Next Bubble or Last Hurrah? - Part I: Stocks and houses - Eric Janszen

[bill]

Re: Next Bubble or Last Hurrah? - Part I: Stocks and houses - Eric Janszen

Maybe as I get farther down the road in my research I’ll discover that the idea behind AGW, that explains the pattern of bullhorn propaganda for it, is that it is intended as a forcing function to reduce carbon emissions, which can be most economically achieved by reducing fossil fuel consumption,

I have always said, using toxic pollutant is more effective and convincing.
EPA
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...60924#poststop

What a political football!
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/49857.html

2/19/11 12:07 PM EST

House Republicans led a charge late into the night Friday against Obama administration decisions to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, block mountaintop removal mining and allow increased use of ethanol in gasoline.
The continuing resolution faces an uphill climb in the Senate and a veto threat from President Barack Obama, but the myriad votes against the administration's energy and environmental initiatives this week will likely not be the last.

Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), chairman of the Interior-EPA Appropriations subpanel, said the strong support for riders blocking the Environmental Protection Agency will build momentum for future attempts to pass more permanent pushbacks on the agency's regulations.
"The same thing that you see on the floor with all the people offering amendments [on EPA] is the same thing I hear out in my district," Simpson told POLITICO. "If the issue of the EPA comes up, it dominates the rest of the conversation, and the EPA needs to know that."
The entire debate – covering hundreds of amendments over several days – was largely anticlimactic as well-worn partisan differences ruled the day. Democrats didn’t even bother to offer amendments aimed at stripping out the Republican language trumping EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ed...l_create_jobs/

Feb 12, 2011
THE REPUBLICAN attack on the Environmental Protection Agency began in earnest Wednesday with Representative Joe Barton of Texas saying that regulations to curb pollutants and limit greenhouse gases will “put the American economy in a straitjacket, costing us millions of jobs.’’
Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator, was ready to combat the job-killing rhetoric. In her opening statement to a House Energy and Commerce Committee subcommittee, she quoted a UMass Amherst study that found that the construction and retrofitting investments in the eastern US under two new EPA air quality rules would produce nearly 1.5 million jobs over the next five years. The rules limit the emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury, lead, dioxin, arsenic, and other pollutants. She said the EPA’s implementation of the Clean Air Act, even in the last year of a Republican Bush administration loath to admit to the dangers of global warming, “contributed to dynamic growth in the US environmental technologies industry and its workforce.’’
James Heintz, associate director at the UMass’s Political Economy Research Institute, which did the study, said in a telephone interview that the potential job growth was not only dynamic, but diverse. “You are talking about an intense infusion of new capital for construction and installation and direct jobs for [people making] boilers, pollution control technologies, scrubbers, and component parts,’’ he said. “The indirect jobs are the kind created that when you install a natural gas-fired generator’’ which includes components made at factories across the country.

The report
http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/...PERI_Feb11.pdf


Nuclear, its coming.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP...s-2202118.html

France redirects its nuclear giants
22 February 2011
In addition, the French Ministry of Energy will lead a working group to look into the technical, legal and economic aspects of low power (100-300 MWe) reactor projects, which are becoming increasingly popular.

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN...r-1802117.html

Westinghouse announces Small Modular Reactor
18 February 2011
Westinghouse has officially "introduced" its 200 MWe Small Modular Reactor (SMR), and says it is preparing for a role in the US Department of Energy's demonstration program.

[vinoveri]

Re: Next Bubble or Last Hurrah? - Part I: Stocks and houses - Eric Janszen

Steve is a so-called "New Keynesian" in his own words. I've tried to pin Hudson down, but it's impossible, and that's a good thing. He tends to trust democratic government more than oligarchy, a position that is often confused for a pro-government, socialistic stance, understandably given his Marxist background. Wray is I think trying to start his own school. Let's call it the Wrayvian school. He certainly raved at me enough to earn it.

If you search iTulip for the terms Bullhorn and Kazoo you'll see the concept outlined. But as my movie script writer sister Karen taught me 20 years ago, some ideas are essays, others are articles, others are screenplays, and others are books. This idea is a book.

Perhaps in the context of "In a social democracy all roads lead to inflation" OR "Thou shall not steal ... except by majority vote" - attributions unknown

I've always instinctively trusted the "mob" over the intellectuals; it is an almost intuitive inclination, which is likely shared by most. Perhaps Bernays knew this too and saw that a frontal assault could not be used b/c it would be recognized, and thus saw the subtlety of propaganda as the way.

How about a website along with the book? A practical and real time site that tackles the propaganda associated with and promulgated by various interests groups on a variety of topics. Showing the vested interests on each issue and dissecting conclusions to reveal the false/questionable premises and fallacious conclusions. "iPropaganda.com"?

[EJ]

Re: Next Bubble or Last Hurrah? - Part I: Stocks and houses - Eric Janszen

A subject near and dear to my heart. I continue to lobby Jim Puplava to organize a Hyperinflation vs. Sustained High Inflation debate, because all of the people who predict hyperinflation seem to base their predictions on the experiences of Argentina, Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany, without ever taking into account the differences between those countries and the United States.

