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

[c1ue]

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

That certainly will be a challenge, because there's no such thing as "unconscious impulses." The unconscious mind does not force you to do anything. All actions and choices are made volitionally, through free will.

Repeatedly I been told this sentiment, but repeatedly I have not been convinced.

Because there are so many examples where both groups and individuals, even entire populations, repeatedly engage in behavior which is not just unknowingly negative, but knowingly negative.

In other words, the so called free will of these decision makers decided on behavior which was bad in every sense of the word.

Until this behavior can be explained - and stupidity isn't the only reason - the idea that there is nothing but free will is and will continue to be a myth albeit an attractive one.

Indeed, the best evidence of "free will" being a myth is often the person believing it. They somehow think they are alone, as lamp-posts in the night, standing tall and strong in their free will and self-sufficiency, when in fact they are connected to the rest of the grid by the same cables.

[Sharky]

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

sharky, you are a font of wisdom. not only are you, by your own testimony, cognizant of the only true and objective morality, you are also an expert in the foundations of behavior and neuroscience. amazing.

the only thing greater than your knowledge is your modesty when you share it.

Really? An ad hominem is the best you can do? No questions about how I can support the things I said? You just dismiss them out of hand? Why?

I'm an atheist too. Care to heap on any more sarcasm? Maybe with a dish of dogma or two?

[jk]

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

That certainly will be a challenge, because there's no such thing as "unconscious impulses." The unconscious mind does not force you to do anything. All actions and choices are made volitionally, through free will. The fact that some people choose to evade the consequences of their actions, or choose not to focus or not to critically view the things put in front of them, is much, much different from saying that we are somehow controlled by unconscious impulses. Humans do not, and in fact cannot, simply wander around the world and rely on their unconscious for survival. In order to be acted upon, memories or concepts must first be made conscious -- whereupon they come under the influence and control of the conscious mind, which means choice and free will.

In the case of smoking, people made a choice to listen to advertising; perhaps they used those words and pictures to justify their evasion of the knowledge that smoking is harmful; they wanted to smoke, and were happy to find any reason to support that view, in spite of knowing that it was actually harmful. Blaming their subsequent actions on "unconscious impulses" is simply a cop-out.

sharky, you are a font of wisdom. not only are you, by your own testimony, cognizant of the only true and objective morality, you are also an expert in the foundations of behavior and neuroscience. amazing.

the only thing greater than your knowledge is your modesty when you share it.

[Sharky]

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

Much good could be accomplished if a way could be found to get rich people to act in the best interests of all. I wish I had a good idea.

Do you mean doing something instead of providing jobs and investment capital? How is that not in everyone's best interests?

Is a rich person's money better spent by giving it away, or by investing it to increase not only their wealth, but the overall wealth of society?

I hope you're not thinking along the lines of Michael Moore:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vid..._its_ours.html

[Sharky]

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

You say this as though it were fact, but really it's very much unproven and subject to eternal ethical debate. Having convictions is great, but it doesn't mean you're right (or wrong).

And just because something has been eternally debated doesn't mean that it isn't a fact, or that it can't be proven to be true. The underlying issue is, of course, philosophical -- as is the acknowledgment of the existence of any facts at all (along with their knowability).

Regardless, the point is that people are easily and subtly influenced, and there are manifold influences shaping people's behavior, often to their detriment.

People aren't "influenced" by external forces beyond their control. They allow themselves to be influenced; the resulting change in behavior is a matter of choice, not force or the "unconscious". The difference is crucial.

[Chomsky]

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

That certainly will be a challenge, because there's no such thing as "unconscious impulses." The unconscious mind does not force you to do anything. All actions and choices are made volitionally, through free will. The fact that some people choose to evade the consequences of their actions, or choose not to focus or not to critically view the things put in front of them, is much, much different from saying that we are somehow controlled by unconscious impulses. Humans do not, and in fact cannot, simply wander around the world and rely on their unconscious for survival. In order to be acted upon, memories or concepts must first be made conscious -- whereupon they come under the influence and control of the conscious mind, which means choice and free will.

In the case of smoking, people made a choice to listen to advertising; perhaps they used those words and pictures to justify their evasion of the knowledge that smoking is harmful; they wanted to smoke, and were happy to find any reason to support that view, in spite of knowing that it was actually harmful. Blaming their subsequent actions on "unconscious impulses" is simply a cop-out.

