August 2004 Archives

Jonathan Adler's note on contraception for birds brings to mind the problem of mute swans, an invasive species doing serious harm to ecosystems such as the Chesapeake bay. Details here. Animal rights groups, however, have blocked action to control the swans - see a recent story here. One swan lover is quoted as saying ""To me, they've been here so long already — so what if they're not indigenous," she said. "You can't force them out now." " What's next - immigration amnesty for invasive species?

Public financing of contraception is always a controversial subject. This is no less so when it's for the birds -- literally. Today's New York Times reports on efforts to put parakeets on the pill:

In wildlife management there is no tougher public relations problem than a cute pest, which is partly why scientists and wildlife managers are showing increasing interest in a new, nonlethal means of animal control: contraception. The monks [a type of parakeet] have joined a variety of other species, some cuter than others, but all with passionate defenders, as a target for enforced infertility.

Parakeets are not the only species subject to such efforts. Wildlife managers have also sought to use contraception to control populations of geese, deer and other "pest" species.

Everywhere animals that people would rather not have in such large numbers are doing or have just done what Cole Porter's birds, bees and educated fleas are famous for. That's fine; it's the inevitable results that scientists are working on.

The greatest living Malthusian, Paul Ehrlich, does not come out well from the New York Times' investigation of the 'demographic time bomb.' The Times correctly points out all the ways that mankind's technological and societal progress over the past thirty years have confounded population alarmism:

AIDS and abortion are drops in the demographic bucket. The real missing billions are the babies who were simply never conceived. They weren't conceived because their would-be elder brothers and sisters survived, or because women's lives improved. In the rich West, Mom went to college and decided that putting three children through graduate school would be unaffordable. In the poor Eastern or Southern parts of the globe, Mom found a sweatshop job and didn't need a fourth or fifth child to fetch firewood.

"On a farm, children help with the pigs or chickens," explained Joseph Chamie, director of the United Nations population division. Nearly half the world's people live in cities now, he said, "and when you move to a city, children are not as helpful."

Beyond that, simple public health measures like dams for clean water, vitamins for pregnant women, hand-washing for midwives, oral rehydration salts for babies, vaccines for youngsters and antibiotics for all helped double world life expectancy in the 20th century, to 60 years from 30.

More surviving children means less incentive to give birth as often. As late as 1970, the world's median fertility level was 5.4 births per woman; in 2000, it was 2.9. Barring war, famine, epidemic or disaster, a country needs a birthrate of 2.1 children per woman to hold steady.

What is the prophet Ehrlich's response to all this?

"I have severe doubts that we can support even two billion if they all live like citizens of the U.S.," he said. "The world can support a lot more vegetarian saints than Hummer-driving idiots."

So in order to drive population down, we should move away from the "idiotic" pursuit of liberty and standards of living, which have been proven to drive population down, and instead return to a "saintly" agrarian lifestyle, which drives population up?

The man truly is a genius.

The UN, in a rare moment of perspicacity, informed the North Koreans that they are facing devastating environmental problems.

The nostrum recommended by the UN, however, was not a system of basic property rights and even a little capitalism. Instead, the UN said "farmers should expand use of restorative practices, including tree planting and use of organic fertilizers," according to the Associated Press.

Amazing. When Kim Jong Il and Kofi Annan get together, anything is possible.

Sen. Kerry is calling for charging royalties (which he claims will raise $600 million per year) rather than privatizing mineral resources as a means of funding national parks. His comments (from August 12) are reported here.

The Kerry plan is flawed in (at least) three important respects:
(1) it is DOA - no major change in the Mining Law of 1872 is going to make it through the US Senate, where western state senators form a bipartisan group blocking attempts to mine resource companies for federal revenue (and Kerry needs to ask strong mining law supporter Democratic Senator Tom Daschle about this, as Daschle is in a tight race in South Dakota).
(2) There is no relationship between mining and national parks - and so tying national park funding to even hypothetical mining royalties is bad policy. Moreover, as the state lottery experience (all the money is for education! Really!) shows, earmarked revenue sources usually produce shifts in unearmarked revenue away from the funded entity. Even if Kerry's plan passed and produced $600 million annually, the National Parks would be lucky to see even a fraction of that as a net increase.
(3) Destroying the successful privatization program that is the Mining Law of 1872 is bad policy - privatizing resources based on investment in discovery (what the law does) avoids the corruption problems that have plagued countries that charge royalties. Anyone want to swap Congo or Angola's mineral rights regimes for ours? That's what Kerry's plan boils down to.

I took this photograph outside of Cooke City, Montana last year where mining reclamation was underway. I'm not sure that even Julian Simon could have written a better motto than the closing tagline.

The Sept/Oct 2004 issue of Sierra continues the green attack on the General Mining Law of 1872, as part of the Kedwards attack on the Bush environmental record. Under the headline "The Bush administration resurrects laws from the 1800s," the article complains that the Administration has complied with the Mining Law's provisions and turned over land claimed under it. Together with coauthors, I critique the "giveaway" claim in Homesteading Rock: A Defense of Free Access Under the General Mining Law of 1872, available here. The Sierra critique makes even less sense than the usual green attacks on privatization of federal lands - the Bush Administration has no choice but to privatize land when applicants comply with the the law's requirements. There is no "resurrection" of a law going on here, simply compliance with a law that has resisted concerted attacks, most recently former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt's questionable use of "midnight" regulations to make an end run around Congress at the end of the Clinton-Gore administration (see my critique (with the same coauthors) of that in the summer 2003 issue of the Administrative Law Review.)

Paul Ehrlich is at it again. After numerous defeats dealt him by better minds (e.g. Julian Simon), Paul Ehrlich is claiming – again – that civilization is on the verge of collapse.

This time, he wants to put together a panel of academics to discuss this imminent catastrophe in earnest - and hopes to get our favorite world committee (the UN) to bankroll it! Our beloved Malthusian has set about organizing a conference called "MAHB," or Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior. In the company of scientists, social scientists, and philosopher kings, Ehrlich plans to figure out ways of making people more virtuous.

While the thrust of the Ehrlich project is billed mostly as ethical navel-gazing, Ehrlich and Co. hope that Americans, for example, will “ask themselves whether their values are really leading to the sort of world they want for their descendents.”

More than likely, he hopes his committee will get the kind of shrift garnered by the Copenhagen Consensus – a group of non-hacks and Nobel Laureates who have devoted considerable thought to solving the world’s most pressing problems (on a dime).

But the, eh hem, best part of this article is from Ehrlich:

Can we become moral entrepreneurs and persuade universities to retool themselves to become major forces in solving the human predicament? It would mean faculty adopting new values, and more often trying to do what is right for a broader community, rather than what is comfortable for those isolated from society in their ivory towers. Unhappily, in a world rapidly becoming more dangerous, they are organizations not accustomed to operate on 'Manhattan Project time...

Interesting. Can the current academic elite become any more "morally retooled" than they already are?

Wallace Kaufman’s book Coming Out of the Woods (Perseus 2000) is a realistic account of attempts to preserve some rural land in the US south through the use of covenants. It is completely without the romanticism evident in the column by George Monbiot posted by Iain yesterday. Kaufman wrestles with a lot of down-and-dirty issues in trying preserve his land and is honest and open about his failures as well as his successes. You can order Kaufman's book through Amazon. My review of it, along with other private conservation literature, will eventually be out in a symposium on private conservation in the Natural Resources Journal, whose home page is here. I'll post about that again when it is available.

Reaction to an EPA announcement on mercury and river fish yesterday, exemplified by USA Today's lead story today, Warnings on river, lake fish jump (note that the print headline is different from the more circumspect web headline), could reasonably be described as alarmist. Take the first paragraph in the USA Today story, for example:

One third of the nation's lake waters and one-quarter of its riverways are contaminated with mercury and other pollutants that could cause health problems for children and pregnant women who eat too much fish, the Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday

(Emphasis added). As the story notes, the warnings are not about fish in general but about fish caught from those particular lakes and rivers. Nowhere in the story is it estimated how many women eat so much river-caught trout that they may be at risk.

Moreover, as the story intimates, the "jump" in the headline is probably an artifact of increased reporting in two states. The EPA fact sheet (PDF link) says quite clearly (p.4):

In 2003, the geographic extent of the states under advisory for mercury was 13,068,990 lake acres and 766,872 river miles. The increase in acres and river miles under advisory is a result of the issuance of statewide mercury advisories by Montana and Washington in 2003 and the addition of rivers to Wisconsin’s statewide advisory.

All of which makes this statement from the Sierra Club outright misleading:

Today the Environmental Protection Agency announced in its 2003 National Listing of Fish and Wildlife Advisories that 766,872 miles of America's rivers and 13,068,990 lake acres are contaminated with so much poisonous mercury that the fish aren't safe to eat -- that is a more than 60 percent increase for river miles and an eight percent increase for lake acres since the 2002 report.

This increase is astounding considering that the technology exists right now that would put us on the road to cleaning up 90 percent of toxic mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants by 2008. As America's waters get more contaminated, the Bush administration continues dragging its feet, even endorsing a plan that would delay cleaning up mercury emissions from power plants for at least a decade and setting targets so weak that the industry will be allowed to emit three times more mercury after 2018.

Mercury emissions in the US for which humans are responsible dropped from about 375 tons per year in 1989 to 117 tons per year in 1999*.

Moreover, the EPA's health warnings themselves are based on studies from the Faroe Islands which inadequately controlled for the Islanders' diet, which contained a fair proportion of whale meat. A useful discussion of the science underlying EPA's guidelines on mercury and health is available here (PDF link).

The actual basis for the alarmist reaction is flimsy, to say the least.

UPDATE: Environmentalist blogger JLowe agrees that the Sierra Club reaction is inappropriate.

* Corrected from earlier numbers.

Reactionary environmentalist George Monbiot has declared that industrial civilization is over. Growth is no longer possible, so the Age of Entropy is here.

Actually, it sounds more like the Age of Aquarius; Monbiot urges us all to live like some hippies he's befriended who live in a pre-industrial revolution state in Somerset, England. No word on what happens when the hippies fall ill; if they treat themselves with 18th century medicine I'll be impressed by their devotion to their cause, if nothing else.

I wonder if George will now give up his computer and hand-write all his essays with quill pen before sending them to the Guardian by pigeon-post? I'm not holding my breath.

In the meantime, the rest of us can get on with working out ways to extract the massive remaining reserves of oil in a cost/effective manner while developing new energy technologies without being told which ones are best by government.

The Cato Institute's Jerry Taylor dissects John Kerry's silly push for "energy independence" on NRO.

Our own Jonathan Adler has written a strong piece about the significance of Russia to the fate of Kyoto. Implicit in this story is the reality of the nation's opportunity costs... In other words, if Russia were to hobble its economy to meet Kyoto targets, it would have less to spend on other local and regional environmental problems that have continued to linger since the collapse of the USSR.

The Europeans et al seem to be blind to the contradiction: that is, coaxing Russia to join Kyoto by teasing it with EU Superstatists' aspirations (read: trade concessions with Europe) only hamstrings the nation as it tries to distance itself from its socialist past and fully embrace a market system.

Mother Russia, while growing, is not yet on the downslide of her Kuznets curve - so she can ill-afford the luxuries of global treaties with only nominal environmental effects. Adler makes a point of saying that perhaps Russia and other developing nations will do better to get richer, so they can afford to adopt newer, cleaner technologies across the board. As FMEs are fond of saying: "wealthier is healthier." But it bears repeating, as the mantra doesn't seem to have broken out of the Commons enclave.

Iain has a good post on extreme weather events, below.

Back in 1998, my husband David wrote a paper for The National Center for Public Policy Research on this topic. Titled Don't Like the Weather? Don't Blame it on Global Warming, the paper examined charges that mid-90s forest fires, heat waves, blizzards and hurricanes were indicators of global warming. Because the paper reviews a century's worth of trends on these extreme weather events, it remains one of the most popular downloads on the National Center's website even now, six years later. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in the topic.

The federal Superfund program often discourages private cleanups of hazardous waste and chemical contamination. Yesterday, the New York Times reported on an alliance between Trout Unlimited, the Snowbird ski resort, and Tiffany & Company to clean up acidic mine runoff at American Fork Canyon in Utah. The U.S. Forest Service is also involved, largely because some of the contamination is on federal land. It's an interesting story about a largely private effort to address a neglected environmental concern.

As I noted here, the Michigan Supreme Court recently overturned the infamous Poletown decision in Wayne v. Hathcock. While most free-market types see this case as an important victgory for property rights, not everyone agrees.

The Detroit News published dueling op-eds on the decision, one by George Mason law professor Ilya Somin, defending the ruling, and another by defended the ruling, and another by Wayne State professor John Mogk defending the use of eminent domain for economic development.

Courtesy of the Volokh Conspiracy, the debate continues:
Somin responds to Mogk here.
Mogk responds in turn here.
Somin's final rejoinder is here.

Flash floods in the UK and hurricanes in the US are being blamed on global warming. Spiked's Brendan O'Neill provides a useful reality check:

Dr Mark Saunders, a weather expert at University College London (UCL), says we need to cool down. 'I don't think the weather we have seen is particularly unusual, to be honest. Somewhere in the world you will always get extreme weather events - whether it's a storm, a flood, or a drought. There are always people being affected by extreme weather. There is no study to my knowledge which shows that more people are being affected now, or that more people will be affected by freak weather this year than in previous years.'

And what about the global warming allegations?

Saunders has little time for those who argue that today's extreme weather is caused by global warming - a claim which has been made, not only by green-minded columnists, but in news reports, in passing, as if it were established fact. 'Global warming is definitely a real thing. But I disagree with the claims that global warming is all going to be doom and gloom, and in particular that extreme weather events are going to become more common.' He points out that in 2002, 'severe floods were attributed to global warming; then in 2003 hot and dry summer weather, the opposite of 2002, was attributed to global warming; now torrential rain, the opposite of 2003, is attributed to global warming. It seems that any anomalous weather can be blamed on global warming'.

For Saunders, the extreme weather conditions of the past two weeks are, in many ways 'the norm'. 'I take the view that it's a record if you don't get a record somewhere with regards to the weather. Extreme weather, even record weather, is actually quite common.' What's happened over the past week is that different weather events have been linked together as evidence of something more sinister. 'We are treating weather systems that aren't particularly unusual as if they were highly unusual.'

O'Neill surmises that the "silly season," when not much is happening in the world beyond sport and weather, is probably combining with a culture increasingly afraid of any risk to result in such stories. This theory has a lot to commend it; after all, they don't have shark attacks in the UK.

Newsweek's Robert Samuelson critiques the state Attorneys General nuisance suit against utilities for emitting greenhouse gases. For more Commons Blog commentary on this litigation, see here and here.

On a day when the Union of Concerned Scientists makes headlines with a study on Emissions pathways, climate change, and impacts on California that predicts harm to the California wine industry, the Hoover Institute's Henry Miller points out a much more direct threat to the wine industry there: execessive regulation.

An infestation of Pierce's disease threatens severe damage to the state's vines:

"Counting only grapes, the disease now threatens a crop production value of $3.2 billion and associated economic activity in excess of $33 billion. Other crop and ornamental plant resources such as almonds ($897 million) and susceptible species of citrus ($1.07 billion), stone fruits ($905 million), and shade trees are also at risk."

The best answer is to introduce genetic resistance by gene-splicing. But, no:

The EPA discriminates against gene-spliced varieties, by regulating even more stringently than chemical pesticides any plant that has been modified with gene-splicing techniques to enhance its pest- or disease-resistance. This policy, which has been attacked repeatedly by the scientific community as unscientific and irrational, has badly damaged agricultural research and development. It flouts the widespread scientific consensus that gene-splicing is more precise, circumscribed and predictable than other techniques. New gene-spliced varieties can not only increase yields, make better use of existing farmland and conserve water, but -- especially for grains and nuts -- are a potential boon to public health, because the harvest will have lower levels of contamination with toxic fungi and insect parts than conventional varieties. Moreover, by reducing the need for spraying crops with chemical pesticides, they are environmentally and occupationally friendly.

Agbiotech's potential is proven. A decade ago, an epidemic of papaya ringspot virus had virtually destroyed Hawaii's $64 million a year papaya crop, but by 1998 biotech researchers provided virus-resistant varieties that have preserved the industry.

Yet, the EPA holds gene-spliced plants to an inappropriate, extraordinary standard, requiring hugely expensive testing as though these plants were highly toxic chemicals. In effect, these policies impose a hugely punitive tax on a superior, and badly needed, technology.

If we want to save the California wine industry, rescinding those EPA regulations would be a good start. It'd be easier than trying to change the weather.

The New York Times reports on a renewed debate over whaling. Whale conservation efforts have been sufficiently successful that many whale populations are no longer endangered. This means that whaling could resume for some species without any threat of driving them to extinction. Nonetheless, many groups oppose the resumption of whaling. Whereas once the anti-whaling movement was motivated by a concern with extinction, now environmental and animal welfare organizations argue that killing whales, which are highly evolved and reasonably intelligent mammals, would be immoral.

While traditional whaling countries (e.g. Japan, Norway) and environmentalists debate the ethics of whaling, technology may move the policy debate beyond a binary choice over whether to resume whaling. Gregory B. Christainsen and Brian C. Gothberg have a provocative paper on how technology could be used to establish tradeable rights in whales. While perhaps not politically viable, such a system would empower those who believe any whaling is immoral to purchase the rights to specific whales in order to protect them. While this might not prevent all whaling, it would help ensure thatn any whaling occurred at a sustainable level and could further reduce whaling by increasing the opportunity costs of holding whaling rights.

Whether or not the Christainsen/Gothberg paper describes a politically viable policy option, it illustrates how increases in technology can facilitate the creation of property rights in environmental resources and true market solutions to environmental problems. On the other hand, if one believes whaling is inherently immoral, then one might not feel trading whaling rights is any more acceptable than trading human slaves.

Some interesting data from urban planning expert Wendell Cox and Joshua Utt of the Heritage Foundation in The Costs of Sprawl Reconsidered: What the Data Really Show.

The analysis was spurred by the cost arguments of the 'Smart Growth" movement. As they summarize,

Much of the justification for the current campaign against the low-density (sprawling) urban development that Americans and Western Europeans1 prefer is based upon assumptions that it is more costly than the more dense development of central cities.

Variously described as "smart growth," "growth management," or "New Urbanism," the movement would force people to live at higher densities, in multi-family units, townhouses, or clustered single-family developments--while placing significant restrictions on the expansion of suburban commercial development

The rationales offered for limiting suburban housing choices are many, various, and of questionable validity. At one point or another over the past half-decade, critics of suburban development have cited its adverse impact on "food security," wildlife, and air and water quality. Critics of suburban expansion even contend that suburbs contribute to serial killings, teenage angst, social alienation, low wages, obesity, asthma, and higher taxes. This last item, the belief that lower-density, "more sprawling" development fuels higher government expenditures, is the most common reason elected officials in many municipalities adopt measures to limit housing growth in their communities.

Typical of the concern that low-density development raises municipal costs--and therefore local taxes--is a contention in a recent, federally funded study of sprawl and costs that claims the United States "no longer can pay for the infrastructure necessary to develop farther and farther out in metropolitan areas."

The analysts therefore take a good hard look at the data that have been used to advance the argument that "uncontrolled growth" will cost about $227.4 billion between 2000 and 2025 (about $9.1 billion gross annually).

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In today's New York Times Book Review section, Al Gore reviews Boiling Point by climate alarmist Ross Gelbspan. Gore cottons to the book's thesis that a sinister cabal is distorting climate science and frustrating sound global warming policies. Andrew Stuttaford comments on the review here.

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Monday I am presenting a paper on environmental federalism at the 2004 meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society. The paper, based on my prior work in the area, offers a revisionist account of the causes and consequences of environmental centralization. Also on my panel, Parth Shah will be presenting a paper on Communities and Markets in Natural Resource Management.

As many readers of this site are probably aware, wealth tends to lead to better environmental and human health, i.e. wealthier is healthier.

But how many knew, as the BBC reports, that if African-Americans in the United States were their own country, they would rank 11th in the world in GNP? Considering the relative fraction of the population they represent, that is astounding.

The Providence Journal was kind enough to publish an op-ed I wrote. It addresses the eight state attorneys general who are attempting to run a coup on Congress by taking over our national global warming policy.

Rhode Island's AG is one of the offenders.

Addendum: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has now printed it as well. Wisconsin's AG also is one of the eight. The paper also printed an opposing view in favor of legislation by litigation by John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace USA.

The blatantly protectionist Common Agricultural Policy is well-known as one of the worst things the European Union does, preventing developing nations from selling agricultural products in a competitive European market. Less well known is the disaster that is the Common Fisheries Policy. Euroskeptic commentator Richard North, who I believe has worked closely with the dying British fising industry, examines the problems in this post at his EU Referendum blog. He notes a publicity stunt by Greenpeace, which arranged for delivery of a load of dead marine life:

This was the by-catch from a two-hour trawl on the Dogger Bank, and comprised 11,000 dead or dying marine species. It included a variety of flatfish, small cod, mackerel, sole, Norway lobster, edible crab and starfish.

The catch represented a fraction of the estimated 720,000 tons of discarded fish returned annually to the North Sea, including some 12 percent (or more) of the total cod and 40 percent of the plaice catch by weight had been discarded.

So far so good. Every fisherman and campaigner would agree that discarding is highly wasteful, and experience from the successful fisheries of Norway, Iceland and the Faroes demonstrate that banning this practice is an essential past of good fisheries management.

But Greenpeace does not make this point. It uses the information to claim that "this type of fishing practice" – and then lumps beam trawling with otter trawling, which is claims are "particularly prone to picking up unwanted species, because they are inherently indiscriminate".

That, in fact, is not true as a matter of principle. Given good design, these nets can be highly selective – the problem being that the rigidities of the CFP prevent the design and development of more selective gear, and prohibit experimentation to reduce by-catch.

North goes on to point out that there are some exclusion zones in the North Sea, notably around oil and gas installations.

These in part may account for the fact that certain species, like haddock, are at a thirty-year high, and that fishermen are taking record catches of large cod, despite scientists' claims that the stock is near exhaustion.

Finally, North notes that, under the proposed EU Constitution, conservation of fish stocks will become the responsibility of the EU itself, and not of member governments. Given the "depradations" of the CFP, this is unlikely to be good for marine life.

The media watchdog STATS takes a good hard look at the reality behind the hype surrounding the supposed threat to Europe and the East Coast from the collapse of part of one of the Canary Islands. This formed one of the threats referred to in the article Jonathan Adler commented on below.

As STATS found, referencing one of the world's leading tsunami experts, fears of Deep Impact-style tidal waves are irresponsible exaggerations:

Specifically, the shorter period and wave amplitudes in his model, result in significant wave height attenuation with distance - to less than one-third of the shallow water amplitudes. The upper limit of his modeling study shows that the East Coast of the U.S. and the Caribbean would receive waves less than 3 meters high. The European and African coasts would have waves less than 10 meters high. However, full Navier-Stokes modeling of the same La Palma failure, brings the maximum expected tsunami wave amplitude off the U.S. east coast to about one meter.

[Emphasis added.] If this is the measure of the threat, a good pair of Wellington boots would protect even beachfront property.

Residents of a tiny former gold mining town of La Grange, who have fought for three years to protect their water rights held since the goldrush, are bracing for a hike that could exceed a hundredfold. The fading town of 67 households may be forced to pay water treatment costs for the first time under a judge's recent ruling and lose their water rights altogether. The details can be read in the LA Times. This move poses a threat especially to conservationists. The concept of rights in pepetuity are central to many of the more successful conservation efforts, where individuals and groups band together and purchase land to protect significant eco-systems--but if 'in perpetuity' no longer means 'for ever' those conservation efforts become temporary at best.

No matter what you think about the Bush administration and its environmental policies, this study by David Healy at CRC should be disconcerting - maybe even a little perplexing.

Here's the long and short of it: the federal gov't takes tax dollars from the US taxpayer, and then gives it to environmental organizations as part of federal subsidy programs meant to aid in Green efforts. The figureheads of those self-same organizations use the subsidies to propagate anti-Administration rhetoric – especially with respect to the Administration’s environmental policies (read: EPA and Interior). Therefore, taxpayers via the Administration are being forced to fund Green propaganda. This is a vicious, vicious circle for all parties involved (except, of course, environmental groups who are content in their role as rent-seekers).

The moral? The federal government should get out of the business of subsidizing NGOs, much like it should get out of the business of subsidizing NPR and PBS.

As Nature magazine is publishing this week, global warming is not the threat to coral reefs people have thought. It seems that 'bleaching' caused by the deaths of algae in reponse to higher temperatures is temporary, because the corals combine with hardier algae to form a new symbiotic relationship.

"Corals have a cunning ability to adapt to events because they're flexible in their associations," says Andrew Baker of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York, one of the researchers who made the discovery. "This shows that the more dramatic predictions of coral-reef doom are simplistic."

With this worry out of the way, perhaps we can turn to the real environmental issues surrounding reefs, rather than the illusory ones:

Corals are still threatened by factors such as water pollution and damage caused by fishing. But most of these factors are easier to reverse than climate change, Baker points out, especially if conservation efforts are spurred on by the idea that corals are not doomed by global warming.

In other words, rather than trying to change the weather, we should be pursuing "no regrets" policies that will protect the environment regardless of whether global warming happens or not. If global warming alarmism prevents that happening, then the alarmism itself is a genuine threat to the environment.

Anyone who reads the weekly magazine of The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change will be well aware that there are scientific articles published in the peer-reviewed journals on a regular basis that raise serious questions about the alarmist view on global warming.

Now, however, three significant articles in the peer-reviewed press knock the legs out from under greenhouse theory itself. As three of the authors, Michaels, Singer and Douglass, explain in their non-technical summary on TCS, Settling Global Warming Science, this is a "triple whammy":

This is a double kill, both on the U.N.'s temperature records and its vaunted climate models. That's because the models generally predict an increased warming rate with height (outside of local polar regions). Neither the satellite nor the balloon records can find it. When this was noted in the first satellite paper published in 1990, some scientists objected that the record, which began in 1979, was too short. Now we have a quarter-century of concurrent balloon and satellite data, both screaming that the UN's climate models have failed, as well as indicating that its surface record is simply too hot.

If the models are wrong as one goes up in the atmosphere, then any correspondence between them and surface temperatures is either pretty lucky or the product of some unspecified "adjustment." Getting the vertical distribution of temperature wrong means that everything dependent upon that -- precipitation and cloudiness, as examples -- must be wrong. Obviously, the amount of cloud in the air determines the day's high temperature as well as whether or not it rains.

As bad as things have gone for the IPCC and its ideologues, it gets worse, much, much worse.

I would not go as far as the authors to declare, "The "skeptics" - the strange name applied to those whose work shows the planet isn't coming to an end - have won," as no science is ever that settled (did Newtonian physics "win"?), but these papers demonstrate clearly that there are significant scientific problems with global climate models, never mind the already well-established economic ones.

We protect the environment because we care about clean air and preserving other species, not mainly for financial reasons. But we also value inexpensive supplies of power and fast and convenient transportation.

All interesting and important policy questions involve choosing among competing values. Consider climate change. How does human action influence future climates? How willing are we to give up inexpensive fossil fuel energy? Does climate change demand drastic and dramatic action now? If so, at what cost? However well intended, it is naïve and irresponsible to ignore the unavoidable trade-offs.

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In reference to Randal O'Toole's comment below, I have two thoughts:

1. It is certainly true that giving more money to the National Parks without changing the incentive structure faced by park managers will not improve the park' condition, and could make things worse. Yet it has been my impression that the fee demonstration program (discussed on The Commons here and here) has helped change those incentives for the better. Admittedly fee demo is no panacea, but I believe it's a significant step in the right direction. Does Randal disagree?

2. I would also question Kerry's assumption that altering the 1872 Mining Act will produce a substantial increase in federal revenue. Increasing royalty payments will reduce the amount of mining activity on federal land (which is one reason many environmental activists support this policy change). Thus it is possible that an increase in mining revenue could be more than offset by a decrease in federal tax revenues.

[Speaking of the Mining Act, my colleague Andrew Morriss co-authored a provocative defense of the Act which can be found here.]

Historically it was believed ambient air pollution causes asthma. Yet as air pollution in major cities has declined over the last few decades, asthma rates have continued a dramatic climb. While high smog levels can increase the number of asthma attacks -- that is, the experience of symptoms by those who already have asthma -- the claim that ambient air pollution causes asthma is a non-starter. (As I understand it, though, the jury is still out on whether some common components of indoor air pollution play a role.)

Despite these facts, Senator Kerry and some of his supporters want to blame President Bush for the asthma epidemic. This is absurd, as is Kerry's claim that he will end the epidemic as President. NR editor Rich Lowry discusses this issue further in his latest column.

My latest Tech Central Station column, Finding the Truth about Kyoto in a Lie by Bill Clinton, looks at how both sides in the upcoming Presidential election seem confused over their stance towards the Kyoto treaty.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, in another piece over on National Review Online, my colleague Zack Klein and I look at the measured conclusion of three Nobel Laureate economists and some of their peers in the analysis game that the measures suggested to combat global warming, including Kyoto, represent very bad value for money.

John Kerry says he wants to increase the Park Service budget by $600 million per year funded by "updating" the 1872 Mining Act. Just think of the incentives: Park Service officials will lobby hard for more mining on federal lands in order to increase their own budgets.

Aside from debate over the mining laws, the real problem with Kerry's proposal is that he thinks the national parks need more money. He obviously doesn't know that half the Park Service budget goes into administrative overhead.

Kerry points to a "$4.9 billion maintenance backlog (that) has grown to $6.8 billion." He obviously doesn't know that a huge portion of this "backlog" consists of employee housing. Why should the Park Service provide housing to employees when every park in the lower 48 states (not to mention Hawaii and most in Alaska) are within easy driving distance of private housing?

The Park Service is a classic example of the failure of socialized housing. The agency typically spends twice as much on construction and reconstruction as any private owner would pay, again partly because a huge percentage of the agency's "construction" budget is siphoned off into administrative overhead.

Unfortunately, Gale Norton defends the Bush Administration's record by pointing out that the Park Service has increased its budget by 20 percent since 2001. When are we going to stop measuring the success of bureaucracies by the growth of their budgets?

Sorry, Secretary Norton. No, thanks, Senator Kerry. The parks are better off with less money, not more.

Today's New York Times reports on how the President's timber road proposal is playing in Idaho. Of particular interest, the story notes some of the trade-offs between national and more local control of timber harvesting decisions. I particularly like the discussion of elk habitat.

Not surprisingly, the debate over the welfare of the elk tends to break along the same lines as the old logging arguments. The Bitterroot and Clearwater mountains originally combined old trees, which sheltered elk in the winter, and fire-cleared open space, where they foraged for willow, bear grass and other shrubs. Logging, mill owners say, promotes the growth of essential forage. Older trees, environmental groups say, provide essential shelter.

They're both right. To me, that's just another reason to have more local control of forestry decisions, as this will tend to result in greater diversity of land-use decisions than leaving such decision in the hands of the federal government.

The BBC reports that British researchers claim that gargantuan natural disasters are a greater threat than international terrorism and deserve more attention from policy-makers. One of the reported threats comes from asteroids. This prompts me to wonder: Do all those who support precipitous government action to address various environmental threats out of "precaution" also support the development of defensive systems to prevent an asteroid from hitting the earth?

TCS' Nick Schulz takes a close look at recent actions by the World Health Organization, and the results aren't pretty.

"Most asbestos lawsuits in the United States are being brought by claimants who are probably not sick," according to a new study, Nature reports. According to the study, expert witnesses in asbestos cases are vastly overstating the extent of alleged asbestos-related harms.

Radley Balko has a solid piece explaining his take on "the tragedy of the commons." Money quote:

The best example of the tragedy of commons occurs in the oceans. Why is it that we regularly hear about how we're running out of various species of fish, but we're always well stocked with beef, pork and poultry? The difference is that the latter are raised on dry land, where there are clear, discernible property rights.

Robert Kennedy, Jr. -- among others -- should read it.

THis past week, the Michigan Supreme Court overturned the infamous Poletown decision that allowed the city of Detroit to raze an entire neighborhood to pave the way (quite literally) for a General Motors plant. The decision, Wayne v. Hathcock, is potentially quite significant, as there is an increasing amount of litigation challenging the use of eminent domain for "economic development." Eugene Volokh quotes the additional thoughts of George Mason law professor Ilya Somin on the decision here.

The Bush Administration is supporting proposed changes to federal law that would encourage the Bureau of Land Managment to sell off wasteful and unnecessary federal land holdings by allowing the agency to direct the resulting revenue to other projects, including environmental conservation. (See stories here.) Explained Assistant Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett explained the value of the change to Grist:

There has long been a concern that BLM really didn't have any incentive to sell [portions of its holdings] that are unmanageable and not germane to its mission. . . . There's a lot of work involved in doing the surveys and appraisals and so forth that are necessary to sell land, and as long as the revenues from the sale go straight off to the Treasury, it's all cost to BLM and not necessarily much benefit.

Allowing the BLM to keep the revenues would encourage it to consider the opportunity costs of maintaining unneeded parcels in the federal estate.

A 2000 survey by the Clinton Administration identified over three million acres owned by the BLM worthy of sale. Maintaining these lands in federal hands, the Administration concluded, was a waste of taxpayer dollars. Nonetheless, establishment environmental groups are skeptical, and decry any effort to divest any federal land-holdings. Indeed, some are upset that the Bush Administration supports a requirement that only 60 percent of the revenues from federal land holdings be devoted to federal land acquisition. (Just how much land does the federal government need to have?!?)

Allowing federal land agencies to keep the proceeds of land sales is a positive step forward in federal land management, as is not requiring that all of the money from such proceeds be spent on acquiring more land. Yet there is far more to do. Given the federal government already owns approximately one-third of the continental U.S., a "no net loss of private property" provision requiring the federal government to offset any new land acquisitions with the sale of equivalent-sized parcels would be a welcome next step.

As the Commons Blog's resident Brit, I feel it incumbent on me to say a little more about RFK Jr.'s strange view of Magna Carta. As the British Library translation makes clear, the references to fisheries have nothing whatsoever to do with "free access to fisheries in navigable waters." Fish-weirs were to be removed in order to make rivers navigable again, not to provide a fish for every pot.

The other section, "River-banks that have been enclosed in our reign shall be treated similarly," (Clause 47) prevented the executive power (to use modern terminology) from appropriating private property for its own use.

Thankfully, English fishermen, jealously preserving the "public right to fish" that grew out of this clause through jurisprudence, have used Common Law mechanisms to prevent a tragedy of the commons. The Pride of Derby fishing club, for instance, went to law to reduce pollution in their waters.

Magna Carta, by instituting the sanctity of due process in the legal system ("To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice," Claue 40), in fact laid the groundwork for such Common Law actions. The environmental protection system was therefore put in place in 1215.

This is a far cry from RFK Jr's strange insistence that federal environmental laws restore the free market. Instead, they are otiose. Magna Carta gave us a system that should work in every case. Ironically, it is the cases where the executive power has accrued to itself exactly the sort of appropriations that Magna Carta was designed to stop that has caused the real problems.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not only not a serious environmentalist, as I noted below, nor a free-marketeer, as Jonathan Adler has just demonstrated, but he's not much of a historian, either.

Note this Kennedy paragraph in the Grist magazine interview:

When Roman law broke down in Europe during the Dark Ages, a lot of the feudal kings began reasserting control over the public-trust resources. For example, in England, King John began selling monopolies to the fisheries and he said the deer belonged to nobility. The public rose up and confronted him at the Battle of Runnymede and forced him to sign the Magna Carta, which of course was the beginning of constitutional government. In addition to having virtually all of our Bill of Rights, the Magna Carta has two other chapters on free access to fisheries in navigable waters. And those rights descended to the people in the States when we had the revolution. And virtually every state constitution says the people of the state own the waters and the fisheries, the wildlife, the air. They're not owned by the governor, the legislature, the corporations. Nobody has a right to use them in a way that will diminish or injure their use and enjoyment by others.

There's too much to address here for just a blog entry, but a few points:

1) King John was one in a long line of Norman/English/British Kings who believed that the nobility had the right to control hunting rights in "public" forests. William the Conquerer, King John's grandmother's grandfather, was a big believer in exercising the sovereign's "right" to control the land, and the practice did not end with the signing of the Magna Carta (although that document does address the matter).

2) The Magna Carta does not "hav[e] virtually all of our Bill of Rights." It was mostly about preserving the prerogatives of a small number of families against the power of the monarch.

3) Note Kennedy's line "those rights descended to the people in the States when we had the revolution." The the governmental philosophy of the United States is that rights descend to the public (actually, all individuals) from our Creator, not from some dude or dudette in London ("...all men are created equal... endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights").

4) Kennedy's timeline ("those rights descended to the people in the States when we had the revolution") is baffling. The Revolution ended the authority of any British monarch and his/her governments over the American (ex)colonies. It was not a lobbying effort aimed at convincing King John's heirs to grant Americans a few more "rights."

In the Grist interview mentioned below, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. also claims to be, first and foremost, a “free marketer”. When asked whether the “culprit” in environmental degradation is “free-market capitalism,” Kennedy answers:

No! The best thing that could happen to the environment is free-market capitalism. In a true free-market economy, you can't make yourself rich without making your neighbors rich and without enriching your community. In a true free-market economy, you get efficiencies and efficiency means the elimination of waste. Waste is pollution. So in true free-market capitalism, you eliminate pollution and you properly value our natural resources so you won't cut them down. What polluters do is escape the discipline of the free market. You show me a polluter, I'll show you a subsidy -- a fat cat who's using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market.

Kennedy continues:

Laissez-faire capitalism does not work, particularly in the commons. Individuals pursuing their own self-interest will devour the commons very quickly. That's the economic law -- the tragedy of the commons. You have to force companies to internalize costs. All of the federal environmental laws are designed to restore free-market capitalism in America in this regard. . . . . I don't even consider myself an environmentalist anymore. I'm a free-marketeer. I go out into the marketplace and I catch the polluters who are cheating the free market and I say, "We are going to force you to internalize your costs the same way you are internalizing your profit." That's what the federal environmental laws allow us to do: restore real property rights in America. You cannot get sustained environmental protection under any system but a democracy. There's a direct correlation around the planet between the level of tyranny in various countries and the level of environmental degradation.

Kennedy correctly notes that pollution and other environmental problems tend to result from the lack of market institutions – not from “market failures.” But the idea that federal environmental laws somehow “restore free-market capitalism” is sheer lunacy.

If federal environmental laws sought to reinforce market institutions, their primary function would be to clarify property rights in environmental resources and assist property owners in the enforcement and protection of their rights. Instead, major environmental laws impose myriad requirements on businesses and individuals with little regard for the actual environmental impact of specific activities and whether those activities infringe upon the property rights of others. If federal environmental laws respected property rights, than rights holders would be able to allow the degradation of their own property, so long as it did not infringe upon the equivalent rights of their neighbors. In such a framework, pollution is the imposition of waste or other residuals upon the property or person of another without their consent, and government would not impose emission restrictions where emissions have minimal impact. Groups like Riverkeeper, with which Kennedy works, would not file suit to enforce the picayune details of effluent permits that have little relationship to water quality. Rather, like the Anglers’ Cooperative Association, they would enforce riparian and other rights in rivers and streams, and enter into binding agreements with upstream polluters. (For more on how such a framework might work, see here, especially part IV.)

Of course, Robert Kennedy has little interest in the free market or protecting property rights. Rather, he is a “faux market environmentalist” and partisan defender of the federal environmental regulatory bureaucracy, and has attacked each and every effort by the Bush Administration to modify, reform, or streamline existing regulations, no matter how minor (often committing errors in the process, as I document here). “Free marketer” is just a convenient label to soften his hard ideological stance.

In a new article on Climatology on National Review Online, I point out an interesting difference in the way global climate modelers approach their work from the way other scientific modelers approach theirs.

I sometimes wonder whether a laager mentality is developing among climate modelers in that they are becoming resistant to genuine challenges to their models because they view them all as politicized. It is certainly depressing that many of them are still defending the outlier models chosen as the basis for the US National Assessment on Climate Change which, even the study authors admitted, are no better at reproducing past climate than tables of random numbers.

If reality and the models continue to diverge, this debate is simply going to get even more polarized.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has been known to make exaggerated claims -- utterly ridiculous, completely laughable statements -- about environmental issues.

This quote from him may explain why:

I have so much mercury in my body right now, having tested it recently, that if I were a woman of childbearing years, my child, according to Dr. David Carpenter, the national authority on mercury contamination, would have cognitive impairment -- permanent IQ loss.

Hmmm....

In the same interview, from Grist magazine, the following exchange occurs:

Grist: So if you were to tell our readers the single most important environmental action they should take, what would it be?

Kennedy: If your choice is to buy a Prius or go work for a politician who is going to implement the CAFE standards, you better work for the politician. The most important thing you can do is participate in the political process. Support the environmental groups that wage legal action and lobby for these bills. Get rid of the politicians who are whoring for industry. It's more important than recycling. It's more important than anything you can do.

So rather than drive a small, fuel-efficient car, Kennedy advises, it is better for you to vote for a politician who will force you to drive a small, fuel-efficient car.

Why not eliminate the middleman?

That is, if you want to take your life in your hands. In 2002, the U.S. government's National Academy of Sciences released a report (Effectiveness and Impact of CAFE Standards 2002) saying that since CAFE standards were imposed in 1975, an additional 2,000 deaths per year can be attributed to the down-sizing of cars required to meet these fuel efficiency standards.

The National Center has a webpage devoted to fuel economy standards, our Fuel Economy Information Center. Stop by and take our quick poll: Should CAFE standards be raised, lowered or left where they are?

Radley Balko proposes a manifesto for "alternative environmentalism" at ABetterEarth.org.

Now, this may prove groundbreaking or as is euphemistically put in the item, "innovative". The UN to date has only proposed a carbon "cap-and-trade" system, described by the U.S. Congressional Budget Office as up to four times as inefficient (expensive) as simply taxing the carbon. Now comes the prospect of competing carbon proposals, and possibly a debate about their relative merits. Of course, such a September proposal might also foster certain other debate in the U.S.

From a widely distributed update/site funded by the UN and its subsidiary bodies:

"UN TO CONSIDER GLOBAL TAXES

The United Nations is studying proposals for global taxes as a means to generate innovative sources of financing for development. The proposals to be considered include a carbon tax on fuel use, a tax on currency transactions, an arms sales tax, a global lottery and a tax on international airline travel....

Read More »

While spending the summer in Bozeman, one can readily determine whether there are major forest fires in the region. The more fires in the West, the hazier the view of the surrounding mountains. When produced by industrial facilties, haze in National Parks is regulated under federal law. Why, then, is the haze produced by forest fires not similarly regulated? Of course the government could not impose pollution controls on forest fires, but federal agencies could require the use of fire management techniques that reduce this form of pollution. After all, whether caused by burning coal or burning trees, haze pollutes the viewshed. Just a thought.

I visited Yellowstone National Park this past weekend, as I have almost every year for the past decade. As usual, I gained admission by using my National Parks Pass. I purchased the pass, which covers admission to all National Park entrance fees for a year, last August for $50. When I visit Yellowstone, the pass covers the entrance fee for any vehicle in which I am riding. This was the third time I sued this pass for Yellowstone, and I have used the pass to bring at least five guests to the park in my last three visits. In other words, if I only used the pass for Yellowstone, my guests and I would be visiting the park for just over $6 per visit per person (5 guests + 3xMe = 8 visits). Had I paid the vehicle entrance fee of $20 each time (good for 7 days), the cost would have been $10 per visit per person. Either way, it's a miniscule cost for visiting one of the nation's treasures.

By any measure, my frequent visits to Yellowstone National Park are heavily subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. The National Parks face a staggering maintenance backlog, and regular visits by millions of Americans further strain the budgetary resources of the National Park Service. Like most Park visitors, I could well afford to pay more for my visits -- and would be willing to do so, particularly if I were assured that the money would actually address maintenance, upkeep, and general operating costs in the parks. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Although the Fee Demonstration program has produced some positive results, in part by letting individual park units raise fees and keep the revenues within the park, the existing program is limited and under attack by a motley coalition of Western Republicans and esablishment environmental organizations.

The dirty little secret of federal lands policy is that recreation is among the most subsidized activities on the federal estate. It is more heavily subsidized than logging or grazing. Yet because hikers, campers, and other recreationists are not as easy to demonize as timber barons, cattle ranchers or rapacious miners, there is little attention to the cost and extent of such subsidies -- and the subsidies persist. So, for those readers who haven't visited Yellowstone so far this year, thank you for your support -- and I hope I am not able to thank you for this subsidy for too much longer.