Scotland's irrational GM crop ban

The Scottish government has decided to ban genetically modified crops to ensure Scotland maintains its ‘clean, green status’. This phrase, symbolic of what we are supposed to want to preserve, has not been defined, and we have no way of discerning exactly how it relates to the consequences of GM crops. Richard Lochhead, Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and Scottish National Party Member, announced the policy as Scotland's stance, ahead of the government's request to be exempted from EU-authorised GM crops. None of the reasons given for the prohibition follow from the evidence we have about GM crops nor from countries’ experiences with them. One anti-GM-crop writer, Mike Small of Bella Caledonia, remarkably complained we are falling foul of an ‘expertocracy’ because of our ‘unswerving devotion to scientists’. He has also given a number of reasons why we should support the prohibition of GM crops in Scotland. Among those were that GM crops are a long-term economic disaster for farmers; do not increase yield potential; increase pesticide use; and have not been shown to be safe to eat. These claims are simply wrong.

If we take a look at a meta-analysis conducted last year of the impacts of genetically modified organisms we see that the agronomic and economic benefits of GM crops are large and significant. The positive feedback we hear from people in developing countries is reflected in the studies as we find that yield and profit gains are higher in developing countries than in developed countries. It concludes that, on average, GM technology has increased crop yields by 21%, reduced pesticide quantity by 37% and pesticide cost by 39%, and meant average profit gains of 69% for GM-adopting farmers.

The World Health Organisation has verified that all GM foods available in the international market have passed safety assessments and are not likely to present risks for human health. People have been consuming them for decades in the United States and in 2014 GM crops made up 94% of soybean acreage, 93% of all corn planted, and 96% of all cotton. For as long as populations have consumed them no resulting effects on human health have been shown in the countries where they have been approved.

While farmers in the rest of the UK are looking to take advantage of GM technology, farmers in Scotland are concerned by the Scottish Parliament's backwards policy; spokespeople for the agricultural industry say it will impede their efficiency and competitiveness. They are right: Scottish farmers will not be capable of competing in the same market as their neighbours if shut off from technological advances just as other countries are adopting GM crops.

To give any credence to Mike Small and similar superstitious claims would be to completely go against accepted evidence and rationality. So if Scottish politicians follow through with the GMO prohibition without any credible counteracting evidence that it would be harmful for Scotland, it will not only hold the country back, but the boundaries of scientific research will be redefined and Scotland might lose its leading research experts to more supportive political environments.

The fiddly and tricky bit of the new electricity system

That the amount of electricity we can generate from wind turbines is inherently variable is well known. What isn't as well known is how they intend to deal with it:

Households' lights could be dimmed and kettles take longer to boil when the wind isn't blowing, under Government-backed plans to routinely dip the voltage of Britain's electricity supplies. As Britain builds more wind farms, the measures to dip voltage could be used when there is an unexpected lull in wind power output. New technology to instantly dip the voltage of power to entire regions “at the press of a button” has already been quietly trialled on half a million households across north-west England. The system could be rolled out across the UK in coming years, ministers have indicated - after trials showed consumers did not notice any difference.

That is just fine for domestic supplies. No one does notice although we do have a technical word for this: "brownout". It's something that we consider to be part of a Third World (for which read "bad") electricity supply system.

For while there's pretty much no problem with domestic supplies this causes absolute chaos in industry. Something that is already being seen in Germany. There, it's not so much that the grid is intentionally lowering (or, as is proposed, raising at times) the voltage, it's that the country's reliance upon wind just makes it happen. And modern production machinery simply cannot deal with variations in voltage.

There have been cases not just of production runs faltering, ruining what was being produced, but of voltage variations damaging the actual machinery itself. This has in turn led to German industry scrambling to deal with the problem: effectively, the solution is to put something like a giant UPS on the side of every piece of production machinery.

