Catallaxy Files

Yes. I think Bernanke should go. Let’s hear first from Bryan Caplan.

Contrary to my expectations, Bernanke’s been a disaster. At the same time, though, I can’t honestly say that his successor will be any better. Why then do I strongly favor firing my former teacher? Accountability. When someone fails as badly as he has, he’s got to be fired to send a message to his successors.

The problem with Bernanke goes back to his testimony to the US Congress in September 2008. These words were the problem

Despite the efforts of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, and other agencies, global financial markets remain under extraordinary stress. Action by the Congress is urgently required to stabilize the situation and avert what otherwise could be very serious consequences for our financial markets and for our economy.

As you will recall the Congress was not happy to just sign over $700 billion and did not pass the legislation Henry Paulson was proposing. In the meantime, the Fed chairman had told the world that markets would collapse and, of course, they subsequently did. This is isn’t suggesting that Bernanke is to blame, but he did make it worse. I would have let him serve out his term but not renewed it. Some economists I have spoken to would have sacked him then. But fast forward to 2009 and President Obama nominated him for a second term.

I’m not sure what to make of this news item.

Amidst the voter anger at Wall Street and Washington, D.C., ABC News has learned that the Senate Democratic leadership isn’t sure there are enough votes to re-confirm Ben Bernanke for another term as chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Bernanke’s term expires on Jan. 31.

First question is why has this been left so late? That is just slack. It is also bad news for the market – the US is about to go on a banking regulation frolic that is already causing market problems. The other point to emphasise is that Obama isn’t a second term President in his last year. To snub him so dramatically so early in his Presidency is a huge call. I can’t see it happening – although the outcome would be correct.
(HT: CL)
Update: When I first saw this story I thought it might be a ‘slow-news’ day type story, but the Intrade market is showing some movement (the graph below is closing prices, but the continuous traing graphs also show volitility). Before anyone gets too excited, the market is still suggesting he’ll get up.

(HT: Mankiw)
Update: The WSJ are reporting that Bernanke has been reappointed.

We all recall Phil Jones saying

Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !

It seems he wasn’t the only one playing hard and fast with peer-review. Following hot on the heels of GlacierGate, we have another IPCC scandal on our hands. GlacierGate revealed that the IPCC would copy anything off the internet and pass it off as peer-reviewed research. Well they have been caught out doing it again.

While fact-checking an Oxfam publication the UK group Climate Resistance have turned up another anomaly in the 2007 IPCC Report. In a guest post at Roger Pielke Jr’s blog Ben Pile tells the story.

What attracted our attention most, however, was this claim

According to the IPCC, climate change could halve yields from rain-fed crops in parts of Africa as early as 2020, and put 50 million more people worldwide at risk of hunger. [Pg. 2]

We looked to see if it was true. All we could find in the IPCC report was this.

In other [African] countries, additional risks that could be exacerbated by climate change include greater erosion, deficiencies in yields from rain-fed agriculture of up to 50% during the 2000-2020 period, and reductions in crop growth period (Agoumi, 2003). [IPCC WGII, Page 448. 9.4.4]

Oxfam cite the IPCC, but the citation belongs to Agoumi. The IPCC reference his study properly:

Agoumi, A., 2003: Vulnerability of North African countries to climatic changes: adaptation and implementation strategies for climatic change. Developing Perspectives on Climate Change: Issues and Analysis from Developing Countries and Countries with Economies in Transition. IISD/Climate Change Knowledge Network, 14 pp. (PDF).

There is only limited discussion of “deficiencies in yields from rain-fed agriculture” in that paper, and its focus is not ‘some’ African countries, but just three: Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria. It is not climate research. It is a discussion about the possible effects of climate change. All that the report actually says in relation to the IPCC quote, is that,

Studies on the future of vital agriculture in the region have shown the following risks, which are linked to climate change:
• greater erosion, leading to widespread soil degradation;
• deficient yields from rain-based agriculture of up to 50 per cent during the 2000–2020 period;
• reduced crop growth period;

Most interestingly, the study was not simply produced by some academic working in some academic department, for publication in some peer-reviewed journal. Instead, it was published by The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).

