Talk:Copenhagen Consensus

Someone might add content to this page from [1]

Criticism on climate change

Re climate change measures being rated 'poor', I've deleted the words 'however this is only a relative measure; it still had a net positive benefit over costs' - if I recall rightly from reading the conference papers I don't think this is correct - at most discount rates there was no net benefit. Ben Finn 16:59, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

The Clime paper gets a B/C ratio of 2:1 for optimal carbon; 1.7:1 for Kyoto & 3+:1 for value-at-risk.: see http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Default.aspx?ID=165, first link William M. Connolley 17:20, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

we shall block the ip adress that modifies this article all the time

POV Statements like "This is seen by the green that, they are anti environment, though the economics as a dicipline, never take such stance" belong, if anywhere, in a criticisms section for an article such as Green Economics. It's not appropriate to include your own arguments as a response to criticisms reported in the article. If you can find published responses, by all means include them.JQ 06:16, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Criticism on discount rates

I've deleted a criticism on discount rates, moved from the Lomborg article because it's invalid (the discount rate is not equal to the rate of growth of income) and also appears to be Original Research. There is probably room, though, for more discussion of the dispute between Cline (propponent for the GW measures) and the panel members over discount rates, which was a major factor in the negative evaluation of GW measures and contributed to suspicions of a setup by Lomborg. JQ 22:42, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

In addition, the members of the panel, selected by Lomborg, were seen as a likeminded group of free-market economists, not likely to be supportive of government intervention to protect the environment. To deflect this likely criticism, the organizers convened a parallel panel of young people to hear the arguments presented in the challenge papers and by the discussants, and to give their own list of recommendations (which was largely aligned with the experts' ranking).

Any information on the sample of these young people? I hope they weren't all similar as well. In other cases this has been just US college/university students. That is a limited group. There are still many poor youth who do not attend college/university, considering the US's unusually high poverty and dropout rates for many groups within the population as a whole.

I looked for it in the linked readings and could not find mention. Does anyone know?

I read in Lomborg's book Global Crises, Global Solutions about the conference, that the students were (deliberately) drawn from many countries, particularly developing countries. I don't recall if they were economics students or from multiple disciplines. Ben Finn 17:00, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Who said what

I deleted all unsourced criticism. Use of weasle words, "some criticised" or peakok word "widely criticised" are against the guideline. Plus "Sachs 2004" is not an acceptable level of reference. Need full name and proper title name of the reference source. Vapour

This is bad practice. Unsourced claims should be noted with a cite tag, not deleted. To delete a sourced criticism because the reference is inadequate is very poor, particularly when the cited reference is given in full at the bottom of the article. In any case, I've now added several cites, so the article has been improved. JQ 23:31, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

"The Copenhagen Consensus project has been widely criticised. " Typical use of peacock terms. Likely effect is to discredit the project in the eyes of the readers. Vapour

I don't have objection about referencing Jeffery Sach. Problem is that his reference is used to include what appear to be personal and unsourced criticism of the project. Please limit the reference to Jeffery Sach's opinion. "So some economist criticised, including Sach" is not kosher. Please restore it with "Jeffery Sach criticised the project for such and such reason". That assume that you read his writing. Lastly, you cannot complain if someone delete unsourced claim. Please read verification policy. Vapour

"Lomborg had argued in his controversial book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, that resources allocated to mitigating global warming would be better spent on improving water quality and sanitation, and was therefore seen as having prejudged the issues.[2]" Original article do not make direct allegation that that the project is prejudged because of Lomborg. Rather it implied. However, it contain claim by the guy that CBA is a junk science. So I restore it in this context. Vapour

I'm very sceptical of J Sachs reference. Though the uncertaintity of economic modelling is voiced by all economist, it is highly unlikely that any economist would disown CBA. Similar analogy can be seen by the climatologist and the climate modelling. Both economists and climatologists accept that model contain uncertaintity. But neither would claim that attempt at estimation is pointless. After all, the economics is about modeling and analysis. I highly suspect that the J Sachs's opinion is taken out of context. Please provide actual quote from Sachs. I leave Sachs for a while. Vapour

I've added direct quotes from Sachs. The article is readily available in libraries, so statements like "I highly suspect that the J Sachs's opinion is taken out of context" are pointless as well as unhelpful. Also, your edits are ungrammatical and badly spelt. Please take the trouble to put your text through a spelling/grammar checker before making edits to text that is currently in good shape. It's unfair to expect other editors to fix your errors. JQ 13:08, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

