Canadians go to the polls on October 14, 2008; just before the US federal election. Climate change was touted as a key election issue, but that was before the financial turmoil of the last couple of weeks.
According to Roger Gibbins writing in the Calgary Herald, Canadians’ resolve on global warming has cooled with the economy. Gibbins also commented that:
“The bad economic news has been unrelenting in recent weeks and there is no doubt public support for aggressive action on climate change has wilted in the face of this barrage. With ongoing woes across the border, plunging stock markets, escalating fuel costs and growing uncertainty about Canada’s economic prospects, voter support for aggressive climate change action is weakening. It is hard to concentrate on a complex climate change policy debate when financial institutions are collapsing and RRSPs are evaporating.
“The argument that aggressive climate change action is essential for Canada’s economic prosperity is not holding in tough economic times. For the most part, Canadians are proving to be fair-weather climate change supporters.”
In Australia the Rudd Labor government is planning for the introduction of an emissions trading scheme in 2010. The idea is to go with emissions trading rather than for example, a carbon tax, as the market is claimed to be the best place to sort out what the price of carbon should ultimately be, etcetera.
But I can’t see how the whole scheme is anything more than a crock, as the carbon market is entirely a creation of government regulation and therefore totally artificial.
Sure there will be those who make money as middle men, brokers for schemes where industry pays for permits to emit carbon dioxide at so much a tonne, but it is artificial, perhaps as risky as a sub-prime mortgage?
Indeed, according to blogger and Professor Emeritus, Philip Stott:
“With a world likely to cool during the next decade, with a world economy set in austere mode, and with the new politics of China, India, Brazil, and the rest, Big Global Warming’s boom days are surely coming to an end.
“Global warming’ is sub-prime science, sub-prime economics, and sub-prime politics, and it could well go down with the sub-prime mortgage.”
Here’s hoping that all this happens, before too much more damage is done.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
The reason the climate warming farce has gone on this long because the governments saw it as a tax grab from big industry which would actually be applauded by the naïve public, this is eutopia for governments, increase taxes and be praised. Add to this the fact that the news media make a lot of money out of alarmism and you have a truly dynamic duo.
This all fell apart with the decline in the economies, remember this charade started in the good times. Now the taxes would be passed on to the consumers and would not only increase the cost of living but make exports more expensive and imports from the countries with free rides cheaper by comparison. This will of course cost domestic jobs which will increase the downward spiral. Finally the public is becoming aware of this and the politicians realize they will not be able to sweep their tax grab under the carpet. I have said before this is all going to fall apart in 2012 when the Kyoto accord runs out and a new one has to be signed. There will be no more free rides consequently the new accord will fail but the governments of Europe will have exacted a considerable amount of money out of their industries before then.
So far in the Canadian election this subject has been bsrely mentioned and similarly in the US, 6 months ago it was a big deal.
No it didn’t – it grew out of concern for the climate implications.
Don’t think the global climate system really cares what we all think and it doesn’t know about economics either.
Whatever happens with AGW – most global citizens still have major climate variability to contend with – it’s not like there have never been any droughts, floods, hurricanes, heatwaves or cold snaps before.
So many many people are now more than ever tuned into the climate issue. El Nino is now a household name. Wasn’t before the 1990s.
So there are still climate issues to be understood and adapted to regardless. Science has a lot to offer.
That is if you really think anything has dissipated… it’s just the blogosphere astroturfing away.
Start talking when they disband the IPCC and close the Hadley Centre. Until then – dream on.
There are provisions in many governments for safeguarding the country from the looney fringe. In other words, if a party got into power and was behaving way outside the constitution of a country, that government could be legally stopped and changed.
I think many of the governments implementing the carbon idiocy should be challenged in court. In Britain, for example, PM Gordon Brown is having a very hard time making his carbon-based agenda acceptable to Britons. Normally, people would have to wait till an election to get him ousted, but I think people in Britain should challenge him in court.
We are headed for an election in Canada and the Liberal government were running on an inane plan called the Green Shift. It is basically a carbon tax scheme with all the carbon bells and whistles. The Tories are beginning to take a commanding lead in the polls and the Liberals have moved their plan to the back burner.
I’m sorry to hear that Aussies are being assaulted by the carbon lunacy. Maybe you should look into legal remedies.
Whatever happens with AGW – most global citizens still have major climate variability to contend with – it’s not like there have never been any droughts, floods, hurricanes, heatwaves or cold snaps before.
Luke this is what we have been trying to drum into your thick head, Yes the climate changes and will always change and if we can mitigate those changes lets all work together to do so, but for heavens sake why should we put ourselves in an economic straight jacket for no benifit.
You bet the emissions trading is a crock. This is what appears to be going on now in the general. Changelings showing up on the right and claiming that certain government practices are free enterprise in nature.
You have all these deals struck at APEC between heads of state and that is now termed “free trade”. Government to government deals made out of haggling when the only bargaining chip was the willingness to block trade are now called “free trade agreements.”
Changing banking regulations is called deregulation even though banking regulation keeps piling up.
Emissions trading is a horredous bureaucratic nightmare of foreign interventionism and local crony-socialism. And they pretend its a free enterprise thing.
Libertarians have too many congenitally-leftist posers in their ranks. They ought to be culled and sent back over to their ideological home.
Less is more.
In the LDP we had this constant rolling campaign for a carbon-tax. Just at a time when we need to be developing coal-liquification, to be setting up more coal-electricity and finding ways to use oil-shales we would have this rolling-thunder of a campaign to go in for a carbon-tax.
The argument in favour of a carbon-tax was a novel one. It was on the basis that we should choose the second most disastrous policy. Not the best policy or the second-best policy but the second most disastrous policy. All it amounted to in the end was fervent support for science fraud.
It was as if by aggressively pushing the second-most-disastrous policy that they would in doing so avoid the worst policy which everyone agreed was emissions trading.
