I’ve had a skim over your recent commentary. I’ll have to have a closer look later, but I wanted to clarify something right now…

“2) It NEVER EVER EVER works to pay a blackmail shakedown.”

Absolutely! I wasn’t advocating that, just trying to illustrate how weak our financial system is and what that implies for cap and trade, presently and in the future. In fact, if we did have a strong financial/monetary policy we probably wouldn’t have to worry about NK for entirely different reasons. Perhaps not even China, for that matter.

And yes, China does indeed have it’s own reasons. It’s very fascinating subject, but not a topic for discussion here unfortunately. Suffice to say, they are having their own problems in controlling impoverished populations. They had a riot the other day. They don’t want that on their border with Korea. Unity is not beneificial to the security of the status quo. So they would reel NK in if they could, but for the same reason we haven’t through bribe, they haven’t either. Cap and trade would allow a temporary releif, though. It’s political TO THE CORE, and so I don’t think scientific arguments can be used to defeat it, hard as the scientists work to do so.

Yes, I have seen the EIA chart before, and seen many an argument made from it. Unfortuneately, they make convinving ones :-)

And I ought to know, as that once served to convince me of some things. I’ll have another go at it, though, and see if I can’t reconsider. Heck, I even know of an economics prof that likes to talk about that (and favorably, at that). But I have to warn… it’s tough to sell ice to an eskimo.

Now about ANWR, and probably a number of other blocks against development, just humor my argument for a moment that the financial/monetary system is so corrupt and then ask yourself why they WOULDN’T…

a) Invent and maintain stories about polar bears, caribou, melting ice, hot air etc in order to justify not undertaking any large financial commitments (democrats)

b) Dismiss all that, but insist that a puny investment would somehow have a meaningful impact even in the face of world-wide demand ramping up (and good lord should Africa join the party), such that the US would pretty much still be doing more of the same, which is not make any big commitments towards expanding it’s resource base/output in order to sell an actual something in the world instead of govt promises that make Wall Street happy (republicans)

c) Tell the truth. The empire is broke, or would be if it tried to do anything significant like expand it’s resource bas/output. Perhaps your people and enemies will forgive and forget. (not in a million years)

Unfortunately, the emperor always has clothes even when he does not. Sad, but true. At least if our monetary system is so corrupt to make the stories seem more tempting to our government. I hope I’m wrong, but history does not support my shred of optimism. Nor does monetary science. So it’s even harder to sell sunshine to this eskimo than it is to sell ice. Speaking of which, about interest…

You’re right. Rate per se does not matter… so much as stability of rate over time.
With that difference in mind, let’s put that in the context of something else…

“Interest is not so relevent to real estate. What is crucial is making and selling houses”

We’ve recently seen the fallacy of that of assumption, though. The housing bubble went pop. And so we’ve seen it in every single bubble we’ve had since bubbles became the order of the day. And those bubbles were the result of FALLING interest from the day that Fed Chairman Volcker said “UP!”. And if they trend up?

Volcker’s failed feat aside proves that another bounce to the opposite is no medicine. Nothing stopped it from lowering to dangerous levels in his time. Nor did anything stop it from trending lower over the past couple decades, to just as if not more dangerously low levels. Still, many think the opposite nessecarily means correction. They still think we’re in Kansas, classic economics. They mistake rate for stability of rate. Since there was no backstop to excess in the lowering trend, it may well turn out that there isn’t a backstop on the rising trend either. Ie, a depression, where more credit than has right to will evaporate.

And that is the difference between steady fluctuation and gyrating interest. Debt-based monetary policy can not stabilize interest to save the day. What production and deployment of tech that takes place and has taken place is mostly if not entirely government strong-arming. And cap and trade, imv, is the shrugging Atlas.

E.M. Smith said earlier that this was not peak oil, in the pure sense, and I agree. I never meant peak in geological supply. What I meant to say all along is peak production. There is one example I can think of when peak production did in a civilization even though geological abundance said it was impossible. The Incan civilization, some argue, took a big hit that sent them into oblivion. They didn’t produce enough water, didn’t expand their structure for doing so. For whatever reason, the leadership/culture went lax in that in endeavor and the rest is history. Some states are complaining about water these days.