The article before i edited it made it looks like Sachs, an economist himself, is disowning CBA. I simply find it hard to believe that a professiona economist would do something like that. Now the edit make it clear that Sachs criticisms are centered around the speclaities of the panellist as well as the context of the question which the panellists are asked (50 billion fund issue). This I can understand. It is a green activist (and non economist), Tim Burke, who is claiming that CBA is a junk economics. Well, it is quite funny that members of the right calling climate modelling a "junk science" while one member from the left is calling economic modelling a "junk economics". I delted the claim attributed to Q that the panell consisted of free marketieer are unlikely to support government intervention to the environmental issue. I run "find" function but could not find quote from the reference. Q does claim that these panellist are unlikely to support Kyoto. This is not same as blaket rejection to government intervention. I would say almost all economist who specialise in the public choise theory, in which the cost benefit analysis is a branch of, would support the energy tax because it is such an efficient government intervention. The entire premiss of the cost benefit analysis is that different government intervention have different overall benefit/cost. To claim that economist who advocate free trade are against the government intervention is being ignorance of the subject. Vapour

Trade Liberalisation

I think most people agree that the project view on the climate policies is the main focus of the controversy. While the benefit of the trade liberalisation is contested, this is done elsewhere. I edited the section to reflect this relevance. Vapour

O.K. I deleted the mention of trade liberalisation. Though I agree that the issue of trade liberalisation is highly contested, this happened outsid of this project. The controversy of the project was solely about it's ranking of climate change. So far, no specific criticism of the project in regard to the trade liberalisation is cited. Moreover, given the size of the Climate controversy, the trade liberalisation is somewhat out of place. I propose that the section of the title should be changed to "Climate Change". If someone want to set up the separate section titled "Trade liberalisation", fine. Just that, at this point, there isn't a (sourced) content in this topic. Vapour

"climate change was set up to fail"

This paragraph has bit of doggy spining. Firstly, Mendelsohn say "climate change was set up to fail". Then Lomborg follow this by accepting that "more modest proposals (such as a small carbon tax or investments in research) would have ranked higher on the list." Firstly, investment in research is not part of the project. So what the research investment doing. Secondly,if Lomborg responded to the panellist critcism, the reference is clealy about high requirement (either stopping or reversing the climate change). In such case, the discount rate has very little to do with this. The requirement aspect would produce the policy's cost/benefit for each year while discount rate deal with how each year's result should be calculated (discounted) for the present value. I will separate the part about discount rate unless someone give better reference to explain this confusion. Vapour

I've read mendelsohn's paper. His critics of the project is based on premise that project's model adopt ridiculously low (in fact, one actually assume zero discount rate). And this actually inflate the expected damage caused from global warming. Moreover, he argue that the project's literature survey is based on slightly dated studies and newer studies, according to Mendelsohn, indicate significantly lower damge from the global warming. His argument is that the damage from the global warming is lower, hence the policy to conbat it can be less sever. This in turn make the cost of implimenting carbon tax to be significantly less, which in turn raise the ranking of the policy. The current state of this article is highly misleading. Vapour

I've reverted the last lot of changes, which contained the claim that little attention had been paid to cost-benefit analysis of climate change before Lomborg. This claim is unsourced, incorrect and out of place in a section on criticism. eqally importantly, your edits remain ungrammatical and badly spelt, greatly detracting from the quality standards of Wikipedia.

The para above, beginning "This paragraph has bit of doggy spining." is an extreme example of the problem I'm complaining about. How is anyone supposed to respond to this, or to the rest of the para? I repeat, please check everything you submit to this article or talk page for grammar and spelling.I'm going to revert anything that contains such errors from now on. I'll go back later and clean up the errors that are still there from your recent edits.JQ 05:41, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

The wikipedia policy/guideline spelt out that English written by non native speaker should be corrected rather than deleted unless it is incomprehensible. There is no difference, as far as wikipedia is concerned, between people with imperfect grammar and people with imperfect (i.e. non neutral) POV. Please do not use my Engrish as an excuse for delete given that this is somewhat of POV edit dispute as well. Oh, another one of my background is that I haven't got a wordprocessor with spelling check on my computer. Why don't you give me money so I can buy one. (^^)

Secondly, I have checked some related links. Large portion of criticism appear to originate from you. Someone of public figure getting involved in related articles is a wikipedia policy minefileld. Just by inserting/deleting your own quote, it may be consider as the violation of soapbox ban as well as NPOV. You deleted your own quote which somewhat put the project in a good light. Whatever the intent of such delete, I can't see how this is justified. I'm not saying you can't get involved in editing for being who you are. However, could you be bit more careful? If you want to know, I do "try" to write in proper English.