It became more and more apparent that what we had here was a whole of of CO2-bedwetters that had jumped the fence and gotten into the libertarian camp.
In the libertarian camp are also a lot of people who think we ought to lose our agriculture and our manufacturing. This is particularly virulent amongst the economists who instead of owning up to the failure of their socialist monetary-policy misuse the concept of comparative-advantage to argue that we need neither agriculture nor manufacturing.
In this bizzare view of things comparative advantage is not specific to individuals, companies or even industries… But to whole conceptually-aggregated sectors like primary, secondary and tertiary. And the belief is that only tertiary is indicative of a modern economy. But in the Australian version of this bizzare misuse of the concept of comparative advantage, they consider that we have a comparative advantage in mining.
Hence they have this vision of us mining and adding value by being service industry “knowledge workers.”
So they will continue will socialist money, putting up with massive trade deficits and emissions trading. And if you tell them that emissions trading will damage our agriculture and manufacturing well its all part of the plan.
Next there will be a protectionist backlash against this sort of thing. And we will get the worst of both worlds.
“but for heavens sake why should we put ourselves in an economic straight jacket for no benifit.” – barry
It’s bizarre to hear that energy efficiency and new technologies are a “straight-jacket”.
It’s more like a choice between staying with the horse and buggy or getting onto the stream-engine.
An ETS is a carbon tax where the taxpayers compete to see how much tax they can pay by outbidding each other.
It also allows the government to escape responsibility for the level of the tax and the damage it causes by claiming the level has been set by the “market”.
Never mind that the “market” is totally a creation of the government and a complete fiction.
Michael, I am not saying we should not improve our energy conservation, in fact “lets work together” means spend our R&D money wisely on new and more efficient technologies. I spent 20 years in nuclear research until the greenies killed it. I only considered nuclear power a stepping stone to fusion power but it never happened because of the idiotic greenies. I am seeing the same mindless idiots bankrupting our economies and thus preventing progress. Fossil fuel is a harmless interim solution to economic energy supply and none of the current alternatives except nuclear and hydro, where possible, has even come close to being competative so let us not take a giant step back for no reason. CO2 is not harming our atmosphere or climate if it were I would be on your side. In fact CO2 accelerates all plant growth, if we had 1000 ppm CO2 there would be no temperature effect but agriculture production per acre would double.
Sorry guy but there is a library full of research which proves this why do you let yourself be manipulated by greedy immoral governments and news reporters who actively supress the truth for their own gain.
A market failure (in finance) is used as an excuse to allow the continuation of another market failure (on climate change).
Makes sense…. NOT.
David, the market failure in fianance, as you refer to it, was a result of a disconnect between the perceived and real value of the ‘commodity’ traded. isn’t a carbon market likely to fail for the same reason? because, in reality, there is no market?
Let’s wait until New Zealand wrecks its economy – shouldn’t be too hard – its a basket case as it is before their emissions trading scheme.
sorry that should be, in reality there is no demand. the value/demand is an artifact of government policy.
What market failure would that be david???
This is what I’m talking about. Leftists pretending to be in favour of improving the market when in fact they are in favour of hurting it.
We don’t have the ability to pick and choose in energy at the moment. We face decades of energy stress and we have to go after every energy source can be profitable without subsidies.
Whats happened is that the fake crisis crowds out the real problems. The contemplation of how many angels dance on a pin crowds out the reality of the Turks breaking through the walls of Constantinople.
Our success therefore is largely based on what we choose not to worry about.
There is no problem gathering joules. But we need the capital to gather them. Yet we need the energy to produce the capital to produce the energy and so forth.
What this means is that the environmental movement can do immense damage by backing us into an energy/capital vortex where we don’t have the energy to produce the capital to produce the energy.
This energy-deprivation crusade precedes the global warming scare and it has been immensely successful. So it may take decades to pull ourselves out of this mess.
Defining the problem in this way highlights the importance of gaining more capital via financial triage and tax cuts to savings and retained earnings.
Its never a bad time to slash the size of government but right now its a matter of some urgency.
I suspect the left see this affair as a failure of the free market economy and theincreasing need for corporate welfare – all the more reason to regulate and tax the life out of it to finance the new age.
On the other hand there is a common factor here:
The so-called net capital rule was created in 1975 to allow the SEC to oversee broker-dealers, or companies that trade securities for customers as well as their own accounts. It requires that firms value all of their tradable assets at market prices, and then it applies a haircut, or a discount, to account for the assets’ market risk. So equities, for example, have a haircut of 15%, while a 30-year Treasury bill, because it is less risky, has a 6% haircut.
The net capital rule also requires that broker dealers limit their debt-to-net capital ratio to 12-to-1, although they must issue an early warning if they begin approaching this limit, and are forced to stop trading if they exceed it, so broker dealers often keep their debt-to-net capital ratios much lower.
In 2004, the European Union passed a rule allowing the SEC’s European counterpart to manage the risk both of broker dealers and their investment banking holding companies. In response, the SEC instituted a similar, voluntary program for broker dealers with capital of at least $5 billion, enabling the agency to oversee both the broker dealers and the holding companies.
This alternative approach, which all five broker-dealers that qualified — Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley — voluntarily joined, altered the way the SEC measured their capital. Using computerized models, the SEC, under its new Consolidated Supervised Entities program, allowed the broker dealers to increase their debt-to-net-capital ratios, sometimes, as in the case of Merrill Lynch, to as high as 40-to-1. It also removed the method for applying haircuts, relying instead on another math-based model for calculating risk that led to a much smaller discount.
http://www.nysun.com/business/ex-sec-official-blames-agency-for-blow-up/86130/
Yet again my comment vanishes without trace. Trying again.
I remind you all that a month ago, Jennifer was telling us in the Australian that climate scientists should be held to the same high standards as stock market investment funds. The link above is to an analysis of that column by an ethicist.
Here’s hoping that the IPA’s backers lose so much money that they pull their funding, before too much more damage is done.
