Parsing

"To point to his modest military record and say it is the cause of his occasional flashes of international assertiveness is to ignore a good deal of the evidence and to lack a bit of common sense."

That's Nathan Williams yesterday criticizing Lin Cho-shui's profile of Xi Jinping as "assertive" due to his having something of a military background. I'm not sure exactly what Nathan imagines the significance of his point to be, but I think the emphasis he places on distinguishing civilian and military leadership...

"PLA budget growth began after Tiananmen and accelerated rapidly under civilian, not military, leadership."

.... is misplaced. It would be naive to imagine the PLA as simply subservient to, rather than parasitical on the civilian leadership in the CCP. As Lin Cho-shui himself says:

"...the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has always played a crucial role in the CCP’s internecine power struggles."

... and later...

"...the more the PLA was kept at arms length from the party and government, the more it developed into a kingdom of its own."

Bruno Walther

Bruno Walther in a letter to the Taipei Times on Monday:

"The Taipei Times reported that the Humane Genome Project is providing more evidence that it is our environment, not our genes, which causes mental illness (“Mental illness revealed to be caused by environmental factors,” Oct. 18, page 9). As the article makes clear, the solution to this problem is state-sponsored intervention. What will be the (predictable) response of “Tea Party” conservatives and right-wing bloggers? You’ve guessed it: denial."

Could it be that Walther has anyone in particular in mind? At any rate, the contention that "mental illnesses" are a product of "nurture" rather than "nature" is, in many cases, little more than a tautology - the American Psychiatric Association in their DSM-IV Committee, for example, simply votes on whether to count certain descriptions of neurological functioning and behaviour as diseases. Now, whatever other controversies surround the categorization of mental illnesses, that is not science; it is a measure of consensus substituted for a measure of reality. Nor would I deny the environment as a cause of mental illness in the usual, non-social-constructionist sense. Were children brought up in exposure to, for example, predatory socialism in the former eastern-bloc countries more prone to some form of "mental illness" than children brought up in the comparatively sane conditions of the west?

An even more salient question would be this: how long before there is an attempt made to classify AGW skepticism as a mental illness? More broadly - how long until the Left tries to classify critics and skeptics of government solutions generally as mentally ill? After all, it is only the next logical step for the Left - it is not as if they'd have any moral problem with doing so.

As to whether state-sponsored intervention is the solution to reducing rates of mental illness, the mere assertion that it is so does not amount to making the matter "clear" as Walter would have it. Here's the quote from the Oliver James piece to which Walther refers:

"Instead, the Human Genome Project is rapidly providing a scientific basis for the political left. Childhood maltreatment, economic inequality and excessive materialism seem the main determinants of mental illness. State-sponsored interventions, like reduced inequality, are the most likely solutions."

Got that? A "scientific basis for the political left"... uttered without a hint of historically-informed irony. And consider what "excessive materialism" could be brought to refer to - having a full belly, living in a comfortable house and driving a new car? Would an honest man not consider malnutrition, starvation, homelessness, refugee status and economic dependency - all those things resulting from an insufficiency of material goods - as more likely causes of mental illness than "excessive materialism"? Should this kind of thing continue to fester away in the darkness of the Universities and newspapers it will come to be yet another chapter in the deliberate corruption of science by politics.

And there is more nastiness in that article:

"Politics may be the reason why the media has so far failed to report the small role of genes. The political right believes that genes largely explain why the poor are poor, as well as twice as likely as the rich to be mentally ill. To them, the poor are genetic mud, sinking to the bottom of the genetic pool."

No. The poor are poor largely because of the structure of economic incentives available to them - from unemployment insurance and other subsidies, to rising inflation and low interest rates on savings. Interestingly, a more recent incentive for people to continue to remain unemployed in the UK has been the offering of State benefits for a burgeoning class of mental disorders. Back to Walther:

"Whether it is scientific evidence of global warming published in the top academic journals or overwhelming evidence that our environment is in serious meltdown, as reported last week once again at the international biodiversity conference in Japan...

Overwhelming? Meltdown? Please - only a simpleton would be overwhelmed. The methodological limitations of climate science ought to be apparent to any good mathematician, diligent engineer or honest statistician, but allowing for the possibility that Walther is none of those, I shall now name them. First, the engineering difficulties of acquiring good data cannot be dismissed out of hand - and the subsequent coding of that data is a crucial task that must be done with both rigour and transparency. Second, the difficulty of modeling a vastly complex non-linear system on just a few decades worth of data (even assuming the quality of that data to be perfect) ought to be obvious to anyone with a passing familiarity with for example, the sheer complexity of mathematics required to adequately model airflow in even relatively minor aspects of aircraft design: the level of statistical uncertainty involved would necessarily prohibit claims of "overwhelming evidence" by any honest man. But that paragraph of Walther's goes on:

"...or yet more evidence that social and educational services increase mental well-being and quality of life..."