Thirdly, I have never claimed that "little attention had been paid to cost-benefit analysis of climate change before Lomborg." It certainly has in the academia. I said it has not received much public attention. Not the same thing. Switch "BL's book" with, say, "Carson's Silent Spring". If verification is invoked for every sentence or phrase, it's just damb. For example, I could also invoke verification for the sentence "(combating AIDS and malnutrition) were widely agreed to be of critical importance". I'm not saying you can't invoke verification. But are you really not sure that the book was the first to popularise the idea of CBA of global warming and related policies? Anyway, why not change this section's title to "Climate Change".

Lastly, "dodgey spining" is merely an another way of saying it is not NPOV. I can't see how this is problematic. I have read the M's criticism. He is arguing that the latest economic litaratures (including his) indicate significantly less damage from the global warming. Moreover, he is arguing that low discount rate for the sake of long forsight is a circular logic, not to mention the fact that this adjustment increase the present discounted cost of global warming. His view is far more unfavouralbe to the green POV than the project is. Given the content of the controversy, the current state of this article is very misleading about M's criticism and Lombarg's response to it. Neutralising one side of debate would be considered as "dodgey spining".

I will revert my edit. Feel flee to collect my Engrish (or POV). V(^^) Vapour

Criticism reinstated

I've reinstated the criticism section, and distinguished it from the discussion of climate change, since the criticism covered a range of issues. As you say, neutralising one side of the debate is not a good thing, so I suggest that you continue to work on a section explaining how climate change was treated in the CC process, and don't attempt to include rebuttals within the criticism section. JQ 20:46, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't think there is nothing non-NPOV about including rebuttals within the criticism section as long as approriate attributions are made. In fact, it is bit counter productive if there are two section, one dealing with the criticisms while other dealing with rebuttals to such criticism. These two should be in the same section. I would say the title "Criticism" should be changed to "Controversy".

Because the content of controversy is dominated by the issue of the climate change, the current arrangement is not ideal. I would shift M's criticism to the controversy section. The Climate Change section is now strictly about the methodology of C. Because his original paper is avialable, we should be able to put enough content in the Climate Change section. I think clear understanding of C's paper would help put the criticism in a better content, Vapour

The members of the panel anti government intervention

"Quiggin argued that the members of the panel, selected by Lomborg, were seen as a likeminded group of free-market economists, not likely to support government intervention to protect the environment. [3]."

I have read the reference. I could not find such claim. (correct me if I'm wrong here). Only thing which come close to such claim in the blog is.

"Comparing the two lists, the omissions are, broadly speaking, towards the left of the economics profession and those who have commented on climate change have supported policy initiatives such as Kyoto. Conversely, the members of the Copenhagen panel were generally towards the right and, to the extent that they had stated views, to be opponents of Kyoto."

Unless, someone can show a quote which say otherwise, "the government interpention to protect the environment" should be changed to "Kyoto protocoal". Vapour

Vapour, it's clear that you are not a native English speaker and from your comments I doubt that you are an economist. So I think you may be missing implications that are evident to native speakers familiar with economic discussion. For example, in discussion of economists, those "towards the right" are generally supposed to be "free-market economists, not likely to support government intervention to protect the environment".

Once again, I urge you not to insert rebuttals into the criticism section. The result is to make the whole thing unreadable. I've added a subsection for Lomborg's response JQ 04:00, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Can I infer from your "toward right" statement that you think the panelists are tilted toward anti abortion, anti poor, anti immigration, pro God, anti-gay, anti gambling, anti drug, anti U.N., pro gun and anti foreign aid as well as anti environment? Hey, they must hate hippie too and must be closet racists. Where can I draw a line in your stereotype of right wing? The meaning of the word and the intent behind the word is not exactly the same thing. I or anyone else has no idea what you consider as typtical right especially right wing economist. It's just not NPOV in wikipedia to second guess the true intention of someone' else's statement, then present it as such. Of course, you are in an unique position to second guess what JQ implied. But that means you are using this page as your own soapbox. That would be an another policy violation.

As of your snip at my background in economic, are you baiting me to engage in my-CV-is-better-than-your-CV-argument? That what felit like being implied but hey, I'm not you so I don't know. Previous edit had very obvious attribution problems. So when you took the opposing side in this edit dispute, I, too, thought you don't know much about economics. Silly me.

Lastly, what you are doing amount to a form of POV content forking, not to mention the fact that you deleted significant portion of BL's response outright. The readers of this page should be allowed to read the corresponding arguments according to its relevance. Moreover, M's criticism appear to be forked out from the ciriticism section for not being coming from the green perspective. It appear that your ideal criticism section consist only of pro green criticism of the project. That is not NPOV. Vapour

On "right wing", in economics this does not carry any implication of the kind you mention - you are making it even clearer here that you are not an economist. Lots of economists who would be classed by themselves and their colleagues as being "on the right" are libertarians. Obviously, I haven't seen your CV, but you're welcome to look at [mine|http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/CV.html]. If you feel you're better qualified than I am to comment on the topic, feel free to waive anonymity privately and point this out. Since my work on this topic is published, there is no policy problem in citing it: in fact, the guideline on Original_research specifically encourages this. If I cut any of Lomborg's response, it was unintentional. Feel free to add it back in. This is the kind of problem that arises when you attempt to include rebuttals in a criticism section. Again, I suggest that you leave the criticism section alone, and concentrate on the sections where you have a [[comparative advantage] JQ 08:44, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

My list of right wing stereotypes are suppose to be irrelevant and out of context. It is to demonstrate that the meaning of the term "right" depends on different POV. You appear to hold a belief that economist who tilt toward right are against government intervention to protect the environment. You might hold such understanding to be self evident and some economist may share your understanding. But I do hope that the majority of economists do not share this kind of partisan bias. And I would say most of economist who you consider to belong to the right would not share your stereotype. Economist who may be informally described as tilting toward right tend to favour government invervention/regulation which they consider to be in accordance with the principle of utilitarianism. That is, they tend to have much stronger adherence to neo classical framework. In policy term, this means that they tend to favour such policies like internal markets within public services (eg. school voucher), or supervision of market, or global carbon tax instead of global carbon quota (which Kyoto is an example). I highly doubt there is any academic economist who is against the government regulation/intervention per se. Modern (neo classical) economics is a study of choise both private and collective. It is more appropriate to understand the academic debate of economics policy in term of type of, or quality of government intervention. Your failiure to show the grasp of the nuiance of the debate is one reason, I mitakenly thought you may not have a background in economics. Of course, my characterisation of "economist who tilt toward right" is also a POV. Just that I can appreciate that other people hold different POVs. To second guess the true intention of someone else's writing would amount to covert violation of no original research policy. In this instance, you are expressing your personal stereotype of right wing economist (which is not universally shared) using the writing which you published in your own blog. So you are also in violation of no soapbox policy. Please understand that what you are doing is very much frawned upon in wikipedia. It is just not o.k. for someone to clarify his or her own statement or opinion in wikipedia article. Vapour

Please correct me if I'm wrong but this statement "the members of the Copenhagen panel were generally towards the right and, to the extent that they had stated views, to be opponents of Kyoto." appear to be the source of your edit that "Quiggin argued that the members of the panel, selected by Lomborg, were seen as a likeminded group of free-market economists, not likely to support government intervention to protect the environment, and in particular initiatives on climate change such as the Kyoto Protocol." In the first sentence, it is you who is claiming that the panel is tilted toward right and that their stated view is in opposition to Kyoto. In the second sentence you are now claiming that the members of the panel are seen to be toward right. Moreover, instead of being in opposition to Kyoto, they are now "perceived" to be in opposition to environmental policy in general. You are in unique position to state what yourself meant. So help me out here because I find it hard to see the process in which this reinterpretation has occured. You appear to express a belief in this talk page that these members are toward right and this would automatically mean that they are anti government regulation/intervention and in particular anti green. But I thought these panelists are participating in the project in which almost all the policy options are about supporting collective regulation/intervention with price tag of 50 billions dollars. And giving back 50 billions dollars to hard working tax payer is not an opition here. So It looks like they are setting themselves up to support government intervention almost by default. Moreover, please explain to me why being right wing economist would compell someone to rank environmental policy lower than public education, public health, conflict resolution, financial market regulation, anti corruption drive, fight against hunger and unclean water. I thought right-wing economists are supposed to be equally against these things. I found your logic very hard to grasp. Moreover, in this edit, you are now claiming that other unspecified people share your POV. Who are these people? The Green? Other economists? Public? Me? It appear to me that only way your reinterpretation of your own statement works is to presume that your peculiar POV is universally shared by everyone else. This assumption seems to be in direct opposition to the philosophy of this site. And please explain to me why the reinterpretation of the quote is prefered over the quote itself especially when the quote itself is shorter? Vapour

I think all this is moot, in view of the changes that have been made. If you want, I can point to papers where Mendelsohn, Schelling and others have written in opposition to Kyoto, and we can have a lengthy summary of their political views, and those of other CC members. But, as you say, I'm pretty well placed to summarise my own published work, and I think what is in the article as it now stands is a good summary. JQ 07:22, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Your edit interpreting your own statement, which equate someone's opposition to Kyoto to the blaket opposition to the government intervention to protect environment is in violation of number of core wikipedia policies (verification, NPOV, no original research and no soapbox). I personally find it distastefull for an academic economist to make this kind of argument. But if you hold this kind of POV and express it in your own blog, that is your business. However, it is not fine to use wikipedia to clarify your statement made in your personal blog. What you believe such statement supposed to means is still your POV. Others may not find such clarification to be justified in term of logic or their understanding of economics. Please do not add edit which is based on unsourced, unverified personal POV even if it it is about the statement you, yourself, have made. Make a clarification in your new blog entry. Then someone who is not JQ may be justified in referencing this new blog entry in this article. Wikipedia is not your personal soapbox. Vapour

As of the position of the panel members' opinion in regard to economic efficiency of collective action including Kyoto, if you can cite their papers, please do so. That would be a welcoming addition to this page. What is not justified is for you to spin the presentation to support your personal POV about them. It may be the case that many of them are indeed anti environnment, right wing economst as you descirbe it. But I highly doubt that such partisan characterisation is sustainable. Vapour

Content Forking

Please stop forking out the contents according to your partisanship. Mendelsohn's criticism was originally in criticism section. Why is that when more detailed clarification of his position are made, which turn out to be something which green lobby probably won't like, then M's criticism are to be qurantined elsewhere? If the title of the section is "Criticism", then Mendelsohn, Mann and Schelling's criticism of the low ranking of climate policy belong to the 'criticism' section. Afterall, the ranking of the climate change is the focus of the controversy. Why is it difficult for you to accept that critics from different perspective have their say without being forked out to other section by none other than John Quiggin. Why not change the title of the criticism section to "Criticism from the left wing economist and the green lobbies" instead. Vapour

And can you stop forking out BL's rebuttal as well. You may not like the idea of BL's opinion sharing section space with you and your commrades' opinions. But may I point out that Clien has his own counter rebuttal to Mendelsohn and Mann's criticism. So does Clien counter rebuttal deserve it's own subsection? In that case, Sachs criticis should also be forked out to a separate subsection titled "Sachs criticism". And what if others from conservative or right wing or libetarian sources wrote their counter rebuttal of the critics? Partisan content forking is no different from what dog do to mark its territory. We know the topic is controvercial. Good way to present the controversy is to identify different issues involved. If there is a perceived bias of the composition of the members of the panel, then we should present summary of for and against opinions for that issue. If there is a percieved bias in regard to the project framework (such as 50 billions issue, discount rate, or wholesale objection to the cost benefit anaysis), the we should present for and aganst opinions of such issues. That is why "Controversy" is more appropriate title than "Criticism" for this section. Vapour

We need to distinguish between debates within the process and criticism of the process as a whole. It's perfectly appropriate to have a section stating the views of critics. Attempts to mix in rebuttals, as you've done, are inevitably disastrous. Also, you've ignored my repeated requests to pay attention to quality. You haven't even bothered to spell Cline's name correctly. I'm not going to try and fix your contributions, but I don't want you messing up sections I've worked on, which is why I'm "forking" JQ 01:08, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Climate policy net benefit/cost positive or negative?

O.K. I'm bit confused here. Clien clearly state that all three climate policies has net benefit in his paper. But then the summary state that all three climate policy to have "costs that were likely to exceed the benefits". [4] What is going on? Vapour