And to the same lvels of accountability mining companies have to satisfy when making stock exchange announcements, variously covered by the JORC and Valmin codes in Australia.
In terms of potential fraudulent data handling, this post http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2008/09/20/online-experiment-with-the-latest-hockey-stick/ will cause some grief for the Team.
David
I have every confidence in you putting your llife savings in an ETS.
It’s also called putting your money where your mouth is. Easy.
Thanks for the link Louis; because of NT’s spotting of my mistake with Mann2, I am going to have to revisit Mann1 and Mann2 and see if I can stake this vampire once and for all, and every little bit helps; Mann’s unused data is something McIntyre cracks down on too.
“The link above is to an analysis of that column by an ethicist.”
Don’t tell me. Its some bonehead calling himself an “environmental philosopher” having a shot at Dr Marohasy because she isn’t dependent on stolen money.
Am I right Haughton?
Face it. The guys an idiot. He isn’t fit to polish a real philosophers rifle. It looks like an old Marxist trick. And its just the sort of thing science frauds, like you Haughton, try on when you don’t have any evidence.
By the way have you found that evidence now dummy?
Glenn Albrechts blog is about the stupidest thing I’ve yet seen. He’s got no idea. If he has some evidence for CO2-warming why doesn’t he just spit it out?
You guys might think that its OK to have this subsidised education and all that. But its a luxury we cannot afford, because it raises all these nutballs up to the top. I mean this guy is calling himself an “environmental philosopher”. He’s not really fit to philosophise about anything at all.
Bernhard was quick to jump out on the beloved Professor Brooks’ blog and try and shore this fellow up by making out he was this magnficent lecturer. He reckons Albrecht was such a good lecturer they’d go to his lectures even if they weren’t taking the paper.
Which sort of makes Bernhard seem to be somewhat younger than he was making himself out as.
It probably a made-up story. Because it is this sort of thing that Bernhard does all the time. Never talks about evidence. You just build the alarmist up and try and undermine actual scientists. Scientists being people who take evidence seriously.
I don’t think this thing is going away with the sub-prime mortgage. These morons are absolutely committed to keeping this racket going until it snows in Sydney in the summertime.
Its got to be actively destroyed. Its not going anywhere. Conservatives being kind-hearted people don’t think they need to have all these nutballs sacked and humiliated. But they’ll be there doing all sorts of damage to the country unless they are weeded out mercilessly.
Albrecht is a post-modernist joke; James, invite him on so he can enunciate a few of his philosophical views; we all need a laugh.
Good post Jennifer…. Yep. There is no real market here, because there is no real product…. All it is, is a bureaucratic mechanism that will restrict growth and productivity…..
Green Ideology is not a free market.
Albrecht had this idea that we all ought to buy $500 worth of coal so we could leave it in the ground. Real smart guy this one.
I suspect that Haughton felt it was especially significant that a (drum-roll) philosopher (fire-works) was having a cheap shot at Dr Marohasy.
Haughton the idea is just to find some evidence. I’ve told Albrecht at my blog that he ought to piss or get off the pot. I asked him if he hadn’t learned how to get to the heart of the issue in philosophy.
Try again Haughton.
As Jen says, “in reality, there is no market [or demand]”.
This is simply Tulipmania [and I don’t mean Tassy in springtime] all over again.
Carbon trading in one form or another [like subprime mortgages] has the capacity to permeate many aspects of the share market.
You will need to invest only in free standing property to avoid contamination.
When the carpetbaggers are through with what’s left of our super after the current meltdown, retirement will be a luxury of the past.
It is true that the current financial meltdown may act as an excuse for not tackling anthropogenic global warming. However it will equally dent our faith in business and economic mouthpieces whether they pontificate about the costs of mitigating climate change or not. Jennifer, in her recent article in the Australian, urged us to demand that scientific reporting on AGW rise to the level of business reporting. According to her, business knows what it is doing and provides clear graphs and other hard data to help us make sound business decisions. Well where are those clear graphs and other warnings about the current financial debacle?
Yes, we know what commodity prices are doing – because we are provided with charts in the business pages of newspapers. There may be turbulence, but at least we know what the trend is at any point in time.
As regards, for example, global temperatures, well there is some confusion because the charts are not prrovided. Instead we get expert opinion.
>It’s also called putting your money where your mouth is. Easy.
WJP I’ve already cut my household emissions by ~90%. It now saves me about $1000 a year. An ETS holds no fear…
Why don’t you try it?
The economics on this site (like the climate “science”) bears no correspondence to the scientific literature which puts the cost of mitigation at a small percentage of GDP.
“It is true that the current financial meltdown may act as an excuse for not tackling anthropogenic global warming.”
Don’t try and tackle what you cannot find. There is nothing more foolish and undignified than grown men charging about tackling shadows and things that aren’t there.
The current meltdown is no reflection on free enterprise. Its a reflection on fractional reserve which is a bank priviledge that you or I would get arrested for. Its a reflection on inflationism and fiat-money which are leftist-supported and anti-capitalist.
Its really a reflection on the failure of crony-socialism in money.
“The economics on this site (like the climate “science”) bears no correspondence to the scientific literature which puts the cost of mitigation at a small percentage of GDP.”
Thats because the leftists economics is even more ridiculous than their science. Whose projections are you talking about?
Quiggins? Garnaut’s following Quiggin? Sterns?
It would be almost impossible of thinking of a better achilles heel to aim at in order to do the maximum economic damage.
Energy-economics is a little bit different from the rest of economics since substitution rates away from the primary energy source are so appallingly slow.
What carbon-taxing does, is make it harder to substitute away from traditional oil sources just when we have to as a matter of urgency.
Find yourself some better economists champ. Because you are relying on leftist know-nothings.
No such thing as a Free Market. All markets are regulated to some degree. Anything would be stupid.
I think what we see in this post is the reality of the thinking of posters here.
