Asymmetrical Information

You passionately hacked away at the pejorative use of the noun/adjective "hack."

For a moment, I was thinking you were getting into the whole hacker/cracker/etc. debate. There are a lot of geeks who get itchy typing fingers when you use the hollywood slant on the word 'hack' i.e. to break into a computer... As opposed to the more general, neutral meaning of "using a items for something they shouldn't be used for in a creative way." i.e. "That the crew of Apollo 13 built a CO2 filter from socks and junk around the capsule was a pretty good hack." Or "Early computer GUI interfaces were essentially software hacks, the supporting hardware not being developed yet."

We surgeons use it occasionally to describe other surgeons as in "BladeDoc -- what a hack". As you may realize it's not complimentary. But it is rather descriptive.

I argued for a bit on the page, as you can see. It was pretty clear that Chris did not understand the paper or Dasgupta's point, and that his use of "hack" was pretty far out of line.

I recognize that in computer science, 'hack' can be a compliment. In organic chemistry, it's a pejorative. Odd, that.

There's a valuable lesson for bloggers in there, one that I have only learned in painful embarassment: never make personal attacks unless you are very, very sure that you understand the subject so well that there is no possibility of error

Isn’t that pretty much par for the course though at Crooked Timber – they made snide attacks accusing someone (Kling) of being something (bad) and it comes out that they didn’t know what they were talking about the charge they made was actually more true about themselves?

I was afraid you were going after the Lifehacker bunch. Some of us like our hacks! :)

I think you may be confused as to who misunderstood whom...

Chris Bertram:
"Dasgupta’s real argument is that Stern shouldn’t adopt the egalitarian approach it does to intergenerational well-being whilst being at the same time indifferent to inequality among members of the present generation."

Prof. Dasgupta, in an email to Brad DeLong:
"My point in working with the parameter values in my piece was only to show that a figure of 1 for eta reflects scant interest in inequality among people and scant interest in avoiding risk. I had nothing else in mind."

No doubt, that when one begins "calling a spade a spade", that they should continue, no matter the owner of the shed, nor the employer of the tool.

Past that, too many journolismo-"hacks" get by, from any scrutiny, because of the misconstrual of posts, such as ths one, and the general fear of being improperly attacked in response to pointing out the offending incompetent.

I dare say, that if there wasn't such broad latitude given to "hacks" in the field, of Journalism, it would look as starkly depopulated as many of the Mountainsides of British Columbia.

To be fair, the Bertram post sort of picks up its tone from the first Kling post, which, while not ad-hominem, isn't exactly circumspect in its use of the word "swindle."

In A. Kling's "able" defense, I find it difficult to get past this glaring lack of understanding: "Suppose that Robyn Crusoe lives on a large island with a small fruit forest. If Robyn eats all the fruit very year, she can have 1000 pieces of fruit per year. However, if she foregoes eating some fruit and plants it instead, she will have more fruit in the future. Fruit planting is subject to diminishing returns."

As ol' Robyn knows, moreso than AK, she can eat all the fruit she cares to, and Still plant the Seeds, thereby, increasing her orchard. As well, it isn't ascertainable that Robyn will reach 'diminishing returns' to her Orchard-size increasing activity. That 'excess' 'flora' might just give rise to additional fauna that would allow Robyn the opportunity to broaden her potential meal plan, if not, at the minimum, give her additional targets for her 'Nikon-ing'.

More than likely, as opposed to 'diminishing returns', she'll face geographic/topographic constraints on the sie of her orchard.

No wonder A. Kling gets aired out as a 'hack', he certainly knows how to get the basics wrong.

"As ol' Robyn knows, moreso than AK, she can eat all the fruit she cares to, and Still plant the Seeds, thereby, increasing her orchard."

Can you buy a $1 burger at jack in the box and still simultaneously invest that $1 to buy $1.055 burgers 1 year from now? No. So your point is worthless.

"More than likely, as opposed to 'diminishing returns', she'll face geographic/topographic constraints on the sie of her orchard."

Yes, and thus a planter will plant on the the choicest, most fertile parts of the land first, and then move on to lesser and lesser quality parts. That sounds like diminishing returns to me.

Mark Hoffer complained that "he certainly knows how to get the basics wrong.".

Oh, for Pete's sake. It's a metaphor, Mark. A simple example. Not the ablest one, for the nitpicky reason you point out (cattle would have been a better, if less original, choice).

Talk about missing the forest for the trees.

Integrity in the use of hack exists only in novels? That's cynical and false.

As long as we can still use it as a verb, this prohibition is OK with me.

Also, pretty funny calling Arnold Kling a hack. He is about as far from being a hack as you can get. I ooulc nominate a lot of people to be called hacks, and never get to him. But I won't, since we are not supposed to use hack as a noun.

Chalk me up as another person who thought for a paragraph or so that you were talking about hacker/cracker/lifehacker/etc. stuff!