What evidence? How is mental well-being and quality of life to be defined - and who gets to define these things? Walther goes on:

"...the recipe for denial is as predictable as it is harmful to society. This consists of the endless repetition of cherry-picked data or outright lies, insinuations of scientific conspiracies or claims that there is still a “debate” going on because a few scientists do not belong to the consensus of 99 percent of the world’s scientific community."

Just how do you suppose that Walther came up with that figure of 99% if not by... oh, I don't know... lying? Is it actually possible for example to be a bona-fide researcher on "climate change" and yet be an AGW skeptic? Of course not - es ist verboten. And on his claim that climate skeptics use both cherry-picked data and "outright lies" - was not the Hockey Stick an infamous example of such cherry-picking? And where are these "outright lies"? They are certainly not on my blog - despite Turton and his bad faith bullshit. As to insinuations of scientific conspiracies - what exactly are the conditions governing the funding of climate research? How many jobs now depend on this "industry" that produces nothing but that third item on the infamous rhetorical list... statistics? This is a fact; to the extent such climate scientists are funded by governments, then they are living on and working with stolen money.

"As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, global problems of smuggling, trade imbalances, nuclear proliferation, health and environmental deterioration, to name just a few, need to be urgently addressed. Therefore, we need strong global governance backed up by interventionist national governments more than ever, as was pointed out in another recent article in the Taipei Times (“Global power structures a growing, but still distant future,” Oct. 15, page 9)."

The problems Walther mentions of course do need to be solved, but his use of "therefore" to connect them to his preferred solution is a non-sequitur. Presumably, he has no real conception of any alternative way of thinking about these problems - nor any real concern with whether his preferred solution can actually work. How has intervention by national governments helped to solve famine and environmental deterioration in Africa for example?

"Taiwan’s government should be at the forefront of building strong global alliances the policies of which should be based on evidence, common sense, universal rights and protection of the global commons."

Evidence and common sense? They'd better not listen to Walther then. He is essentially calling for a worldwide social democratic system - a kind of "let's turn the whole world into Sweden" approach.

"For example, it should heed the advice of Jurgen Lefevere and unilaterally implement cuts in greenhouse gas emissions (“Can Taiwan join in the fight against climate change?” Oct. 17, page 3). This would demonstrate good will, improve Taiwan’s international clout, get its renewable energy industry growing, improve energy security, create competitive, high-quality jobs and encourage the economy to develop in a low-carbon, high-tech and sustainable way. What’s not to like about this? Even China is doing it."

Or... how about unilaterally instituting a one-child policy to ensure permanent demographic decline and thus a permanent lowering of Taiwan's carbon output? This would help create competitive high quality jobs and encourage the economy to grow in a low-carbon, high tech and sustainable way too. Even China is doing it.

Really, Bruno Walther is the very worst - in a long line of extremely stupid commentators on international and Taiwanese politics - he is the very worst person I have ever read in the pages of the Taipei Times. I said this to Turton here, but he killed the comment, presumably to spare his fellow Soviet, who I have little doubt, reads both Turton's blog and mine:

"Walther is a liability Turton, do yourself a favour and dump him."

Ben Goren

"The 'free market' libertarians and neo-conservatives seek to defend has, as I understand it, a logical conclusion in a world were no law impedes the ability of an individual, or business, to acquire and protect resources gained through any system of enterprise / exchange."

Then you don’t understand it Ben, and therefore, never have understood it. It is as though nobody has ever explained it to you honestly; libertarian thought is not the same as “libertine” thought (if that can even be called “thought”). A “libertine” calls for the abolition of all order and all forms of constraint – whether in the form of law or not. The Marquis de Sade was, for example, a libertine. I am not. A libertarian is simply one who insists upon the rights of the individual irrespective of race, gender, nationality, social background etc. Those rights must be recognized by law and as such, my insistence upon my own rights naturally entails the observance of the rights of others and this necessarily poses constraints upon me, that for example, if I do not wish others to aggress against me or my property, I must therefore refrain from aggressing against them and theirs. If another business sought to acquire – without my consent - resources lying upon my property, then, under a free market system, they would be guilty of theft and I could prosecute them. So your statement above as to how you understand the free market indicates that you actually don’t understand it.