This is your paradigm: If it’s not Free Market it’s bad.
It’s a pretty simplistic one I must admit and mirrors the simplistic ways with which you ‘debunk’ Global Warming.
why do people think Global Warming is some sort of Socialist conspiracy. Seriously I am not asking a rhetorical question. I want to know if anyone has evidence that this is some sort of Socialist agenda being enacted on a Global scale.
It’s also interesting that the country suffering the most is being ruled by people very strongly in favour of Free Markets and yet you still attempt to blame it on “The Left” or Socialism. very strange.
For example, Graeme Bird:
“The current meltdown is no reflection on free enterprise. Its a reflection on fractional reserve which is a bank priviledge that you or I would get arrested for. Its a reflection on inflationism and fiat-money which are leftist-supported and anti-capitalist.”
But the measures taken to help the Banks were undertaken by the Republicans. Are you saying they are leftist-supported and anti-capitalist?
Do people here read Lyndon LaRouche? That would explain a lot.
That should read “Anything ELSE would be stupid”
“It’s also interesting that the country suffering the most is being ruled by people very strongly in favour of Free Markets and yet you still attempt to blame it on “The Left” or Socialism. very strange.”
They hardly practice it. Its the practice that counts. Not the propaganda. The Republicans are like our Liberals. They are thieves and spendthrifts also.
I don’t really see what your argument is. Perhaps you’d like a second stab at it.
Yes it is true that some regulations are needed. These are regulations to clarify property rights so everyone knows where they stand in advance.
Its not that some regulations aren’t needed. But you can take 77000 pages of banking regulations (US example) and replace it with a small booklet.
So yes some regulations are needed. Maybe 0.1 of 1% of what we currently have.
NT
Free markets mean individuals choosing for themselves, what to buy and sell, with all the associated risks of making a wrong choice.
The alternative, which you seem to prefer, is a dictatorship – there is not other possibility.
AGW is a socialist conspiracy? No – but strange that the loudest advocates for it are all socialists of whatever hue.
The financial meltdown has simple answers – Fiat money and central banks, vis. government intereference in the market by monopolising the production of money.
And we can see that you as a committed lefty deploy the standard method of ad hominems.
“Free markets mean individuals choosing for themselves, what to buy and sell, with all the associated risks of making a wrong choice.
The alternative, which you seem to prefer, is a dictatorship – there is not other possibility.”
false dichotomy. We didn’t WWII with free enterprise.
SJT
Give it up, your posts are simply a series of cascading non-sequiturs.
IOn fact you post is simply nonsense.
Jennifer, I find it bizarre you claim that charts are not provided – anyone with internet access or access to a library can look up charts of global and local temperatures, CO2 levels, ice coverage, etcetera. I don’t think we have ever been blessed with such an abundance of graphically presented data about any previous single phenomenon before. I also think it strange that you claim that we know what the current trend in the market is, which seems to be more than most of the market knows.
By implication, your comparison claims that the papers aren’t stuffed full of economists offering “expert opinions” sans graphs, charts, etc about the market. But they obviously are. In any comparison between climate science and financial market analysts, the former is doing a lot better than the latter.
Its not suprising that a financial crisis leads to short term thinking. There are places in Africa where noone cares if they catch HIV since they are likely to die of other reasons well before they develop AIDS. That doesn’t mean HIV/AIDS isn’t a threat.
“Yes it is true that some regulations are needed. These are regulations to clarify property rights so everyone knows where they stand in advance.”
This is the problem with a carbon tax – the price of a credit for emitting a ton of CO2 is unknown. Existing property rights are destroyed. If you own a coal fired power station you have just been left with something that may be worthless, or may be worth an awful lot of money as energy shortages bite from lack of future investment.
The golden era of “renewable” energy is a stupid dream.
The ETS carbon tax creates a climate of total uncertainty which destroys investment and future economic growth.
Hopefully when the ETS hits peoples pockets they will come to their senses. I am always amazed that people who flapp socialist green dogma are always ready for an income making personal wealth creation opportunity. Al Gore take a bow.
http://www.nocarbontaxes.org
Am I getting this right? we have people advocating a free market for something no one wants or has a use for?
No Graeme and Louis I am no Socialist. And yes Graeme, I didn’t have an argument. I am confused about the point of this post.
Louis, James Hansen is (apparently) a member of the Republican party.
And I am no socialist.
Don’t understand why you think any market control is a dictatorship. That would mean every country in the world is a dictatorship…
Gordon Robertson
“We are headed for an election in Canada and the Liberal government were running on an inane plan called the Green Shift. It is basically a carbon tax scheme with all the carbon bells and whistles. The Tories are beginning to take a commanding lead in the polls and the Liberals have moved their plan to the back burner.“
Just to clarify, we are in an election in Canada with the vote 3 weeks tomorrow. As Gordon indicated, the Liberals and their `Green Shaft` plan are about to be pummelled at the polls!
Although Luke would like to believe this is the end of the beginning for Climate Alarmism, alas it is the beginning of the end. The public is waking up to the grim realities of the BS being spread by those that espouse climate dogma rather than actual climate science. It`s going in the trash bin in Canada in 3 weeks. The U.S. situation is not yet clear remembering that climate concerns are way down on the list of American public priorities to begin with. Watch for the climate deluded Labour party in the UK to get pummelled at every by-election henceforth until the British public can put them out of their misery for good. My guess is that Australians are chomping at the bit to do the same but unfortunately must wait a few more years.
false dichotomy. We didn’t WWII with free enterprise.
SjT, you make Ender look good. What an idiot you are.
There was no free market in the lead up to the latest shakedown simply because the price of money was and still is regulated by the various central banks. False price signals, via unrealistically low interest rates, have been embedded in the global economy especially since the tech wreck and 9/11 attacks.
http://www.caseyresearch.com/library/articles/2280/comrade-bernanke-does-it-again-9-18-08/
This led to unrealistic expectations especially in real estate and share markets. The resulting mayhem is there for all to see.
