation of personal transport. The free market isn't perfect, but it's a much better way of channelling creativity than is government planning.

Guest author Martin Livermore is the Director of The Scientific Alliance

Green cars

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Part of Lord Mandelson's bail-out (oops, we're not supposed to call it that) of the car industry is yet more subsidy to promote the production of 'green' cars.

If the government really wanted to produce green cars, it would quadruple the price of fuel. You could then be pretty sure that customers would demand cars that did four times the mileage, and that the carmakers of the world would rush to produce them.

But of course they don't dare, because they would be swept to oblivion at the polls. (They might well be anyway.) So just like the National Socialists, they tell industry what to produce, and tell it to produce cuddly products that will show how 'concerned' the politicians are for the environment. But it's a sure way to mess up our rotten economy even further.

When politicians spend on something that makes them look good, the money has to come from somewhere. And it comes from our pockets. Quite frankly, most people right now – reeling under high taxes and falling order books – can find far better things to do with their money than spend it on building greener cars. Sure, in the future, greener cars might be in high demand, either as a result of people's genuine concern about the environment, or politicians forcing people to buy greener cars and no others. But again, the lure of profit would supply that demand. Why have politicians got to spend our money trying to do it?

Unsubstantiated promises

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If history offers us any guide, and I strongly believe it does, then all the promises of the Kyoto crowd simply will not materialize. We don’t need to dismantle the one-sided quantitative science of global warming – disproportionately blown up by computer models – we just need to look at the history of previous energy transmission. That’s what Vaclav Smil did, author of Energy at the Crossroads. Natural gas was supposed to have us driving fuel cell cars by now.

Unfortunately this forecast like so many other projections from bureaucrats were terribly flawed. The transformation of the energy supply of modern industrial societies takes much longer than the green guru wants to make us believe. Al Gore should take notice:

• It took oil about 50 years since the beginning of its commercial production to capture 10 percent of the global primary energy market, and then almost exactly 30 years to go to reach 25 percent.
• Analogical spans for natural gas are almost identical: approximately 50 years and 40 years.
• Regarding electricity, hydrogeneration began in 1882, the same year as Edison's coal-fired generation, and just before World War I, water power produced about 50 percent of the world's electricity.
• Nuclear fission reached 10 percent of global electricity generation 27 years after the commissioning of the first nuclear power plant in 1956, and its share is now roughly the same as that of hydropower.
• But coal has reigned supreme since the late 1890s; in 2008, it supplied twice as much energy as it did in 1973.