"Additionally, ultimately all regulation and law that appropriates monies from the profits of business and individuals unbalances the natural equilibrium of the distribution of resources."

No – that’s a misreading. Three points: first, actually that argument is correctly made against distortion of “the time structure of production” by monetary policy (I will have to explain that another time). Secondly, whatever the “natural distribution of resources” may be, there is no good reason to think that it must necessarily be in “equilibrium” – both upward and downward trends in such things as wealth and population are good reasons to discard this idea from the outset. Third, your statement is internally incoherent because although it is true that taxes, laws and regulations obviously affect the incomes of businesses (and not always negatively so – many large corporations are among the first not only to call for legislation and regulation, but to actually write it for the government - in order to put their competitors out of business), the “natural” distribution of resources in a market would necessarily include provision for law and enforcement mechanisms, whether under a minimal State or a total market system. Consider: laws against minor cases of theft or fraud for example, might be applied by imposing fines on the culprits (and why could this not encompass your “and law that appropriates monies from the profits of business and individuals”?). The same reasoning also applies in cases of externalities in which, for example, a petrochemical plant, would by law be forced to make reparations against local residents for verifiable damages to their persons or property.

"The free market beloved of the new right seeks to make all resources a matter of exchange - including public goods."

All economic resources (i.e. scarce ones) already are a matter of exchange, Ben. The argument is over whether those exchanges should be forced at the point of a gun or not. Your “public goods” are only “public” because that is a nice sounding word to hide the fact that the exchanges which make them possible take place down the barrel of a gun. If I refuse for long enough to pay certain taxes, for example, I will eventually find myself staring down that barrel. Turton thinks this is an “efficient” way to get those “public goods” he thinks is best for both me and everyone else.

"The problem here is that we are generally all working on the nation-state model in which we hold collective ownership of certain resources within a predefined geographical area - an use or misuse of those resources have negative externalities for the rest of the population included in that imagined community."

Well you can leave me out of your “we”. That lots of other people agree upon the nation-state model doesn’t make it right, any more than if some skinny 12 year old got his nose broken by a bully at school meant that therefore he must have been in the wrong to refuse to hand over his lunch money.

As to your externalities point – sure. That is why power over those resources must not be centralized in the hands of the few, which is what a State owned corporation necessarily does. Now the Left’s typical solution to this problem is to democratize the decsion making structure of large corporations (e.g. water) – and although it appears to be an answer to the problem, it isn’t a very intelligent one.

"It seems to me that you are suspicious of a centralised legal architecture. What particular architecture do you think would best simultaneously enforce rights and motivate people to curb their random whims? I ask this so I can go and do some research to better understand your position."

You’re damn right I’m “suspicious of a centralized legal architecture” – I can call the whole military and political history of the 20th century as my witness for that. The very worst of all large scale human rights abuses always occurred under the auspices of States with extremely centralized legal architectures. But it is more than that, those monstrosities occurred due to the centralization of political and military power – which is the most significant corrollary of centralized legal architecture. There are many ways of decentralizing both political power and the legal architecture in which it may typically be expressed, but as to which system would be best, I honestly don’t know. The Ninth and Tenth Amendements to the U.S. Constitution, reserving certain powers to the several States could, and in fact sometimes did, work as a restraint on Federal power (the doctine of “nullification” expressed in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 for example went on to be used by the New England states against the trade embargo imposed by President Jefferson himself – who was largely the author of the Kentucky Resolutions) – but it would be dishonest to say that the U.S. is not now a country of basically unlimited government.

"For my part I reject the concept of responsibility in which it is a reflection of the rights we enjoy and rather state that in order for our rights to be protected, we have a necessity to consider the rights of others."

That’s (almost) what responsibility means Ben – strict observance of rights: I don’t steal from you, and you don’t steal from me. But it also means I must consider taking action against you if you do steal from me.

"If we are all continually mindful of the rights of others, there is no need for a concept of duty or responsibility, which is vulnerable to the state or power elites shaping using culturally subjective, exclusionary and discriminatory norms."

To be mindful of the rights of both yourself and others and to act on this value – irrespective of how these “rights” may be framed in law by a legislature – that is what it means to be “responsible”, i.e. someone who will respond justly to cases of injustice, which are what violations of rights are.