On top of this we have had central banks issuing their various currencies / creating credit in excess of requirement.
These two forces working together gave us the paradigm ” this time it’s different”.
And now in hindsight it’s different alright but much worse.
How in the living bejebus is the US going to get out of this one? Running massive dual deficits on trade and federal spending, and sporting unfunded liabilities , in areas such Social Security, Medicare, defence etc etc that are taken for granted. The head of the Dallas has put this at $99 trillion.
http://www.kitco.com/ind/Daughty/jul292008.html
With the take over of Freddie and Fannie and then AIG, the US government has effectively added $5 trillion to already $10 trillion of debt. This debt is funded essentially by their trading partners (China, Russia and the Arab oil exporters), not exactly pal central. In the future, will they be willing to lend at the current rates of interest the Fed is offering? PS that is not a trick question.
And there’s more to this unholy mess, in the form of derivative positions, in the order of $600 trillion (p. 20), others have put it at $1000 trillion (ackkk).
http://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt0809b.pdf
Pheww…..
Actually, David that’s good, been there done that myself, haven’t done an audit but all appliances and lights are done!
James, You misrepresented my piece in The Australian in your first comment in this thread. In your most recent comment you seem to be missing the point, that when newspapers report on environmental issues their articles are essentially data free, in contrast when they report on business issues they often include charts and hard data. You may want to re-read my piece from The Australia. You can find it here, with charts, http://www.ipa.org.au/news/1664/case-of-the-warm-and-fuzzy
Cheers,
There is an interesting post on icecap regarding the cost to the German taxpayer this year of their carbon tax scheme it seems to be $21 Billion which is quite significant. This article was written by Reuters which together with AP have been very biased towards the AGW mind set, maybe we really are seeing a change in the mainstream news.
On another subject I have always found socialists very superficial thinkers and are totally incapable of seeing the ripple effect of their naive and simplistic schemes. I think it is for this reason they have to try and control everything and can not let things balance out on their own. That being said there has to be some rules to prevent gouging and harmful practices in business, however the people making and enforcing the rules must never be allowed to play the game as well, this generates a serious conflict which is where all the socialist systems fail.
You are indeed confused NT. What is your argument? Are you saying that if we need SOME regulations to clarify property rights that means regulations more generally are good?
You are confused and lacking an argument NT. When you have a post there is supposed to be a clear argument that goes with it.
“Hopefully when the ETS hits peoples pockets they will come to their senses.”
We’ve got to stop this disaster before then. Even the thought of it is causing malinvestment. People building for gas turbines when coal is cheaper.
So we cannot wait until all this damage is done. We have to take down the movement and punish the hard leftist frauds behind it prior to that.
Most of the damage is for things that we cannot see. The coal-electricity plants that don’t get built. The coal-liquification that doesn’t go ahead.
So what was your argument again NT? All regulations are good because some regulations are needed?
Is that it?
Not too bright are you NT?
The sub-prime issue had it’s genesis with President Jimmy Carter and a Democrat controlled congress – copied from John Ray’s dissecting leftism site:
“Jimmah Carter started the rot that led to the present financial crisis
Much as Bush-hating media members conveniently ignore historical events that led to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, their current finger-pointing at the White House, John McCain, and all Republican politicians for the collapse of the financial services industry lacks any honest assessment of decades-old legislation that laid the groundwork for today’s problems. In particular, 1977’s Community Reinvestment Act which required banks and savings institutions to make loans to the lower-income areas in the communities they served.
Despite how integrally tied the current crisis is to this bill enacted by a Democrat-controlled Congress and signed into law by Jimmy Carter, no major media outlet other than Investor’s Business Daily and National Review Online mentioned it during last week’s market meltdown. Going against the grain was a highly-informative editorial by IBD Thursday:
To hear today’s Democrats, you’d think all this started in the last couple years. But the crisis began much earlier. The Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act forced banks to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, mostly in minority areas. Age-old standards of banking prudence got thrown out the window. In their place came harsh new regulations requiring banks not only to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, but to do so on the basis of race.
These well-intended rules were supercharged in the early 1990s by President Clinton. Despite warnings from GOP members of Congress in 1992, Clinton pushed extensive changes to the rules requiring lenders to make questionable loans. […] Failure to comply meant your bank might not be allowed to expand lending, add new branches or merge with other companies. Banks were given a so-called “CRA rating” that graded how diverse their lending portfolio was. […] In the name of diversity, banks began making huge numbers of loans that they previously would not have. They opened branches in poor areas to lift their CRA ratings.
Meanwhile, Congress gave Fannie and Freddie the go-ahead to finance it all by buying loans from banks, then repackaging and securitizing them for resale on the open market. That’s how the contagion began. With those changes, the subprime market took off. From a mere $35 billion in loans in 1994, it soared to $1 trillion by 2008.
Readers are strongly encouraged to review this entire fact-filled piece to not only better understand the roots of today’s financial crisis, but also to get a sense as to just how absurd media accusations of this all being Bush and McCain’s fault are.
That said, from 1989 through 1995, I managed branches for two savings and loans: Imperial Savings, which got taken over by the Resolution Trust Corporation during the S&L bailout, and; Great Western Bank which eventually was purchased by Washington Mutual. The pressure to comply with CRA was astounding, especially at Great Western as it was expanding throughout the country. Its ability to acquire other institutions was directly related to its CRA rating.
With this in mind, IBD’s views concerning this matter are spot on raising a very important question: if the role of news media is to inform the public, why does a LexisNexis search indicate that as this crisis came to a head last week, its connection to CRA, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton was almost completely ignored?
Would such a revelation make it difficult for Obama-loving press outlets to point fingers at George W. Bush and, more importantly, John McCain? Yes, that’s a rhetorical question.”
NT
James Hansen is a republican? You have fact to back this up?
And you need to think a bit more about the difference between unhampered markets and regulated markets – in one you choose, in the other you don’t.