Well Jane, you are certainly right that my understanding of Dasgupta's paper was imperfect, and John Thacker is right to say that he corrected me on some of the technicalities in comments. But I think I've been vindicated in my claim that Kling misrepresented Dasgupta and simply latched onto him in order to denounce Stern as a "swindle".

You refer to someone (Kling) who opportunistically misuses one person's work to represent another person as a swindler (i.e. intentionally dishonest) as excercising "admirable restraint in not responding to the personal side of the attacks," That really is remarkable. Solidarity among right-wing hacks perhaps?

Chris, it wasn't imperfect; it was wrong. Understandably so, but wrong. In the context of the paper, the debate over eta has only tangential relation to the debate about intragenerational equity; it is obviously, to someone who has followed the debate, about the question of how one decides questions of intergenerational equity under conditions of uncertainty. And having come out swinging, accusing Arnold of misrepresenting the paper, you were not in a good position to admit your error.

Arnold used much stronger language than I would have. However, the essence of his argument is correct. From my (admittedly cursory) reading of the paper, it is not clear that the authors really thought through the implications of a zero or very-near-zero discount rate; because there are so many future generations, really using one would imply that we should make catastrophic adjustments in our own consumption in order to produce trivial benefits for future generations. That implies either that you know that future generations will be no richer than we are, or that you think there are no diminishing returns to consumption. Perhaps more importantly, the way the paper was discussed to and in the press did not make it clear that the Stern Report's argument was based, not upon any new research, but a highly controversial value judgement about the tradeoffs that we should make between current and future consumption when new generations are involved.

Turning the "h word" on me in this context certainly won't work; I'm a firm global warming believer, and I'm fairly agnostic about what the discount rates and eta should be (not that I think there isn't a right answer; I just don't know what it is yet. More study on my part will be required.) I think that Stern raised a very important question about intergenerational equity with his report, one that philosophers are perhaps better equipped to settle than economists; I would very much have liked to see you attack the problem of deciding how much to leave future generations, when they may not even need it. Right now I am a huge supporter of really hefty carbon taxes (I would like to see gasoline prices at European levels, though to be fair, I live in New York and rarely drive, so that's a pretty cheap concession on my part). I am not defending Arnold because we agree on global warming; we don't. He is far more sceptical than I am of the science, and is much more willing to take a "wait and see" approach than I am. I am defending Arnold because he is not a hack, and you were out of line in calling him one, all the more so because you didn't know what you were talking about. After a few mishaps, I don't wade into dense philosophical arguments, at least not confidently, because I know I don't have the background to be sure I understand what's going on.

I always thought that the verb to "hack" meant to attempt solutions without fully understanding the problem, or even its causes, in the hope that you might correct the situation by dint of hunch, or even dumb luck.

As in "You may say I'm a hacker, but I'm not the only one."

A prime example of "Hacking", per my definition, would be Kyoto.

Jane,

Not to gum up your comments with OT ramblings, but what specific evidence made you a "firm global warming believer". I am on the fence myself, every time I try to discuss this subject with a believer, the conversation soon descends to name-calling.

I also live in a remote area where heavy carbon taxes would pretty much moot our lifestyle. And I am not talking about just power boats and snow machines, but also the realities of living remote from cities and closer to nature.

Before I can accept that I am going to have to be marched off to the city to live, like a Chinese peasant, I want some pretty good evidence. It just seems like the skeptics make a lot of arguments that the believers answer by ad hominem, or just plain ignore.

If the science is so rock solid, why aren't the "believers" out there answering skeptics at every turn? And not by name calling or guilt by association either.

Why is it that "global warming believers" are so dismissive of written history? The novel Frankenstein was written during an extremely cold Summer during the little ice age. This is represented thematically throughout the novel. There are records of farming in Greenland, which is now permafrost. I could go on.

How is it different to disregard an argument because an oil company may benefit if it is true than to disregard an aboriginal land claim, because the aboriginals would benefit if upheld? These are the kinds of questions the "believers" do not answer. I am not trolling here, if you have found the answers, let me know where they are.

Jane, my misunderstanding of the paper was precisely about eta, and nothing else, since I took it that Dasgupta's claim was that Stern was indifferent to inequality among present people, whereas Dasgupta's claim was that, in assigning eta a value of 1, Stern was indifferent to inequality among persons as such, independently of time considerations. (I was misled by Dasgupta's example involving a tradeoff between the interest of the present poor and those of future generations.)

Kling used Dasgupta as a stick with which to beat Stern, accusing Stern of intentional dishonesty. But it would be very odd for someone with Kling's politics (or yours it seems to me) if they were to care as much about inequality among persons as such as Dasgupta does, since as concern with inequality as such would normally suggest, as one of its implications, a greater concern about intratemporal inequality (ie inequality among present persons) than either of you has hitherto exhibited.

And that excuses your swinish intellectual manners how, Mr. Bertram?

