Reviewing the Science of Climate Change.

This is just to reassure Rodney Hide that while the select committee on climate change will not be reviewing the science of climate change, scientists will continue to.

I spent last week at the Australian Institute of Physics Congress in Adelaide. There were several great plenaries. One of them by Professor Marvin Geller of Stony Brook University in New York reviewed the effect of variations in solar intensity on the earth's average temperature. He told us that this effect is not large enough to explain observed warming. The Australian (which often runs infuriating articles on this issue) reported on this and I particularly liked this little comment from Geller

According to Professor Geller, sceptics are incorrect when they claim CO2 cannot cause warming as it comprises only a small, though increasing, fraction of the atmosphere.

In fact, CO2 is highly reactive in the atmosphere, he said. "Just because it's a small fraction doesn't mean it's unimportant. If you don't believe me, try surviving in a room with a small concentration of cyanide gas."

ACT in Government: Wasting your taxpayer dollar

Lets be clear. The Select Committee review of emmissions trading is a waste of money and a broken election promise on the part of National.

National was quite emphatic before the election that the ETS would not be repealed, that emissions trading would go ahead, and certainly that "the scientific aspects of climate change" were no longer up for discussion by New Zealand politicians.

We appear to be back to square one, at least if the select committee Terms of Reference in the confidence and supply agreement are final, or if Murial Newman gets her way. Here she is in the NBR spouting the "warming stopped in '98" canard and calling for a select committee review "of the science". As if scientists were not continually engaged in reviewing the scientific aspects of climate change!

It's breathtaking that ACT want to hear "competing views on the scientific aspects of climate change from internationally respected sources" when pretty much every scientific association in the world, including our own Royal Society of New Zealand, has carried out a careful review of the science and concluded that anthropogenic global warming is real.

I challenge ACT to find an internationally respected source to disagree. (And no, Thatcher-era UK cabinet ministers don't count. I'm interested in a scientifically respected source.)

In any case everyone is in agreement on this point so write a letter to John Key already.

My Election Theories

The Labour party will be dismayed at how few electorates still have a list vote lead for Labour. An alarming number of Labour-held electorates had National ahead on the party vote. This includes not only New Lynn but also Mt Roskill. In almost all Labour-held seats the MP is more popular than the party.

Since it is the home town, lets look at the Christchurch list votes. Increasingly rural Waimakariri looks like a safe National seat. There was just enough personal vote for Clayton Cosgrove for him to barely hold it. Christchurch Central was a very narrow win for Labour on both MP and list vote so you should think of that as a marginal(!) Labour seat. Port Hills looks marginal National and Wigram(!) looks to be only marginal for Labour. Only Christchurch East still looks like a pretty comfortable Labour seat. That's not the electoral map that I grew up with to say the least.

Oh and I almost forgot Ilam is still a National safe seat.

We were told by Mike Williams on election night that the get out the vote efforts developed in South Auckland last election were implemented nation wide this election.

Indeed I myself was prevailed upon to go door to door encouraging people to vote in Mana and there were certainly many Labour people out on the streets of Wellington Central getting out the vote. Based on experiences in Porirua I can only agree with the Labour leadership, many heartland Labour voters are still remarkably positive about the party.

Clearly though the get out the vote efforts were not as successful as might have been hoped, particularly in Auckland but in other centers also.

Here's my working theory.

There is a difference between knowing in principle how to organise the party vote, and having enough enthusiastic volunteers to execute.

Were Labour party operatives really working that hard on Saturday?

A question for an investigative journalist?

Iran and the Solomons

It seems like it's not just China, Taiwan and Japan practising checquebook diplomacy in our back yard Lowy Interpreter

Tehran and Honiara have little in common, but as Taiwan found out a long time ago, the Solomon Islands’ vote in the UN General Assembly is worth as much as that of the US. Hence the interest Iran has started to show in the welfare of Solomon Islanders. The two countries recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding, which may eventually lead to the establishment of diplomatic relations.