You say this as though it were fact, but really it's very much unproven and subject to eternal ethical debate. Having convictions is great, but it doesn't mean you're right (or wrong).

Regardless, the point is that people are easily and subtly influenced, and there are manifold influences shaping people's behavior, often to their detriment.

[Sharky]

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

Amen sister: "collective loss of reasoning and common sense" pretty much nails it. However, I wonder if "we" ever had it in the first place.

I will offer this perspective from armenian mystic George Ivanovich Gurdjieff:
Gurdjieff claimed that people cannot perceive reality in their current states because they do not possess consciousness but rather live in a state of a hypnotic "waking sleep".
"Man lives his life in sleep, and in sleep he dies." As a result of this condition, each person perceives things from a completely subjective perspective. Gurdjieff stated that maleficent events such as wars and so on could not possibly take place if people were more awake. He asserted that people in their typical state function as unconscious automatons, but that one can "wake up" and become a different sort of human being altogether.

Mystic, subjectivist nonsense.

Humans, like all living organisms, must take specific actions in order to survive. Those actions would not be possible in a "hypnotic waking sleep." We are conscious, and to be conscious is to be conscious of something. There is a universe, and it exists independent of perception -- not because of it.

Wars don't happen because people are asleep. If the world was truly subjective, then why would wars even matter? Or how could you even be sure that there was a war?

[Sharky]

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

There are two challenges facing anyone who attempts to educate the public on this topic: one, to convince the reader that 90% of human behavior is driven by unconscious impulses not by free will; and two, that our unconscious has been consciously shaped by others, that many of our own most treasured beliefs were constructed by forces beyond our own will, including the belief in free will itself.

That certainly will be a challenge, because there's no such thing as "unconscious impulses." The unconscious mind does not force you to do anything. All actions and choices are made volitionally, through free will. The fact that some people choose to evade the consequences of their actions, or choose not to focus or not to critically view the things put in front of them, is much, much different from saying that we are somehow controlled by unconscious impulses. Humans do not, and in fact cannot, simply wander around the world and rely on their unconscious for survival. In order to be acted upon, memories or concepts must first be made conscious -- whereupon they come under the influence and control of the conscious mind, which means choice and free will.

In the case of smoking, people made a choice to listen to advertising; perhaps they used those words and pictures to justify their evasion of the knowledge that smoking is harmful; they wanted to smoke, and were happy to find any reason to support that view, in spite of knowing that it was actually harmful. Blaming their subsequent actions on "unconscious impulses" is simply a cop-out.

[Zen$]

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

No it does not point in both directions. Her point is about the nature of the scientific method and controls and inquiry.

[Zen$]

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

Amen sister: "collective loss of reasoning and common sense" pretty much nails it. However, I wonder if "we" ever had it in the first place.

I will offer this perspective from armenian mystic George Ivanovich Gurdjieff:
Gurdjieff claimed that people cannot perceive reality in their current states because they do not possess consciousness but rather live in a state of a hypnotic "waking sleep".
"Man lives his life in sleep, and in sleep he dies."[16] As a result of this condition, each person perceives things from a completely subjective perspective. Gurdjieff stated that maleficent events such as wars and so on could not possibly take place if people were more awake. He asserted that people in their typical state function as unconscious automatons, but that one can "wake up" and become a different sort of human being altogether.[17]
[source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gurdjieff


Seems to be the problem on all sides of a political question.

[c1ue]

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

On 15 February 2011 Mercer's Responsible Investment (RI) team launched Climate Change Scenarios - Implications for Strategic Asset Allocation,
http://www.mercer.com/articles/1406410

The problem with listening to Mercer, much a similar problem with listening to Munich Re, is that they're talking their own book.

Certainly financial companies would love to get into the Carbon Credit scheme - it allows yet another vehicle for derivatives. However, the failure of CCE as well as the ongoing failure of the European carbon credit system (it is cheaper to buy the credits than it is to actually stop emitting CO2) should form a cautionary tale.