This is the fundamental problem

That the IPCC is citing non-peer-reviewed, non-scientific research from quasi governmental semi-independent sustainability advocacy organisations must say something about the dearth of scientific or empirical research. The paper in question barely provides any references for its own claims, yet by virtue of merely appearing in the IPCC’s 2007 AR4 report, a single study, put together by a single researcher, becomes “consensus science”.

This is not about Oxfam and this is not about the IISD – they are lobby groups who undertake research and advocacy work and so on. The IPCC have again been caught quoting second hand unrefereed sources to make their case. Generally there is nothing wrong with that, but the IPCC have set higher standards for themselves and we can plainly see that they are failing to maintain those standards.

In the comments at Pielke’s blog we see this gem by Richard Tol

This story must be wrong. The IPCC has just told us that there was only one error in the whole the Fourth Assessment Report.

Indeed. How much longer before people start referring to the ‘now discredited’ 2007 IPCC report.
(HT: Dover_Beach)

ABC Unleashed continues to dispense helpful advice to us all from those with greater wisdom and knowledge of the world than we have.

Simon Chapman the sociologist who made his career campaigning against tobacco suggests that we all set ourselves a travel reduction target to reduce our carbon footprint. He mentions an invitation he had a couple of years ago to travel, all expenses paid, to Geneva to speak for 15 minutes at a conference. He declined because “the carbon footprint involved and the derisory speaking time”.

Now, most of us would reckon it’s a pretty dopey idea to go all that way for 15 minutes of talking, whether or not we cared about our carbon footprint. About two minutes’ thought would be enough to convince me that it was all a very foolish idea.

Long distance flights are no fun and they need a pretty good purpose before we consider putting ourselves through the discomfort and jetlag. Perhaps Chapman is getting to the age where flying has lost its excitement and is using his carbon footprint as a more worthy reason to stop than simple discomfort?

He is now sending video presentations of his thoughts instead of going there. Great idea and a good use of modern technology. Of course carbon emissions will only be reduced if airlines cut their schedules which is unlikely even if all the sociology conferences in the world are replaced with Skype chats.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

“Which part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?” is a great political slogan.

It seems to have been a close thing; a 5 – 4 US Supreme Court decision in favour of free speech came through over night.

The Supreme Court threw out a 63-year-old law designed to restrain the influence of big business and unions on elections Thursday, ruling that corporations may spend as freely as they like to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress. The decision could drastically alter who gives and gets hundreds of millions of dollars in this year’s crucial midterm elections.

By a 5-4 vote, the court overturned two of its own decisions as well as the decades-old law that said companies and labor unions can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to produce and run their own campaign ads. The decision threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.

It also amends some of the McCain legislation.

The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.

The take-home message is this:

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate Republican leader who filed the first lawsuit challenging the McCain-Feingold law, praised the court for ”restoring the First Amendment rights” of corporations and unions. ”By previously denying this right, the government was picking winners and losers,” McConnell said.

Corporations and unions ultimately represent the interests of individuals but supressing their right to free speech, the US Congress had abridged the rights of those people who chose to organise their affairs via instruments such as corporations and unions.
(HT: Cafe Hayek)

Japan Airlines has just gone into bankruptcy. Joe Sternberg at the WSJ wonders if this is a legacy of Japanese stimulus spending. He’s got a good point – the idea of stimulus is to spend a dollar on any project without worrying if that is a good or bad project.

During the lost decade of the 1990s, airport construction popped up in many stimulus plans. National and local politicians, not to mention the politically powerful construction lobby, wanted to put an airport in every prefecture. And ordinary airports wouldn’t do. Because Japan’s relatively small flat surface area is in such high demand, one airport after another was built on reclaimed land in the middle of the ocean at enormous expense. Despite periodic public fulminations about out-of-control costs, in practice “expensive” seemed to be viewed as a net positive.

Boosters touted airports as creators of short-term construction jobs and longer-term boons to their areas. This airport binge has continued right up to today. Japan’s 98th airport opened last year: Shizuoka-Mt. Fuji, roughly 50 miles from the famous mountain. California, with a larger land area, has around one-third as many airports in regular commercial service, with another 35 or so “reliever airports” to handle business jets and general aviation.

Japan’s strategy hasn’t worked for the airlines or the airports. Those half-empty JAL flights helped push the carrier to bankruptcy. They also translate to less revenue for airports.

To my mind there are two take-home messages.

