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December 09, 2009

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Neo
To a psychologist, climate change looks as if it was designed to be ignored.
It is a global problem, with no obvious villains and no one-step solutions, whose worst effects seem as if they’ll befall somebody else at some other time. In short, if someone set out to draw up a problem that people would not care about, one expert on human behavior said, it would look exactly like climate change.

Now they invoke the use of a psychologist to tell us that we are being irrational when it comes to spending a mere few trillions of dollars.

Neo

Maybe I’m naïve

There used to be this commercial that started with ... "I'm not a doctor, but ..."

Krugman might as well be saying .. "I'm not a climate scientist (or anything close), but ..." or perhaps simply "I’m guilty of being naïve"

narciso

That's the same calculus they used to rationalize the passage of the stimulus, and when their numbers don't bear out, it's 'look,squirrel'. Of course they ignore the science, the massaged numbers like some spa
in Mob controlled Vegas, Orwell has been born out, they really think 2+2=5, under the right
circumstances.

Neo

Al Gore (Global Saviour and Time Traveler) ...

What we’re seeing is a set of changes worldwide that just make this discussion over 10-year-old e-mails kind of silly.

last e-mail:
Date: Thu Nov 12 10:18:54 2009

Don't misunderstand Al’s point .. you see Al Gore lives in the future .. sometime around 2019.

Charlie (Colorado)

Don't misunderstand Al’s point .. you see Al Gore lives in the future

... and on Neptune.

Neo

Hey, with Al Gore living 10 years into the future, even if Global Warming is ever proven true, we have another 10 years before the window closes.

narciso

He might actually think he lives in the world of "Blade Runner", then again he might think that cartoon that his daughter wrote for, Futurama, was actualy a documentary

NewYorkCentral

The people who claim that the so-called 'green jobs revolution' will increase employment are suffering from the broken windows fallacy - sure, I guess some jobs will be created building wind turbines for a while, but expensive and unreliable electric power is certain to destroy at least as many jobs as are created (2.2 destroyed for every 1 created in Spain, for example). I'm really disappointed to see NYT's Nobel-Prize winning economist fall victim to one of the classic blunders.

ShivaWatchesWhileKaliDances

12/8/09 article:
Mumbai: Chicago man charged for terrorist attacks in India


David Coleman Headley aka Daood Gilani
(Photo credit NY Post)

IS THIS THE SAME MAN TO OBAMA’S LEFT?

(Jpg posted by Sara on 11/27/09 in http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/11/traditional-black-friday-open-thread/comments/page/2/#comments”>Black Friday thread.)

Could this be why the MSM has been pushing the gatecrasher story? A smokescreen for a Mumbai terrorist being present at the 11/24/09 White House State Dinner for India's Prime Minister Singh ?!

The article says he was arrested in October and criminal charges filed on Monday, 12/7/09. Could it be that he was out on bail while attending the State Dinner?

We’ll have to look at this picture carefully to see if it’s the same man. Wonder if the Secret Service still have the attendee lists.

clarice

I thought the claim that they were 10 years old was false..thanks, I didn't want to bother to sort thru them again.

And, yes, Neo, I saw that ridiculous psychological argument , too. When you don't have facts i suppose it's okay to just suggest your opposition is tetched.

Dennis D

Krugman can no longer be taken seriously as an Economist and should always be viewed as a partisan pundit with a degree in economics. His Nobel is worth as much as Obama's and Arafats,

Jane

Holy Cow (whoever you are - are you kim)?

That's pretty bizarre!

Porchlight

IS THIS THE SAME MAN TO OBAMA’S LEFT?

Sure looks like it.

Neo

building wind turbines

Nearly all turbines, not just wind turbines, are built now in China.

Porchlight

Then again, the guy also looks just like the Indian prime minister, Singh:

Did the NYPost get their pics mixed up?

Tom Bowler

So Jane, off topic but what do you think about Brown's chances against Coakley to replace Kennedy in January? The media are already calling it for Coakley, but I'm looking for a even the smallest shred of hope.

Porchlight

D'oh - that's what happened. The pic that is supposedly of David Coleman Headley aka Daood Gilani is actually a pic of the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh:

CV of Dr. Manmohan Singh

(with the following pic)


Sue

The man to the left of Obama is the PM of India http://pmindia.nic.in/>Dr. Manmohan Singh.

Jane

Tom,

I posted about this elsewhere but yesterday on the radio Dick (who thinks he is a campaign guru) thinks he can win.

I was trying to find a breakdown by town of the results but haven't yet.

Dick's strategy for Brown is to not campaign in Middlesex County, but everywhere else - because Middlesex will go for Coakley. That's not a bad strategy because it is also so liberal. No one is geared up about this election (10% voted) so it will be turnout. And anger fuels turnout.

My opinion is that Brown should talk about 2 things: One: he is the 41st vote against healthcare in the senate and 2. jobs.

I really see an angry rumble percolating in central MA but we tend to be more conservative. It will be interesting to see if Dave and Rocco have the same feeling.

I wish the National Republican party would help out - but we will see.