Equally so the tale of how AGW was used to derive $82M in additional insurance premiums despite clear scientific 'consensus' that there is no upward trend in either hurricane incidence or intensity:

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article...tc=pgall&tc=ar

Hurricane Katrina extracted a terrifying toll -- 1,200 dead, a premier American city in ruins, and the nation in shock. Insured losses would ultimately cost the property insurance industry $40 billion.

But Katrina did not tear a hole in the financial structure of America's property insurance system as large as the one carved scarcely six weeks later by a largely unknown company called Risk Management Solutions.

RMS, a multimillion-dollar company that helps insurers estimate hurricane losses and other risks, brought four hand-picked scientists together in a Bermuda hotel room.

There, on a Saturday in October 2005, the company gathered the justification it needed to rewrite hurricane risk. Instead of using 120 years of history to calculate the average number of storms each year, RMS used the scientists' work as the basis for a new crystal ball, a computer model that would estimate storms for the next five years.

The change created an $82 billion gap between the money insurers had and what they needed, a hole they spent the next five years trying to fill with rate increases and policy cancellations.
RMS said the change that drove Florida property insurance bills to record highs was based on "scientific consensus."

The reality was quite different.

Today, two of the four scientists present that day no longer support the hurricane estimates they helped generate. Neither do two other scientists involved in later revisions. One says that monkeys could do as well.

In the rush to deploy a new, higher number, they say, the industry skipped the rigors of scientific method. It ignored contradictory evidence and dissent, and created penalties for those who did not do likewise. The industry flouted regulators who called the work biased, the methods ungrounded and the new computer model illegal.

Florida homeowners would have paid more even without RMS' new model. Katrina convinced the industry that hurricanes were getting bigger and more frequent. But it was RMS that first put a number to the increased danger and came up with a model to justify it.

As a result of RMS' changes, the cost to insure a home in parts of Florida hit world-record levels.
Hundreds of thousands of homeowners were forced to find new insurers as national carriers fled the state.

Yet the prediction of a more dangerous Florida has not played out.

The new RMS model called for at least 11 hurricanes to come ashore in the United States by the end of 2010, most of them aimed at Florida.

Four hurricanes struck the U.S. None hit the Sunshine State.

RMS stands by its five-year outlook and contends that the risk of hurricanes remains higher than normal. Company officials last week said they would continue to adjust their model as needed, but a single five-year lull does not disprove their results.

Yet a growing number of experts now wonder if the changes spurred by RMS -- and the accompanying spike in insurance premiums -- were justified.

The woman credited with launching the industry of hurricane modeling questions how near-term models were introduced. She accuses RMS of overselling software that lacked sufficient scientific support, and says insurers accepted the output of that model as if it were fact.

"I've never seen the industry so much just hanging on what a handful of scientists or one model would say," said Karen Clark, founder and former CEO of AIR Worldwide, an RMS competitor.

"They're just tools," Clark said.

"They're models.

"They're wrong."

FOUR MEN, FOUR HOURS

The daily papers were still blaring news about Katrina when Jim Elsner received an invitation to stay over a day in Bermuda.

The hurricane expert from Florida State University would be on the island in October for an insurance-sponsored conference on climate change. One of the sponsors, a California-based company called RMS, wanted a private discussion with him and three other attendees.

Their task: Reach consensus on how global weather patterns had changed hurricane activity.

The experts pulled aside by RMS were far from representative of the divided field of tropical cyclone science. They belonged to a camp that believed hurricane activity was on the rise and, key to RMS, shared the contested belief that computer models could accurately predict the change.

Elsner's statistical work on hurricanes and climatology included a model to predict hurricane activity six months in advance, a tool for selling catastrophe bonds and other products to investors.

There was also Tom Knutson, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration meteorologist whose research linking rising carbon dioxide levels to potential storm damage had led to censoring by the Bush White House.

Joining them was British climate physicist Mark Saunders, who argued that insurers could use model predictions from his insurance-industry-funded center to increase profits 30 percent.

The rock star in the room was Kerry Emanuel, the oracle of climate change from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Just two weeks before Katrina, one of the world's leading scientific journals had published Emanuel's concise but frightening paper claiming humanity had changed the weather and doubled the damage potential of cyclones worldwide.

Elsner said he anticipated a general and scholarly talk.

Instead, RMS asked four questions: How many more hurricanes would form from 2006 to 2010? How many would reach land? How many the Caribbean? And how long would the trend last?