Key's first mistake

Last election I was appalled by the sight of Don Brash's grinning face surrounded by a posse of Diplomatic Protection Squad members as he entered the National party function to make his concession speech. I'm amazed that we saw a rerun of this disastrous image tonight. It spoke volumes at the last election that we saw Helen Clark's protection staff only in so far as they were required to help her parents into a car, and in tonight's efforts to protect Clark the DPS was similarly circumspect.

This is not an easy issue. I have heard that those who were charged with protecting Clark sometimes felt that she asked them to stand off at considerable risk to her person. They did not see this just as a risk to her but also as a risk to them and their reputations.

However, I don't believe that the New Zealand public wants to see its Prime Minister designate separated from the press or from the party faithful by the kind of linked arm squadron we saw tonight. This is an appalling look for the leader of any democratic country and should not be countenanced by the Prime Minister designate of New Zealand. Key should get up the courage to a put a stop to this sort of image.

I wonder whether the choice of venue has contributed to this situation. National Party organisers should select election night venues with a view to allowing the DPS to protect its leader while keeping out sight of the TV cameras.

A Vote for Generational Change

For various reasons I've been thinking this year about the messiness and necessity of generational change. I think I might finally be beginning to understand all those Greek myths where the son kills the father.

For the moment at least, I am planning to cast my electorate vote this year against my sitting MP. This means voting for a young, allegedly liberal, woman from the National party. It's not an easy decision and I may yet change my mind.

The Labour party is still my political home and I'm giving them my party vote trusting that in six years time everyone who sat around a Cabinet table or in a Labour party caucus room in the 80's will have retired and we will be electing a talented and enthusiastic new Labour-led Government.

In the meantime social democrats should be contemplating the extraordinary testimony of Alan Greenspan.

We will agree with John Quiggin on this point

Coming to substance, quite a few people have argued that the crisis doesn’t really signify very much, and that, once it is resolved, things will return to pretty much the way they were a couple of years ago. I disagree.

This concession of error by Alan Greenspan is, I think, pretty strong evidence against the view that the crisis is not so significant, in policy or ideological terms.

We'll also agree that news of the "great moderation" was premature.

As taxpayers we will want a say in the running of banks or other private businesses that we underwrite or take shares in.

In contemplating the future it seems to me that like many Australians, including the current Treasurer, we should be thinking about Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley in these times of financial crisis. (There is a new documentary on his fascinating life to show on the ABC.)

Chifley took over from wartime Labor Prime Minister Curtin who is credited with forming the Australia-US alliance and who died in office. He lost power in the early fifties after trying to to nationalize the banks, after sending in the army to break up a mining strike and after failing to totally overcome Communist influence in the Australian union movement and Labor party. I've been learning about him from Bob Ellis's book "Goodbye Jerusalem".

Near the end of his life Chifley said

I remember when in the thirties because of the banks hundreds of thousands of breadwinners were thrown on a pitiful dole. Farmers were sold up and shopkeepers closed their doors, and insecurity, misery and want were forced upon our people. We are determined with all the power that we command that that shall not happen again.

"A new dawn of American leadership is at hand"

I spent the day with a score of physicists trying to get work done while they scanned their Blackberries for the latest vote counts. Having gotten home and watched Obama's speech my relief has been replaced by excitement.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

My friends on the left, particularly in New Zealand, have a sometimes deserved reputation for anti-Americanism. At the end of four years living in the United States I was an enthusiastic combatant for the contrary view in any and all private discussions but I finally shut my mouth after the first photos from Abu Ghraib. From tonight I'm back on the team.

Will the Greens never learn?

A prominent feature of recent Australian politics has been the growing influence of the Green party in inner city electorates. Particularly in state elections where tired and unpopular Labor governments are opposed by state Liberal parties that, particularly in NSW, are a shambles populated by the barking mad.

At the weekend the Greens got the balance of power in the ACT.

Why is the Green party not doing better in inner city electorates in New Zealand?

Because they continually display the political nous that led them to declare prior to the election that they would not support the National party in Government. This despite the fact that an exactly similar declaration saw them kept out of the Cabinet after the last election. Russel Norman sometimes seems to understand the issue.

