Jonathan Turley in the Hill newspaper.
JT is on target.
Mueller failed to do his job. My guess is that he succumbed to politics. His choice of staff is consistent with this guess.
--------------------------------------------
One of the more profound statements by Archie Bunker in “All In The Family” came when he corrected his daughter Gloria for questioning if God made a mistake: “God don’t make no mistakes, that’s how he got to be God.” There is a certain value in divine status. Natural disasters are dismissed as “God’s will,” and genetic defects as part of “God’s plan.”
Very few mortals ever warrant such faith, except perhaps Robert Mueller. Washington has deified him by popular acclamation. The times demanded it. It was simply not enough to demonize Donald Trump. That was done throughout the 2016 campaign, with the notable assistance of Trump himself. However, you cannot have a villain without a countervailing hero. Evil needs a point of reference, and Mueller became that reference. While Trump is portrayed as bombastic, impetuous, and juvenile, Mueller is painted as stoic, reserved, and professional. Indeed, as every new filing undermined the common narrative of Trump campaign collusion with the Russians, the commentators fell into a mantra of “just wait for Mueller.”
They are still waiting. Mueller has yet to testify despite Attorney General William Barr stating that he has no objections to him doing so. In the past week, it was confirmed that Mueller is resisting testifying in public. At the same time, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler indicated that his committee may indeed allow Mueller to appear in private with no subpoena, no cameras, and no cries of coverup. The media is remarkably uninterested in the reason for this demand from Muelller. After all, if you have no faith in Mueller, then you are an apostate within the Beltway.
So why is Mueller and his staff so worried and apprehensive about his answering questions in public? To answer that question, we must look at his report objectively, as agnostics rather than as advocates for one side or the other. Mueller has to address several glaring problems with how he carried out his responsibilities, including his reported failure to identify grand jury material, as requested by Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, which may have delayed the report.
The most troubling failure, however, was Mueller refusing to reach a conclusion on obstruction. He reached a conclusion on any crimes linked to collusion and stated that his staff could “not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” He then stated that he would not reach a conclusion on obstruction, without explaining why beyond citing past Justice Department memos stating that a sitting president cannot be indicted. His decision on this matter is incompatible with his mandate.
The special counsel is mandated to find possible evidence of criminal conduct. If Mueller is going to argue that he felt constrained by Justice Department memos, he was a failure as special counsel. I have argued, going back to my testimony in the Clinton impeachment hearings, that the Justice Department was wrong on those memos. Nothing in the Constitution says that a president has immunity from criminal charges. Nevertheless, one can accept these memos and still see the illogic in reading them as a bar to reaching conclusions as a special counsel.
First, any implied interpretation would not only contradict the governing federal regulations but contradict the express directions of the Justice Department superiors overseeing the special counsel. Indeed, both Barr and Rosenstein pushed Mueller to reach a conclusion on obstruction. When he failed to do so, they did it for him. No one has suggested that they violated Justice Department policy in reaching their conclusion.
Second, any reading of the two Justice Department memos dispels any notion of a limit on special counsels. Even accepting the flawed logic of the memoranda, they only speak to indicting a president while in office. Because such an indictment would tie up a president in litigation, it was argued that it would interfere with his functioning. Yet, nothing in that policy would stop a special counsel from making findings of criminal conduct. Indeed, Mueller made findings not just on collusion but on facts underlying obstruction. It is nonsensical to read memos on the indictment of a president to mean that you cannot find a basis for criminal charges.
Finally, this is what a special counsel does, as defined in the regulations, which outweigh any Office of Legal Counsel memos. A special counsel makes prosecutorial decisions. For two years, both Congress and the executive branch expected Mueller to reach conclusions. Before filing his report, Barr and Rosenstein expressly told him to do so. If he was not willing to do so, he should have stood aside when asked to come on.
Many of the commentators discussing the report in the media not only make excuses for Mueller but ignore that the report is not particularly impressive. The investigation by the FBI certainly was impressive and notable, especially on Russian hacking and trolling operations. However, the report itself reads like a long account of interesting vignettes with no prosecutorial conclusions. One obvious concern is that Mueller and his staff did not reach a conclusion on obstruction because they could not bring themselves to give Trump a clean bill of health on criminal conduct.
The statement released by Barr was damning to be sure. Even if Trump was not found to have acted in an indictable or impeachable fashion, he was found to have acted in a contemptible fashion. However, reaching a conclusion in both volumes may have proven too much for Mueller after months of abuse by Trump. If this was the motivation, then the greatest political offense established by the special counsel was indeed his own.
Mueller may not want to answer any of these questions in public. Indeed, he seemed to have trouble answering even in private. As Barr tellingly testified to the Senate: “Special counsel Mueller stated three times to us in that meeting, in response to our questioning, that he emphatically was not saying that,” but for the Office of Legal Counsel opinion, “he would have found obstruction.” He continued: “We did not understand exactly why the special counsel was not reaching a decision. When we pressed him on it, he said that his team was still formulating the explanation.”
That is not the Mueller many of us encountered 30 years ago. It is bizarre that he would meet with the attorney general and the deputy attorney general about his conclusions but not have a clear explanation on not reaching conclusions. In the past, the idea of Mueller saying his team was working on an explanation after two years would have been laughable.
The House Judiciary Committee is not placing conditions on Mueller testifying as it did with Barr, who had been willing to appear in public until the committee added a condition guaranteeing that he would not by insisting that he be questioned by legal staff, like a mob “torpedo” in the Kefauver hearings. When asked why they would forgo Barr testifying by insisting on such a condition, members said the special counsel report was so complicated that legal staff needed to question the witness.
Suddenly, it seems, the report has become less complicated. There is no demand for a public hearing and, apparently, no demand for legal staff to question Mueller. He has much to explain, and the public is entitled to hear it without the usual partisan filters. Mueller can still fulfill his mandate and redeem his legacy. After all, to err may not be divine, but it is human.
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Thursday, May 23, 2019
China's word cannot be trusted
From www.nature.com.
