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Returns | Oct 15, 2003 11:04
Salam Pax is back in the 'hood! The Baghdad Blogger pretty much gave up posting while he was out of Iraq promoting his book, but he appears to have had a high old time of it in London and elsewhere, and has plenty to say on his return.
His London stories make me feel more of an affinity with him than ever. He did pretty much what I did last time I went to London - met interesting people, went out on the town, and loaded up on books and CDs. His non-encounter with Jack Straw is quite amusing.
Tracey Nelson's awesome game stats are back on Paul Waite's Haka! site. Her analysis of the All Blacks' first World Cup match against Italy tells the story of a game of two halves, in which the forwards spent a good deal of the second half standing back and admiring the speed and skill of their backs.
The All Black front row's impressive mobility is borne out in the stats - its strength against the big bruisers will be properly tested later in the tournament. Young Dan Carter's keenness to be in the game - he was there early at the breakdown more than twice as often as any other back - is also illustrated.
It was a weekend of mismatches, and in that context I guess the ABs did alright. The lineouts and scrums seemed pretty organised, and the bewildering touches of skill from Rockocoko and Carter in the second half were testament to what makes this side different from every other one in the competition. But if Spencer can't kick fairly adjacent goals in an indoor stadium …
I was impressed by the way that Italy never lost their shape, even when they were well beaten. Fiji, on the other hand, were a rabble, and Argentina were extremely disappointing against Australia, who didn't look too flash either. France and England looked pretty scary.
As regards the coverage, the stand-off between TVNZ and Sky is pretty irksome. TVNZ is playing most games live, but only once, and most people will be finding it hard to be in front of a TV for the 4pm to 6pm highlights show. Sky, meanwhile, is dealing with the difficult situation of trying to cover the tournament without actually being able to show any of the rugby.
Funny thing is, there is the odd full replay to be had - but only if you can receive TVNZ's trial satellite signal, although most of the time it's just a TV One simulcast. I understand that some aerial installation companies are geared up to provide generic dishes and boxes able to receive the signal.
I think half the world probably wonders why there isn't a reasonable and viable solution to the Middle East conflict: well, it appears there is. Israeli Opposition politicians and former Palestinian ministers have been negotiating a peace plan in a process guided by the Swiss government. The Palestinians have agreed - momentously - to give up the right of return for refugees in exchange for Palestinian sovereignty over the Temple Mount. Israel would withdraw from almost all of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and Jerusalem would be legally, but not physically, divided.
Arafat has apparently given tacit support, but the plan remains but a dream for so long as Ariel Sharon and his cronies remain in office in Israel. So who's the barrier to peace, then? The Independent had the story and a further analysis.
Petitioner Keith Humm has an interesting analysis of the value - or otherwise - offered by Telecom's DSL products as compared to plain old dial-up. It offers some insight as to why the market has been so disinterested in JetStream.
And Ahmed Zaoui has been reprieved by TVNZ Interactive! The "criminals" directory on TVNZ's images server (noted in Hard News last week) has been migrated over to a new home - where its inhabitants are all just "people".
Respect me in the morning ... | Oct 14, 2003 12:03
Jeanette Fitzsimons described life after the GM moratorium on One News last night: she said companies from New Zealand or abroad making applications to Erma could expect scrutiny so close that some of the "shonkier" ones would probably just drop out in advance. Well, good. That's how it's supposed to work.
If nothing else, the end of the 18-month moratorium will move the debate on from the sprawling shape it has taken and towards real decisions on real, specific questions.
Because, frankly, the GM debate in its current form has not been terribly useful. Last Thursday, the Harbour News ran a story looking forward to the anti-GM march. It quoted Jonathan Eisen - author of a book claiming, among other things, that the Apollo moon landings were faked, and that evidence of buildings and canals on Mars is being covered up - as a protest spokesman. It concluded with a dissenting opinion - from the local branch of the Raelians. Jesus wept. Is this where we're at?
Yesterday morning, in my usual comment slot on 95bFM, I tried to explain my perspective on the issue, the gist of which is in this post. There followed a string of phone calls to the station from people who had been at the march, most of them abusive towards me. There was a lot of emotion washing around all morning.
Personally, I'd be happy enough for applications for commercial release to be held off for another year or three, although I don't expect any to actually be made in that time. On the other hand, Labour is ending the moratorium it put in place - and hasn't that little detail been lost in the passion? - as part of a public policy process that meets the key tests of a democracy.
The party went into and won the 1999 election with this process as policy, as a promise to the Greens, who, just before the election, had presented a petition with 92,000 signatures calling for an inquiry into GM and a moratorium on the release and field trials of GMOs while the issue was investigated further. This is what they got.
The government held the Royal Commission, received its findings, and instituted the formal moratorium to provide some breathing space while a new regulatory structure could be prepared. It then fought another election, and won that. Of the other parties elected to Parliament last year, all but one (the Greens), representing in excess of 90 per cent of votes cast, more or less backed this path.
Moreover, I'm concerned at the recent tendency to retrospectively smear the Royal Commission, most notably in the case of Eisen, whose book, The GE $ellout, argues that:
The Royal Commission, however, was from the start a crucial part of the government's "game plan" – to engineer popular opinion. The Commission's deliberate distortion of the evidence of harm and danger from GE was simply too obvious and repetitive to have been "accidental".