I've suggested an EJ vs. John Williams debate on this subject several times, but so far Jim's not taking the bait. My strong impression is that the reason I've not been successful is that nobody but me is asking for this. Perhaps if more people made the same request, Jim might be persuaded to tackle this subject, which IMHO is probably the most important question we face navigating what's ahead. The Inflation vs. Deflation debate series was one of the most popular in the history of FinancialSense, and IMHO the Inflation vs. Hyperinflation question is both far more interesting, and far less obvious. Very few people even seem to understand the real difference between the two, which is night and day.

You have to consider the debate on another level. Inflation versus deflation appears to be about economics and the mechanisms of money growth and so on but it's really a political debate.

The inflationists tend to be conservative and the deflationists liberal. The inflationists distrust the government and monetary authorities while the deflationists tend to trust them. This dichotomy makes sense for a debate that is grounded in an agreement on the operations of monetary tools and the effects of policy. The disagreement is about how those tools will be used and their effectiveness. My position is that I trust the government and monetary authorities to reflate, which in monetary policy circles is the politically correct way of saying "inflate" but without producing an inflation rate much above 2%. I don't think they'll be able to keep it to 2% for political reasons, but I don't think it will go to to 1000% because the tools are available to a reserve currency issuer to prevent that from happening.

The hyperinflationists, the inflation extremists, belong in the same camp as the hyper-deflationists, those who forecast a deflation spiral, the deflation extremists. Both see either inflation or deflation running out of the control of monetary authorities. Compounding the confusion of a conservative versus ideological debate, neither understands the operations of monetary tools and the effects of policy so there isn't even a foundation for disagreement.

My favorite comment on the hyper-deflationists, Steve Keen among them, was by Michael Hudson in an interview when I asked him in 2007 what he believed is behind the deflationist's concerns, such as those of our mutual friend Steve. He said, "It's psychodrama. Modern monetary policy is based on double-entry book keeping, of the central bank adding to the assets and liabilities sides of the balance sheet at will. How can you not believe in it? It's like worrying that gravity might stop tomorrow and we'll all float up into the air!"

Marvelous. Since then I have convinced Keen to look more carefully at the way monetary policy is actually conducted, and additionally capital flows and their impact on currency valuations, and the impact of currency depreciation on inflation expectations, and as a result his site now reflects a thoughtful analysis of why deflation didn't happen.

I got into a lively email debate with Randall Wray who argues that a sovereign can print as much money and issue as much debt as it wants with impunity. An Austrian ideologue would dismiss the idea out of hand but I'm always interested in understanding the full range of ideas out there. After I got an introduction to him I sought an interview with him. He quickly dismissed my inflation argument as "video game economics" and then got rather abusive. For I presume ideological reasons he cannot enter currency depreciation into his calculus of sovereign debt and currency creation limitations, or I should say his theory of the unlimited power of sovereign debt and currency creation limitations does not include foreign exchange inputs. I walked away from the discussion concluding that there is no there there. Wray's argument is ideological, rhetorical and stylistic. I decided not to bother to interview him.

I've reluctantly come to that conclusion about nearly everyone in the field today. I either know what they are going to say or know that the level of discussion will be limited by their miscomprehension of the operations of monetary tools and the effects of policy.

I'm often asked which school of economics I belong to. No one of them works for me. I have to take bits from one and from another to create my own. I wound't want to join any economics school that would have me as a member.

Steve is a so-called "New Keynesian" in his own words. I've tried to pin Hudson down, but it's impossible, and that's a good thing. He tends to trust democratic government more than oligarchy, a position that is often confused for a pro-government, socialistic stance, understandably given his Marxist background. Wray is I think trying to start his own school. Let's call it the Wrayvian school. He certainly raved at me enough to earn it.

AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

Obviously the answer is of great interest to your readers, so why make it a secret? If you really feel it's outside the scope of this conversation, how'bout posting another thread and making it in-scope in that thread.

I used to want to castrate engineers who would write technical documentation that would say "[some topic the reader really needs an answer for] is outside the scope of this document." Obviously they were aware readers wanted the answer, else they wouldn't have had the presence of mind to include this idiotic statement! Why not just answer questions you know your readers are interested in, rather than taunting them with this sort of comment? If the issue is that to do the subject justice would require considerable space, I can certainly understand that. But another dedicated post would be far better than a tease!

xPat

If you search iTulip for the terms Bullhorn and Kazoo you'll see the concept outlined. But as my movie script writer sister Karen taught me 20 years ago, some ideas are essays, others are articles, others are screenplays, and others are books. This idea is a book.

[jk]

Re: Next Bubble or Last Hurrah? - Part I: Stocks and houses - Eric Janszen

a direct tax on carbon would be as effective as tradeable carbon permits, but the latter- under a banner of [somehow] increased efficiency - allows for the establishment of a huge marketplace for financial intermediaries to milk.

