Mangled Thoughts

The IPA has sniffed where the wind blows, and finds the breeze from the carbon tax side whiffier by the day. Watching the CIS strangle itself has also disturbed the IPA. Oh, the IPA is still having a bob each way, but has placed some new bets. I suspect some bookies (donors) are beginning to dissuade them from the CIS race-track training schedule – the horses are galling badly.

The IPA has recently arrived at the same conclusion as all who to date have criticised the CIS position, it is not costless, that it is a heavy, destructive burden. This puts Professor Sinclair Davidson in an invidious position, he’s fast become an embarrassment to the IPA. This is unfortunate, because they already have Chris “The Kid” Berg and Andrew “Andy Pandy” Kemp exposing them as it is. Oh dear, and the good Professor only recently wrote a ‘joint paper’ with the kid, stating some now embarrassing for the IPA things on carbon taxes and emissions and heavens, what can be done but scrap coal and bung in nuclear plants.

The consistency of the Professor can lead him nowhere else but to sniping at and smearing Nahan, Alan Moran and Jennifer Marohasy. This requires integrity; intellectual, and of principles, and courage to advance them. So, Professor, when do we read your first swipe at the IPA? Why not today? Why put off until tomorrow what you can so easily do today? Surely he has no wish to be called a coward? Besides, he has good backup in the CIS and John Humphreys.

Humphreys will be smearing the IPA too? I can’t see how he can avoid it, since the IPA has also decided the CIS position is false. Alan Moran will be fascinated. Would it be presumptuous to assume Moran is very familiar with the Humphreys paper and how discreditable it is? No, it wouldn’t be. So, go on Humphrey, they await your witty rebuttals. Go Humphrey, go Prof; show all how to biff more critics.

Alan Moran

Unlike the CIS-Humphreys paper, and the Davidson - Berg IPA paper, Alan Moran doesn’t introduce his paper with waffle. He states in the first sentence what the essential matter is, and leaves no doubt as to, in the main, the argument to follow:

Contrary to many assertions, including those of the Stern report, the costs of reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will be considerable.

Far more draconian emission reductions are required than agreed to at Kyoto if the world is to see a reduction in the concentration of carbon dioxide and other gases said to be responsible for global warming. This would require vigorous action by all countries. It would require more intensive measures by developed countries, the only ones with serious abatement commitments under the Kyoto Convention. It would also require the adoption of abatement measures by developing countries, the emissions of which now surpass those of the developed world.

The difficulties recorded by developed countries in abating emissions would be far greater for developing countries. Per capita emissions of developing countries are presently only one quarter of those in developed countries. Absent a technological breakthrough, requiring developing countries to reverse, or even reduce their trend growth in emissions would, if enforceable, consign them to income levels that would remain considerably lower than those of developed countries.

For this reason alone, short of an as yet unheralded technological breakthrough or widespread global adoption of nuclear power allowing a phasing out coal and gas based electricity generation, lower levels of emissions cannot be achieved.

Australia has more to lose than other countries from measures that require abatement of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. This is because we have a comparative advantage in cheap electricity based on our easily won and plentiful supplies of coal…

Australia is also one of the most important world sup-pliers of coal and natural gas, both of which would come under increasing pressure if general and global abatement measures were to be taken.

It follows that whatever interests the world has in low-ering emissions of designated greenhouse gases, Australia has much more to lose than other countries.

Economic issues in carbon dioxide abatement, Submission, Alan Moran, Monday, February 11, 2008. (In Pdf format here. )

What a punchy and no-nonsense opening. Gee, Moran cannot have an objection to what has already been said by JC, Bird, GMB, Jackson, Prodos, any other I have not mentioned (apologies) and me. This is pleasing; not that such encouragement is required. I would only correct the last sentence. Other countries, Japan and China for example, have much to lose too if coal production for power plants is smashed, as has already been well observed. The reverberations also have mutual impact for all three countries.