"The difference between us I suspect comes in the fact that I still see a need for a state apparatus and independent judiciary to regulate interactions between people and protect rights when individuals and businesses fail to."

OK, but individuals and businesses only fail to protect rights because they are largely prevented from so doing by the State which claims a monopoly over this critical social function (although individuals and businesses can and should challenge this). The minarchist libertarian would argue for keeping an independent, common law judicial system whilst stripping the State of much of its monopolistic power over this function.

"I also support a strong national infrastructure in realms such education, health, transport, energy, security and environmental protection / sustainability."

“National”. That’s another nice-sounding word to hide the fact that what you actually support is a system in which education, health, transport, energy, security and environmental protection services are based upon routine and systematic rights violations perpetrated by the State, principally theft, extortion and fraud.

"Perhaps culture plays a large part in the levels of collectivity of a nation."

Undoubtedly.

"In the US, some states still want to sucede from the Union and individuals are suspicious of the Federal Government."

Actually I don’t believe that’s true. Many states wish to nullify some Federal laws and programs (e.g. California right now has effectively nullified the Federal prohibition on medical use of marijuana), but that’s not the same thing at all.

"Libertarians still have no coherent answer to the question of how to manage public goods and collective national services in a developed and industrialised nation-state."

Yes we do, you just don’t know what it is because you've been on automatic pilot for far too long.

Turton

"Mike, all of this is bullshit. Moreover, you know perfectly well it is bullshit. I have zero respect for people who argue in bad faith for wholly anti-science positions."

That was Turton yesterday after I had made reference to problems with the coding of the CRU data as evidenced in the emails under the "Harry Read Me" file and also in the leaked code itself:

"...the organization writing the code did not adhere to standards one might find in professional software engineering. The code had easily identified bugs, no visible test mechanism, was not apparently under version control and was poorly documented. It would not be surprising to find that other code written at the same organization was of similar quality. And given that I subsequently found a bug in the actual CRUTEM3 code only reinforces my opinion."

That's John Graham-Cumming, a professional computer programmer, in his submission to the UK parliament in March earlier this year. Prior to that, he also took part in an interview for the BBC which you can watch here (the introduction to the interview starts at 1.35 with Susan Watts standing outside Parliament). The part of my statement Turton was responding to was this:

"To say nothing of last year’s Climategate scandal, in which the coding of surface temperature records was shown to have been done in such a way that the original data is practically irretrievable – hence CRU's denial of FOI requests."

Where is the falsity in that statement? Is the word "irretrievable" too strong? Whatever, I cannot see how it warrants Turton's furious plunging.

A charitable view of that "bullshit" remark would be that he made the unwarranted inference that I saw the coding problems as evidence of a CRU conspiracy. But that implication is simply not there - all I said was that the coding was a mess (this seems to me incontrovertible) and that that explains why CRU sought to deny the FOI requests made of them. I rather think that is a damning enough comment in itself - irrespective of the plays some journos may have made for "respectability" in the months after the story first broke.

Anyway, upshot of that thread is that Turton has asked me not to comment on his blog any more - here's his little variation on that classic leftist argument:

"Stay off my blog. I don't have time to waste on flat-earthers, creationists, and agw denialists."

In other words: "shut up". It's the same response I got from David Reid earlier when I asked him to back up his claims about rising sea levels around Taiwan: "shut up." It's the same response I expect to be encountering again and again, but I will not shut up.

Turton: my absence will be your loss whether you appreciate it now or not.

Fanapi Flooding Claims

On Wednesday 6th, Shern Jian-chuan 沈建全, a professor of marine environmental engineering at Kaohsiung Marine University in Nanzih had an editorial piece in the Taipei Times. It dealt with the subject of flood control following Typhoon Fanapi, which hit Niaosong, Nanzih, Ciaotou and Ganshan districts of Kaohsiung particularly hard - all districts with which, like me, Shern Jian-chuan will be quite familiar. To set the scene, the professor issues the following claims about the impact of Fanapi:

"As Typhoon Fanapi swept across eastern and southern Taiwan on Sept. 19, it brought extremely heavy rainfall of 500mm to 800mm or more in six hours to Gangshan (岡山) and Ciaotou (橋頭) townships in Kaohsiung County and Nanzih (楠梓) and Zuoying (左營) districts in Kaohsiung City. That is well in excess of the 480mm deluge that can be expected to occur once every 200 years. In fact, we could expect this kind of volume to occur in these areas only once every 500 years. Such heavy rainfall is bound to cause flooding, whatever city it falls on."