-------------------------------------------
The recovery of the stratospheric ozone layer relies on the continued decline in the atmospheric concentrations of ozone-depleting gases such as chlorofluorocarbons. The atmospheric concentration of trichlorofluoromethane (CFC-11), the second-most abundant chlorofluorocarbon, has declined substantially since the mid-1990s. A recently reported slowdown in the decline of the atmospheric concentration of CFC-11 after 2012, however, suggests that global emissions have increased. A concurrent increase in CFC-11 emissions from eastern Asia contributes to the global emission increase, but the location and magnitude of this regional source are unknown. Here, using high-frequency atmospheric observations from Gosan, South Korea, and Hateruma, Japan, together with global monitoring data and atmospheric chemical transport model simulations, we investigate regional CFC-11 emissions from eastern Asia. We show that emissions from eastern mainland China are 7.0 ± 3.0 (±1 standard deviation) gigagrams per year higher in 2014–2017 than in 2008–2012, and that the increase in emissions arises primarily around the northeastern provinces of Shandong and Hebei. This increase accounts for a substantial fraction (at least 40 to 60 per cent) of the global rise in CFC-11 emissions. We find no evidence for a significant increase in CFC-11 emissions from any other eastern Asian countries or other regions of the world where there are available data for the detection of regional emissions. The attribution of any remaining fraction of the global CFC-11 emission rise to other regions is limited by the sparsity of long-term measurements of sufficient frequency near potentially emissive regions. Several considerations suggest that the increase in CFC-11 emissions from eastern mainland China is likely to be the result of new production and use, which is inconsistent with the Montreal Protocol agreement to phase out global chlorofluorocarbon production by 2010.
-------------------------------------------
The recovery of the stratospheric ozone layer relies on the continued decline in the atmospheric concentrations of ozone-depleting gases such as chlorofluorocarbons. The atmospheric concentration of trichlorofluoromethane (CFC-11), the second-most abundant chlorofluorocarbon, has declined substantially since the mid-1990s. A recently reported slowdown in the decline of the atmospheric concentration of CFC-11 after 2012, however, suggests that global emissions have increased. A concurrent increase in CFC-11 emissions from eastern Asia contributes to the global emission increase, but the location and magnitude of this regional source are unknown. Here, using high-frequency atmospheric observations from Gosan, South Korea, and Hateruma, Japan, together with global monitoring data and atmospheric chemical transport model simulations, we investigate regional CFC-11 emissions from eastern Asia. We show that emissions from eastern mainland China are 7.0 ± 3.0 (±1 standard deviation) gigagrams per year higher in 2014–2017 than in 2008–2012, and that the increase in emissions arises primarily around the northeastern provinces of Shandong and Hebei. This increase accounts for a substantial fraction (at least 40 to 60 per cent) of the global rise in CFC-11 emissions. We find no evidence for a significant increase in CFC-11 emissions from any other eastern Asian countries or other regions of the world where there are available data for the detection of regional emissions. The attribution of any remaining fraction of the global CFC-11 emission rise to other regions is limited by the sparsity of long-term measurements of sufficient frequency near potentially emissive regions. Several considerations suggest that the increase in CFC-11 emissions from eastern mainland China is likely to be the result of new production and use, which is inconsistent with the Montreal Protocol agreement to phase out global chlorofluorocarbon production by 2010.
Friday, May 10, 2019
Nadler takes the Democrats on a wild ride that could lead to a crash
Here is Jonathan Turley on the tradeoffs of the Democrats voting Barr in contempt and taking the case to court.
JT is on target.
------------------------------------------
The House Judiciary Committee is voting to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress and to secure a vote of the entire House of Representatives in order to send the matter to federal court. The problem is that the contempt action against Barr is long on action and short on contempt. Indeed, with a superficial charge, the House could seriously undermine its credibility in the ongoing conflicts with the White House. Congress is right on a number of complaints against the White House, including possible cases of contempt, but this is not one of them.
As someone who has represented the House of Representatives, my concern is that this one violates a legal version of the Hippocratic oath to “first do no harm.” This could do great harm, not to Barr, but to the House. It is the weakest possible case to bring against the administration, and likely to be an example of a bad case making bad law for the House.
House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) laid out the case for contempt. He raised three often repeated complaints against Barr in that he failed to release an unredacted report by special counsel Robert Mueller, allegedly lied twice to Congress, and refused to appear before the committee. Yet, notably, the only claim the committee seeks to put before a federal court is the redaction of the report. That seems rather curious since, if Barr lied or refused a subpoena as House leaders claim, it normally would be an easy case of contempt. The reason for this move is that House Democrats know both claims would not withstand even a cursory judicial review.
False statements
Democrats have struggled to focus attention on the summary Barr wrote rather than on the actual report. While Democrats claim the summary misrepresented the report, the report tracks the conclusions referenced in the letter Barr sent. Barr said Mueller did not find evidence of a crime linked to collusion or conspiracy with the Russians. That is true. He said Mueller did not reach a conclusion on obstruction. That is also true.
Barr said he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded the evidence, particularly on the lack of a clear showing of corrupt intent here, did not support an obstruction charge. That is again true. Barr then added the most damaging line of the report, stating Mueller expressly did not exonerate Trump. Barr also gave Mueller an opportunity to review his letter, but Mueller chose to decline. However, his letter was not false.
Democrats also have cited the exchange between Barr and Congressman Charlie Crist (D-Fla.) over a story about some “concerns” the letter raised among the members of the special counsel team. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cailf.) declared what Barr said was a “lie” and a “crime.” One would assume that Barr would then be referred for prosecution and subject to an immediate impeachment. At a minimum, it would seem such an allegation would be in the contempt sanction. The problem is that what Barr said was true.
Crist noted unspecified news reports that members of the special counsel team are “frustrated at some level with the limited information” in the letter Barr sent and “that it does not adequately or accurately, necessarily, portray” the findings. Crist asked if Barr knew what they were referencing. Barr said no and said, “I suspect that they probably wanted more put out.” He added, “But in my view, I was not interested in putting out summaries or trying to summarize because I think any summary, regardless of who prepares it, not only runs the risk of, you know, being underinclusive or overinclusive, but also, you know, would trigger a lot of discussion and analysis that really should await everything coming out all at once.”
Barr was being questioned about news reports citing unnamed members of the special counsel team and their being “frustrated” by the portrayal of the “findings.” He said he did not know but added that he assumed they “wanted more put out” and he rejected the idea of releasing additional summaries. That is true. The only thing Barr did not mention was the letter that Mueller sent to him, which had not been public at that point.
Failure to appear
Various Democrats have declared that Barr refusing to appear before the committee is clear contempt of Congress. It is a point endlessly raised by House members on television but conspicuously missing in the contempt sanction. The reason is that it is not true. Barr appeared before the Senate and answered detailed questions from members. He was prepared to do the same in the House when the committee inexplicably demanded that he be questioned not just by members but also by professional staffers.
Democrats have tried to explain that the demand for questioning was due to the “complexity” of the record and issues of the special counsel report. That rationale is facially absurd. There is nothing overly complex about these issues, as shown in the Senate hearing. The committee wanted Barr examined by staff lawyers, including Norm Eisen, who handled ethics questions for President Obama. Eisen had declared months ago that the criminal case for collusion was devastating and that Trump was “colluding in plain sight,” a position expressly rejected by Mueller. The Democrats wanted to manufacture a conflict, and they have succeeded in doing so.