I'm going to interview Brown on the radio in the next few weeks so let me know if you have any questions.

centralcal

I don't think the NYPost mixed up the pictures. If you follow the original story link it takes you to some Examiner website. They got the picture wrong.

Porchlight

Jane, thanks for all your great work in MA. If (per the the Kilimanjaro thread last night) you can turn around your co-host I think you can turn around a lot of folks. Just keep doing what you're doing, it's working.

Porchlight

centralcal, you're right, the link goes to the Houston Examiner. The commenter credited the NY Post but I didn't check to see what pic (if any) they ran. Ah, need more coffee so as not to run after wild geese.

narciso

Right, that seemed a little odd, but with Robert Creamer, a convicted felon for bank fraud, and the author of the primer for the Obama takeover plan, visiting the White House
who could say The world is deeply absurd,

Porchlight

Obama hits new low in Quinnipiac poll, 46% approval

And with that, I'm off to the dentist.

Jane

Thanks Porch. I have no idea if anyone is listening.

At an rate I just heard a Kerry staffer on Fox say:

"For 8 years George Bush and Sarah Palin denied the earth was warming."

Aside from the fact that is not true (to my chagrin) I cannot believe that the democrat strategy is to still blame George Bush and add Sarah Palin to the mix. They must be scared to death.

narciso

This is who I'm referring to, in the LUN

Sue

ShivaWatchesWhileKaliDances,

Okay, back to the important stuff, who are you? Are you Kim?

Rob Crawford

I cannot believe that the democrat strategy is to still blame George Bush and add Sarah Palin to the mix.

Why not? They've based their politics on anger, hatred, fear, and greed for the last decade. This is nothing new, just an adjustment.

Just think of Bush and Palin as stand-ins for Emmanuel Goldstein.

Pofarmer

See, here's the problem with that. Coal fired power plants are going to start going offline. Can we build gas and windmills fast enough to keep from having spot blackouts? How much are costs going to increase if businesses have to generate their own power for a portion of the day? There are just too many unknowns here. People are assuming that things will just goin with "business as usual", but, as I am myself running on a generator this morning, I can tell you that that makes things anything but usual. It takes a lot of generator capacity to run a factory, or, even a small business. I think they are SERIOUSLY underestimating the economic impacts here, and they will be ADDITIVE. Higher electricity and higher fuel prices and different building codes, materials, etc, will build increased costs into EVERYTHING.


"For 8 years George Bush and Sarah Palin denied the earth was warming."

Yeah, well, it wasn't.

The Unbeliever
I cannot believe that the democrat strategy is to still blame George Bush and add Sarah Palin to the mix.
I guess we were wrong in 2004; BDS is apparently a chronic disease, not one cured after 4 years.
Tom Bowler

Jane, thanks. That's much more hopeful than I expected.

I found the town by town results here. Although the primaries may not be good predictors for the general election I didn't find the results to be at all encouraging. The total number of Republican votes was lower than the number cast for Coakley's runner up.

Other than questions that might encourage Brown towards campaigning as a tea partier, I can't think of any questions I'd like you to ask. If I think of anything specific I'll let you know, and I'll try to listen to your interview. Wouldn't it be great if he won.

Rick Ballard

Clarice,

Another letter, signed by 141 people with rather substantial credentials:

His Excellency Ban Ki Moon

Secretary-General, United Nations

New York, NY

United States of America

8 December 2009

Dear Secretary-General,

Climate change science is in a period of ‘negative discovery’ - the more we learn about this exceptionally complex and rapidly evolving field the more we realize how little we know. Truly, the science is NOT settled.

Therefore, there is no sound reason to impose expensive and restrictive public policy decisions on the peoples of the Earth without first providing convincing evidence that human activities are causing dangerous climate change beyond that resulting from natural causes. Before any precipitate action is taken, we must have solid observational data demonstrating that recent changes in climate differ substantially from changes observed in the past and are well in excess of normal variations caused by solar cycles, ocean currents, changes in the Earth's orbital parameters and other natural phenomena.

We the undersigned, being qualified in climate-related scientific disciplines, challenge the UNFCCC and supporters of the United Nations Climate Change Conference to produce convincing OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE for their claims of dangerous human-caused global warming and other changes in climate. Projections of possible future scenarios from unproven computer models of climate are not acceptable substitutes for real world data obtained through unbiased and rigorous scientific investigation.

Specifically, we challenge supporters of the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused climate change to demonstrate that:

1. Variations in global climate in the last hundred years are significantly outside the natural range experienced in previous centuries;
2. Humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHG) are having a dangerous impact on global climate;
3. Computer-based models can meaningfully replicate the impact of all of the natural factors that may significantly influence climate;
4. Sea levels are rising dangerously at a rate that has accelerated with increasing human GHG emissions, thereby threatening small islands and coastal communities;
5. The incidence of malaria is increasing due to recent climate changes;
6. Human society and natural ecosystems cannot adapt to foreseeable climate change as they have done in the past;
7. Worldwide glacier retreat, and sea ice melting in Polar Regions , is unusual and related to increases in human GHG emissions;
8. Polar bears and other Arctic and Antarctic wildlife are unable to adapt to anticipated local climate change effects, independent of the causes of those changes;
9. Hurricanes, other tropical cyclones and associated extreme weather events are increasing in severity and frequency;
10. Data recorded by ground-based stations are a reliable indicator of surface temperature trends.