This, of course, has costs, substantial costs, and needs to be added to the cost of this new electricity generation system. And it isn't added: so, therefore, the costs of wind power are not fully accounted for. Just as with the original carbon emissions, we've got an uncosted externality in the system making the numbers even worse than the current massive price.

Nationalising the energy companies works so well, doesn't it?

Jeremy Corbyn tells us all it would be lovely if the gas and energy companies were nationalised:

The cost to taxpayers of renationalising the UK's gas and electricity sector, as desired by aspiring Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, would total as much as £185bn, according to city experts. Peter Atherton, analyst at Jefferies investment bank, said that the cost to take control of just the UK assets of companies, which include British Gas owner Centrica and network operator National Grid, would drain about £124bn from the nation's coffers. Mr Corbyn has stated that he would nationalise British Gas, SSE, Eon, RWE, Npower, Scottish Power and EDF if he became Prime Minister in 2020. He said he would also put National Grid back into public hands.

This is because public policy should decide how these companies work, not the cut and thrust of the purely commercial world.

Hmm:

It was not too long ago that Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled energy conglomerate, was one of the Kremlin’s most powerful weapons. But those days now seem like a distant memory. Today, Gazprom is a financial shadow of its former self.

The speed of Gazprom’s decline is breathtaking. At its peak in May 2008, the company’s market capitalisation reached $367bn (£237bn), making it one of world’s most valuable companies, according to a survey compiled by the Financial Times. Only fellow Exxonmobile and PetroChina were worth more. Gazprom’s deputy chair Alexander Medvedev repeatedly predicted that within a decade the Russian energy giant could be worth $1 trillion.

That prediction now seems foolhardy. Since 2008, Gazprom’s value has plummeted. In early August it had a market capitalisation of $51bn – losing more than $300bn. No company among the world’s top 5,000 has suffered a bigger collapse, Bloomberg Business News reported in April 2014, and by the end of the year net income had fallen by an astonishing 86%.

Why's that then?

Experts say Gazprom’s main problem is that it continues to serve as Putin’s favoured geopolitical weapon. Examples include the company’s purchase of major Russian media outlets that were then turned into Kremlin mouthpieces, bullying or buying the loyalty of neighbouring states and sponsoring the egregiously expensive Olympic Games in Sochi.

Most ominously for the company, the Putin administration still keeps pushing Gazprom to implement new projects that are important for the Kremlin but risky from a financial viewpoint. Two prominent examples concern Ukraine and China.

Because Gazprom is run according to public policy, not the cut and thrust of a purely commercial world.

That it would be public policy running the energy companies is exactly why Crobyn suggests their nationalisation. That it would be public policy running them is exactly why it's a bad idea for them to be nationalised.

If only the warmists bothered to read the actual research

Talking about climate change inevitably brings up huge shouting matches. But let's put that to one side for a moment and just start insisting that those who do urge action on it actually read the reports that lead to the urging of action. As The Guardian quite obviously isn't here:

The fact is that it is in the very poorest countries where women have the most children, on average. And where population growth slows, generally economic growth speeds up, and carbon emissions rise faster. This happens on a global scale and even within countries – certainly within the poorer ones where there is most scope for population control, and where, also, the potential for industrialisation is greatest. It is unclear which is cause and which is effect: it is likely that they play off each other. And in some cases, perhaps, population policies go hand in hand with economic reforms. Only in the wealthiest countries, though, which already have lower fertility rates, are these links weakened or even broken.

This phenomenon raises the counterintuitive possibility that curbing population growth could generate higher global emissions than would otherwise be the case.

No, that's not something you're allowed to do. For, as the SRES, the economic models upon which the whole game is based, have entirely the opposite assumptions baked into them. A richer world has a smaller population. And those richer, smaller, worlds have lower emissions than poorer and more populated ones. Other than the entirely extreme world of A1FI that is (and really, nobody believes that coal is going to provide 50% of energy in 2100).

Economic growth leads to falling fertility and thus a smaller future population. The combination of these two is part of the solution to climate change, not part of the problem.