[EJ]

Re: Next Bubble or Last Hurrah? - Part I: Stocks and houses - Eric Janszen

Wow, how weird to post for the second time to a website i have been reading for 11 years...

I studied climate science in graduate school and got to live a few years in center of this hurricane. Let me strip this down to what to me, is the core issue.

Asking if the current state of the earth system is caused by X (can be anything, let's say fossil fuels in the atmosphere) is NOT A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. For two reasons.
1. In science you need a control group to infer causality. There is no 'control' earth to compare our earth to, one with lots of CO2, one without.
2. Earth is a chaotic system. So even if you had two earths, or a thousand earths, you will not be able to do the experiment to determine cause and effect, you can only see how the group of outcomes shifts with the given inputs (assuming you can get a signal above the noise).

We will NEVER be able to say that the current warming is due to anything we did to the planet. Never. We do not have the rational tools, the scientific method at our disposal to infer such a thing. It will never be answered.

With that said, there is NO DOUBT that we are screwing with a human life support system. We know that the carbon cycle is delicate, we are dependent on it, and we are messing with it willy nilly by re-released all this carbon that used to be trapped into the atmosphere/oceans etc.

We have known this since the 50's. We didn't need to do any more science after that to know what the right thing was to do. It's nice to do climate research, and it is useful for all kinds of things, but it gets us NO CLOSER to answering the above question. The conclusions there were obvious to those rational and without agendas: re-value carbon based energy to mitigate what we unleash by our 'experiment' on the life support system. For those that don't believe we may accidentally blow up the earth in all kinds of ways we don't yet understand and may never understand (it happens to be a pretty complicated place), i ask you to consider the ozone hole story (at the end of this post). Further, re-value carbon based energy so that we burn it as slowly as possible and as responsibly as possible.

SO, i don't care about the debate, it is nonsense. Everyone that takes either side has bought into increase the veils of confusion and muddying the issue. I agree with EJ, everything and everybody that did NOT get at the core of this issue since the 50's (the oil company speaking heads, the climate scientists who have an agenda to fund their research or feel important forming international committees) are all in the same camp and they may not even know who's agendas they are really promoting.

EJ, if you can wake people up, all the more power to you. It is so demoralising, truly.

The Ozone Hole Story (as told to me by my professor who shared the nobel prize for discovering it)

Around the time the hole first popped up climate scientists no longer studied the stratosphere (where the hole is). It was a simple system and considered known and predictable in all ways (nothing like the troposphere, which remains deeply unknowably complex and we base all our climate predictions on). It was so well known that when the ozone hole was first detected on ground, they replaced the machine because the satellites weren't seeing it and it was 'impossible'.
The new machine had issues to it seemed, so they fired the graduate student. After going a few rounds with this, they realized the satellites were filtering this data out because they had been programmed that those readings are systematic errors.
Some odd years later they finally got the satellites fixed up (still having no idea how this was possible), and figured out it was CFC's that were causing the trouble.

So, you may be saying, well, so what, some people in Australia have to wear hats. However, the punchline is, we didn't have to use CFC's for aerosol cans, we could have easily used Bromide based propellants. Good thing we didn't, they are more powerful and in the time it took to find the problem the bromide would have destroyed the ENTIRE supply of stratospheric ozone. Without ozone in the stratosphere, you can say goodbye to any plant or animal being able to exist in the light of the sun. Mitigate that.

So NOW we are consciously, knowingly messing with what we know is part of the life support system, in a part of the earth system we readily agree we don't understand. Talk about collective loss of reasoning and common sense. It boggles the mind.

What a fascinating response, on many levels.

On the question of AGW, I am willing to modify my position that “we don’t know the answer yet” and accept your notion that “It will never be answered.” We lack the tools. That said, I also agree with you that CO2 emitters should be motivated to reduce CO2 emissions without governments awaiting proof of the impact of human CO2 emissions on the global ecosystem.

The question is how, and is the system that is being motivated by the AGW argument fair, economical, and practical or is it the foundation of yet another scheme by FIRE Economy interests to extract economic rents from the Productive Economy?

More than 30 years ago I took the unpopular position with my fellow Natural Resource Studies students at the University of Massachusetts that we needed to build more nuclear power plants to reduce our dependence on the burning of coal and gas for electricity, heating, and industrial processes. These contribute five times as many pollutants than liquid fossil fuels do when burned for transportation.

At the time, the auto industry and utility companies that owned coal power plants were putting up a full bore bullhorn campaign to slow government initiatives to force them to reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides emissions that were causing acid rain. The usual arguments that the costs were too high, would be passed on to consumers, and will make the US uncompetitive and so on were floated. They failed and the legislation that passed was successful. Here’s the Wikipedia entry on it:

“In 1990, the US Congress passed a series of amendments to the Clean Air Act. Title IV of these amendments established the Acid Rain Program, a cap and trade system designed to control emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Title IV called for a total reduction of about 10 million tons of SO2 emissions from power plants. It was implemented in two phases. Phase I began in 1995, and limited sulfur dioxide emissions from 110 of the largest power plants to a combined total of 8.7 million tons of sulfur dioxide. One power plant in New England (Merrimack) was in Phase I. Four other plants (Newington, Mount Tom, Brayton Point, and Salem Harbor) were added under other provisions of the program. Phase II began in 2000, and affects most of the power plants in the country.