"Labour taught us a good lesson: you can't trust Labour to do anything except look after themselves, and I think National's the same. So you have to be tough."

Then they go and walk into the same old trap a second time. Twice seems like carelessness.

The Greens desperately need electorate seats so that they don't continue to rely on the 5% margin to get them into Parliament. These seats could well be one of the three with "Central" after its name but the Greens would have to break some eggs to get them.

However they persist in 'campaigning for the party vote' at least in Christchurch Central (where my parents live) and Auckland Central (where I have to decide who to vote for). I couldn't name the Green candidate in either electorate.

In both seats if they stood a warm body with a good list place and a long term committment to the electorate and campaigned agressively for the electorate vote they would attract significant support. This could damage relations with Labour in the short term, but as I have noted the Greens should have punished Labour for last election's shenanigans and this seems to be one way they could have made the point. Better still with effective challengers from National standing in both seats it might possibly have had the effect of giving the seats to the Nats.

This would be ideal for the Greens since these seats will never be safe for the right of politics and a warm Green body with the advantage of list incumbency and growing urban support would maximize the possibility of eventually winning the seat.

I can't resist pointing out that this was a particularly good year to initiate this strategy in Christchurch Central. The popular Labour MP has retired and Labour has seen fit to nominate in his place a spin doctor who has never previously lived in the city. I can assure you that Christchurch people very much dislike having to vote for these Labour carpet-baggers. (I was naive enough to believe that MMP had put a stop to the practice.) Moreover in last year's local body elections Green candidates unseated several Labour incumbents representing central parts of Christchurch on the regional council. They did this by running against Labour-led council and Government support for an enormous irrigation project on the Canterbury plains. This shows that local environmental issues could be big winners for the Greens, and the issue could have been revived for the general election by an enthusiastic campaigner.

The Green party of New Zealand is asleep at the wheel.

Just as well the anti-science Greens are one of my least favourite parties in the New Zealand Parliament. A genuinely Green, genuinely political, Green party would however be an asset.

Small town activism

I lived in South Pasadena for a couple of years. Despite being in the middle of the conurbation that is Los Angeles, it's a beautiful little enclave of California bungalows and tree-lined streets. There's a great little coffee shop next to the park in the middle of town where you can overhear students discussing their projects and scriptwriters their scripts. You can buy the best Baja fish tacos at Senor Fish and get your groceries at the original Trader Joes. It's the kind of place where people still take little kids trick or treating and the whole community lines up to cheer the fire department at the 4th of July parade before heading to the fireworks in the evening.

It's probably not the kind of small town Sarah Palin thinks of as breeding good people but it's a wonderful small town all the same. It's great to see some in South Pasadena getting behind the effort to defeat Proposition No 8 which would overturn the California Supreme Court's decision that same sex marriages are legal in that state. Their ad which features many gay and lesbian families and marriage ceremonies has appealed to many who are dissappointed with the oblique approach of the main "No on 8" campaign.

Hat-tip: Andrew Sullivan

A question for our politicians as they stand for re-election. Is it still the policy of New Zealand to recognise marriages performed in other jurisdictions?

Say what?

A colleague passed through the Qantas lounge in Auckland at the weekend and brought back a copy of the Sunday Star Times.

I find that they have started a "Wise Heads" column alternating Doug Graham and Margaret Pope.

Good for Doug Graham, I nearly voted for him as President! This week he called for an independent anti-corruption authority. A wise and timely idea.

But Margaret Pope?

Trans-Tasman contrasts in response to financial crisis

The Australian government dedicated half its surplus or $10.4 billion dollars to a stimulus package. The money goes out before Christmas to those most likely to spend it; pensioners and their carers, low income families and first home buyers ($14,000 from the State when you buy a house! That's twice the Howard government level.)

This was done without any detailed Treasury modelling because both officials and politicians were of the opinion that immediate action was needed. In particular it appears that Australian and international experts are not very confident of the continued health of the Chinese economy which is the main driver of growth in resource rich Australia.

The economy is still dominating the front pages and Rudd has announced the goal of avoiding recession and developing regulations in response to the crisis that will be a model for international developments. This is consistent with his extraordinary ambition to be seen as a player on the world stage.