Report redactions
That leaves us with the only ground cited by the Democrats for contempt, which is Barr refusing to release the unredacted report. Senate Democrats attacked him at his confirmation hearing for refusing to guarantee public release of the report without redactions. As a witness, I testified that they were asking Barr to commit to a potential criminal act to secure his own confirmation. The report inevitably would contain some grand jury material, which under the law is information that cannot be publicly released without a court order. It is a crime to unveil such information.
Barr promised to release as much of the report as possible, and he has delivered. Indeed, he is not expressly given the authority to release the confidential report. Yet, he not only released it but declared executive privilege waived on its content. The key obstruction portion of the report is virtually unredacted. Just 8 percent of the public report was redacted, largely to remove material that could undermine ongoing investigations. The sealed version of the report given to Congress only had 2 percent redacted. Democrats are therefore seeking a contempt sanction on a report that is 98 percent disclosed and only lacks grand jury material.
Barr restricted access to the 98 percent disclosed report, as opposed to the 92 percent public report, due to the inclusion of evidence impacting ongoing prosecutions. Some of the withheld material is likely covered by court orders in other cases like the prosecution of Roger Stone. He has offered to expand the number of members and staff to review that material but insists on it remaining protected. But this has nothing to do with the redactions. It is the 2 percent solution to a major political dilemma of the left. Faced with a report that rejected the collusion theories of their running narrative, Democrats want to focus on those 2 percent of redactions rather than over 400 pages of findings.
So Congress now will ask a court to find civil contempt for Barr refusing to release grand jury information. The District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals recently rejected a district court claim to have the “inherent supervisory authority” to disclose grand jury matters because of great public interest. To make matters worse, the Justice Department has now said the president has invoked executive privilege over the entire report, making this contempt claim even less likely to prevail over the long run.
Democrats are launching the weakest possible contempt claim against the administration in a civil action with a long track through the courts. In the end, there is utter contempt in this action, but not in the case of Barr.
JT is on target.
------------------------------------------
The House Judiciary Committee is voting to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress and to secure a vote of the entire House of Representatives in order to send the matter to federal court. The problem is that the contempt action against Barr is long on action and short on contempt. Indeed, with a superficial charge, the House could seriously undermine its credibility in the ongoing conflicts with the White House. Congress is right on a number of complaints against the White House, including possible cases of contempt, but this is not one of them.
As someone who has represented the House of Representatives, my concern is that this one violates a legal version of the Hippocratic oath to “first do no harm.” This could do great harm, not to Barr, but to the House. It is the weakest possible case to bring against the administration, and likely to be an example of a bad case making bad law for the House.
House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) laid out the case for contempt. He raised three often repeated complaints against Barr in that he failed to release an unredacted report by special counsel Robert Mueller, allegedly lied twice to Congress, and refused to appear before the committee. Yet, notably, the only claim the committee seeks to put before a federal court is the redaction of the report. That seems rather curious since, if Barr lied or refused a subpoena as House leaders claim, it normally would be an easy case of contempt. The reason for this move is that House Democrats know both claims would not withstand even a cursory judicial review.
False statements
Democrats have struggled to focus attention on the summary Barr wrote rather than on the actual report. While Democrats claim the summary misrepresented the report, the report tracks the conclusions referenced in the letter Barr sent. Barr said Mueller did not find evidence of a crime linked to collusion or conspiracy with the Russians. That is true. He said Mueller did not reach a conclusion on obstruction. That is also true.
Barr said he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded the evidence, particularly on the lack of a clear showing of corrupt intent here, did not support an obstruction charge. That is again true. Barr then added the most damaging line of the report, stating Mueller expressly did not exonerate Trump. Barr also gave Mueller an opportunity to review his letter, but Mueller chose to decline. However, his letter was not false.
Democrats also have cited the exchange between Barr and Congressman Charlie Crist (D-Fla.) over a story about some “concerns” the letter raised among the members of the special counsel team. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cailf.) declared what Barr said was a “lie” and a “crime.” One would assume that Barr would then be referred for prosecution and subject to an immediate impeachment. At a minimum, it would seem such an allegation would be in the contempt sanction. The problem is that what Barr said was true.
Crist noted unspecified news reports that members of the special counsel team are “frustrated at some level with the limited information” in the letter Barr sent and “that it does not adequately or accurately, necessarily, portray” the findings. Crist asked if Barr knew what they were referencing. Barr said no and said, “I suspect that they probably wanted more put out.” He added, “But in my view, I was not interested in putting out summaries or trying to summarize because I think any summary, regardless of who prepares it, not only runs the risk of, you know, being underinclusive or overinclusive, but also, you know, would trigger a lot of discussion and analysis that really should await everything coming out all at once.”
Barr was being questioned about news reports citing unnamed members of the special counsel team and their being “frustrated” by the portrayal of the “findings.” He said he did not know but added that he assumed they “wanted more put out” and he rejected the idea of releasing additional summaries. That is true. The only thing Barr did not mention was the letter that Mueller sent to him, which had not been public at that point.
Failure to appear
Various Democrats have declared that Barr refusing to appear before the committee is clear contempt of Congress. It is a point endlessly raised by House members on television but conspicuously missing in the contempt sanction. The reason is that it is not true. Barr appeared before the Senate and answered detailed questions from members. He was prepared to do the same in the House when the committee inexplicably demanded that he be questioned not just by members but also by professional staffers.
Democrats have tried to explain that the demand for questioning was due to the “complexity” of the record and issues of the special counsel report. That rationale is facially absurd. There is nothing overly complex about these issues, as shown in the Senate hearing. The committee wanted Barr examined by staff lawyers, including Norm Eisen, who handled ethics questions for President Obama. Eisen had declared months ago that the criminal case for collusion was devastating and that Trump was “colluding in plain sight,” a position expressly rejected by Mueller. The Democrats wanted to manufacture a conflict, and they have succeeded in doing so.
Report redactions
That leaves us with the only ground cited by the Democrats for contempt, which is Barr refusing to release the unredacted report. Senate Democrats attacked him at his confirmation hearing for refusing to guarantee public release of the report without redactions. As a witness, I testified that they were asking Barr to commit to a potential criminal act to secure his own confirmation. The report inevitably would contain some grand jury material, which under the law is information that cannot be publicly released without a court order. It is a crime to unveil such information.