“During the 1990s, research continued. On March 10, 2005, EPA issued the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR). This rule provides states with a solution to the problem of power plant pollution that drifts from one state to another. CAIR will permanently cap emissions of SO2 and NOx in the eastern United States. When fully implemented, CAIR will reduce SO2 emissions in 28 eastern states and the District of Columbia by over 70 percent and NOx emissions by over 60 percent from 2003 levels.

“Overall, the Program's cap and trade program has been successful in achieving its goals. Since the 1990s, SO2 emissions have dropped 40%, and according to the Pacific Research Institute, acid rain levels have dropped 65% since 1976. However, this was significantly less successful than conventional regulation in the European Union, which saw a decrease of over 70% in SO2 emissions during the same time period.

“In 2007, total SO2 emissions were 8.9 million tons, achieving the program's long term goal ahead of the 2010 statutory deadline.

“The EPA estimates that by 2010, the overall costs of complying with the program for businesses and consumers will be $1 billion to $2 billion a year, only one fourth of what was originally predicted.”

But unlike the CO2, the direct impact of SO2 and NOx emissions on the environment are measurable. CO2 is an input to the natural cycle of CO2 exchange between the atmosphere, land, and sea. We know that human activity added 0.8% to total global atmospheric CO2 in 2006. That sounds like a lot to me, but how much of that annual output gets absorbed in the carbon cycle and how much accumulates in the atmosphere?

It is generally agreed that in the last 100 years atmospheric CO2 increased from 270 to 388 parts per million, an increase of 30% of a gas that is 0.039% of an atmosphere that is 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, and 0.93% argon. So while the 30% change in CO2 contributes only 0.0118% to the total, CO2 may play a crucial role in the ecosystem such that even small variances can result in out-sized changes in the ecosystem, never mind a 30% increase in 100 years. Whether that result is heating or cooling of the atmosphere, or some other impact, as you say, is immaterial. Waiting for results is unwise. Your CFCs versus Bromides example is spot on. We got lucky then. Maybe we won’t be so lucky with CO2.

I thought it was a good idea to lower fossil fuel emissions 30 years ago and still do today, and remain a proponent of nuclear power as an alternative to burning coal and gas. However, unlike the case of SO2 and NOx emissions, since we cannot measure the cost of the impact of CO2 emissions we cannot price the cost of reducing emissions.

This is where I get nervous about AGW. My experience since starting iTulip in 1998 is that when you can’t price something in the market and governments get involved, a racket that benefits campaign contributors develops soon thereafter, with the full engagement of the bullhorn to sell it -- the co-oping of specialists in government and academia, of journalists, and so on. I hope to interview an authority on the carbon exchange itself to answer some of my questions.

All that said, I believe that Peak Cheap Oil will trump AGW concerns.

Remember the truck drivers that sat idle when diesel prices went to $4.73 per gallon in May 2008?

After falling to $2.14 in Feb. 2009 diesel prices are back up to $3.44 today nationally, and $3.65 at the Mobile station up the street where I go to fill my car.

Peak Cheap Oil means we throw out AGW concerns as:

1. We tear the planet to shreds to produce the liquid fossil fuels in a desperate bid to keep our low distillates cost dependent transportation and food production system functioning.
2. Increased federal government fuel subsidies either grow our fiscal deficit and depreciate the dollar further, and raise energy prices even more due to import price inflation, or we cut, say, health care to pay for fuel subsidies.

All Peak Chap Oil roads lead to reducing the consumption of liquid fossil fuels, to conservation. Maybe as I get farther down the road in my research I’ll discover that the idea behind AGW, that explains the pattern of bullhorn propaganda for it, is that it is intended as a forcing function to reduce carbon emissions, which can be most economically achieved by reducing fossil fuel consumption, versus dubious technologies such as CO2 capture that require additional fuel consumption. The alternative is to raise the official alarm about peak oil, which can have all kinds of unpleasant consequences from a governance standpoint, ranging from the governments of oil producers consolidating their power positions vis-à-vis oil consumer countries, to market panics that drive oil prices to $200/bbl in months or weeks.

As for the value of a book that explains the American system of propaganda, the first step toward ending the demoralization that it creates is to explain how it works. But it will give readers more than that. I've often been credited with having a crystal ball. In fact I have learned to filter the bullhorn, to deconstruct its operation with respect to specific products. You might say to write such a book is to give away the keys to the kingdom, but it's more like explaining how to pick a particular brand of a highly sophisticated lock, or method to find the combination to break into a vault. That is the commercial application of it; the social value is inestimable going into the kind of period we are entering now. It merits serious consideration, but there are major downsides for the writer in my position besides the cost of creating economic and market forecasting competition.

