Guest essay by Larry Kummer. From the Fabius Maximus website.
Summary: Like all of Krugman’s work, we can learn much from his latest column about climate change. See this annotated version to see how he shows why 30 years of climate crusading has produced so little policy action in the US.
“The Axis of Climate Evil“
“Bad faith may destroy civilization”
Paul Krugman’s op-ed
in the New York Times, 11 August 2017.
Krugman is a brilliant economist, with a knack for explaining technical details to the general public. He is also an insightful political analyst, albeit of the left-wing hack kind. In yesterday’s column, he shows us the latter in action — and why three decades of climate activism has accomplished so little.
“It’s Not Your Imagination: Summers Are Getting Hotter.” So read a recent headline in The Times, highlighting a decade-by-decade statistical analysis by climate expert James Hansen. “Most summers,” the analysis concluded, “are now either hot or extremely hot compared with the mid-20th century.”
Krugman starts with a look at the past. Hansen’s graphs in the New York Times are what Edward Tufte calls “chart junk” in his classic work about graphics
For a wider perspective see this graph from the Executive Summary of the Third Draft of the Climate Science Special Report, part of the Fourth National Climate Assessment. (CCSR of NCA4). Oddly, it is not in the current Fifth Draft. It shows the hottest day in the 48 contiguous US States by year. The line has been rising since the 1960s, but remains below the levels during the long Dust Bowl. The real message here is that individual graphs can look spectacular, but no one graphic — no matter how animated — can capture the complexity of climate change.
“Extreme Hot Days Dominated by 1930s Dust Bowl.”
A still wider context shows another picture. America and Europe have been warming for two centuries, since the Little Ice Age ended. The IPCC’s AR5 Working Group I describes the anthropogenic part of that long warming: “It is extremely likely (95 – 100% certain) that human activities caused more than half of the observed increase in global mean surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 {link}.”
So what else is new? At this point the evidence for human-caused global warming just keeps getting more overwhelming, and the plausible scenarios for the future — extreme weather events, rising sea levels, drought, and more — just keep getting scarier. …
It’s fun to see climate activists make menacingly vague statements and support them by pointing to a voluminous reports, as Krugman does here — pointing to the 673 page-long draft CCSR. Let’s see if we can do better. The key relevant section is “4: Climate Models, Scenarios, and Projections.”
“Over the next two decades, global temperature increase is projected to be between 0.5°F and 1.3°F (0.3°–0.7°C) (medium confidence). This range is primarily due to uncertainties in natural sources of variability that affect short-term trends. In some regions, this means that the trend may not be distinguishable from natural variability (high confidence).
“Beyond the next few decades, the magnitude of climate change depends primarily on cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols and the sensitivity of the climate system to those emissions (high confidence). Projected changes range from 4.7°–8.6°F (2.6°–4.8°C) under the higher RCP8.5 scenario to 0.5°–1.3°F (0.3° 1.7°C) under the lower RCP2.6 scenario, for 2081–2100 relative to 1986–2005 (medium confidence).”
So the report does not prophesize doom with the certainty Krugman implies. In fact, it does what activists seldom do — explicitly state the certainty of its conclusions (the IPCC’s reports also do this). We might get tolerable rise of 0.5°–1.3°F under RCP2.6 — the most favorable of the four scenarios in the IPCC’s AR5 report (it might be easy to do; see these details). On the other extreme, their worst-case RCP8.5 scenario is nightmarish but unlikely.
What becomes clear to anyone following the climate debate, however, is that hardly any climate skeptics are in fact trying to get at the truth. I’m not a climate scientist, but I do know what bogus arguments look like — and I can’t think of a single prominent climate skeptic who isn’t obviously arguing in bad faith.
A sensible person would stop reading with this pitiful attempt to delegitimize scientists who disagree with him. Only hard-core hacks write like this. Climate activists describe prominent climate scientists like Roger Pielke Sr. and Judith Curry as “skeptics”. Krugman’s description is quite mad applied to them.
Take, for example, all the people who seized on the fact that 1998 was an unusually warm year to claim that global warming stopped 20 years ago — as if one unseasonably hot day in May proves that summer is a myth.
With this science denial Krugman shows the brotherhood of the far-right and far-left. Here he vaguely refers to what climate scientists call the “pause” or “hiatus”. Hundreds of papers in peer-reviewed journals and reports have discussed this since the early ones in 2009. Scores discussed evidence showing the pause. After that was well-established, scores discussed possible causes of the pause (a debate still not resolved). Some discuss when the pause will end (with the 2015 El Nino either making a pause in the pause, or more likely ending it). Those links go to posts with citations, abstracts, and links to a sample of 150 papers about the pause.
Or all the people who cited out-of-context quotes from climate researchers as evidence of a vast scientific conspiracy.
I agree with Krugman on this, and have written several posts about it (for example, here).
Or for that matter, think of anyone who cites “uncertainty” as a reason to do nothing — when it should be obvious that the risks of faster-than-expected climate change if we do too little dwarf the risks of doing too much if change is slower than expected.
This is a creative use by Krugman of the false dilemma logical fallacy to mischaracterize his opponents. The alternatives are not a binary do nothing or something. The world faces many serious threats in addition to climate change (details here and here). We have limited resources and must allocate them wisely among these threats. Krugman does the usual climate activist trick of focusing on the fringe that denies the reality of global warming — and ignoring the serious debate about how much warming, when, with what effects. Understanding those is necessary for effective policy action.
Conclusions
This is propaganda, characteristic of how activists have conducted their campaign to build support for massive public policy action to fight climate change. They’ve been at it since Hansen’s 1988 Senate testimony. It has not worked.
- Why the campaign to warn people about climate change fail: incompetence.
- Focusing on worst case climate futures doesn’t work. It shouldn’t work.
- Manichean paranoia has poisoned the climate debate.
It is not too late. Climate scientists can restart the climate change debate – & win. For more information about this see putting this proposal in a wider context of science norms and the climate science literature.
For More Information
Hat tip to Michael Bastasch at the Daily Caller for locating the Third Draft of Climate Science Special Report at Internet Archive.
For more information about these matters see the keys to understanding climate change, my posts about climate change, posts about the insights of Paul Krugman, and especially these with good news about the climate…
- Good news! Coal bankruptcies point to a better future for our climate.
- Good news from America about climate change, leading the way to success.
- Ignoring science to convince the public that we’re doomed by climate change.
- Paul Krugman explains how to break the climate policy deadlock.
- “Good news for the New Year! Salon explains that the global climate emergency is over.“
- Stratfor gives us good news, showing when renewables will replace fossil fuels.
- The IPCC gives us good news about climate change, but we don’t listen.
Krugman is so brilliant that he thinks decades of deficit spending, including a deficit of a trillion dollars a year for the past decade hasn’t been enough, so we need more to stimulate the economy.
A “theory” like that can never be shown false, as with CACA.
He was awarded a Nobel because three Scandinavian socialists agreed with his conclusions.
Well stated Gloateus. Our real doomsday scenario is the certain economic collapse that will make the Great Depression look like a 5th grade bake sale. The impending collapse will shake the world and destroy quality of life far beyond anything that global warmi…ahhhh we really meant climate change all along, could throw at us.