NT
There are two James Hansens, one if the Republican member for Utah, the other is the very liberal director of the GISS.
Thanks for that article Louis. Its good to get some history on the current crisis though I am sure that there will be other takes on it. As for James Hansen, from my memory I read on the web that he stated or implied that he was a Republican many years ago, but I can’t remember the details. Also from memory I believe that, statistical surveys of scientists have found that as a group they tend towards conservative political opinions.
Jennifer, as to your comment that we know how commodity prices are doing, surely this equates to a climate scientist saying that we know the temperature history at a particular geographical place. It is a matter then of whether climate science is better at putting this data together to produce a big picture including projections into the future compared with economic theorists abilities to give us a picture of the larger economy, etc together with future trends. I know whose big picture and future projections I would trust at the moment. Climate scientists are facing a far more tractable problem.
With business data, swings from highs to lows seem built into the system and fluctuations interest us because of our hopes to make money or save losses by paying attention to them. With global warming there is just a very slow, boring, incremental movement overlaid with noise (eg how much heat is being buried in the depths of the sea at this time due to el nino/la nina?). Such a boring trend and confusing graph by its nature will not excite the average reader and I don’t think there is any conspiracy that such graphs are not given prominence.
Louis
The role of the “meeja” is NOT to inform. Murdoch said it outright: “We are not required to educate the public” … and clearly, almost none of them do.
Watch the subliminal propaganda on the ABC TV nightly weather forecast – a map of the country coloured with harsh, scary-bear red and orange hues (oooh, it’s becoming SOO hot!)
There was a LOL period early last summer when the weather refused to obey the ‘warming” doctrine – I watched with amusement as the ABC struggled with the manifest problem of retaining those hotter-than-hell hues in the face of the populace observing the progress of a cool, wet puddle of a summer.
Sub Prime mortgages involved lending money, notionally secured against the property, to people who had, No Income-No Assets–and No Job.
What does that say about the Governments that:
a) Allowed it to even get started,
b) Allowed it to continue.
I wonder how much of the ill gotten gains earned by those involved actually found its way back into camapaign funds. ?
If this can happen with such a huge over dose of self interest and incompetence being behind it, anything is possible, including the use of corrupted science and reasoning to peddle a fairy story.
Another example of which is this:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2008/09/20/online-experiment-with-the-latest-hockey-stick/
Like the article says
Just when are the scientific fraternity going to speak out and do something about the shonkiness in their own ranks.
This isnt a debate about the relative merits of a position– its just more incompetence, fraud and malfeasance.
The similarities between subprime mortgages and the GW story are disturbing.
“carbon market is entirely a creation of government regulation and therefore totally artificial”
As is the market for … oh I don’t know, taxi licenses or hotel licenses or horse racing licences. You don’t seem to realise this kind of thing has been going on for centuries; goverment grants permissions to certain parties at a price to carry out some activity for the purchasing parties’ benefit. You need some elementary instruction in the history of markets. Morons (sorry channelled G. Bird there) ….
No Graeme, as I clearly said. “I don’t have an argument”.
Not too bright are you?
Patrick B – what you describe is traditional monopoly practice – it’s been a feature of statistm for centuries.
Ianl
As I don’t listen or watch anything the ABC broadcasts on radio or tv, I suspect have been spared from brainwashing.
that’s a shame Louis – you would have missed this
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/audio/ep186/PROFESSORTIMFLANNERY.mp3
Malcolm,
The greatest “stick” the AGWers wield is that we are all guilty. We all create ACO2. Original sin.
We must all suffer in the name of Gaia.
Any shonkiness is perfectly allowable in this cause.
Ask James Hansen.
And Janama,
I think Louis had it right the first time.
Isn’t there a more direct link here?
Superficial analysis points to bad lending practices in the sub-prime housing sector, but this is no more than a symptom of the malaise. To find out what is really wrong we need to ask how it is that a house confidently valued at $100,000 last year is now valued at $80,000. People, staring numbly at their eviction notices are asking right now: ‘But how can this be; it’s the same house; what’s changed?’
What’s changed is sentiment, the prevailing psychology within the market. But again, herd psychology does not change on whims and fancy. Investors, in aggregate have become pessimistic over the last few years for good reasons. What is driving this negative sentiment?
Both sides of the political spectrum would probably agree that one of the key drivers of negative sentiment is energy cost. There are fundamental issues with oil supply but these have been factored into economic models for some time. The striking new driver in energy cost inflation is climate change: More specifically, the imposts, whether they are to be levied through trading schemes or taxes, that we might call the Climate Change Burden (CCB). When this factor (one, three, five percent…pick a number) is added into models already straining at the seams with ordinary inflation and increasing regulatory costs, our future value no longer stacks up: Marginal projects are shelved, margin calls are issued, loans are called in, houses are repossessed, and so on.
Climate change theory and activism has been with us for twenty years, so why are the costs only being factored in now? The answer is that the market; the hard heads, the Lehman Bros of the world; didn’t really believe the climate alarmists until recently, now they do, and the CCB has been factored into their outlook with predictable results.
The climate change consensus, the green zeitgeist, whatever you call it, has reached the economic mainstream. Ironically, Lehman Bros, itself, was one of the more preachy green institutions on Wall Street in its last days. And why would it not be? With both Barack Obama and John McCain promising bi-lateral carbon rationing measures, it would be old-fashioned, if not imprudent, for any business not to allow for the Climate Change Burden in its forecasts.
So everyone from Lehman Bros down has started putting the CCB into their mainstream models, and asset values are plummeting.
Good analysis, Jimmock.
We’re all gunna die/things can only get worse/we must make sacrifices without end is not a recipe for healthy forward looking pyschology and hence economies. Anyone remember the Jimmy Carter years?
As for McCain as reported in today’s Australian, the old warrior can do two more things for his country. Win the election on Nov 4 and then drop dead before January 20th 2009.