I’m honored to have you as a reader for 11 years. I wish you’d post more often. These forums are like a virtual classroom, composed of a relatively small number of frequent participants and a large number of infrequent participants, many of whom have a great deal to say but who for various reasons choose not to. If I were a lecturer I’d say, “I always see the same hands. I'd like to see some new hands raised.” Not to diminish the contributions of the frequent contributors, but it’s great to hear new voices in the discussion. Thank you.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Next Bubble or Last Hurrah? - Part I: Stocks and houses - Eric Janszen

If the issue is that to do the subject justice would require considerable space, I can certainly understand that. But another dedicated post would be far better than a tease!

xPat

May I presume to give an answer. As a creative, it took me many years to learn to understand that, with many calls for "creativity" there comes a moment in time where the brain tells us to "shut up and sit down to think". It truly is quite impossible to answer every question without running the very real risk of being sent 'Nuts' in the process. So my guess here is EJ simply wants to use his time to what he views as his best advantage.

Re: Next Bubble or Last Hurrah? - Part I: Stocks and houses - Eric Janszen

CI: Give me an example of a broken debate.
EJ: For example the debate about inflation or deflation as potential outcomes of the US credit bubble. They have for years been debated as equally likely and viable outcomes, when in fact one is as likely as summer in the northern hemisphere in August and the other as likely as Paris Hilton inventing a stem cell cure for cancer. The debate should have been about what kind of inflation we’ll have, that we are now having.

A subject near and dear to my heart. I continue to lobby Jim Puplava to organize a Hyperinflation vs. Sustained High Inflation debate, because all of the people who predict hyperinflation seem to base their predictions on the experiences of Argentina, Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany, without ever taking into account the differences between those countries and the United States.

I've suggested an EJ vs. John Williams debate on this subject several times, but so far Jim's not taking the bait. My strong impression is that the reason I've not been successful is that nobody but me is asking for this. Perhaps if more people made the same request, Jim might be persuaded to tackle this subject, which IMHO is probably the most important question we face navigating what's ahead. The Inflation vs. Deflation debate series was one of the most popular in the history of FinancialSense, and IMHO the Inflation vs. Hyperinflation question is both far more interesting, and far less obvious. Very few people even seem to understand the real difference between the two, which is night and day.

CI: Like how?
EJ: That’s outside the scope of this discussion.

AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

Obviously the answer is of great interest to your readers, so why make it a secret? If you really feel it's outside the scope of this conversation, how'bout posting another thread and making it in-scope in that thread.

I used to want to castrate engineers who would write technical documentation that would say "[some topic the reader really needs an answer for] is outside the scope of this document." Obviously they were aware readers wanted the answer, else they wouldn't have had the presence of mind to include this idiotic statement! Why not just answer questions you know your readers are interested in, rather than taunting them with this sort of comment? If the issue is that to do the subject justice would require considerable space, I can certainly understand that. But another dedicated post would be far better than a tease!

xPat

[bagginz]

Re: Next Bubble or Last Hurrah? - Part I: Stocks and houses - Eric Janszen

I recommend you start by reading the original analysis of the American system of propaganda, Edward Bernays' 1928 book Propaganda.

The theory cannot be made convincingly in a few posts here. The challenge is to prove the existence of a system of propaganda the key evidence of which is the absence of certain topics and frameworks of debate.

To underline your points about Edward Bernays, smoking and the power of mass media propaganda:

The whole documentary "The Century of the Self" is an excellent documentary all about propaganda and public relations and well worth the time spent.

You can find it here:

http://www.archive.org/details/AdaCu...uryoftheSelf_0

"Ever wonder why there isn't a "peak oil versus no peak oil" debate in the media? I believe the answer is in the AGW misdirection.

Interesting idea I'll live with that one for a while.

For example, why is this issue is not openly debated in the US as it is in other countries?

Yes. Contrast with Harry "bullet magnet" Windsor for example:

His uncle Prince Andrew flew helicopters in combat in the Falklands.

Say what you want about the Royals but they instinctively know that they have to earn the respect of their "subjects" .

I'll admit, I bought into the AGW view wholeheartedly in the beginning. But I also have a slightly different view, though yours seems correct as well.

At first, I heard about Goldman Sachs buying into some derivatives market/exchange regarding carbon credits. Another Ponzi scheme, I thought.

And then I read about the conflict between Obama and China at Copenhagen...

And so, I thought, "who benefits?" China, and many other large manufacturing/polluting nations also have cheap currencies. One way to affect that trade advantage was to make the manufacturing process expensive. To "even out" the advantage. Environmental regs are a convenient tool for that end. In some way, it accomplishes the same thing a stronger yuan would.

As for Goldman Sachs and the carbon credits exchange - that screamed at me. How obvious the deception, and how easily I bought into it.

That screamed at me also gnk - very loudly.

Imagine the power: everyone on planet Earth needs so called carbon credits in order to trade and function. As Goldman Sachs you manage to finegle your self into a position where you have the power to administrate (and create?) these units.