It is not the responsibility of ‘climate realist’ scientists to prove that dangerous human-caused climate change is not happening. Rather, it is those who propose that it is, and promote the allocation of massive investments to solve the supposed ‘problem’, who have the obligation to convincingly demonstrate that recent climate change is not of mostly natural origin and, if we do nothing, catastrophic change will ensue. To date, this they have utterly failed to do so.

I'd say AL. Ron Gore and his 30 Jerks of the Inner Circle of Climate Scientology are running into a cooling trend with building headwinds.

narciso

In other news, the world is still not flat, now one of the sites I infrequently visit is this dystopian science fiction blog, Autumn 211O, and the poor fellow who runs it, is beside himself saying Dubai's fall is the product of peak oil, (face palm) and quotes
Jim Kunstler, to further the humiliation. And
of course denies the essentials of Climategate

Joseph Brown

That dadburn Harry Truman caused (insert false statement here).
Hey, if the Obama administration can do it with GWB, I can do it with Truman. Don't get me started on FDR.

That dadburn Truman!

Jane

Tom,

I think Dick is just stuck in campaign mode - he wants to be involved. But I am seriously pissed at how the media is handling this race. Yesterday they never mentioned either republican's name, and today they are saying "Republicans have already conceded".

I think they are underestimating how angry people are, but that might be wishful thinking on my part.

Pofarmer

Excellent link, Rick. I think the warmistas are about to get rolled by reality.

narciso

Even the Boston Herald and the local Fox station, Jane

fdcol63

I'll keep repeating this because it needs to be repeated:

This site goes a great job of explaining the real, nefarious motives behind the whole AGW "global warming" and Green Movement scam:

http://www.green-agenda.com/

You need to read through all of it to get the whole scope of the strategy and goals.

clarice

Rick, I saw that and thought to blog it, but then it just looks like a numbers game--we already know the "consensus" argument is absurd and fraudulent.

I liked that Australian stuff on Watts up even more but I think someone else may have posted that on AT. (The climategate stories keep rolling along at a rapid clip.)

Dave (in MA)

Jane, I don't really follow basketball, but it occurred to me last night that we just saw the biggest waste of Celtics ownership's money since Pervis Ellison. The guy was a Dubya and Mitt supporter and then decided that he could buy a Senatorship by running as a moonbat and buying up more ad time than Bud Lite. Great move. Came in 4th.

Rick Ballard

Clarice,

The entire fraud is a "numbers game" but I certainly understand what you're saying. It's very hard to communicate the phoniness of a "global average temperature" based upon "adjusted" instrumental observations. E.M. Smith knows where the body is buried in the "adjustments" but it takes a bit of reading and a little thought to understand that using thermometers next to runways will tend to raise night time minimum temperatures somewhat more than the enHansened UHI "adjustment" accounts for.

I anticipate seeing Anthony Watts' presentation of an "unadjusted rural station only" dataset shortly. Perhaps that will aid in the exposure of the Hansen/Wigley/Jones "adjustment" fraud.

AT is really doing an excellent job of following the story.

narciso

Wasn't he a partner at Mitt's firm, Bain Capital, Pagliouca (sic) I mean

Tom Bowler

Jane,

Up until the day before the primary vote, I had no idea who the Republican candidates were. In fact I wondered if Republicans had already decided not to run a candidate, because here in southern New Hampshire the only TV ads that made it across the border were for Coakley, Capuano, and Pagliuca. Pathetic ads, by the way. Extraordinarily left.

But there is every reason to see why it worked out that way. Brown had no competition, so he barely campaigned. Republican voters couldn't have felt particularly motivated to get out and vote.

The Democrats had to play to the far left for any hope of getting nominated, and since there was a choice of candidates a fair turnout could be expected.

Massachusetts Republicans and independents have a unique opportunity, now that they suddenly find themselves with the leverage to stuff health care reform by electing Brown. Maybe they'll actually pull it off. It ought to be very interesting.

Jane

Dave,

He should have run as a republican. Bain Capital and "I'm for the public option" are not compatible. He now has name recognition.

I just got a call and was told the time of my show is changing in Jan. Hmmm I wonder if this is the beginning of the end?

clarice

I think they are, too, Rick. For non-statisticians/scientists/engineers the trick is to accurately boil down these things so they can understand what the anti-warmist scientists are saying without quitting their day jobs.

Some years ago Jams Lewis at AT did a brilliant job of this (without all these charts, etc) by explaining how many variable there are in climate forecasting and how large the margin of error is in each variable.

OT:From the WaPo coverage today it seems that Fitz' prosecution and conviction of Conrad Black has drawn serious fire from the entire SCOTUS bench. The question seems to be is the honest services" statute so vague as to require being pitched as unconstitutional or can the court just fashion a reading far narrower than the out of control prosecutors have been using.