Barr promised to release as much of the report as possible, and he has delivered. Indeed, he is not expressly given the authority to release the confidential report. Yet, he not only released it but declared executive privilege waived on its content. The key obstruction portion of the report is virtually unredacted. Just 8 percent of the public report was redacted, largely to remove material that could undermine ongoing investigations. The sealed version of the report given to Congress only had 2 percent redacted. Democrats are therefore seeking a contempt sanction on a report that is 98 percent disclosed and only lacks grand jury material.
Barr restricted access to the 98 percent disclosed report, as opposed to the 92 percent public report, due to the inclusion of evidence impacting ongoing prosecutions. Some of the withheld material is likely covered by court orders in other cases like the prosecution of Roger Stone. He has offered to expand the number of members and staff to review that material but insists on it remaining protected. But this has nothing to do with the redactions. It is the 2 percent solution to a major political dilemma of the left. Faced with a report that rejected the collusion theories of their running narrative, Democrats want to focus on those 2 percent of redactions rather than over 400 pages of findings.
So Congress now will ask a court to find civil contempt for Barr refusing to release grand jury information. The District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals recently rejected a district court claim to have the “inherent supervisory authority” to disclose grand jury matters because of great public interest. To make matters worse, the Justice Department has now said the president has invoked executive privilege over the entire report, making this contempt claim even less likely to prevail over the long run.
Democrats are launching the weakest possible contempt claim against the administration in a civil action with a long track through the courts. In the end, there is utter contempt in this action, but not in the case of Barr.
Wednesday, May 08, 2019
Stopping mass shootings at churches - armed guards vs. armed citizens
John Lott at Townhall.
--------------------------------------------
From New Zealand to Sri Lanka, houses of worship are under attack. This has been an all too common phenomenon around the world. At home, there have been recent shootings at synagogues in Pittsburgh and San Diego, and at churches in Texas, Tennessee, Colorado, and South Carolina. So how do we make people safer?
New York City councilman Kalman Yeger will introduce a bill this week that requires the city to pay for armed security guards at any house of worship that requests protection.
That is helpful, if expensive, but New York refuses to adopt the most effective policy: letting more people carry concealed handguns. Indeed, all of the church shootings noted above were stopped by civilians with guns. One that had banned guns and didn’t stop the attack occurred in Charleston, South Carolina.
There are simply too many targets for police to be able to guard every one of them. If terrorists don’t attack synagogues, they can target Kosher grocery stores, Jewish schools, or restaurants. In January 2015, the Hypercacherkosher supermarket siege in Paris left four murdered and nine injured.
These terrorists have huge strategic advantages in determining the time and place of attacks. They can wait for guards to leave the area, or pick an undefended location. Even when guards or police are in the right place at the right time, those who can be readily identified as guards may as well be holding up neon signs saying, “Shoot me first.” Terrorists know that once the guards are killed, they will have free rein to go after everybody else.
Permit holders make guards' very difficult job easier.
If a terrorist tries to kill a guard, he reveals his position and makes himself a target to someone with a concealed handgun.
In 2018, some 17.5 million Americans had concealed handgun permits last year. Excluding permit-unfriendly California and New York, this amounts to 8.5 percent of the adult population. Nobody knows whether the person next to them might have a gun, except in the rare case that it is needed. Permit holders are incredibly law-abiding, losing their permits for firearms-related violations at rates of thousandths or tens of thousandths of 1 percent.
We can no longer ignore the fact that these mass public shootings keep on occurring in those small, isolated areas of right-to-carry states where permitted concealed handguns aren’t allowed. Indeed, since 1950, 98 percent of mass public shootings have occurred in places where general citizens are banned from defending themselves.
Terrorists and criminals don’t have any respect for gun-free zones. Nor do they let gun control stop them from getting weapons. France bans semi-automatic guns and strictly licenses and registers guns, but from 1998 to 2015 had more than twice the US’s rate of murders from mass public shootings. Other European countries with much stricter gun control laws include Russia, Norway, Finland, and Slovakia. All also have higher per capita murder rates from mass public shootings. Across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the rates also tend to be much worse than in the US.
The war on guns has been as much of a failure as the war on drugs. Terrorists can also resort to homemade bombs, and have lately made a habit of using vehicles as weapons.
Ron Noble, the Secretary General of INTERPOL from 2000 to 2014, cautioned that even with “extraordinary security,” it would be virtually impossible to keep weapons out of soft targets. When terrorists breach these soft targets, they are the only ones with weapons.
Most schools are soft targets, but not all of them. In 20 states, many school districts currently allow teachers and other staff members to carry guns on school property. Some states have had these rules for decades, and their successful track record couldn’t be clearer.
More than a thousand school districts allow teachers to carry guns. Outside of suicides and gang violence during the wee hours of the night when no teachers are around – there has yet to be a single shooting death or injury on the school property of one of these school districts. Nothing bad has even happened, outside of one accidental discharge outside of school hours. No one was seriously harmed.
Permit holders have stopped dozens of would-be mass public shootings in malls, churches, schools, universities and town centers. Gun control advocates perennially fear that a permit holder will lose control of his weapon or accidentally shoot a bystander, or that a police officer will accidentally harm the permit holder. But this has never happened in a mass public shooting.
People should be much more worried about the fact that these attacks become massacres when there's no one who can fight back. Permit holders who carry in the course of daily life should be able to bring their guns to churches and schools. They should be able to protect students and their fellow worshipers.
--------------------------------------------
From New Zealand to Sri Lanka, houses of worship are under attack. This has been an all too common phenomenon around the world. At home, there have been recent shootings at synagogues in Pittsburgh and San Diego, and at churches in Texas, Tennessee, Colorado, and South Carolina. So how do we make people safer?
New York City councilman Kalman Yeger will introduce a bill this week that requires the city to pay for armed security guards at any house of worship that requests protection.
That is helpful, if expensive, but New York refuses to adopt the most effective policy: letting more people carry concealed handguns. Indeed, all of the church shootings noted above were stopped by civilians with guns. One that had banned guns and didn’t stop the attack occurred in Charleston, South Carolina.
There are simply too many targets for police to be able to guard every one of them. If terrorists don’t attack synagogues, they can target Kosher grocery stores, Jewish schools, or restaurants. In January 2015, the Hypercacherkosher supermarket siege in Paris left four murdered and nine injured.
These terrorists have huge strategic advantages in determining the time and place of attacks. They can wait for guards to leave the area, or pick an undefended location. Even when guards or police are in the right place at the right time, those who can be readily identified as guards may as well be holding up neon signs saying, “Shoot me first.” Terrorists know that once the guards are killed, they will have free rein to go after everybody else.
Permit holders make guards' very difficult job easier.
If a terrorist tries to kill a guard, he reveals his position and makes himself a target to someone with a concealed handgun.