I see no reason to question his claims as to the measurements of rainfall - having seen such flooding myself in precisely these areas over several years, I can well believe those figures. However, the claim that such quantities of rainfall have a 1/500 chance of occurring seems to me highly questionable. That probability statement cannot possibly have been derived purely from a rigorous data analysis, since there is insufficient data - recorded history itself on this island only goes back about 400 years. It can only have been derived, therefore, from a statistical model based on an assumption that rainfall in Taiwan is normally distributed. But since normal distributions are rarely found in nature, I'm disinclined to regard such statements as trustworthy. I have tried to contact Shern Jian-chuan to check his facts, but in the meantime I've looked at the Central Weather Bureau's own statistics on rainfall in Kaohsiung - unfortunately the website only gives statistics for the last decade which is far too little (presumably Shern Jian-chuan has access to a larger data set). Anyway, between 2001 and 2010, the mean rainfall in the Kaohsiung area for the month of September is 302.2mm with this September's outlier a massive 853mm. For that rainfall pattern to fit a normal distribution, there would have had to have been a year in which Kaohsiung received -248.6mm of rain: so clearly, Shern Jian-chuan would have to have access to a much larger data set from which he can claim a mean rainfall value much larger than 302.2mm (i.e. 550.8 or higher) - if, that is, he is using a model based on a normal distribution of rainfall to derive those probability statements.

"What’s more, global warming may cause extra-heavy downpours to happen more and more often."

And look at that - that's just bluster, casually thrown out without a hint of supporting evidence whatever, on the expectation that it will be swallowed down without question. And this, a year after the climategate scandal - which, disgracefully, received scarcely any media attention at all in Taiwan. I hope to have a reply from professor Shern in the next week or so.

The Clicking Of Certain Gears

I have been busy the back end of this week with a lot of interesting reading and with having to deal with a couple of minor domestic crises. I have five draft posts waiting to be finished.

Following on from his report last week on the secret meeting between the PRC's Vice Minister of Public Security, Chen Zhimin and Taiwanese security officials, this week J.Michael Cole sought a slightly longer depth of field to bring the context for this meeting into focus by drawing together answers from three proclaimed U.S. foreign policy experts to his questions on East Asian geopolitical-military maneuverings. The introductory warning:

"All these moves, added to a Washington that appeared to be increasingly reluctant to provide Taiwan with the advanced weapons it needed to defend itself, pointed to a possible reassessment of the line drawn by then-US secretary of state John Foster Dulles and then-assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs Dean Rusk in 1950, just as the Korean War was breaking out, which turned Taiwan into a redoubt against the communists in China. This is a line that, for all intents and purposes, remains effective today. Could this mean that Japan and the US, 50 years into their security alliance, have opted for a strategic retreat, abandoning Taiwan in order to consolidate a more easily defensible position, whose outer edge begins at the newly redrawn ADIZ?"

That single, rather timid sentence I have emboldened reads just like an anxiously elongated question mark, a nervous application for yet one more line of credit. That question mark, along with its instigator, the frightening prospect of a U.S. strategic retreat from East Asia, was what J.Michael Cole took to the following foreign policy experts last week.

First, Arthur Waldron, a professor of international relations in the history department at Pennsylvania:

“A month or so ago, that [U.S. retreat] would have been a plausible position. That is why, I think, Japan shifted the ADIZ [Japanese air defense zone]... Ironically, it has been the Taiwanese leadership and a seeming public lack of concern that has caused some to consider redrawing the line.”

A plausible position a month ago? Why not now? That doesn't reassure at all.

Second, the former chairman of the AIT and current Brookings Institute Senior Fellow, Richard Bush. He had this to say:

“We can certainly not rule out the possibility that the United States might decide to play less of an international role and provide less ‘security public goods’ than it has in the past … I see no sign that the US commitment to the peace and security in East Asia is waning”

... and ...

“We have a multi-faceted stake in the region. Our regional policy is one supported by both Democratic and Republican leaders and policy experts.."

I don't find that particularly reassuring either because my worry lies not so much with any purported waning of U.S. commitment to peace and security (i.e. the status quo), but with the fact that that "commitment" signifies the lack of any concentrated moral challenge to the existence of the PRC. When was the last time a prominent Western leader openly challenged or mocked the PRC, in the manner of Reagan's rebuke to Gorbachev? This cowardice ought to be traced back to the decisions by the political and military leadership of the U.S. and Britain after WW2 to forego the historical opportunity provided by their military advantage to challenge the communists in both the USSR and China. Nevertheless, the essentially evil nature of the PRC (and yes that is a considered use of the adjective) still remains effectively unchallenged, sixty five years later. I do not see how the people of China can ever free themselves without strong leadership from the West - and that most definitely is not going to come from the Europeans.

