Why organic farming might not be quite such a good idea

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You'll have noted that we're all supposed to chow down on only organic food now I suppose? It's better for the environment, better for us and better for the food itself we are told. That there are a number of contradictions in the story seems not to bother people all that much. If we're not to use "artificial" fertlisers that means requiring rather more animals around for their dung, something which seems to militate against the idea that we should be eating less meat and anyway, what about methane emissions and the atmosphere?

That organic farming requires much more land is also true: there is no way that the UK could feed its current population by such methods and "self-sufficiency" is something the same sort of people promote as well.

However, there's a much greater problem with the whole idea. A problem elegantly laid out here:

Influential food writers, advocates, and celebrity restaurant owners are repeating the mantra that "sustainable food" in the future must be organic, local, and slow. But guess what: Rural Africa already has such a system, and it doesn't work. Few smallholder farmers in Africa use any synthetic chemicals, so their food is de facto organic. High transportation costs force them to purchase and sell almost all of their food locally. And food preparation is painfully slow. The result is nothing to celebrate: average income levels of only $1 a day and a one-in-three chance of being malnourished.

The system doesn't actually work, doesn't actually do what a system of feeding people is supposed to do: feed people.

I've said it before and will no doubt have to say it again in the future. The problem with a peasant system of agriculture is that people have to live the lives of peasants: short, exhausting and hungry. As someone whose ancestors only escaped that fate in the last couple of centuries (I'm realistic about my dear yet departed forbears. Aristocrats they were not, illiterate potato farmers they were.) I simply do not regard forcing my descendants into returning to it as an advance in human civilisation. I don't in fact consider it an advance in anything at all to be frank.

Parochialism of London Underground

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My wife, who is presently training to become a nurse with the NHS, was recently scheduled for her first weekend shift. She was supposed to start work before 7 am in North East London. Turning up shortly after 6 am at Baker street station she was in for a surprise.

The first train on the Bakerloo line was leaving at 7:24 am on a Sunday in the sleepy Roman village Londonium. The officer of Transport for London could not see my wife's point of view, telling her: "after all, tube transport staff have families". But who is supposed to help these families when they are in trouble out-of-hours? If you can’t afford a car, how can you supposed to get around in London?

Now consider the often belittled and much smaller continental rival capitals. They also resort to night buses for a short period after midnight. But in Berlin you certainly can catch a tube in Spandau at 3:15 am and any time later on a Sunday morning and travel all the way to Pankow at the eastern end of town.

In Paris you have no problem catching a train at Gare du Nord at 3:22 am and any time later on a Sunday and travel wherever you like. In London you are depending on the night buses until 5 or 6 AM during the week and later at weekends.

Germany and France have a reputation of being even more unionized than Britain but they manage to get their transport running at times necessary for maintaining essential services in a world capital. Given the money TfL takes in fares and the government subsidies, I am at a loss why we can’t do the same.

Let them decide

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The estimated cost to the airline industry of Europe’s recent airspace closure is estimated at $1.7billion. The airlines blame governments and say they should compensate the industry. They insist the authorities were over cautious during the ash deposit, with BA Chief executive Willie Walsh arguing they could have continued to fly “safely” and that there was no need for the grounding that took place.

My personal belief is that if airlines want to continue flying during ash clouds or other phenomena that may occur, then let them. Like any other business, airlines will not want to harm its customers. Indeed, for the sake of their reputation they will desperately want to avoid any harm coming to their customers or crews, so it is entirely reasonable to expect that if the danger is significant, the airlines themselves will choose to ground their planes.

These calls need not be left to the government’s magic wand: airlines and, crucially, well-informed customers can take responsibility for themselves. Admittedly this is the first time such an incident has arisen, and – in their defence – governments were only thinking of our safety. But regardless, this may well be looked back upon as another unnecessary and uneconomic panic, driven by the over-zealous, bureaucratic application of the precautionary principle.

Volcanic lessons

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The recent shutdown of European airspace by the Icelandic volcano proved conclusively the existence of Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Instantly, hundreds of thousands of stranded travellers made alternative arrangements, independent of any government rules, regulations, instructions, guidelines, targets or programs. Millions of decisions were taken by individuals and companies and millions of bargains struck with each such bargain based on the participants’ self-interest.

Trains, boats, cars, bicycles, hotel rooms, meals, drinks, telephones, the Internet all swirled around in a giant pot to deliver the best possible result in the circumstances. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t perfect but it delivered a result far, far better than anything any government anywhere came even close to matching.