Whenever I have listened to Krugman speak I find myself involuntarily rolling my eyes and shaking my head. This guy is anything but a Brilliant Economist. The only thing he is brilliant at is left wing group think newspeak.
Krugman merits a full-body eye-roll.
Don’t worry; no one’s paying the slightest attention to him anyway.
Krugman’s economic paper on global trade for which he won the Nobel prize was so brilliant, cogent and important it was ignored for almost 20 years. He won for his NYT political editorials bashing of GW Bush
I hate to keep saying it, but there is no Nobel prize for economics. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences
Economics is a special branch of human behaviour study devoted primarily to business transactions. It is incapable of making projections with any accuracy greater than chance and so in spite of its status in the business community and the fake Nobel prize which attempts to give it legitimacy, it is basically a fraudulent activity akin to homeopathy.
Larry Kummer writes: Krugman is a brilliant economist, with a knack for explaining technical details to the general public. He is also an insightful political analyst, albeit of the left-wing hack kind.
Larry, no Keynesian economist is brilliant, and this includes Keynes himself.
+100
I actually made the effor READ Keynes’ “General Theory”. You can get it free on “Project Gutenberg” and similar sites.
One point Keynes argued was that workers’ reluctance to accept lower wages leads to additional unemployment. Government spending, increasing inflation, gets workers to accept higher “nominal” wages but lower “real” wages, reducing that unemployment i guess Keynesians think workers are too stupid to notice that inflation. and don’t take countermeasures. We had BOTH high inflation and high unemployment during the Nixon-Ford-Carter years, proving that Keynesianism was voodoo economics.
Keynes was a brilliant statistician.
Keynes, BTW, advocated for governments to spend money during economic downturns, but certainly not to continue deficit spending when the economy was growing.
Keynes never advocated permanent deficits and debt…which is what Krugman and his insane ilk argue foe every single day of their lives.
Krugman has never had an original idea in his life.
MarkT wrote: “Keynes was a brilliant statistician.”
Mark, you might have more correctly assumed I was talking about Keynes understanding of economics, not his command of statistics. In fact, as is also the case with many climate scientists, social engineers and government bureaucrats, his so-called expertise in statistics might have enabled both his own hubris and his ability to create wrong-headed but sciency sounding, sophistical economic arguments. Of course, my opinion comes from one who believes that every scientific experiment that uses some statistical tests or models MUST include a section explaining why the statistics chosen are fit for purpose, and alternately, why they might NOT be fit. Anything less spits on Feynman’s demand that we must not fool anyone, and that we most easily fool ourselves.
Keynes theory was that there were pools of money sitting around unused, and that having government seize this money and spend it would improve the economy.
As later economists, (and basic logic) have shown. These pools never existed.
In every instance, government takes money from one group in order to give that money to people who are in political favor.
This is like claiming that moving money from your right pants pocket to your left, will make you richer.
MarkW, you are wrong when you say, “These pools never existed.” Not only do they exist, they can be created out of thin air by the Federal Reserve.
Printing money is as much a tax as any other method of raising money.
The difference it’s a hidden tax that hits everyone. They become poorer, because the money they hold becomes worth less over time. The difference is that they don’t know they are being robbed until it’s too late to do anything about it.
There is value available in the system to print out of thin air, or at least there was. Counting that value is a tap dance. I just finished doing a volunteer effort with 2 organizations. That effort put value into the system, that the Fed can print money against. The challenge though is the count. I was volunteering with Org1 who was helping Org2 to a project for Org3 who reports to Org4. The 3 hours I spent will show up on three different ledgers. 3 hours of value were added to the system, at least 12 hours was recorded. No money changes hands on the front side. The only place the money can appear to change hands is either in the discount rate or the money supply (Given that Time Value of money has Rate, Present Value, Future Value, Payments, and Periods, we can tap dance with them also).
Krugman is worth listening to. He gives us a really good idea of how to do it wrong.
Well, his Nobel work was on free trade and “the patterns of international trade and the geographic distribution of economic activity, by examining the effects of economies of scale and of consumer preferences for diverse goods and services” (Wikipedia). So even though he is a left-leaning progressive, his Nobel work was not exactly socialist. I disagree with many of the things he believes.
His “Nobel work” is about the only thing he ever did that was actually capitalist. Not surprisingly, it is really just an analysis. I wasn’t allowed to do an analysis for my PhD dissertation, but he wins a faux-Nobel for it.
He was quite good until he got integrated into NYT collective. Someone speculated that no one likes you when you tell the truth, so to get into the good parties he reiterates progressive canon law now.
http://www.aei.org/publication/paul-krugman-on-the-minimum-wage-1998-vs-2015/
Spot on. Krugman has stated that stimulus spending in Japan hasn’t worked because they just didn’t spend enough — and this after Japan accumulated twice its GDP in government debt over a period of some 25 years of “insufficient” spending. Krugman is clueless.
A minor point of expansion that is too often overlooked. Paul Krugman was not awarded a “Nobel.” There is no Nobel Prize in economics because then like now economics is not a science.
Background on why he deservedly won the Rizbank Memorial: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/14/business/economy/14econ.html
What he actually got is still not a Nobel Prize: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. A bank sponsored award unsurprisingly.
LOL was that sarc right out of the gate, calling him a “brilliant Economist”. I call it the Krug Beast, drinking the koolaid of Keynesian foolishness.
He is the poster boy for what ails us.
“Failed”?
Certainly not worldwide – and it seems not in the US either ….
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-observer1702/20170813/282278140434375
Ah yes, the great Renewables Utopia.
Like Erewhon, it is nowhere.
Toneb,
Few of the things in that article’s grab-bag list are public policy actions, and none of those are significant.
“Weatherstripping homes” as a success from a massive 30-year campaign to get public policy action to fight climate change? Nice try.
Paul Krugman is a master at substituting a confident manner for actual knowledge. His view of climate science is as shallow as it is wrong.
Climate “scientists” want a do-over? Pass.
A “do-over?” is that what President Trump asked his hair stylist for?
Krugman is a liar. And makes good money doing it.
http://oi67.tinypic.com/2dlm053.jpg
http://oi67.tinypic.com/10er3ps.jpg
A hot summer is not defined by the maximum temperature. Taken over the whole summer, many summers are now in what would have been the “extremely hot” category from the 1951-1980 base period.
You’re talking average temperature.
When Johnny Carson came out on stage for his monologue and cued the audience with, “It was really hot to day!”
he wasn’t referring to the average temperature. Averages omit a lot of information. For example the average of 49 and 51 is 50 and the average of 1 and 99 is also 50.
That graph and map show that the heat of the afternoon during the warmer part of the year May-Oct has been on the decline for many decades. For most of those states colored blue the decline has been all the way back to the 19th century. Warmer nights and cooler days equates to milder weather and climate. The “summers are getting hotter’ claim for the United States at least is total B.S.
Nice try. Now go check out the 1930’s. Actual,temps, not the cooled homogeized ones that get UHI adjustments backwards (see essay When Data Isn’t for details). The world cooled from ~1945-1975, you cherry picked the base comparison period. Doesn’t work here.