It is, of course, fine to have differing views on the subject itself. But we're adamant that whatever your views are they must at least be consistent with the evidence that leads you to them.

Let's call a thing what it is shall we, a spade is a spade after all

It's not so much the pettifogging that annoys, although there is a tinge of that, it's the hijacking of an honourable description that really irks:

A typical household has 40 plastic carrier bags stashed away at home, ministers have claimed, as new figures showed the number of bags used by shoppers rose for the fifth year running. British shoppers took home more than 8.5 billion single-use carrier bags from supermarkets in 2014, 200 million more than in the previous year, figures from charity WRAP show.

Charity: the giving of money to aid mariners in peril on the seas perhaps. Or alms to house the destitute. But the most important part of the description is voluntary.

Following the review we worked closely with Defra to develop a programme of work, in line with sharpening our strategic focus, that will make a significant contribution to helping the UK achieve its environmental objectives and obligations, such as achieving the 50% household recycling rates by 2020, but at less cost. As a result grant funding from Defra for 2014/15 has been confirmed at £17.6m (2013/14: £25.7m), expected to reduce to £15.5m in 2015/16.

Financial Results for 2013/14

WRAP‟s total income for 2013/14 was £65.4m (2012/13: £63.2m) of which the majority (98.9%) was grant funding from government and EU sources. Although the underlying grant funding from Defra reduced compared to the previous year, the addition of the Resource Efficient Scotland programme and the timing of activity in EU funded grant schemes, notably the ARID capital grant scheme in Wales, resulted in a marginal increase in total income.

This is not a charity. This is a tax funded arm of the central bureaucracy. As such it most certainly isn't voluntary.

It has to be said that a caring society would indeed have a place in it for those who get their kicks counting plastic bag hoarding by household. But it's not entirely obvious that those working hard on the minimum wage should be charged tax to pay for it. Perhaps it should be paid for, voluntarily, in a charitable manner, by those who share this minority taste?

At which point we are going to revert to calling a spade a spade. WRAP is not a charity, it is a collection of tax leeches.

Opposing environment-friendly rice with higher yields

The MIT Technology Review reports that scientists have produced a genetically modified rice strain that emits far less methane than traditional varieties.  It emits one thirtieth as much in summer and half as much in winter.  It does this because a single gene from barley has been inserted to make the plant yield 43% more grain per plant, so less carbon goes into the roots and the soil to be converted by microbes into methane.

Despite its enhanced yield and lower greenhouse gas emission, it is estimated that it could be 10-20 years before it becomes available to farmers.  This is because scientists will have to use traditional breeding methods to produce a rice that is scientifically the same, including the same gene.  As Chuanxin Sun, the report's senior author, puts it: 

“Right now of course it’s a GMO issue, and we cannot deliver this variety directly to farmers. We have to use traditional breeding methods and breed the new, society-acceptable variety for farmers.”

It is thanks to completely unwarranted scare stories from environmental groups that progress in genetic modification has been held back.  Millions of children have suffered blindness or death because of opposition to 'golden rice' modified to biosynthesize beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A, to combat a shortage of dietary vitamin A in some areas.

Millions more live at precarious subsistence levels because they are denied access to GM crops with enhanced yield or greater saline or drought resistance.  Innumerable field tests have failed to show adverse effects on humans, yet many in the environmental lobby campaign for all GMOs to be rejected.  They do not hesitate to trample down experimental crops planted with the support of democratically elected governments.

Many of the NGOs will undoubtedly oppose the new rice, despite its hugely increased yield and smaller environmental footprint.  Scare stories are what they do, and they keep the subscriptions and donations rolling in.

From the Rockefeller Lancet report

Only a minor little point but symptomatic of how people really don't quite get the basics sometimes. The Lancet has teamed up with the Rockefeller foundation bods to tell us all that we'd better have global environmental socialism real soon now or Aieee! We're All Gonna Die! We think we've been told this before really.

