Here in Illinois we have a desperate need for capital investment in things like roads, bridges, sewage systems, etc. Stuff that pretty much everyone agrees is the proper kind of thing for government to spend money on. But there’s no support from the electorate that spends its time driving over the crappy roads and dangerous bridges for getting a capital bill passed because we are convinced that large amounts of the money will be wasted through corrupt practices. We’d rather buy new shocks for our cars than see the buddies and relatives and political contributors of Blago and Stroger and Daley line their pockets while building slightly less shitty roads and bridges and take forever doing it.
[ /rant ] [it's true, though]

[back on topic]

Frankly, I’m more interested in seeing what Sen. Obama wants to do with this money, and why he doesn’t think we can’t re-allocate money from existing taxes for the purpose. Taxes are a necessary evil if you’re going to have a functioning government, but they are an evil nonetheless regardless of the target group you’re taking them from. The issue is not whether or not the people you are taking them from will or will not miss the money or whether or not they got the money they have in a fashion that people approve of, but what the money is going to be used for and whether the purpose they are going to be used for is properly the role of government as opposed to private action.

There’s an argument in the comments section of this post at Alas about the effects of marginal tax rates on labor supply.

I do think that there’s something to the idea that the short-term labor supply is somewhat inelastic. Ronald Reagan’s stories …

That’s the question you should be asking if you want to draw out this comparison.

To be clear, the only reason I referenced the AGW discussion was for Robert’s explanation for what he thinks the word “consensus” means. All other analogies belong to their respective authors.

I’m not responsible for Daran’s formulation; you’re right that his phrasing and mine aren’t equivalent. Accordingly, I shouldn’t have said there was a consensus on his formulation, but only on mine.

Okay, but you implied a false equivalence between (1) taxes affect economic behaviour at the margins, a statement so general if not banal that the null hypothesis would really take some extraordinary evidence, and (2) Al Gore is right. From this, I’m guessing the expected conclusion is that right wing anti-income tax positions are more grounded in its respective field than is climate change.

The problem is, this is a stacked and invalid comparison. The logical counterpart to “taxes affect behaviour at the margins” isn’t “everything lefties say about global warming is true” (which I basically agree with, mostly if not everything, but that’s beside the point), but “broad-scale human activity can affect the weather”. And the counterpart to “Al Gore was right” on climate change is “G. W. Bush was right” on tax cuts. How many economists do you think dissented with Bush’s tax cuts? That’s the question you should be asking if you want to draw out this comparison.

“Most of whom don’t work in a relevant field” is disingenuous; I’m pretty sure that math, physics, earth science, meterorology, etc. are all “relevant fields”, and that’s about 10,000 signatories (or ~3,000 “relevant PhDs”). Another third are engineers, which is a fairly broad-based competence.

Sure, they can be - meteorologists, physicists, and mathematicians could have worked on climate change in the past and penned their name to a paper or at least a respectable article on the subject, for instance. Those that haven’t, however, are no more qualified to speak on the veracity of climate change than are climatologists who haven’t done either of the above - who are themselves are no more qualified than a CERN physicist or a mechanical engineer is to head NASA’s astronomy department.

I recognize what the petition says. The text, in full:

We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

That sounds like AGW to me. If you’re quibbling about the word “catastrophic” - well, OK, I’ll grant you that there could be AGW that wasn’t catastrophic, and this petition doesn’t address that. But if it isn’t catastrophic, then who cares? The cure for AGW with modest effects is to wait and see what happens, because the climate changes modestly ALL THE TIME.

In reality, proponents of AGW believe it is a catastrophe, that requires large adjustments in our economy and our political institutions to save us from the floodwaters. Al Gore is not concerned that there will be a 2 cm rise in sea level. You can’t have it both ways; if AGW is this huge problem, then this petition is in fact talking about AGW.

The person who organized the Oregon Petition spent his scientific career in the pay of tobacco companies, claiming that there’s no evidence that cigarrette smoking causes cancer. No credibility problems there.

Frederick Seitz was a brilliant physicist of distinction. He spent the first 35 years of his career as a physicist. In 1979, around the time he retired from his equally distinguished career as the President of the National Academy of Sciences and as President of Rockefeller University, he consulted for RJ Reynolds as an advisor to their research program, for about ten years. If you have a cite of him saying what you claim he said, I’d love to see it. Otherwise I am going to dismiss this as a smear.