In 2018, some 17.5 million Americans had concealed handgun permits last year. Excluding permit-unfriendly California and New York, this amounts to 8.5 percent of the adult population. Nobody knows whether the person next to them might have a gun, except in the rare case that it is needed. Permit holders are incredibly law-abiding, losing their permits for firearms-related violations at rates of thousandths or tens of thousandths of 1 percent.
We can no longer ignore the fact that these mass public shootings keep on occurring in those small, isolated areas of right-to-carry states where permitted concealed handguns aren’t allowed. Indeed, since 1950, 98 percent of mass public shootings have occurred in places where general citizens are banned from defending themselves.
Terrorists and criminals don’t have any respect for gun-free zones. Nor do they let gun control stop them from getting weapons. France bans semi-automatic guns and strictly licenses and registers guns, but from 1998 to 2015 had more than twice the US’s rate of murders from mass public shootings. Other European countries with much stricter gun control laws include Russia, Norway, Finland, and Slovakia. All also have higher per capita murder rates from mass public shootings. Across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the rates also tend to be much worse than in the US.
The war on guns has been as much of a failure as the war on drugs. Terrorists can also resort to homemade bombs, and have lately made a habit of using vehicles as weapons.
Ron Noble, the Secretary General of INTERPOL from 2000 to 2014, cautioned that even with “extraordinary security,” it would be virtually impossible to keep weapons out of soft targets. When terrorists breach these soft targets, they are the only ones with weapons.
Most schools are soft targets, but not all of them. In 20 states, many school districts currently allow teachers and other staff members to carry guns on school property. Some states have had these rules for decades, and their successful track record couldn’t be clearer.
More than a thousand school districts allow teachers to carry guns. Outside of suicides and gang violence during the wee hours of the night when no teachers are around – there has yet to be a single shooting death or injury on the school property of one of these school districts. Nothing bad has even happened, outside of one accidental discharge outside of school hours. No one was seriously harmed.
Permit holders have stopped dozens of would-be mass public shootings in malls, churches, schools, universities and town centers. Gun control advocates perennially fear that a permit holder will lose control of his weapon or accidentally shoot a bystander, or that a police officer will accidentally harm the permit holder. But this has never happened in a mass public shooting.
People should be much more worried about the fact that these attacks become massacres when there's no one who can fight back. Permit holders who carry in the course of daily life should be able to bring their guns to churches and schools. They should be able to protect students and their fellow worshipers.
Tuesday, May 07, 2019
Cases where concealed handgun permit holders have stopped mass public shoot-ings and other mass attacks
Here is a link to the list of cases.
Below is one of the cases so you can see what they are like.
----------------------------------
Titusville, Florida, August 4, 2018
A shooting at a back to school event for children and their families had a shooting that was quickly stopped by a concealed handgun permit holder. Something between 150 and 200 people (video here puts it at over 200), primarily children, were present at the event.
From Fox 32 WOFL in Orlando, Florida.
Titusville Police still have not released the name of the man who stopped the shooter at a park on Saturday, but they are calling him a hero.
The gunshots still echo across social media, after the emcee at Titusville’s Peace in the City event posted a Facebook live video of the shooting. When a good Samaritan carrying a licensed concealed weapon shot the attacker, police say he did the right thing.
“Based on the information that we’ve gathered,” said Titusville Police Sgt. William Amos. “This person stepped in and saved a lot of people’s lives.” . . .
Here is another statement from the Titusville Police via the Orlando Sentinel on the evening of August 6th, 2018.
Titusville Police are calling the bystander who shot a gunman who opened fire at a park full of kids on Saturday a “hero.” On Monday, police said they aren’t releasing the names of those involved and said the citizen who returned fire on the suspect won’t be facing charges.
“He’s a hero,” Titusville Police Sgt. Bill Amos said. “This park was filled with families and children and, at that time, it was an active shooter situation for him and he was trained enough to deal with it and he did.” . . .
Below is one of the cases so you can see what they are like.
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Titusville, Florida, August 4, 2018
A shooting at a back to school event for children and their families had a shooting that was quickly stopped by a concealed handgun permit holder. Something between 150 and 200 people (video here puts it at over 200), primarily children, were present at the event.
From Fox 32 WOFL in Orlando, Florida.
Titusville Police still have not released the name of the man who stopped the shooter at a park on Saturday, but they are calling him a hero.
The gunshots still echo across social media, after the emcee at Titusville’s Peace in the City event posted a Facebook live video of the shooting. When a good Samaritan carrying a licensed concealed weapon shot the attacker, police say he did the right thing.
“Based on the information that we’ve gathered,” said Titusville Police Sgt. William Amos. “This person stepped in and saved a lot of people’s lives.” . . .
Here is another statement from the Titusville Police via the Orlando Sentinel on the evening of August 6th, 2018.
Titusville Police are calling the bystander who shot a gunman who opened fire at a park full of kids on Saturday a “hero.” On Monday, police said they aren’t releasing the names of those involved and said the citizen who returned fire on the suspect won’t be facing charges.
“He’s a hero,” Titusville Police Sgt. Bill Amos said. “This park was filled with families and children and, at that time, it was an active shooter situation for him and he was trained enough to deal with it and he did.” . . .
Schools that allow teachers to carry guns are safer than schools that are "gun free zones"
Here is a link to a paper by John Lott, "Schools that Allow Teachers to Carry Guns are Extremely Safe: Data on the Rate of Shootings and Accidents in Schools that allow Teachers to Carry".
Here are some excerpts.
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ABSTRACT
After the Columbine school shooting 20 years ago, one of the more significant changes in how we protect students has been the advance of legislation that allows teachers to carry guns at schools. There are two obvious questions: Does letting teachers carry create dangers? Might they deter attackers? Twenty states currently allow teachers and staff to carry guns to varying degrees on school property, so we don’t need to guess how the policy would work. There has yet to be a single case of someone being wounded or killed from a shooting, let alone a mass public shooting, between 6 AM and midnight at a school that lets teachers carry guns. Fears of teachers carrying guns in terms of such problems as students obtaining teachers guns have not occurred at all, and there was only one accidental discharge outside of school hours with no one was really harmed. While there have not been any problems at schools with armed teachers, the number of people killed at other schools has increased significantly – doubling between 2001 and 2008 versus 2009 and 2018.
Police are very important in fighting crime, but a single officer in uniform faces an almost impossible task in stopping mass public shootings.1 Officers become the first targets in these attacks, as attackers know that if they kill the officer, they will have free reign to continue their massacre. Even if officers aren’t in uniform, attackers may be able to guess from their behavior that they are standing guard.