Chris, this is rather off topic, but you are confusing "concern about" with "endorsing Chris Bertram's preferred solutions for". I think I've registered a pretty high level of concern for certain kinds of inequality, though not necessarily the ones you feel are most pressing. What, exactly, constitutes morally important inequality is a rather thorny question, upon which I know you and I disagree. But that doesn't mean that I am not concerned about it; we simply disagree about what should be done.

As for the rest, yes, you misunderstood what eta referred to in that context, and Arnold didn't, and you accused him of being a hack based on not endorsing your reading.

Arnold is perfectly entitled to use Dasgupta's valid criticism of the Stern report "as a stick to beat the Stern report". I don't necessarily agree that the conclusion about eta and discount rates is wrong (and by the way, your misunderstanding about eta necessarily has implications for interest rates); but Arnold's criticism was not disingenuous, or factually or theoretically incorrect. If you have to set eta to one, or delta to zero (or near-zero), in order to get your result, you have produced a figure that is very, very open to argument. And argument is what it got.

In essence, the report hinges on a contentious value judgement that cannot be defended on economic terms (which is not to say it is indefensible, only that it is basically non-economic--it can't be criticised in solely economic terms, either). I think that value judgement might be right . . . but like any gross value judgement, it is not unreasonably attacked in strong language.

I call someone a hack when he throws around accusations of "swindling" and I'm the one with swinish manners? Please!

Chris, you're inviting my readers to search out instances of your using similarly strong language. Is that really a good idea?

moptop,

I've recently switched from skepticism to mild belief. Check out How to talk to a skeptic about global warming. It is not perfect (for example, I suspect the Hockey Stick really is broken), but it has largely backed my skepticism onto the cosmic rays bandwagon.

Jane G: If you think that living in NYC is going to insulate you from the effects of massive energy price and consequential overall cost increases, you are 1) not the economist you seem to be; and 2) in for a terrible surprise should the policies you advocate come into law.

Chris: If you really want to establish your credibility, admit you were wrong.

"A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday." - Pope

I was especially amused by the commenter on CB's post who said: "I first realized his hackdom when I stumbled upon his completely erroneous cheerleading for shale oil—which he later corrected when James Hamilton published some real analysis on the topic." In other words, when AK found out he was wrong, he corrected himself. This makes him UNtrustworthy?

No, I was responding to the accusation that I have "swinish intellectual manners".

As for strong language, you write: "like any gross value judgement, it is not unreasonably attacked in strong language."

I'm far from clear why you think that _any_ gross value judgement might be reasonably attacked in strong language, but note that Kling didn't directly criticize Stern's value judgement (Dasgupta did that) but rather criticized him for assigning a "far from plausible interest rate". Even if that assignment does ultimately depend on a value judgement, Kling doesn't make his point in the form of an attack on a value judgement.

Jeff Z: I did admit I was mistaken in my understanding of Dasgupta on eta, see above. I'm not going to admit that I was wrong to say that Kling misrepresented and misused Dasgupta's paper in order unfairly to attack Stern as a "swindler", because that's just what he did, so I wasn't wrong.

Chris, this is pitiful quibbling. That sort of language is used every day in arguments about controversial choices like this, by many people whom you have never seen fit to call hacks. To put it in lay language, Stern's discount rate is, like, waaaaaaaaaaaaaay low; it requires a pretty strong defense, and in my opinion, a much stronger one than Stern gave for it. My mind is open to the possibility that such a choice could be defended, but I also think that Stern didn't, very well. And I simply don't think the eta can be defended on any terms; as a simplifying assumption, it simplifies too much. It matters whether our descendants will be richer or poorer than we are in deciding how much we are entitled to consume now.

Justin,
Thanks for the links. Cosmic rays are just one of the issues ignored by the "believers". I will look at the other one when I have more leasure.

The other major canard is that there has ever been, or ever could be, a period of climate stability. Because of this, attempts to "stabalize the climate" are, to use Jane's word, risible on the face of it.

The "Hockey Stick" is road apples, to clean up language for this forum. The function has been shown to produce a "Hockey Stick" graph, even if fed pink noise.

In computing science and programming circles, a hack is the exact opposite of a pejorative. A hack is any particularly ingenious or elegant solution to a problem. If a fellow programmer says, "wow, nice hack," then you're entitled to feel pretty pleased with yourself. To call someone a hacker is the height of praise. Here's what über-hacker Eric Raymond has to say on the subject.

"It matters whether our descendants will be richer or poorer than we are in deciding how much we are entitled to consume now."

Well you finish up with a sentence that sort of makes sense. Except that eta concerns the distribution of well-being of *individual persons* whom you've now amalagamated into a great big "we". I'm all for saying that the presently poor (such as many people in subSaharan Africa) should be entitled to consume more and that we shouldn't adopt climate abatement policies that harm *them*. I'm also for restraining the consumption of present-day wealthy North Americans and Europeans, if the people at the sharp end of climate change in the future turn will turn out to be drowned and displaced Bangladeshi peasants. We!

