2% of national income is not something to declare a national emergency over unless you are in a very poor country.
Richard Tol also mentions that there has only been 27 studies of the economic costs of climate change:
Twenty-seven estimates is a thin basis for any conclusion. Researchers disagree on the sign of the net impact; climate change may lead to a welfare gain or loss. At the same time, researchers agree on the order of magnitude. The welfare change caused by climate change is equivalent to the welfare change caused by an income change of a few percent.
That is, a century of climate change is about as good/bad for welfare as a year of economic growth.
As Tol wrote elsewhere, the reason why there are so few studies of the welfare cost of global warming is governments and bureaucracies do not like the small numbers they yield so they pre-emptively do not fund such research.
Few economists work full-time on the economics of climate change as their research results are too moderate to win repeat business and further research grants. Importantly, there is vicious criticism of what you say. Much better to just work on other topics.
One of the great tactical victories of the climate activists, I resisted the temptation to call them climate alarmists, is they keep going on about the science is settled and whether you are accepting the scientific results.
I have long argued let the science be settled, only the economics matters. The climate change activists do not want to talk about the economics that much except for the estimates by that political hack Lord Stern. Lord Stern has been on the losing side of history ever since he wrote a bad review of PT Bauer’s Dissent on Development where he said:
Dissent on Development is not a valuable contribution to the study of development.
The Stern Review puts the costs of unmitigated climate change at 5–20% of GDP (now and forever). The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finds differently.
I followed the coding by the Guardian despite reservations. Including those struck by police cars in routine accidents, none of them police chases, conflates one database with another and does not touch on the issue of the wisdom of police car chases. Including people who drive cars at police or flee with kidnapped children in a car is stretching the definition of unarmed. The wisdom of shooting at a car with children in it is a separate issue. The safety of the hostage taker is not a responsibility of the police, the safety of the children kidnapped in that car was.
About 10% of police shootings of unarmed people resulted in murder charges and a few of those still under investigation read as suspicious and may result in charges as well as more evidence is gathered.
That 10% figure of police shootings that result in murder charges is much higher if you exclude people who collapsed while in contact with police from underlying poor health either in a struggle or after being tasered – 20 or more out of 62, drove cars at police (3), killed in crossfire (2) or were killed in police car accidents (5). The figure is even higher when you exclude a good number of those who are struggling with police and the police fired in self defence lawfully. That is, if a police officer shoot someone at a safe distance without good cause, they face a high probability of being charged with murder.
The database I used today for the above figure on shooting of unarmed Blacks takes less than an hour to work your way through to code them for yourself, so if you doubt my coding, do your own coding and put up a rival figure. I will even consider a guest blog by you if you lack a forum.
Update: When I shared this post on the dataisbeautiful sub-reddit, the first comment on that post was to denounce me as a racist for sharing.
I am surprised that the Guardian did not do this graphical analysis themselves. My analysis below shows the quite a few people were unarmed but many more were carrying guns, knives or other weapons.
You have to read through every individual data entry to work out how many of those killed had guns, and the many of these were shooting at police when they were shot dead. The same legwork is required to find out how many officers are on murder charges after killing civilians.
Note: The house price index series is an index constructed with nominal house price data. The real house price index is an index calculated by deflating the nominal house price series with a country’s personal consumption expenditure deflator.
Western Australian secessionists, in common with Scottish nationalists, really do like to dictate the terms of their succession which always includes an open border and a generous financial settlement regarding division of federal government debts.
How arrogant. Why should parting be sweet? If you do not want us, why should we want you. If you want to find your own destiny, you can find it good and hard.
The Guardian is so anti-police that they included in their interactive database a drunk that drove into a police car and some poor bastard run over by the police cruiser searching for him at night.
Another handy hint for an unarmed suspect is do not flee police by stealing a police cruiser with the officer dragging behind you. He may well shoot you. Police will certainly shoot an unarmed suspect if they flee arrest in a police cruiser, kidnapping the two children who happened to be in the back – their parents expect no less.
Most of the police killings of the unarmed in circumstances where better evidence would resolve doubts.
The Guardian would do a lot better by arguing that all Tasers should have cameras on them, all police cruisers should have cameras in them, and all police officers should have cameras on their lapels. These cameras are excellent for collecting evidence against criminals. There should also be plenty of cameras in police stations.
The first randomized controlled trial of police body cameras in the USA showed that cameras sharply reduce the use of force by police and the number of citizen complaints. In Seattle, the police department has set up its own YouTube channel, broadcasting a stream of blurred images to protect privacy.
Update: I recoded charging police and reaching for a possible weapon on your person or in a car into separate categories
In coding the data from The Guardian interactive website, I included all 19 people they classified as unarmed and killed by police including
a death in custody involving corrections officers,
a drunk driver drove into the police car while turning left, and
an off duty police officer getting into a fatal fight with a neighbour.
Unarmed people should not charge at armed police, struggle for their guns, or refuse to comply when threatened with a Taser, especially if poor of health or have a weak heart.
In the only two cases of police malfeasance – three corrections officer beating a prisoner to death or a trigger-happy police officer – charges have been laid or the officer dismissed pending further investigation. The man shot while fleeing police was a murder suspect.
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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