South Korea announces delay the day after Australia’s carbon tax repeal
Story submitted by Eric Worrall
In a sign that rejection of climate alarm is gathering momentum, South Korea has thrown doubt on its carbon plans. Significantly, the announcement was made the day after Australia abolished the carbon tax. According to the report;
“July 18 (Reuters) – South Korea’s finance minister has called its impending emissions trading market “flawed in many ways”, hinting that he would pressure other ministries to delay the planned 2015 launch, a local newspaper reported.
Choi Kyung-hwan, who is also deputy prime minister, said problems had been found with the scheme, which is due to start in January, and that the government would review them before deciding whether to delay it, modify it or implement it as planned, The Korea Times reported on Friday.”
http://af.reuters.com/article/commoditiesNews/idAFL6N0PT3CZ20140718
(h/t to WUWT reader Pat)
South Korea’s courageous stand against carbon madness raises hope that Australia’s rejection of carbon pricing will be the domino which topples any chance of global cooperation on CO2
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Rocky roads says
I think it’s mostly my fault and for that I apologize, but there isn’t really all that much to the story anyway so at least we aren’t waisting a good debatable story.
Roderick Rbe Schuller says: July 19, 2014 at 12:15 am
The monetary system being the biggest fraud of all!! Central Banking is what needs to go!!
_________________________________
Have you tried buying anything, without money? Have you tried trading without banks?
Russia [had] a largely cash economy in the 1980s, because there were no banks as we would understand them. But buying and selling goods from different cities was almost impossible. You had to send someone with cash.
Banks may not be perfect, they may be greedy, and they may have carved out far too large a section of the economy, but they are useful. A cash-based or barter nation, is a poor nation.
Ralph
“And while the basics don’t guarantee a radical level of ultimate change, they do guarantee ranges that strongly suggest that ignoring the issue is extremely counter productive, and unfair to our kids theirs.)” – John C.
Why so vague? What’s going to befall The Children™ ?
Johnny, I’m not sure that I agree with you that I’m obligated to respect anything that comes down the Pike self-labeled “science.” For example, you don’t seem the type that believes in the free enterprise system of economics.
In the case of AGW it’s the adherents that have posited the theory and are demanding large sacrifices from me. It would seem that in the absence of ANY evidence of some extraordinary example of man made climate havoc they should be more than willing to field any question that comes their way. If AGW is such a fait accompli they should be able to handle any skeptical argument with little difficulty. Your use of the word “discredit” makes it seem like you’re taking the debate too personally.
Policycritic
By the by companies are holding and hoarding cash because of government policy and more importantly lack of consistent policy. You can not invest when someone is always changing the rules on you. This is not analysis on my part this what I do. My company only invests and takes a risk when we are left with no choice because of the market. We don’t hire or invest because the government makes the risk too great. Congress, IRS, regulators are always changing the ground rules. We have made investments that were total loses because the government changes the rules after the investments is made leaving the company nothing but waisted and energy time. This is not isolated its country wide across all industries. Companies make way too many decsions that have nothing to do economic and sound business practices because of government intervention. Almost the entire accounting industry is a waste because its only focus is on tax code. We three times as many accountants dealing with tax as we do with business accounting projection. How do you think this effects world wide competitveness.
Why do we need thousand of new laws each year, why do we need thousands of changes in taxation regulation each year, why we need every other department in the government generate thousands of new regulations. I can’t tell how many people I know who are saying its just not woth it. Constancy is the most important thing in an economic system, with out it companies can not plan for risk. Government is about control and power it has zero interest in well being, freedom or economic success. You are delusional if you think government is anything other then the tool of last resort.
“Weird how this thread on S. Korea’s carbon tax devolved into John Carter’s ignorance and the Federal Reserve. Oh well….”
Not really. The idea that the government can pick ‘correct’ interest rates, or set the ‘correct’ level of growth in the economy by spending money is just as insane as the idea that the government can choose the ‘correct’ temperature for the planet, or control that temperature through taxation.
“We don’t hire or invest because the government makes the risk too great.”