Jane Galt: idiot or hack?

I think it is pretty untenable to maintain that *Chris Bertram* is the one who misunderstood Dasgupta's point, when Dasgupta has gone on record as saying that his concern (about the parameter value for eta) was indeed what Bertram thought it was.

Kling's snivelling about whether the value that the Stern report uses for delta should match the observed interest rate might be defensible in its own terms; I don't think so, but that is a principled disagreement that is amenable to reasoned argument. But when Kling uses Dasgupta to criticize Stern on a different matter than what Dasgupta himself was criticizing Stern for ("My point in working with the parameter values in my piece was only to show that a figure of 1 for eta reflects scant interest in inequality among people and scant interest in avoiding risk. I had nothing else in mind."), that is a manifestation of recurring hackery.

To repeat, Kling does not say "I think it's always wrong to use a delta parameter that is not the observed interest rate." That might be wrong (first, because the risk-free rater of return *is* pretty low, second, because it does an end run around the requisite moral questions) -- but it certainly isn't hackery. Instead, Kling says that Dasgupta crystallizes "the magnitude of the intellectual swindle that Stern is trying to pull off."

Not only is Kling the one throwing around "swindle," but he is improperly attributing the accusation to someone else. My only question is why Jane Galt persists in defending Kling.

Yes, Chris, we. If our descendants are going to be extraordinarily wealthy, then they will be better placed to abate global warming than you or I; if they will be poorer, our obligation will be correspondingly greater. Eta may theoretically vary from individual to individual, but in practice it can only be measured at rough income levels, and since we only get to have one discount rate, it will end up as an amalgam variable.

Even intratemporal comparisons are difficult, since it is easier to stay at a low energy level than to get to one. Bangladeshis have all the complementary assets for life without electricity, including human capital; Americans don't. It is further complicated by the fact that a real gut renovation of the American economy might well end the production of things Bangladeshis like, like foreign aid and new drugs.

What a strange misunderstanding of the concept of a "hack". A useful word with a wide range of meanings, it's not going anywhere anytime soon. In my student days it meant a clever technical prank. Its modern meaning in that sense is more sinister. In professional terms it can mean someone who flails about with the best of them, but is actually terrible at his job. This is an elaboration of its earlier meaning of a professional writer whose stuff was nothing great, and he and everybody else knew it, but who would take on even the worst jobs so long as they paid. It was perjorative, but only slightly. In journalistic or blogospheric terms it nowadays means someone lacking the slightest qualifications to have any idea what he's talking about, but who insists on talking about it anyway. Perhaps it can be defined as the peculiar though common notion that professional enthusiasm can be a suitable substitute for knowledge or skill in an unrelated field. This is a misconception not likely to go away any time soon. Hence the concept, as well as the word, will retain its usefulness. A huge chunk of professional journalists are hacks. They're journalism majors. This doesn't actually equip them to understand anything except, maybe, journalism. Were I to engage in constant blogging about cookware, I'd be a hack. A surgeon blogging about flight dynamics is very likely to be a hack, although there's a possibility that he's an experienced amateur (which is out of the question re me and cookware). A trained economist blogging about climatology is almost certainly a hack. A hack is distinguishable from a dilettante or an enthusiast or a fan or what the Russians call a "lubitel" because he's SO SURE that he has something worthwhile to say, whereas he's actually flying without a clue. And doing it on a day-to-day basis. And would just LOVE to make others listen, because he's so, you know, sincere, concerned, etc. Just not skilled or knowledgeable. You know, just a hack.

Thank you Jane. On receiving a reply like that, a prudent advocate would simply say "No further questions" and leave to jury to draw their own conclusions.

That might be a defense . . . except that the debate is about economic variables, not climate science, and the author of the report in question is an economist.

I am a believer in Global Warming (and of course Global Climate Change is tautological), but I am far from convinced that: a) it is 'caused' in any large sense by CO2 (especially when about 95% of the Greenhouse Effect comes from water vapor) or that spending massive amounts and crippling major economies in order to slow the effect by a degree or so in the next hundred years is a good idea.

The link to 'how to talk to a skeptic' is interesting, but it begs the question by starting with the assumption that Global Warming is, indeed, caused by CO2. Simply re-stating your argument very slowly and in more detail is not likely to change my mind.

Also, continuing to insist that a 'consensus' exists and therefore skeptics must be wrong is hardly useful.

Maybe it would be better to wait just a few more years before 'jumping on our (CO2 emissions) horse and riding madly off in all directions'.

> I call someone a hack when he throws around accusations of "swindling"

Which goes to show that you don't know what a hack is.

Hint - someone isn't a "hack" merely because they use strong words to criticize something that you like. There are swindles, and calling something a swindle is not evidence of hackery.