They talk about the joys of the circular economy and seem to miss rather an important point about it:

Several essential steps need to be taken to transform the economy to support planetary health. These steps include the reduction of waste through the production of products that are more durable and require lower quantities of materials and less energy to manufacture than those that are being produced at present; the incentivisation of recycling, re-use, and repair; and the substitution of hazardous materials with safer alternatives. These changes will necessitate innovations in design and manufacture that capitalise on the potential restorative powers of natural systems combined with strategies to reduce overall demand for resources that greatly damage the environment during the course of their extraction, production, use, or disposal—leading ultimately to the circular economy (panel 1; figure 19).11 Importantly, such a transformation could also bring benefits to health and wellbeing if occupational health standards are adhered to, including through reduced amounts of air, water, and soil pollution; increased employment opportunities; and changes in diet and physical activity.

It's that "increased employment opportunities". That's a synonym for "everyone has to work harder". And that's really not a development that we're happy about having. For the aim and point of this having an economy thing is that we minimise the amount of human labour that has to be performed thus maximising the amount of human leisure that can be enjoyed. The basic problem here being of course that all too many people don't realise that jobs, employment, these are not benefits of a plan, they are costs of one.

Yes, it's only one small point taken from a large and long report. But it is symptomatic of their lack of knowledge about how economics works. That lost more people are going to have to work reprocessing our rubbish is not a good part of their plan, it is a cost of their plan.

Energy efficiency isn't quite as efficient as it's cracked up to be

It's true that this information is from the US. It's also true that this shows more than a dash of Hayek's "fatal conceit". The idea that the clever people can plan things for us and we'll all go off and do them just as we're planned to do. Human beings don't really work like that which is why planning so often fails. But to the information itself: energy efficiency programmes don't have the effects the planners thought they would:

Conventional wisdom suggests that energy efficiency (EE) policies are beneficial because they induce investments that pay for themselves and lead to emissions reductions. However, this belief is primarily based on projections from engineering models. This paper reports on the results of an experimental evaluation of the nation’s largest residential EE program conducted on a sample of more than 30,000 households. The findings suggest that the upfront investment costs are about twice the actual energy savings. Further, the model-projected savings are roughly 2.5 times the actual savings. While this might be attributed to the “rebound” effect – when demand for energy end uses increases as a result of greater efficiency – the paper fails to find evidence of significantly higher indoor temperatures at weatherized homes. Even when accounting for the broader societal benefits of energy efficiency investments, the costs still substantially outweigh the benefits; the average rate of return is approximately -9.5% annually.

What we are looking for in an investment is a positive rate of return of course. The idea that the outputs of whatever it is that we do are worth more than the original value of the resources we have to put into doing it. A negative rate of return is evidence that we shouldn't be doing this, whatever it is, because it is making us poorer.

Which is why, if action to deal with climate change there is going to be we have always insisted that that action should be a carbon tax. It's analagous to the argument over Greece and the euro. The horrendous economic pain there is because they must go through internal devaluation. That austerity: in order to screw down the price level for local labour. It's far easier, and there's a great deal less pain, if just the one price, the exchange rate, can be changed and thus realign the economy in a much simpler manner. So it is with the carbon tax and climate change. By changing that one price we make it rational to perform those tasks where the savings are greater than the costs. Including, of course, those social costs of carbon emissions.

We thus don't need to have armies of engineers making plans where the outcomes aren't going to live up to the hype. It becomes in the rational self-interest of each consumer to do those things which help and not to do those things which don't. So, consumers do those beneficial things.

We're generally of the view that government is best kept out of the operation of the economy. Yet even we agree that sometimes intervention is necessary. But when intervening, keep that intervention to the simplest action that will achieve the task: in both of these cases that means just the one single change to the price level and then let the market calculate out the implications of it.