Cole's third interviewee was David Arase, a professor at Claremont in California, who did at least try to offer reassurance:

“I’m pretty sure no one is thinking about handing Taiwan over to China. If it did, why should Japan trust the US with its security?”

One answer to that of course is that Japan shouldn't and indeed, Japan has already taken some of its own, cautious, steps toward its own defense - it extended its Air Defense Zone in June and is talking about deploying troops on some of the islands - Yonaguni, Miyako and Ishigaki - it claims for its southernmost prefecture of Okinawa. It is correct of course that Japan's defense still overwhelmingly rests upon the weight of the U.S. deterrent, and any decision to develop nuclear weapons by Tokyo would likely face political difficulties. However, all of that is beside the point. In addition to noting the terms of Tokyo's surrender to the U.S. at the close of WW2, I think we must take into account the latent (and frequently not so latent) Chinese hatred toward Japan which has been a very useful card for the CCP to play on in maintaining their grip on political power. No Japanese government since WW2 has had any realistic chance of abandoning its strategic alignment with the U.S., and to pretend otherwise is insulting.

More from the interviews - this time, Richard Bush first:

"The actions of China are driving our friends back into our embrace,” Richard Bush said, with Taiwan ostensibly in mind. “That Beijing has brought this about is quite astounding after its fairly deft diplomacy of the last two decades.”

In the absence of evidence I can only treat the first sentence as conjectural at best; my sense is of a certain political momentum toward Beijing rather than Washington, hence the talks between the KMT and the CCP back in 2006 when the KMT weren't even in power. On top of that, I can't say I share the astonishment expressed in the second sentence - the U.S. has maneuvered itself into a position of relative weakness.

Back to David Arase:

“The Pentagon could see an advantage in provoking China to assume a belligerent stance. One good incident and China’s charm offensive in Southeast Asia is undone.”

Assuming there are people in the Pentagon who are trying to influence the Obama administration into putting the PRC "back in its box" as it were, I can only say the signs have been very timid so far. Naval exercises do not carry anything like the same weight when they are not backed by the clear, clarion call of moral challenge from the President himself. Has the current U.S. President given any signs that he is capable of that?

Finally, back to Arthur Waldron:

“The other Asian countries know that the Taiwan Strait is still the front line,” Waldron said, adding that as Taiwanese, like others in Asia, recoil from China’s “crude behavior,” more confidence and coherence will develop in society to oppose Beijing."

Let's hope so, but let's not kid ourselves that the rest of Asia can face down the PRC without the clear moral support of the people of the United States. And facing down the PRC is a responsibility that any person who cares for his or her freedom in this part of the world must not shirk.

Reheating The AGW Fraud

A little spark ricocheting its way around the tubes last weekend was the news that Harold Lewis, a senior physics professor at the University of California has resigned his membership of the American Physical Society. Part of his spiritedly worded resignation (reprinted in full by James Delingpole at the Telegraph) runs thus:

"It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist."

At the time the Climategate scandal broke last year, I sent letter after letter after letter to the Timid Times and not a single one was published. If I recall correctly, they didn't even acknowledge the scandal had happened at all, let alone report it, until some months later after the feeding frenzy had died down a bit. That was a disgraceful dereliction of journalistic values which was simply stunning. The Taipei Times does not even display that level of political bias on Taiwan party politics. Their decision to publish Paul Deacon's response to Charles Hong's response to him earlier was therefore no surprise at all. Look at this pillock:

"There is not anything like the equivalent weight of evidence on the side of skeptics and it is therefore a consensus that needs urgently to be acknowledged in some quarters before we can move on to thinking more seriously about tackling the possible consequences..."

There is no onus on skeptics to prove a negative - Deacon clearly doesn't know the first fucking thing about science. The evidence in favour of anthropogenic global warming is not at all conclusive and even if it was, the methods proposed for dealing with it are just more boiler-plate, warmed over the lip of the cannibal pan socialism.

Counter-Intel

J. Michael Cole had his editorial out in the Taipei Times today. He hits all the notes I expected, and the general tone is right ("treason") but of particular interest is the angle on the Ma administration's recent revival of the ROC constitution and its claims over the Senkaku islands.