Eisen's press release goes on:
A new book hitting the stands this week that the Royal Commission on GM was primarily an expensive, elaborate "PR exercise" whose outcome was a foregone conclusion.
The GE $ellout, edited by Jonathan Eisen, contends that scientific studies indicating serious harm to human health and the environment have been deliberately and consistently ignored by the NZ government.
This certainly isn't how it was seen at the time. The NBR bitched about how it was the most "politically correct" inquiry of its kind ever undertaken in New Zealand. When the terms of reference and the names of the commissioners were announced, along with news of a voluntary moratorium, it was justifiably claimed by the Greens as a significant policy achievement (Winston Peters, of course, claimed it was all his idea).
The commission sat in 15 towns and cities (even Greymouth!) and held 28 workshops, 10 regional hui and a national hui with Maori. It met with 107 "interested parties" and took around 10,000 submissions in all. It eventually cost around $7 million to complete. The claims of either side were tested and measured against each other before a former chief justice of New Zealand, a doctor, a scientist with relevant experience, and the Anglican Bishop of Auckland, the Right Reverend Richard Randerson. It was not, as Alannah Currie appeared to suggest last week, some obscure thing that happened in Wellington.
The Royal Commission actually had a significant effect before it was even constituted. With a change of government - and, consequently, a Royal Commission - looming, Monsanto withdrew what would have been New Zealand's first application for commercial release, for its GM canola. Under the old regime, the application might well have been approved. Now, I honestly don't think there'd be a chance in hell of GM canola being accepted. Which is good, in my view.
As the likely shape of the government's response emerged, scientists complained at the strictness of the coming regulations. The National Party accused the government of caving in to the Greens, and demanded that the moratorium be cancelled immediately because it went further than what the commission recommended and would harm innovation.
You're not hearing a lot of that from the National Party right now, of course. Act and National have gone very quiet on GM, doubtless reasoning that if anyone's going to get their head shot off, it might as well be Marian Hobbs (although United Future has, creditably, taken a public position - it doesn't actually matter what the position is, so much as that they have the decency to take one).
The major media have been largely hiding out, too. No thunderous front-page editorials - either way - in the Herald, and a continuation of the generally anaemic, personality-based coverage that has plagued the issue. No one seems to have covered the genuinely interesting story around Dr Peter Wills' paper Genetic Engineering: Policy and Science since the Royal Commission: Insoluble Problems, which was posted on the Life Sciences Network website, and subsequently criticised by a number of his peers.
Wills' response to his critics was an extraordinary letter (Word doc) claiming he had been defamed and demanding the immediate removal of the criticism and "written apologies to me from all of the member organisations of the Life Sciences Network." Given that Wills contributes to the Eisen book, which casually defames so many people, his letter seems ill-advised.
The most common fallacy in the press is to attach global significance to a single issue. The Guardian, working on advance information of a significant report due for delivery to the British government on Friday (about which you will hear a lot), ran this story speculating that the results would justify the banning of all GM crops in the UK.
You have to read down a bit to get the nuance: three commercial GM varieties, of canola, sugar beet and maize respectively, were tested against their conventional counterparts; the test being that they had to be more environmentally benign than existing crops. The canola and the sugar beet failed: there were fewer insects in the soil.
You might have been forgiven for thinking from the various stories that it was because they were GM that they damaged the environment. Actually, no: they were designed to resist a particular herbicide, and it was the herbicide that clearly proved too harsh for local conditions. The solution? Don't grow them, obviously. These results would be strong enough for those plants to be rejected for growing in New Zealand.
The maize, on the other hand, came up better - because the conventional maize fields were treated with atrazine, a rather nasty weedkiller which has recently been banned. The Guardian's reports on the issue were strongly criticised by the British Royal Society, but widely quoted by GM opponents.
On the other hand, read this fascinating story from The Atlantic Monthly, which focuses on the way GM plants have been used to aid no-till farming, which is a revolution in soil ecology. It predicts that GM plants will be embraced by many ecologists for this reason.
We also tend to forget that many other countries are having the same debate as us, working through regulatory systems, making their choices. Brazil recently allowed the planting of GM soybeans - in part because its farmers were already importing seed from Argentina, to the point where the Brazilian soy crop was already about 60% GM varieties. Fourteen African states are working on a joint regulatory system. GM cotton appears to be growing well, with less pesticide and better yields, in China, India and Australia. The Canadians, on the other hand, appear to have lost all hope of separation of GM and conventional varieties of canola, and this has hurt their sales into Europe. There are successes and there are failures.
If anything about the science has changed since the Royal Commission, it's separation distances, especially in the case of crops like canola, which is both promiscuous and related to far too many weeds. The Otago University study set out the key future trade issues for New Zealand as regards GM. European food buyers (as the Canadians discovered) are extremely wary about the possibility of intermingling between established crops and similar GM ones. But they're relaxed about GM pine trees, for example. And they place remarkably little stock in the idea of a "GE Free New Zealand".
Actually, the most pause I have been given on the issue this year was the result of a conversation with a physicist at the Skeptics conference. He felt that insufficient attention was given to the role of quantum actions in genetics. He didn't seem to want to ban biotech, but he did think there should be physicists available to Erma. Fair enough.