Anyway, even if we still don’t see eye to eye, just so you know, I’m not “a bit” worked up because we do not. I’m just a nut on the subject and I’ve rather liked talking about it :-)

Btw, I did read those links and while the peak energy one didn’t offer a fresh perspective, the one on nuclear was an oft not heard take on the issue. Not the usual anti-science, ie, but a good case against. I think like AGW, it will have it’s day when it’s called to the carpet to be debated.

Wow…two Bingo’s and a Yup. I’ll take that as high praise!

You might be interested in an expanded version on the Grand Game, which relates to the place played by oil in the world-wide energy/transportation/electricity arena.

http://energyguysmusings.blogspot.com/2009/07/peak-oil-and-unicorns-both-mythical.html

Um, no, it can’t. “Peak Oil” has a very specific PHYSICAL definition. It is that rate of production that can never be exceeded. Nothing at all to do with resource in the ground nor with the value in the marketplace. It is a simple statement of maximum gallons (or bbls or L or cubic furlongs…) you can pump per day. Period. NOTHING can change that.

GDP would never tell us that story except perhaps in the most vague of ways. And just the same, so do prices in currencies fail to tell that story.

Very true. Both GDP and currencies are “rubber rulers” that have great travails in the interpretation…

And that story, I’m not the least ashamed to admit… scares the hell out of me.

Which, IMHO, makes you a wise and perceptive person…

… Take North Korea and it’s mud-slinging. Its mud, maybe with some pluto mixed in to create a dirty nuke or two. But they won’t stop until China reels them in.

N. Korea is just trying to re-play the “shakedown” they pulled on Clinton. He was dumb enough to hand over cash based on their promise to ‘play nice’. Dictators never play nice. They realized they had a good scam going and tried the same shakedown on Bush. It didn’t work. Obama is a democrat, so maybe it will work on him (they think). We’ll see. If Obama has a brain and, er, oblate spheroids sub pubic bone… he will simply have a predator drone make any launch site into a pile of rubble and announce that N. Korea has had a “launch failure”… The proper answer to a “protection racket shakedown” is to put the shakedown artist in a body bag… Chicago knows this, so I hope to see Obama display an innate understanding of this too…

(A friend has suggested that any nuke building site could benefit from a predator launched nuke coupled with a public announcement that N. Korea ought to be be more careful since nuclear materials are unstable and dangerous … but I’m not sure thats the right answer at that scale… though it does have a certain charm about it… 8-)

And China will not be able to reel them in until we make sure that all the debt that China holds of the US is worth something. We would have bought off NK already, ourselves, if we were able to afford it.

2 issues here.

1) China will do what is best for China. The US $ is not tied to N. Korea in any way. China is already moving away from the $ (today had the news flow that the first “settlement” of a trade had happened in Yuan… and Brazil and China have agreed to trade sans US $…) As long as N. Korea is doing what benefits China, China will do nothing. Once it hurts China, N. Korea will be speaking Mandarin…

2) It NEVER EVER EVER works to pay a blackmail shakedown. Ever. Nuke em. Kill em. Sic the police on them. Promise to pay, then double cross them. Slip them a poison money packet. ANYTHING other than letting them profit. If they profit, they will return. Just don’t go there. That is the fundamental mistake Clinton made last time. THE ONLY proper answer to a blackmail attempt is to attack the blackmailer with overwhelming force and as much lethality as you can muster. Period. Got it? Yes, it has risks. But the risk is the same as NOT doing it and having a new blackmail event next year. You can not reduce the risks. You CAN reduce the blackmailer…

So again I urge all to learn about the virtues of gold vs imaginative fiat values, and pester their reps to come clean about it, and reintroduce it into the poisoned monetary bloodstream. It is not enough to protest bad science.

