Three activities, and Three Items, in this Easter Digest.

(That's plenty for the Easter Break. We have no one to proof read today so please forgive any typos.)

Contents:

Activity 1: Dealing with emails

Activity 2:   Preparing to give papers at three conferences

Activity 3:  Two new projects

Items

Item 1: We hate to say "We told you so" – but ...
Item 2: Opportunity for Policy Analyst with CIS, Australia    
Item 3: How regulation gets it wrong – the case of the light bulb.

  Funding:    Even a Dollar Helps! 


ACTIVITIES
Activity 1: Dealing with Emails and In-trays.

We shall report more fully on the New York Conference on Climate Change as time 
goes by. In the meantime you might like to read about the big event 
at  http://www.heartland.org

The Centre has had to deal with over six hundred emails which had accumulated 
in the mailbox, many of which have grown out of the US trip. The Centre is also 
working with the NZ Climate Science Coalition to respond to the scurrilous 
article about our attendance at the Bali conference in this week's Listener.

Activity 2: Preparing papers for three more conferences

The Centre is also preparing papers for conferences on Housing Policy and RMA 
law reform in Wellington, later in March and early in April, which build on the 
US conference and the financial meltdown and related topics.

Activity 3: Two new projects.

Project One: The Link between Climate Alarmism, Smart Growth and the Financial Meltdown.

The Centre is working on two new projects with strong international input. 
The first is to prepare a "Declaration" along the lines of the "Manhattan 
Declaration on Climate Change" but authored  by maybe a dozen experts drawing 
the connection between Climate alarmism, Smart Growth regulation and the 
financial melt-down. 
The final version of the paper I presented in New York has the title "Why Urban 
Planners love Global Warming – or How Climate Alarmism has led to the Risk of 
World Wide Recession."
You can see the paper with the original title at:
http://www.fcpp.org/images/publications/HeartlandGaspF-2.pdf

This release by Bloomberg draws the strong connection between land regulation 
and the financial meltdown. The Centre's paper simply moves one step further 
back along the cause-and-effect chain. The Centre is not arguing that Climate 
Alarmism is the _only_ excuse for Smart Growth rules, but it has certainly 
dominated the definition of "sustainable", as in "sustainable urban form", over 
the last ten years or so. Go to:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aTGvWJvbonR0&refer=h 
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aTGvWJvbonR0&refer=home


Project Two: Auditing Scientific Forecasts.

Over the last few months the Centre has been exploring means of monitoring and 
auditing the process whereby scientific information is turned into policy. 
Kesten Green is an expert in this field. He spoke at the Heartland Conference 
and is based in Monash University, Melbourne, but is currently working in New 
Zealand.
I recommend his excellent joint paper (with Scott Armstrong) "Global Warming: 
Forecasts by scientists versus scientific forecasting" which is at
http://forecastingprinciples.com/Public_Policy/WarmAudit31.pdf

which in turn is within the group’s general web page "Public Policy Forecasting" at:
http://forecastingprinciples.com/Public_Policy/index.html

During my several years experience in managing venture capital funds I became 
acutely aware of both the strengths and weaknesses of the financial models and 
forecasts which are presented in support of applications for funding or for 
preparing business plans directed at joint venturing and licensing. 
Such forecasts are also at the heart of annual reports and information memoranda 
supporting normal prospectuses for fund raising, and mergers and acquisitions.
Fund managers soon learn to spot the models that have started with the desired 
end results (say 30% return on capital) and plugged in the inputs needed to 
achieve that result, rather than building the model from the bottom up. We soon 
learn how sensitive such outputs are to small changes in the inputs if the model 
runs out for five to ten years – let alone the fifty and one hundred year 
projections so favoured by the IPCC and the like.

Over the years the business community has accepted the need for all such models 
and forecasts to be subject to independent audit by acknowledged experts in the 
field.

However, scientists are now routinely making forecasts based on computer models 
without having their forecasts subject to independent audit of their forecasting 
techniques. A recent example is the report prepared by the Ministry of Transport 
which concluded that precisely 399 New Zealanders, aged 30 years or over, would 
die prematurely because of vehicle emissions. As soon as the report was released 
it became accepted as "fact" and is routinely quoted as "fact" even though the 
error spreads are massive.
A suitable "forecasting audit" process would put a stop to such nonsense.

The Centre believes we need to have the requirement for such forecasting audits 
firmly embedded in the public consciousness. We need to demonstrate the use of 
such audits with an example which is simple to understand, is placed within a 
simple legal framework, and which can be distributed as an "international" template.

The aim would be to use a particular case to develop a template could be used to 
encourage policy-makers in other jurisdictions and other fields to seek similar 
forecasting audits so that eventually such audits become as well established as 
"best practice" as audits of financial forecasts are today.

The whole field of environmental law desperately needs such audits for claims 
about future hazards from ozone depletion, contaminated soils, nuclear waste, 
dioxins, mercury, vehicle exhausts, and other “toxins”.

The Centre is finalising a proposal and will soon be seeking funding for the 
project.

 Expressions of interest in selection of a project, participation in the 
project, or assistance with fund raising would all be welcome.

ITEMS
Item One: We hate to say "We told you so" – but ...

This press release endorses the Centre's recent predictions about claims of 
carbon neutrality.