It must be lovely to live in a world with no tradeoffs, Chris . . . and one in which self-righteousness is a perfect substitute for engagement with thorny questions. Let me start my cross, then: absent some miracle invention of an alternative energy source that can provide baseload power generation and/or efficiently store sufficient energy to power transport, what is your plan for transferring consumption from roughly 700 million Americans, Europeans, Canadians, and Australians, to the billions and billions of people who live without electricity, health care, transport, or running water, in a timely manner, without either 1) raising global output emissions or 2) killing millions of the westerners in question? Please show your work in light of the fact that, other than Britain and Germany, which got enormous credits for historical accidents, only one European country is on track to reduce its emissions; that China is set to surpass America as a carbon emitter by 2013, is in the ugly part of its fuel efficiency curve, is relying heavily on coal to reduce its oil dependancy, and doesn't care a fig about global warming; and that India, with roughly as many people as China, is just starting on the same development path.

Unless you have such a plan, sneering at me for wanting one would seem to indicate that it is you, not I, who are guilty of callous disregard. Not to mention a rather shocking ignorance of the complexities involved in the global warming debate, for one who is so keen to stake a position in same.

Even if tu quoque covered all sins, it would still be the case that Bertram was not calling Kling a hack for using the word "swindle"; he was calling Kling a hack for being right-wing, for writing for TCS, and for being less egalitarian than Dasgupta. This even though one needn't hold any particular view about equality to agree with Dasgupta that the Stern Report was inconsistent in its appeal to the idea.

Crooked Timber == left wing website ... there you have it, you need know no more.

Crooked Timber is the living, breathing embodiment of hack(ery).

I followed the Kling link and it takes you to nothing that even mentions "hack" or Crooked Timber.

Might you have hacked up the link?

moptop claims: "The "Hockey Stick" is road apples, to clean up language for this forum. The function has been shown to produce a "Hockey Stick" graph, even if fed pink noise."

This is untrue. You have been misled.

It must be lovely to live in a world with no tradeoffs, Chris

But precisely nothing that I've written licenses the inference that I believe that I do live in such a world. In fact, in my original post -- which you objected to -- I mentioned the possibility that the benefits to the present poor of not restricting Chinese and Indian growth might outweigh the future harms of global warming. Sounds like a tradeoff to me.

As for your rather overheated remarks about transfers to the global poor ... "killing millions of the westerners in question" etc. This is simply nonsense. Massive improvements in the levels of well-being of the very poorest could be had at very little cost through public health improvements, clean water etc. Transfers needed to effect _that_ would hardly have any discernible impact on the lifestyles of the "westerners in question", let alone killing "millions" of them.

Jane,

I don't know the science and I don't know the players. I would be very interested to read what you have to say about this article (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/05/nosplit/nwarm05.xml) by Christopher Monckton.

I am especially interested in your take on his assertion that the scientists claiming global warming have violated a basic principle of physics and committed a variety of serious errors including deliberate manipulation of the data.

Also, his follow up is here - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/12/nclim12.xml

Sounds like one of those famous irregular verbs.

I engage in tough-minded but fair debate, calling a spade a spade.

You use stronger language than I perhaps would have.

He projects his own willingness to committ sins of omission For The Cause onto innocent others.

And I should have pointed out that he specifically asked the Stern people what discount rate they used:

Sir Nick says if we spend 1 per cent of GDP now and for ever we can reduce "the chances of temperature rises of 4-5C and above – at which levels some of the worst impacts occur". The crucial number when evaluating the income stream from forward investments like this is the discount rate: the annual percentage by which any forecast of tomorrow's revenue is cut to allow for the risks inherent in not getting it today. Stern discusses the rate at length, and even has a technical annexe on it, but, astonishingly, not once in 700 pages does he put a figure on it. I gave his team 24 hours' notice of the question: What discount rate or rates, and why? Six hours after my deadline, as the Treasury was closing, they said they might answer "next week". The following morning, with the page held for my copy, I rang and asked again. "There's nobody in who worked on that part of the report," they said. But they admitted they'd used several rates, all of them low because "if you're richer in future you value each unit of output a bit less", and because they hadn't discounted the future just because it was the future as that would be intertemporally inequitable (in English: not fair to the kids). Too low a discount rate makes spending 1 per cent of GDP now look cheaper than waiting.

Hmmmmm.

Well, that was one of the most interesting exchanges I've ever seen on a blog. Personally, I see no problem with tossing out an insult now and again - as long as it is done artistically. For example, I would say that Arnold's use of "swindle" was more artistic than Chris' use of "hack" - though neither was particularly subtle.

P.S. Jane; Don't imagine that you will escape a carbon tax just because you don't own a car. Haven't been to NYC for a couple of years, but if I remember correctly, there are a great many cars, taxis, buses, trains, planes, and snowplows. Not to mention that it seemed to be well heated and that people seemed to eat large amounts of food that was presumeably not grown in the city - nor without the use of carbon products.