So there are nuances galore. For the record, I have no doubt that various biotech products will eventually prove highly beneficial. I don't believe GM is fundamentally wrong or against the laws of nature - I respect the people who do, but that's a religious argument. I hold no brief for companies like Monsanto, and I would far rather see New Zealand continue to focus on its own intellectual property in agriculture, as it has done for years. I'm realistic enough to know that big corporations already supply the patented seed that produces our conventional crops, and that that those seeds must already be purchased anew each year (that's the price farmers pay for hybrid vigour). I can see an interesting clash of values in a few years, if GM crops continue to spread in Africa and Asia.
But it's somewhat hazardous to discuss. I knew that anything I said would have me potted as a cheerleader for the biotech industry - which I'm not and don't bloody want to be - but I was a bit shocked by the reaction yesterday. I periodically get abusive emails from anti-GM people, and generally try to answer them in a serious and respectful manner.
For the record, I admire Madge and Alannah Currie, for their extraordinary ability to mobilize, for being creative and not humourless. But I also admire these guys, who stood off to the side with their own little counter-protest on Saturday. One of them was physically assaulted (punched in the face) and - again - the quiet dissenters needed the assistance of the police. I find this quite worrying.
I have friends on the other side of the debate, and I don't want to be anyone's enemy (except perhaps Eisen's, but I'll shut up about that for now). But I don't believe that government was ever going to walk away from the process it began nearly four years ago (this is not the same thing as saying the protest was useless, it wasn't). It probably wonders whether the moratorium itself was a blunder, but I don't think so.
All this means even Madge has to change now. If Alannah wants to continue to speak for the organisation, she'll have to do better in interviews like this, she'll want to avoid alienating people by calling them "stupid white men" and she'll have to start addressing the more specific arguments to which the debate will now turn. Emotional intensity won't do for ever.
The government needs to raise its game too. Corngate drained it of moral authority, the Prime Minister seems to be fighting back a hissy fit every time she has to discuss GM, and it's hard to imagine how a minister could so singularly fail to engender public confidence as Marian Hobbs has.
Clark also needs to get over her issues with Fitzsimons, who I think is going to be a key figure in the next few years. It's crucial to the integrity of the process that there is a reasoned opposition, and Fitzsimons and her colleagues are likely to provide it. For now, many people are saying some wild things about issues they haven't taken the trouble to understand. I'd like it now if everybody took the trouble to show a little respect.
Rugby and me | Oct 10, 2003 11:04
I told this story at my father's funeral. When I was 13 years old, I missed out on the Under 14 Open A team at the Burnside Rugby Club. There weren't enough of us to make up a B side, so we were moved up to the Under 15 Under 8 Stone grade, and merged with their B team.
We were the only B team in a competition of A sides, and we didn't win a game all season. But it was the best year of rugby I ever had. Having laboured away in the front row every other season (and every season after that), I was made number eight, and captain.
I ran with the ball, took tap penalties and generally had a great time. But I couldn't score a try. I'd drive to the line and be held up short, or hoof the ball downfield and chase the bloody thing only to see it take an off-break into touch five yards from the line. We didn't score a lot of tries - our winger was a short-sighted albino - and I was more likely to do so than most, but it just didn't happen.
Nonetheless, my father, as he had ever since I first played rugby at the age of nine when we lived in Greymouth, made time every Saturday to drive me down to the clubroom and, if we had an away game, ferry a carload of boys to the opposition ground. I have always been grateful for that. He watched the games and, I think, enjoyed that season as much as I did.
It so happened that the Under 15 Under 8 Stone B side had a bye on the last weekend of the season, and the Under 14 Open was short of a loose forward. So I came back into the side I'd missed at the beginning of the season, and had a pretty fair game.
And then, in the second half, we had a lineout just inside the opposition 22. We won the ball, and our rangy halfback took it and made ground off the back of the lineout. He got tackled, I called, took the pass, and crashed over, to the right of the posts. I'd like to say I ran 15 metres, but perhaps it was more like 10.
Still, I was delighted. After the whistle, I saw my Dad, and my regular coach (a lovely bloke who'd turned up to watch me play when he didn't need to) and inquired as to what they'd thought of my try. Their faces fell. After driving, and standing on the sidelines all that season, they'd nipped around the corner for to toast each other with a quick beer in the second half. They'd missed it. Life's little ironies. I saw the funny side.
I never achieved any great heights in the game, although if I hadn't broken my wrist, I might have played more than a couple of high school First XV games. But it was actually a useful experience to participate in something where I was just a battler, and I think I gained a lot through being in teams with guys I wouldn't have had much to do with otherwise.
First year out of school was 1981, and, like a good many other New Zealanders, I became alienated from the game. I clearly recall standing in drizzle on the sideline of a senior club game (I was covering it for the Christchurch Star) when news came through people's radios that the Springbok game in Hamilton had been halted by protestors. People were outraged. Good job, I thought quietly.
Anyway, like everyone else, I made my peace with the game and it's been good to me. The first season of Super 12 in 1996 was a great time to be an Auckland supporter (my ties with Canterbury are non-existent now). Apart from anything else, those raging Blues games, with Lomu and Vidiri screaming down the touchlines, and the team redefining the game, were the only place where I could leave behind a gnawing anxiety about the fact that I was being sued by a large company over something I'd written.
I like to shout at the rugby; to help the referee and advise opposition players of their shortcomings. I just like to be part of the crowd, of a collective experience bigger than me. Participation mystique, Jung called it, and it's real. I think we all need some of it, and I'd rather be the man on the terraces, or in the crowd at a great gig, than be some poor sap at a happy-clappy church in Takapuna.
This season has been rewarding. I was beside myself after the Blues held out the Crusaders to win the Super 12 for the first time since 1997. I was overwhelmingly relieved when the All Blacks did enough at Eden Park to finally reclaim the Bledisloe Cup. But, unfortunately, it won't mean much unless the All Blacks can carry it on and win the 2003 Rugby World Cup.
This is a good All Black side; on its day it can beat any team in the world, and do it playing swift, rhythmic, thrilling rugby. It includes players capable of reaching truly extraordinary levels of performance, and I don't begrudge them their big pay packets at all. The All Black jersey is one of the most powerful symbols of aspiration New Zealanders have had.
Which is why I'm getting awfully, viscerally nervous as the tournament begins. I'm most nervous about playing Australia in the semi-final; clinging to the faint hope that perhaps Argentina will upset them tonight. England, in the final, we can beat. No matter what British press plonkers like Stephen Jones say, the All Blacks were running at about 65% per cent in the test against England this year, and still would have won if Carlos had kicked for goal a little better. England didn't hold out New Zealand through four six-man scrums as Jones always insists: the hooker stood up four times to waste time, eventually got penalised, and then So'oialo fluffed a quick tap penalty. Composure. That's the worry.
I'll keep it in proportion if we don't win. It's only a game, and there are more important things. But I know how gutted I'll be, and I don't want to go there. So let's just win the thing, okay?
Power craziness | Oct 09, 2003 11:40
So Californians get their wish: a movie actor with no coherent policy platform is to take charge of their basket-case state. And Arnie comes in with a problem that might make the groping allegations look irrelevant.
Newly-unearthed email memos appear to show that Schwarzenegger met with the now-disgraced chief of crooked energy trader Enron, Ken Lay, two years ago. Schwarzenegger claims not to remember doing so. Should it matter anyway? Depends.
The Enron memos have been discussed in a highly colourful story by the investigative journalist Greg Palast, who claims that Schwarzenegger's candidacy was a set-up aimed at neutralising governor Gray Davis and his deputy Cruz Bustamante, who have both been seeking to recover $US9 billion in illicitly-obtained profits from Enron and other power companies:
While Bustamante's kicking Enron butt in court, the Davis Administration is simultaneously demanding that George Bush's energy regulators order the $9 billion refund. Don't hold your breath: Bush's Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is headed by a guy proposed by … Ken Lay.
But Bush's boys on the commission have a problem. The evidence against the electricity barons is rock solid: fraudulent reporting of sales transactions, megawatt "laundering," fake power delivery scheduling and straight out conspiracy (including meetings in hotel rooms).
So the Bush commissioners cook up a terrific scheme: charge the companies with conspiracy but offer them, behind closed doors, deals in which they have to pay only two cents on each dollar they filched.
Problem: the slap-on-the-wrist refunds won't sail if the Governor of California won't play along. Solution: Re-call the Governor …
The pay-off? Once Arnold is Governor, he blesses the sweetheart settlements with the power companies. When that happens, Bustamante's court cases are probably lost. There aren't many judges who will let a case go to trial to protect a state if that a governor has already allowed the matter to be "settled" by a regulatory agency.
There's a great deal of supposition in Palast's report, and it's not entirely borne out by the eight pages of internal Enron memos obtained by the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights. Palast says he has 34 pages of memos.
On the other hand, Schwarzenegger's claim that he doesn't remember the meeting two years ago - where of 45 business leaders invited, he was one of only 11 who attended - simply lacks credibility: As Douglas Heller of the FTCR said: "You don't meet with America's most well-known corporate crook in the middle of California's biggest financial disaster and not remember."
Perhaps Arnie simply met with the crooks from Enron because he cared about the state and wanted to discuss possible solutions to the power crisis. Maybe he was flattered to be invited. But if Palast has called it right, and the energy companies get a sweetheart deal - one which couldn't happen unless he allows to happen - Arnie will be under considerable scrutiny.
So even if he can get past that, is he up to the rest of the job? Well, the actor is socially liberal, and I don't actually think he's a complete incompetent; certainly not with Warren Buffett lined up to offer financial advice. But in the course of his campaign, he set himself a far tougher task than that which proved too much for Davis.
He has promised to balance California's budget. But he has also promised to repeal Davis's rather desperate "car tax", which was to bring in $US4.2 billion in the next year - which will instantly blow out Davis's $8 billion deficit to $12 billion. About 80 per cent of the state budget can't be cut as things stand, and Schwarzenegger, in another campaign promise, further fenced off education spending. What's left? Prisons and healthcare. And he has also promised not to raise taxes. Does anybody seriously believe there are an annual $12 billion worth of inefficiencies lying around? Apparently so. It all seems quite mad, really.
