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Assorted links
1. Review of North, Wallis, and Weingast.
2. Sunstein nomination still being held up for animal welfare issues.
3. Big subsidies for GE Capital; hey, they're not a bank!
4. Global warming graphs and analysis.
5. History of home ownership subsidies.
6. New economics journal, edited by Kenneth Arrow.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 29, 2009 at 07:22 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
Since Dave Warsh identifies the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization as a "breakaway journal in its field today" I shall note that the journal's impact factor jumped between 2007 and 2008 from 0.772 to 1.125.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jun 29, 2009 8:41:23 AM
.
Enough with the puff pieces! The real story today is that Michael Jackson is still dead.
You heard it here first.
.
Posted by: cosanostradamus at Jun 29, 2009 9:07:00 AM
Re: #4, between the blogger deleting the entire contents of comments whose authors disagree with him and the repeated use of the inflammatory word ''denialist'', I cannot take any of it seriously. Just as some GW skeptics are loonies, so is (s)he. Too bad, because the evidence is otherwise well presented.
Posted by: Jack at Jun 29, 2009 9:17:52 AM
Jack: "because the evidence is otherwise well presented."
What evidence? that the earth has warmed since 1970? Why not look at the 100 year evidence? or the 600,000 year evidence? or the 100 million year evidence?
The issues for almost everyone who urges caution about implementing costly global warming "fixes" are these:
1. How do we know that CO2 caused all or even most of the global warming of the 20th century? because some computer models tell us that?
2. How do we know that the feedback mechanism in the climate change models - the mechanism whereby CO2 increases cause increases in atmospheric water vapor - is really valid?
3. How do we know that any "fix" we attempt to implement will have any more than a tiny impact on climate change?
4. How do we know that global warming - if it continues - will be net harmful?
Global warming zealots are willing to rush through changes with huge economic impacts without having answered any of those issues.
Posted by: John Dewey at Jun 29, 2009 10:08:01 AM
Re: #4
The blogger accuses a "denier" of picking a convenient period (1998-present) to illustrate his point about the lack of warming recently. To show how unrepresentative that period is, (s)he steps back and reveals the big picture from 1970 to present, a steady trend of warming on which the last decade is seen as mere fluctuation. In doing so, (s)he happens to pick a lucky year. See
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/28/nasa-giss-adjustments-galore-rewriting-climate-history/#more-8991
why 1970 is the best starting point for a plot to show as evidence for warming. The link also points out that the GISS data show not only that the last few decades have been warming, but also that the first half of the 20th century keeps cooling to this day.
Posted by: Karoly at Jun 29, 2009 10:12:19 AM
"It has also seen a war against truth and the scientific community, waged by the forces of ignorance and dishonesty who deny that global warming is real, is man-made, and is dangerous."
This is so utterly preposterous. Many people do deny these things, but the idea that there is some kind of massive propaganda campaign is absurd. Every single information outlet that has any influence over public policy or public opinion not only wholly endorses the three premises, but openly vilifies anyone who disagrees. What universe is this person living in when the mere existence of anyone who disagrees with her is a war against truth (which, interestingly, she equates with the "scientific community" not evidence, but a particular community.)? 9-11 conspiracy theories get similar levels of attention from information outlets. I guess, the enemies of truth and justice and science are just that devious.
Posted by: josh at Jun 29, 2009 11:19:54 AM
Woah. The titles to the articles in the first issue of the Annual Review of Economics look really good.
Posted by: Michael F. Martin at Jun 29, 2009 11:32:38 AM
For one thing, it is coming into existence under the stewardship of Kenneth Arrow, of Stanford University, among the two or three greatest economists of the second half of the twentieth century,
Indeed. And how do we know he's so great? Because we mathematicians claim him as one of our own as well.
Any sufficiently advanced economist or computer scientist is indistinguishable from a mathematician, they say. (Not true, of course. But we'll claim any interesting enough work as "really" being math.)
Posted by: John Thacker at Jun 29, 2009 11:40:39 AM
#4 accuses GW deniers of cherry-picking data most favorable to their cause then proceeds to...cherry pick data most favorable to his cause
Posted by: Ben at Jun 29, 2009 1:20:12 PM
"forces of ignorance and dishonesty". Nice.
As to the graphs and analysis: The trend-lines are particularly unimpressive. Any long term stochastic data-set is likely to have a trend in one direction or the other. 50% chance it will be up. The fact that we are at or near an "extreme" is no surprise either. A random walk is not so unlikely to achieve an extreme at one end, because the data at the end of the set is less dependent on the data at the beginning of the set, while more dependent to the nearby data.