It seems to me it's exactly the same concept as the power to issue money; to create billions of dollars at a computer keyboard by pressing the zero key.

The only thing that changes is the name; "carbon credit" instead of "dollar" what remains is exactly the same: conjuring a monopoly of power over everyone else on the planet from thin air.

Smells very much like this to me:

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812)

So I came to yet another view (which is currently):

Climate change is real but it's been co-opted as a tool for the profit of the financial elite.

Makes sense, it's far, far more powerful to co-opt and harness the huge momentum of a pre-existing cultural conversation which has years of scientific research and popular sentiment on it's side than to attempt to concoct and propagate a new cultural story from scratch. (Though that appeared to work quite well with the pig flu scam)

The whole business is not a binary choice but a lot more insidious with various shades of nuance which have to be carefully parsed. We now live in Orwell's world of newspeak.

In my view, the main danger here is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Cheers,
bagginz


"Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the Earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of a pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. Howe...ver, take it away from them, and all the fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for this world would be a happier and better world to live in. But if you wish to remain slaves of the Bankers and pay for the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits."

Sir Josiah Stamp, President of the Bank of England in the 1920s, the second richest man in Britain.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Next Bubble or Last Hurrah? - Part I: Stocks and houses - Eric Janszen

We will NEVER be able to say that the current warming is due to anything we did to the planet. Never. We do not have the rational tools, the scientific method at our disposal to infer such a thing. It will never be answered.

With that said, there is NO DOUBT that we are screwing with a human life support system. We know that the carbon cycle is delicate, we are dependent on it, and we are messing with it willy nilly by re-released all this carbon that used to be trapped into the atmosphere/oceans etc.

So NOW we are consciously, knowingly messing with what we know is part of the life support system, in a part of the earth system we readily agree we don't understand. Talk about collective loss of reasoning and common sense. It boggles the mind.

One of the difficulties with a long post is that one can get carried away and end up pointing in both directions as here. But please, do not stop making comments; they are much appreciated.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Next Bubble or Last Hurrah? - Part I: Stocks and houses - Eric Janszen

C1ue, I have to suspect that you do not live very high up in the Northern hemisphere. Here in the UK the weather has changed quite dramatically over the last fifty years. Rainfall has increased more than 25% year on year; temperatures are rising; spring is showing very good signs of coming very early this year. But all that being said; the only thing that might change your mind is perhaps when sea levels suddenly rise, as I am, personally, sure they will. So let us leave the debate until we have something that will settle the matter. Except that, as they say, the frog is in the pot and the water is getting hotter year by year and if sea levels do suddenly rise by, say, 30 feet, then civilisation as we know it comes to an abrupt end, and this debate will be the least of our concerns.

[c1ue]

Re: Next Bubble or Last Hurrah? - Part I: Stocks and houses - Eric Janszen

If you are incorrect about this scientific matter, and I will assure you you are, you run a risk of doing great damage to your reputation, and possibly discrediting your book before the 1st word is written.

Again, you seek to bring to bear social pressure as opposed to fact.

We've gone many rounds, and you've yet to provide a single convincing argument which conclusively demonstrates that fossil fuel derived CO2 is the one and only factor in driving climate change today.

You've failed to show that the climate today and its changes is unusual.

You've failed to clearly separate out CO2 as the single cause ascendant over all other human and natural causes.

You've failed to show any skill in prediction, either personally or anywhere in the entire 'climate science consensus' establishment

I've posted the entire AGW argument in full before, and again it is:

1) CO2 is a greenhouse gas (true)
2) CO2 is the strongest climate driver (extremely false)
3) The climate has a net positive feedback - i.e. any changes made to it are magnified (demonstrably false in the past, zero proof whatsoever outside of computer models in the present)

As a recipient of a BA in physical Geography, and having the unique opportunity to actually work in the field, with at first, 7 years working with meteorological research data for the federal government, then 8 years working with cryospheric data for climate research at a NASA data center in a large university, I can assure you my conclusions have not been formed by the media you are referring to. My conclusions were drawn from trying to organize for discovery and distribution petabytes of data from everything from dozens of instruments on board several spacecraft platforms, to bore holes in Greenland, to radar sounding in the heart of Antarctica, to personal observations of native Inuits... I also had the opportunity to have numerous hundreds of hours of discussions with some of the worlds leading climate scientists. I have spoken to scientists from China, Germany, England ..., and all of the scientists at the facility. Not one fails to shake their head at anyone who would deny the libraries of data that have been collected.

And so what? All you're describing is a closed group of intellectuals - who clearly do not accept outside concepts or ideas.

I've posted numerous times how it is well documented that human beings seek out information which confirms their own beliefs.

The entire purpose of the scientific method is for those with differing beliefs to clash, and in the clash, for the truth to emerge.

Having a huge group of group-thinking climate scientists doesn't do anybody any good.

I've noted endlessly how the pronouncements of the 'experts' continue to be wrong.

I've noted all sorts of issues which were clearly not scientific in any way - concerning projections on the Amazon, on the Antarctic, on the Arctic, on floods, on storms, etc etc.