I suppose that it is no surprise, given the Election season, that by contrast the front page news on the New Zealand Herald website at the moment is that Lockwood Smith has been known to make a dick of himself. Who knew?

Cullen will be happy to find that fishhooks in the detail of the Government's bank guarantee were big news in Australia this morning. So Australian moves are not without percieved missteps.

Meanwhile the outcome of the NZ election is not a topic of great interest.

US Presidential Race

McCain's campaign is currently in tatters, that never seems to last long though!

Last weekend he allowed his campaign operatives to make the extraordinary statement, to the Washington Post I believe, that they wished to "turn the page" on the financial crisis and move to attack Obama's judgement and character. They let all and sundry know that they would raise the Ayers issue, possibly even in the debate Tuesday. Reviews, even from conservative commentators like Peggy Noonan on Meet the Press, were very negative and polls have continued to move in Obama's direction.

Sure enough Ayers was not mentioned Tuesday and everyone agrees that Obama came off best. McCain-Palin events are whipping up quite nasty rhetoric from the more redneck element though, which is again creating concern among commentators like George Packer, for example. This has led McCain to once again dial back the rhetoric and another outbreak of playing nice.

On the other side I think we saw a trademark Chicago shove from Obama. (This whole "Bambi" thing was always a fiction. The reason to like Obama is that he is very considered and also tough, I hope his more dewy eyed supporters are not too disilluisioned, they should definitely reader the Lizza profile in the New Yorker as well as the earlier one.) After McCain announced his intention to increase the negative attacks we saw Obama release a 15 minute account of the Keating Five scandal on the web.

Last weekend also saw (with suspiciously apt timing) the release of an extraordinary polemic against McCain in Rolling Stone. It'll take a while for you to get your jaw back up off the floor after you read it.

Some good quotes: this one from a fellow prisoner of war in Vietnam (and I am leaving out the best bit)

Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. "McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man," Dramesi says today. "But he's still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in."

And in honour of local corruption hawks this one:

There is no small irony that the Reform Institute — founded to bolster McCain's crusade to rid politics of unregulated soft money — itself took in huge sums of unregulated soft money from companies with interests before McCain's committee. EchoStar got in on the ground floor with a donation of $100,000. A charity funded by the CEO of Univision gave another $100,000. Cablevision gave $200,000 to the Reform Institute in 2003 and 2004 — just as its officials were testifying before the commerce committee. McCain urged approval of the cable company's proposed pricing plan. As Bradley Smith, the former chair of the Federal Election Commission, wrote at the time: "Appearance of corruption, anyone?"

But really read the whole thing.

Oh and the NYT has finally noticed Obama's extraordinary ground operation.

Preparing for worse if that's possible

The response to the G7 communique and Paulson's subsequent press conference seems to be very negative. Many commenters hoped that the G7 would move to a British style scheme of partial nationalisation of the banks. Paulson's press conference suggested he is moving ahead with that but is still looking for private capital to assist also and the G7 communique is very vague. (The authority to buy equity in the banks was not in the original rescue package put forward to congress but clearer heads prevailed and it now seems that the bailout package will look very different.

It's really not reassuring when Paul Krugman says "Paulson sounds terrified" and others comment that he is loosing all credibility. But given that he has downplayed the crisis at every turn for the last 18 months this is perhaps not surprising.

Lets hope that Morgan Stanley does survive the weekend.

Australian Response to Financial Crisis

Treasurer Wayne Swan is in Washington and New York this weekend, attending the G20 meeting and lobbying bigwigs. I've just listened to his interview with Barry Cassidy on Insiders, and I don't think you could really describe him as calm and collected. It seems that there is no government program that will not be reconsidered in light of the financial crisis.

Back in Canberra the Foreign Minister Stephen Smith has announced that the finance subcommittee of the Cabinet will meet later today.

What are New Zealand's alleged leaders doing this weekend?

THE government's cabinet budget committee will meet later today to take any action deemed necessary from key meetings of the International Monetary Fund and Group of 20 finance ministers in New York today.