Well, gold is better than fiat currencies, but not by much. Most of the world supply comes from Russia and South Africa, so you are handing over control of the money supply to two not very good places… I’m not sure there is a better answer, though. I’d probably go with silver and copper as a basis, but that’s just me…

Roger Sowell (07:43:41) :
@Benjamin (03:12:55) :, re price of oil relative to gold;

I would not get too worked up over any prices relative to gold. What matters, from a mythical “Peak Oil” perspective, is the price (in any currency) of oil relative to the next most expensive fossil fuel, whether that be tar sands, coal-to-liquids, shale oil, etc. The relative prices are key.

BINGO! And the alternatives come on line between $40 and $80 / bbl (which is why we have oil sands in play now, but not coal to oil) …

High interest rates merely put more money in the banks’ pockets temporarily,

Um, minor nit: It is the “yield curve” not the absolute yield that puts money in the pocket of the bank. They “borrow short” and “lend long” so it’s the ratio of short term to long term rates that makes profit (a “steep yield curve”) Rates could be at 19% for a 6 month bond and 20% for a 10 year and banks would go broke, while a 1% to 4% ratio is literally “money in the bank”…

Have another look at that graph in the link I provided from EIA on the real price of gasoline since 1919. Interest rates have fluctuated, and so has the price of gold since 1919. The key point is oil price has gone up in real dollars *only* when the oil market was severely disrupted. The steady downward trend in the real price of oil is quite obvious.

In direct proportion to technological improvement. It is the improvement of technology that drives all cost changes.

Economic theory is a fascinating subject, and there are endless theories and proposed mechanisms; but at the end of the day, the men who drill for oil do not worry too much about theoretical economics. What matters is access to oil reserves. We know where the oil is, and we know how to get it. All we need is access.

BINGO! again!

… so oil-rich regions restrict access to the oil in the ground. The USA is complicit in this by restricting access to ANWR on environmental issues, and by restricting drilling off the East Coast and the West Coast, again on environmental issues. Whatever the reason given, the effect is the same: higher oil prices because of restricted access. Other countries do the same.

Yup. Interesting enough, the Elk Hills Naval Oil Reserve was sold to a company who’s stock was heavily owned by AlGores family… a “sweetheart deal ” to a government employee if ever there was one. Now we have the Naval OIl Reserve to the west of ANWR (out to the pacific) with more proven oil than ANWR ever will have, and we are bickering over ANWR…

Were I in charge, I’d be building enough coal to oil factories to power the navy should they ever be needed and drilling in the Alaska Oil Reserve.

http://www.blm.gov/ak/st/en/prog/energy/oil_gas/npra.html

But don’t be surprised if the democrats sell it to one of their own and do NOT build the coal to oil facilities to replace it… they have in the past…

Mike Guerin (11:44:14) : The more productive the average worker is the higher the standard of living and the government can not artifically manipulate wealth. The government can only manipulate how productive the workers are with policy decisions, not directly manipulate wealth or standard of living.

Um, I’d assert that the government can’t even do that. All it can do is mandate how the workers productivity is distributed. They can not make the worker more productive, only technology can do that. The can “spread the wealth around” and they can destroy wealth, but that’s about it.

Right now most green energy jobs produce less product (their less productive) than fossil fuels. Therefore it is without question, undebatable that the governments manipulation of policies that create jobs in solar or wind etc will result in a net LOSS in productivity and therefore wealth.

BINGO! Again!

davidgmills (12:48:18) : Wall Street will be trading these credits — for an outrageous fee — to suckers all over the world.

There will be a bubble, then a bust, and we will be fleeced again — first by the government in taxes and then by Wall Street. Deja vous.

Not just Wall Street. The London exchanges are expecting to profit from trade in Quatloos too. Both ICE and CME expect to make big money on big markets… (ICE is InterContinental Echange, while CME is the Chicago Mercantile Exchange … hmmm isn’t Obama from Chicago?… )

http://sites.google.com/site/disclosuredelta/

Here’s how it works: If the bill passes, there will be limits for coal plants, utilities, natural-gas distributors and numerous other industries on the amount of carbon emissions (a.k.a. greenhouse gases) they can produce per year. If the companies go over their allotment, they will be able to buy “allocations” or credits from other companies that have managed to produce fewer emissions: President Obama conservatively estimates that about $646 billion worth of carbon credits will be auctioned in the first seven years; one of his top economic aides speculates that the real number might be twice or even three times that amount.

