How not to deal with climate change
The British Government currently mutters that all new cars must be electric in 2040. The Labour Party is making noises that this should be brought forward to 2030. This is not the way to deal with climate change:
Toyota is developing a hydrogen-powered car which could be fuelled for a year by the manure of a single cow, bosses have claimed.
Chief technology officer Shigeki Terashi said a cow's droppings can be converted to produce enough hydrogen to run its next-generation Mirai saloon for 12 months.
The concept car uses a “fuel stack” to transform liquefied hydrogen into electricity with water as the only byproduct, making the technology zero emission.
It’s a fuel cell, not a stack, even though cells come in stacks.
But the point is there are myriad technologies which could be used to meet whatever emissions target we might have. Choosing one of them, now, when the varied possibilities are not mature, is the incorrect decision.
We would point out that one of us has actually worked on fuel cells and they’re lovely things - even if they may or may not be the correct replacement for the internal combustion engine.
A bureaucratic - or political - decision to choose the one technology now is that wrong decision. The correct method is to set the performance target, whatever it is, then leave markets to tell us which meets that target best. The problem being not the choosing of the one technology, but the ruling out of all the others, some of which may well be better.
This stuff is complicated, meaning we’ve got to turn to that only complex calculating engine we’ve got, the economy as a whole and its price system.
Two decisive battles
By coincidence the date of October 23rd marked two decisive battles of World War II. On that date in 1942 Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery launched his 8th army into an attack on the German and Italian positions near the railway halt of El Alamein. Montgomery had chosen his field carefully, with quicksands to his South barring Rommel's favoured flank attack. He had overwhelming superiority in equipment, largely because Rommel's extended supply lines had to run the gauntlet of Allied attack in the Mediterranean, and then faced air attack on their way to reach Rommel's position in Egypt.
The battle lasted 10 days and resulted in a total Allied victory. It heralded the beginning of the end of the Western Desert Campaign, eliminating the Axis threat to Egypt, the Suez Canal and the Middle Eastern and Persian oil fields. The battle revived the morale of the Allies, being the first big success against the Axis. Winston Churchill said, "Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat." He ordered church bells to be rung cross the country in celebration.
On the same date two years later, October 23rd 1944, began the largest naval battle of World War II, possibly the largest in history, with over 200,000 personnel involved. It took place at Leyte Gulf off the Philippines. It could easily have gone Japan’s way, since US Admiral Halsey took the bait of pursuing the Japanese Northern carrier force, not realizing it was a decoy fleet that could only muster 100 planes with inexperienced pilots. He left the US landing force undefended as Japanese battleships and cruisers attacked, but the Japanese were unnerved by the aggression of the outgunned US defending forces, and withdrew in disorder.
It was a total Allied victory, like El Alamein, with the American losing 7 warships to the 26 lost by the Japanese, including carriers, battleships and heavy cruisers. It signalled the effective end of Japan’s navy. It remaining ships lacked oil because of the US submarine blockade, and lacked air cover.
Both battles saw the Allies up against countries gripped by poisonous ideologies whose troops revered their leaders as gods or near godlike figures. Both countries were brainwashed into a belief in their racial superiority, and both committed unspeakable atrocities. In Japan’s case, Leyte Gulf saw the first use of Kamikaze suicide attacks, evidence of a fanaticism that led America to atom bomb them into surrender.
El Alamein and Leyte Gulf were won by superior forces backed by high morale and determination. The sudden, unprovoked attacks by the Axis powers, Blitzkrieg, Barbarossa and Pearl Harbour, gained early victories, but provoked outrage and stiffened Allied resolve. Then the remorseless build-up of Allied strength eventually took its toll. US factories switched from making cars to making tanks and planes, and even prefabricated ships.
The lessons were not lost during the Cold War. NATO resisted Soviet aggression with resolve and resources, using technology to close the gap caused by brute Soviet strength. Eventually the USSR could not match the sophistication of their opponents, not browbeat them into submission, nor subvert them by employing their “useful idiots” in the Western media, and left the field in disarray, just as their predecessors had done at El Alamein and Leyte Gulf. Their ideology, as destructive as that of the Japanese and the Nazis, and just as corrosive of human rights and human values, went into history’s trash-can, just as the others had done.