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said there was a growing realisation that the international financial crisis was worse than originally thought.

Update: Account of Clark's campaign opening speech just up, she does at least announce a deposit guarantee scheme.

How are New Zealand's banks really doing?

We were told on Morning Report Friday morning that the Reserve Bank believes that New Zealand banks have $60 billion of overseas debt to turn over in the next 40 days. I've listened to that several times to be sure that is really what was said.

That figure appears to be nearly half of New Zealand's GDP.

My limited understanding of the situation at the moment is that internationally banks are simply not lending money to other banks.

Worse still other nations are moving to guarantee or buy stock in their banks. Australia seems likely to increase its guarantees on its banks (which admittedly own ours) in the next few days.

We're told that the Reserve Bank has moved to allow banks to borrow from it secured by the value of mortgages. However I can't help noticing that the total value of New Zealand houses is about $2.11 billion, so there better be some hefty mortgages on commercial property out there if that's really going to solve the problem.

Could someone, preferably the boss of a bank and the leader of a major party, say something reassuring but convincing about the position of New Zealand's banks?

Finally, if you were Jim Anderton and you'd set up a government owned bank that doesn't borrow overseas you would have to be pretty happy with yourself.


Update: Clark has just announced a deposit guarantee scheme.

The Dilemma of Attribution

It's been a great decade for Nobel Prizes in theoretical physics. In 1999 it was awarded to 't Hooft and Veltman "for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics", in 2003 to Abrikosov Ginzburg and Leggett "for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids", to Gross, Wilczek and Politzer in 2004 "for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction", and in 2005 to Roy Glauber "for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence" (that contribution amounts to creating, out of the pretty much the whole cloth, my field of theoretical quantum optics and proceeding to do a frightening amount of the interesting work in it).

This year's prize is more cause for excitement since it goes to three more theorists: Yoichiro Nambu "for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics" and to Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature".

All of these well-deserved prizes recognise wonderful advances in our knowledge. Theoretical physics is an activity undertaken by a relatively small community of researchers and it's in the nature of ideas that often a large number of people have made significant contributions to any major development. When it comes time to award the prize only three names can be up in the bright lights. Those of us who have read enough physics texts to recognise the terms "Nambu-Goldstone boson" and "Cabbibo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix" might wish that there were a better way to reward the great ones among us and achieve for them appropriate public recognition.

It's probably fair to guess that David Politzer's Nobel Address got his co-recipients offside from the first paragraph. It does, however, provide a fascinating if bleak assessment of how science really gets done and the challenges facing those who decide on who gets and who does not get a Nobel Prize.

Keep Physicists Off Wall Street

I've long been of the opinion that overly complicated and insufficiently commonsensical analysis of risk by theoretical physics and mathematics Ph.D's may have played an unfortunate part in the creation of the incredibly complicated arguments that dressed sub-prime mortgages up as AAA investments and thus contributed to the current parlous state of international credit markets.

Dave Bacon seems to agree and has a great idea to avoid this state of affairs in future; increase science funding to keep theoretical physicists away from money markets!

The State of the Free Market

Could I second the Hive's plea that we all take the US financial crisis more seriously?

I can't resist arguing the cause of social democracy though. John Quiggin here in Brisbane has a great trade for those who argue that the current difficulty is not some failure of "the free market" on account of the US not being a free market. I'll have to quote it almost in full

I will agree that
(a) the US is not a free-market economy, and its failures do not constitute evidence against the claim that a pure free-market economy is the best possible form of social organization
(b) no other actually existing society is, or has ever been, a free-market economy, and no actual or conceivable events anywhere constitute evidence against the claim that a pure free-market economy is the best possible form of social organization
(c) In discussion with parties to the agreement, I will not contest the claim that a pure free-market economy is the best possible form of social organization

All I ask in return is that the counterparties to the deal agree not to advocate, oppose, criticise, or comment on any policy or political position that might actually be implemented, to ensure that the purity of the free-market ideal is not compromised by actual experience.

John is also willing to make the same offer to Marxist-Leninists for pretty obvious reasons.