Elsner's discomfort grew as he realized RMS sought numbers to hard-wire into the computer program that helps insurers set rates.

"We're not really in the business of making outlooks. We're in the business of science," he told the Herald-Tribune in a 2009 interview. "Once I realized what they were using it for, then I said, 'Wait a minute.' It's one thing to talk about these things. It's another to quantify it."

Saunders did not respond to questions from the Herald-Tribune. Knutson said if RMS were to ask again, he would provide the same hurricane assessment he gave in 2005.

But Emanuel said he entered the discussion in 2005 "a little mystified" by what RMS was doing.
He now questions the credibility of any five-year prediction of major hurricanes. There is simply too much involved.

"Had I known then what I know now," Emanuel said, "I would have been even more skeptical."
Elsner's own frustration grew when he attempted to interject a fifth question he thought critical to any discussion of short-term activity: Where would the storms go?

The RMS modelers believed Florida would remain the target of most hurricane activity. Elsner's research showed storm activity shifted through time and that it was due to move north toward the Carolinas.

But RMS' facilitator said there was not enough time to debate the matter, Elsner said. There were planes to catch.

In the end, the four scientists came up with four hurricane estimates -- similar only in that they were all above the historic average.

RMS erased that difference with a bit of fifth-grade math. It calculated the average.

Thus, the long-term reality of 0.63 major hurricanes striking the U.S. every year yielded to a prediction of 0.90.

Contrary to Elsner's research, RMS aimed most of that virtual increase at Florida.

On paper, it was a small change from one tiny number to another tiny number.

Plugged into the core of a complex software program used to estimate hurricane losses, the number rewrote property insurance in North America.

Risk was no longer a measure of what had been, but what might be. And for Floridians living along the Atlantic, disaster was 45 percent more likely.

RMS defended its new model by suggesting it had brought scientists together for a formal, structured debate.

Elsner disputes that idea.

"We were just winging it," he said.

PREDICTING APOCALYPSE

In the Oz of insurance, RMS is the man behind the curtain.

The company is a Silicon Valley prodigy created 22 years ago by four Stanford graduates and their engineering professor, who parlayed a research project into a commodity: calculating earthquake probabilities and selling them to the insurance industry.

It was a short leap from there to run odds on just about every terrible and unlikely event, from Florida hurricanes to Japanese typhoons to European tempests, what RMS CEO and co-founder Hemant Shah calls a "full portfolio of apocalyptic hazard events."

The company Shah started from his California apartment is now a $200 million-a-year enterprise.

Major insurance and reinsurance companies the world over pay annual subscriptions of $1 million or more to lease RMS' disaster-predicting software.

The impact these private models have on the insurance price homeowners pay is so great that Bob Hunter, insurance director for the Consumer Federation of America, calls them unregulated "rate bureaus."

For most of the past two decades, risk models have relied on actual hurricane activity recorded over more than 100 years to produce averages and other estimates of storm formation.

But even before Katrina, RMS was under pressure to disband the long-term outlook. Insurance insiders wanted something they believed would be more accurate. And they wanted it to forecast hurricane activity for next few years based on current conditions, not simply assume history would repeat itself.

The pressure came from several places. Some reinsurers sought validation that global warming was increasing the threat of hurricanes. Others in the industry wanted a short-term model to encourage investors, who wanted odds on their returns in the near term.

Shah says he had an obligation to pursue the short-term model because of the belief that hurricanes had gotten more dangerous.

"How are you going to incent people to mitigate their homes if you don't have the right kind of signaling on what risk really is?" he told the Herald-Tribune in 2008.

An accurate prediction of the near future could save insurers billions of dollars by indicating when to raise rates or drop policies in places most likely to be ravaged. It's the difference between predicting how many times the number 1 will appear in 100 rolls of the dice, and anticipating what number is expected for the next five rolls.

That, essentially, was what RMS promised.

RiskLink 6.0, RMS chief researcher Robert Muir-Wood wrote in a February 2006 column, "is likely to be the most eagerly awaited model ever introduced into the reinsurance market." [see below]

RUSHING TO RAISE RATES

Records show reinsurers and insurers did not wait.