Scientific American estimated (based on a small sample they surveyed) that when you eliminate the uncredentialed, the folks in irrelevant fields, and the folks who didn’t recall signing any such petition, there were about 200 signatories left in the Oregon petition.

Scientific American wrote in 2005 that:

“Scientific American took a sample of 30 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science. Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases, 11 said they still agreed with the petition —- one was an active climate researcher, two others had relevant expertise, and eight signed based on an informal evaluation. Six said they would not sign the petition today, three did not remember any such petition, one had died, and five did not answer repeated messages. Crudely extrapolating, the petition supporters include a core of about 200 climate researchers – a respectable number, though rather a small fraction of the climatological community.”

My bold. That was in 2005, when the petition had about 1400 atmospheric and earth scientists; today it has 3,697. Their sample was tiny and their methods self-admittedly crude. Equally crudely, the number today would be 528.

By your own cite and criteria, there are more than 500 climatologists who disagree with the “consensus” position.

So (for example) one-tenth of a percent is enough to demolish consensus, in your view?

Depends on the one-tenth of a percent; if it’s all nobodies, maybe not. If Lindzer is in there, then yes.

The problem you have here is that “consensus” is a very, very strong word. It’s a word that anyone with a political agenda would like to have on their side. But it’s also a word that requires a pretty rigorous standard. See below.

I don’t recall that I ever made a claim about “international scientists,” to be able to back down from it.

See your comment #26. I claimed that there was no consensus of international scientists; you said I was wrong. If you assert that I’m wrong in my negative statement, then that to me translates you to asserting the positive statement.

Lacking such a country, however, I’m certain that the consensus is international.

OK…then why are you even bringing it up?

Tell you what, let’s be fair. You tell me what your claim is, regarding the consensus, and tell me what it would take to falsify that claim. How many scientists have to disagree, before you will admit that it isn’t a consensus? One? One thousand? One million?

You tell me.

I don’t recall that I ever made a claim about “international scientists,” to be able to back down from it.

That was my claim, in the thread from two years ago.

…flat-earthers…

That’s a bit harsh, in my opinion. I’m sure there are some among the signatories who would fit that description, but the majority, I suspect, are just deceived. For all my skepticism, it never occured to me that such a respectable-sounding organ as the “Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons” might not, in fact, be a reputable scientific publication. It sounds so… well… so respectable.

Nice bit of social engineering, that.

The person who organized the Oregon Petition spent his scientific career in the pay of tobacco companies, claiming that there’s no evidence that cigarrette smoking causes cancer. No credibility problems there.

Robert:

You’re grasping at comparatives on AGW. “Most of whom don’t have PhDs” is still 9,000 who do.

Either through carelessness or ignorance, you’re shifting the case. The 9,000 you cite have nothing to do with AGW, because the petition didn’t disagree with the premise that there is AGW.

Could you please address this? Because at this point, I’m not sure if you realize what the Oregon Petition — piece of crap that it is — actually said.

“Most of whom don’t work in a relevant field” is disingenuous; I’m pretty sure that math, physics, earth science, meterorology, etc. are all “relevant fields”, and that’s about 10,000 signatories (or ~3,000 “relevant PhDs”). Another third are engineers, which is a fairly broad-based competence.

Scientific American estimated (based on a small sample they surveyed) that when you eliminate the uncredentialed, the folks in irrelevant fields, and the folks who didn’t recall signing any such petition, there were about 200 signatories left in the Oregon petition.

It’s hard to say for certain, since we have only the Oregon Petitioners’ word for it that there has ever been any independent check of the validity of the signatures, and the list isn’t formatted in a way to allow independent checking of all the names. (Because they don’t list institutional affiliations.)

“Only a small fraction” is quite enough to demolish consensus.

So (for example) one-tenth of a percent is enough to demolish consensus, in your view?

And I note with quiet satisfaction (well, not that quiet) that you’re backing down from “consensus of international scientists” to “consensus of climatologists”.

I don’t recall that I ever made a claim about “international scientists,” to be able to back down from it.