Speaking of which, check out Australia's proposed anti-spam legislation, which I think would be viewed by any informed observer as stark raving bonkers - and not really an anti-spam measure at all. Get this:
The Australian government wants to exempt its own emails and those of political parties and religions from being considered spam, as well as any messages with "factual information", albeit that they may contain added "comment" and information on the identity of the sender, including a company logo. Such "designated" messages would also be exempt from the requirement to have an "unsubscribe" facility, whereby the recipient can tell the sender not to send further similar messages.
Can we spot the loopholes there, folks? Paul Swain has suggested that New Zealand might follow Australia's lead on anti-spam legislation. No it should not. Australian attempts to regulate the Internet have a tendency to attract international derision, and this one looks more idiotic than most.
Unfortunately, the efficient function of the Internet is under threat much closer to its core. VeriSign, the company which has the monopoly contract to administer the .com and .net domains recently sought to abuse that monopoly by making a change to the functioning of the Domain Name System for its own commercial advantage. It backed after an angry letter from Icann, but appears set to try again, after it has run a PR campaign aimed at pitching its disgraceful dodge as an "innovation". I've written a Listener column on it, but until that's published, Dan Gilmor has a good story on VeriSign's arrogance, The Washington Post rounded up coverage and they're going ballistic on Slashdot.
Look, it comes down to this: the Internet is what it is because its engineering is done by engineers, and principled ones at that. Feral business people who do not grasp that crucial fact can fuck right off.
Nasty little battles seem to be warming up inside the Bush administration. In the course of the kind of interview which, regrettably, it's hard to imagine a major American publication doing, the Financial Times has discovered that Rummy wasn't told about a major change to the way the hitherto bungled reconstruction of Iraq is run. And he's supposed to be in charge. The FT story is here, and the full interview transcript is here. The Washington Post picked it up.
Top news! We're still amongst the least corrupt countries in the world, according to Transparency International, which listed Argentina, Belarus, Chile, Canada, Israel, Luxembourg, Poland, the USA, and Zimbabwe as the countries which have suffered a "noteworthy" fall from grace on its index.
More top news! A new report on life in New Zealand cities says: "The overall quality of life for most people living in New Zealand's eight largest cities is improving. Our health is getting better and education standards are increasing. Overall crime is reducing, and people's sense of safety is more positive."
And finally, what does it say about our public broadcaster's view of the asylum-seeker Ahmed Zaoui that TVNZ's online department keeps his picture in a directory called http://images.tvnz.co.nz/news/criminals/? Does Zaoui really deserve to be filed alongside Jules Mikus, Morgan Fahey and Nicolas Reekie? TVNZ may have turned off viewing-by-directory by the time you read this, but thanks to keen-eyed reader Alex Davidson for the tip.
PS: The White Stripes were simply amazing at a jam-packed St James on Tuesday night, and I hear that the Wellington show was just as good. There's a clarity and originality about them that seems undiminished by fame. I had my "back when I saw them at the King's Arms" story at hand, but there's really no need. They're still saving rock 'n' roll.
Lomborg | Oct 07, 2003 11:38
Self-described "sceptical environmentalist" Bjorn Lomborg will speak in Wellington tomorrow, at the invitation of the Business Roundtable - and a lot of people who should know better will make arses of themselves.
It is not that Lomborg is a charlatan. His book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, offers a fresh - and possibly very useful - perspective on environmental management. Employing the tools of his trade - he's a statistician - he attempts to set environmental problems in a broader context, and suggests both that some problems aren't as bad as they appear, and that we need to reassess our priorities.
Well and good. But the tendency of some people to treat the Dane like the Second Coming - and dismiss various bodies of genuine scientific expertise while they're at it - is actually quite embarrassing.
Lomborg was first brought to attention by The Economist. But Denis Dutton, marshalling all the expert knowledge of an, er, associate professor of the philosophy of art, moved in early to his status as Lomborg's special friend with an adulatory review in The Washington Post. Dutton's review drew a scornful letter from Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute, who said the book was "riddled with misleading arguments and factual errors" and that "Lomborg, who has never previously worked or published in environmental science or policy, is simply out of his depth, and your reviewer has mistaken a polemic for a work of scholarship."
Dutton, smug as ever, implied that Lash was a "lobbyist" peddling "Green dogma". Well, hardly. Among other things, Lash is on the biotechnology advisory board at DuPont, not quite the place where you'd expect to find a witchy-poo greenie. Ironically, it's the people who fancy themselves as sceptics who look distinctly witchy-poo here, especially when the topic turns to climate change, where everyone's an expert, even when they're not.
Feel free to read this beautiful post by the "Whiggish" Australian libertarian Jason Soon. Read all of it:
Sorry, I'm more sceptical of the greenhouse-sceptics than some people here. Greenhouse-scepticism as espoused by Tim Blair (who the last time I checked didn't have a science degree) verges on crankery when people are willing to ignore the fact that among environmental scientists/climatologists the majority opinion is that there is something going on. Now, I don't normally go for majority rule but my heuristic is I can't be an expert on everything. In those cases my plausible presumption is that if the majority of qualified experts say X I adopt X as my working hypothesis. It's a courtesy I extend to learned people in other areas just as I don't appreciate it when some graduate in mediavel theology talks nonsense about, say, game theory or expected utility theory.
Grist magazine also has an excellent page of links covering the emergence of the Lomborg phenomenon, its cheerleaders and its angry opponents.
