There are so many to choose from in this interview, I suppose I’ll just have to list them all. But #3 is the most profound.
From the Atlantic:
An Interview With Nobel Prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling, Part Two – Conor Clarke
#1 …And what I don’t know is whether Americans are really willing to understand that and do anything for the benefit of the unborn Chinese.
#2 It’s a tough sell. And probably you have to find ways to exaggerate the threat. And you can in fact find ways to make the threat serious.
…
#3 But I tend to be rather pessimistic. I sometimes wish that we could have, over the next five or ten years, a lot of horrid things happening — you know, like tornadoes in the Midwest and so forth — that would get people very concerned about climate change. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.
h/t to Tom Nelson
coloradocelt (13:07:49),
Having the weatherunderground referee your challenge is about as partisan as anyone could get. So go ahead, issue your challenge — but I will be the referee.
C’mon, I dare you.
Bring it up to him, maybe he will accept. Instead of crying partisanship make a deal.
This is slighty of topic but non the less important.
If you think 2 trillion dollars is much for a bail out, think 23.7 trillion US dollar for the real price tag. This is all public money.
This is the biggest robbery in history.
Comment by Ron de Haan
Monday, 20 Jul 09 @ur momisugly 4:31 PM
Sane or insane:
Insane has won….!.
Bailouts could cost U.S. $23.7 trillion.
This is more than the costs of all the wars the US have fought, including the entire Space Program….
By EAMON JAVERS | 7/20/09 3:19 PM
Barack Obama’s Treasury Department says less than $2 trillion has been spent so far on bailouts.
A series of bailouts, bank rescues and other economic lifelines could end up costing the federal government as much as $23 trillion, the U.S. government’s watchdog over the effort says – a staggering amount that is nearly double the nation’s entire economic output for a year.
If the feds end up spending that amount, it could be more than the federal government has spent on any single effort in American history.
For the government to be on the hook for the total amount, worst-case scenarios would have to come to pass in a variety of federal programs, which is unlikely, says Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the government’s financial bailout programs, in testimony prepared for delivery to the House oversight committee Tuesday.
The Treasury Department says less than $2 trillion has been spent so far.
Still, the enormity of the IG’s projection underscores the size of the economic disaster that hit the nation over the past year and the unprecedented sums mobilized by the federal government under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama to confront it.
In fact, $23 trillion is more than the total cost of all the wars the United States has ever fought, put together. World War II, for example, cost $4.1 trillion in 2008 dollars, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Even the Moon landings and the New Deal didn’t come close to $23 trillion: the Moon shot in 1969 cost an estimated $237 billion in current dollars, and the entire Depression-era Roosevelt relief program came in at $500 billion, according to Jim Bianco of Bianco Research.
The annual gross domestic product of the United States is just over $14 trillion.
Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams downplayed the total amount could ever reach Barofsky’s number.
“The $23.7 trillion estimate generally includes programs at the hypothetical maximum size envisioned when they were established,” Williams said. “It was never likely that all these programs would be ‘maxed out’ at the same time.”
Still, the eye-popping price tag provoked an immediate reaction on Capitol Hill. “The potential financial commitment the American taxpayers could be responsible for is of a size and scope that isn’t even imaginable,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee. “If you spent a million dollars a day going back to the birth of Christ, that wouldn’t even come close to just one trillion dollars – $23.7 trillion is a staggering figure.”
Congressional Democrats say they will call for Treasury to meet transparency requirements suggested by the inspector general, said a spokeswoman for the Oversight committee. “The American people need to know what’s going on with their money,” said committee spokeswoman Jenny Rosenberg.
I think you are all screwed.
I would say if the solar indicators don’t start an upswing really soon, he may well get his disasters when things start really chilling off, just because of blizzards instead of tornadoes.
As a Keynesian Schelling wants tornadoes to destroy property in the United States so the rebuilding will boost the economy.
The entire premise of fixing AGW is built on the fallacy of the broken window, except the poor Keynesians don’t understand the fallacy part.
“Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other science known to man.”
— Henry Hazlitt in
Economics in One Lesson Mr. Hazlitt was correct nearly all the time, but he didn’t live to see the “science” of AGW, or he might have added “with the exception of AGW” to the end of his quote.
1. Squidly (05:58:46) : “…anyone can win a Nobel prize…Nobel Prize is less than meaningless…”
It’s less than that. You can’t even use it to grow roses.
2. Curiousgeorge (06:10:57) : “What is wrong with these people? Is it some kind of genetic defect?”
They are liberals. They judge themselves by their intentions, not their actions or the results.
3. Milwaukee Bob (09:25:22) : “#1 – What? Why? They “kill” opps, sorry – abort girls, don’t they?”
No, no. Since it’s all about something called ‘choice,’ I think they simply dechoosify girl babies.
4. Ron de Haan (10:42:35) : …Rajendra Pachauri said he believes governments will look to the report for “validation … of their own decisions” being made now…”
That and validation of their own delusions.
“Ron de Haan (09:40:00) :
Just for fun, Google flies you to the moon.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10290705-2.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
How a bout a single trip for our political entablishment?”
Heh, Iowahawk is way ahead of ya!!
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/
By the way, daring me, makes absolutely no sense in this case.
Schelling is one of my old instructors from the JFK School. Aside from the fact that he’s a poor instructor and a bit of a weirdo (the hyper-long striding nerd walk, the crew cut, eyes always fixed on the ground in an attempt never to make eye contact), he never met a leftist fad he didn’t like.