Now come the recriminations as consumers and companies seek compensation in one form or another. Fair enough but let’s make sure such compensation is drawn only from the travellers and the travel industry, not from taxpayers in general. Unlike the banks, there’s no company that’s too big to fail so let’s not create any new expectations.

The volcano revealed risks to travel that hadn’t been previously considered and it’s only appropriate that such additional risks are born by those who do travel. This may mean higher travel insurance premiums or higher ticket prices. So be it – if you want to travel, things go wrong and you want compensation, then insure yourself or your company.

And before anyone moans that the problems are due to overly cautious and generous safety and consumer protection regimes, well, indeed, they’re part of the underlying risk so start pricing for them. Right, Mr O’Leary?

Finally, the British government’s response was somewhat alarming. Is the best this island nation which once ruled the waves can deliver on short notice just two ships?

Modelling climate change

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An investigation into the reported ‘fudging’ of figures at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia has found no evidence of malpractice. So does this mean we should have complete faith in the research and models produced by this and similar bodies? I’m not so sure. The task of modelling and predicting climate change is a very difficult one. Earth’s climate, like many natural phenomena, is complex and requires some simplifications and assumptions in the modelling process. The language of the IPCC reports, however, doesn’t seem to take into account the likelihood of errors in climate change projections; this is misleading on their part.

It could be said that in this situation, given the apparent severity of the possible outcomes, it is best to ‘err on the side of disaster’, as it seems the IPCC does. This is an argument for a type policy response though; scientific research should never be skewed in such a way.

I would say that my biggest worry about the climate change models is related to measurement errors. Owing to the nature of the subject under observation, measurement errors are likely. It is not often pointed out that projecting such observations into the future then compounds this measurement error even further; in the jargon, this is called ‘sensitive dependence on initial conditions’, the initial conditions being measurements such as temperature. Given the sensitivity of the models to even tiny differences in the initial measurements, the projections can be vastly different because of a tiny measurement error to start with. Just like the proverbial butterfly in India that can help cause a hurricane in Oklahoma, measurement errors can impart massive distortions in the projections of variables such as future temperature and sea level.

I’m not a climate change sceptic, but a climate model sceptic. We just don’t understand the complex systems at work as well as the IPCC seem to think we do.

The Green Party manifesto

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With all the fuss about the non-debate, one could be forgiven for forgetting there were any parties in this election other than the main three. However, I was jolted back to reality by this article in the Times, about the concerted effort the Greens are making for this upcoming election, particularly in Brighton.

They insist they are not the part of what Charlotte Vere, the Tory candidate, describes as hard-left “eco-fascists”. Instead they say they have some serious views on serious issues, claiming that people no longer have to choose between green issues and economic growth.

I had a quick look at their website to see what these views were. They amount to little more than what the new economics foundation has been saying for much to long. They will clamp down on bonuses at banks, arguing, correctly that the current government ‘has acted completely irresponsibly’. Of course, rather than proposing sensible governmental reforms to ensure no government can act so irresponsibly in the future, they instead propose a ‘High Pay Commission’ for bankers. Naturally, the Greens know better than anyone else in history how to set price controls without destroying wealth creation. And it goes without saying that they presume to dictate how much other peoples’ labour is worth. I doubt they want to know what most people's opinion of their labour is.

They propose a large increase in the minimum wage at a time of high unemployment. If a small rise in National Insurance is attacked and debated incessantly as ‘a tax on jobs’, what will be the effect of price floors in the labour markets? It certainly won’t be to ‘eradicate poverty in Britain for good’!

As several reports from the ASI have shown over the years, there really isn’t any need to sacrifice economic growth or productivity for the sake of environmental concerns, when those concerns are addressed, not through coercive state force, but through voluntary interaction and innovation in the market. Clearly, the Greens in that respect are correct. However, there are no policies on their site that would actually do this. Instead they  argue for a type of environmentalism that puts climate change at the centre of everything, and that if ever brought into reality, would wreck the economy in the process.

Why capitalism is so glorious (and why it will save the planet)

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Actually, it's not quite capitalism that is glorious, it's that strange combination of calitalism and free (ish) markets that provides the glory. John Hempton, an Australian fund manager specialising in short selling of stocks, is trying to explain why he's short selling a company called First Solar. They're a great company, making a fortune, and they're doing so by making ever cheaper solar PV cells. Which is exactly what we want to be happening of course. However, there's one problem with their business model:

To make money in technology you need to do two things. Firstly you need to change the world (which First Solar clearly did) and secondly you need to keep the competition out. Alas very few businesses manage the second trick.