Bingo. Politicians complain that companies only think short-term, but you can’t think long-term when the government can and does put businesses out of business overnight with the stroke of a pen. No-one can make sensible, long-term investment decisions when, next year, they might be faced with a ‘carbon tax’ or other nonsense that will make those investments unprofitable.
The last thing the world’s economy needs is more interference from governments.
John Carter says:
July 19, 2014 at 12:31 am
Concluding sentence of the above piece: “South Korea’s courageous stand against carbon madness raises hope that Australia’s rejection of carbon pricing will be the domino which topples any chance of global cooperation on CO2.”
Is it possible that it’s madness, or at least extraordinarily counter productive, to not address the radical change to the long term long lived greenhouse heat trapping gas concentration of the atmosphere, that, still growing at geologically breakneck speed, has collectively changed – increased – the concentration of long lived greenhouse gases to levels not seen on earth in several million years?
Is it possible that the issue is not being looked at objectively, but instead in a manner focused on finding ways to discredit the idea of climate change, not consider but simply find ways to attack or dismiss any points that don’t serve to discredit the great bulk of climate science, but yet is being confused with objectivity?
Is it possible that it’s madness, or at least extraordinarily counter productive, to fail to positively welcome and encourage the continuation the recent slight upward change to the concentration of CO2, the life-giving photosynthesis-supporting gas in the atmosphere, that, in very recent geological time, has dipped to a concentration – below 200 ppm – at which level plant growth is hindered and the fatal undermining of the entire biosphere begins from its base level – a catastrophe not seen on earth in all the history of life?
Is it possible that the CO2 issue is not being looked at objectively, but instead in a manner focused on finding ways to demonise life-giving CO2 by grossly and fraudulently inflated fansasies about “climate change” (as if climate were not always changing, naturally, in any case, humans or no), not to consider how essential and beneficial is CO2 to all life but simply find ways to attack or dismiss any points that don’t serve the misanthropic life-hating conspiracy that goes by the name of contemporary “climate science”. Are you the one confused by objectivity?
Roderick Rbe Schuller says:
July 19, 2014 at 12:15 am
Tax of any kind on the people is a fraud. The monetary system being the biggest fraud of all!! Central Banking is what needs to go!!
Yes there are injustices in any monetary system.
We humans evolved to survive, not to be moral. We have to make the best of what our evolution has made us, which is not pretty.
Why has every human civilization always, independently, eventually started making little metal discs with images printed in them, to use as money, to facilitate trading transactions between individuals? It seems that in order to move on from stone-age hunter-gathering (unless you’re happy to settle for that) – we need money at some point.
Money is to human relations what ATP is to the biochemistry of a cell – a currency of energy to make everything move. Money is indeed about naked self interest. This is not pretty. But the paradoxical fact is that, in human relations, allowing all sides in an interaction to serve their own self-interest is the best and most practical and durable way to get a beneficial and just outcome. In the long run, for everyone.
Some have tried to force everyone, at the point of an AK47 gun-barrel, to be altruistic. Its easy to generate voluminous fine-sounding words about such an approach. But in practice it is a disastrous failure maximizing human misery. North Korea typifies this approach.
See how the world goes round
You’ve got to help yourself
See how the world goes round
And you’ll help someone else
Keane, Inshin Denshin
“Why has every human civilization always, independently, eventually started making little metal discs with images printed in them, to use as money, to facilitate trading transactions between individuals?”
You don’t need a central bank to have money. You do need a central bank to allow the government to control and devalue money, so it can destroy savings and repay its debts with less than it borrowed.
Even the Commies were quite open about this, with the Communist Manifesto proposing ‘centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly’ as one of the planks of their platform to transition backward Capitalist states to their glorious Communist future. Why do you think the ‘Progressives’ so desperately wanted the Fed?
It’s worth noting that Economics and Global Climate Warming Distruption Change have an awful lot in common. Both feed data with poor quality control into simplistic models, believe the results are of Divine Importance, and continue to claim they’re correct even when all actual, empirical evidence shows they’re wrong. I saw a great exhibit at the Science Museum in London last year, where they have an old ‘economic model’ from the 50s or 60s, where you’d pour liquid in different parts of a machine to simulate economic inputs, and it would go through a lot of tubes and valves and somehow the end result would tell you how the economy would react. It would have been hilarious, if some people hadn’t taken that kind of clap-trap seriously.