Of course, the K-School is full of these types (think Robert Reich), and they now populate the Obama administration. It’s a big lefty bubble, and Schilling floats around in it like all the rest.
Of course Schelling is really stupid. That’s why he got the Nobel prize and none of you on this blog did.
Jim Papsdorf (12:53:01) :
Ron de Han:
“Great post re the record low highs in Mich this weekend.
My good buddy Joel Goldberg who runs the website michwine.com tells me that his sources indicate that this years grape crop in N. Mich has been “devastated” by the low temperatures we have experienced over the last six months. I suspect the same thing is occurring in Ont where the vineyards are a HUGE part of their economy.
Ironically, the state of Mi wants to push more acreage into vineyards. With the possible onset of severe global cooling given the length of the current Solar Minima [per David Archibald] anyone initiating a vineyard venture in this state at this time is courting financial disaster”.
I am afraid courting financial disaster will not be limited to initiating a vineyard venture.
Skeptic Tank (10:00:10) :
“Wishing for manifestations (deadly ones, no less) to evoke an emotional, if not irrational response. Like images of slabs of ice falling off glaciers and cartoons of a 20′ sea level rise flooding Florida. Dramatic and terrifying images that prove nothing.
I guess this is how desperate AGWers are becoming. Wishing for people to die so they can be right”.
Right.
Robin (09:09:59) :
“This is distrubing stuff. Why would anyone want to proceed on the basis of terrible disasters. I read this shortly after having lunch with a friend. I expressed views of a sceptical nature about the evidence, or lack of it, for AGW and was subjected to an astonishing assault that likened those who took a contrary position to ‘holocaust deniers’. Naturally I was pretty upset. Taking an alternative view based on the best evidence available is the intelligent approach isn’t it? My freind advanced not a single intelligible argument or piece of evidence; just an argument along the lines of ‘all the leading scientists (no names) are in favour’ – in other words a pure appeal to authority. Now I read this frightening stuff about wishing for major disasters and “finding ways to exaggerate the threat”…
Can anyone advise what the best line of argumment might be to politely counter such ‘fundamentalist’ AGW enthusiast positions. I value my friends, but I also value my sanity and capacity to reason and weigh evidence”.
Well you could offer him a gun so he can shoot himself if the disasters hit.
coloradocelt (13:07:49) : If they get their data from the same corrupt weather stations that feed GISS, it’s a suckers bet.
Schelling may have a Nobel prize in economics, but he doesn’t know a thing about climatology. As the poles warm and there is less difference in the temperature gradient between them and the equator, there is less transfer of energy between them. That means that storms such as tornadoes become less severe and common not more so. The most severe tornadoes are generated when the gradient is steepest which occurs when cold polar air masses impinge on warm equatorial air masses such as during the ice ages. Just check the ice cores to see where the concentration of dust is the greatest. It is during the coldest part of the ice ages.
Nobel Prize winners are looking worse and worse. For a few years I thought it was just the Peace Prize winners, but lately it seems as if it’s all of them.
AGW is a social movement that uses climate science the way eugenics used evolutionary science. The interview only underscores this dangerous reality.
coloradocelt (13:41:43),
You brought this up in the first place. Now you want others to write your letters for you??
I was merely pointing out the AGW agenda you’re promoting. There isn’t much difference between having the weatherundergound, or Al Gore doing the refereeing; it’s a stacked deck.
I’ve been listening to the real-time replay of the Apollo 11 mission radio. I was only 5 months old then. I grew up and still live where I could look out my window and watch a rocket go up. I find it very hard to believe that so many people think the whole thing was a hoax. I find it even more frustrating that many more people believe that a hoax is real. Most landing deniers can be easily dismissed by the proper application of physics. It is too bad climate science is not as advanced.
The Nobel Peace Prize is finishing the job that Nobel’s original invention started.
Anders L. (14:32:00) :
Your last sentence is wrong. Care to make a correction?
What’s the big deal; they say right in the story, that the clouds are formed up high when it gets cold enough (up there) and the sun is stil shining on them.
So get out your #2 pencil and fill in dot (c), and you’ll get a pass in illumination engineering.
I see these clouds almost any day of the week going home from work; yes I do have a job, and I go home late so I can earn enough to pay taxes to fund all these otherwise out of work statisticians, to study why we can see light; it’s very simple; if we can’t see it it isn’t light; by definition. End of story.
“We have to destroy humanity in order to save it.”
So if we can double our GDP in the next 70 or 80 years. . .
That is a growth rate of less than 1%. 70th root of 2 if you have a hand calculator, Prof Schelling. Great minds like his, well, Thumper’s mom’s rule applies.
. . a very bad result — which is the disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which would put Washington DC under water
If only.
The rich counties — especially the United States — do so little in the way of foreign aid right now.
Okay, he’s clueless. Move along, nothing to see here.
And about Nobel prizes –
Jimmy Carter negotiated a peace between Egypt and Israel that stands to this day. They gave Nobels to Sadat and Begin, dissing Carter who actually deserved it. Got him thinking, how do you get one? He taught Sunday school, didn’t work. He built houses for the poor, didn’t work. He monitored rigged elections in Latin America, didn’t work. He jumped on the Palestinian bandwagon, didn’t work. Finally he started trashing America in speeches abroad. Bingo!
Climate profiteer Al Gore has been trashing America every time he goes overseas. Bingo. It wasn’t (urban legend) for his tireless AGW efforts to boost his stock holdings.
Note that Bill Clinton and Obama are following the same overseas route. Obama’s got a lock fer shure.
I don’t stand a chance.
NYT writes about the sun:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/science/space/21sunspot.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss