I'm all for reducing carbon emissions, if it comes in the form of non-subsidized nuclear, wind, and solar energy. How many solar panels do you own? I have a small system, and plan to go full solar by the end of next year. You can bitch and moan about people not changing their behavior, but in the end, you only want OTHERS to change their behavior, while you sit and watch TV, eating apples shipped from New Zealand while eating pork grown in South America and perhaps driving a hybrid car that you traded your perfectly usable "junker" for a few years ago, increasing your net emissions because of the production costs of said new car (ie you only looked at the emissions from use, not from manufacturing).
AGW proponents just don't look past the surface, just like most people. This is why they are so easy to manipulate, and make so many evil bastards super rich.
Perhaps you should. CO2 is only a greenhouse gas (in that it has a higher heat capacity than the average of the remaining atmospheric components) in the absence of water vapor, and then only very, VERY slight. It only makes a BIG difference when it is the ONLY component of the atmosphere. Add in water vapor, and you get a little surprise--CO2 actually DECREASES the weighted heat capacity of the atmosphere.
In reality, it is more likely that any warming we are seeing actually comes from higher levels of water vapor in the atmosphere. Water vapor emissions are strongly correlated with CO2 emissions, after all. Not only that, but water vapor is a lot easier to get out of the atmosphere than CO2, and can be scrubbed for if desired. Even if my physical analysis is wrong, scrubbing water out of the atmosphere will have a much more rapid remediation effect than carbon credits or any other such money grubbing scheme.
Also note that labeling your intellectual opponents is a sign of the weakness of your argument, and a method for reinforcing your own bias.
You will see that when people are doing it. Or would you prefer that outright fraud go un-noted? If so, I would highly advise you to take on a new career in corporate or government accounting!
But he didn't change his position. He has been on record for 50 years as a believer of AGW. It seems a lot more like he just lied to the Koch Brothers who failed to do a background check on him before writing a check.
I would like to see CO2 fall and then see temperatures fall, then I would like to see both rise, and fall again several more times. But that is the problem with climate science, we don't get to run multiple trials, and there are no controls. It's like trying to diagnose an engine problem having never seen an engine before (only models that may or may not be accurate) while the vehicle is doing donuts in the cargo bay of a C-130 flying through the eye wall of a hurricane with the "scientist" strapped to the bottom of the vehicle. It might be possible, but it certainly isn't controllable or repeatable, and there are a lot of factors at play which are difficult to separate out. Not to mention that the other factors can render the whole argument moot as the cargo door opens and drops the vehicle into the depths of the ocean, or the whole damn thing goes down (ie artificially created economic catastrophe creates worldwide poverty, thus cutting carbon emissions, or a climate cycle like a supervolcano erution comes around all on its own and we plunge back into another ice age).
No, it rose from 1970 to 2000, then inconveniently stopped, much to the chagrin of grant seeking climatologists, who then had to find a way to boost their credibility. Sadly, they did it through dirty means, lying, attempting to discredit any and all who disagreed with them, etc. Might as well try to tell Aztec priests that the sun is going to rise the next day no matter how many or few curly haired boys hearts they rip out.
Actually, we haven't. It looks like the douche that is the author of this paper has claimed the climate was warming when his data showed it wasn't. He also claimed to be a climate skeptic, when in reality he has literally 50 years of comments about how global warming is real and caused by humans.
Don't "feel like" moving? The coastline has always moved, and people move right along with it, and have for thousands of years. Rising sea levels aren't really a concern unless Antarctica melts. Absent the melting of Antarctica, the capital we preserve by not "cracking down" on carbon emitters will allow us to raise the level of threatened areas, much as Galveston did after the Great Storm, or absent that, allow people to move further inland.
Honestly, this whole AGW thing is scaremongering at literally every level.
God damn. I was inclined to believe that guy, as he was going against his bias, but now it seems that he WAS biased for AGW.
I don't think there is anything anyone can say to convince me of this theory any more. There have simply been too many lies, and the liars have been placed into positions of authority. Even reading TFA, the language is disturbing, saying that people should no longer be skeptical. Lack of skepticism is the single most deadly sin in science and in any economic system. Anyone calling for less of it is much more likely to have an agenda that he doesn't want people examining.
After the debasement which occurred in the 10th century, the solidus was discontinued, and replaced with the hyperpyron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_coinage. These coins were discontinued as the empire declined, due to the military adventurism that spread their empire, but destroyed their capital base, leading directly to the breakup of the empire into successor states, which fell easy prey to the Turks.
