Tim Lambert (deltoidblog AT gmail.com) is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.
John Stossel is his usual misleading self with a piece denying anthropogenic warming. Video here and summarized here. Tamino details the way Stossel deceives his viewers:
Probably the most irritating aspect of Stossel's "report" is a brief clip from An Inconvenient Truth of Al Gore saying, "... sea levels will rise 20 feet." What's irritating is that I've seen AIT often enough to know that this quote is taken out of context -- so much so that Stossel doesn't even have the honesty to play Al Gore's entire sentence. What Gore says is that IF the Greenland ice sheet, or the West Antarctic ice sheet, disintegrates, THEN we'll have 20 feet of sea level rise.
There are a couple more things wrong with Stossel's report. Stossel:
The media also treat the IPCC as impartial scientists, but Reiter and Christy, who were members of the IPCC, say it is not what the public thinks it is. Many of the people involved in writing its report "are not scientists at all," Reiter says. "They were essentially activists." Members of groups like Greenpeace were involved.
I tried to find where Reiter substantiates this, and the best I could come up with was this memorandum where he claims:
It will be interesting to see how the health chapter of the fourth report is written. Only one of the lead authors has ever been a lead author, and neither has ever published on mosquito-borne disease.
It is often stated that the IPCC represents the worlds top scientists. I copy to you the bibliographies of (the two lead authors), as downloaded from MEDLINE. You will observe that (the first) has never written a single article, and (the second) has only authored five articles
I also pointed out that one Lead Author is a "hygienist", the other is a specialist in fossil faeces, and both have been co-authors on publications by environmental activists.
OK, if we look at the health chapter of AR4 we find that the coordinating lead authors are Ulisses Confalonieri and Bettina Menne. Google Scholar lists 113 articles for Confalonieri. This is more than the zero that Reiter claims. The very first article listed by Google Scholar (with 81 citations) is about mosquito-borne disease, and while Confalonieri has many articles on parasites in coprolites, he also has plenty on tropical diseases.
As for Bettina Menne, Google Scholar lists 105 articles, mainly on the health impacts of climate change. This is more than the five Reiter claims. Menne also has an article on mosquito-borne disease.
I don't think that Reiter's claim that the IPCC reports are not written by scientists is credible.
Stossel also writes:
Skeptics like Reiter, Christy, Spencer and Tim Ball, who studies the history of climate change and heads the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, are often smeared as "deniers," lumped in with Holocaust deniers and accused of being "on the take" from energy businesses." Gore impugns skeptical scientists by saying "the illusion of a debate has been purchased."
But the scientists I interviewed don't get money from business.
But that's not true. Tim Ball was funded by oil company money that was laundered by U Calgary.
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Comments
Well, at least Stossel's stuff on guns was good.
"What Gore says is that IF the Greenland ice sheet, or the West Antarctic ice sheet, disintegrates, THEN we'll have 20 feet of sea level rise."
And.... what? Gore doesn't think that will happen? No chance? A significant chance? An inconvenient chance? If he thinks it might be likely, then Stossel is justified in mentioning it. If he doesn't think it's likely, then who cares and why is it even in the movie?
Posted by: ben | October 24, 2007 3:33 PM
Re: The Al Gore "20 foot rise in sea level" canard.
I've seen this one come up in friggin' comedy routines. Even before I knew it was a distortion, I had a feeling it was bogus. When I looked into it, I found I was right.
Posted by: Orac | October 24, 2007 3:40 PM
The clue, ben, is that whenever people complain about Gore's 20 ft. comment they ALWAYS leave out what he actually said. Or worse, they claim that he says seas will rise 20 ft. by 2100 (Pat Michaels is guilty of this lie).
If what Gore says is wrong and alarmist, why can't the "skeptics" honestly quote him?
Posted by: Boris | October 24, 2007 4:14 PM
Stossel long ago lost credibility with me. His repeated distortions and outright lies make anything he says suspect, whether you agree with him or not. The sad, but unfortunately not unexpected thing is that his network news organization does not do more to make him fact check.
Posted by: Mark P | October 24, 2007 4:37 PM
"Stossel long ago lost credibility with me. His repeated distortions and outright lies make anything he says suspect, whether you agree with him or not."