“No Graeme, as I clearly said. “I don’t have an argument………”.
Just so as we have that clear.
Re: Comment from Luke
Time September 22, 2008 at 11:59 am
No it didn’t – it grew out of concern for the climate implications.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I’m new to this site.
My impression: no one sets much store by the pontifications made by Luke. Methinks he does protest too much.
-P.
Peter,
You’re a quick study!
“Will Global Warming go the way of the Subprime Mortgage?” Excellent question, which no commenteers seem to address (though jimmock’s analysis of a causal link between belief in AGW and the current economic crisis is fascinating). My tentative answer : maybe not, because they’re logically completely different animals.
Subprime mortgages really exist, they’re real debts owed by real people, used to maximise profits by real institutions. But no politician, or journalist or university professor has the least personal / professional investment in them. They’ll disappear because they’e economically toxic. The elimination of the multi-trillion-dollar-debt shadow economy is a technical problem, which all players hope to resolve to the benefit of all.
AGW is an idea, a myth maybe, but which has been espoused by every major politician and serious media outlet in the democratic world. (And why do so many of your bloggers see it as a leftist thing?)
But can you see those G8 leaders saying “Hey, temperatures are going down, we were wrong, lets uproot those stupid trees we planted”? Can you see a hundred editors announcing “Due to the recent fall in mean global temperatures, we are sacking our environmental editor. Henceforth, photos of polar bears and penguins will be strictly limited”? This is mass hysteria, global displacement activity, a psycho-social phenomenon unmatched since the crusades (and wasn’t that during a previous Warm Period?). History suggests that mass hysteria doesn’t wind down quietly, but dispels its energy in outbursts of horrific violence (crusades, witch hunts, religious wars). Think of the 1914-18 war. Here you colonials can provide the best evidence for the psycho-social origins of political disaster. We French and English can provide some political (ie logical) justification for committing suicide in our millions in Flanders – but you Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians…?
I have the hugest admiration for the scientists (and a small number of political and social scientists eg Climate Resistance, Benny Peiser) who lead this resistance movement. But where are the historians, psychologists, (dendrochronologists?) etc. who can help us to see our way out of the woods?
“The greatest “stick” the AGWers wield is that we are all guilty. We all create ACO2. Original sin.
We must all suffer in the name of Gaia.
Any shonkiness is perfectly allowable in this cause.”
Lies, all of it.
Think about this SJT:
AFR 25/9/08 p.21
“Merkel says key German industry sectors must be given free permits, arguing that while she supports the need to tackle climate change, she cannot support the destruction of German jobs through “an ill-advised climate policy” ”
& p.1
“More than $25 billion new mine developments are at risk of being shelved as the impact of the global credit crisis, soaring input costs and falling metal prices hit the local resources industry…….
As the rest of the country looks to the commodity boom to sustain the national economy…..”
Hmmmm.
Checked your Super lately? Any lies there?
Here is an answer to an email from a thermista in the Canadian Civil Service.
By Lord Monckton
Dear Sir Humphrey – The “Abundance of scientific statements” that you mention is no sound or logical basis for deciding or believing anything. The question is whether the scientific statements have any rational justification, and whether those making them are in effect making statements that are political rather than scientific, rent-seeking rather than objective. After all, this is the age of reason (or it was).
Therefore, one should not accord to “scientists” the status of infallible high priests merely because they mumble a hieratic language with which one is unfamiliar. There is clear, compelling evidence that many of the major conclusions of the IPCC, your new religion’s constantly-changing Holy Book, are based on evidence that has been fabricated. The “hockey stick” graph that purported to abolish the mediaeval warm period is just one example. So let me try to lure you away from feeble-minded, religious belief in the Church of “Global Warming” and back towards the use of the faculty of reason.
Let us begin with the “devastation of New Orleans” that you mention. Even the High Priests of your Church are entirely clear that individual extreme-weather events such as Hurricane Katrina cannot, repeat cannot, be attributed to “global warming”. Even the Holy Book makes this entirely plain. There was one priest – Emanuel (a good, religious name) – who had suggested there might be a link between “global warming” and hurricanes; but he has recently recanted, at least to some extent. Very nearly all others in the hierarchy of your Church are clear that ascribing individual extreme-weather events to “global warming” is impossible. Why? Well, let’s take the question of landfalling Atlantic hurricanes such as Katrina. The implication of your attribution of Hurricane Katrina to “global warming” is twofold: that “global warming” is happening, and that in consequence either the frequency or the intensity of tropical weather systems such as hurricanes is increasing. Neither of these propositions is true. Yes, there has been “global warming” for 300 years, since the end of the 60-year period of unusually low solar activity known as the Maunder Minimum (after the celebrated Astronomer Royal who studied it). But there has been no net warming since 1995, and Keenlyside et al, in the theological journal Nature a few months ago, say they do not expect a new record year for global temperatures until 2015 at the earliest. If these theologians are correct, there will have been a 20-year period of no net “global warming” even though the presence of the devil Siotu in the ether grows inexorably stronger. And, secondly, the number of Atlantic hurricanes making landfall has actually fallen throughout the 20th century, even as temperatures have risen. Indeed, some theologians have argued that warmer weather actually reduces the temperature differential between sea and sky that generates hurricanes, reducing their frequency, and that the extra heat in the coupled ocean-atmosphere system increases wind-shear in tropical storms, tending to reduce their intensity. Certainly the frequency of intense tropical cyclones has fallen throughout the 30-year satellite record, even though temperatures have increased compared with 30 years ago. Also, the damage done by Hurricane Katrina was chiefly caused by the failure of the Democrat-led city administration to heed repeated warnings from the Corps of Engineers that the levees needed to be strengthened.