No. We have had a lovely cool summer here in the Ohio Valley. The high was 80 today, well under the average of 84. I think it might have gotten over 90 once or twice, but a lot less than 25 years ago.
Hey sea ice, the vast majority of people think of hot as what happens during the day when the sun is shining.
Less cool at night is not hot by any common reckoning.
Krugman is a liar, and so are you.
As I sit in the kitchen these days taking my morning tea I can’t help noticing the early morning temperatures are hovering in the mid 60’s. This is just NOT normal temperatures for mornings in August in New Jersey. I can’t wait to see what next year might bring. On the other hand, we’ll have to pass through winter to get there and I may not wind up being fond of that trip.
Maximum Temperature not good?
Let’s see % of all stations reporting both in 1920 & 2016, for temperature over 90 in US.
H/T tonyheller
According to the best data set in the world, the frequency of hot days has been plummeting in the US.
Not even close to Extreme Hot.
““Most summers,” the analysis concluded, “are now either hot or extremely hot compared with the mid-20th century.”
Not even close to being true.
Question: Are you experiencing an extremely hot summer this year?
My summer here in the former Dustbowl has been as mild and pleasant as any I can remember. It’s about 85F outside right now, it rained this morning, and the flora and fauna are flourishing.
Normally, at this hottest time of year the temperatures would be running above 100F and it would not have rained for several months, everything would be dry, and the heat would hang around for weeks if not months. This year is a walk in the park! 🙂
It’s not getting hotter and hotter, it is getting milder, and every indicator says so except the bastardized surface temperature Hockey Stick chart which has been fashioned to promote the CAGW narrative, and that’s what Krugman and Hansen are using to makes these claims of extreme heat. The lying Hockey Stick chart is the only thing these people can point to as “evidence”. Take that away from them and they have nothing. Nothing at all.
TA,
“My summer here in the former Dustbowl has been as mild and pleasant as any I can remember.”
I hope you are kidding us, citing the weather in your community now as a measure of the trend in US temps. I’d hate to believe the level of comments at WUWT that had fallen that far.
Yes. Who should we believe? ‘Climate Scientists’ or our own lying thermometers?
The amazing thing about ‘Global Warming’ is that it seems to be happening everywhere except the places where people actually live.
Eyeballing the graphs in the link, by “hot summer” they mean more than 1 sd above the average for 1951-1980. Over the base period we would have 13.6% of summers described as “hot” and 2.2% described as “very hot”
Keeping those same limits, it looks like about 40% are in the “hot” category and 20% in the “very hot”, making about 60% hot or very hot based on the 1951-1980 distribution.
And very hot is 2 sd.
“I hope you are kidding us, citing the weather in your community now as a measure of the trend in US temps.”
Well, I’m actually citing weather for the entire central U.S., minus the coasts, so it encompasses more than just my community. I think if you did a query of people on WUWT, you would find that their summer in the U.S. this year has been very mild, just like mine.
And now we are at the heighth of the hot season and it’s all downhill from here temperature-wise.
This summer in the U.S. is definitely not a subject for the alarmists to use as an example of extreme weather. You haven’t heard them make such claims much this year. They tried to hype a few days of extreme heat in the Southwest at the beginning of the summer as something unusual, but it went away too quickly to help their talking points, and then a high-pressure system heated up the west coast for a few days, but that, too, didn’t last long enough to write home about. The alarmists are left with citing heatwaves in Spain and India.
No “hotter and hotter” here. No “hottest year evah!” here. Nothing extreme here. Just the nicest weather you can imagine.
A funny thing happens when you start to look at the temperature graphs for individual locations…as actually recorded by the people who were alive then and looking at the thermometers at the actual locations: You have one hell of a hard time finding many actual locations getting hotter at all.
Most places are getting cooler over time.
There is absolutely nothing unusual or unprecedented happening with the weather.
Not.
One.
Single.
Thing.
The quote was referring to NH summers.
However even in the US Ssummers have nights as well …..
Yes, summers do have nights. Do you really think “It’s Not Your Imagination: Summers Are Getting Hotter” refers to the coolest part of summer nights, when most people are sleeping or at least indoors?
Tone, couldn’t help but notice you graph shows a 1 1/2 degree increase in temps..
….which just happens to be how much NOAA has adjusted temps
Shirley, you can’t be serious. What is the correction for UHI to that data? Please tell.
I like that chart, Latitude! Looks like a new one.
“What is the correction for UHI to that data? Please tell.”
There is no correction for that.
Every manipulation (I refuse to even consider humouring the notion of calling fraudulent alterations to historical data “corrections”…and neither should you.) cools the past, smooth’s out the multidecadal trend reversals, and makes the entire time series look more and more like steady warming…when the fact is no such thing was ever actually measured anywhere on Earth.
If they corrected for UHI, they would have to warm the past or adjust correct temps down.
What has actually occurred is transparently obvious: The warmistas have manipulated the data to attempt to lend some credence to their failed ideology.
IOW…instead of adjusting their hypothesis to fit the facts, they adjusted the facts to fit their hypothesis.
The only way to not know this is true is if one is in a state of cognitive dissonance induced hallucination, or just not paying attention, or has been convinced to believe a pack of lies.
“Tone, couldn’t help but notice you graph shows a 1 1/2 degree increase in temps..
….which just happens to be how much NOAA has adjusted temps”
Ah, the usual “with one bound ….”
Err no … that is average temp, which is between max and min, yes?
And let me pose this question to you…
You think it sensible that a max temp should be read in the early evening and the thermometer be reset?
You do know what that would do iffen the next day is cooler?
You would like the practise to be reverted to?
Of course you wouldn’t as that would give a false warming trend.
Just why it has been adjusted out.
To answer your question, it appears that when you perform a study of the data, the answer is that it does not in practice make any significant difference. Eg.,
AND
Of course this study, whilst it encompasses the entire contiguous US only looks at July, but since this article is on hot days in summer, the July temperature data should suffice to see whether there is any material trend due to TOB.
It appears that in practice, there is no TOB trend, and therefore there is in practice no need to make some adjustment for perceived trend. It follows that making an adjustment for something which is only perceived and not in practice real, does not improve the data set and simply distorts the data and exacerbates error.
“You think it sensible that a max temp should be read in the early evening and the thermometer be reset?”
When I worked for the railroad we wrote down the temperature and atmospheric conditions four times per day, at midnight, 6am, 12 noon, and 6pm. Didn’t have to reset anything.
Btw, every railroad on Earth, I suppose, records the temperature and atmospheric conditions at every little station up and down the line. I wonder if anyone ever made use of that kind of database. Lots of coverage over many square miles for several hundred years. Of course, it was mear, fallible humans taking those readings so they would probably need adjustment by cooling the past. 🙂
Besides for everything noted here demonstrating that the TOB adjustments are 100% unjustified, is the overlooked assumption that stations that recorded/reported the daily temperature in the afternoon rather than early morning also reset their high/low thermometers during the hottest part of the afternoon.
This assumption is a huge one, and not based on one single shred of evidence that the people manning and operating those stations were that careless and stupid.
Regardless of the time of day temperatures were recorded, the people running meteorological stations knew full well that the best time to reset these thermometers was just before midnight. That way, the readings were recording the high and low for the next calendar day.