My belief is that the consensus among actual experts (i.e., not the flat-earthers with no relevant credentials you prefer as experts) exists internationally. But for all I know there’s some country where right-wing religious conservatives have succeeded in repressing all alternative views. In such a country, it is possible that there is no scientific consensus on global warming.

Lacking such a country, however, I’m certain that the consensus is international.

Give it a couple more years and it’ll be “consensus of climatologists who signed the IPCC reports”.

Robert, the momentum is entirely in the other direction.

No, I’m not. You can tell what I claim; it’s the stuff I claim.

Then I really wish you would state your claims precisely. This conversation started when you said “But at the margin, there will be a fairly significant shift in peoples’ activities.” You didn’t even say which way they would shift. OK, it was easy for me to guess that you meant toward less productivity. But I shouldn’t have to guess.

So, sorry for guessing wrong about the details of your position. Next time, state it more clearly, so that we won’t have to guess.

There are a dozen reasons why an economist might favor Obama’s policy over McCain’s.

There are indeed a dozen or more reasons why Obama’s economic policy might actually be better than McCain’s*. There are certainly a dozen or more factors that ought to be taken into consideration. So why aren’t we talking about them? Why do economic discussion with rightwingers always tunnel-vision onto the tax take?

*I know next to nothing about the policies of either, but I do have a BSc in mathematics. Perhaps I should sign a petition.

“This underlying principle of economics doesn’t actually function the way we think it functions” just isn’t one of them. A trend at the margin is not always the smart way to act; economic growth, while important, is not the ultimate value.

I totally accept that, taking nothing else into account, taxation always or nearly always operates to depress economic activity - assuming the same public spending, productivity is negatively correlated to taxation.

The opposite is true for spending. Assuming the same taxation, productivity is positively correlated to spending.

But neither assumption is valid. Taxation pays for spending. To assess the impact of a tax cut on the economy, you need to look not just at the effect of the change in taxation, but also of the cut in spending necessated to enable it. (If spending is not cut, rather funded by borrowing, then that’s not a real tax cut, just a tax deferral.)

So why has my first post in this thread met with such deafening silence?

Since AGW is a tertiary issue to this thread, at best, I won’t continue to advance the argument, other than to note that “astroturf” campaigns are those which are funded by someone (usually someone with an agenda) to appear grassroots. I have seen no evidence that this is the case with the Oregon petition; if you have any such evidence, I’m sure it would be of remarkable interest, and you should blog about it. But you don’t; you’re using “astroturf” to mean “people who are refusing to accept the narrative that I’ve accepted”. Everything I’ve seen indicates that the Oregon petition is a self-organizing group.

I don’t really have time to research it right now, but I find this alleged groundswell of dissent against the climatological consensus highly suspicious. You don’t see it in many other scientific fields. You don’t see, for example, petitions signed by large numbers of non-medical scientists to the effect that doctors have it all wrong. You don’t see people who aren’t engineers jumping up and down and complaining that the principles of engineering are bunk.

When science is attacked in this way, it is invariably because it’s either inconvenient to big business (tobacco is a historical example where the astroturfing has been documented) or it offends some people’s religious sensibilities (evolution).

But ultimately, whether or not the petition is sponsored by vested interests isn’t that important. The petition has no credibility because those who sign it aren’t experts in the field, and aren’t verifiablly experts in any field.

No, I’m not. You can tell what I claim; it’s the stuff I claim.

There are a dozen reasons why an economist might favor Obama’s policy over McCain’s. “This underlying principle of economics doesn’t actually function the way we think it functions” just isn’t one of them. A trend at the margin is not always the smart way to act; economic growth, while important, is not the ultimate value.

Since AGW is a tertiary issue to this thread, at best, I won’t continue to advance the argument, other than to note that “astroturf” campaigns are those which are funded by someone (usually someone with an agenda) to appear grassroots. I have seen no evidence that this is the case with the Oregon petition; if you have any such evidence, I’m sure it would be of remarkable interest, and you should blog about it. But you don’t; you’re using “astroturf” to mean “people who are refusing to accept the narrative that I’ve accepted”. Everything I’ve seen indicates that the Oregon petition is a self-organizing group.