Putting a guard in every school is also very costly. Florida is spending over $400 million a year to put one police officer in each public school.2
Increasing funding for mental health services has its benefits, but it is hard for mental-health professionals to identify patients who pose a serious violent threat. It’s common for mass killers to have already been seeing psychiatrists before their attacks. But mental health professionals are often unable to identify when someone is at risk of becoming violent. Psychiatrists overlooked the dangers posed by Ivan Lopez (the recent Fort Hood shooter), Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook Elementary), James Holmes (“Batman” movie theater) and Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech).3 Indeed, from January 1998 through May 2018, 42 percent of mass public shooters were seeing mental health care professionals before their attacks. In only one of those cases had the killer previously been identified as a danger to others.4 We can't foresee every attack, so what's our backup plan when violence does occur?
Within hours of mass public shootings, even before we know how the shooter obtained his gun, there are immediate calls for laws such as universal background checks. Ironically, there is not one mass public shooting this century that would have been stopped by universal background checks, even with a perfectly enforced law.5
Outside of arming teachers and staff, there's only so much that can be done to secure our schools. Schools have multiple entrances to facilitate smooth evacuations in case of fires or other emergencies. Even if school doors are set up so that they can be opened only from the inside, it's easy enough to have someone on the inside to open a door. Even where there is only one attacker, doors can be propped open.
Having a single entrance with a metal detector creates its own safety hazards by leading to crowded bottlenecks of people that present easy targets to attackers. Metal detectors won’t stop someone from shooting their way into a school.
But if attackers don't know who is carrying a concealed firearm, they won’t know whom they need to attack first.
Perhaps because police understand the difficulty of their jobs, they are strongly in favor of abolishing gun-free school zones. Shortly after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, PoliceOne, a 450,000-member private organization of police (380,000 active, full-time and 70,000 retired officers), surveyed its members and found that 77 percent supported arming
teachers and/or school staff.6 Eighty-six percent of the officers believed that casualties in mass public shootings would have been reduced or altogether prevented if legally-armed citizens had been able to carry guns.7
Allowing teachers and staff to carry concealed handguns is nothing new in the United States, and hasn't created any problems. Before the early 1990s, there were no state laws specifically restricting concealed carry on K-12 property so that teacher carry may have been common for much of our history.
School insurance rates are no higher for schools that allow teachers to carry. “From what I’ve seen in Utah, rates have not gone up because of guns being allowed,” says Curt Oda, former president of the Utah Association of Independent Insurance Agents.8 An additional survey of schools in Arkansas, Kansas, Ohio, South Dakota, and Texas also did not indicate that teacher carry had caused an increase in insurance premiums.9 Insurance fees significantly declined in Kansas.
Here are some excerpts.
----------------------------------------
ABSTRACT
After the Columbine school shooting 20 years ago, one of the more significant changes in how we protect students has been the advance of legislation that allows teachers to carry guns at schools. There are two obvious questions: Does letting teachers carry create dangers? Might they deter attackers? Twenty states currently allow teachers and staff to carry guns to varying degrees on school property, so we don’t need to guess how the policy would work. There has yet to be a single case of someone being wounded or killed from a shooting, let alone a mass public shooting, between 6 AM and midnight at a school that lets teachers carry guns. Fears of teachers carrying guns in terms of such problems as students obtaining teachers guns have not occurred at all, and there was only one accidental discharge outside of school hours with no one was really harmed. While there have not been any problems at schools with armed teachers, the number of people killed at other schools has increased significantly – doubling between 2001 and 2008 versus 2009 and 2018.
INTRODUCTION
Police are very important in fighting crime, but a single officer in uniform faces an almost impossible task in stopping mass public shootings.1 Officers become the first targets in these attacks, as attackers know that if they kill the officer, they will have free reign to continue their massacre. Even if officers aren’t in uniform, attackers may be able to guess from their behavior that they are standing guard.
Putting a guard in every school is also very costly. Florida is spending over $400 million a year to put one police officer in each public school.2
Increasing funding for mental health services has its benefits, but it is hard for mental-health professionals to identify patients who pose a serious violent threat. It’s common for mass killers to have already been seeing psychiatrists before their attacks. But mental health professionals are often unable to identify when someone is at risk of becoming violent. Psychiatrists overlooked the dangers posed by Ivan Lopez (the recent Fort Hood shooter), Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook Elementary), James Holmes (“Batman” movie theater) and Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech).3 Indeed, from January 1998 through May 2018, 42 percent of mass public shooters were seeing mental health care professionals before their attacks. In only one of those cases had the killer previously been identified as a danger to others.4 We can't foresee every attack, so what's our backup plan when violence does occur?
Within hours of mass public shootings, even before we know how the shooter obtained his gun, there are immediate calls for laws such as universal background checks. Ironically, there is not one mass public shooting this century that would have been stopped by universal background checks, even with a perfectly enforced law.5
Outside of arming teachers and staff, there's only so much that can be done to secure our schools. Schools have multiple entrances to facilitate smooth evacuations in case of fires or other emergencies. Even if school doors are set up so that they can be opened only from the inside, it's easy enough to have someone on the inside to open a door. Even where there is only one attacker, doors can be propped open.
Having a single entrance with a metal detector creates its own safety hazards by leading to crowded bottlenecks of people that present easy targets to attackers. Metal detectors won’t stop someone from shooting their way into a school.
But if attackers don't know who is carrying a concealed firearm, they won’t know whom they need to attack first.
Perhaps because police understand the difficulty of their jobs, they are strongly in favor of abolishing gun-free school zones. Shortly after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, PoliceOne, a 450,000-member private organization of police (380,000 active, full-time and 70,000 retired officers), surveyed its members and found that 77 percent supported arming
teachers and/or school staff.6 Eighty-six percent of the officers believed that casualties in mass public shootings would have been reduced or altogether prevented if legally-armed citizens had been able to carry guns.7
Allowing teachers and staff to carry concealed handguns is nothing new in the United States, and hasn't created any problems. Before the early 1990s, there were no state laws specifically restricting concealed carry on K-12 property so that teacher carry may have been common for much of our history.
School insurance rates are no higher for schools that allow teachers to carry. “From what I’ve seen in Utah, rates have not gone up because of guns being allowed,” says Curt Oda, former president of the Utah Association of Independent Insurance Agents.8 An additional survey of schools in Arkansas, Kansas, Ohio, South Dakota, and Texas also did not indicate that teacher carry had caused an increase in insurance premiums.9 Insurance fees significantly declined in Kansas.