In practice, they were likely reset either at that time, for stations manned 24/7, or in the early morning, for stations manned during work day hours only.
Anyone who had any idea of the reason for having these thermometers would know without even thinking about it that resetting them during the heat of the day or in the middle of the night would give errant readings.
Steve Case,
Your graph is May to October. Meteorological summer is June to August.
Tony’s graph shows a rise in summer minimum temperatures. Average and maximum summer temps have also increased.
See the graphs here: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/
Summer is included in the May – October time series. Some people say summer is June 21st to September 21st. And there’s always the little ditty often recited on May 1st:
Hooray hooray, the first of May
Outdoor screwing starts today.
The May-October span was chosen because it was the longest at Climate at a Glance that showed maximum temperatures cooling for the longest time-span. Most the states colored blue on the map show afternoon temperatures cooling all the way back to the 19th century. That’s true for all of the states bordering Kentucky and Tennessee plus a few more.
See my other comment comment.
Notwithstanding the meteorological summer definition, the hottest day of a year can easily occur in May or September.
As has been mentioned, it all depends on where you start your trend line.
The only honest and scientific place to start is at the beginning.
That is, for the entire period for which records are available.
Steve, have you seen Tony’s take on it?……..
Tony Heller? If that’s who you mean tells me every time I post temperature data from Climate At A Glance that it’s “Fake Data”.
Well yes, the Climate At A Glance page uses NOAA homogenized data – but it’s their data and it shows albeit to a lesser degree the same thing Tony’s stuff does.
By the way, just today he’s beginning to release software to allow us ordinary mortals to easily download the NOAA unadjusted data or at least I think that’s what he’s unleashing. Means lots of folks will have the power to do what he does.
Yes, so,he says. C++ is not a language supported by most PC’s, so he had to also provide a clunky compiler. (Never good if you can avoid.) Newly coded version of his software in Python overcomes that. I have had ‘free’ crowd sourced Python 2.2 on my Mac since a decade when my son at HBS recommended. Useful when Excel fails. Much better than all other PC programming alternatives.
The point was the 1 1/2 degrees you only get by adjusting…..
Heller runs Linux for most tasks it appears, and has now provided Windows based python file for the most recent version. If the C++ compiler he used was the GCC compiler included in most Linux releases it really isn’t “clunky” at all. C++ itself, now, that may be a another story. Linux development is one of the best development environments in use – or can be. With a well-setup make file, very imposing programs (aps to the “smart” phone crew) like R and GRASS can be compiled on directly on your system. I have run Linux preferentially for well over 10 years now and with the exception of Access, which I need to work with on occasion, it serves vert well for all purposes.
“C++ is not a language supported by most PC’s, so he had to also provide a clunky compiler.”
Uh, sorry, but that statement doesn’t make sense. C++ is a language that can be compiled into just about any machine language, including all modern PCs. The only difference is the compiler for each machine. There are numerous compilers for Windows, gcc, as well as the Visual C++ compiler, which Microsoft provides for free. gcc is probably the most powerful development compiler in use. Saying that a PC “doesn’t support C++” indicates maybe you should stick to commenting on the things you are good at instead of this one.
He was awarded a Nobel prize because he developed a theory that changed the face of economics. A great many disagree with his Op Ed pieces but still respect his Nobel prize winning work. He is viewed by at least some economists as a brilliant economist gone bad by over political interpretaions. Whatever you think of his politics, it is fairly undeniable that he has made a significant contribution to economics.
On the contrary…it is highly deniable.
I read Krugman’s “Depression Era Economics” and found it to be not impressive–he had no useful suggestions in it at all except huge stimulus, and if that didn’t work, then huger stimulus. I understand his work on trade is brilliant, but I’m agnostic on his brilliance after reading the book. I do suspect that his Bush bashing gave him a leg up over other nominees with the Norwegian committee.
The only good thing I can say about Paul Krugman, is that he is several orders of magnitude smarter than Thomas Friedman.
https://youtu.be/CgAUW_zcN9k
Imagine how moronic Thomas Friedman must be.
It is fascinating to look at the tipping point argument because it does not make sense 1) In the entire known history of the planet, granted, recreated through proxies, not only is there no linkage between co2 and temps, but we have seen very cold and warm periods reverse with no spiralling into earth as an ice ball descent, nor heating so much we turn into Venus.. or worse, a satellite sun. Krugman, etal, refuses to identify a true temp the earth should be at, or even the perfect one for all life on the planet. The same with co2 levels. So we are left with this idea that if its warmer, its worst. but what fascinates me is no one seems to bring up the idea that given the nature of heat as a function of energy, the warmer it is, the harder it is to make it warmer. There are logial ways to see this 1) Look at where and when the bulk of the warming is occuring. Its in cold dry areas, most supceptible to the increases in water vapor brought about by warmer oceans, which are likely recovering from the previous cold period we were in, and perhaps because of enhanced sunspot activity and absorption of extra incoming radiation during that period. The other aspect is that much of the warming has been in nightime lows, as most of the extremes in heat were in previous decades. This confirms that its lower temperatures, not higher, drier climates, that are affected most. Krugman seem unaware that if one looks at the records in the arctic since 1958 on the DMI site, the warming has been during the arctic winter, when absurdly frigid has warmed to just very frigid, WHILE SUMMER TEMPS REFUSE TO WARM! ONCE AGAIN SHOWING YOU there is a cap, that the warmer it is the harder it is to get warmer. Another problem is Le Chateliers principle, which states: ” If a dynamic equilibrium is disturbed by changing the conditions, the position of equilibrium moves to counteract the change.” Krugman and the entire movement refuse to give us the goal, the perfect temp we need, The reason, there is none, or it can not be defined. They wish to push the idea that the increase of 1 molecule of co2 out of every 10000 molecules of air over a 100 year period is the climate control knob over the sun, oceans, stochastic events, the very design of a system which has been in conflict its entire known history. We can go on and on. Most damaging to them is the idea that if the earth is warming disproportionately , more in the polar regions than where humans live, and more in its cold season, there are 2 fold benefits. Alex Epsteins the moral case for fossil fuels outlines the obvious, men are progressing more rapidly than ever. But the DECEREASE in temp difference, both in max min temps ( if mins are rising some and maxes are not), and more importantly the decrease in zonal potential energy if the colder regions are a bit, warmer MAY MEAN LESS, NOT MORE, ADVERSE WEATHER! It may be a reason for why the doom and gloom of the hurricane seasons has not occurred, large scale changes in the MSLP during the northern hemisphere tropical seasons and the changes that would have to occur with the global wind oscillation. I wrote about this in weatherbell.com as to why large powerful hurricanes may be weakening coming toward the coast,even in the big years monsters like Katrina and Rita were off their peaks when they hit, unlike many of the storms in the 30s,40s and 50s that hit the coast while near their peaks! Finally at any given time, most of the planet is having weather that can be expected. The better detection methods and the ignorance of the general public to how bad the weather can be or what has happened before is being used by people to push the idea its worse than ever, when in reality there is nothing new under the sun, and as a matter of fact, the weather and climate of today seems to be best for plant and animal life. After all, during the fossil fuel era, popuation, life expectancy and personal income globally have exploded. Man is certainly better off today than they were or what we would be if people advocating what is being said here had their way ( note it may not affect them, since many of them are very well off, but those seeking to create a better life, would be met with insurmountable odds without cheap energy)
Paragraphing would help!