GROVE MILL NOT CARBON NEUTRAL AFTER ALL

*Date: *Wed 19 Mar 2008

The heavily promoted “first certified carbon neutral winery in the world”, Grove 
Mill has been revealed to not be carbon neutral. The mistake has been released 
by the certifying agency, carboNZero, verifying that the carbon cost of the 
bottles used by Grove Mill was not included in their evaluation.

On line carbon market news site, carbonnews.co.nz broke the story yesterday, 
declaring /Grove Mill wasn't including the carbon content of its bottles when it 
announced it was the world's first "carbon neutral" winery./

Ann Smith, programme leader for state-owned certifier carboNZero, told Carbon 
News that in anticipation of a new standard being drafted by British Standards, 
this year’s Grove Mill inventory was widened.

CarboNZero now claims that their certification is accurate, but also admits that 
the freight to the United Kingdom was not part of the original certification 
either. Her assertion is that because Grove Mill does not pay the freight, the 
carbon footprint of that freight should not be included.

The Centre has argued that it does not matter how many corrections they make 
someone can always find an error. They forgot about the bottle and the freight. 
But what about the coffee growers in Brazil?

For more detail go the the Centre's paper on "Why Urban Planners love Global 
Warming" (link above) and read section 7 which explains how, in his classic 
essay 

I, Pencil, my Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read, Leonard Read 
demonstrates that no single person or committee knows how to make a pencil on 
their own. 
Read does this by listing the pencil’s components (cedar, lacquer, graphite, 
ferrule, factice, pumice, wax, glue etc) and identifying the multitude of people 
involved, down to the coffee drinker in the forest, and the lighthouse keeper 
guiding the shipment into port.

The Centre's paper then argues that if no one person or committee knows how to 
make a pencil, no one person or committee knows how to calculate its carbon 
footprint. No one has challenged this claim.

Litigation and references to the Commerce Commission are inevitable. 


Item Two: Opportunity for Policy Analyst with CIS, Australia.

The Centre for Independent Studies has a vacancy for a Policy Analyst or 
Research Fellow to work in the New Zealand Policy Unit based in Sydney. The 
position is available in mid May. This is an opportunity for a bright person, 
with appropriate skills and experience, to join Australia’s leading think-tank 
and to establish a high profile reputation as an applied social researcher and 
commentator.

In 2006 the New Zealand Policy Unit was established to focus specifically on NZ 
policy issues. The Unit's work so far has focussed on tax, government spending, 
tertiary education and social policy. Already this work has stimulated debate 
and attracted widespread media coverage. As well as research, the establishment 
of the New Zealand Policy Unit has seen an increase in activities across the 
three other key areas of CIS work - events, publishing and media liaison.

The Centre's research tries to identify non-governmental solutions to social and 
economic problems and aims to strengthen a civic culture of self-reliance and 
social responsibility. The person appointed to this position should feel 
comfortable endorsing this broad philosophy.

The research output from the program is published and disseminated in various 
formats including books, papers, journal articles and newspaper ‘op-eds.’ Our 
target audience includes senior politicians and policy-makers, academics and 
intellectuals, the business community, voluntary agencies and the general 
public. Various outputs from the program can be found on the CIS web site:

_http://www.cis.org.au/default.html___

The successful candidate will work alongside existing researchers at the Centre 
however all candidates should be aware that the there is a large element of self 
motivation and self direction involved. The person who is appointed position 
will have a lot of autonomy in the direction of the programme.

For more details go to:

_http://www.cis.org.au/vacant/position.html___


Item Three: How regulation gets it wrong – the case of the legislated light bulb.

The following news report tells the sorry story of how the EU regulators have 
rushed to ban incandescent light bulbs in favour of compact fluorescent bulbs. 
(CFLs) The report argues that this makes as much sense as the rush to legislate 
for compulsory use and subsidy of biofuels - even if one accepts the need for 
reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the first place. Go to:

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2007/03/light-bulbs-and-eco-fascism.htm

The Centre does not necessarily agree with every argument in this report but the 
author makes a strong case and is worth reading if only for the entertainment value.

However, there is another even more serious problem with such "rushes to 
action". On my way home I stayed with a friend who is an expert in materials 
science and who was building a "high tech" new house in the South Bay Area. He 
showed me the light fittings they would be using which are Light Emitting Diodes 
and which use only 12 watts to produce the light equivalent to a 65 watt 
incandescent bulb – which means they outperform the CFLs. The LED can fit into 
any light fitting (including flat ceiling mounts) and addresses virtually every 
problem raised in the "EU Referendum" report. Furthermore, because the light is 
electronically controlled my friend has been able to programme his iPod to 
control any light in the house – which can be dimmed or even ranged through the 
colour spectrum. 

The Centre suspect the EU regulations are "crowding out" such LEDs in Europe.

If anyone wonders why the US, which has not rushed to sign up to Kyoto, and has 
generally been more cautious in "rushing to regulate", has outperformed the 
Kyoto signatories in reducing the growth in emissions, the story of the CFL and 
LED has much explanatory power.


Funding.

Never has the Centre been asked by so many to do so much. And we try to oblige. 
However, everything costs money and the Government is remorseless in its demands 
for provisional taxes and GST. We really don't want to fold our tent and creep 
away so your donations are essential to our ongoing efforts. The Centre donation 
form is attached.
Remember – even a dollar helps! 
And all this overseas travel costs money – in one way or another. But the 
dividends are huge.