Like what?
"The sad, but unfortunately not unexpected thing is that his network news organization does not do more to make him fact check."
Well, duh. They don't fact check Rather, why would they bother with Stossel?
Posted by: ben | October 24, 2007 4:43 PM
Why would they bother to fact check a reporter who makes a living exposing what he calls lies, distortions, and mistakes? Could it possibly that in the case of Stossel being wrong would completely negate his whole reason for being hired, and thus be a waste of his entire salary? Or could it be they just don't care because enough people talk about his reports, good or bad, it doesn't really matter to them.
Either Gore's quote has context or it doesn't. Either the lead authors had published previously on the subject at hand or they didn't. It isn't a question of how relative the truth is, it's a question of the truth. Given Stossel's "mission" I would think this would be not only obvious to him but to the people that pay him.
Posted by: B8ovin | October 24, 2007 5:01 PM
Boris -- you need to understand that the usual rules about honesty in attribution are suspended in the case of Al Gore. Case in point: try, some time to correct someone who says that Gore claimed to have "invented" the Internet. As everyone ought to know by now, that's not true. An honest response would be something like "Oh, if I'm mistaken about that quote, I'm sorry. Won't happen again." But you won't hear that in a thousand tries. Instead, you'll get "Well, he implied, or suggested that he played a bigger role than he did, so it's a fair cop." Also not true, but that's beside the point. On the point is that it seems to be acceptable in some circles to put any words in Al Gore's mouth, so long as the desired effect is achieved. That's why you will always hear the word "invented" used in connection with Gore and the Internet, and never "initiated", "supported", "advanced" or any other word that would serve as a more accurate paraphrasal.
It is obvious that ben has gotten the memo. He has, in the past, waxed downright indignant about Snopes' characterization of the Reagan redwood quote[1], but figures that it's perfectly acceptable for Stossel to omit a critical phrase when he's quoting Al Gore, and even makes elaborate excuses for Stossel's lie. The rules are different when you're quoting Al Gore. Get used to it.
[1] For the record, I think Snopes is too generous to the press (or harsh on Reagan) to call it a "paraphrase." But let it be noted that Snopes reported the whole episode and left the reader free to disagree. Stossel deliberately distorted a quote to leave a false impression. That's the difference between an honest reviewer with an opinion and a hack.
Posted by: jre | October 24, 2007 5:18 PM
Ben, check the first link in the post and you can find a small sample of Stossel's distortions and lies.
Posted by: Mark P | October 24, 2007 5:23 PM
What probability of rapid ice sheet disintegration in the next century or two would warrant addressing catastrophic sea level rise in a movie about global warming?
90% probable? 66% probable? 10% probable? 5% probable?
Now that everyone has settled on a number, what probability of getting in a car accident in the next year or two would warrant purchasing car insurance?
90% probable? 66% probable? 10% probable? 5% probable?
I've been driving for 16 years, and I've been involved in one accident. I have purchased car insurance every year, and I support laws forcing people to buy liability insurance. Due to this low probability, I must be "clearly alarmist" and the laws that force motorists to buy insurance must be an anti-American plot to rob people of freedom and cause starvation amongst the poor. Just think of all the food, medicine, and pesticide my insurance premiums could buy for peasants in Africa.
That is the kind of insane rationalization that is going here. This is a serious threat that need to be taken seriously.
Posted by: cce | October 24, 2007 5:51 PM
cce,
I will gladly sell you asteroid impact insurance for $100.00/gigaton since you seem willing to spend money on possible but wildly improbable events.
I am somewhat less sanguine on politicians spending a significant fraction of US GDP on CO2 abatement schemes to avoid a melting event this century with a probability approaching zero.
Let me know on that asteroid impact insurance. Operators are standing by.
Posted by: Lance | October 24, 2007 6:33 PM
Well, duh. They don't fact check Rather, why would they bother with Stossel?
Actually, they did do fact checking for Rather. In the infamous case, they just did it poorly.
On the other hand, Stossel is intentionally fabricating his show. He doesn't think it's correct, he knows it's wrong.