Is Blagojevich' indictment based on the same statute? I forget.

Dave (in MA)

Pagliuca is still with the outfit, yep.

Jane

Tom,

I agree with you about the opportunity. Jack E Robinson ran again. The only the I recall about his last senate race is that it was reported he was sleeping in his car. His ad against Brown was: "He's a RINO" If that is all I knew I might have considered voting for him. Brown got 90% of the vote.

cathyf
"For 8 years George Bush and Sarah Palin denied the earth was warming."

Yeah, well, it wasn't.

...and he didn't.

(Not sure about her -- I think she's been agnostic, right?)

Extraneus

Changing to when, Jane?

daddy

"it occurred to me last night that we just saw the biggest waste of Celtics ownership's money since Pervis Ellison."

Dave,

I take your point but I think Len Bias was an even bigger waste of Celtic's money, as he didn't even make it to Boston before croaking on crack.

narciso

You're right, cathyf, she's been more firm against the idea that it is manmade, which seems a sign of egotism, to think we can
really alter the climate

narciso

Ouch, daddy, a bit harsh there. Btw what dod you think of persilly, being oppointed natural
gas coordinator, he's the one who compared Sarah to Evita, in every place from Bloomberg
to the Guardian and People Magazine, a legacy
of Knowles and Murkowski, an aide to Hawker

cathyf
Is Blagojevich' indictment based on the same statute? I forget.
Yep. Local news here yesterday is that they are anticipating counts to drop/add after SCOTUS rules on "Honest Services"

(Am I the only one chuckling that the Queen of Typos spelled Blagojevich perfectly? ;)

Jane

I dunno - probably 11:00 AM. I want to see what happens before I talk about it. (I know, I brought it up)

jimmyk

Now they invoke the use of a psychologist to tell us that we are being irrational when it comes to spending a mere few trillions of dollars.

A favorite trick of the left. I remember Dr. Helen Caldicott doing the same thing about the threat of nuclear annihilation. She invoked "cognitive dissonance" for anyone who denied not the threat, but her preferred "solution" (some combination of unilateral disarmament and arms control agreements if I recall correctly).

The sky is always falling for these people, and if you don't agree than there's obviously something wrong with you.

Extraneus

Might be a good time. Aren't you on at 12 now, competing with Rush?

Captain Hate

I think Len Bias was an even bigger waste of Celtic's money, as he didn't even make it to Boston before croaking on crack.

Ouch; did he ever sign a contract with them?

Dave (in MA)

daddy, true, but Pervis was quite a bit more recent than Bias.

daddy

Last night I listened to ">http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&source=hp&q=steve+macintyre+on+campbell+brown&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=rdcfS-yvLYqsswOEpMmBCg&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CBYQqwQwAw#hl=en&source=hp&q=steve+macintyre+on+campbell+brown&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=rdcfS-yvLYqsswOEpMmBCg&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CBYQqwQwAw&qvid=steve+macintyre+on+campbell+brown&vid=-1257553472570059945"> this CNN segment of Campbell Browne's, interviewing AGW sceptic Steve Macintyre, and Princeton Professor Michael Oppenheimer who helped write the UN's Climate Change Report.

I was disappointed because though Macintyre did a fair job of rebuttal on a very select topic, in my view Oppenheimer got away with trotting out this well prepared list of bullet points on the entire Climate Agenda, and in I think the minds of the average CNN viewer, a single glove wasn't decently laid on him in rebuttal.

Here's exactly what Oppenheimer spouted in well prepared bullet-point fashion, and this is what we're going to be hearing from here on out, and we have to do a better job of effectively and immediately countering each one of these untruths, or in my opinion we are not going to be successful in winning the minds of the folks not intimately paying attention to this debate.

It concerns the CRU leaked data:

"There was no deception here. I mean lets step back,
From a scientific point of view, before this episode occurred we knew:

-The earth was warming
-Sea Level was rising
-Glaciers were melting
-The Sea Ice was retreating
-The ocean is becoming more acidic
-All due to the buildup of the GreenHouse gases

Nothing in this episode changes any of that

Even if you think that the British group was somehow cheating which I don't believe it was, you can throw them out, and there are 3 other groups, The Japanese Group, and 2 American groups who've done analysis on the temperature data and reached the conclusion:

- that Earth is warming and the warming is unique in climate history,

so there is nothing here that changes the picture

The critics have had decades, because they have access to the data too, they have had decades to prove that the global warming observations are wrong and they haven't been able to do it. Until they do we know:

-that greenhouse gases are building up,
-that's partly responsible for the warming of the Earth,
-and until those emissions are brought under control, (for instance by the governments meeting in Copenhagen right now),
-the Earth is simply going to continue to warm."

In my view Oppenheimer was better prepared making his case than his opponents and we better do a better job of counterattacking.

A place to start I suppose would be by our side analyzing the actual lies and half-truths in the above bullet statements of Oppenheimers, and being prepared to immediately counterattack them with pithy factual rebuttals.