Using numbers RMS provided in its promotional materials, they began increasing their own hurricane loss estimates 30 to 40 percent, six months before the new model was finished in May 2006.

Florida insurers in turn sought rate boosts in anticipation of what the new model would do to their own costs.

But the yet-unpublished five-year model did not become an industry standard until December 2005, when it was embraced by A.M. Best, the Chicago firm that provides financial ratings for insurance investors.

Best said it would determine an insurer's soundness by simulating its performance in back-to-back 100-year hurricanes as calculated by the five-year model.

The reasoning was simple.

"Catastrophe is the single largest threat of insolvency to an insurance company," Devin Inskeep, senior financial analyst at A.M. Best, said in an interview.

According to a confidential presentation one of its officers gave an industry think tank, RMS calculated its new hurricane model raised the expected cost of a major U.S. hurricane by $55 billion.

Plugging that model into A.M. Best's stress test meant the industry as a whole would need to raise $82 billion to remain solvent.

RMS' two chief competitors argued there was inadequate scientific grounding to heavily promote a five-year outlook.

Clark, at the time CEO of AIR Worldwide, said she urged A.M. Best to reconsider requiring a model "based on theories."

Having alternative models available was good, she said, but "I personally was an advocate of not rushing into something that was not tested and would have a dramatic change. Certainly, I had a lot of conversations with A.M. Best."

The warnings were not heeded. Both Eqecat and AIR eventually produced their own five-year versions, though AIR warned clients it considered the only credible version to be the long-term model.

By January 2006, five months before RMS released its new model, at least half a dozen reinsurers were pricing their contracts based on the new numbers, comments made in quarterly earnings calls show. The pricing triggered a cascade of rate hikes in Florida.

In a calculation Florida regulators learned about two years later, State Farm added a $1.5 billion "frequency adjustment" to its potential hurricane losses. That, in turn, required it to buy more reinsurance from its parent, a cost that resulted in a 47 percent rate increase to its Florida customers.

Allstate increased the loss estimates of its long-term hurricane model by 41 percent, a "climate cycle" adjustment it only briefly noted within its 4,000-page request for a 22 percent rate hike.

By the time the actual model was released in May 2006, it had already reshaped the Florida property insurance market, unleashing the largest spike in premiums in state history.

Florida has a law intended to prevent just such chaos.

A state commission must review and approve catastrophe models before insurers may use them to set rates. No short-term model has ever passed that test.

RMS in 2007 submitted its model for review by the Florida Hurricane Loss Methodology Commission -- the only body of its kind in the nation.

Meteorologists, statisticians and engineers for the commission began a lengthy review. But when RMS learned those reviewers planned to reject the model, the company withdrew it from consideration.

A draft report shows the objections centered largely on how RMS had determined its new hurricane rates.

The panel said the model change failed to meet credibility and bias tests, and it questioned how RMS had picked its four scientists and why so few were invited.

Shah later told the Herald-Tribune he believed Florida was "mucking things up," suppressing a credible view of risk "so pricing can be more affordable."

"If you artificially constrain your view of risk then you're not going to have the clarity of insight that suggests what really needs to be done to solve the problem," he said.

RMS continues to promote its short-term model as the preferred option for its customers. A survey by Bermuda officials shows it is the dominant model for Bermuda reinsurers, the most crucial source of private hurricane protection for Florida.

MONKEYS COULD DO THIS

At the outset in 2005, RMS promised to revisit its forecast at the end of every season. "If there is a material change," the company said, "rates would be updated."

So it was in October 2008 that RMS assembled a group of seven weather science experts at the Hotel Victor on Miami's South Beach.

Rather than produce their own storm predictions, they were asked by an expert in gathering scientific opinion to rank 39 different climate models that RMS would then run to produce a five-year forecast.

The man running the show was Tony O'Hagan, a British statistician who had developed drug trials for AstraZeneca. He came armed with Tiddlywinks, 30 for each scientist, to help them visualize and rank the weather simulators.

What struck University of Colorado environmental science professor Roger Pielke as he played with his pile of green chips was the pointlessness. Pielke, already a critic of the five-year forecast, believed the 39 models were a stacked deck, "biased upwards."

RMS said it gave its experts the option of sticking with a long-term average. "We were strongly encouraged not to do so," Pielke said.