Posted by: daenku32 | October 24, 2007 6:57 PM
It seems very clear that Stossel is deliberately misleading (quote-mining Gore). He also misrepresents the UK court case (which does not oblige teachers to "explain nine errors in the movie"). And he's running the long-discredited "warming precedes CO2" line, preceded by the following totally unintelligible sentence: "And while man's greenhouse gasses may increase warming, it's not certain that man caused it". And he does solar, currents, polar bears, "7 to 24 inches", and the rest.
Reiter, meanwhile, is worse. Stossel's just a media cipher, a talking head. Reiter is supposed to be better than that. He obviously has an axe to grind.
What I wonder is: to whom is Stossel preaching? He knows he's misleading. We know he's misleading. Even the kids in his video know that he's full of it - they're hilarious. So is there anybody with the slightest interest in the subject who doesn't know this? Who is there left to mislead, and to where?
These denialists become more and more shrill and unlikely as time passes. They start sounding like a tiny squeaking Fred Phelps caricature. One can readily imagine them parading outside the Nobel ceremony with hand-daubed placards reading "God hates Greens". The pitch of their rhetoric is rapidly rising out of the audible range - soon only dogs and bats will be listening to them.
Just as well, given graphs like this. How's that for a hockey stick?
Posted by: Nick Barnes | October 24, 2007 7:09 PM
Icesheet disintegration is not a "wildly improbable event." Winning the lottery is a "wildly improbable event."
I bought my asteroid impact insurance when I paid my taxes, a small portion of which went to NASA, and a small portion of that went toward detecting near earth asteroids and developing the countermeasures for deflecting them. I don't mind spending this money given that the odds of dying from an asteroid (assuming no countermeasures in put in place) are about the same as dying in an airplane crash.
Posted by: cce | October 24, 2007 7:24 PM
"Let me know on that asteroid impact insurance. Operators are standing by."
Would you like to buy some terrorist insurance? There are sleeper cells all over the place, you know.
Posted by: Boris | October 24, 2007 10:25 PM
No reference to John Stossel is truly complete without viewing this video clip of his early efforts as a reporter:
John Stossel, probing journalist
I can see why he's given up on legitimate journalism.
Posted by: Chip Block | October 24, 2007 10:28 PM
There are myriad reasons for being concerned about a significant sea rise. The first is that during the last interglacial, with temperatures between one and two degrees higher than what we have at present, the sea level was 6m higher than it is now. One would think that might set off alarm bells, but then one may not be familiar with the Pollyanna right wing that brought us Iraq. This just in, risk matters. Uncertainty matters more.
It is true, we do not know plenty about dynamics of ice sheets and glaciers, but we have strong reason to suspect that global average temperatures correlate. By coincidence of the fact that, though we can bound climate sensitivity to CO2 with some probability on the high and low side, the high side implies practically catastrophic levels of increase, and a concomitantly increased concern about the potential of the release of that water onto the world's oceans.
Putting it together, if one believes that the world will work itself out because it can and because we want it to, and by consequence that we shouldn't worry about risk or uncertainty (unknown unknowns to you right wingers), then, well, Gore shouldn't have discussed the potential for a 6m increase in sea level at all, and the US was right on with its invasion of Iraq and forecasts of success. Back here in the reality based community, Gore's presentation of this catastrophic scenario doesn't seem peculiar at all.
Posted by: Majorajam | October 24, 2007 11:50 PM
Under your "usual misleading self" link is an article that claims Stossel was wrong about his AIDS vs Parkinson's related deaths, but it appears that if you use the CDC numbers then Stossel is correct. While I think it's OK to dispute the CDC numbers, Stossel shouldn't be blamed for "misleading" for reporting what appear to be the official numbers.
Posted by: nanny_govt_sucks | October 24, 2007 11:55 PM
Stossel also says on the video that we all know the earth is warming, yet Tim Ball didn't object. Timmy's been telling us for years that the earth is cooling - he just can't remember if it started in 1930, 1940 or 1998 (which might explain why he finds it difficult to establish how long he was a professor).
Posted by: Lurker | October 25, 2007 1:46 AM
I just can't figure why Stossel and people like him don't just move to the Congo where there is very little government to put obstacles on the path of progress taken by free enterprise. I am sure someone as hardworking and as skilled as he is would be very much in demand over there.