And so is the biter bit: serves them right

One of the more bizarre points of Osborne's budget is that renewable energy generation technologies will be subject to the Climate Change Levy. Given that the levy is meant to be one of the clumsy, kludgy, ways in which the UK begins to have a carbon tax this is pretty odd really. And as Guido points out, the boosters of renewables are having conniption fits:

Caroline Lucas: “We’ve seen yet another example of reckless short-term policy making that prioritises the profits of polluters over the public interest in a safe and habitable climate”

RenewableUK: “It’s another example of this government’s unfair, illogical and obsessive attacks on renewables”

Greenpeace: “This will make it more expensive for business to buy electricity from renewable power. He is man out of step with the times”

Friends of the Earth: “This is totally bizarre, making renewable electricity pay a carbon tax is completely counterproductive — like making apple juice pay an alcohol tax”

Friends of the Earth does have it right there: non-carbon energy generation shouldn't be paying a carbon tax, that's rather the point of it all.

Except, except, the nuclear industry has been subject to the Climate Change Levy all along. And there are no "no carbon" technologies at all, there's always some emissions, from cement for windmill footings, the energy to purify silicon, the rotting of vegetation at the bottom of a reservoir behind a dam. And nuclear has rather lower emissions than some of those forms of generation.

Which is where the biter is bit of course. They all were perfectly happy that the low carbon system, nuclear, that they didn't approve of had to pay the levy. Now that the hunger of a Chancellor for revenue is coming for them they don't really have a logical point to stand on.

Oh dear, boo hoo, eh?

Just say no to the Swansea lagoon

Everybody obviously colours the argument for their pet scheme. But it's rare to see something quite as transparent as the entirely fallacious arguments being put forward for the Swansea lagoon:

Plans to build the world’s first tidal lagoon power plant in Swansea Bay have now been granted development consent. At a time when the UK is struggling to rewire its electricity market to introduce more security, less carbon and less cost, here is a blueprint for an infrastructure solution that ticks each box and that will endure.

Reliable? Quite possibly, low carbon almost certainly yes. However, less cost it simply will not be. We can tell this because they're asking for a contracts for difference price on the electricity to be generated of £168 per MWhr. Rather higher than even the most absurd of the nuclear plans and very much higher than a gas plant, or even wind turbines (and yes, higher than gas even taking carbon emissions into account).

We know this because this has all been extensively studied. Hundreds and hundreds of pages of analysis with this basic conclusion:

In the light of these findings the Government does not see a strategic case to bring forward a Severn tidal power scheme in the immediate term. The costs and risks for the taxpayer and energy consumer would be excessive compared to other low-carbon energy options. Furthermore, regulatory barriers create uncertainties that would add to the cost and risk of construction. The Government believes that other options, such as the expansion of wind energy, carbon capture and storage and nuclear power without public subsidy, represent a better deal for taxpayers and consumers at this time.

That was the report that killed off the idea of the government itself investing in it. Now Frankenstein's Monster has risen again by claiming that it won't get government subsidy. It'll just pick all our pockets through the electricity price instead. Same people having to pay the same subsidy just via a different route.

That analysis really is damning too. The larger the lagoon, barrage, built, the more money is lost. It's as if the cot com boom never happened: we lose money on every transaction and make it up in volume. It's really not too strong to say that this is the rapine of the citizenry.

It's also possible to identify where the original mistake was made: by Ed Miliband, yes it was. If there's going to be a subsidy to renewables (we prefer a carbon tax but...) then that subsidy should be the same for all technologies. And thus we'll end up building out the renewables that work best. However, the decision was made to vary that subsidy dependent upon the costs of each different technology. So it's possible for people to wander in and claim they've got this great idea: but they'll just need to sell their 'leccie for 4 times the going rate to fund it. This is madness. And it's exactly the problem that the imposition of a carbon tax avoids.

We absolutely know that this phantasmagorical plan just will not work, will not work in providing us with the energy that we desire at a price that we're willing to pay for it. We really do need to tell these chancers and scheme promoters to take a long walk off that short pier that their lagoon will obliterate.