Posted by: Rob at Jun 29, 2009 1:22:27 PM
How about we start in 1934 to show a world, just as warm as now, going into a terrible, unnatural cooling period from which we are just now, mercifully, recovering from.
Posted by: Td at Jun 29, 2009 1:55:51 PM
John Dewey,
Um, world is much warmer now than a century ago. Yes, it was warmer back in the Mississipian and Devonian.
Td,
No, it was not as warm in 1934 as today, although things did cool off somewhat after that to the 1970s. One possible explanation? SO2 and particulates (both cooling) were increasing rapidly, with that slowing down after legislation passed in early 1970s in major industrial powers to do so, letting the warming effect from carbon to dominate.
Here is a problem for all of you who spout that this is all just "natural fluctuations." Well, maybe it is, but those playing "skeptics" have no agreement on what that is. Solar radiation? volcanoes? cosmic rays? cow farts? El Nino? None explain it.
No one disagrees that carbon tends to heat things up or that carbon emissions (and stocks) due to human activity have been increasing. There is disagreement on how strong that effect is. But to assert that everything we see is due to "natural fluctuations" without providing some alternative theory that is agreed upon by at least some noticeable subset of the scientific community (not just one or two folks) is not at all impressive.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jun 29, 2009 2:05:02 PM
No, it was not as warm in 1934 as today, although things did cool off somewhat after that to the 1970s.
In the US alone, it was believed that 1934 was slightly warmer than today. The 1999 revisions to GISS revised our estimates for 1934 temperature down, so that we now believe that today is slightly warmer than 1934. The result may be different for other data sets.
I don't believe that the facts, which do support a slight warming trend along with a cyclical trend, warrant your dismissal, Barkley. Taking a trend line starting from a local maximum like 1934 is misleading, but so is taking a trend line starting from a local minimum like 1970.
Posted by: John Thacker at Jun 29, 2009 2:43:28 PM
Barkley,
Point was cherry picking of dates. I could choose others in history where temps were warmer, but I'd be as guilty as the GW proponents.
Amazing how cycles don't exist over the last ten years, then do over the last century, but once again don't over longer time scales.
Posted by: Td at Jun 29, 2009 3:04:37 PM
barkley rosser: "But to assert that everything we see is due to "natural fluctuations" without providing some alternative theory that is agreed upon by at least some noticeable subset of the scientific community (not just one or two folks) is not at all impressive."
It is not one or two scientists who are skeptical about the strength of the CO2 warming effect.
According to the forum editor for the American Physical Society, the 110 year old association of American physicists:
"There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.">
Canadian scientists do not agree that global warming science is settled:
"A canvass of more than 51,000 scientists with the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGGA) found 68% of them disagree with the statement that ‘the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled.'"
The Polish Academy of Sciences recently expressed skepticism over the concept of man-made global warming.
Posted by: John Dewey at Jun 29, 2009 4:18:32 PM
Dewey,
I agree that there is ongoing debate. We have been through this before.
However, your quotes and citations do not disagree with my contention that
those argueing for "it is all natural fluctuations" agree with what is
causing them.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jun 29, 2009 4:56:19 PM
Barkley Rosser,
I see no reason why those who are skeptical of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming need to be united in providing alternate explanations for phenomena.
My argument is that we should not implement a GDP-killing, standard-of-living killing cap and trade system unless we are positive we know it will provide more benefits than it costs. The burden of proof should not be on the skeptics who wish to avoid such a massive tax system, but rather on the global warming zealots who wish to impose the tax.
I cannot tell from your comments where you come down on cap-and-trade or on direct taxation of carbon emissions.
Posted by: John Dewey at Jun 29, 2009 5:15:59 PM
Dewey,
There is room for people to disagree whether something should be done only if
something is "definitely proven," which in this case is not going to happen,
which means clearly that you support doing nothing, period, no matter what, or
if one thinks that something should be done if there is a tail risk of something
really awful happening after a long lag time that must be prevented far in
advance.
Between cap and trade and direct taxation, I'll take the former, although this
is not the time or place to get into that. Long story, except to note that the
advocates of taxation always compare textbook theoretical taxation systems with
actual ugly cap and trade ones. Cap and trade has worked well for SO2, but
indeed CO2 is a lot more difficult, a lot more.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jun 29, 2009 6:22:34 PM
Last summer when oil prices peaked an interesting thing happened: Very few on the Left cheered. Why not? Isn't hydrocarbon demand-destruction what they want? No, not if oil companies' profits increase at the same time. The Left wants less energy consumption AND for oil companies to make less money (so they will die off). So what will happen when energy prices go back up (because of Cap & Trade or simply because the world economy picks back up or both) and people discover that oil companies are still making good profits (since most of the tax will get transferred into retail price)? Will there be more outrage? It is frankly hard to believe the Left really worries more about climate change than they hate the oil industry. And for that I blame Bush and Cheney.