Another participant, Georgia Tech climatologist Judith Curry, had her own misgivings. She believed the selection too narrow.

"I thought all of the models were wrong. I didn't have confidence in any of them," Curry said.

When RMS averaged the scientists' choices, the number of expected storms had dropped from the previous finding in 2005.

This time, the number of Category 3 and higher hurricanes expected to strike the U.S. each year dropped, from .9 to .8, a seemingly small change.

That decrease meant the risk of hurricanes had dropped by a third. Presumably, homeowners' premiums should follow suit.

But there was no rush to adjust homeowners' bills and no publicity surrounding the new scientific "consensus."

RMS in December 2008 described the results as "consistent" with past findings. It disclosed the lower numbers six months later in an April 2009 confidential report to clients. By then it was too late to effect that year's reinsurance rates for many insurance companies.

Company vice president Claire Souch denied that RMS promoted the increase and downplayed the decrease. "Our time lines were the same," she said.

Even after it was released, brokers said, the revised model was not roundly embraced.

"It is true that many 'set aside' the model change when underwriting this year," said John DeMartini, vice president at the Towers Watson brokerage.

"While they were quick to adopt near-term when it raised loss estimates, they didn't commit to sticking with it through reductions."

Following the unusually inactive 2009 season, RMS announced it would skip its annual expert review.

By fall 2010, RMS had changed its methodology to remove the human element, Souch said. Souch said a new model will be released in February. It is expected to decrease rates along the coast and increase them inland, RMS officials said.

For his part, Pielke returned to Colorado and set up a random number generator to rank RMS' 39 climate models from 2008 -- akin to blindly throwing darts to choose the best model.

The outcome nearly matched the scientists' consensus.

"So with apologies to my colleagues," he wrote in his science policy blog, "we seem to be of no greater intellectual value to RMS than a bunch of monkeys."

Note: Muir-Wood is a prominent AGW proponent, even to the point of participating in public debates:

http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/201...london-debate/

[bill]

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

bill
Be prepared for the movement.
Like it or not carbon markets will develop.

On 15 February 2011 Mercer's Responsible Investment (RI) team launched Climate Change Scenarios - Implications for Strategic Asset Allocation,
http://www.mercer.com/articles/1406410


MSM
Dan Rather Reports, March 1, 2011
http://www.hd.net/programs/danrather/

I noticed Dan Rather interviewing Hyperion, they may need all the help they can get.
http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/201...clear-battery/

February 23, 2011

This week I wrote a piece for the magazine on what many energy analysts believe to be the future of the nuclear industry: small modular reactors.
These mini reactors, which generate up to 300 megawatts compared to 1500 megawatts for traditional large nuclear power plants, are all the rage because they are versatile and cheap. My story focused on the smallest of the small reactors--the 25 megawatt Hyperion Power Module (a.k.a the nuclear battery) which Denver-based Hyperion Power hopes will soon fuel subdivisions, mining operations, military bases, hospitals, desalination plants and even cruise liners around the world soon.
But it is a competitor, it seems, that may be the first company to break ground on a commercial mini reactor in the U.S. This week the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) revealed to me that the Tennessee Valley Authority, the U.S.'s biggest public utility, had exchanged letters with the NRC about receiving licensing for two small reactors at its Clinch River site—and the reactors will be designed by Babcock & Wilcox, a maker of nuclear-propulsion systems for the US Navy.
That's significant because a problem facing Small Modular Reactors is that the NRC is already reviewing a dozen applications for new large reactor designs. The Babcock & Wilcox design, called mPower, is based on existing (but miniaturized) technology. That makes it more likely to have a smooth licensing process than more novel designs, the NRC told me.
The Hyperion Power Module is a new design, which the company says makes it more safe than traditional reactors but which the NRC, while not commenting the company's claims on safety, says will require the module to undergo a particularly extensive review before it can be licensed.
Hyperion's executives have expressed frustration at energy conferences about the NRC's lengthy review process, and have said that it will likely build modules abroad first as a result. Not so fast, say the NRC, as any nuclear technology exported from the U.S. would need approval from several agencies, including the NRC.
So it may be Babcock & Wilcox that wins the race to be the first mini reactor by a U.S. company. Recently Babcock & Wilcox told The Economist that the company's small reactor offers another advantage on top of mature technology: "Because it can use existing power-transmission lines without overloading them, the mPower can act as a "drop-in replacement" for ageing coal furnaces without the need for costly refurbishment."