But let's be clear here: Lomborg isn't being junketed around the world because his book is the last word on environmental management, but because what he has to say is what his hosts - like the Business Roundtable - want to hear.
Gordy's already got in his "me too" ("When Lomborg arrives here in a couple of days I expect local worthies to explode with indignation." Oooh, you rebel, you ...) and David Cohen provided this simpering effort for NBR, inviting his readers to have a chuckle at the expense of Lomborg's old "greener-than-thou colleagues within academe and the environmental community." He says:
Dr Lomborg, a onetime Greenpeace activist turned "sceptical environmentalist," the title of his controversial best-seller, not only disbelieves the greenhouse effect but has unpopularly set himself against such fashionable political notions as the imminent exhaustion of the world's natural resources and extinction of vast numbers of species, the problem of overpopulation, and disappearing forests. The self-described "eco-optimist" feels pretty relaxed about genetically modified crops as well.
But does Lomborg really "disbelieve the greenhouse effect"? Actually, no, but he has faulted some projections, and - as he explained at a public meeting in Melbourne last week - he believes it's simply to costly to effectively address at the moment, and that there are better uses for resources.
"The greenhouse effect is a problem definitely," he says. "It's man made and serious and we should definitely contemplate what to do."
It is his solution to the issue that is unusual in environmental circles and has brought industries like coal and aluminium flocking to his Melbourne function. Basically, Lomborg's policy is do nothing.
"Greenhouse is too costly to do anything about in the short term," he says. "But it's a long-term problem. We want to make sure we stop using fossil fuels eventually. And it's likely this will happen even if we do nothing, as renewables are dropping in price dramatically."
So investing in research and development for renewables will do more to solve the problem than the Kyoto protocol on climate change. "Let's do something smart rather than something that feels good but doesn't do much good," Lomborg says.
He is not saying ignore greenhouse forever. Rather, he claims there are more pressing concerns, such as providing clean drinking water to 1.5 billion people who do not have it. The provision of basic services will help spur a process by which the poor countries will be able to support measures to clean up the environment.
This is actually a point of view worth considering. The problem, of course, is that the Kyoto refuseniks aren't presently lining up for the laudable but large job of providing the world with clean drinking water.
Cohen also notes that Lomborg is executive director of the Danish Institute of Environmental Assessment, but doesn't venture to say what the institute does. Which is: not research. It "interprets" and "presents" the research of others, and offers opinions. And what is does say is frequently misinterpreted in the media, as this useful summary points out. His institute's own board recently rapped Lomborg for presenting cost-benefit analyses without establishing a valid frame of reference.
But perhaps we shouldn't be too harsh - Lomborg didn't actually create the DICE cost-benefit model which is the basis of much of his work on global warming. Mikael Skou Andersen, an associate professor in Lomborg's own department at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, has described DICE as so oversimplified as to be almost worthless. While DICE might have been news to philosophy professors at minor universities, Lomborg, he says, "does not acquaint his readers with the extensive discussions that have taken place in professional circles about economic climate models."
Andersen also has a useful page covering the background to the debate, the rebuttals and objections of experts in the various fields in which Lomborg dabbles, and the difficulty faced by other scientists in having their dissenting views represented in the media.
The other view - sympathetically aired by Cohen - is that the claims of unhappy experts are largely decreed by their desire for continued research funding. Which is, of course, very much like the view of fringe elements of the anti-GM lobby. Scientists are not scientists, but craven seekers of the research dollar. This is not only insulting, but, logic would dictate, a fairly risky view to take. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says in its explanatory brochure, noting diverse views on the severity of climate change and appropriate response:
Because the stakes are so high and the system complex, policymakers cannot rely on popular interpretations of the evidence or on the views of an individual expert. They need an objective source of the most widely accepted scientific, technical and socio-economic information available about climate change, its environmental and socio-economic impacts including costs and benefits of action versus inaction, and possible response options.
But that would spoil the fun, wouldn't it?
PS:Great news! Overall, New Zealanders are happier than Americans, Australians and the British. Australia beats us for "day-to-day happiness" but apparently harbours some existential gloom when the lights are out. And the dear old Slavs are still the world's most miserable people.
Gordy's Lament | Oct 03, 2003 10:56
Earlier this week NZPundit's Gordon King bashed out an angry lament for New Zealand, wondering why we can't be more like Australia. If we don't go and beg to be a state of Australia, we will, apparently, wind up "tribal, corrupt and poor, just like all the other pacific island micro-countries."
Uh … what? We're heading off to Australia to escape over-regulation and corruption? Is this some other country called Australia with which I'm not familiar?
I'm sure he was just having a bad day - anyone who loves his daughter so much can't really be that bitter - but I do periodically get emails along the same lines, from people convinced that we suffer under the worst government in our history, that the economy's poked, and the whole country is going down the gurgler. Helengrad is, for them, the very symbol of the end-times. I wonder how they get out of bed in the morning.
And still the right-wing reality generator chunters on: one frankly deranged guy from Western Australia posted a comment to Gordy's lament ("I'm really sorry about what's happening to your country. New Zealand is running the worst economic, race-relations, and foreign policies anywhere in the Western world … What is happening in New Zealand? Does New Zealand still exist? Is it a third world country? Irrelevant to the Anglosphere, have they joined the African Union?") and a pointer to his so-called essay, which is a cut-and-paste of Don Brash's last speech. He urges all right-thinking New Zealanders to relocate to Australia while the borders are still open.