The size of an empire does not reflect its stability. If capital is expended rather than consolidated in wartime (as is the case some 95% of the time), then the empire is destined for collapse, as happened with Alexander, the Great Khans, and the British toward the end of their empire (Early expansion of the British empire consolidated capital, as did the earlier expansions of the Mongols). Some empires which consolidated capital CONSISTENTLY were ancient China, pre-Communist Russia, and pre-1913 (ie pre-fascist) United States (though the US had a major screw up in the Civil War, but earlier capital consolidation and later peacetime consolidation more than made up for it).
Those empires could survive political turmoil because of the capital consolidation that they practiced both during peacetime and wartime. Consolidation of capital doesn't simply mean "get ze gold". It means doing as Sun-Tzu espoused--"taking whole". Maintaining honest money is a major part of that, because use of fiat scrip, while allowing greatly increased government spending, destroys the economy just the same as if every printed dollar had been taken from the people using that currency in a non-progressive manner (or even a regressive manner, as the rich tend to see such things coming, and flee to gold or other currencies before the inflation becomes too much). But honest money is the only part. It means not destroying manufacturing bases, either with bombs or with burdensome regulations. It means allowing people to have the freedom to do what they think is best for themselves without placing a large burden on them, or worse, enslaving them. Sadly, such lessons are totally forgotten by our modern military, who didn't think twice about destroying the entire civilian infrastructure of any nation they choose to invade, and then printing up billions to "help" them by losing track of pallets full of cash, which go to support corrupt elements in the new puppet government.
Wrongo. The money that balanced the budget came largely from increasing tax revenues with were a result of the internet bubble. They were simply not sustainable, and even if Clinton had gotten two more terms accompanied by Wepubwicans in Congress, everything still would have blown up in their faces.
The only way to really address problems in the real economy is to force the Fed to allow the MARKET to set interest rates. But that will never happen, because it means the free money binge will definitely be over, and we will have to take the pain of a deep depression NOW, rather than being able to kick the bulk of it off for another year or two (making it get worse and worse on down the line).
With an aging America, I would say the opposite is also true. How are the elderly going to survive when their fixed income checks won't buy a cup of coffee?
If the currency does not save your wealth, then it can't facilitate transactions, as it forces the person trading the good for the "money" to play "hot potato". Ever increasing monetary velocity decreases the value of that money until it becomes worthless.
So the Fed could print a hundred quadrillion dollars tomorrow, and it would all still be "backed" by labor, so there would be no inflation?
Also, you fail to learn from history. The "process of separating money from gold" started in 800 AD in China, and has ending in unmitigated disaster every time, simply because human beings can't be trusted with the ability to centrally administer economies. If interest rates are set differently from market rates, the market will eventually collapse. A short period of false prosperity is purchased with the suffering of the future. Gold, on the other hand, can't be printed. You say that "gold rushes" cause dislocations. So what!? Those are rare, historical events, and never increase the money supply by much, simply because all the gold ever mined is still circulating. It's hard to create 10% inflation on a national or global scale under a gold standard. But with fiat currency, that is NORMAL.
Also note that under a gold standard, the number of people prospecting for gold is directly proportional to the price of gold in terms of goods, meaning that if gold gets expensive, it leads to more gold coming onto the market. If it gets cheap, then new supply slows. This is free market regulation of the money supply, and it worked very well, especially in those few places where central banks did not interfere.
Eh? The Byzantine debasement of currency lead directly the downfall of their empire. Their theft of capital from their lands through monetary debasement made raising armies too easy while it made living within their nation too hard (ie capital that should have been devoted to economic growth was instead destroyed by military adventurism). The vast majority of their history was one marked by the ABSENCE of debasement, which is why their empire lasted so long.
Also, you note correctly that the dollar is valued by people and their demand for dollars, but you forget the other side of the equation--supply. The Fed always prints more dollars, and their balance sheet is evidence of them doing exactly that. If the Fed were to blink out of existence tomorrow, inflation would stop, and deflation would begin, as the population and economy continue to grow while no more dollars are created (the deflation would be more severe than it was under the gold standard because gold could be mined if it got too expensive, but without a Fed and all else held equal, no-one can print dollars). Of course, the US would collapse, as they rely on inflation to fund their welfare and warfare state (much as the old Roman Empire did).
Slashdot Mirror
I'm all for reducing carbon emissions, if it comes in the form of non-subsidized nuclear, wind, and solar energy. How many solar panels do you own? I have a small system, and plan to go full solar by the end of next year. You can bitch and moan about people not changing their behavior, but in the end, you only want OTHERS to change their behavior, while you sit and watch TV, eating apples shipped from New Zealand while eating pork grown in South America and perhaps driving a hybrid car that you traded your perfectly usable "junker" for a few years ago, increasing your net emissions because of the production costs of said new car (ie you only looked at the emissions from use, not from manufacturing).