Posted by: Sortition | October 25, 2007 2:01 AM
NGS wrote:
In the most recent years, HIV/AIDS deaths have decreased relative to Parkinson's deaths. In the US in 2004, around 18,000 deaths US were attributed to Parkinson's while around 17,000 were attributed to HIV/AIDS. However, in the mid-1990's, HIV/AIDS deaths peaked at around 45,000 per year. I don't know what the exact totals were when Stossel made his claim so perhaps the comparison in that particular year was literally correct. Nonetheless, even if it were literally correct, it was pretty misleading. I don't thik there's ever been a year in the US when Parkinson's mortality was close to 45,000. HIV is infectious and for a while it looked like it was going to be an epidemic. Parkinson's isn't, and didn't.
BTW, there's a new estimate out that MRSA, the iatrogenic infection passed around in hospitals and health care facilities, killed around 19000 in 2005, i.e., more than either HIV/AIDS or Parkinson's. And we actually know exactly what we need to do in order to prevent it.
Posted by: Robert | October 25, 2007 3:16 AM
Stossel's HIV/AIDS vs Parkinsons comparison was made in 1999. In 1998 CDC figures put Parkisons deaths at 13,000, less than those from AIDS.
Posted by: Tim Lambert | October 25, 2007 5:03 AM
I wrote:
to which Tim L. replied
Yeah, I think the trend in overall Parkinson's mortality is rising since there is a strong age effect to it. Even if age-specific rates remain exactly unchanged, we'd expect total mortality to rise as the baby boom generation reaches senior ages. OTOH, HIV/AIDS peaked at 45,000 and is around 17,000 now. A fair-sized component of that peak mortality was infants born HIV+. At least in the US, we don't see that nearly as much now because of perinatal therapies that were made possible, in part, by all that research money into HIV/AIDS that Stossel was whining about. And those therapies can (and I hope, will) be transferred to places where HIV/AIDS mortality is still high.
Stossel is a hack.
Posted by: Robert | October 25, 2007 9:40 AM
Stossel:
From the World Conservation Union website:
http://iucn.org/places/usa/webdocs/news/news_archive2007.htm
Posted by: Pop Trot | October 25, 2007 10:07 AM
Isn't the polar bear thing a little obverblown? Genetically they're pretty similar to the black (or is it Brown bear?). If the population falls off can't we just simply catch some that hang around the New jersey and Penn burbs, spray paint them a nice white color and transport them into colder climes?
Posted by: Jc | October 25, 2007 11:03 AM
Lance, if you're willing to put money down on your position that human-caused global warming isn't happening, let me know:
http://backseatdriving.blogspot.com/20050501backseatdrivingarchive.html#111700433898143899
Operators are standing by.
Posted by: Brian Schmidt | October 25, 2007 11:15 AM
Jc opined:
Hmmm. Interesting idea. Genetically, humans are pretty similar to the great apes. Should something happen to Jc, we could simply catch a chimpanzee, shave his back (or maybe not?), and plop him down in front of a keyboard. The quality of Jc's posts mightn't change much at all.
Posted by: Robert | October 25, 2007 11:47 AM
Tim, that Peter Hart piece is nearly as much garbage as Stossel. His look into Stossel isn't remotely unbiased, and his own ideology shines through. For example:
Calling what California did to its energy markets "deregulation" is a joke. California's RE-regulation of its energy market was the primary cause of the energy-crisis that followed. It also put Enron in a position to manipulate the market, and they did. Among many dubious parts of the law, the one that prevented the utilities from entering into long term contracts with suppliers, forcing the utilities to only buy on the spot market, was probably the worst.
As bad as conservatives can be on global warming, liberals can be on economics. They LOVE to bring out California's "deregulation" debacle as an example of how less government regulation is bad for the economy, but this is actually an example of how government interference can make things worse. Naming government regulation "deregulation" in order to win arguments is pretty lame.
Posted by: ben | October 25, 2007 12:12 PM
From the U.S. Geological Survey:
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/special/polar_bears/
We may need a new Stossel Rule: Whatever he claims, the opposite must be true.
Posted by: Pop Trot | October 25, 2007 12:21 PM
Even if the critics are biased, their criticisms are valid.
Posted by: Mark P | October 25, 2007 12:23 PM
Ah... It's that damn spot market. "Out, damn'd spot! out, I say!"