You’re grasping at comparatives on AGW. “Most of whom don’t have PhDs” is still 9,000 who do. “Most of whom don’t work in a relevant field” is disingenuous; I’m pretty sure that math, physics, earth science, meterorology, etc. are all “relevant fields”, and that’s about 10,000 signatories (or ~3,000 “relevant PhDs”). Another third are engineers, which is a fairly broad-based competence.

No, I do not agree that someone who specialises in designing bridges is necessarily competent to opine on whether there is “convincing scientific evidence” on the subject of Anthropic Global Warming. The criteria for that is 1. “has formal training in the analysis of information in physical science”, and 2. “has studied the evidence“. I took criterion one from the petition, and to be quite honest, They’ve set the hurdle pretty low there to start with. Dammit even I qualify (or would if I was American), and I haven’t done anything scientific in twenty years.

As for criterion 2, well, there’s apparently no need so certify to any knowledge about the subject at all. You don’t even need to have read their review paper.

And on the subject of their paper: “This article was submitted to many scientists for comments and suggestions…”

Which scientists, and what did they say about it? In particular do those who were cited agree that their research has been fairly represented?

“…before it was finalized and submitted for publication. It then underwent ordinary peer review by the publishing journal.”

Which was “Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons”, whose review panel is stacked with experts in climatology, I’m sure. I wonder how many journals they had to go through before they found one that would publish it.

“Only a small fraction” is quite enough to demolish consensus.

It’s an astroturf campaign.

And I note with quiet satisfaction (well, not that quiet) that you’re backing down from “consensus of international scientists” to “consensus of climatologists”. Give it a couple more years and it’ll be “consensus of climatologists who signed the IPCC reports”.

The phrase was mine, and to honest, I never thought you would be so desperate to deny AGW that you would dismiss the experts in the field, in favour of those ignorant on the subject. Clearly I seriously underestimated your intellectual dishonesty.

Your own definition of consensus also appears to have changed. Back then it was “nobody who should be taken seriously doubts the consensus theory”. A single dissenter is enough: “Lindzer is a top man, and he says “no”. That’s enough to blow up consensus right there.”

I agreed that Lindzer should be taken seriously. His views on who should be taken seriously, should also be taken seriously:

…why are the opinions of scientists sought regardless of their field of expertise? Biologists and physicians are rarely asked to endorse some theory in high energy physics. Apparently, when one comes to “global warming,” any scientist’s agreement will do.

Ditto their disagreement, which pretty well dismisses your petition, and leaves us with… well, with Lindzer.

By your consensus criterion back then, there is no consensus among cosmologists that the Big Bang ever happened, among physicists that Newton’s laws of motion are correct (Eric Laithwaite, for example), even among mathematicians about whether a theorem has been proven (De Branges, for example, thinks he has proven the Riemann hypothesis, but most mathematicians disagree).

Are you seriously claiming that there is not a single economist who favours Obama’s policies over McCain’s?

Anthropomorphic would mean climate change is taking on the physical or emotional characteristics of a human being. On that, I can agree there is no scientific consensus.

Of course there is. Everyone knows that the increase in hurricane activity in the Carribean is because the weather hates America.

You’re grasping at comparatives on AGW. “Most of whom don’t have PhDs” is still 9,000 who do. “Most of whom don’t work in a relevant field” is disingenuous; I’m pretty sure that math, physics, earth science, meterorology, etc. are all “relevant fields”, and that’s about 10,000 signatories (or ~3,000 “relevant PhDs”). Another third are engineers, which is a fairly broad-based competence.

“Only a small fraction” is quite enough to demolish consensus. And I note with quiet satisfaction (well, not that quiet) that you’re backing down from “consensus of international scientists” to “consensus of climatologists”. Give it a couple more years and it’ll be “consensus of climatologists who signed the IPCC reports”.

Then, later, you claimed that “all economists accept, as a broad proposition, that ‘higher tax = lower activity’.”

The two claims aren’t interchangable. There probably is a consensus among economists for the latter statement, because it’s a broad proposition — obviously, if taxes are raised ENOUGH, they will suppress economic activity — but that doesn’t mean that there’s a consensus for the earlier statement.