Policycritic
You state that when Walmart buys goods from China it goes through an account at the Fed. This is also incorrect when we purchase items abroad we make direct wire transfers to the other parties account this can be done in either dollars or the currency of the host bank. There is no transfer through the fed and no purchase of tresuries.
The debate about a central bank has merits on both sides but the issue is the fed is not acting like a central bank protecting the value of the dollar and easing the transfers of goods. It’s actively acquiring leverage over the government and control over all private transactions. It is not performing the roll of an independent safe guard it is positioning itself to be the dominate entity in a global market independent of the interest of the citizens of this country.
policycritic
Wow . . . I suspect you are a great example of how the education system in this country has failed to educate students on key economic principles.
The federal government does not create money to spend — it borrows it. If the treasury department spends more money than it takes in via taxes, then the treasury does NOT print money. Rather the Treasury department borrows it, and from wherever that money comes from (the private sector), that place no longer has the funds to create value, create jobs, stimulate sales.
There have been times that the federal government created money — such as the Weimar Republic and Zimbabwe. But to prevent hyperinflation, governments know that they cannot print money.
The ability of banks to lend money is controlled by the Central Bank. Ideally, banks will lend money when an enterprise demonstrates that it will create value with the loan — more value than the sum of the loan on the interest on it. That is how productivity is enhanced; that is how jobs are created; that is how sales are boosted.
When the national government borrows money — the private sector is not able to do these things well. Productivity, jobs, incomes, and sales will always be less when the government takes over, because the government will make decisions based on politics rather than on value created — and the government creates incentives to waste resources to get funds without adding value.
I hate to be a wet blanket here, but couldn’t it just be because they are stupid, unworkable, unenforceable laws?
There is no end to the arguments against policycritic view, his arguments is circular and based in a zero sum game with no external influence. It’s exactly like taking a lab experiment an assuming that the results will play out in a real world environment even when there is a thousand natural inputs that didn’t exist in the lab. It’s a mind game that he is playing and he is one of those people that thinks he is the only one smart enough to understand what is going on even though I am guessing he has never work in the business world and no nothing about policy effects business. May the gods save us from intilectual do nothing’s like him.
Printing money will not fix the economic imbalances caused by investment in expensive renewables, or other political follies.
Printing money is the ultimate stealth tax. Instead of taking actual money out of people’s hands, it leaves them with the same money they had before – but some of the value of that money has been removed.
Like any tax, printing money doesn’t stimulate the economy, printing money depresses the economy.
If the amount of money in circulation increases, without a matching increase in economic output, then each dollar of the money in circulation, including the newly printed money, has reduced value – it can’t buy as much.
A good way to understand this concept is to consider an analogy – what would happen if the supply of another commodity increases. I worked in banking, they taught me a new insight, to help me work with them – money is just another commodity. You can speak of buying money with gold, in the same sense as you speak of buying gold with money, or buying silver with gold, or whatever – its all interchangeable.
If the supply of money goes up, its like someone finding a big new deposit of gold – great news for the person who discovers the gold, bad news for everyone else who already owns a stock of gold. If the supply of gold increases, the price drops.
Its exactly the same with money – if the supply of money increases, its value in terms of gold, in terms of things you can buy with money, decreases.
Of course, take it too far, and things get really hairy. Money is intrinsically worthless, its a game we play – it only holds money if we all believe in it. Print too much, and that trust, that belief, fades like frost melting in the morning sun.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=AK8JgJHYEfwC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Wrong. You’ve got it all mixed up. But you don’t have to believe me. Let me direct you to the former Deputy Secretary of the US Treasury, Frank N Newman. He wrote a book in April 2013 called Freedom From National Debt that explains how the US Treasury acts operationally, and how it interacts with its banker, the Fed. It’s short, 87 pages. The. Treasury. Does. Not. Borrow. Money. (Although the term ‘borrow’ is used colloquially as an accounting artifact when describing the issuing of treasury securities from the US govt’s point of view, when the correct term is ‘issue’). The US Treasury does not “crowd-out” the private sector for operating funds. Where do you think the private sector got that dollar to begin with? Pull one out now and look who signed it.