Crikey. Curiously enough, it's not long since the Melbourne Age published this story, noting that for the first time in eight years New Zealand is not the number one source of immigrants to Australia. Indeed, only half as many New Zealanders are moving to Australia as two years ago.
The paper's economics editor suggested that new welfare eligibility rules had had an impact, but also cited "boom times" in New Zealand. He said New Zealand's unemployment rate, at its lowest in 14 years, was "well below" Australia's, and amongst the lowest in the western world; our GDP growth, at four per cent, was the highest in the OECD. Britons, meanwhile, were fleeing a stagnant economy, and twice as many Australians were leaving for "greener shores" than 10 years ago.
That same week, there was of course, a large and fawning cover feature in Time magazine, about how "hot" we "cool Kiwis" are these days, and how we increasingly find our destiny at home rather than elsewhere.
So has anything much changed in the ten weeks since? And what of Gordy's key point - that the latest business confidence survey doesn't really count? He says:
Look into the figures a bit though and you see that it is in fact the retail and construction sectors that account for all the increase in confidence. The manufacturing and agricultural sectors are through the floor. So once again NZ is in the grip of a mini boom driven by high inwards immigration and a weak US dollar lowering import costs. The sectors that actually earn foreign exchange, the new money to be introduced into the system, are looking really shaky.
True, robust domestic confidence is, at least in part, being driven by the housing boom:
The survey of 1500 consumers found that growing numbers of New Zealanders feel better off, expect to be even better off next year and, as a result, consider this a good time to buy a major household item.
That is a big turnaround from the start of this year, when consumer confidence was in the doldrums …
Building consents are at their highest in 25 years.
But there's also this: in the three months ended June, average hourly earnings for wage and salary workers rose by 6.9 per cent compared with the June 2002 quarter. Inflation is running steadily at 1.5 per cent. We have price stability and wage growth.
It is true that, after a dream run, the export sector, and agriculture in particular, is less optimistic than it was a year ago - in large part because our dollar is so strong. But as this story shows, the overall movement in the last few surveys - from net 44 per cent pessimism in May (when everyone was worried about Sars) to only 3 per cent this month - is startling. A net 30 per cent of companies are now optimistic about their own businesses.
And maybe the farmers aren't quite as distraught as they sometimes like to crack on. See Delight down on the farm, again from this week's Business Herald. It says most businesses serving the rural sector have had "a solid year". Furthermore:
Throughout the rural sector it was important not to lose sight of the fact that things were still in significantly better shape than they were in the 1990s, Weenink said.
"Despite the lower prices, the returns - in comparison to the 90s - are still extremely good."
Results of a bi-monthly rural confidence survey released yesterday show farmers are increasingly optimistic in their outlook for the coming year.
The RaboBank/ACNielsen rural confidence survey for July and August indicated farmers' investment intentions are on the rise and there is greater expectation of increased income.
This is despite 86 per cent of respondents saying the rise in the New Zealand dollar has had a negative impact on their business.
Optimism was strongest among sheep and beef farmers.
Nearly two-thirds (almost twice as many as the last survey) now expect the rural economy to improve.
And then there's the recent strong sharemarket performance. To quote:
"I think there's confidence about the direction of the New Zealand economy. Most companies here are doing well - there's a bit of pain in the export sector but those in the domestic scene are strong."
So what of Gordy's introductory complaint - that marine farming is being killed off here and moving to Australia? He says:
They were pioneers in New Zealand's green-lip mussel industry and had been trying to grow the business here. But, as anyone in aquaculture knows, there is a ban now on new consents while environmental and cultural issues (Maori treaty claims) are settled. And even if the ban is lifted there will be expensive resource hearings, insane regulatory charges, repressive health and safety regulations, expensive cyto-sanitary and bio-security charges, and oodles of interest groups to be paid off before the marine farmer can drop his first spat laden rope into the water.
It would be unusual if would-be marine farmers weren't complaining about regulation. But the government's job is not to hand-feed mussel farmers. There are public interests at stake in the use of the shoreline too, remember? It is true that a two-year moratorium on new marine farming consents is in place. It was put in place with the aim of providing breathing space so that the regulations could be clarified.
No one seems to seriously disagree with the intention of proposed new rules, but as this commentary notes, the industry is growing impatient with the speed of progress, even given the unexpected appearance of a major complication like the Appeal Court's finding on the foreshores. Some believe that the deadline for the end of the moratorium - March next year - will slip. But it's hardly the industry holocaust Gordy suggests. Waikato is among the regions to have already specified a marine farm zone as proposed under the revamped regulations. The area is expected to generate a mussel harvest worth $40 million a year.
I could go on. But, really, it comes down to this: even if you believe that the good run of the last four or five years is entirely dumb luck on the idiot government's part, New Zealand has been outperforming most developed countries. No, future performance is not guaranteed, and we face significant challenges, but the economy - and consumer confidence in particular - has been bucking gloomy predictions for quite a few quarters now.