But this is it. This is the world we live in now. And in this world, some of us have to play by the rules, while others get a note from the principal excusing them from homework till the end of time, plus 10 billion free dollars in a paper bag to buy lunch. It’s a gangster state, running on gangster economics, and even prices can’t be trusted anymore; there are hidden taxes in every buck you pay. And maybe we can’t stop it, but we should at least know where it’s all going.

Wall Street will be trading these credits — for an outrageous fee — to suckers all over the world.

There will be a bubble, then a bust, and we will be fleeced again — first by the government in taxes and then by Wall Street. Deja vous.

Once 75% of the population provides enough food then 25% can do other things like provide entertainment, protection, etc.

When 50% of the population can provide enough food then the other 50% can do other things like provide entertainment, protection, etc.

Do you see how that works? Gains in productivity has allowed the modern day society to advance to where it is today. The more productive the average worker is the higher the standard of living and the government can not artifically manipulate wealth. The government can only manipulate how productive the workers are with policy decisions, not directly manipulate wealth or standard of living.

Right now most green energy jobs produce less product (their less productive) than fossil fuels. Therefore it is without question, undebatable that the governments manipulation of policies that create jobs in solar or wind etc will result in a net LOSS in productivity and therefore wealth.

I would not get too worked up over any prices relative to gold. What matters, from a mythical “Peak Oil” perspective, is the price (in any currency) of oil relative to the next most expensive fossil fuel, whether that be tar sands, coal-to-liquids, shale oil, etc. The relative prices are key.

The interest rates you mentioned are not important, either, what is crucial is obtaining access to energy resources. High interest rates merely put more money in the banks’ pockets temporarily, and result in more innovation from oil companies – thus further reducing the real cost of producing oil. This produces more oil, and reduces interest rates over time.

Have another look at that graph in the link I provided from EIA on the real price of gasoline since 1919. Interest rates have fluctuated, and so has the price of gold since 1919. The key point is oil price has gone up in real dollars *only* when the oil market was severely disrupted. The steady downward trend in the real price of oil is quite obvious.

Economic theory is a fascinating subject, and there are endless theories and proposed mechanisms; but at the end of the day, the men who drill for oil do not worry too much about theoretical economics. What matters is access to oil reserves. We know where the oil is, and we know how to get it. All we need is access.

Such access has always been the key, as for example Rockefeller strove to restrict access to oil refineries – and was so successful his empire was broken up under monopoly laws. One can no longer restrict access via refineries, so oil-rich regions restrict access to the oil in the ground. The USA is complicit in this by restricting access to ANWR on environmental issues, and by restricting drilling off the East Coast and the West Coast, again on environmental issues. Whatever the reason given, the effect is the same: higher oil prices because of restricted access. Other countries do the same.

Of course, you’re right about GDP and I don’t think we really disagree on anything in that regard. As you so wonderfully illustrated through many examples, it grows but we have to look at the productivity vs debt behind it that makes it grow. Is it, for example, economical to create more Taco Bell/GREEN jobs so that we can say we’re employing more people? GDP can’t answer that question except in the affirmative if only because it got a bit bigger or didn’t shrink. It’s the ultimate “yes man”.

Some economists look to something called “gross output”, and say that that is far more representative of true economic activity than GDP. My jury is still out on that one, but I suspect gross output wouldn’t be any more helpful. All that need be done is to look at debt levels, though. They’re there, for the whole world to see, so even if this gross output reads better (or worse), there is no escaping the fact that excess credit-debt is destined to contract at some point (followed, in all likelihood, by a vast explosion of it).

Similar to the GDP falsehoods…

As I hoped to point out much earlier on in the gold to oil price ratio, is that higher prices, as is so often contended by anti-peak oil opposition, can not sustain production. They hold that higher prices will be the new order, but insist we will not run out any time soon because of that market mechanism.