Mr Lambert,
I will admit that following the link referenced above was quite informative regarding urban myths of the skeptic communitiy, some of which I have undoubtedly fallen for, but as for the hockey stick, I see they had no response to this assertion.

'The controversy of Mann’s methods lies in that the proxies are centered on the mean of the period 1902-1995, rather than on the whole time period. This mean is, thus, actually decentered low, which will cause it to exhibit a larger variance, giving it preference for being selected as the first principal component. The net effect of this decentering using the proxy data in MBH98 and MBH99 is to produce a “hockey stick” shape. Centering the mean is a critical factor in using the principal component methodology properly. It is not clear that Mann and associates realized the error in their methodology at the time of publication.'

Report of the Energy and Commerce Committee of the US congress.

Has this finding been since authoritatively refuted?

Moptop,

Monckton, in the articles I posted about above, says that the hockey stick will be produced even if you put in numbers at random. The entire structure of the study is flawed.

I really want to hear from someone who can respond to his (Monckton's) assertion that the global warming conclusion is dependent on an assumption that violates a basic law of physics.

"Right now I am a huge supporter of really hefty carbon taxes..."

JG,

Why the pretense of 'Libertarianism'?

Are you going to tell us that you're some kind of DailyKos-style "Left-Libertarian"(?), the MadAve'd misnomer of the, heretofore, known "Watermelon"?

Oops, forgot the link.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/home/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf

Randy,

Surely you know that all vehicles in New York City run hydrogen fuel cells using, as ultimate source, windmill power. And all the the buildings are heated by solar heat exchangers and the burning of unused biomass. As for the food, it is all grown organically in neighborhood gardens and is carried to the market by the most fit individuals.

Here we have the distinguished blogger Tim Lambert in the comments thread. I would hope he has a response. It is lack of response to legitimate questions that keeps me in the skeptic's camp. Like stan, I am interested in the truth as best we can ascertain it, not in grinding an axe in the libertarianism vs socialism battle.

It is certainly true that if AGW can be proven, and I mean proven in the sense as it has been that capatalism is better at feeding and housing the multitudes, then markets are a failure in the largest sense. It also would be true that the poverty and misery that will inevitably result from a worldwide converstion to a command economy are small a small price to pay for survival. I am not ready to buy that yet.

There is also this challenge to AGW believers.

JunkScience's challeng

Has there been a credible response to it that goes beyong name calling?

My spelling is a constant source of shame. Regrets to all for offence caused.

Yancey, snark aside, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the per capita energy consumption of NYC residents was lower than for suburbanites in similar climate zones. This would be from reasons obvious to the most casual observer.

Oh good, Mr. Hoffer is back. Sir, your bluff was called, but nobody picked up the line. Do you have any further opinions on having one's fruit and eating it, too? For example, if Ms. Crusoe is stuck on an island with a few small mulberry trees, do you really think she will have the foresight to bury her own scat in orchard lines for the next couple days after consuming?

"Oops, forgot the link.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/home/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf"

Posted by: moptop

This is in regards to a previous comment, that the 'hockey stick' model will produce a 'hockey stick', even if fed white noise.

If one follows that link, and goes to page 29 (in Adobe Acrobat, printed page number 30), and examines figure 4.1, two things should be apparent:

1) The statement is true,
2) Wegman did some *very* interesting graphical things. The top panel has has a scale which increase the visual magnitude of the false positive 'hockey stick' by a factor of 10. I've seen a rescaled superposition someplace, which is what Wegman should have done, shows that the magnitude of the false positive effect makes it trivial.

You might be right, Barry. But don't forget to factor in all the lighting (Times Square), and that bit about the city that never sleeps (the suburbs do sleep).

LRF,

Are you referring to this: "Can you buy a $1 burger at jack in the box and still simultaneously invest that $1 to buy $1.055 burgers 1 year from now? No. So your point is worthless."-- As "my bluff being called" ?

That goober is making the same kind of mistake that I was calling attention to, in the first place. Thereby, no response necessary. Ironically enough, yon' goober painted himself as one that aids the growth of 'hack-ism' by fully fledging this characterization: "too many journolismo-"hacks" get by, from any scrutiny,...(for) the general fear of being improperly attacked in response to pointing out the offending incompetent."

I couldn't have dialed up a stooge, from Central Casting, more fitting.

Contrary, of course, to our Hostess. Who'd care to wager that LRF and JG post from the same IP Address?

Barry,

I don't really doubt that is true, but I was just feeling really snarky this morning.

I really don't understand the purpose of c02 taxes. How can ANYONE support them. Is it because we're making a big bad demon out of c02? Would the public fall for a gasoline tax hike? Sure, let's charge 80 cents more per gallon of gas. And where will that money go? Will the environment suddenly get better? No, but all of the sudden our benevolent leaders will have more money to spend on their pet projects...while still keeping the nation in debt at the same time no doubt.