Posted by: Rob at Jun 29, 2009 7:05:19 PM
I'm neither an AGW believer or denier, just a skeptic that the "science is clear'. The problem I have now is: Because the political climate is so charged, it is getting harder and harder to know who to believe. Most smart, reasonable public figures and publications are believers. Which, under normal circumstances, would lead me to believe they are right. However: these are not normal circumstances. Words like "deniers" (sounding a bit too close to "Holocaust Denier") and "treason" (Krugman's latest) are getting thrown around a bit loosely. We are experiencing a "You are either with us or against us" moment. Everyone who is a public figure simply has too much political/professional skin in the game to be trusted as an independent thinker. Even major oil company CEO's are all believers now, publicly. If I didn't trust them before, why should I trust them now? Isn't their sudden about-face a bit eerie?
Milan Kundera wrote--something to the effect that: at a certain time in Czechoslovakia the smarter, more energetic people tended to be Communists. Then things changed.
I don't understand the AGW data enough to gauge the signal/noise ratio myself. But my guage of the signal/noise ratio of the public debate is that it is approaching zero. Today Krugman writes: "The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at a terrifying rate. And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe — a rise in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable — can no longer be considered a mere possibility." Wait. According to "recent studies"? This makes me feel like I'm trying to decide when to buy a new TV. If the recent studies are so much better than the one's just a short while ago: why don't I wait six months for an even newer, more improved study to come out? Surely the newer models will be better. Maybe better than the optimists hoped. Who knows?
I wish there were a futures markets for global temperatures 10, 20 and 30 years out. Make people put there money where there mouths are--anonymously.
Posted by: Rob at Jun 29, 2009 9:36:49 PM
Hmmm, Tamino uses GISS charts:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/28/nasa-giss-adjustments-galore-rewriting-climate-history/
Posted by: Peter at Jun 30, 2009 1:35:15 AM
.
You know, this is like having an argument about whether the brakes need fixing. Sure, maybe the brakes don't need fixing. But we could check, just to be safe. And if they're a little worn, and we're liable to be carrying people we care about, sure, fix them. Why not?
Why not fix global warming, Republicans? Why wait until we crash? Your sole argument is that there will be an economic cost. There's an economic cost to everything, even not doing something. But if you're wrong, the downside here is economic ruin for the whole world. In less than a century, most major cities, which tend to be on the water, are going to be flooded: With salt water in many places, which will ruin aquifers and deprive millions of fresh, clean, cheap drinking water & water for irrigation of food crops. Millions of square miles of coastal, lake & riverside land is going to be permanently underwater. Crops are going to be destroyed and whole farm economies wiped out.
Speculation? Yeah, that's what intelligent people do. Plan for the future. "Hope for the best, expect the worst." And act accordingly. So far, that rather conservative approach has worked out pretty well for the U.S. Why are you right-wingers now so intent on taking the most reckless action, which is to do nothing? Because you want to bet our entire future that you're right, based on your understanding of science as "intelligent designers" who think the Universe is only 6,000 years old? Seriously, you finished reading one book. Now try another one. Maybe a science book. And not one written by the coal industry.
And get those brakes fixed. They're squealing, and everybody but you can hear them.
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Posted by: cosanostradamus at Jun 30, 2009 5:28:32 AM
"Hmmm, Tamino uses GISS charts:"
GISS has A LOT of problems. There is a group going around documenting the sites and 58% of them have major issues. 11% looked good. Things like commercial size air conditioners blowing ten feet from the instruments and the like. You can google to find their site, lots of pictures.
Satellite temps tell a different story. Very slight warming compared to what is expected.
Posted by: Td at Jun 30, 2009 10:23:17 AM
Very disappointing to see Tyler linking to this global warming site. Did he not read one commenter's question about who he was and what were his qualifications? That query was totally ignored. Also, I could not find any information on the site about "who we are." A bit odd, eh?
Also, in relation to EPA and climate change, a whistleblower at EPA -- a long-time career analyst -- has publicly said and released emails showing that EPA repressed his analysis of the inadequate work the agency had done in pushing through its "endangerment" findings on CO2.
Isn't that a clue to the fact that policies are being pushed through because "that's our position" rather than being based on analysis?
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