And he didn't even have to say this was the warmest decade in history because Campbell Browne said it fir him, plus she repeated, while introducing Macintyre, that Macintyre has been called a Bozo, a Moron, and "the Joe McCarthy of Climate Change". An excellent job of poisoning the Jury before the segment even began.

Jane

Aren't you on at 12 now, competing with Rush?

Ex,

The thought of "competing with Rush" is hysterical. But yes.

sylvia

I read a comment somewhere from someone saying the earth has been warming for the last 200 years, as it comes out of a mini ice age. So since the trend is up, of course each new year will be the warmest on record. Until we reach the peak and start decreasing. That makes sense to me.

clarice

Jane and the gang--next tea party here on tax day:

For the past few weeks we've been hard at work putting together what will be the biggest Tea Party Express of them all!From March 27 - April 15, 2010 the "Tea Party Express III: Just Vote Them Out" tour will cross the nation holding tea party rallies in dozens of cities across America, culminating in the grand daddy rally of them all in Washington, D.C. on tax day!We'll be kicking off the effort with another mega rally - on the opposite end of the country, in Searchlight, NV - Harry Reid's hometown (population of just over 500 people). We're

Old Lurker

Obviously big news in DC at the time - as I recall, Bias was picked by them in the draft, went to NY (?) to accept, signed a big deal endorsement contract (can't recall if he also signed the contract to play), returned to DC, partied some, then died the next morning of a heart stoppage brought on by cocaine use. All I recall was "cocaine"...don't remember it as crack.

MayBee

Didn't Bias die the day after he was drafted? I'm not sure the Celtics ever paid him a dime.

daddy

"Ouch, daddy, a bit harsh there. Btw what did you think of persilly, being oppointed natural
gas coordinator, he's the one who compared Sarah to Evita,"

Narciso I am constantly amazed at how much more you are up on what goes on up here than I am. I know nothing about this guy but will try to learn. Our current big item, besides the pseudo authority to start exploratory drilling, is Repub candidates lining up to challenge Sarah's successor, Sean Parnell, as Governor in 2010. The radio interviews have started and they are intent on defeating Parnell, because he is continuing Sarah's Aces agenda and they want to overturn that in favor of some previous Murkowsky scheme.

Will try to educate myself on this new oil guy you mentioned.

Old Lurker

LUN is the Wiki on Len Bias. Brings it all back.

daddy

MayBee you're prob'ly right.

I was just shooting my mouth off trying to cause Captain Hate and discontent:)

Jane

I'm in Clarice! Do you think we can get the same arrangements?

Tom Bowler

Clarice & Jane,

Count me in too! Whatever the arrangements!

Jane

Oh good Tom and this time we will find you!

clarice

Sure--I'll call in and ask for reservations as soon as you give me names and dates.

clarice

(Pls do that by email)

anduril

Wow! Some pretty long posts on this thread--I'm really going to have to extend myself to compete!

Here's an interesting post at the Official Google Blog: Google Chrome for the holidays: Mac, Linux and extensions in beta. Bottom line: Google is bragging about the snappy performance of their Chrome browser for the Mac ("there's hardly even time for the icon in the dock to bounce!"), and they're urging Mac users to download the beta and give it a try.

New betas for Linux and Windows are also out. Re Linux, Google notes:

At Google, most engineers use Linux machines, so we certainly heard loud and clear how much they wanted Google Chrome for Linux.
Patrick R. Sullivan

Sarah Palin on her Global Warming beliefs:

I've always believed that policy should be based on sound science, not politics. As governor of Alaska, I took a stand against politicized science when I sued the federal government over its decision to list the polar bear as an endangered species despite the fact that the polar bear population had more than doubled.....

Our representatives in Copenhagen should remember that good environmental policymaking is about weighing real-world costs and benefits -- not pursuing a political agenda. That's not to say I deny the reality of some changes in climate -- far from it. I saw the impact of changing weather patterns firsthand while serving as governor of our only Arctic state. I was one of the first governors to create a subcabinet to deal specifically with the issue and to recommend common-sense policies to respond to the coastal erosion, thawing permafrost and retreating sea ice that affect Alaska's communities and infrastructure.

But while we recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can't say with assurance that man's activities cause weather changes. We can say, however, that any potential benefits of proposed emissions reduction policies are far outweighed by their economic costs. And those costs are real.

Jane

Clarice,

As soon as I find my calender for next year - I have no idea where I put it, I'll email you.

Captain Hate

I was just shooting my mouth off trying to cause Captain Hate and discontent:)

LOL; spoken like a true pussy blue Tarhole. Although I can't bring myself to hate them as much under Roy as when the patron saint of nicotine addiction, St. Deanie, ran the show. My brother told me a story that makes me kind of tolerate the big-schnozzed coot: My bro had gotten to a Terps/Holes matchup early when the teams were still warming up. Deano was within shouting distance so my brother yelled out "Dean, I've got a nice fresh carton of Marlboros for you if you tank the game". Dean never turned around but my brother could see his shoulders shaking ostensibly from laughing.

anduril

The Institutional Risk Analyst has a really good post: Martin Mayer: Audit the Fed! Ben Bernanke: Beneath the Banksters. They start out with a great quote, the closing lines of Martin Mayer's book, The Bankers:

The tragedy for all of us would be if the Fed's and the Treasury's and the Congress's reverence for people who make a lot of money left us unprotected against some sudden revelation of the truth that becomes obvious only in hindsight, that a lot of them don't know what they're doing.