I always thought it had more to do with the color of Gray Davis's underpants. Anyway, it's clear it had nothing to do with companies trying to make some money.
Posted by: Sortition | October 25, 2007 1:08 PM
Sortition, the point is that it was not "deregulation" by any measure, and it was NOT a failure of free markets, since there was no free market present.
Posted by: ben | October 25, 2007 1:20 PM
Ben
Suppose that there was electricity grid that required 100 units of electricity to operate (without blackout). Suppose that you have 12 producers, each of which can produce 9 units. How does a producer maximize his profit? You might think that he should sell as soon as he can in order to insure that he could sell all 9 units (if you were as clueless as ben for instance). But the winning strategy is to wait until all the other producers have sold their 9 units to the grid.
BUT WAIT you say. Doesn't that mean that I'll only be able to sell one unit.
Yes it does, but since the grid needs that unit to function it is worth at least as much as the 99 units which have already been purchased.
What would happen if the EVIL government stepped in and capped the price of a unit at twice fair market value. Then waiting would be the losing strategy since you would receive at most 2 instead of the 9 you could receive if you sold at once.
And what was it that happened in California when the priced was capped? QED
You were right about one thing though. The energy market in California was not free. Not because of government interference of course, but for the same reason that most markets are not free. One of the players in the market could (and did) affect the price. (The very definition of a free market is one where this is impossible)
Posted by: elspi | October 25, 2007 1:42 PM
Next time we are offered a "deregulation" scheme, I will make sure to ask you (or Stossel, or some other High Priest of Free Markets) whether we are heading toward a TRULY free market or will there be spots left.
I wonder, though, why the fine points about "spots" do not make it into Stossel's hymns to free markets.
Posted by: Sortition | October 25, 2007 2:07 PM
Sorry, elspi, but your argument fails. You presume that the market is static, and won't change to meet increasing demand.
Many/most utilities can or do buy some of their supply via long-term contracts. While this might prevent them from getting the short-term optimal price for electricity, it does hedge against future increases in price, and against scenarios like the one you alluded to. California was specifically PROHIBITED from this sort of action.
In many/most states, public utilities can produce their own power, so that the price to themselves is simply the cost of operating their power plants. If they have extra power, they can sell it, and if they need more, then they can buy it. in California, the were specifically PROHIBITED from doing this. The utilities that supplied power to the end consumers were not allowed to own any power plants.
Briliant! The problem with this "deregulation" that wasn't, was that the architects were trying to enforce "perfect" competition. They did not think of the unintended consequences of their actions. They didn't consider that outside sources who were unconstrained by their laws would use California's laws to their own advantage.
Lastly, California does not produce enough power to keep up with its own demand. Some blame the greens for making it to hard to produce power in Cal. Some blame other things. Whatever the case, TOUGH SHIT FOR CALIFORNIA, they are their own worst enemy in their power problems.
On a side note, for those in favor of government regulation to save power and avoid global warming, I propose sweeping government regulations that will help right away: Fat Tax. Yes, fat people are a huge burden on the environment. They burn more fuel lugging their heavy bodies around. They require that more fuel be burned to lug all that food around that they eat. And they produce more waste that must be dealt with. If you are over-fat, then you should have to pay a tax. I'm not kidding. An exception should be made for any obese person who can demonstrate that they are taking steps and actively losing weight.
Posted by: ben | October 25, 2007 2:11 PM
"You presume that the market is static, and won't change to meet increasing demand."
Why would the generating companies kill the goose that laid the golden eggs? Why when they are making obscene profits would they rock the boat?
Rather than increasing their generating capacity, the generating companies were taking power plants off-line in order to worsen the crisis. Why would some new company come in and undercut these companies, when the very act would case the price to fall to point where there was no profit in it for the new company?
And the proof of all of this is in the pudding. That is if as you lie "TOUGH SHIT FOR CALIFORNIA, they are their own worst enemy in their power problems", then capping the price of electricity would have made the electricity crisis much worse. Instead it made it disappear. That is how we know that you are a lying sack of shit.
Posted by: elspi | October 25, 2007 2:49 PM
Are you serious? Try starting out with the definition of "free", as in are you "free" to do something like trade with whomever you want? If you're not, then it's not a free market. Or are you free to negotiate and make long-term contracts for power, or are you not? Is there a 5lb manual of regulations telling you what you can and can't do, or is there not?
Posted by: nanny_govt_sucks | October 25, 2007 4:06 PM
Of course, if that were true, they would not. However, if there was a profit to be made in a free market, then someone will move in to fill the void.
Thanks for the kinds words. Why should it have made the crisis worse? If the cap is above the market cost of electricity, then it won't have any effect, except to prevent too much manipulation, if the system is open to manipulation (such as it was under "deregulation"). If the cap was below market rates, then it would probably lead to an energy shortage.
On the other hand, a proper free market should be able to achieve a better results than a regulated market. That's all I'm arguing. That, and that whatever you call it, California's energy market "deregulation" wasn't.
Every criticism I've given of situation is repeated clearly here.
Posted by: ben | October 25, 2007 6:04 PM
I thought the California electricity crisis was a really good example of what happens when you let companies own the gvt, as happens here in the UK. In fact, I understand that we are pioneers in the modern era of this.
Posted by: guthrie | October 25, 2007 6:48 PM
First you force California into your free market wet dream and then you have the gall to say "TOUGH SHIT FOR CALIFORNIA" as they are robbed blind in the dark. Fuck off and die you treasonous troll.
Posted by: elspi | October 25, 2007 8:06 PM
Er, um, like, what are you talking about? Beside the fact that I didn't force anyone into anything, what California undertook was hardly a free market wet dream. Not by any measure.
How much pounding will it take to get the nail into your skull that what California did to it's energy sector was not deregulation, much as it has been called that, and a proper free market was not present. Therefor, neither the free market, nor deregulation can be blamed for what happened. I know you like to do that, but it is wrong.
And I'm the one who gets accused of frothing here! elspi, remember to take your rabies shots next time you see the doctor.
Posted by: ben | October 25, 2007 8:24 PM
I can't believe people fall for the free market fairy tale. Some idiots even talk about a free market and competition in health care, as if you could shop for an ambulance operator and emergency room after your car wreck. There has never been an unregulated market that actually functioned like the fanboys fantasize for public consumption. Unregulated (or free as some say) markets have always naturally tended towards monopoly or producer cooperation (otherwise known as restraint of trade). Unregulated markets benefit the producers, not the consumers.
And besides, the electric power market can't be considered a free market because it is impossible for companies to respond to demand by producing more energy than they can produce at a given time by constructing new power plants. The generation capacity is essentially fixed. The only way it can be changed is by artificially restricting supply, not by the "market", whatever that's supposed to mean. And, since each power company operates as a defacto monopoly in each market, in what sense can it be called "free" in any case? How is an electricity consumer supposed to shop for a power company. In my state, at least, even though there are several power companies, you get your power from whoever strung the lines to your house. Even in the natural gas market, in which various suppliers can now use the lines of the former monopoly supplier, competition resulted from regulation, not deregulation.
Posted by: Mark P | October 25, 2007 11:26 PM
One thing, Mark P, I was not arguing in favor of free markets or deregulation. I was only saying that California's energy woes could not be justifiably blamed on them.
I disagree with what you claim above, though. For example:
How is this true? Generation capacity is fixed? They certainly can respond to demand, it's simply that the time scales are larger than with, say, electric fans in the summer.Posted by: ben | October 25, 2007 11:34 PM
MarkP says:
I can't believe people fall for the free market fairy tale.
I can't believe people fall for the swill you're about to dish out, Marky.
Some idiots even talk about a free market and competition in health care, as if you could shop for an ambulance operator and emergency room after your car wreck.
No Markey, it wouldn't mean any of that. You would still be getting to the hospital. By the way, doofus, have you noticed that most ambulance services these days are actually privately owned or run by charities?
There has never been an unregulated market that actually functioned like the fanboys fantasize for public consumption.
No evidence here, markey, just more swill.
Unregulated (or free as some say) markets have always naturally tended towards monopoly or producer cooperation (otherwise known as restraint of trade). Unregulated markets benefit the producers, not the consumers.
Markey, Walmarts could not survive for a minute if customers didn't walk through the door. Customers make the decision where they shop, genius.