And I WOULD agree, except for one thing… Financing will not allow even higher prices to sustain oil production (and food production, and silver, copper, lead… all commodities). Why? I beleive that increasingly higher prices are a result of interest rates (thus stability of investment) being wildly out of controll. And since interest rates are in the hands of governments and their central banks, and not the free market (if there is such a thing), sustainability of oil production, among other things, will simply not continue, at higher prices or otherwise.

And so we arrive at cap and trade. It is generally well-understood by the wonderful system government and centalized banking that elastic currency/credit leads to eventual bankruptcy. Thus, governments, in order to assure some supply until the day comes, handle things like oil production. They know there is no private firm out there that could endure what their controll on interest rates can dish out, especially over the longer haul, which is nessecary for private firms to undertake such tasks.
They might let private firms handle some things, but they always come back to nationalize them. Only now, governments are getting tired of taking their own punches… thus cap and trade and more and more prophecy on peak oil. They just aren’t going to advocate privatizing oil production. They’re not even going to discuss oil. Period. They’re not going to advocate privitization of alternatives. Period. They’re not going to allow privitization at all. And wheather they know it or not, they aren’t even going to allow intervention.

What I’m saying is that fiat currencies, and more to the point government securities creating unlimited credit and risk, is doing the opposite of gold. The price of oil in gold (and indeed all other commodities below gold, which is every last one of them) is telling us that the utlimate government intervention (fiat money) is not cutting it. Nor will it ever. Not other commodity pricing another commodity would tell you this story. When gold is used, it is just as economical to grow/mine/pump things from the ground today as it was 60 years ago. By the same token, it is just as economical to develop and most importantly deploy new tech to provide a wealth of commodity production as it was 60 years ago.

Roger Sowell pointed out why gold is best, but I think he missed the point despite that realization. He correctly pointed out that gold tends to accumulate vs other commodities. BINGO! That is the concept of marginal utility and stocks to flow. And because no other thing known to man has such a high marginal utility and stocks to flow ratio than gold, there is nothing better that can provide stability to interest rates, and thus investment, as gold can. And with stable interest over a long period of time, via Gibson’s paradox, price ranges in gold also tend to stabilize in range over the longer term.

Government bonds, credit bubbles, and the resulting money-printing bankruptcy, on the other hand, have highly uncertain value and that uncertainty only increases with time. But that was the point of them. Central banks wanted to create an elastic currency, a lie for all occasions, so that a supposedly benevolent government could regulate us to a better world (unlike that no-good cut-throat free market, they said and continue to maintain today)

No, peak oil isn’t a near-term certainty, or, I contend, even a longer-term concern, any more than AGW is real and cap and tax desirable. Many realize this and thats good. But what we must remember is that in the past, peak oil and AGW resistence was routinely disproven/repelled because…

a) In the past, gold was at least somewhere in the system to have the effects that it does on interest.

b) that debt-backed fiat money almost always has at least a short term stability to it which it allows it to do some good. For a while anyway.

That is not true today. Not even the Swiss use gold to back their currencies anymore. And now the whole world is in a recession and they’re talking seriously about just walking away from oil for reasons that I don’t really think most in govt truly beleive. That CAN bring about peak energy. But not because of an actuall shortage of resource left in the earth but rather for the want of stable financing.

GDP would never tell us that story except perhaps in the most vague of ways. And just the same, so do prices in currencies fail to tell that story. And that story, I’m not the least ashamed to admit… scares the hell out of me. I come here frequently to read what the genuine scientists have to say. And I confess, a lot of it is greek to me (it is interesting greek though! :-). Its nice to know that the science is being done. But that, to me, is mostly a smaller comfort. I know that no matter what they have to say about it, other considerations are going to see the science ignored. Its a shame, because while its all mostly greek to me, I can see that these people clearly put a lot of effort into their work. But even if cap and trade is repelled this time, it will be back and I can almost assure that it will be under far uglier circumstances than today. Take North Korea and it’s mud-slinging. Its mud, maybe with some pluto mixed in to create a dirty nuke or two. But they won’t stop until China reels them in. And China will not be able to reel them in until we make sure that all the debt that China holds of the US is worth something. We would have bought off NK already, ourselves, if we were able to afford it. WWI was started and fought under very similar cirumstances. Governments lied about their fixed rates to gold and so the system defaulted. That increases hostility in the world.