The remainder of the article is exposition and demonstration of each point. I only draw attention to one statement that is pertinent to the CIS paper and the Sinclair Davidson - Berg paper:

Environmental activists often favour the economic inefficiency of command and control regulations, since they are indifferent to costs and consider lower levels of consumption as a per se goal.

Moran does not discuss the lie of Co2 causes ‘climate change’, that man is the major culprit, and the emission must be cut there. His paper is confined to the economics of the force of measures aimed at cutting Co2. The fence sitting is irritating but, not the force of the above.

Problematic is Moran saying nuclear power can be a way out. In view, though, of the main lines of his paper, the statement is carefully couched - the least cost option. (I hope he is not cautiously pushing the nuclear power interests the CIS serves. The odious two, Ron Walker and Hugh Morgan keep cropping up). For, obviously, coal has a huge advantage over nuclear, and thus the switch would impose heavy costs as it is, and compounded by wiping out existing capital and rebuilding power production with new capital.

There it is, capital. Moran stated it (whether he actually understands that that is what he has stated is another question but some of his other remarks are encouraging). The carbon tax hits capital in coal-based firms and the impact damages a vast array and vast number of plants.

Moran is in no doubt as to the final impact on the consumer, a major reduction in living standards. Moran is spelling it out; immiseration of millions of Australians is a reality should a carbon tax be imposed. He is spelling it out; the tax would wreak destruction on a massive scale. How do the CIS answer another economist stating the same conclusions some have already set out? Will Sinclair Davidson smear Moran? Will he call Moran a “ranter”.

I am chuffed to read Moran makes a point I have re-iterated many times over (I have lost count):

In fact, regulations have effects that are almost indistin-guishable from taxes and can be usually expressed as a tax.

There can be no question of the extensive regulatory provisions taxing carbon requires. Neither of, at bottom, the police-state goon squad that will have to be raised to enforce it. Humphreys in his paper said a straight tax as opposed to carbon credits would avoid the corruption that accompanies credits. No it won’t. The corruption devolves on the calculation of carbon emissions, with firms trying to stop being bled to death by vicious politicians, and bureaucrats and their advisers responsible for the monstrous fraud of carbon taxes.

What is telling is, in the first instance, before economists explaining the force of the tax from economic theory, the force should be a readily made, ordinary observation. It is a central point I have been making in citing cases demonstrating the impact. It is the explanation of this that is not ordinary.

The laws of economics cannot be ignored without great peril but they are not self-evident and, hence, theory and its advance. We had a telling insight into this throught the complete wrecking of the fight for labour market reform by Hugh Morgan, Ray Evans, Des Moore and Senator Nick Minchin. They wrecked it through false economic explanation; it was a complete mockery of economic theory. Contrast the efforts of that lot to Jackson’s, compiled in Labour Market Wars.

I am not under-estimating the epistemological distinction either. Take the false definition of inflation as price rises and measured by the CPI. The rotten thing is, having been drilled into generations of Australians, through the media, that vulgar notion is accepted as the true explanation. There was a day when Australians did understand sound money, as opposed to funny money, even though not able to explain it from theory.

What the CIS has published is intellectually dishonest. It is worse than that, but I am being polite. This is why I call it a deliberate deception of the public, or at least an attempt to deceive the public. I cannot but suspect some senior figures in the CIS know it is intellectually dishonest, with unconscionably worse, immoral implications riding on the back of the economic force of their position. In the dishonesty the matter of conflict of interest pops up all the time; it breathes, it belches black smoke, it snarls, it’s a bad ‘boof headed’ mongrel. Moran knows such a position is indefensible; his paper shows it. Now for Mahorasy.

Jennifer Marohasy

Until recently, March in fact, the IPA’s position on man causes climate change by Co2 emissions, has been a half-hearted, spineless bob each way. It is understandable why - Hugh Morgan with mate Walker, Toorak Brahmin and doctors’ wives.