Perfect Pitch Of Political Outrage: Claire Berlinski Again

I am liking this Claire Berlinski woman more and more... In this third segment of Peter Robinson's interview with her for National Review, she absolutely crucifies him - and rightly so, the silly preppy choir boy - over the insolent comparison of Sarah Palin to Margaret Thatcher and the equally insolent and, in my view, utterly ridiculous suggestion of her as a potential Presidential candidate. Berlinski says exactly what needed to be said (pick it up from around the 5.50 mark):

Peter Robinson: "...no, but that suggests that she's working at it, that a year or two from now say by 2012, while she's a young woman, by 2016 this is someone who could still be very Thatcher-like, she just has some studying to do right?"

Claire Berlinski: "Margaret Thatcher had a twenty year parliamentary career in which she clearly expressed every position relevant to Britain's political life: foreign policy, the economy... in terms that were absolutely clear to anyone who wanted to consult them by the time anyone was seriously talking about her as a leader of the Conservative Party; no one was saying, well maybe in a few years she'll have mastered this, she had mastered this... years, years before anyone was seriously talking about this. And we're talking about President of the United States at a time of unique geopolitical danger, at a time when the United States economy is in the worst shape its been in since the Great Depression... we're talking about the world's last remaining superpower to which every other country is looking... for signals, for hope... for leadership, and we're talking about putting someone who might be prepared in 2016 in office: are you serious?! Where are the adults? I don't want someone who might be prepared in 2016 to even be spoken about as a possible President of the United States right now."

Go Charlie Red!

"A reference mentions “The Hockey Stick graph — the foundation of global warming theory — has shown to be scientifically invalid, perhaps even a fraud.”

Charles Hong is having none of that Paul Deacon "there is no scientific controversy" bullshit. That reference he mentions is presumably Andrew Montford, aka Bishop Hill, author of "The Hockey Stick Illusion". Good show Charlie! Give 'em some that old time falsifying evidence, it's like holy water to vampires...

Still, I am a little surprised the editors at the Taipei Times published this second letter from him given that the notion of catastrophic and strictly anthropogenic global warming (or is it "climate change"?) spills so easily from their pages seemingly every other week.

Tomster Advice...

Lieutenant Colonel Slade to his tomcat before leaving for New York City:

"Remember... when in doubt, fuck."

- 2.40.

The Trap Of Environmental Evangelicalism

Sirs,

I read Hsu Su-jean's (許夙君) editorial with some interest. I suggest that his vague premise of competition between Taiwan and China can be elaborated by stipulating to the supposition that Taiwanese entrepreneurs could profit from attempting, in cooperation with certain Chinese interests, to peacefully render important features of PRC administered infrastructure economically obsolete. In connection with the three strengths Hsu sees in Taiwan relative to China, I believe that his choice of the modifier "potential" deserves further attention.

The relative preponderence of strong scientific training in Taiwan may continue to confer marginal advantage to contract manufacturers basing the R&D aspects of their operations in Hsinchu and Tainan, but tight profit margins and the risk of further economic shocks will compel them to consider further diversifying their investments. As I have written previously, network independent water and energy technologies may represent one such opportunity and moreover, an opportunity from which considerable positive environmental externalities could cascade and from which the PRC's command of critical aspects of related infrastructure might be rendered unnecessary and obsolete: a true "win-win" situation.

However, the application of this comparative advantage in scientific training may yet be undermined by the two other "strengths" Hsu identified. Firstly, the legal architecture in Taiwan, though it may in some nonobvious sense be "complete", fails to assign the costs of environmentally damaging externalities from manufacturing and agricultural industries to those most responsible for them. Consequently, market incentives for the production of efficient environmental technologies remain somewhat immature. This must be addressed correctly.

Secondly, the "sensitivity" of Taiwan to western culture has created a hothouse for the cross-pollination of western environmental evangelicals with Taiwanese advocates of further democratization. For Taiwanese people to oppose the current detente between the KMT and CCP on this democratic-environmentalist axis would be self-defeating. First of all such an axis would invariably seek to dictate the redistribution of scientific and financial resources into government regulations, carbon taxes and price controls in order to fulfill fantasies, already discredited, about saving the planet from global warming. Not only are the environmental benefits of these policies highly questionable since they consume the very capital needed to produce practical environmental technologies to market demand, but one can bet good money that such policies will not be adopted by the PRC in any event, thus rendering any local benefits irrelevant to the purported menace of global warming.