A CHART
Climate change uncertainty and inadequate analysis precludes taking climate change alarmists seriously
Here is Garth Paltridge on the inherent uncertainty of climate change forecasts and the climate change alarmists failure to address the tradeoffs necessary to make a reasonable decision about what to do now.
Garth William Paltridge is a retired Australian atmospheric physicist. He is a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University and Emeritus Professor and Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Oceans Studies (IASOS), University of Tasmania.
Whether we should do anything now to limit our impact on future climate boils down to an assessment of a relevant cost-benefit ratio. That is, we need to put a dollar number to the cost of doing something now, a dollar number to the benefit thus obtained by the future generations, and a number to a thing called “discount for the future”—this last being the rate at which our concern for the welfare of future generations falls away as we look further and further ahead. Only the first of these numbers can be estimated with any degree of reliability. Suffice it to say, if the climate-change establishment were to have its way with its proposed conversion of the global usage of energy to a usage based solely on renewable energy, the costs of the conversion would be horrifically large. It is extraordinary that such costs can even be contemplated when the numbers for both the future benefit and the discount for the future are little more than abstract guesses.
Assessment of the future benefit is largely based on two types of numerical modelling. First, there are the vast computer models that attempt to forecast the future change in Earth’s climate when atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased as a consequence of the human activity of burning fossil fuel. Second, there are the computer-based economic models which attempt to calculate the economic and social impact of the forecasted change of climate. Reduction of that impact (by reducing the human input of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere) is the “benefit” in the cost-benefit calculations.
Taking the climate change calculations first, it should be emphasized that in order to be really useful, the forecast must necessarily be of the future distribution of climate about the world—on the scale of areas as small as individual nations and regions. Calculating only the global average of such things as the future temperature and rainfall is not useful. The economic models need input data relevant to individual nations, not just the world as a whole.
Which is a bit of a problem. The uncertainty associated with climate prediction derives basically from the turbulent nature of the processes going on within the atmosphere and oceans. Such predictability as there is in turbulent fluids is governed by the size (the “scale”) of the boundaries that contain and limit the size to which random turbulent eddies can grow. Thus reasonably correct forecasts of the average climate of the world might be possible in principle. On the scale of regions (anything much smaller than the scale of the major ocean basins for example) it has yet to be shown that useful long-term climate forecasting is possible even in principle.
To expand on that a little, the forecasts of the global average rise in temperature by the various theoretical models around the world range from about 1 degree to 6 degrees Celsius by the end of this century—which does little more than support the purely qualitative conclusion from simple physical reasoning that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will increase the global average temperature above what it would have been otherwise. It does little to resolve the fundamental question as to what fraction of the observed rise in global surface temperature over the last thirty or so years (equivalent to a rise of about 1 degree Celsius per century if one is inclined to believe observations rather than the theory) is attributable to the human-induced increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. There is still a distinct possibility that much of the observed rise in global temperature may be the result of natural (and maybe random) variability of the system.
While the forecasts of future global average climate are not really trustworthy and would probably not be very useful even if they were, the potentially much more useful forecasts of regional climates are perhaps just nonsense. A good example supporting this rather negative view of the matter is the variability of the set of hundred-year forecasts of the average rainfall over Australia. Each forecast was produced by one of the many climate models from around the world. The present-day measured average is about 450 millimetres per year. The forecasts for the next century range from less than 200 mm to more than 1000 mm per year. That sort of thing makes finding a model to support a particular narrative just too easy.
As a consequence, the economic models of the future of regions and nations are highly unreliable if only because their regional and national inputs of forecasted climatic “data” are unreliable. But to make matters vastly worse, the economic models themselves are almost certainly useless over time-scales relevant to climate. Their internal workings are based on statistical relations between economic variables devised for present-day conditions. There is no particular reason why these relations should be valid in the future when the characteristics of society will almost certainly have changed. As Michael Crichton put it: “Our [economic] models just carry the present into the future.” And as Kenneth Galbraith once remarked: “Economic forecasting was invented to make astrology look respectable.”
There is a lot of discussion among academics as to what should be an appropriate “discount for the future” to apply in the cost-benefit calculations associated with human-induced climate change. The discussion quickly becomes incomprehensible to the average person when phrases such as “cross generational wealth transfer” and “intergenerational neutrality” and so on appear in the argument. These are fancy terms supposedly relevant to what is essentially a qualitative concept of fairness to future generations. The concept is so qualitative that there is virtually no hope of getting general agreement as to how much we should spend now so as not to upset the people of the future.
There are two extremes of thought on the matter. At one end there are those who tell us that the present-day view of a benefit for future generations should be discounted at the normal rate associated with business transactions of today. That is, it should be something of the order of 5 to 10 per cent a year. The problem for the academics is that such a discount would ensure virtually no active concern for the welfare of people more than a generation or so ahead, and would effectively wipe out any reason for immediate action on climate. At the other end of the scale, there are those who tell us that the value of future climatic benefit should not be discounted at all—in which case there is an infinite time into the future that should concern us, and “being fair” to that extended future implies that we should not object to spending an unlimited amount of present-day money on the problem.
Academics tie themselves in knots to justify the need for immediate action on climate change. For example, we hear argument that “discounting should not be used for determining our ethical obligations to the future” but that (in the same breath) “we endorse a principle of intergenerational neutrality”—and then we hear guesses of appropriate discount rates of the order (say) of 1.5 per cent a year.
The significant point in this cost-benefit business is that there is virtually no certainty about any of the numbers that are used to calculate either the likely change of climate or the impact of that change on future populations. In essence it is simply assumed that all climate change is bad—that the current climate is the best of all possible climates. Furthermore, there is little or no recognition in most of the scenarios that mankind is very good at adapting to new circumstances. It is more than likely that, if indeed climate change is noticeably “bad”, the future population will adjust to the changed circumstances. If the change is “good”, the population will again adapt and become richer as a consequence. If the change is a mixture of good and bad, the chances are that the adaptive processes will ensure a net improvement in wealth. This for a population which, if history is any guide, and for reasons entirely independent of climate change, will probably be a lot wealthier than we are.
Perhaps the whole idea of being fair to the people of the future should be reversed. Perhaps they can easily afford to owe us something in retrospect.
The bottom line of politically correct thought on the matter—the thought that we must collectively do something drastic now to prevent climate change in the future—is so full of holes that it brings the overall sanity of mankind into question. For what it is worth, one possible theory is that mankind (or at least that fraction of it that has become both over-educated and more delicate as a result of a massive increase of its wealth in recent times) has managed to remove the beliefs of existing religions from its consideration—and now it misses them. As a replacement, it has manufactured a set of beliefs about climate change that can be used to guide and ultimately to control human behaviour. The beliefs are similar to those of the established religions in that they are more or less unprovable in any strict scientific sense.