It must have been a real quandary for Nahan until, it seems, the penny dropped. It appears he has realised that there are many more Liberals, some donors, who happen to be engaged in firms that will be razed by carbon taxation. Then there are the three former Liberal (in name only) ‘watermelon red’ ministers for the “Environment”, Malcolm Turnbull, Ian Campbell, and David Kemp. Kemp is a right headache for the IPA.

The IPA, with “The Kid” has “Andy Pandy”, and David Kemp. David Kemp boasted, when the Minister for the Green cult, he was defeating the “watermelon red” Greens. He never did explain how he was managing that while he was busy imposing many of the ‘policies’ the “watermelon reds’ demanded. Kemp, as Garrett and Wong today, had only one tune to sing to those who were calling the grand lie a lie and for sound reasons -everyone of them scientific, venomous tirades and smears. All together, on this matter, the IPA had the rightwing establishment breathing down its neck, and the donations they fork into IPA coffers.

It seems the IPA and Nahan have suddenly realised, on carbon taxes and the lie of climate change by human co2 emissions, they can boot the Right out the front door and into the gutters. Hugh Morgan’s backside must be smarting, and his knees scarred from hitting the bitumen. After all, Morgan threw millions of WMC shareholders’ funds into IPA. Never mind, Hughie, you still have the CIS flying propaganda for the nuking of coal based energy companies.

On the 17th of March 2008, in the name of the IPA, Marohasy came out on ABC radio’s Counterpoint, hosted by former ALP heavy, Michael Duffy, and firmly slammed the grand lie. Right in enemy territory, she put the IPA’s firm nyet to the lie. The transcript is not up yet, but the ‘listen now’ option kicks in quickly.

I have, on the count of science, one major objection. Marohasy has committed it before in one of her IPA articles. ‘Computer modelling” is rubbish full stop. This is crucial because computer runs are asserted to be evidence of “anthropogenic caused climate change”. They are not at all, and I have explained before why they are not. The computer ‘modelling’ is meaningless rubbish. Sadly, taxpayers are forced to shell out millions to fund that grotesque fraud. No, Marohasy, not even adjusting program script according to science alters that fact. Mahorasy does need to get this right, because it is not trivial at all in combating the liars.

The second objection is the IPA, through Marohasy conveniently ignored all those in Australia, who entered the fray long ago, and brought to bear powerful scientific arguments. Those doughty freedom fighters were smeared by the Left, the media, and ignored totally by the ‘free market think tanks’. Right now, the CIS has every motive to join the left in smearing those good men:

Louis Hissink, Aaron Oakley, Jon Ray, Warwick Hughes and the splendid John Daly.

They brought to bear a mountain of evidence raised over, what, nearly a decade, not simply in other countries, but by scientists from within Australia. Marohasy and the IPA ignored all this. Indeed listening to Marohasy on Counterpoint, many listeners could be forgiven if they were given to understand that until the recent conference in New York and the IPA this month, the body of evidence damning the lie is nearly non-existent. That is very misleading.

I suppose, coming from the IPA, a litotic summation of the science against the lie is nonetheless better than nothing. After all, they have done what the CIS has refused to do, attacked the lie. Indeed, as it is transparent, the CIS accepts the lie. The CIS’ advocacy of carbon taxes assumes the lie is true and, therefore, cutting Co2 emissions is necessary.

Conclusion

On both counts, science and economics, the CIS now has to attack the IPA. This means, since they are consistent, smearing the IPA, Alan Moran and Marohasy. The CIS now has to order its PR stuntmen, Humphreys and Professor Sinclair Davidson, to do to the IPA what they have had them do to all critics who have rejected the CIS position for irrefutably true, and highly moral reasons.

The good Professor Sinclair Davidson is now in an invidious position. In truth, the IPA is faced with having to dump him. The Professor has embarrassed them severely.

I cannot wait for the CIS to land the first blows. They have no other choice. Their position is plain. They have made it plain to all what they make of those critics. Surely, they won’t resile from treating the IPA to the same abuse? Surely, they are not cowards?