The cultural "sensitivity" of Taiwan identified by Hsu is evidently not shared by the "10:10" axis of environmental evangelicals who, apparently not content with David Reid and Paul Deacon's emulation of PRC-like attitudes of childish denial of their critics ("there is no scientific controversy"), have now revealed themselves for what they truly are in publicly portraying - on youtube - the vicious murder of people who merely happen to disagree with them.

Taiwanese people who value their freedom and independence must face the premises of these "environmentalists" squarely for what they really are - a dangerous distraction from the real threat to Taiwan: the PRC.

Yours freely,
Michael Fagan.

(Sent: Sunday 3rd October 2010. Unpublished by the Taipei Times)

Intolerance Vector

I'm actually slightly shaken after having just watched this... Warning: if you haven't seen this already and don't like the sight of children and adults being gratuitously murdered for their opinions, then don't hit that link. James Delingpole at the Telegraph is succinct:

"Kyoto is dead. Copenhagen was a flop. Cancun is going to make a mockery of all those green dreams about global carbon emissions legislation. And how do the environmentalists respond? By force of argument? By presenting new evidence which supports their cause? Nope.

By threatening to blow up anyone who disagrees with them. And not just that: they believe this is actually an entirely reasonable and rather amusing position to adopt."

As an addendum to Delingpole's words, I will offer the reminder that a correct application of natural rights requires of you that you do not tolerate those who are intolerable of others. The question I am really interested in is this: how much longer can the murderous rage of these "environmentalists" be contained by current political parameters?

A Tactical Step Forward?

I was looking over Toby Baxendale's proposal for banking reform in the UK in conjunction with this recent discussion involving some of the heavyweights at Peter Boettke's blog. Baxendale's proposal, if I understand it rightly, argues for the introduction of enough new money by the Bank of England to instantiate a 100% reserve system among the commercial banks (RBS and the like). What I like about the proposal is that, by eliminating the need for a lender of last resort (the Bank of England), it does seem to represent an intermediary step forward between our current predicament and the ideal of a free banking system; if a lender of last resort is not required because banks are keeping 100% reserves, then the only remaining arguments for the continuing existence of the Bank of England are about government spending.

Baxendale's proposal is a bold tactical step. The chief problem with it seems to be that, in effectively advocating the outlawing of fractional reserve (after Baxendale's reform, "fractional reserve accounts" will actually be no more than closed mutual funds), Baxendale's proposal might create new problems whilst the Bank of England, although its original function will have been abolished, yet remains in place issuing loans to government departments and large insurance firms and the like. As George Selgin argues in the Boettke discussion thread and at rather more length here (pdf), the fractional reserve system is not of its own inflationary and involves only temporary redistributions of purchasing power rather than regressive currency debasement, so outlawing fractional reserve, rather than being a good in its own right, is merely an instrumental means of reaching a slightly better but still precarious position from which to further advance the cause of free banking.

Are there any better tactical ways of thinking about the problem of going from the current situation in which commercial banks are like mere branches of the Central Bank to the ideal situation of free banking and competing currencies?

Disclaimer: Although I can recite the basics of Austrian Economics (the origins of money and credit, the subjective theory of value, capital structure and the business cycle, inflation vs deflation, Gresham's law and competition among private currencies), I'm way in over my head here at this level of detail, so in writing this my aim is to clarify my own grasp of the proposal and the discussion surrounding it. For beginners, Brian Micklethwait has a good podcast interview with Mr Baxendale here.

Strategy & Tactics

"Once a secret agreement between the two sides’ security apparatuses is signed, it wouldn’t be hard to cooperate electronically to track and pressure pro--independence bloggers, activists and politicians.

If meetings like this become the norm... then the public won’t know when their actions — which might have been legal in the past — will suddenly be considered dangerous or illegal."

That'll be J.Michael Cole getting his op-ed out early. I'll bet the electronic tracking has been going on for at least several years already.

This totalitarian creep will not be stopped by democratic elections. Get busy on strategy, tactics and network independent technologies.

Dan Bloom

"Helen Pidd’s recent article about cyberstalking and cyberbullying... was an important wake-up call about how the Internet must be monitored more diligently in the digital age."

Monitored more diligently by whom? Who gets to define use or abuse, and what would enforcement look like? Here's the thing Dan - you can't skip over the political manifestation of that precept and then expect everything will just be fine and dandy for everyone. That is very dangerous, class A political power you're playing with in your little sand pit there even if your eyes are too under-developed to distinguish the colours and I don't give a fragrance of monkey turd about your pathetic poem.