But of course nothing dents your group think.

[c1ue]

Re: Next Bubble or Last Hurrah? - Part I: Stocks and houses - Eric Janszen

Just out of curiosity, how would you describe your own political views? You seem very intent on bashing libertarians.

Fiscal conservative. Social Moderate.

Libertarians in contrast desire all their rights, but without a government to regulate or enforce them.

Were it not for the bizarre focus on rights, this would otherwise be known as anarchy.

And yes, I do bash the libertarians as represented by such fine examples of humanity as Lyndon LaRouche.

I don't bash conservatives on principle, nor do I bash liberals on principle. Both are representative of common mind sets and can work.

Libertarianism in contrast is a fantasy.

Is this "reality" based on anything other than your authoritative assertion?

Does this reality apply to all insurance companies or simply health care?

This reality is based on the model of insurance. You don't provide protection because you don't think you're going to have to pay, you provide protection to a group of people from which you expect a specific set of losses.

I have no problem with an insurance company - in an ideal, isolated situation - charging a person with preexisting conditions more for insurance ... again assuming the extra cost is representative of the actuarial risks from said preexisting condition and not all other issues.

But I do have problems with insurance companies finding excuses not to pay, booting people out for pre-existing conditions, denying coverage for those with pre-existing conditions, etc etc - all behaviors intended to cheat on the actuarial odds.

Let me put it another way: if you have a terrible driving record, it is reasonable that an insurance company charge you more for providing auto insurance to you.

How often do auto insurance companies deny coverage completely to even bad drivers?

If you cannot understand why denial of coverage is wrong, then I cannot help you as you clearly have no idea what insurance is.

Yes, they are crooks, no doubt about it. They have rigged legislative/judicial system to protect themselves, for example McCarran–Ferguson Act. Most of what you mention are deceptive or fraudulent practices. I spend a good deal of my time dealing with these issues. I also would benefit from more sick people having insurance. Nonetheless, I still don't understand why not providing insurance to people who you know in advance will cost more than they will pay in premiums is somehow illegal or immoral.

Again, you are conflating denial of coverage with enforced coverage for all at a fixed price.

In a situation where the entire population is forced into a single plan, then this is invalid.

Equally so, if a company chooses to simply exclude the 'high risk' population from its models, then said company isn't providing insurance.

It is acting on a Ponzi scheme where those most likely to require payouts are simply booted out.

[bill]

Re: Next Bubble or Last Hurrah? - Part I: Stocks and houses - Eric Janszen

SO, i don't care about the debate, it is nonsense.

So please, guys/gals tell me what energy solution?
The core issue is what energy satisfies AGW and Peak Oil?

[Jill Nephew]

Re: Next Bubble or Last Hurrah? - Part I: Stocks and houses - Eric Janszen

Wow, how weird to post for the second time to a website i have been reading for 11 years...

I studied climate science in graduate school and got to live a few years in center of this hurricane. Let me strip this down to what to me, is the core issue.

Asking if the current state of the earth system is caused by X (can be anything, let's say fossil fuels in the atmosphere) is NOT A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. For two reasons.
1. In science you need a control group to infer causality. There is no 'control' earth to compare our earth to, one with lots of CO2, one without.
2. Earth is a chaotic system. So even if you had two earths, or a thousand earths, you will not be able to do the experiment to determine cause and effect, you can only see how the group of outcomes shifts with the given inputs (assuming you can get a signal above the noise).

We will NEVER be able to say that the current warming is due to anything we did to the planet. Never. We do not have the rational tools, the scientific method at our disposal to infer such a thing. It will never be answered.

With that said, there is NO DOUBT that we are screwing with a human life support system. We know that the carbon cycle is delicate, we are dependent on it, and we are messing with it willy nilly by re-released all this carbon that used to be trapped into the atmosphere/oceans etc.

We have known this since the 50's. We didn't need to do any more science after that to know what the right thing was to do. It's nice to do climate research, and it is useful for all kinds of things, but it gets us NO CLOSER to answering the above question. The conclusions there were obvious to those rational and without agendas: re-value carbon based energy to mitigate what we unleash by our 'experiment' on the life support system. For those that don't believe we may accidentally blow up the earth in all kinds of ways we don't yet understand and may never understand (it happens to be a pretty complicated place), i ask you to consider the ozone hole story (at the end of this post). Further, re-value carbon based energy so that we burn it as slowly as possible and as responsibly as possible.

SO, i don't care about the debate, it is nonsense. Everyone that takes either side has bought into increase the veils of confusion and muddying the issue. I agree with EJ, everything and everybody that did NOT get at the core of this issue since the 50's (the oil company speaking heads, the climate scientists who have an agenda to fund their research or feel important forming international committees) are all in the same camp and they may not even know who's agendas they are really promoting.

EJ, if you can wake people up, all the more power to you. It is so demoralising, truly.