At the most does anyone have a real prediction for how much it would cut demand? When gas has gone up over $1-2 more per gallon over the last 2 years, has it really dropped demand? No, it just made everyone a little less wealthy. So we'll see the same people driving because we pretty much have to. The environment won't change, and even if we in the US stopped consuming as much as some astronomical 20 or 30% in about 5-10 years china and india will pick up that slack. Another 20 years after that and some other developped country will be doing the same. I'm not sure what the solution is, but surely it's not to hold America back while the rest of the world moves on.

It may sound cold and cruel, but I believe our nation can handle the problems in our continent associated with our overproduction. Let each nation take out their own trash. Is that too hard to ask? Does the US have to do everything? If they're tired of us consuming, then stop selling to us. Otherwise, they can keep their mouths shut (especially when they ask for our food) and their fists closed (when they ask for handouts).

They can take my c02 when they pry it from my cold dead...er...lungs...doesn't have the same ring to it.

Like I thought. No response. It is ever thus with the "believers"

Attention everyone, Mark E Hoffer's charges of hackery are off limits to criticism. Making counterpoints against those who level the hackery charge just contributes to a general state of hostility towards hack-acusers that may diminish the frequency of thier charges, to societies detriment.
The same goes for charges of racism. Whenever anyone accuses someone else of racism, don't question whether it's true or not, and cruelly make people actually have to logically back up thier accusation. That just makes people not want to accuse eachother of racism. So it is better to let the charge of racism just be the end point of all debate.

moptop,

You well know it. It's similiar to the type of stunts resorted to by the likes of ol' goober, above.

No substance. No logic. Just, invective,or silence.

For you, though, I suggest keep thinking, and keep questioning. "They" can't dispell the truth, nor spellbind the honest.

Another thought on the c02 re: gas tax. If someone is going to say taxing is good to spur innovation, why hasn't europe with their $5+ a gallon innovated their way out of oil? Or should we charge more than that in the US to get the real innovation going? Or is it they are just too stupid or too rich to care in Europe?

Another thought...if taxing our way to progress is a good idea, we should take up that proposal and start taxing other industries we deem could be doing better. I think we need faster, better designed computers, after all the increase in productivity will pay off in the long run. So let's tax the hell out of intel, amd, etc so they get the picture and REALLY start innovating...

Sheesh, what a mess.

No, I was responding to the accusation that I have "swinish intellectual manners".

File under "self-referential arguments."

moptop, you quoted Wegman: "This mean is, thus, actually decentered low, which will cause it to exhibit a larger variance, giving it preference for being selected as the first principal component."

Here are the key words: "first principal component". This is not the same as the temperature reconstruction (the hockey stick graph). If you corner them, the "hockey stick is broken" crew will admit this, but they quite happy for people to think that you get the hockey stick graph from noise. You don't.

Now I think it would have been better if MBH had centred the mean, but it turns out not to matter -- you get a hockey stick shaped reconstruction in any case. You won't find this in the Wegman report because his terms of reference were carefully constructed so he wouldn't ask if the centering made any difference to the reconstruction.

The junk science challenge has been dealt with here.

Or is it they are just too stupid or too rich to care in Europe?

Not that I'm in favor of a gas tax (I'd rather see more nuclear energy first) but Europe does have a lot more public transportation that actually works. I believe they have more fuel efficient cars as well. In Japan, you can acutally buy electric cars that can power up directly from the grid. As far as electric cars that work off the grid, it's not a matter of lack of US technology, they just don't sell them here.)

"Now I think it would have been better if MBH had centred the mean, but it turns out not to matter -- you get a hockey stick shaped reconstruction in any case." You wouldn't happen to have a link to an expository article on this finding?

I am not qualified to pass judgement on the debunking of the junkscience challange, but I will take your word for it. However, I can see that it is as full of attacks on the motives and intelligence of the makers of the challange as it is on the actual 'debunking'. This is the kind of rhetoric that keeps me a skeptic.

Incidentally, the IPCC's predictions come under attack again in "American Scientist Online". It seems that the IPCC's scenarios assume an ever increasing concentration of methane, yet methane levels seem to be stabilizing. Possibly due to a negative feedback effect of warming.

The article also makes the claim that this trend in methane has been common knowledge for a quarter of a century, yet the IPCC ignored it in their predictions which are used by Al Gore in his scare campaign.

http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/54097

In case the link doesn't work, the article is called "The other greenhouse gas"

Incidentally, I do appreciate your taking the time to answer my posts.

> I always cringe when I see someone use the word "hack"

This tells us more about your pet peeves than it does about the word "hack".

> more often than not, they are projecting onto their victim their own willingness to committ sins of omission For The Cause.

Speaking of projecting... doesn't this statement qualify as rather overbroad?

> Even those who are not themselves willing to shade the truth have almost certainly tolerated it in others they agree with.

That's not unique to people who use the word 'hack', to the point that it's totally unrelated to the use of the word 'hack'.

