Our Leader, This Sums it up...

Does Climate Change Matter?

In response to an interview between Climate Skeptic and Esquire Middle East, which is the subject of Reader Opinion Day at the Air Vent. The questions posed by Esquire Middle East are so blatantly biased that disingenuous doesn't begin to cover it. 

My frustration with the whole issue is that the first assumption seems to be it is the only issue. And everything else gets spun according to the requirements of the one issue. For example, deforestation and pollution - it isn't the same problem. Lumping pollution in with the global warming agenda is validation that the warmists don't feel it is a problem worthy of its own analysis. There are far more effective ways to reverse the accumulation of plastic trash in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre that attempting to outlaw oil.

My issue isn't with whether global warming exists or doesn't exist. My issue is that in context, relative to other issues, it does not warrant the level of economic commitment and human suffering that the proposed solutions will entail. The purveyors of the issue wail that if we don't have an earth to live on, then everything else doesn't matter. That is a hysterical argument. If one is willing to accept a qualify of life accorded to the population of say, Afghanistan, then sure, the price can be paid. Energy has consequences, good and bad. Eliminating energy or satisfying ourselves with what can be produced through wind, solar and hydroelectric are unlikely outcomes. Since we simply are not going to find enough members of the global population to willingly go there, taking the argument to its emotional extremes is a waste of time.

In the scheme of things, where does this problem fall on the list of priorities including:

Pollution, environmental destruction, amelioration and reversal of the current state;
Disease and health care, and better delivery systems to populations lacking basic care and prevention;
Food, clean water, population health and nutrition (which is related to disease prevention, and axis of health care);
Human rights - everything from genocide to female excoriation;
Affordable and available energy, since it is the foundation of productivity (without means of economic productivity, how will populations ever achieve self determination)?

An energy idea at least worth civilized discussion

This comes from a Scientific Alliance newsletter. Hats off to Prof Phillip Stott for sharing. Get it from the professor, it is a lot easier to read. The newsletter title is What priority for climate change at a time of European crisis?
The proposition is basically this: Give electricity to the people who don't have it. Tax it.

(So, we aren't really giving it, they are going to pay for it. Somehow). This actually makes some sense because energy is the "master resource" upon which wealth is built. In other words, without energy (electricity), plowing fields, carrying coal out of mines, hauling goods to market with your ox cart, just isn't going to make you competitive. Energy is a multiplier of work. The more work, the more the economic rewards, and the better those markets are for buying products and services from other markets.

Along the way, because more energy is being made, the unit price of energy will go down. 

I'm not actually convinced this will happen. Electricity doesn't flow out of the ground. Behind it is oil, natural gas, coal or nuclear, the first three being highly volatile to supply and demand issues. Can't argue that expanding electricity into new markets isn't going to have major impact on that. And Solar and wind are not economically viable, they require too much government subsidy to even exist in the market place, let alone compete. They are just too inefficient  and unreliable to represent a primary resource now or in the future. Kind of like corn-gas, it doesn't take a nuclear physicist to figure out the numbers don't add up.

But the idea is that with the expansion in electricity "manufacture," the unit price goes down, making a tax bearable.

Even if it is not bearable, using government subsidies to bring energy where it isn't is a lot more efficient use of that resource than pouring it into the endless hole of subsidies for nonviable energy solutions at home.

Use the tax revenue to fund energy research.

Way to go Germany/Merkel

Chancellor Merkel basically unilaterally outlawed naked trading. While simplifying the description is always risky, it basically amounts to this: Trading in shares that you don't own. It gets more twisted, but the scenario that she wants to eliminate is where traders bet that the price of a stock will go down based on short-selling shares that they don't have. It has made markets furious. And there is a lot of sturm and drang about how this will have serious down side consequences. And the Chancellor is not garnering any applause in Germany.
But she has my applause and here is why: At the base of the practice, there is an economic/financial gain to be had based on -- nothing. The trader has not increased some net worth because he didn't have any worth to begin with. The transaction garners income with no equity or assets. The trader has no skin in the game, so to speak.
Imagine going to the casino and placing bets with money you don't have. And betting that the bet will lose. And making money off that transaction.

Earthday - is this the day the sky will fall?

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner for the Earth Day issue of “Environment,” a scientific journal.

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Ehrlich said.
“The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” Denis Hayes, said an aide to Nelson, the chief organizer for the first Earth Day.
 “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: In five years, widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread within 15 years to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa.
“In 30 years, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions . . . the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”

ARE YOU SCARED YET?

Buyers remorse

Or maybe voters remorse. Like that horrible hang-over feeling followed by the gut-wrenching realization that you've awaken to find a coyote sleeping next to you. You didn't drink too much, you spent too much and now your options for the future are dramatically changed.

Here is the reality of the spending orgy we've been on. Barack says that we can't get over deficit spending soon, but under his plan, we will never get back to where we were in 05-07, even with fighting two wars, medicare part D, Katrina and assorted other off-budget items.

citation: Washington Post

Those red lines add up, year after year, each becoming part of the national debt.

Citation: CBO Director's Blog
There is no do-over (except doing health care right instead of doubling the cost) and there is no easy fix. We cannot sustain entitlements, even if we quit spending on all the other stuff (agriculture, transportation, research) and quit fighting wars. Just social security, medicare and medicaid will consume the income in the not distant future.

This is an interesting article on the situation and what we can do to reverse the trend, or "bend the curve" as the Obaminator likes to say.

There is no easy fix to the budget mess

The truth is whatever he wants it to be today

This is Bill Clinton:

"What we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or that we should reduce our passion for the positions we hold - but that the words we use really do matter, because there's this vast echo chamber, and they go across space and they fall on the serious and the delirious alike. They fall on the connected and the unhinged alike," he said.

My recollection is that Oklahoma City was about Clinton's attorney general Janet Reno burned the Branch Davidian compound to the ground resulting in the deaths of 76 men, women and children exactly 2 years earlier. At least that's what the perpetrator (who's name shall never be spoken or written by me) claimed was his motivation. I don't think there was any political movement there at all.

The bomber was hoping to incite revolt against the government. I haven't seen any of the tea party people committing violence - just some democrats who apparently don't feel people with different opinions should be allowed to voice them.

So, if one wants to claim that the perpetrator was unhinged, perhaps there is some common element in OK City and Bill's statement. Everything else is just completely manipulative and pejorative deceit. But what else might we expect from Clinton?

What Bill's statement says to me is: "My government is responsible for the OK City bombing because we should have known by burning down the Waco compound, we would incite some nut job to blow up a government facility."

Or perhaps I am misreading this and he is actually advising the deeply, deeply troubled democrat haters to head a conservative principle and take responsibility for their actions.  Meh, somehow I doubt it.

Way to go Bill. I am perfectly happy holding the bomber and his accomplii accountable for their actions, but if you and Janet want to join them in hell, go right ahead.

Clinton statement
OK City bomber summary