Hyperion power's nuclear battery has all the gee-whiz factor of new technology--and it's CEO may indeed be proven correct that the reactor is a "game-changer" for the industry. But as of now, it seems that it will be reactor with more a mature and tested design that will likely be the first small reactor licensed in the U.S. by the NRC.

[cjppjc]

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

getting rich people to act in concert is no more easy than getting poor people,

Much good could be accomplished if a way could be found to get rich people to act in the best interests of all. I wish I had a good idea.

[c1ue]

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

I apologize for anything i said that might have been inflammatory.

No worries!

I have a big emotional button around this because i watched and researched carefully the propaganda machine evolve around the 'climate skeptics' movement while being embedded in a different propaganda machine (academia).

Indeed. You may note I have not made any comments on the recent drubbing on AGW in the House due to Republicans' new control. What's going on there is purely political; the reactionary side is no more correct than the revolutionary one.

I tried to give public talks at the time (2003) to raise the discourse to a rational argument but found that i could not find a rational audience. We simply have failed to educate our society to think critically. I tried to simply put some facts out there, but even that seems to be impossible in this environment.

Further, i find that rational solutions get little audience. The real root cause of this issue (to me) is that people aren't used to rational discourse over debate. You cannot debate facts. You debate inferences based on those facts. And in the end everybody has a couple agendas they do not wish to give up:

Indeed, this is what EJ has referred to by the BullHorn and the kazoo analogy. He's also noted in this very thread how poorly this entire situation has been set up and how it seems very politically motivated as opposed to factual.

EJ has also noted, as I have (in the Austrian vs. FIRE thread: http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...s.-itulip-FIRE) that there seems to be something beyond pure self interest in how people behave.

Whether this is due to enemy action (MSM), some inherent human herding behavior, some strange metaphysical/emotional meme, or combination thereof, nonetheless it seems clear that there are 'tipping points' at least with human behavior.

I did 3 very poorly by escalating to make a point. Didn't feel good. Again, sorry.

Again, no worries. I actually am fairly thick-skinned - I have no people on my 'ignore' list and I do pretty much read all thread and all replies.

At some point, generally after dozens and dozens of posts where a clear agenda and also a clear lack of desire to learn is exhibited, then I will react.

There are a number of those whom I disagree with but have agreed to disagree. Some things simply are not able to be settled by debate.

However, I would note that one fundamental weakness of rational debate is the assumption that the person/movement/idea being debated is of equally rational and objective provenance.

While I am not a conspiracy theorist - getting rich people to act in concert is no more easy than getting poor people, and likely more difficult, nonetheless all groups of people do share certain areas where there is clear mutual interest.

The furthering of this mutual interest can take many forms both conscious and subconscious.

[Jill Nephew]

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

I apologize for anything i said that might have been inflammatory.

I have a big emotional button around this because i watched and researched carefully the propaganda machine evolve around the 'climate skeptics' movement while being embedded in a different propaganda machine (academia).

I tried to give public talks at the time (2003) to raise the discourse to a rational argument but found that i could not find a rational audience. We simply have failed to educate our society to think critically. I tried to simply put some facts out there, but even that seems to be impossible in this environment.

Further, i find that rational solutions get little audience. The real root cause of this issue (to me) is that people aren't used to rational discourse over debate. You cannot debate facts. You debate inferences based on those facts. And in the end everybody has a couple agendas they do not wish to give up:

1. Short term economic gains and the cost of the long term
2. A desire to consume shared resources in a selfish, irresponsible manner (myself included, i would love to do a road trip right now, what hypocrisy!).

It is another variant on 'the tragedy of the commons' - with all things environmental.

As such i have 3 real tools at my disposal:
1. Try to push political agendas that force governing bodies to consider the commons at the expense of the individuals right to choose.
2. Use social pressure with my immediates (shaming, shunning, ridicule etc. - all the normal unpleasant social tools that have, for example, driven the massive green movement)
3. Educate people how to examine their thinking processes

I did 3 very poorly by escalating to make a point. Didn't feel good. Again, sorry.