Apparently building housing doesn't provide housing
A marked inability to understand how markets work here:
On either side of the leafy park, which undulates over the graves of 40,000 Victorian paupers, the bulky concrete frames of new apartment blocks are beginning to rise. They will ultimately become 17- and 22-storey slabs that will in turn be dwarfed by a 41-storey tower, all surrounding the park with a glacial wall of “ultra-sleek urban homes”. And not a single one affordable.
The complaint is that building lots of housing in Manchester does not provide places for poor people to live in Manchester. Which is, of course, ridiculous. If we’ve added housing for 35,000 more people to the area - one estimate being used - then we’ve added housing for 35,000 more people to the area.
The part that’s being missed is that here in England almost all of us - as it ever has been - live in second hand housing. It may well be true that the new builds are going to the rich and the rich only. But as they move into those new builds then they leave their former housing and so on up and down the housing ladder. Adding 35,000 new dwelling spaces at the top then frees up 35,000 dwelling spaces at the bottom as well.
Yes, of course, there’s also migration to consider. But the general point still stands. Adding housing adds housing. Even if none of the new build is “affordable” it still makes other housing more so as those laws of supply and demand still work.
Adding more housing reduces the cost of housing. How could it be otherwise?
The end is nigh (again)
The Millerites were the followers of the teachings of William Miller, who in 1833 first shared publicly his belief that the Second Advent of Jesus Christ would occur in roughly the year 1843–1844. This was later pinned down by biblical scholarship to happen on October 22nd, 1844.
That October day, 175 years ago, the day Jesus was expected to return, ended without it happening. Millerite leaders and followers were left generally bewildered and disillusioned. The next day was called "The Great Disappointment." A similar event occurred in 2012 when the world's end, allegedly predicted in the Mayan Calendar, failed to show up.
There have been many predictions of doom and disaster over the centuries, but there seem to be more in recent years because there is now big money in it. It sells books. It also provides new way to attack business and capitalism for those who yearn for the good old days of Soviet central planning.
Paul Erlich has made a fortune out of it. In 1967 he said it was already too late to avert worldwide famines in 1975. In 1970 he told us the oceans would be dead by 1980. James Hansen, a NASA scientist, is also a repeat offender. In 1988 he predicted regional droughts in the 1990s, and that the oceans would rise by 6 feet, putting parts of New York under water. In 2008 he told us that the Arctic would be ice-free by 2018, reversing an earlier trend of people predicting an imminent ice age.
In 1971 Dr S I Rasool predicted a new ice age by 2020. The Guardian in 1974 told us it was coming fast, and in 1976 Stephen Schneider forecast an ice age and famines "soon." As late as 2004, the Guardian reported that Britain would be like Siberia by 2020. However, in more recent years the 'melters,' led by Al Gore, have greatly outnumbered the 'freezers.'
Several people have compiled lists of doom prophecies that failed to materialize. Here is a selection of them (sources are readily googleable).
1966: Oil will run out in ten years
1967: Famines by 1975
1968: Worldwide overpopulation
1970: World's natural resources run out
1970: Ice Age by 2000
1970: Water rationing in US by 1974, food rationing by 1980
1971: New ice age by 2020 or 2030
1974: Satellites show new ice age near
1976: Scientific consensus that Earth is cooling.
1978: 30-year cooling trend continues
1980: Acid rain kills life in lakes
1980: Peak oil in 2000
1988: Regional droughts by 1990s
1988: Maldives underwater by 2018
1989: Nations will be wiped out if nothing done by 2000
2000: Children won’t know what snow Is
2002: Peak Oil in 2010
2002: Famine in 10 years unless we stop eating fish, meat, and dairy products
2004: Britain will be Siberia by 2020
2008: Arctic will be ice free by 2018
2008: Al Gore predicts ice-free Arctic by 2013
2009: Prince Charles says we have 96 months to save the world
2009: Gordon Brown says we have 50 days to "save the planet from catastrophe"
2013: Arctic ice-free by 2015
2014: Only 500 days before ‘climate chaos’
Some of these came from reputable scientists, and some from headline-hungry popularizers. The fact that none of it happened does not stop others making similar forecasts of imminent disaster, but it does give it some kind of perspective. We are now told of an extinction crisis. It is unlikely that we will go extinct, being resourceful enough to stop it, but it is likely that when the date passes without it happening, alarmed voices will be telling us that doom is coming soon.