That problem being that other companies are deploying other technologies which are making solar cells even cheaper. Which is of course great for all of us consumers as the price is steadily getting closer and closer to that of the fossil fuel infrastructure.

Of course, when solar PV does reach that cost, or falls below it, then much of our concern about climate change (yes, I know, I'm out of step here in believing in its existence) simply goes away. We don't have to give up anything to reduce carbon emissions: we'll naturally be reducing such emissions as we all go for the cheapest technology, solar. I think this is great and of course my enjoyment is vastly increased by noting the annoyance it will cause to various Green types. I'm sure there are some of them who would rather see the seas rise and the oceans boil rather than accept that capitalism and markets were the solution rather than the enemy.

But the solution they will turn out to be.

Is green politics a vote-loser?

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So, after an excruciatingly long delay, we are finally to be allowed to have our say about who we wish to govern us. Commonsense would suggest that we are overdue for a change of government. But given the increasing disenchantment with politics generally, an electoral system currently weighted against the Tories and the relatively small differences in real policy proposals between the parties, anything is possible. Attitudes (not even hard policies) on a few key issues may well prove decisive.

The Conservatives seem to have hit on one topic which resonates with people: the latest National Insurance increase. Here's another suggestion: if they were to break ranks on the apparent shared belief among political elites that present policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions are both necessary and effective, they are likely to tap into a deep vein of scepticism about the greening of politics among the mass of voters.

Now, given the carefully crafted image as a party deeply committed to environmental issues (which includes a puzzingly distate for both nuclear power and airport expansion) any volte face at this stage would be both difficult and surprising. However, the enthusiasms of the Cameroons are not shared by all Tory MPs (although, to be fair, the next batch of candidates might find them more to their liking). The man and woman in the street, meanwhile, are unconvinced that the planet is facing a crisis, while seeing green taxation as just a politically-correct way to separate them from a higher proportion of their earnings. Any party which shows it is willing to question the orthodoxy and think again might get a useful electoral boost.

Martin Livermore is the director of The Scientific Alliance.

Lovelock's latest predications

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Yesterday morning I was woken up by the rambling nonsense of Lord Gaia himself, Professor James Lovelock. It is odd that the BBC humors the shifting and illogical statements of this discredited soothsayer. Contradicting himself at every turn, Professor Lovelock argued that the earth’s future is both utterly uncertain and also that we have already pulled the trigger on climate change.

The day before, Professor Lovelock was busy defending totalitarian dictatorship in the Guardian, stating, “I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.

Lovelock, it should be remembered is also a Trustee of the neo-Malthusian Optimum Population Trust (OPT), which seeks to convince people to stop at two children: “Unless we all do something, worldwide, there are going to be another 2.4 billion people on the planet by 2050."

After all:

Having a smaller family - just one or two children instead of three or more - helps to reverse population growth. And by reversing population growth, we'd be taking another green step towards environmental survival for all.

Thus:

[T]reating population growth as a “given” – something over which we have no control – is a failure of courage and leadership in the face of a planetary emergency.

Which contradicts Professor James Lovelock’s odd statement that we should not worry about the fate of the planet and instead enjoy life while we can. Little does he realise that it is increasingly difficult to enjoy life, with eco-fascist governments interfering in our previously private choices, and the likes of Professor Lovelock calling for a totalitarian dictatorship to solve unsolvable fabrications.

Lovelock and the OPT will not be at peace until we are all dead. After all: “A non-existent person has a zero carbon footprint.”

Human Achievement Hour - tomorrow evening

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A message from the Conservative Leadership Foundation in Australia:

"Originally conceived by the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 2009, Human Achievement Hour coincides with the earth hour campaign but salutes those who keep the lights on and produce the energy that makes human achievement possible.

Millions of people around the world will be showing their support for human achievement by simply going about their daily lives. While earth hour activists will be left in the dark, Human Achievement Hour participants will be going to the cinema, enjoying a hot meal, driving their car or watching television.

There is really no limit to how you can support Human Achievement Hour, just like there is no limit to what mankind can achieve.

Human Achievement Hour 2010 will be between 8.30pm and 9.30pm on Saturday 27 March."