Policycritic
I don’t have to look at anything, i know the answer when we go to the banks to borrow to do our purchasing the banks don’t want to loan because they don’t need to.
you also miss the whole point about capitalism, it is not about dollars chasing goods. it is about profits and liquidity being reinvested to create new products, markets and more efficient process. ie creating wealth, again if this isnt how it works then why dont we still live in caves, hence the word capital. you don’t have any clue how the economy really works and you keep ignore the devaluation of the dollar (inflation) and its huge effect on the capitalist system. there is a reason the dollar trades over international markets and there is a reason treasuries have to increase the interest rate to get people to buy them.
your only good example is WWII and you fail to see how the rest of the world went broke fight the war and paying us for the arms. you fail to see the new market created ie the need to fight the war and you fail to see how the debt was really paid off ie growth in our economy providing goods to the entire world.
I don’t doubt that some pin heads at the fed agree with your view of how money works, but you again miss the point they don’t care about the strength of the dollar or the viability of the US economy they have moved passed that. They care about gaining leverage on the government and controlling the flow of money to generate profit for them selves. They are selling you and the idiots that listen to them a bill of goods. which buy the way is a reference to selling a piece of paper and making you think it has value.
This is no different then the AGW crowd who try to make us feel that they know things that the evidence doesn’t support. they academic pin head spew the bull so the masses panic and relinquish their freedom.
Policycritic
By the by the dollar existed before the FED. the Fed was created because there were times when the demand for physical dollars was larger the the holding of a individual regional bank. Dollars aren’t a creation of the FED the are lubricant to allow a easier transfer of goods, this is why the value of the dollar is directly tied to the output and value of the goods in the economy.
This is why the Chinese buy dollars to take them out of circulation this keeps its relative value higher against other international currencies thus giving them a price advantage. This in effect is just a transfer of wealth from us to them.
but they too cant do this for ever when their growth slows they wont be able to continue, this is one of the reason they are pushing to increase their consumerism in their own country and at the same time trying to push the world away from Dollars. This will allow for a secure market and purchasing power for raw materials. this is the advantage we had and are throwing away.
polictcritic
let me explain it this way, i do something that creates wealth ie build something using materials that the cost of is less the end worth of the item I created, it now has value that i have earned. i use this value to trade with some one else who has done the same thing. there is a transfer of wealth between us. we use dollars to facilitate this transfer.
when the government creates money out of thin air and purchase the same item from someone else there is only wealth created on one side of the transaction. the some total of the value of this deal is half the total of the deal i made.
but worse then that now I have to compete with the government to do my deal so the value of the wealth i created because less so i have to create more wealth to receive the same deal i did before.
i assume you see the the basic point here, supply and demand might set the ultimate price of an item, But it is the work put into creating it that generates the actual wealth. It is the wealth that is the base of the economy and more importantly the willingness of people to be an active part of it.
Joel O’Bryan says:
July 19, 2014 at 1:21 am
CO2 is no more a pollutant than water vapor, the other output of the carbon combustion equation.
The Climate Change-Global Warming Alarmism meme is approaching collapse with each colder winter.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
bit chilly says:
July 19, 2014 at 1:06 am
john carter ,please do not worry about carbon dioxide .someone has been pulling your leg , it is no more a pollutant than oxygen . now the world has entered a slight cooling phase after a slight warming phase
Global Climate is the compilation of weather over time, including many cold (as well as warm) winters from all different regions of the glob, over many years. One of the first understandings of CC was the increased likelihood of more weather volatility, likely increasing over time. That means unusual warm as well as unusuall cold in various regions at various times, and more unusual and intense precip. Etc.