It's not always about climate change
The problem with the evil du jour is that everything, rightly or wrongly, gets ascribed to the evil du jour. As here, where we have new speculations about the deaths and injuries caused by air pollution:
The boss of the NHS has declared an air pollution "emergency" as a major study today shows it causes hundreds of heart attacks and strokes every year.
Simon Stevens says we must act now to avoid so many "avoidable deaths" after figures reveal days of high air pollution trigger an extra 124 cardiac arrests, 231 stroke admissions and 193 hospitalisations for asthma across nine major UK cities each year.
Certainly something we should investigate, yes. The first part of that being to work out the societal cost of these injuries and the societal cost of reducing air pollution enough to eliminate these same injuries. But sadly that custodian our of health care monies doesn’t suggest anything so sensible:
In response to the findings Mr Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, said: “As these new figures show, air pollution is now causing thousands of strokes, cardiac arrests and asthma attacks, so it’s clear that the climate emergency is in fact also a health emergency.
“Since these avoidable deaths are happening now - not in 2025 or 2050 - together we need to act now. For the NHS that is going to mean further comprehensive action building on the reduction of our carbon footprint of one fifth in the past decade.
“So our NHS energy use, supply chain, building adaptations and our transport will all need to change substantially.”
The heart attacks and strokes are not caused by CO2 emissions. Nor by methane, or CFCs and so on. Thus taking action on carbon footprints isn’t the point at all.
In fact, a goodly part of the problem is from earlier attempts to reduce carbon footprints. The encouragement of diesel with it’s higher NOx and particulate emissions was because it reduces carbon dioxide such. The rise in wood stoves and burners was precisely because it was seen as carbon neutral over the cycle - they are significant sources of particularates. And these strokes and heart attacks are being caused by the NOx and particularates…..
It’s unfair but accurate to insist that some part at least of these excess injuries are the result of earlier attempts to reduce carbon footprints. Which does make redoubling our efforts to increase the cause of the problem look an odd way to reduce it.
It is also both fair and accurate to point out that if the answer is always the same whatever the question then we are not dealing with science but religion. “Reduce carbon footprints” may often be the correct answer, even mostly the right answer, but the moment it becomes the only answer it is as with “toss another virgin into the volcano”. It’s superstition, not science.
Nelson ruled the waves
The Battle of Trafalgar was fought on October 21st, 1805. It was a naval engagement between the Royal Navy and the combined French and Spanish fleets. Nelson led a fleet of 27 ships against a combined total of 33 enemy ships commanded by Admiral Villeneuve. The engagement took place in the Atlantic to the Southwest of Spain, just West of Cape Trafalgar.
Although outnumbered, and against ships with more guns, Nelson had the advantage of superior tactics, better-trained and experienced crews, and higher morale, both at the command level and among the seamen. Nelson wanted a decisive victory, not a stalemate with a few losses on each side, as often happened in sea battles.
Napoleon had wanted Villeneuve's 33 ships to link up with Ganteaume's 21 ships at Brest, giving him sufficient naval superiority to launch his planned invasion of Britain. Nelson's aim, therefore, was to prevent this link-up by engaging Villeneuve at Trafalgar.
His tactics were unorthodox. In place of sailing parallel to the enemy's line, firing at each other, Nelson led his ships in a perpendicular attack, with two rows of his ships heading straight at the enemy line to break it into three pieces, and surround one-third, giving it no escape avenue. This posed the danger that as they approached the enemy line, their bows would be exposed to enemy broadside fire that they would be unable to return. Nelson counted on the poor gunnery of the enemy, plus the rolling swell that made the gun platforms unstable. To minimize the danger period, he ordered another break with normal tactic by ordering his ships to deploy all available sails, including stunsails (studding sails).
It was a one-sided, stunning victory. The Royal Navy took 22 ships of the combined enemy fleet, losing none itself. Nelson was killed on the deck of HMS Victory, but had achieved his objective. Napoleon never again planned an invasion of Britain, and the French never again presented a serious threat to the British navy's command of the seas. The battle conformed Britain's naval supremacy and, even as Napoleon established himself as master on Continental Europe, Britain established itself as a global power.
Napoleon still retained naval ambitions, and had plans to build a fleet of 150 warships to challenge Britain's dominance, but his defeats in 1814 and 1815 cut short that project. Nelson, meanwhile, passed into legend. He had written the signal "England confides every man to do his duty," but was told that 'confides' was not in the vocabulary and would have to be spelled out letter by letter. Anxious for speed, Nelson agreed to change it to 'expects,' which is how it passed into history. The term 'England' was then used to include Scotland and Wales, which took their share in the action.