So again I urge all to learn about the virtues of gold vs imaginative fiat values, and pester their reps to come clean about it, and reintroduce it into the poisoned monetary bloodstream. It is not enough to protest bad science. To learn more about gold, I highly recommend one Professor Antal Fekete…

http://www.professorfekete.com/articles.asp

I can’t point to any one essay, but there are common themes all throughout. Anything about the Mint and the Depression, especially. And there’s no Waxmanship! No sir, most of them are ten pages or less and within reach of those who have at least a basic grasp of financials.

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2009/07/meeting_the_tar.html

Pat: your assertion on no reduction is somewhat strange. A whole bunch of countries decreased their emissions of CO2. Examples are: Belgium, France, Ireland, Portugal, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Sweden, etc. Other countries still increased their emissions, resulting in a globally slightly positive balance which is MUCH less than the US and than what would have been observed without these rules, of course. ”

I hope you have read the replies to your initial post and has cleared up your delusional view of ETS, Cap and Trade systems etc.

The Irish economy shrank 8.5% in this year. Where is the money going to come from to pay for an ETS? (OK, the Irish economy was built on billions of EU grants in the first place. It was (In the mid-70’s before the EU funded “boom”), as it is today, a very depressed place to be).

PS. Not sure what year it was..but an Australian based company trading “carbon emissions” between Europe and Asia turned over AU$10bil. Nice little earner if you are in on the top floor, say like Al Gore (Whose family wealth was dervied from oil).

Flanagan
Ron and Pierre: 2009 is a very special year because of the crisis, and the US is doing even worse than EU. Unemployment in the US is now higher than in Europe – you known the crumbling continent with horribly reduced incomes.

according to Eurostat the Eu’s unemployment rate in may was 9.5 percent that is the same as the U.S. not lower. Second countries like Spain that are fully on cap and trade unlike other E.U. countries unemployment is 18.7 percent as of May. Spain is the poster child for cap and trade and you can see what is happening there, just wait till it happens in your home country then we will see what a supporter of cap and trade you are OK?

PaulID,

I am not a supporter of C&P, a supporter of the Lisbon Treaty or any European or Global Government scheme.
I am 100% for personal freedom, capitalism and against big Government, high taxes,
stupid rules and meddling. I am also against Corporatism (read Fascism) and against the corrupt UN. And I can”t stand the lies about our climate.

Geo-engineering,
some concepts coming from:-
Dr John Holdren, particulate matter injected into the atmosphere, similar to volcanic ash. (hate to surmise how this would be achieved, probably nuke a volcano)

Dr Tim Flannery, sulphur injected into he atmosphere, yellow sunglasses for the planet. Others have also fronted up with this idea.

Micro mirrors to reflect radiation back into space.

Millions of man made trees to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

Already tried – iron sulphate, tonnes dropped into the southern Atlantic Ocean, near South Georgia Islands by the German vessel Polarstern – to sequester CO2 into a algal bloom, feeding plankton which die and take the CO2 to the ocean bottom – failed – must have looked good in someones computer modeling.

Heaven forbid if any of these concepts get up , with approval and funding from the POTUS.

Then we have the ridiculous – lets paint all the roofs, buildings, roads and parking lots – WHITE. Someone must have a premium on white paint. Then maybe this is the ‘green jobs’ Obama keep telling us about, along with most of the compliant governments around the world. – Yes I know, white reflects!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8129840.stm

“California has been one of the US states hardest hit by the recession.” Observing across the pond it seems California is one of the Greenest US states. Doesn’t seem to be helping them.

Flanagan,

As an European, I am ashamed at the lack of democracy that the EU has become.

First, I didn’t approve the European Constitution, and not only me, but also the majority of the Europeans didn’t approve the European Constitution in the terms the french guy, I am not going to look for his name, wrote it. Being approved by the individual parliaments doesn’t count in my opinion. The European Constitution is something important enough to require a mayor consensus of the people of Europe.