To some extent.
yah so would lack of misspellings. was in a rush, had to hit some deadlines. Please forgive.
Actually I like the style. Joe is getting deep into it and, sure, paragraphs are fine, but I don’t need them.
I never miss Joe Bastardi’s daily weather updates. and his weekend updates – all outside of Weatherbell’s paywall…He speaks in complete paragraphs – some as long as 15 to 16 minutes, or as short as 2 minutes…lol
Those were really good throughts Joe, thanks!
The “funny thing” is that people like Krugman prattle on about the Holocene climate being some sort of uniquely stable, ideal climatic condition. When, in fact, 150-500 years ago, the Earth was in the grips of the coldest climate in at least 8,000 years. The Little Ice Age was possibly as cold as Late Pleistocene glacial interstadial episodes.
Even if humans have contributed to the warm up from the Little Ice Age… it’s a very good thing for life and human civilization.
The only reason Arctic temperatures don’t go above freezing is for the same reason that ice cools your drink. It takes enormous amounts of energy to melt ice and even more enormous amounts of energy to generate water vapor. Arctic temperatures will only increase once all the ice has melted.
This makes it very easy to game average temperatures. Take a lot of dry Sahara heat and mix with a little Arctic cold and you have a rising temperature. Change the proportions and you can have dropping temperatures.
Keep the proportions the same and any change in the currents of warm tropical waters or cold Arctic waters causes average temperature changes or El Ninos.
Now that a climate “scientist” has put climatology firmly into the realm of faith based religion by saying that climate science is infallible and cannot be proven wrong, (https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/08/10/claim-climate-science-does-not-have-to-be-falsifiable, https://www.britannica.com/topic/papal-infallibility), it’s time to stop funding this nonsense as it contrary to the separation of church and state.
Arctic Temperatures DO go above freezing almost every year during the 60 day Arctic Melt Season. The Ice won’t melt below freezing so without temperatures rising above freezing, there would be no polar melt ponds on the ice. Can’t blame it on the rain either (though Milli Vanilli might want you to) as Rain also won’t fall in below freezing conditions.
The Bell curve on the Sea Ice Page for the Arctic Temperatures indicates that it falls within 2K(C) above freezing for most of the arctic summer.
See
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
But you need to go back to the Super El Nino year of 1998 to find a summer mostly above the bell curve. Most Arctic Summers since then fall mostly below the bell curve though still above freezing.
Amen.
“…the warmer it is the harder it is to get warmer.”
It’s that old T⁴ business. It’s a lot easier to increase night-time lows than daytime maxima.
damn…that was very good Joe!!
two things…you mention increase humidity….makes night temps higher
second, I hate those blown up scales…makes 1 degree in 100 years look like some big deal
Willis often states that clouds cause warming. I often point out to him that one cannot begin to ascertain the effect of clouds until one considers humidity, and the role that clouds play in reducing convective cooling.
I spend a lot of time in summer on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, and I often point out to Willis that on the shores of the Med, in summer, a cloudy night is usually a cool night, and a cloudless night is usually a warm night. I suggest the reason for this is humidity.
Cloudless nights follow a cloud free day and there is a lot of oceanic evaporation, and the air becomes humid and the atmosphere contains a lot of specific heat/energy making it slow to cool. Hence it remains warm well in to the early hours of the morning (eg., 02:00 hrs).
By contrast cloudy nights usually follow from a day where the clouds begin to form late afternoon and there is less evaporation from the ocean and less humidity. The atmosphere contains less specific heat/energy and therefore cools quickly. By 21:00 to 22:30 it is quite cool and begins to feel chilly.
One needs to take account of the specific heat/energy contained in the atmosphere which dominates any radiative effect. After all the Sahara and the Northern Shores of the Med are not that far apart and receive broadly similar solar irradiance and yet the temperature profile of their respective days/nights is very different and this is most probably due predominantly to differences in humidity.
“damn…that was very good Joe!!
two things…you mention increase humidity….makes night temps higher”
I wonder how much of this increase in humidity is attributable to the increased greening of the Earth because of increased CO2 in the atmosphere?
Joe,
You said, ” Krugman, etal, refuses to identify a true temp the earth should be at, or even the perfect one for all life on the planet.” Implicit in that observation is that alarmists have made the unstated and unexamined assumption that the climate was optimal before humans created advanced technology. What are the odds that after 4.5 billion years of widely varying climates on Earth, that it just happened to be at the optimum a couple hundred years ago? I would say that it is highly improbable. So, before getting excited about temperatures that are increasing slightly, we need to define what the optimal average temperature and temperature range should be and justify that definition with analyses of how it would effect the flora and fauna. Otherwise, should the alarmists be successful in maintaining the status quo, they might doom us to a future of a sub-optimal climate.
Clyde has a problem with Luddites. Sounds racist to me. 😉
Robert,
Truth be known, I’m a closet culturist at heart.
Thanks Joe. I paragraphed it for you and fixed a couple of obvious spelling problems:
It is fascinating to look at the tipping point argument because it does not make sense 1) In the entire known history of the planet, granted, recreated through proxies, not only is there no linkage between co2 and temps, but we have seen very cold and warm periods reverse with no spiralling into earth as an ice ball descent, nor heating so much we turn into Venus. or worse, a satellite sun.
Krugman, etal, refuses to identify a true temp the earth should be at, or even the perfect one for all life on the planet.
The same with co2 levels. So we are left with this idea that if its warmer, its worst.
But what fascinates me is no one seems to bring up the idea that given the nature of heat as a function of energy, the warmer it is, the harder it is to make it warmer.
There are logical ways to see this 1) Look at where and when the bulk of the warming is occurring. Its in cold dry areas, most susceptible to the increases in water vapor brought about by warmer oceans, which are likely recovering from the previous cold period we were in, and perhaps because of enhanced sunspot activity and absorption of extra incoming radiation during that period.
The other aspect is that much of the warming has been in nighttime lows, as most of the extremes in heat were in previous decades. This confirms that its lower temperatures, not higher, drier climates, that are affected most.
Krugman seem unaware that if one looks at the records in the arctic since 1958 on the DMI site, the warming has been during the arctic winter, when absurdly frigid has warmed to just very frigid, WHILE SUMMER TEMPS REFUSE TO WARM! ONCE AGAIN SHOWING YOU there is a cap, that the warmer it is the harder it is to get warmer.
Another problem is Le Chateliers principle, which states: ” If a dynamic equilibrium is disturbed by changing the conditions, the position of equilibrium moves to counteract the change.”
Krugman and the entire movement refuse to give us the goal, the perfect temp we need, The reason, there is none, or it can not be defined. They wish to push the idea that the increase of 1 molecule of co2 out of every 10000 molecules of air over a 100 year period is the climate control knob over the sun, oceans, stochastic events, the very design of a system which has been in conflict its entire known history.
We can go on and on. Most damaging to them is the idea that if the earth is warming disproportionately, more in the polar regions than where humans live, and more in its cold season, there are 2 fold benefits.