Nelson had a state funeral, attended by the now-captive Villeneuve, and is buried in St Paul's. He sits atop his column in his square in London, blind in one eye, and missing one arm, reminding people that disabilities can be overcome to achieve greatness. His victory at Trafalgar, with that of Wellington at Waterloo, ensured the hegemony of the British Empire over that of Continental monarchs and despots. It set the seal for the eventual Anglo-American partnership that did so much to save the world from evil. We salute Nelson on this day.
It's not that government shouldn't it's that government can't
An interesting conclusion from an attempt to create an industrial cluster:
Every city wants a cluster, a concentration of high-productivity firms and workers beavering away in a particular industry in a particular place. Proximity means ideas and productivity growing and spreading. Who doesn’t want their own Silicon Valley?
David Cameron certainly did. In November 2010, he announced the “Tech City” programme, aiming to grow a digital cluster in Shoreditch, east London. The plan was to use branding to get firms in, networking to ensure those ideas get flowing with focused support for high-potential firms.
But did it work?
That is, obviously enough, the question we’d like answered. Our treasure, taken from us through taxation, was spent upon this plan:
But the policy didn’t raise productivity – for small firms, higher rents may have outweighed the pros of being round lots of other hipsters. More importantly, it’s not clear that the policy drove the cluster, rather than just being a response to it already getting going. As the author puts it: “Instead of catalysing the cluster, policy generally rode the wave.”.
The conclusion? A good bit of PR, yes, but the research reminds us that clusters are born of thousands of decisions by firms and people, which we struggle to understand, let alone influence. If only humans were simpler, policymakers would have a much easier life.
It didn’t work, no. Our resources were spent to no avail unless we’re to regard a bit of PR as worth it all.
We can be more precise as well, in that the same resources, if not wasted in this manner, might have achieved something elsewhere.
Which gives us our outline of what economic planning actually should be. Get the basics right - the rule of law, property rights, a non-crushing taxation system - and leave the rest alone. Such laissez faire also allows government to expend its efforts and our treasure where there is at least the possibility of competence.
It’s not that government shouldn’t try to plan and manage the economy, nor even that they’re just not very good at it. It’s that they can’t. So, don’t.
George Stigler, Nobel laureate
George Stigler was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on October 20th, 1982. He was one of the hugely influential Chicago School, and was himself influenced by Frank Knight, his supervisor. He also became a lifetime friend of Milton Friedman. Stigler made a modest contribution to the Manhattan Project in World War II, doing mathematical and statistical research for them from his base at Columbia University.
He is principally known for his work on regulatory capture, as it came to be known. Most analysts had previously assumed that regulators acted in the public good to constrain the actions of businesses, but Stigler showed that, in fact, interest groups and political players will use regulation to their advantage, employing legislative power to ensure that the laws are shaped to benefit them. They will lobby to make sure that regulations give advantage to incumbents by making entry more difficult for would-be newcomers. Large established firms have the resources and personnel to handle regulation, whereas small start-up firms usually do not. The theory of regulatory capture forms an important part of Public Choice Theory.
Stigler's landmark article, "The Economics of Information," created a new field of study, the acquisition and use of information. He observed that In most situations information is scarce and costly to obtain, and therefore it can be thought of as an economic good. Acquiring information entails costs and yields benefits, just as does obtaining all other economic goods. People therefore optimize their search for it, but knowledge is asymmetrical. An employer might want an employee ready to learn, for example, but does not know which of the applicants fall into that category. They know, of course, and some of them might acquire a college degree of other qualification that signals their ability to learn to prospective employers.
Stigler's work was in microeconomics, as is the tradition of the Chicago School, and indeed also the Austrian School. He once remarked that he was glad he knew very little macroeconomics, "because it changes once a year." The comment illustrates the wry sense of humour he was noted for. He published spoof articles poking gentle fun at his own profession. His book, "The Intellectual and the Marketplace," proposes "Stigler's Law of Demand and Supply Elasticities," which purports to show that all demand curves are inelastic, as are supply curves.
I often met him through the Mont Pelerin Society. He was one of its founding members, and regularly attended and contributed to its meetings. He served as its president from 1976 to 1978, and was one of the band of scholars that opposed the socialist ideas so prevalent following World War II.