AGW proponents just don't look past the surface, just like most people. This is why they are so easy to manipulate, and make so many evil bastards super rich.
That is interesting, but exposing fraud by funding it seems pretty silly to me.
Perhaps you should. CO2 is only a greenhouse gas (in that it has a higher heat capacity than the average of the remaining atmospheric components) in the absence of water vapor, and then only very, VERY slight. It only makes a BIG difference when it is the ONLY component of the atmosphere. Add in water vapor, and you get a little surprise--CO2 actually DECREASES the weighted heat capacity of the atmosphere.
In reality, it is more likely that any warming we are seeing actually comes from higher levels of water vapor in the atmosphere. Water vapor emissions are strongly correlated with CO2 emissions, after all. Not only that, but water vapor is a lot easier to get out of the atmosphere than CO2, and can be scrubbed for if desired. Even if my physical analysis is wrong, scrubbing water out of the atmosphere will have a much more rapid remediation effect than carbon credits or any other such money grubbing scheme.
Also note that labeling your intellectual opponents is a sign of the weakness of your argument, and a method for reinforcing your own bias.
You will see that when people are doing it. Or would you prefer that outright fraud go un-noted? If so, I would highly advise you to take on a new career in corporate or government accounting!
In America, yes.
I'll agree with that. If only we would allow new nuclear power designs to be built, this would all be moot.
But he didn't change his position. He has been on record for 50 years as a believer of AGW. It seems a lot more like he just lied to the Koch Brothers who failed to do a background check on him before writing a check.
I would like to see CO2 fall and then see temperatures fall, then I would like to see both rise, and fall again several more times. But that is the problem with climate science, we don't get to run multiple trials, and there are no controls. It's like trying to diagnose an engine problem having never seen an engine before (only models that may or may not be accurate) while the vehicle is doing donuts in the cargo bay of a C-130 flying through the eye wall of a hurricane with the "scientist" strapped to the bottom of the vehicle. It might be possible, but it certainly isn't controllable or repeatable, and there are a lot of factors at play which are difficult to separate out. Not to mention that the other factors can render the whole argument moot as the cargo door opens and drops the vehicle into the depths of the ocean, or the whole damn thing goes down (ie artificially created economic catastrophe creates worldwide poverty, thus cutting carbon emissions, or a climate cycle like a supervolcano erution comes around all on its own and we plunge back into another ice age).
No, it rose from 1970 to 2000, then inconveniently stopped, much to the chagrin of grant seeking climatologists, who then had to find a way to boost their credibility. Sadly, they did it through dirty means, lying, attempting to discredit any and all who disagreed with them, etc. Might as well try to tell Aztec priests that the sun is going to rise the next day no matter how many or few curly haired boys hearts they rip out.
Wow, is Al Gore a conservative now?
Guess it would make sense, what with all that money he made scamming environmentalists.
No such thing as technological advance. You will all die make your time.
Actually, we haven't. It looks like the douche that is the author of this paper has claimed the climate was warming when his data showed it wasn't. He also claimed to be a climate skeptic, when in reality he has literally 50 years of comments about how global warming is real and caused by humans.
Please point out the two mutually exclusive elements of his argument. I don't see them.
Or do you not know what cognitive dissonance is?
Don't "feel like" moving? The coastline has always moved, and people move right along with it, and have for thousands of years. Rising sea levels aren't really a concern unless Antarctica melts. Absent the melting of Antarctica, the capital we preserve by not "cracking down" on carbon emitters will allow us to raise the level of threatened areas, much as Galveston did after the Great Storm, or absent that, allow people to move further inland.
Honestly, this whole AGW thing is scaremongering at literally every level.
What? How would free energy from the sky not help alleviate a relative lack of energy on the ground?
God damn. I was inclined to believe that guy, as he was going against his bias, but now it seems that he WAS biased for AGW.
I don't think there is anything anyone can say to convince me of this theory any more. There have simply been too many lies, and the liars have been placed into positions of authority. Even reading TFA, the language is disturbing, saying that people should no longer be skeptical. Lack of skepticism is the single most deadly sin in science and in any economic system. Anyone calling for less of it is much more likely to have an agenda that he doesn't want people examining.
From 312 though the 10th century, the solidus maintained a constant weight: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidus_(coin)
After the debasement which occurred in the 10th century, the solidus was discontinued, and replaced with the hyperpyron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_coinage. These coins were discontinued as the empire declined, due to the military adventurism that spread their empire, but destroyed their capital base, leading directly to the breakup of the empire into successor states, which fell easy prey to the Turks.