For everyone else, there’s a lesson here about the costs of Keynesian stimulus. While political debates on infrastructure spending so often focus on how much government will have to pay for a project today, businesses can end up stuck paying the price for inefficient infrastructure tomorrow—and the day after. It was just JAL’s bad luck to have to work with or around Japan’s airport Keynesianism.

The second message being the more interesting.

Meanwhile, one irony is that while Tokyo was busy dotting the countryside with “airports to nowhere,” it lagged on beefing up air-transport infrastructure at places that actually need it. A third runway at Narita, the country’s main international gateway, remains mired in political wrangling.

Stimulus packages don’t just crowd-out the private sector, they can also crowd-out otherwise legitimate infrastructure spending that needs to be undertaken. We saw this in Australia last year where the government were so busy building (new) school halls that they neglected or delayed building proper schools and classroom upgrades.

I’m planning a longer post on Republicanism based on a paper I wrote with some of my colleagues a few years ago. In the meantime, I couldn’t let a rather silly op-ed in the Australian pass without an immediate raspberry.

It contains the usual litany of whining. The Prince is a fine fellow but won’t be elected, the monarchy doesn’t reward merit and so is unAustralian (I’m paraphrasing) (does Chris Kenny know anything about the income tax system?) and so on. But its always about the children.

We explain to them that we have a democratic system that strives to ensure the will of the people is expressed through their parliaments and their governments. Political power is acquired through the ballot box and other positions of authority are appointed by our democratically elected representatives, again on merit.

We have numerous legislative devices to protect these values of democracy and merit.

Yet at the very pinnacle of our system of government, we place a person who wins their position as a family heirloom.

But our Republican friends are never able to explain why if Ausralian democracy has such a fundamental flaw at ‘the very pinnacle of our system of government’ why our democracy works so well. We have ballot boxes, we have the will of the people being expressed through parliament, and all those good things that Kenny suggests. The other problem that he has is that, unlike in the UK*, we have had an election and the monachy won. At the time the Republicans proposed replacing one unelected individual with another unelected individual whose only redeeming feature was that they would be an Australian. The will of the people at the ballot box was otherwise.

* Of course in the UK the Parliament (reflecting, perhaps, the will of the people) choose the restore the monarchy and later choose to rehabilitate the monarchy and could, if it wanted, to abolish the monarchy. I don’t know the relative strength of the republican movement in the UK, but I suspect it is a small constituency at the ballot.

Some constructive commentary from CL.

Catallaxy is a pretty popular, important Australian blog. I think it’s time it had an Instapundit-like professionalism about its appearance and security. It’s a run-down looking piece of crap at the moment and the previous platform wasn’t much better.

Time to decide whether you want a proper modern blog or an internet jalopy.

Well yes, I suppose so. I’m happy to engage in some market research on the matter. What would you like to see? No promises.

Let’s also acknowledge the effort Jacques Chester has put into getting us into a new home.

In the next few days I’ll passing the hat around asking people for donations to cover Jacques’ costs and a bit to keep heart and soul together.

… then you are reading Catallaxy Files on the new server.

Note for authors: You will need to generate a new password. To the best of my ability, your usernames and email addresses are identical to the ones you used to have.

Tim Lambert points us to this excellent analysis by John Nielsen-Gammon and the Glaciergate story is perhaps even worse than we first thought. This is not just a simple error or transcription problem.

the available evidence indicates that the IPCC authors of this section relied upon a secondhand, unreferreed source which turned out to be unreliable, and failed to identify this source.

Nielsen-Gammon also finds a remarkable consistency between the IPCC statement (on the left in the panel below) and a statement at the India Environment Portal (on the right in the panel below).

The inartfulness of the transfer of verbiage from the IEP to the IPCC explains the first word (“Its”) of the second IPCC sentence: there’s no single noun to which “Its” can refer in the IPCC quote, but in the IEP quote, “Its” refers to “The glacier” (poor English, but singular) in the previous sentence. To me, this is like a fingerprint: I am convinced that the IPCC author paraphrased the IEP article and leaving off or altering the references.

It just doesn’t look good at all.

He is also able to track down a potential origin of the 2035 date (emphasis added).

According to Kotlyakov, the loss of 80% of the extrapolar glaciation on the Earth’s surface will be by 2350, not 2035. And even after 2350 there will still be some glaciers surviving in the Karakoram, the Himalayas, and in parts of Tibet.