And it's a great place to live; which is why all those expats are coming back and buying expensive houses. True, right now, as Chad so nicely put it, the country needs a holiday from itself, but that's a seasonal thing. Summer is coming, and I'm in some degree of excitement about any number of things - the forthcoming Scribe album, the White Stripes playing next week, a not-too-bad-at-all All Black team for the World Cup, the Nick and Waverly storyline on Shortland Street, C4 launching tonight, the fact that Chad's nearly finished his new novel, the frankly amazing Clearview Estate 2002 Unwooded Chardonnay, Return of the King, and, not least, the way Public Address is going. There is, as the rugby league commentators are wont to say, a lot to like - about the people and the place.
So all this wannabe-Australian cultural cringe is just embarrassing. I mean, face it, how would you rather wake up in the morning? With some sense of pride along the lines drawn by the Time feature?
New Zealand is in the vanguard of a dynamic world - its human diversity, open spaces, wit, flexibility and sheer tenacity have taken rugged, isolated country and positioned it on the cutting edge of adventure, knowledge and creativity.
Or with a whinge and a cringe?
Our people tonight ... | Oct 02, 2003 11:08
There was cattiness galore yesterday in the wake of the Broadcasting Standards Authority's finding against the Holmes show's report on the "wahi tapu" status of a mountain in the Bay of Plenty.
TVNZ's news chief Bill Ralston - who must be rolling ciggies as fast as he can move his fingers at the moment - was quick to point out that the finding was against the Holmes show, and not Paul Holmes personally. The reporter responsible - Duncan Garner - he pointed out, now works for TV3.
Garner shot back, claiming that Paul Holmes himself rewrote the introduction to the report - which the authority said was "framed in a way calculated to incite moral indignation" and "inflammatory" - against Garner's wishes.
Perhaps that's the case. But no one at the Holmes programme should feel good about this report: it was a straightforward case of selective and inaccurate reporting from a programme that gave the appearance of not really wanting to know the truth. It was either cynical or very sloppy. We covered it on Mediawatch at the time.
There's more piss-poor reporting from One News in this story, which I presume is based on a report that actually went to air. It leads with the news that the National party is "poring over about 140 newly-released documents relating to the GE contamination of corn seed in New Zealand."
Well, for a start, "contamination" in the Corngate case remains unproven, as even Jeanette Fitzsimons will tell you. If TVNZ's reporter knows something we don't, he or she should get in touch with the select committee. The report then goes on to completely confuse two separate incidents - Corngate in 1999, and a wholly separate detection of GM seed a year later.
Yesterday, the report included an irrelevant claim that "a study from Cornell University in New York suggests that pollen from Bt corn may have toxic effects on the monarch butterfly", backed up with a link to the Cornell report which - priceless! - essentially says quite the opposite. Somebody must have been seized by a sudden passion for accuracy overnight, because that section has now been removed from the story. The Google cache still has the original. I suppose an apology is out of the question.
What the story doesn't include is anything in the way of useful information. What, for instance, is in the 140 documents? From whence do they date? Are they important?
Okay, so here's what the One News report could and should have told you but didn't: National asked the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet for everything on Corngate up until this week. There is no new material dating from before Steven Price's OIA request last year. Most of the material is from the last few months, and relates to written evidence provided to the select committee inquiry. Some of the select committee material is still subject to Parliamentary privilege, but what has been released includes Russell Poulter's written evidence to the committee, various administrative communications, and emails between Price and Michael Wintringham related to a story Steven wrote for the Dom Post a couple of weeks ago. Material on the government agencies' press conference on July 11 last year was also requested, but there doesn't appear to be anything new or previously unseen in it.
National is welcome to burrow through the documents in search of items embarrassing or inconvenient for the government - that's what Opposition parties are for. And One News is welcome to start running reports that include facts.
Anyway, Madge. Although I don't agree with much that they say, I have quite liked Mother Against Genetic Engineering on the basis that creative protest is, in general, a good thing. But I wonder if they've set themselves on the slide with their new billboards. Conceived by Alannah Currie herself, the billboards feature a naked woman with four breasts, attached to a milking machine. No shortage of emotive content there.
But the relevance of the image is questionable. Madge says that Fonterra's biotechnology subsidiary, ViaLactia, paid Australia's Genetic Technologies last month for the rights to use patented human DNA. "If we're going to put human genes in cows, why not milking women?" Currie has said in several interviews. Er, yeah … But it is simply not true to say that Fonterra has bought human genetic material to put into cows. What it has bought, for $1000, is patented research information that it actually already has. If there's a scandal here, it's that Genetic Technologies was granted such a dubious patent on human DNA in the first place.
Most predictable and tedious political press release of the week? National's Judith Collins, on the very minor matter of a morning karakia session being made available to those Parliamentary staff who wish to attend. It is, she says, "political correctness gone mad". Now, how did I know that some underemployed National MP would spew out a statement with precisely that phrase in it? Would it not be easier to write all these things at the beginning of each year and just release them on demand? And, I feel bound to ask yet again, does National really want to micro-manage the entire public service?
Confused over the developing scandal over the "outing" of a CIA agent by the White House? The Washington Post has a Q&A on the topic. Did it happen? Oh hell, yes; that's quite clear. The only real doubt is exactly who leaked, who knew and who authorised. But the White House's "out" may well turn out to be that the journalists who got leaked to will be obliged to protect the confidentiality of their sources.
On a cheerier note, Janet Frame says she'll buy back the railways if she wins the Nobel Prize for Literature tonight.
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