The Ozone Hole Story (as told to me by my professor who shared the nobel prize for discovering it)

Around the time the hole first popped up climate scientists no longer studied the stratosphere (where the hole is). It was a simple system and considered known and predictable in all ways (nothing like the troposphere, which remains deeply unknowably complex and we base all our climate predictions on). It was so well known that when the ozone hole was first detected on ground, they replaced the machine because the satellites weren't seeing it and it was 'impossible'.
The new machine had issues to it seemed, so they fired the graduate student. After going a few rounds with this, they realized the satellites were filtering this data out because they had been programmed that those readings are systematic errors.
Some odd years later they finally got the satellites fixed up (still having no idea how this was possible), and figured out it was CFC's that were causing the trouble.

So, you may be saying, well, so what, some people in Australia have to wear hats. However, the punchline is, we didn't have to use CFC's for aerosol cans, we could have easily used Bromide based propellants. Good thing we didn't, they are more powerful and in the time it took to find the problem the bromide would have destroyed the ENTIRE supply of stratospheric ozone. Without ozone in the stratosphere, you can say goodbye to any plant or animal being able to exist in the light of the sun. Mitigate that.

So NOW we are consciously, knowingly messing with what we know is part of the life support system, in a part of the earth system we readily agree we don't understand. Talk about collective loss of reasoning and common sense. It boggles the mind.

[we_are_toast]

Re: Next Bubble or Last Hurrah? - Part I: Stocks and houses - Eric Janszen

The most interesting thing I learned in my several years of research into the AWG issue is that the strongest adherents to AGW theory hold liberal views generally while opposition to the theory is largely conservative, as if the question was political rather than scientific.

My position is that there is insufficient scientific evidence to prove or disprove AGW. Mind you, as a recipient of a BS in Resource Economics I have since college believed intuitively that dumping tons of carbon emissions into our tiny atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels cannot possibly be a good thing for the environment, and intuitively I still believe that it is bad. But intuition is not science. Everywhere I looked as I studied the AWG issue I found the telltale signs of a Bullhorn sales and marketing operation, from the co-opting of the scientific community with research funding to the selection of TV producers with AGW sympathies. One source I spoke with who is also agnostic on the question said his research shows that beliefs are even more emotionally driven than by inclination toward liberal or conservative views. Polls show that a large percentage of Americans change their view on AGW based on the weather: when it's hot they believe and when it's cold they don't.

But why? Who is using the threat of rising oceans to sell AGW in 2011 like the dream of home ownership to sell the securitized debt that financed the housing bubble in 2002? To what end? Who gains and who loses from policies to reduce carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels?

The reason I haven't made any previous statements about AGW is that I'm certain holding a rational debate on a topic as charged with religious fervor is as futile as the gold bubble versus no gold bubble debate, the inflation versus deflation debate, or any of the other nonsense debates that the US media frames that I've wasted umpteen hours on over the years that divert us from the issue.

It's time to get to the bottom of things.

Ever wonder why there isn't a "peak oil versus no peak oil" debate in the media? I believe the answer is in the AGW misdirection.

Thank you for expressing your reasoning for holding this position. But I would urge a great deal of caution in taking this public position. If you are incorrect about this scientific matter, and I will assure you you are, you run a risk of doing great damage to your reputation, and possibly discrediting your book before the 1st word is written. This is not an economic, non-science question that deals more with trying to understand how humans will react to specific circumstances, such as if the price of gold will go up, or if there will be inflation by the 1st quarter of 2010 or deflation, or whether the Chinese bubble will burst in 2010 or 2011, this is real science with mountains of real scientific data and near unanimity of agreement.

Your observations about liberal vs conservative on this issue are keen indeed, but once again, this is science, and public opinion no matter what the political persuasion, has nothing to do with the scientific facts. You might very well listen to that intuitive voice in the back of your head that is telling you that the gigatonnes of man made CO2 emitted into the atmosphere annually, is indeed having an impact on the worlds climate.

As a recipient of a BA in physical Geography, and having the unique opportunity to actually work in the field, with at first, 7 years working with meteorological research data for the federal government, then 8 years working with cryospheric data for climate research at a NASA data center in a large university, I can assure you my conclusions have not been formed by the media you are referring to. My conclusions were drawn from trying to organize for discovery and distribution petabytes of data from everything from dozens of instruments on board several spacecraft platforms, to bore holes in Greenland, to radar sounding in the heart of Antarctica, to personal observations of native Inuits... I also had the opportunity to have numerous hundreds of hours of discussions with some of the worlds leading climate scientists. I have spoken to scientists from China, Germany, England ..., and all of the scientists at the facility. Not one fails to shake their head at anyone who would deny the libraries of data that have been collected.

Although AGW is considered established science by the scientific community, I agree with you that I would much prefer to have the conversation about Peak Oil rather than AGW. Peak Oil will be a slap in the face of the public, while AGW is the boiling frog. The Bullhorns apparently reach more people and are more persuadable than I imagined, and have already misled too many people.

Given the makeup of the internet, denying established science may improve your subscriber numbers, and may even bring back PythonicCow, but the cost may end up to be higher than you expect.