Alex Epstein’s the moral case for fossil fuels outlines the obvious, men are progressing more rapidly than ever. But the DECREASE in temp difference, both in max min temps ( if mins are rising some and maxes are not), and more importantly the decrease in zonal potential energy if the colder regions are a bit, warmer MAY MEAN LESS, NOT MORE, ADVERSE WEATHER!
It may be a reason for why the doom and gloom of the hurricane seasons has not occurred, large scale changes in the MSLP during the northern hemisphere tropical seasons and the changes that would have to occur with the global wind oscillation.
I wrote about this in weatherbell.com as to why large powerful hurricanes may be weakening coming toward the coast, even in the big years monsters like Katrina and Rita were off their peaks when they hit, unlike many of the storms in the 30s,40s and 50s that hit the coast while near their peaks!
Finally at any given time, most of the planet is having weather that can be expected. The better detection methods and the ignorance of the general public to how bad the weather can be or what has happened before is being used by people to push the idea its worse than ever, when in reality there is nothing new under the sun, and as a matter of fact, the weather and climate of today seems to be best for plant and animal life. After all, during the fossil fuel era, population, life expectancy and personal income globally have exploded. Man is certainly better off today than they were or what we would be if people advocating what is being said here had their way (note it may not affect them, since many of them are very well off, but those seeking to create a better life, would be met with insurmountable odds without cheap energy)
And that cap temperature for the earth would appear to be about 77F (25C). The earth temperature graph approximates a bang-bang system with a max temperature of 77F and a minimum temperature of about 50F (10C . . . we’re almost at that bottom bang right now which brings up the question are we more likely to freeze or burn up?)
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image277.gif
Super B I N G O !
This plays out particularly with respect to ocean SST. The warmer it gets the more evaporation there is which serves to limit temperature rise.
The ignorance of weather history by the general public can be forgiven. The revisionist distortions by people who know better is despicable. It’s immoral – it’s a species of lying. Paul Krugman is completely over the top slandering, all at once, every last prominent climate skeptic as unwilling to argue in good faith. What a ruse!
It’s the alarmists who have repeatedly been caught debasing scientific rigor for political advantage. Krugman ought to know this. One is left suspecting there are none so blind as those who will not see.
It is simple really…Krugman is either an idiot or a liar.
No point in sugar coating it…they don’t.
If Krugman can’t create a straw man opponent when he writes, he finds that he has nothing to say.
And as pointed out here, if one performs even a cursory review of Krugman’s essays, it is obvious he really has nothing to argue except to demonstrate how shallow and reactionary he is.
Except with enough positive feedback. For instance, making larger and larger amplitude swings of the Tacoma Narrows bridge deck should have been harder to do also, but turned out to be easy once a positive feedback was established. However, the history of our planet does not suggest such a positive feedback exists.
Even without paragraphs, Joe just demonstrated far more understanding of climate than anyone who supports a man my made climate warming crisis. Like Joe, I believe the human impact is small and overwhelmingly positive.
The amount of spin that is required to turn what we are observing into a crisis is impressive, and a testament to the power of paradigms in human affairs. The AGW theory is a very weak theory, based on assumptions with no supporting real world observations. For the last 30 years, we have searched for evidence that the theory might be correct, and have no more than what random chance would produce… maybe even less. Still, the AGW theory is treated like a fact in many places, including academia and the media. That can only happen through the lens of a powerful paradigm that encompasses the whole culture. This culture is characterised by the loss of rugged individualism and the embrace of Western guilt and individual victimhood. The AGW theory is not the result of science, as there is very little science in it, but the product of cultural decay.
That is very well said, thank you. Those have been my thoughts as well, but hadn’t been able to express them so succinctly and clearly
EPA has a good graph showing high low change versus high highs.
From the article: “The IPCC’s AR5 Working Group I describes the anthropogenic part of that long warming: “It is extremely likely (95 – 100% certain) that human activities caused more than half of the observed increase in global mean surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 ”
Based on what?
All this is based on is the CO2 greenhouse gas theory which has not produced any evidence that CO2 is causing the Earth’s atmosphere to warm. Just because the IPCC says it’s a probability doesn’t make it so.
No evidence.
The only evidence we have so far is CO2 is increasing and the temperatures are not, so how can CO2 be causing any warming when there is no warming?
“95-100 percent certain” my hindquarters!
It would be useful if we knew how they arrived at the 95 to 100 percent and other such “measures”.
Simple…they made it up.
That is their principle skill set…making stuff up.
“So what else is new? At this point the evidence for human-caused global warming just keeps getting more overwhelming, and the plausible scenarios for the future — extreme weather events, rising sea levels, drought, and more — just keep getting scarier. …”
And yet the latest IPCC report and trend in recent models both indicate reduced temperature sensitivity to CO2.
Only faith in a crypto-religion can explain his ignorance.
BTW keeps this in mind, because in the climate situation I am convinced this applies, from Mencken
“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.”
The one I like, even better Joe, is: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
north korea nuking the USA is a prime current example…….they are no threat to us.
…does us include South Korea?
North Korea is definitely a threat to the U.S.
They are almost to the point where they are too big a threat to allow to remain in existence. They already have millions of innocent people under their guns, and given a little more time, they will have hundreds of millions of innocent people under their guns. And then we can all sit around and wonder whether Kim is in good spirits this morning, or is that mental illness taking him down dark, violent paths.
Something serious is going to have to take place to remove North Korea as a threat. It might not be total war, but it’s not going to be pleasant even if it’s not, because Trump is going to have to get tough with China, and during all this, Kim Jung-Un just might wig out and do something rash which *would* bring on total war.
Trump has had an enormous problem dumped in his lap by the failure of three previous American administrations to take the appropriate actions to put a stop to this North Korean threat. Now, we are left with few choices, none of them very good.
This is what appeasement gets you. You can put the day of reckoning off for a little while, but one day it is going to be upon you, breathing down your neck. You better deal with it while it is a small problem and not let it get overwhelming. But appeasers never do, and most politicians never do, either. They always wait until the crisis ensues.
Reigning in North Korea would have taken tough decisions on the part of these three previous administrations, possibly even war decisions, and none of them were willing to go far enough to fix the problem.
The administrations put on a good public relations show, but that’s all the efforts ever amounted to. Even the sanctions were a joke. We’re still sanctioning North Korea in 2017, when there shouldn’t have been anything left to sanction by now, if our former presidents had made any effort.
One thing about Trump: He has been thinking hard about North Korea for many decades, so he knows this subject, and he said back in 1999, that if he were elected president and were confronted with the problem of a nuclear North Korea, he would negotiate like crazy at first, but if negotiations did not work, then he would fix the problem in another way, implying military action, because the U.S. could not be held hostage by North Korean dictators.
And a word about Trump not ruling out military action in Venezuela: Some folks, mostly on the Left, are getting all exercised about Trump leaving all options on the table with regard to Venezuela, and really fear some kind of military action by Trump, but I think this is just a gambit on Trump’s part to put pressure on Venezuela’s leaders and Trump’s naysayers should chill out a little, especially the Republican ones.
People all over the world are paying attention to Trump on military matters and are taking him seriously, including those in Venezuela.