There are other errors too.

Recall that the IPCC quote referred to a table. The table lists the retreat of 8 Himalayan glaciers. Only one such retreat is as stated in the WWF report. Another retreat, recorded as 2840 m from 1845-1966, is listed as a rate of 134 m/yr, but the actual rate is 23 m/yr. Whoever did the calculation for the IPCC divided by 21 years instead of 121 years! The rest of the values are from other, unnamed sources.

Lambert’s own analysis is also quite interesting. He looks at the reviewing process itself.

There was no cite at all for the claim and more than one reviewer noted that a citation was needed. If the chapter authors had followed this comment, all would have been well:

I am not sure that this is true for the very large Karakoram glaciers in the western Himalaya. Hewitt (2005) suggests from measurements that these are expanding – and this would certainly be explained by climatic change in precipitation and temperature trends seen in the Karakoram region (Fowler and Archer, J Climate in press; Archer and Fowler, 2004) You need to quote Barnett et al.’s 2005 Nature paper here – this seems very similar to what they said. (Hayley Fowler, Newcastle University)

But the response was this:

Was unable to get hold of the suggested references will consider in the final version

Instead the authors added to a cite to this WWF report, which says

“In 1999, a report by the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology (WGHG) of the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI) stated: “glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the livelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high”.

And here we see the perils of lazy citing. The IPCC report should have cited the WGHG/ICSI report, but the authors weren’t able to get hold of it. If they had, they would have found that it doesn’t say anything about the glaciers disappearing by 2035. The WWF report authors hadn’t seen the WGHG report either, but relied on this New Scientist story, by a reporter that hadn’t seen the report either, but had talked to the author of the WGHG report.

So Lambert concludes its all about lazy citation. But that isn’t what he has found. The IPCC state that they are unable “to get hold of the suggested references” but that isn’t the WGHG/ICSI report they can’t get hold of. The reviewer is suggesting they get hold of a paper in Nature. Furthermore the reviewer is saying that the peer-reviewed literature is suggesting that glaciers are expanding not melting away. The IPCC ignore that, claim they can’t find a reference in Nature, and then publish the false information anyway.

The Rudd government’s White Paper into the CPRS at page 2-3 contains this statement now know to be false.

Melting of the Himalayan glaciers. These glaciers feed several of the most important rivers in Asia, which underpin the livelihoods of some of the most populous nations. Decreased freshwater availability could affect more than a billion people in Asia by 2050.

While the government has a disclaimer on the paper, nonetheless the greatest moral issue of our time can’t be based on a lie.

It seems the Garnaut Report also swallowed the Himalayan glacier story. At page 99

After the polar regions, the Himalayas are home to the largest glacial areas. Together, the Himalayan glaciers feed seven of the most important rivers in Asia—the Ganga, Indus, Brahmaputra, Salween, Mekong, Yangtze and Huang. These glaciers are receding faster than any other glaciers around the world, and some estimates project that they may disappear altogether by 2035 (WWF Nepal Program 2005).
Rivers fed from glaciers are projected to experience increased streamflows over the next few decades as a result of glacial melt, followed by a subsequent decline and greater instability of inflows as glaciers begin to disappear altogether, leaving only seasonal precipitation to feed rivers (WWF Nepal Program 2005). Glacial retreat can also result in catastrophic discharges of water from meltwater
lakes, known as glacial lake outburst floods, which can cause considerable destruction and flooding downstream.

But wait, there’s more (at page 147)

The melting of the Himalayan and Tibetan plateau glaciers illustrates the complex nexus of climate change, economic security and geopolitics. Well over a billion people are dependent on the flow of the area’s rivers for much of their food and water needs, as well as transportation and energy from hydroelectricity. Initially, flows may increase, as glacial runoff accelerates, causing extensive flooding. Within a few decades, however, water levels are expected to decline, jeopardising food production and causing widespread water and power shortages.

Sounds terrible. Thankfully we now know that isn’t true. Actually we know a bit more; Walter Russell Mead uses the F-word.

One of the most alarming predictions of the IPCC, the scientific panel that is considered the world’s most authoritative source of information on global warming, turns out to be a total fraud

He says heads should roll. Yes, I think so.
(HT: Noodle)