Then the authors go on to quote Mayer at length, in favor of Congress auditing the Fed. First Mayer points out that "under our system of government, the Congress can no more give the Fed full policy independence than the President can resign as commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy," but then he makes some more substantive observations:

In this context, one probably should note that the Fed's oft-repeated concern about populist pressures for cheap money has always been eyewash. As Bray Hammond demonstrated in his Pulitzer Prize history of Banks and Money in the United States From the Revolution to the Civil War, it's the merchant class, the builders, the shadow bankers and the government who want inflation, while the farmers and workers want stable values for their earnings.

And right now more than monetary policy is involved. Over the course of the last year and a half, the Federal Reserve has created hundreds of billions of dollars and turned them over to the big banks and the big brokerage houses and the big insurance companies of American International Group. Some of the losses that have been and will be associated with these activities-especially those associated with AIG, Lehman Brothers and the government-sponsored enterprise Fannie Mae--are expenditures of the kind the Constitution says can be made only "in consequence of appropriations." The public defense of these activities is essentially an assertion that "we were right to panic."

They then go on to give some interesting historical perspective on the whole current situation, with a focus on Bernanke's performance--they're not impressed:

Economists like to brag about their study of the Great Depression, as though merely going through the mainstream descriptions of the economic meltdown of the 1930s is sufficient qualification to be, say, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board or head the Council of Economic Advisers. But judging by the performance of the current cast of characters in Washington, one wonders if our public servants so much studied the Depression years as they are merely imitating it, following a well worn political path of duplicity and stupidity all too typical in American financial history.

The trouble with most economists, you see, is that they ignore politics. For example, the years of comfortable republican misgovernance under George W. Bush bear close resemblance to the period of laissez faire following the progressive years of President Woodrow Wilson, which saw the creation of regulatory agencies such as the Federal Reserve and the Federal Trade Commission. But Wilson's liberal perspective was the exception to the rule.

In those days, as today, JPMorgan and the other New York banks mostly called the shots in Washington and caused members of Congress to jump through hoops of fire like trained dogs. Alan Greenspan finds a close political analog in Dick Crissinger, a banker and home town friend of former newspaper publisher Warren Harding who thought, like former Fed Chairman Greenspan and now Chairman Bernanke, that bankers were the perfect mechanisms to carry out public policy.

And there's lots more.

Daddy

LOL Captain Hate back at cha',


That's a great story from your Brother ---glad to know there's also a Lieutenant Hate.

narciso

Well there were downturns in 1837, and 1893 they called that depressions, panics in 1858 1873, and 1907, the brief 1920-1921 downturn, in all these instances except fo 1929, the idea seemed to be to get out of the problem

Neo
The world has just ten years to bring greenhouse gas emissions under control before the damage they cause become irreversible, the Met Office has warned.
.. Deja vu ? ...
According to July 5, 1989, article in the Miami Herald, the then-director of the New York office of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Noel Brown, warned of a “10-year window of opportunity to solve” global warming.
anduril

no longer narciso--now the idea is not to waste a crisis by getting out of it and back to normal life. now we're going to use the crisis to turn life upside down based on ideology.

jimmyk

In those days, as today, JPMorgan and the other New York banks mostly called the shots in Washington

"In those days" they couldn't eat at the taxpayer trough, and basically solved the problems themselves without the government's help. (See Jean Strouse's bio off J.P. Morgan, the person, and the account of the panic of 1907. The only government involvement was an antitrust waiver on a merger.) The problem today is that Geithner and Bernanke view our tax dollars as just so much monopoly money to play with as they deem fit.

bgates

For 8 years George Bush and Sarah Palin denied the earth was warming.

Palin was the mayor of Wasilla 8 years ago.

From a scientific point of view, before this episode occurred we knew:

...
-All due to the buildup of the GreenHouse gases

No, we didn't. There was evidence each of those things was going on, but the idea that it was unprecedented and due to human activity rested on speculation.

Nothing in this episode changes any of that

Even if you think that the British group was somehow cheating which I don't believe it was, you can throw them out, and there are 3 other groups, The Japanese Group, and 2 American groups who've done analysis on the temperature data and reached the conclusion:

- that Earth is warming and the warming is unique in climate history,

There are a lot of modelers working with the data, but they all seem to use data from the same source. We now know that data is flawed. No conclusions can be drawn from it.

The critics have had decades, because they have access to the data too

That's a fairly obvious lie. The emails talk about destroying data rather than hand it over in response to FOI requests; after the release of the emails, the institutions involved said the raw data was tossed out years ago.

-that greenhouse gases are building up,
-that's partly responsible for the warming of the Earth,

If they'd just stop there I think we'd be in full agreement....

-and until those emissions are brought under control, (for instance by the governments meeting in Copenhagen right now),
-the Earth is simply going to continue to warm."