There is a very good chance that some Venezuelan army general or politician will have heard what Trump said, and will see this as an opportunity to overthrow Maduro, possibly thinking they could get Trump to come in on their side. They might even give ole Trump a call on the back channel. 🙂
Trump doesn’t have to take military action all the time. Sometimes just the threat, a *credible threat* is required, but if it is credible, just the threat will get you what you want. People tend to conform if they think there is a credible possibility that they will come to harm if they don’t.
Next up for Trump and the World: The Mad Mullahs of Iran. Yeah, previous administrations have left Trump all sorts of messes to clean up. But I can’t think of a better person to do the job. Things come together sometimes. Right man, right place, right time.
“One thing about Trump: He has been thinking hard about North Korea for many decades.”
…
Too funny……you’re talking about a guy that did not know what the nuclear triad was during the campaign.
Dennis Rodman knows more about NoKo than Trump.
TA said:
Too true. Funny, the WaPo editorials and columnists I read never make this obvious point.
He may not have been up to speed on the nuke triad in early 2016 when Hugh Hewitt asked him, but he apparently understands it pretty well now…unlike his predecessors.
Aside from the fact that Krugman is the NY Times paid for “expert” when they want an “independent thinker” to voice the Times’ opinion. They trot out the agreeable Krugman and give him op-ed space and some cash. He delivers theri message as if it were his own. Of course, Krugman has no claim to be an expert on climate, or even experimental science. He seems to have a knack for making boneheaded economic predictions, as I remember. Economics is a very primitive, largely argumentative science. There aren’t really any experts when it comes to economics.
I’m still astounded that all these leftist climate folks think that the future is between fossil fuels and windmills/solar. Boy are they clueless.
Economists, at least, should be aware of how fragile and imperfect computer models are.
The real ones do. The rest… well, the housing bubble can be explained by them.
Holy smoked mackerel – what is this??
prophesize
Noooo! The “ize” is not needed! Just “prophesy” is already a verb.
What’s next? Prophesizate?
Ptolemy,
You are right, of course. But the Great God Microsoft Word’s spell-checker approves of prophesize.
Let it be written. Let it be so.
My money is on orientationization next.
Microsoft Word’s spell checker sucks like a fruit bat on an over-ripe mango.
Economics – “The Dismal Science”
Climate Change – “The Dismal Pseudoscience”
Hmm. I like it!
To Mr. Bastardo
For the past 20 years I have examined the climate (average temperature) history of our planet.
In the period from the lowest average temperature in 1993, to the highest average temperature in 2003, I noticed the average temperature increased about +0.5 degrees C.
Both CO2 and average temperature rose significantly and simultaneously in that ten year period,
for the first time ever.
That ten-year period is proof that rising levels of CO2
will cause runaway warming that will eventually end all life on Earth.
What other proof do we need?
That decade is not some made up proxy data — it was during our lifetimes!
Government scientists say the same thing.
Could all world governments be wrong about this?
Could 97% of climate scientist modelers with advanced degrees be wrong too?
Of course not — they are experts!
Of course I could be wrong
… but do you want to risk the lives of our children and grandchildren
by doing NOTHING ?
Not unless you hate children and grandchildren !
So we must all act now and stop all use of fossil fuels,
before we get past +2.0 degrees C.
+2.0 degrees C. is perfectly safe.
But +2.1 degrees C. will be a disaster.
The experts say so, and who are we to disagree with PhD experts?
indicators required Richard
Sarcasm indicators
Ditto.
You forgot the /sarc!!!
“Both CO2 and average temperature rose significantly and simultaneously in that ten year period,
for the first time ever.”
Out of 40 cars that were involved in fatal crashes 31 used brand X fuel , therefore if you only use brand Y fuel your chances of having a fatal car crash are reduced .
Rabert from Oz:
You are a true scientist — numbers don’t lie — only people do!
Every single human being who has ever consumed even a single drop of human breast milk has died, or else will within a handful of decades.
The only substance which has never been shown to be harmful to a normal human infant is also at the very base of a chain of events leading inevitably to death.
Go figure.
Richard Greene, thanks for such a nice bit of whimsical satire.
Only a fool would think you are being serious, and not hilarious.
Keep up the great work!
Economics and climate science have much in common.
They are both much more like religion than science in that their main purpose is to exercise social control, not to search for truth or factual reality.
Mr. Stallhe
Economics and climate science do have one thing in common.
Economics is a social science, while climate science could be real science,
… but it is often junk science led by smarmy politicians,
looking to gain more power over the private sector.
In the old days socialists promoted their “religion” directly,
but various economies around the world didn’t do so well practicing socialism,
so they are more clever now, selling socialism indirectly,
without using the word “socialism” , which has been replaced by
“Save the Earth from CO2” (the new phrase for socialism).
Both economics and climatology are best at explaining why they were wrong yesterday.
BTW, let’s stop using “Climate science” and use Climatology They love to label us, we should define them.
The vast majority of those who call themselves “climate scientists” have zero credentials in climatology.
The reason the climate campaign failed is that it was based on lies. The whole “climate crisis” is a myth made of whole cloth. What little actual warming there has been has been mild. And despite the hyperventilating about it, there is no actual evidence that any of it was caused by man’s use of fossil fuels.
“Take, for example, all the people who seized on the fact that 1998 was an unusually warm year….”
Hypocrisy. The climate establishment jumped on the latest El Nino and dishonestly shrieked excitedly all over the twitfaceblogsphere and fed the MSM stories, saying the warming it caused was mostly man-made and that it marked the return/acceleration of the ‘dangerous’ warming so long promised, yet still absent.
I liked what Newt Gingrich had to say here at minute 42:35:
“William James described as the only real American contribution to philosophy.”
What about Pierce?!
Every school of economics has been debunked. Krugman is no exception. link
The predictions of economists are no better than would be dictated by chance. link Actually, Krugman is good. He’s almost as accurate as a dart-throwing monkey.
easier than that Bob…..if they are so good, why are none of them rich
“There is nothing reliable to be learned about making money. If there were, study would be intense and everyone with a positive IQ would be rich.”
– John Kenneth Galbraith, Economist
>>
– John Kenneth Galbraith, Economist
<<
I watched his “Age of Uncertainty” a few years back. His solution to all of our economic woes was price controls and deficit spending. That’s basically what he did during WWII. I guess he wants us all on a war-time footing. His ideas don’t work during normal times–the black market bypasses price controls and people won’t make continual sacrifices for the public good. That’s a Communist dream/nightmare.
Jim
I think that Milton Friedman is both a conservative and wealthy economist.
If the monkey is blindfolded and drunk, I agree with you.
I think the Krugnutter’s axis of climate evil is actually an axis of rationality. The biggest fossil fuel interest is not the coal, oil or gas industry. It’s the people who consume the the energy that comes from these fossil fuels. They’re rightly concerned about drastically reduced standards of living to acheive piddly climate gains.
The ideology against all environmental regulation is a ridiculous straw man.
By supposed “shameful” public intellectuals, he probably means people like Matt Ridley, Bjorn Lomborg and Freeman Dyson.
” I do know what bogus arguments look like”
Of course Krugman can, he has made enough of them over his career.
None of the proponents worry about “CC”: all they worry about is their gravy train coming off the tracks.