* * *

As for global warming, two years ago, in the discussion I believe Daran was referring to, you claimed that “There’s no consensus among international scientists that anthropogenic global warming exists.”

You were wrong then, and you’re wrong now.

At best [*], the link you provided shows that there’s no consensus among some people, most of whom don’t have PhDs, and most of whom don’t work in a relevant field, that greenhouse gases will cause a catastrophe. Even if the petition is accurate, and not a scam, that doesn’t change the fact that there’s a consensus among climatologists that “anthropogenic global warming exists.”

I suspect that there’s a similar consensus that global climate change could plausibly lead to disastrous consequences for many people. According to Scientific American, only a small fraction of climatologists agree with the Oregon Petition as it’s currently written; it’s safe to bet that the fraction would be even smaller if it were modified to use less certain language.

[*] And that really is the best-case scenario — there are a lot of reasons to doubt the validity of the survey you cited.

No, it doesn’t. Nor is that what I said. We’re talking about at the margin, not in terms of absolutes and extremes. Vitamin D is good for you; if I drop fifty thousand pounds of it on your head, you’ll die. At the margin, increasing your consumption of it by 10% is probably going to slightly improve your health.

My opinion of “consensus” is what it’s always been: no meaningful level of dissent. On AGW, many scientists disagree with the “consensus view”. There’s certainly a preponderance of professional opinion, although it is weaker than AGW proponents claim; there isn’t consensus. On the economics of taxation, as far as I am aware, there are no economists who reject the broad principle at the margin. If you know of one, speak up.

I haven’t talked to all of the economists. Some of them live far away, and Bill doesn’t return my calls after that whole thing with his sister. But as far as I know, all economists accept, as a broad proposition, that “higher tax = lower activity”.

Right, so if we reduce taxes to zero we’d have the highest activity of all. Of course that would mean reducing spending to zero too.

Think about it. No spending on roads, on police, on defence, on prisons, on hospitals, on schools. America’s economy would boom.

So, does the consensus of economists really advocate “no taxation” (hence no spending) over “some taxation”?

Actually, I think your post on your own blog on Generalities vs. Exceptions holds the answer. A “consensus” is a majority opinion to which disagreement is exceptional within the relevant field.

OK.

But my point was against Robert who, in the past, has argued against the existence of a consensus among climatologists on anthropic global warming on the grounds that he could cite a handful of dissenters. It seems that his definition of ‘consensus’ varies according to whether it suits or conflicts with his politics.

What kind of consensus are we talking about here. Do you mean that economists are unanimous that this happens? Remember that was your definition of “consensus” when we debated global warming. Or do you have different standards for what constitutes a ‘consensus’ in favour of theories that agree with your politics vs. those that don’t.

Actually, I think your post on your own blog on Generalities vs. Exceptions holds the answer. A “consensus” is a majority opinion to which disagreement is exceptional within the relevant field.

Most physicists believe in the existence of the Higgs boson, but there’s nothing exceptional about a physicist who doesn’t. Higgs-skeptics don’t self-congregate at the proverbial lunch table, they aren’t identified by their opposition to that theory, and they don’t carry a siege mentality or a cult of victimhood about their idea. They are regular scientists respected in their field who happen to disagree with their colleagues on a certain point.

However, most climatogists do believe that anthropomorphic climate forcing (known by lesser rubes as “global warming”) is happening, and the few that are in opposition definitely are an “exception”. Thus there is a climatological consensus on global warming.

It definitely seems to be true that economists’ consensus does coalesce around (1), though, putting my finger to the wind, it doesn’t seem as strong as scientists’ consensus on global warming. Of course, to say that

economics as a discipline is tricky

… is hell of an understatement, because as a social science economics is not directly testable the way physics and climatology are. Therefore, I don’t put as much store in economists’ consensus as I do from fields in the hard sciences. The best way I can put is… economists differentiate between “normative” (value-judgmental) vs. “positive” (value-neutral) economics. And real economists must, of course, practice the latter. But it is in the nature of a social science, I think, to be normative. I don’t really think there is such a thing as positive economics*.

*The exception would be where economics overlaps with finance, which are more dependent on pure mathematics and thus freer from value judgments.