He also thinks we might have seen the back of neoliberalism, I'd post a link including his assessment of the New Zealand situation but his site seems to have crashed just at the moment.

The Dark Side

TPMCafe is discussing Jane Mayer's book the Dark Side currently (both Christopher Hitchens and Slate's Emily Bazelon are part of the group). If you are interested in the Bush administration's use of torture you should read the book, not just the New Yorker articles.

In the discussion Mayer asks about the possibility of war crimes prosecutions in the next administration. Since such prosecutions are unlikely she also asks what effect this precedent will have both on future US administrations and the international standing of the US.

Mayer succinctly outlines the facts on which such a case would be based

In secret dungeons, U.S.-held prisoners were waterboarded, stripped naked, kept chained and near frozen, bombarded with unbearable sounds, deprived of daylight, kept isolated from human contact for months, fed barely enough to live on, beaten, confined in dog cages, and deliberately mistreated in other carefully-regulated ways under a policy set in place by the highest-ranking officials of our country. An unknown number died. A larger unknown number simply disappeared. We know that the Red Cross -- an independent non-partisan organization - warned the President and other top officials that at least fourteen of the individuals currently held in Guantanamo -- people who the Red Cross was able to interview -- were tortured. Not maybe. Definitely. The Red Cross also warned the President that he and others in his administration were in danger of being held liable for war crimes

We know an increasing amount about the intelligence community's division on this issue. Scott Horton has some very interesting comments on the state of affairs at the CIA.

In my mind, Jane is asking the most important question--the accountability question. I also have had a run-in with a senior CIA official who described to me in some detail being briefed on the new policies. "I decided that afternoon that I was taking an early retirement," he told me. He went on to note that "it seems quite a few people took early retirement after getting that briefing." He also told me his thinking was simple: "It's not that this was bad policy. It was a crime. Black and white." It's clear that these moves were very controversial within the intelligence service. Although the pushback in the military is now very well documented, the pushback at CIA remains anecdotal. It will come in time, I think.

US Senate passes Indian nuclear deal; where next for nuclear non-proliferation?

The NYT made one last desperate case against it but the Senate was unusually busy today, and passed the US-India nuclear agreement that got through the Nuclear Supplier's Group with New Zealand's reluctant support.

At the moment this move by New Zealand looks like a very good tactical retreat. Firstly we have the move by the US to sign a free trade agreement with the P4 nations. Secondly there may be secret side agreements in Vienna that would make us happier, or maybe not. Thirdly US lawmakers seem to be clear that a nuclear weapons test by India would end the US supply of uranium (but can the same be said for France and Russia?

In private correspondence with Congress that was made public last month, the administration said the United States would terminate nuclear trade with India if it conducted another nuclear test. But the administration refused to add such terms to the Nuclear Suppliers Group waiver, and an amendment to the bill that would have made them explicit failed to pass last night. Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, argued that the amendment was not necessary because U.S. laws made it clear that the deal was off if India tested again.

"There should be no doubt" because of the floor debate, Kimball said. "There will be practical consequences if India tests."

Both presidential candidates are in favour of the deal.

But the agreement had the strong support of both presidential candidates, helping grease the way to victory. The House approved the bill Saturday, 298 to 117.

Just to throw the cat among the pigeons. If India is to become part of the "mainstream" of civilian nuclear trade then it seems only fair that so should Israel.
(While we are at it Israeli "nuclear opacity" may have run its course.)

Given the current parlous situation, good luck to Kevin Rudd's efforts to reinvigorate international non-proliferation efforts I say and lets hope Gareth Evans is serious about his efforts to bring India, Israel and Pakistan under some form of restraint.

Australia's former foreign minister, Gareth Evans, will co-chair the event with Yoriko Kawaguchi, an ex-foreign minister in Japan, the government said. Senior Indian diplomat Brajesh Mishra and Pakistan's ex-army chief Jehangir Karamat are to be among the delegates.

Evans has recently said all nuclear powers _ including those who have refused to join the nonproliferation treaty such as India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel _ must be included in the new process if the world is to ever achieve disarmament.