Second, I know that CO2 is good for the environment, as thousands of experiments and publications prove it. Doubling CO2 levels increase plant growth rate by at least 20%. The cap and trade system only hurts the economy, the whole of it, agricultural, industrial and services economy.

Third, I don’t believe in AGW. And that is all they can offer me, Beliefs in a lousy religion. They can’t prove that the climate sensitivity to doubling CO2 levels is 3º C, 2.4º C, 4.5º C or 0.3º C. If you can’t measure the climate sensitivity they are not talking about SCIENCE, they are talking about cargo cult. AGW is, therefore, a religion, not a branch of science. And last time I checked there was freedom of religion in Europe. I don’t have to pay to support the Catholic or protestant churches in Europe and I don’t want to pay to support AGW.

And Fourth, anything above the tithe or diezmo tax (10% of agricultural production) is institutionalized armed robbery. And we are already suffering from taxes well higher than 10%. IIRC, VAT in Germany is 21%. The roman empire flourished while the only taxes the romans had to pay was the tithe. and It collapsed when they started taxing everything.

For all of the above, I think Europe is not a Democracy, but an Idiocracy.

(Or maybe you should say Idiocrazy?)

Urederra,

I agree 100%, thanks.

Probably GDP does not tell the whole story. The debt-to-GDP ratio for EU was 57% in 2007, in the US it was 65% following OECD.

Flanagan,
2007 is history.
As the political establishments in the world have pumped all our wealth into the financial system in order to keep it afloat, the gamble was made that economic recovery would happen short term. Unfortunately it is not.
We now see the slow collapse of our economies and communal and social structures.
You have no idea how close we are to a total collapse of the international monetary
system.

We are in an extremely vulnerable situation now and the lives of millions of people is at stake.

There very well could be a situation where discussions about climate and windmills are nothing more but a faint memory as people are occupied with the single and most powerful reflex of life, survival.

This is what will happen if the financial system collapses and governments are not able to pay the law enforcers.

Look what happens in California and several other States right now.

They are shutting down the parks, they can’t pay the teachers etc.

You don’t realize it, but your own country Belgium is on the edge of financial collapse as well.

See what will happen if people lose their pension, lose their income, their jobs and the supermarkets don’t receive any supplies because the entire distribution system has collapsed?

People forget very quickly but it was only 65 years ago when people in the Netherlands were starving, steeling trees from the park to keep warm and marching for days to find some food.

It has taken decades of blood sweat and tears to build the society at the standard we are used to today, but it can be destroyed in a very short period of time.

The thin veneer called civilization can wear of very quickly and before you know it you live in a place that resembles a nightmare.

Thousands of Americans who have lost their jobs and their homes are already in such a situation.

Entire towns have fallen into the hands of organized crime.

At this moment in time there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

Europe in 1945 could count on the economic and military support of the USA.

Who is going to help us or the USA for that matter if the economic house of cards is going to collapse?
The Chinese or the Russians?

Our leader are playing with fire.
They have planned a total reform of Governance based on a very sick doctrine.
There are powers in this world who have their own Agenda waiting for our weak spot at the right time.

We can not afford to be weak and we can not afford to reduce our economies to rubble because our leaders believe or make us believe we are a menace to the climate and the planet.

We can not afford to spend massive amount of capital and resources to green fantasies if our basics are undermined.

It is time for you to wake up Flanagan, you are living in a dream.
You call yourself a European, a type of citizen that does not exist in the real world.
The political establishment took steps bypassing the democratic rights of the French, the Dutch and the Irish to introduce the Lisbon Treaty.
Although people love the idea of free trade and free travel within the European Union, they detest the political powers that take away their democratic and civil rights, especially if they don’t trust the political establishment which is the case.

Now, before the EU has grown into a solid body, our leaders are working on a world government, handing over major powers to the UN.

The only thing the UN and the EU have in common is covered with a single word.
And that word is “corruption”.

People don’t want to handover extensive powers to corrupt Government bodies.
That is why we have opposition and that is why we are going to stop the current process.

We don’t want to lose our freedom and we still can prevent the Climate Treaty.

The car industry also provides a good example. Why do you think the US car industry is si low rightnow? And what about Fiat buying Chrysler?