Garth William Paltridge is a retired Australian atmospheric physicist. He is a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University and Emeritus Professor and Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Oceans Studies (IASOS), University of Tasmania.
-------------------------------------------
On the costs and benefits of climate action. Whether we should do anything now to limit our impact on future climate boils down to an assessment of a relevant cost-benefit ratio. That is, we need to put a dollar number to the cost of doing something now, a dollar number to the benefit thus obtained by the future generations, and a number to a thing called “discount for the future”—this last being the rate at which our concern for the welfare of future generations falls away as we look further and further ahead. Only the first of these numbers can be estimated with any degree of reliability. Suffice it to say, if the climate-change establishment were to have its way with its proposed conversion of the global usage of energy to a usage based solely on renewable energy, the costs of the conversion would be horrifically large. It is extraordinary that such costs can even be contemplated when the numbers for both the future benefit and the discount for the future are little more than abstract guesses.
Assessment of the future benefit is largely based on two types of numerical modelling. First, there are the vast computer models that attempt to forecast the future change in Earth’s climate when atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased as a consequence of the human activity of burning fossil fuel. Second, there are the computer-based economic models which attempt to calculate the economic and social impact of the forecasted change of climate. Reduction of that impact (by reducing the human input of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere) is the “benefit” in the cost-benefit calculations.
Taking the climate change calculations first, it should be emphasized that in order to be really useful, the forecast must necessarily be of the future distribution of climate about the world—on the scale of areas as small as individual nations and regions. Calculating only the global average of such things as the future temperature and rainfall is not useful. The economic models need input data relevant to individual nations, not just the world as a whole.
Which is a bit of a problem. The uncertainty associated with climate prediction derives basically from the turbulent nature of the processes going on within the atmosphere and oceans. Such predictability as there is in turbulent fluids is governed by the size (the “scale”) of the boundaries that contain and limit the size to which random turbulent eddies can grow. Thus reasonably correct forecasts of the average climate of the world might be possible in principle. On the scale of regions (anything much smaller than the scale of the major ocean basins for example) it has yet to be shown that useful long-term climate forecasting is possible even in principle.
To expand on that a little, the forecasts of the global average rise in temperature by the various theoretical models around the world range from about 1 degree to 6 degrees Celsius by the end of this century—which does little more than support the purely qualitative conclusion from simple physical reasoning that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will increase the global average temperature above what it would have been otherwise. It does little to resolve the fundamental question as to what fraction of the observed rise in global surface temperature over the last thirty or so years (equivalent to a rise of about 1 degree Celsius per century if one is inclined to believe observations rather than the theory) is attributable to the human-induced increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. There is still a distinct possibility that much of the observed rise in global temperature may be the result of natural (and maybe random) variability of the system.
While the forecasts of future global average climate are not really trustworthy and would probably not be very useful even if they were, the potentially much more useful forecasts of regional climates are perhaps just nonsense. A good example supporting this rather negative view of the matter is the variability of the set of hundred-year forecasts of the average rainfall over Australia. Each forecast was produced by one of the many climate models from around the world. The present-day measured average is about 450 millimetres per year. The forecasts for the next century range from less than 200 mm to more than 1000 mm per year. That sort of thing makes finding a model to support a particular narrative just too easy.
As a consequence, the economic models of the future of regions and nations are highly unreliable if only because their regional and national inputs of forecasted climatic “data” are unreliable. But to make matters vastly worse, the economic models themselves are almost certainly useless over time-scales relevant to climate. Their internal workings are based on statistical relations between economic variables devised for present-day conditions. There is no particular reason why these relations should be valid in the future when the characteristics of society will almost certainly have changed. As Michael Crichton put it: “Our [economic] models just carry the present into the future.” And as Kenneth Galbraith once remarked: “Economic forecasting was invented to make astrology look respectable.”
There is a lot of discussion among academics as to what should be an appropriate “discount for the future” to apply in the cost-benefit calculations associated with human-induced climate change. The discussion quickly becomes incomprehensible to the average person when phrases such as “cross generational wealth transfer” and “intergenerational neutrality” and so on appear in the argument. These are fancy terms supposedly relevant to what is essentially a qualitative concept of fairness to future generations. The concept is so qualitative that there is virtually no hope of getting general agreement as to how much we should spend now so as not to upset the people of the future.
There are two extremes of thought on the matter. At one end there are those who tell us that the present-day view of a benefit for future generations should be discounted at the normal rate associated with business transactions of today. That is, it should be something of the order of 5 to 10 per cent a year. The problem for the academics is that such a discount would ensure virtually no active concern for the welfare of people more than a generation or so ahead, and would effectively wipe out any reason for immediate action on climate. At the other end of the scale, there are those who tell us that the value of future climatic benefit should not be discounted at all—in which case there is an infinite time into the future that should concern us, and “being fair” to that extended future implies that we should not object to spending an unlimited amount of present-day money on the problem.
Academics tie themselves in knots to justify the need for immediate action on climate change. For example, we hear argument that “discounting should not be used for determining our ethical obligations to the future” but that (in the same breath) “we endorse a principle of intergenerational neutrality”—and then we hear guesses of appropriate discount rates of the order (say) of 1.5 per cent a year.
The significant point in this cost-benefit business is that there is virtually no certainty about any of the numbers that are used to calculate either the likely change of climate or the impact of that change on future populations. In essence it is simply assumed that all climate change is bad—that the current climate is the best of all possible climates. Furthermore, there is little or no recognition in most of the scenarios that mankind is very good at adapting to new circumstances. It is more than likely that, if indeed climate change is noticeably “bad”, the future population will adjust to the changed circumstances. If the change is “good”, the population will again adapt and become richer as a consequence. If the change is a mixture of good and bad, the chances are that the adaptive processes will ensure a net improvement in wealth. This for a population which, if history is any guide, and for reasons entirely independent of climate change, will probably be a lot wealthier than we are.
Perhaps the whole idea of being fair to the people of the future should be reversed. Perhaps they can easily afford to owe us something in retrospect.
The bottom line of politically correct thought on the matter—the thought that we must collectively do something drastic now to prevent climate change in the future—is so full of holes that it brings the overall sanity of mankind into question. For what it is worth, one possible theory is that mankind (or at least that fraction of it that has become both over-educated and more delicate as a result of a massive increase of its wealth in recent times) has managed to remove the beliefs of existing religions from its consideration—and now it misses them. As a replacement, it has manufactured a set of beliefs about climate change that can be used to guide and ultimately to control human behaviour. The beliefs are similar to those of the established religions in that they are more or less unprovable in any strict scientific sense.
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