> If the word "hack" has never come out of your lips (or keyboard) in public reference to someone on your own side, you have no right to use it about anyone.

Again, overbroad: one could say this about ANY perjorative label... and no one would listen anyway.

> Really, the only person who is entitled to use the word...

According to you.

> This meditation was inspired by Chris Bertram's attack on Arnold Kling... (who) had clearly misread the paper he was arguing about...

So argue that people who rely on perjoratives/personal attacks while not understanding what they are talking about are idiots, not that the evil word 'hack' made him a bad man. But I guess that wouldn't be news.

Me, I favor calling a hack a hack, and not mistaking a non-hack for a hack.

Ryan,

I've driven in several countries in Europe and there sure seemed to be plenty of cars on the road. Not like LA on the 405 in rush hour kind of traffic, but enough stop go stop that I was in a panic considering I hadn't driven stick shift in years. So plenty of people drive there.

The train system seems to me a function of 50 years ago "our entire continent was just bombed to bits" and we got to create mass transport from the ground up as a result. I don't think they started making trains in the last 15 years because demand for cars and gas was suddenly on the decline.

> I've driven in several countries in Europe and there sure seemed to be plenty of cars on the road. Not like LA on the 405 in rush hour kind of traffic, but enough stop go stop that I was in a panic considering I hadn't driven stick shift in years. So plenty of people drive there.

I think he means less cars and more mass transit per capita, which a casual drive down the road won't tell you. Statisics will.

That said, making direct comparisons between Europe and the U.S. is bound to lead you wildly off track... because of the population density differences which make mass transit a more effective choice there. A country in west Europe is better compared to a city in the U.S.

Incidentally, have the hockey stick graphs in the Wikipedia, for example, been corrected for this error concerning center lines? And the article makes the point that choosing such an unrepresentative sample, as less than a century out of a thousand, is not a valid use of the technique either. I have read elsewhere that by choosing the control point that they did had the effect of minimizing, if not eliminating the medieval warm period.

Other independent proxies, such as stalagmites confirm the existence of this period, as well as the Roman Warm Period, and they are not as subject to interpretation as tree rings, for example, which can be affected by variations in rainfall, forest species succession, probably even catapillar infestaions eating leaves, and the like.

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/10/24/for-peats-sake-warmer-is-better

Anyone want to take on Monckton's articles?

I might have been willing to talk up Monckton a bit if he'd left out the crapola about Boltzman's Law and the medieval Chinese fleet sailing around the Arctic. As it stands, though, he's rather an embarrassment.

From my (admittedly cursory) reading of the paper, it is not clear that the authors really thought through the implications of a zero or very-near-zero discount rate

Cursory indeed, since there was an entire chapter on the subject.

From my admittedly cursory reading of War and Peace, it suffers somewhat from ignoring what was going on in Russia at the time.

moptop-thanks for mentioning the "stalagmites" findings. Strange that this has received about zero mention in the msm coverage, isn't it?
One other point re Mann, et al, and the "Hockey Stick"; it is interesting that the proxies they "like"(some brislecones, not all) are (were) included several times in the regression while others are not used at all. "Data Mining" at its finest.

The term "hack" (as in the sense of "partisan hack") is a useful one; many political staffers, some journalists and a few bloggers actually *are* hacks. Rather than decry the word, the point you should surely be making is that we should keep our eye on the ball, not the man - an effective riposte should focus on their words and actions, not their presumed motives.

Only *after* we have demonstrated their repeated and partisan dishonesty should we call them a hack. Without the demonstration it is just an ugly form of abuse.

I've driven in several countries in Europe and there sure seemed to be plenty of cars on the road. (snip)...So plenty of people drive there.

(snip)...I don't think they started making trains in the last 15 years because demand for cars and gas was suddenly on the decline.

My point was not that noone drove, but rather that;

1. Cars in Europe and Japan are more fuel efficient. source
2. Public transportation was more utilized there. ( This also has to do with higher population densities. )

Heck, the distance commuter trains we do have in the US are forced to play second fiddle to freight train schedules, making commuter train schedules very unreliable.

> Rather than decry the word, the point you should surely be making is that we should keep our eye on the ball, not the man - an effective riposte should focus on their words and actions, not their presumed motives.

Exactly. Who here would claim that calling Hitler a Nazi violates Godwin's rule? It would not. But calling attention to Ronald McDonald's many Nazi-like proclivities would.

Labels don't mislabel people, people mislabel people!

Jane, I don't think Kling is as "in the right" has you think - you ought to read Tyler Cowen on this - to paraphrase him, in some circumstances the 'correct' discount rate between generations can be 0, so a net discount rate below the market rate may be entirely sensible. Kling doesn't seem to have appreciated this and he is just as bad as Betram when in comes to flinging insults around. That doesn't exonerate Bertram, but I don't think you ought paint Kling as a paragon of restraint and clear thinking.

"Labels don't mislabel people, people mislabel people!"

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