Next, you mention the recent earthquake damage at Galveston, and you imply that this is something new and terrible. Perhaps you would like to do some research of your own to verify whether the High Priests of your Church, some of whom have blamed the Galveston incident on the wrath of the devil Siotu, are likely to be telling the truth. And how, you may ask, may a non-theologian such as yourself argue theology with your High Priests? Well, the Galveston incident will give you just one indication of the many ways in which a lay member of the Church of “Global Warming” may verify for himself whether or not the Great Druids of his religion are speaking the truth from their pulpits in the media. Cast your eye back just over a century, to 1906, and look up what happened to Galveston then. Which was worse – Galveston 2008 or Galveston 1906? Next, check the global mean surface temperature in 1906: many theology faculties compile surface temperature data and make it publicly available to the faithful and to infidels alike. Was the global mean surface temperature significantly lower or significantly higher in 2008 than in 1906? What implications do your two answers have for your proposition that Galveston 2008 can be attributed to “global warming”?
Next, you mention fires in California. Once again, you can either sit slumped in your pew, gazing in adoration at the Archdruids as their pious faces flicker across your television screen, or you can do a little research for yourself. It may, for instance, occur to you to ask whether droughts were worse in the United States in the second half of the 20th century than they were in the first half. Once again, you may want to check with your local theological faculty to obtain the answer to this question. Or you may like to pick up a copy of The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck. And you may want to verify whether temperatures in the second half of the 20th century were warmer than in the first half. Once again, what are the implications of your two answers for your proposition that “global warming” is causing forest fires? You could also talk to the Fire Department in California and obtain its data on the causes of forest fires. You might be mightily surprised by the answers you get.
Next, you talk of beetles in your forests destroying natural resources. Here, you could ask the Druids just a couple of simple questions. What evidence do they have, if any, that whichever species of beetle you have in mind has not wrought havoc in the forests before? And, even if your clergy think that they have evidence that the beetle-damage is new, what evidence do they have, if any, that the beetle-damage is greater because of “global warming” than it would otherwise have been? Of course, you could ask them the wider question what evidence there is that anthropogenic “global warming”, as opposed to solar warming, is the reason for the temperature increases that have occurred over the past 300 years. The more honest parish priests will admit that for 250 of the past 300 years none of the inferred warming can be attributed to human industry. They will also be compelled to concede, if you press them, that the warming of the most recent 50 years has not occurred at a rate any greater than that which was observed before, so that it is in fact very difficult to discern any anthropogenic signal at all in the temperature record.
Next, you talk of people migrating from one place to another because in some places water has become scarce. Once again, it is easy for a layman, whether a true believer such as yourself or not, to verify whether such migrations are as a result of “global warming”. For instance, you could ask whether there have been changing patterns of drought and flood before in human history. Once you have collected some historical data – most theological faculties have quite a lot of this available, though you may have to dig a little to get it – you could compare previous migrations with those of which you now speak. And you could also ask your local parish priest whether a theological phenomenon known as the Clausius-Clapeyron relation mandates that, as the atmosphere warms, the carrying-capacity of the space occupied by the atmosphere for water vapor decreases, remains static, or increases near-exponentially. Once you have found the answers to these not particularly difficult questions, you may like to spend some of your devotional time meditating on the question whether, or to what extent, the changes in patterns of flood and drought that have occurred in the past give you any confidence that such changes occurring today are either worse than those in the past or attributable to “global warming”, whether caused by the increasing presence of the devil Siotu in the atmosphere or by the natural evolution of the climate. During your meditation, you may like to refer to the passage from the 2001 edition of the Holy Book of the IPCC that describes the climate as “a complex, non-linear, chaotic object” whose long-term future evolution cannot reliably be predicted.
If you are willing to reflect a little on the questions I have raised – and, with the exception of the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, I have done my best to avoid anything that might be too technical for a layman to find out for himself – you will perhaps come to realize that there is very little basis in scientific fact for the alarmist, hellfire preaching in which your clergy love to indulge. And you may even find your faith in your new religion beginning to weaken a little in the face of the truths that you will have unearthed by the not particularly difficult process of simply checking those statements of your clergy that you can easily and independently verify. There are, of course, many environmental problems posed by the astonishing recent success of humankind. If you were concerned, for instance, about deforestation, or the loss of species whose habitats have been displaced by humans, then your concerns would have a good grounding in fact. But, given the abject failure of global temperatures to rise as the Druids had forecast, it must surely be clear to you that the influence of the devil Siotu on global temperatures – your theologians call this “climate sensitivity” – must be a great deal smaller than your Holy Book asks you to believe.
Finally, you may wonder why I have so scathingly described your pious belief in your new religion as founded upon blind faith rather than upon the light of reason. I have drafted this email in this way so that you can perhaps come to see for yourself just how baffling it is to the likes of me, who were educated in the light of TH Huxley’s dictum that the first duty of the scientist is skepticism, to see how easily your hierarchy is able to prey upon your naive credulity. I do not target this comment at you alone: there are far too many others who, like you, are in positions of some authority and whose duty to think these things through logically is great, and yet who simply fail to ask even the most elementary and blindingly obvious questions before sappily, happily, clappily believing in, and parroting by rote, whatever the current Establishment proposes. I do not know whether you merely believe all that you are told by the Druids because otherwise you will find yourself in conflict with other true believers among your colleagues or, worse, among your superiors. If you are under pressures of this kind, I do sympathize. But if you are free to think for yourself without penalty, may I beg you – in the name of humanity – to give the use of reason a try?
Why “in the name of humanity”? Because, although the noisy preachers from the media pulpits have found it expedient not to say so, there have been food riots all round the world as the biofuel scam whipped up by the High Priests of your religion takes vast tracts of agricultural land out of food production. Millions are now starving because the price of food has doubled in little more than a year. A leaked report by the World Bank says that fully three-quarters of that doubling has occurred as a direct result of the biofuel scam. So your religion is causing mass starvation in faraway countries, and is even causing hardship to the poorest in your own country. Can you, in conscience, look away from the sufferings that your beliefs are inflicting upon the poorest and most helpless people in the world?