Errant nonsense. The earth has been this warm in the past and then cooled. The models that supposedly predict continued warming weren't able to predict the last decade's (flat) temperatures (a failure that one of the researchers called a "travesty" in the Climategate emails). And even if the warming continued, there's divided opinion on whether that would be bad - how many people vacation in Hawaii, California, and Florida vs Alberta, North Dakota, and Norway? Do we grow more food in Kansas or Greenland? (Interesting name, "Greenland" - as though at one time in recorded history it was warm and lush even though now it's frozen. Huh.)

Of course, government control fetishists want more government control whether climate change is a problem, a boon, or imaginary. Ask the Democrats what to do about climate change and they'll say "government regulation"; ask 17-year-old boys what to do and they'll say "go to Hooters". It's their solution to everything.

anduril

very true, jimmyk. i was just about to repeat for narciso what mayer wrote:

"As Bray Hammond demonstrated in his Pulitzer Prize history of Banks and Money in the United States From the Revolution to the Civil War, it's the merchant class, the builders, the shadow bankers and the government who want inflation, while the farmers and workers want stable values for their earnings."

the sad fact is that the advent of the income tax that transformed america. once politicians learned about the possibilities of leverage in politics the utility of tax revenues for buying constituencies became apparent. and as the state grew, the merchant class and the government learned about one hand washing the other--to the detriment of the country at large.

Janet

Next Tea Party!
April 15th is on a Thurs.. I'd be glad to offer an open house JOM party the 14th, the evening of the 15th, or the 16th. We could show them what a true chattering class is!

Jane

How fun Janet!

jimmyk

As Bray Hammond demonstrated

That doesn't square with my understanding. The opposite, in fact. Banks lend long and borrow short, they don't want inflation. It was the farmers who borrowed and were happy to pay back in devalued dollars. That was William Jennings Bryan's ticket to fame.

Maybe the problem is Mayer's reading comprehension. From a critique of Hammond (LUN):

For Hammond, those who opposed inflation and fiat money, supported the gold standard, defended property rights, believed in the enforcement of contractual obligations were "economic royalists" and "conservatives." Remember, for Hammond conservative is a negative term.

Hammond, incidentally, was at the Fed in the 1940s. Not exactly an unbiased source.

narciso

Right, that didn't make sense specially with Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech. One suspects
Hammond would love this current crew in the WH

Captain Hate

glad to know there's also a Lieutenant Hate.

Eh, more like AWOL pending dishonorable discharge Hate; that almost exhausts the positive vignettes I have regarding him.

anduril

jimmyk, narciso, I don't have access to and don't have time to read Mayer's book or Hammond's book. I have no particular brief for Mayer's understanding of Hammond, but on the other hand Mayer is a smart guy and I wouldn't want to accuse him of ignorance or carelessness without good reason.

My recollection is that it was not only farmers who wanted to inflate away their indebtedness but also western mining interests who favored bimetallism. Beyond that I can't go.

As for the critique of Hammond, my impression is that Mayer would basically be on the side of the critics. That is, the critique by Scott Trasker says that Hammond was a fanatical proponent of "the nirvana of fiat money, controlled inflation, and fractional reserve banking under the authority of a government central bank." Trasker obviously doesn't regard that as Nirvana, and it's just as clear that Mayer doesn't, from his demand that Congress exercise more oversight of the Fed. Elsewhere, Trasker writes of Hammond's views:

This is a classic expression of inflationism. Hammond's choice of language is highly significant. Despite the fact that he favors central banking, inflation, government control of the money supply, and state intervention in the economy during crises, Hammond believes that his views are "entrepreneurial" and pro-business.

Trasker also refers (disapprovingly) to the fact that "Hammond applauds this clear evidence of the collusion between the banking and legal community..."

In all this it appears to me that Mayer and Trasker share common ground.

Perhaps more significantly, Trasker compares Biddles attempts in the 1830's to manipulate agricultural (cotton) prices to the actions that FDR took to raise farm prices in the Depression. Unfortunately, Trasker doesn't spell this comparison out in detail, but from the context he appears to be clearly suggesting that FDR's attempt was just as much of a failure as was Biddle's. If that was the case, it seems clear that it harmed farmers rather than helping them.

I'm speculating here, but I'd suggest that what Mayer is saying is that the true interest of farmers and workers (workers for sure) is in sound, stable money, but that big government and big business favor what Trasker calls "controlled inflation" (Trasker opposes that, but Hammond favors it), or what we would call "easy money." The entrepeneurial class that Hammond speaks of would be in favor of "easy money", which would have a long term destructive effect--or so Trasker and (I believe) Mayer would argue. On the one hand, farmers might like paying back debts in inflated dollars, yet inflation would harm them in other ways, I believe. Just like homeowners with fixed rate mortgages initially appear to be helped by inflation but are later squeezed. I know many who are in that position.

Finally, while I realize that the selective quote from Mayer sounds like he approves of Hammond's ideas, the evidence seems to be that he has much more in common with Trasker. Another part of the problem, I suspect, is the rather arbitrary terminology Hammond uses--which Trasker criticizes as well.