Pollutant is a matter of semantics. It refers to the fact that externally adding a net huge (multi million http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-10/hawaii-carbon-dioxide-measurement-for-may-9-passed-400-ppm.html not even counting other net gaseous additons http://theworldofairaboveus.blogspot.com/2014/07/whats-really-problem-and-how-bad-and.html ) geologic spike of long lived greenhouse gases that “trap” heat is going to ultimately have longer term climate impacts, probably very significantly.
“Slight cooling phase, slight warming phase,” volatility and weather are not climate. Climate is long term. These are not “short term cooling phases” but random volatility. Here is our current phase, showing a 100 year running trend upwards, with most of the twenty-est warmest years on modern record occurring in the past twenty five years. http://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/warming_world
dbstealey says:
July 19, 2014 at 2:21 am
John Carter,
CO2 does not ‘trap heat’. It slows it down via re-radiation, like an insulating blanket….
….The proof: there are no empirical, testable measurements showing the fraction of a degree rise in temperature due to the rise in CO2.
BTW, I note that you are repeatedly linking to your own blog as your ‘authority’. Bad form, John. You are no authority.
Thanks for the lesson on “trapping” but you know it’s a common term to refer to the idea that ggs, to use your phrase, slow down via radiation, like an insulting blanket. This was specifically addressed in a comment above yours. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/18/another-carbon-tax-domino-falls-south-korea-goes-cold-on-ets/#comment-1689515 From my comments you also know I often use it that way, as well as often “absorb and re radiate, which is a resulting increase in gg molecules’ energy levels through vibrational transitions (and for higher wavelength IR some virbrational rotational transition), and re radiation in all directions.
Re “proof.” The idea that a fraction rise could be proven directly attributable to CC is extremely misleading on two key counts.
First, CC is not about just any small affect to whatever the climate today would be in the absence of our huge external multi million year gg level spike. I also reference this here, and the misleading relevance of having deep views on the issue without this awareness. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/17/australia-no-longer-a-carbon-tax-nation/#comment-1690789 The earth has huge ice sheets, caps, a vast reservoir of energy in the oceans (which has been rising now for years in response ) all of which are system stases and (relativel) stable, indirect drivers of climate, and slow to respond, and a huge spike in gg woldn’t just immediately be reflected i whatever “change” it will ultimately impact.
Second, it would require knowledge of exactly what the climate would do each day for mutliple decades which by the enormous shorter term randomness and volatility of climate, is untenable. It is also scientifically illogical to then conclude that therefore, adding an external multi million year gg level spike wouldn’t or is unlikely to have. over time, and probably in not just volatility, but maybe even “fits and starts,” what we would consider a very unwelcome impact.
Re authority, it’s not bad form, as the links are plainly visible (they’re not encoded into the text) so known. Also, those are articles I know, and if they capture points directly relevant, then they’re relevant. Links are for authority, support, or further clarificatiion, or access to more info with clarification and authority. (i.e, a source which itself has multiple external links for authoritative support, as several of mine do. And as has been provided directly in several comments as well.)
John Carter,
Unless you man up and admit that global warming has stopped, you have zero credibility. I would go farther: you are borderline insane.
You write reams of prose, which amounts to exactly nothing. You are just trying to justify your anti-science belief system by posting lots of vague notions. Do you live in your grandmother’s basement? Don’t you have a real job? Why are you wasting everyones’ time with pseudoscientific nonsense that is easy to refute?
Get a life, John.
John Carter of Mars?
The comment above was not intended to all be in italics, which was done by typo mistake, and I apologize for. It makes it harder to read. I don’t know if it should be re posted or not. On the one hand a lot of thought and work went into the comment, it has some good points, the italics makes it a royal pain to follow, and it can be easily fixed by re posting cleanly. On the other hand, I would rather not re post the same comment.
[Reply: are you sure you are commenting on the right thread? ~ mod.]
Bob Bolder says:
John Carter of Mars?
On Mars they use all italics. ☺
Let’s not dismiss a guy just because he made a formatting error. We all do it. Look at his ideas not his typing.
After all, he comes from the Silent Planet so his words are precious.
I’m British, not American, and so are my references