The size of an empire does not reflect its stability. If capital is expended rather than consolidated in wartime (as is the case some 95% of the time), then the empire is destined for collapse, as happened with Alexander, the Great Khans, and the British toward the end of their empire (Early expansion of the British empire consolidated capital, as did the earlier expansions of the Mongols). Some empires which consolidated capital CONSISTENTLY were ancient China, pre-Communist Russia, and pre-1913 (ie pre-fascist) United States (though the US had a major screw up in the Civil War, but earlier capital consolidation and later peacetime consolidation more than made up for it).
Those empires could survive political turmoil because of the capital consolidation that they practiced both during peacetime and wartime. Consolidation of capital doesn't simply mean "get ze gold". It means doing as Sun-Tzu espoused--"taking whole". Maintaining honest money is a major part of that, because use of fiat scrip, while allowing greatly increased government spending, destroys the economy just the same as if every printed dollar had been taken from the people using that currency in a non-progressive manner (or even a regressive manner, as the rich tend to see such things coming, and flee to gold or other currencies before the inflation becomes too much). But honest money is the only part. It means not destroying manufacturing bases, either with bombs or with burdensome regulations. It means allowing people to have the freedom to do what they think is best for themselves without placing a large burden on them, or worse, enslaving them. Sadly, such lessons are totally forgotten by our modern military, who didn't think twice about destroying the entire civilian infrastructure of any nation they choose to invade, and then printing up billions to "help" them by losing track of pallets full of cash, which go to support corrupt elements in the new puppet government.
That is a good and important point, but over the time period being discussed, it is sadly moot.
Wrongo. The money that balanced the budget came largely from increasing tax revenues with were a result of the internet bubble. They were simply not sustainable, and even if Clinton had gotten two more terms accompanied by Wepubwicans in Congress, everything still would have blown up in their faces.
The only way to really address problems in the real economy is to force the Fed to allow the MARKET to set interest rates. But that will never happen, because it means the free money binge will definitely be over, and we will have to take the pain of a deep depression NOW, rather than being able to kick the bulk of it off for another year or two (making it get worse and worse on down the line).
With an aging America, I would say the opposite is also true. How are the elderly going to survive when their fixed income checks won't buy a cup of coffee?
The US has never paid back its debt. It has only gotten more credit. Only a fool thinks this is sustainable.
Correct, money is a CLAIM on wealth.
If the currency does not save your wealth, then it can't facilitate transactions, as it forces the person trading the good for the "money" to play "hot potato". Ever increasing monetary velocity decreases the value of that money until it becomes worthless.
So the Fed could print a hundred quadrillion dollars tomorrow, and it would all still be "backed" by labor, so there would be no inflation?
Also, you fail to learn from history. The "process of separating money from gold" started in 800 AD in China, and has ending in unmitigated disaster every time, simply because human beings can't be trusted with the ability to centrally administer economies. If interest rates are set differently from market rates, the market will eventually collapse. A short period of false prosperity is purchased with the suffering of the future. Gold, on the other hand, can't be printed. You say that "gold rushes" cause dislocations. So what!? Those are rare, historical events, and never increase the money supply by much, simply because all the gold ever mined is still circulating. It's hard to create 10% inflation on a national or global scale under a gold standard. But with fiat currency, that is NORMAL.
Also note that under a gold standard, the number of people prospecting for gold is directly proportional to the price of gold in terms of goods, meaning that if gold gets expensive, it leads to more gold coming onto the market. If it gets cheap, then new supply slows. This is free market regulation of the money supply, and it worked very well, especially in those few places where central banks did not interfere.
Eh? The Byzantine debasement of currency lead directly the downfall of their empire. Their theft of capital from their lands through monetary debasement made raising armies too easy while it made living within their nation too hard (ie capital that should have been devoted to economic growth was instead destroyed by military adventurism). The vast majority of their history was one marked by the ABSENCE of debasement, which is why their empire lasted so long.
Also, you note correctly that the dollar is valued by people and their demand for dollars, but you forget the other side of the equation--supply. The Fed always prints more dollars, and their balance sheet is evidence of them doing exactly that. If the Fed were to blink out of existence tomorrow, inflation would stop, and deflation would begin, as the population and economy continue to grow while no more dollars are created (the deflation would be more severe than it was under the gold standard because gold could be mined if it got too expensive, but without a Fed and all else held equal, no-one can print dollars). Of course, the US would collapse, as they rely on inflation to fund their welfare and warfare state (much as the old Roman Empire did).