See what you think.

Pofarmer

From a scientific point of view, before this episode occurred we knew:

-The earth was warming
Really depends on the data that you look at, and how it's "adjusted".

-Sea Level was rising
Not really.

-Glaciers were melting

Some are, some aren't worldwide, ice extent is UP.

-The Sea Ice was retreating
the Sea Ice goes in cycles. Sea Ice, as a whole, is INCREASING.

-The ocean is becoming more acidic

Recent studies have shown that much sea life actually does BETTER with a little more carbon in the water.

-All due to the buildup of the GreenHouse gases

Unproven THEORY.


The critics have had decades, because they have access to the data too, they have had decades to prove that the global warming observations are wrong and they haven't been able to do it.

The critics have had access to SOME data. Now, one of the real problems has been, that because of failure to release data and code, nobody know's what data that folks like Mann, and Jones, and Briffa has used. When it's finally released, there are invariably real problems. Much of the problem lies in the fact that skeptics DON'T get the warmists results, and need to know what data the warmists used to get their results to analyze what's going on. That's how science works.


that greenhouse gases are building up,

So? We don't have good enough records to really know what past levels were. I've never seen ONE paper validating ice core results.
-that's partly responsible for the warming of the Earth,

Partly, probably accounts for less than half of any current warming, as most of CO2's wavelength overlaps water vapor.

-and until those emissions are brought under control, (for instance by the governments meeting in Copenhagen right now),
The truth of the matter is, the meeting in Copenhagen isn't going to control anything.

-the Earth is simply going to continue to warm."

based on unproven and unverified models.

The problem here, is that for every unfounded claim they make, you have to make a negative claim, so you start to sound like a crank. Truth of the matter is, I expect there to be a LOT more skeptical papers coming out now. How many are in the pipeline that were suppressed? The whole thing is chilling, really, and the fact that folks like Oppenheimer are rah rahhing this crap is depressing.

ManBearPig

Remember how I was kinda orange in one of my debates? That is how you all will look if we don't get an agreement at Kobnhavn. You can deny it, you deniers, but the sun will turn your skin orange.

Old Lurker

Don't you wish we could read columns like the LUN in US papers for a change?

Pofarmer

Oh, nobody on any of the skeptic blogs seems to know what "Japanese Group" Oppenheimer was talking about.

Also, keep in mind that NOAA, GISS, and CRU, are all pretty much working from the same raw data, and that the emails show the heads there all in contact. What are the chances that they are all using the same adjustments? Hell, from the director of the NZ Climatology dept, we learned there's an "international treaty" dealing with adjusting stations. Therefore, the fact that the 3 main databases agree isn't all that surprising. Also, the "2000 scientists" line that the wamists like to use is more like 25 to 50 scientists as the core group. Outside of that, you have a bunch of papers titled, "Iowa to become a desert" based on the work of the primary scientists. It's a pretty tight little racket, really.

daddy

I wish bgates and Pofarmer had been on CNN last night opposite this Oppenheimer guy.

These are tough untruths to beat, and they've gone around the world multiple times while Truth is still in bed awaiting a ruling on his FOIA request.

Pofarmer

We need to be patient, let statisticians and mathematicians and meteorologists and scientists work on the data. Problem is, we also need to prevent our govt from doing something stupid, which looks to be really, really hard.

Pofarmer

I wish bgates and Pofarmer had been on CNN last night opposite this Oppenheimer guy.

Problem is Daddy, all of the stuff that I've researched on this, and $4.00 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks. I don't even want to think how much time I've put in on this.

ManBearPig

You're all wasting your time. The science is settled. Only I can save you.

JM Hanes

You know worms have turned when JOM has to come up with make believe trolls. LOL!

Neo

I once attended a seminar given by a guy who was a expert in radio communications. During a break, he told us a story about how he had developed a burst transmitter design for an agency within the "intelligence community". In the process, he described how not only did this intelligence agency have guys designing radio transmitters that could be hidden, they had another set of guys, a "counter group," who's job it was to detect hidden radio transmitters. These two groups would go after each other in an attempt to come up with the best possible transmitters and the best possible methods of detection.

In climate science, we have a bunch of seemingly half drunken academics who live off the government dole while they concoct amateurish schemes to prove something that it seems has been predetermined to be true, no matter the actual empiric data. The only group of guys trying to test their schemes are underfunded or doing work on their own time, pro-bono.

This process is obviously corrupt. It was never meant to provide the truth. If it was, the government research community would also have a fully funded "counter group" to try to prove that "Anthropogenic Global Warming" doesn't exist, has little impact or at least can be easily mitigated and therefore save billions, if not trillions, of dollars/Euros/pounds on trying to prevent a non sequitur.

The fact that there is no "counter group" immediately brings into question the purpose of the activity and whether it is meant to be part of that "waste, fraud and abuse" that so often infiltrates all vestiges of government. The fact that this is an international activity makes one wonder if the UN has any real function except to give heads of state a chance to go shopping in New York City from time to time and travel to useless conferences where they can dine well and come up with new ideas on how to fleece their citizens at home.

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Wilson/Plame