Five years after his Nobel Prize, in 1987, he was awarded the National Medal of Science, an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in scientific fields. He had the satisfaction of living long enough to witness the collapse of the socialist system, one built on false and fanciful ideas that he had spent his academic life opposing and exposing.
It's important to understand what's happening in the environment
To be provocative about it, dead whales in the Thames are a good sign:
A second whale has been found dead in the Thames less than two weeks after a humpback nicknamed Hessy died near the same stretch of water.
No, we are not in favour of dead whales. We are however in favour of there being enough whales around, especially in waters formerly clear of them, that the occasional dead one is found.
For one of the great environmental events of the past few decades is the explosion in the cetacean population in the waters of the world. That the occasional corpse now turns up in London’s river is a victory.
The proper consideration of environmental events is important. For failing to grasp what is happening leads into error:
Some Extinction Rebellion activists present climate warming as a disaster waiting to happen. But for my cousins in the global south, the dystopian future has already arrived. A staggering 12 million people in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia are facing hunger caused by low rainfall. Deadly tropical diseases are spreading more easily as the climate warms, and 780,000 people a year are dying in Africa because of air pollution. But for many black inner-city teenagers like me, the climate change movement conjures up nothing but apathy.
Obviously, we were all waiting for the race aspect of the current demonstrations to be raised. Bit consider that litany of suffering in Africa. Those 780,000 air pollution deaths a year.
It is regularly reported - thus should be well known - that this comes from an absence of industrial capitalism, not the presence of it. For the cause of those deaths is the use of wood or dung to cook upon indoors. We will reduce such deaths by more industry, more economic growth, not by the less that XR are calling for.
We entirely agree that a better environment would be a boon to us all. But we do insist that a certain amount of attention be paid to what is a better environment. As well as the evidence that we’ve already made the world better as we have with the whales - you know, moved from a hunter gatherer lifestyle to once where we consume the products of the factories?
Russell Kirk, the sage of Mecosta
Russell Kirk was born in Michigan on October 19th, 1918. He was a revered figure amongst American Conservatives for his scholarly analysis of Conservatism. At a time when left-wing liberals (using the word in its US sense) dominated academe, Russell, together with his friend William Buckley, provided a heavy intellectual counterweight.
After war service, he went to the University of St Andrews and achieved the rare distinction of gaining an earned DLitt degree. It is normally awarded as an honorary degree, but Russell Kirk earned one, the first American to gain one. His thesis was published in 1953 as "The Conservative Mind: from Burke to Santayana," and became an instant classic.
I got to know him when we both taught at Hillsdale College in the mid-1970s. We had the St Andrews connection in common, since I had done a doctorate there, and like him had developed an abiding affection for the place. Russell had written a very engaging book about St Andrews and its history.
At a time in America when liberalism (as they called it) was riding high, Russell outlined in the first chapter of "The Conservative Mind" how he perceived it. It was characterized, he said, by a belief in the perfectibility of man, by hostility towards tradition, by support for rapid change in economic and political systems, and by the secularization of government. Russell, on the other hand, outlined six "canons" of conservatism. They were:
* A belief in a transcendent order, which Kirk described variously as based in tradition, divine revelation, or natural law;
* An affection for the "variety and mystery" of human existence;
* A conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize "natural" distinctions;
* A belief that property and freedom are closely linked;
* A faith in custom, convention, and prescription, and
* A recognition that innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which entails a respect for the political value of prudence.
What he was describing was a European strain of Conservatism that had never really taken root in America. To America, founded on the principle of freedom, Conservatism meant preserving the freedoms that the Founding Fathers had established and fought for. Kirk's version of Conservatism seemed to many Americans on the right as more alien, seeking to preserve the values of a culture they had fought against. It seemed elitist and transcendental, rather than libertarian and rooted in the practical world whose challenges Americans had needed to face.
Despite these differences, Kirk was regarded as a sage of the American right, even by those who took issue with his interpretation of Conservatism. At their Mecosta house in Michigan, he and his wife, Annette, were famous for their hospitality, operating a kind of salon, a refuge where right-wing scholars could find a refuge and meet like-minded people.
Kirk has an impish sense of humour. He would tell his guests ghost stories about Mecosta, and was once caught creeping through a secret passage above the guest room to make ghostly noises and bangings above them.