European constructors had to cope with increasingly stricter rules about CO2 emissions, something I think that could never be accepted in the US. The consequence is that those cars actually have incredibly low fuel consumption – in American standards. 70 mpg? 80 mpg? And these cars cost exactly the same as the American ones. The consumer doesn’t need to think twice before choosing… It is time the US wake up before it’s too late.

Flanagan,
You are telling our American friends that a bloody FIAT is a car?

There is nothing wrong with American cars and compared to the (size and weight)
European cars there is not much of a difference in fuel consumption.

If we look at the 4WD cars the European cars even use more fuel, much more fuel.
(BWW X5, AUDI and PORCHE)

You can not ask people who spend half their lives in their cars to drive a FIAT!

These cars will not be sold in the USA, anyhow, not in big numbers.

The US always has a higher beta in it’s unemployment numbers. We don’t do much to soften the economic truth, so it’s over quicker. The EU has all sorts of ways to prevent job losses (like several month notice to shut down a factory) so it spreads it’s pain out over much longer time periods.

Traditionally, this gave the USA a quick sharp recession with a much more rapid recovery. Unfortunately, thanks to our politicos being enamored of EuroSocialism, we are playing with the socialism shiny thing this time. But we still have less impediments to rapid adjustment.

To really have a clue how 2009 will sort out, you need to look back at it from about 2012… but that doesn’t do much for the discussion.

The bottom line is that economic statistics are almost as variable and cooked as the temperature series and you can’t really compare them much across systems. The EU system is much more lethargic both in fall and recovery, so any comparison in less than half decade time scales is more comparing the legal systems than the economic results.

In the longer term, the EU is going to have major issues. Their mercantilist behaviours will hold it off a little bit better for a while, but in the end, just whom will be buying an over priced German car when they can get a Jaguar from India for less? A lot less.

The US will play with the Socialism Shiny Thing for a couple of years, and wear the AGW Cap & T until the tantrum hits, then, just like metric, we’ll toss it aside as uncomfortable and move on. Europe will continue it’s basic stagnation with the only real growth coming from added ex-Soviet countries. Eventually, when that runs out, the EU will add Turkey, (and probably lose Greece if they do…) and that will be the end of it. Disintegration back into bickering will follow shortly after. Unfortunately, these kinds of processes run in 10 to 20 year ruts, so the result is a ways off.

I just hope the USA has the good sense not to come over and clean up the mess a third time if your disintegration leads to a third Great War.

GDP isn’t even the beginning of the story… First you must deflate it by whatever passes for the real inflation rate (IF you can find data not compromised by government manipulation…) then you have the bigger issue:

GDP is NOT economic gain and certainly not quality of life improvement.

Digging and filling holes on a government contract would add to GDP, but be a real loss. Similarly, building bridges to nowhere and windmills that make electricity with a negative real worth are counted as part of GDP. Further, if you make a chemical that causes 1,000,000 people to go to the hospital for medical care running into the billions of Euros of costs after exposure, BOTH the medical care AND the clean up of the toxin are counted as increases in GDP. If I buy a widget from China for a buck, and sell it for 2, that’s an addition to GDP. If I double my price to $4, that’s a big increase in GDP (even though all that really happened is that more pretty pictures of dead presidents changed hands). If I tune up my car, that is not in GDP, nor if I have a wonderful home cooked meal. If you tune up my car that is in GDP and if my spouse works at Taco Bell and I eat there, that is in GDP. My garden is not part of GDP, yet is worth a great deal to me.

And I won’t even begin to explore the more esoteric brokennesses of GDP. Basically, it’s a number that everyone uses because it isn’t that hard to calculate it; it just doesn’t have much real truth in it. Hmmm… kind of like global average temperature…

So ask the folks on the ground: Did ETS make things better or worse, then be quiet and listen. All I hear is “worse”.

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/commentaries_essays/seriously_inconvenient_truth.html

Seconded, Nev. I’ve wondered for a long time what was driving the obviously bad science of AGW, feeling that “follow the money” while true was not enough, and this chapter made sense of a lot.