This passes for economics in leftist circles. How sweet.
Now how many of you actaully agree with mark..... Come on get out from under the desk and own up. It's not funny any more.
Posted by: Jc | October 25, 2007 11:51 PM
"Genetically, humans are pretty similar to the great apes. Should something happen to Jc, we could simply catch a chimpanzee, shave his back (or maybe not?), and plop him down in front of a keyboard. The quality of Jc's posts mightn't change much at all."
Better yet, we could boost Gorilla numbers with JC and his fellow free-market crack-pots.
Posted by: Ian Gould | October 26, 2007 4:07 AM
"Stossel also says on the video that we all know the earth is warming, yet Tim Ball didn't object. Timmy's been telling us for years that the earth is cooling - he just can't remember if it started in 1930, 1940 or 1998 (which might explain why he finds it difficult to establish how long he was a professor)."
Next you'll be asking why people who claim warming stopped in 1998, pointing enthusiastically to supposed evidence of warming going on on Mars at present.
Or citing the Martian warming as supporting theories that warming is caused by the action of cosmic rays on rain clouds (despitye the absence of rainclouds on Mars).
Posted by: Ian Gould | October 26, 2007 4:13 AM
"I just can't figure why Stossel and people like him don't just move to the Congo where there is very little government to put obstacles on the path of progress taken by free enterprise. I am sure someone as hardworking and as skilled as he is would be very much in demand over there."
Well i'm sure JC will explain its because of the innate low IQ of the locals who'd drag the few noble white pioneers down to their level.
Personally, I think it'd be wholly consistent with libertarians' adoration of Hayek, that fan of "liberal dictatorships" ala Pinochet and their adoration of the Confederacy to introduce slavery.
That way, you'd establish property rights over the poor dumb locals and their genetically more advanced masters would have an economic incentive to see that they were gainfully employed at whatever menial tasks they were suited to.
Arbeit macht frei,y'all.
Posted by: Ian Gould | October 26, 2007 4:19 AM
"Sortition, the point is that it was not "deregulation" by any measure, and it was NOT a failure of free markets, since there was no free market present."
Well obviously since freedom is good and markets are good, free markets must be doubly good.
Something bad happened therefore logically free markets couldn't be involved.
Tell you what, Ben, give us a working definition of a free market and then tell us in detail how the Californian energy market deviated from it.
Posted by: Ian Gould | October 26, 2007 4:27 AM
"Tell you what, Ben, give us a working definition of a free market and then tell us in detail how the Californian energy market deviated from it."
I am not normally one to stick up for Ben and friends, but...I am a Californian, and I actually paid attention tot he energy 'deregegulation' thing back in the 90's. I noticed first that the deals were made behind closed doors without the council of consumer activists groups, despite protests. Reading the details of the deals led me to beleive that they were designed to fail from the start.
The disasterous 'deregulation' of the California energy market was not the fault of the 'Free Market'™. It was the fault of what happens when government supported monopolists (utilities) decide to screw with everyone by pretending to deregulate, deliberately fail, and thus hope to prevent future real de-regulated market. We are still seeing FUD ballot measures trying to prevent further real derugulation, or measures to increase the presence and power of the traditional utility companies based on the fear of a return of the 90's style deregulation.
Government force used to protect entrenched private interests is NOT a free market. Without that force in place, the utilities could not exist...and ther'd be a lot less CO2 in the atmosphere to boot, as the power companies would have been much more efficient.
Posted by: Sam-Hec | October 26, 2007 6:10 AM
Jc, I would just like to point out that Wal-Mart does not operate in an unregulated market. Just to name a few, there are zoning regulations, wage and hour regulations, workplace health and safety regulations, product safety regulations, and laws against certain types of restraint of trade. So just what "free market" are you talking about?
Also, you didn't tell us how a free market operates in the health care area. And what does the fact that most ambulance services are private have to do with anything? Are you sure we're talking about the same thing here? Or living on the same planet?
Posted by: Mark P | October 26, 2007 7:51 AM
"Well obviously since freedom is good and markets are good, free markets must be doubly good. Something bad happened therefore logically free markets couldn't be involved."
I am so stealing that.
Sam-Hec why don't you google "Yorkshire water" for more on how this deregulation magic has worked in other places.
Posted by: elspi | October 26, 2007 10:01 AM
Sam is right, guys.
Second:
Ian, elspi, that's your stupid argument. I never argued anything of the kind. To be more clear: the market wasn't any more free after "deregulation" than it was before. Ian, you're usually pleasant to argue with, but right now you're just being a dick.
And Sam has it dead on. Whether or not free markets are good, at least for energy, nobody knows. But the California utilities can point to deregulation as bad because of what happened in the 90's. Even though it was deregulation in name only, helped along by the willing liberals of the press. Nice.
Posted by: ben | October 26, 2007 11:01 AM
You know, I remember once listening to a radio show with a guest Economist from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC. She was talking about how bad the "deregulation" was, and then said, with a straight face, when talking about how it would be bad for a particular American energy company to buy a BC power plant:
"They will raise prices and do nothing to encourage conservation."
OMG! A professor of economics said that! If it wasn't Canada, they would have revoked her professorship on the spot. Kinda like a physics professor saying that an asteroid passing the earth would make the earth spin faster.
Posted by: ben | October 26, 2007 11:05 AM
"Next you'll be asking why people who claim warming stopped in 1998, pointing enthusiastically to supposed evidence of warming going on on Mars at present. Or citing the Martian warming as supporting theories that warming is caused by the action of cosmic rays on rain clouds (despitye the absence of rainclouds on Mars)."
Don't forget the Urban Heat Island effect on Mars, or the argument "we can't trust the instrumental record, only the satellites (therefore the UHI effect must have ended in 1978)." It would really be funny to get all of the skeptics in the same room. Anything and everything is causing the warming (assuming it exists) . . . except for increasing GHG concentrations.
Posted by: cce | October 26, 2007 12:04 PM
"Sam-Hec why don't you google "Yorkshire water" for more on how this deregulation magic has worked in other places."
I shall, but I would like to remind you that not all regulations/deregulations are created equally. 'Deregulation' does not automagically mean 'Free-Market™'.
Posted by: Sam-Hec | October 26, 2007 1:54 PM
I love that in ben's world there is no such thing as a market that has a prohibitive cost for entry. It's all free. Remember when Microsoft was run out of the OS market because of their bloaty, glitchy Windows?
Posted by: Pinko Punko | October 26, 2007 2:14 PM
'Deregulation' does not automagically mean 'Free-Market™'.
Yes, there's a spectrum, esp. wrt public goods and the wondrous magic of Free Markets™. Bechtel comes immediately to mind.
Best,
D
Posted by: Dano | October 26, 2007 2:28 PM
ben If you don't like Ian's argument, you need to go think up your own.
Hint: if you want to see what such an argument would look like, try
32. Since I am not sure you can count that high, I'll repost it
Ben Suppose that there was electricity grid that required 100 units of electricity to operate (without blackout). Suppose that you have 12 producers, each of which can produce 9 units. How does a producer maximize his profit? You might think that he should sell as soon as he can in order to insure that he could sell all 9 units (if you were as clueless as ben for instance). But the winning strategy is to wait until all the other producers have sold their 9 units to the grid. BUT WAIT you say. Doesn't that mean that I'll only be able to sell one unit. Yes it does, but since the grid needs that unit to function it is worth at least as much as the 99 units which have already been purchased. What would happen if the EVIL government stepped in and capped the price of a unit at twice fair market value. Then waiting would be the losing strategy since you would receive at most 2 instead of the 9 you could receive if you sold at once. And what was it that happened in California when the priced was capped? QED
This is an argument for why ANY unregulated generating market would eventually become perverse (because that is where the maximum profit is).
Posted by: elspi | October 26, 2007 2:43 PM
Elspi, optimization is not so straight-forward as you might think. Plus you are looking at a "market in a vacuum," which isn't really indicative of much. Your scenario works, at best, only if the situation is EXACTLY as described. But why wouldn't the other producers all do that? Heck, they should just all hold back until the consumers hand over their first-born, and then give out only the minimum necessary. But again, there are alternatives. The consumers can go and buy solar panels, and even add energy to the grid. They can use less energy, which does not help to maximize the profit of the energy companies. You act as if the consumer