> Krugman is a brilliant economist
Is he?
No. Search for ‘paul krugman failed predictions’. There are many hits for articles and opinion pieces detailing his many failures. Then search for ‘paul krugman successful predictions’ and note you still get a lot, even most of the hits where he failed! The search algorithm must just ignore that it does not find ‘successful’ in conjunction with ‘paul krugman’…
The only part of the description of Krugman that is accurate is the part about him being a partisan hack.
The rest is not even wrong.
I’ve been writing an economics / finance newsletter since 1977.
I have never found anything Krugman said to be useful
to include in my newsletter, for my subscribers.
I didn’t think his New Trade Theory was worthy of a Nobel Prize.
Of course I didn’t think Obama should have received a Nobel Peace Prize,
so what do I know? (Obama later proved that he did not deserve the prize
by having our nation at war EVERY DAY of his eight years,
which was even worse than G. Bush ! )
Krugman is a brilliant economist? How much credit does he deserve for our $20 trillion National Debt?
Quite a bit. He was one of Obama’s loudest cheerleaders.
Obama had help in spending all that money: The quivering Republican Congress. They were so afraid of being called racist by the MSM if they opposed Obama, that they gave him just about every dollar he asked for. A pathetic performance.
Well actually that’s a lot of credit. All $20 trillion in fact was credit. I’m waiting for the guy who will tell us how to pay it all back.
National debt does not get paid back.
It gets “inflated away”, or defaulted upon,
or rolled over (old bonds/notes/bills are paid off
with borrowed money from selling new bonds/notes/bills).
The interest is paid until the nation can’t afford to pay it.
Paul Krugman: “I am wise, all my friends tell me so. You are not. JUST SHUT UP!”
In 1900 US temp max was 79.25 F and in 2012 it was 80.1 F and based on that we get “hot to extremely hot” relative to the mid 20th century? Some very sensitive people out there!
They adjusted 1 degree……it’s exactly the same temp if you don’t adjust it
What do you call a smart man totally lacking common sense? Paul Krugman. It’s not your imagination, it’s his.
I suspect that what Krugman really shows here is that he is simply too important to actually read anything anymore. That’s what interns and graduate research assistants are for. Then they write what he has to say on the matter. Then he picks up a check for for it.
If a competent science journalist (yes, I know) ever gets the opportunity to actually ask them a penetrating question that tests their technical knowledge about sources of data then, like David Suzuki, they will likely fall flat on their face. And that journalist had better watch out for their career.
Craaaazy Dave isn’t a one trick climatology pony. He has at least a hundred different horrible ends for life as we know it. He can’t seem to fathom that life always ends horribly, it is the nature of nature. Perhaps now that he is an elder, he can stop living his life in fear (not likely).
“That’s what interns and graduate research assistants are for. Then they write what he has to say on the matter.”
I’ve read accusations that his wife has a lot of input to some of his Op Eds.
Some of these indexes are designed so that a small fraction of a degree warmer looks extreme. Eg. Take the 90 percentile value for the base period as a cut off. Slightly higher temperatures mean 11% of recent max and min recordings are above it due to a fraction of a degree of warming (real or measurement error). Have an index that is min and max for three days above this and the 10% greater frequency looks like 60%.
Take off his glasses and to me he looks like Robert E. Lee.
I seem to recall at least one of the ladies here finds him to be a hunk. (Was that you, Pamela?)
Maybe she took of her glasses.
A hunk of what?
Are you sure she did not say he was a piece?
Climate change hysteria has eaten all the low hanging fruit, it took the easy money, but now the curve steepens and it gets too hard to go further for many reasons. I think CAGW has been successful (trillions of $) but now is feeling some push back. I would love to drain the swamp of alarmism.
Paul Krugman & Linus Pauling ave a lot in common:
1) Each won a Nobel prize (Pauling won 2): Pauling – Chemistry; Krugman – Economics
2) Each assumed this certified them as geniuses on subjects outside their narrow specialty: Pauling – medical science; Krugman – politics
3) Each chose to fritter away their Nobel credibility by blathering about stuff in which they were not trained
You can add William Shockley to the list.
That falsely implies that skeptics have used 1998 as a starting point for calculating the Pause, which isn’t so. We’ve calculated backward from the preent (Monckton), or used some other year than 1998 as a start.
It also ignores that it was the alarmists who seized first on 1998 as indicating that the world was about to become a steaming cauldron of sulfuric acid.
“Krugman is a brilliant economist“…
No he isn’t, he’s an idiotic keynesian with bent left view…
“Krugman is a brilliant economist …”
Good. God.
Krugman is a blithering idiot. Unbeknownst to most, the Great Depression was in fact a bull market in bonds. Decades later and no wiser, we are now 37 years into the most run-away bond bull ever — that is, we are in the Greatest Depression, with no end in sight. Falling interest rates, the flip-side of rising bond prices, are surreptitiously siphoning capital off of balance sheets, leaving insolvent banks, pensions, insurance companies, and governments in their wake.
And there is pudgy Mr. Smug, cheerleading our descent into the maw of hyper-deflation.
While he might be a good soul (who knows), I despise what he stands for.
At least the banks, the “good” ones, are too big to fail.
Is the /sarc really necessary here? 🙂
Yes but it has made a few people very wealthy.
There is a definite, unvoiced tendency to assume that all observed climate warming is attributable to mankind’s actions. To state this is to reveal its ridiculousness, but there is the expectation that we are supposed to take steps to reverse this trend.
Exactly how much has the globe warmed over the last 150 years? What proportion of this rise is reasonably attributable to human activities? How is it distinguished from natural variation? What is the error margin? Why is a scientific opinion poll (97% … ?) relevant to any conclusions to be drawn from the preceding questions?
It’s my opinion that the science is now virtually irrelevant as the issue has become thoroughly politicised. You may quote all the proofs you like, but they will not affect the beliefs of the faithful one whit. I expect that if the sceptics put their heads down for 20 years until a cooling trend is undeniable, it would be wise to not then say: “I told you so!” It will transpire that no-one ever actually believed in that rubbish, anyway. In any case, it is likely that CO2, the miracle molecule, will be responsible for CAGC and we’ll still have to stop burning fossil fuels.
USA
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2dlm053&s=9#.WZEDJFGQzIU
Greenland
Capetown South Africa
Paraguay – You used to be able to get a copyable record of unadjusted for the longest record at Asuncion, Paraguay which showed the 1930s the highest temperature, too, but Paul Homewood dug up this record and the world’s climate scientists from Cowtan to Hausfather to GISS wrote rationalizations, but I guess the best method is to get rid of the links.
Anyway, there is no real statistician that wouldn’t credit such worldwide similarity of records – flawed or not- as corroboratory. We better get a big file of worldwide raw temperature records before they are all deep-sixed if its not to late already. For the US record, because it is so good and complete and each state has its own records, the fiddlers state, yeah but its only 3% of the world. These other records show that the real US record is a good sample for world records pointing to 30s-40s as the hottest so far. Someone with good skills at rounding this up should do a post with raw records from all over to show this for what it is.
Mod, I’m only comparing scattered long temperature records that show the same thing as the US unadjustesd: the 1930s were the hottest, no ad homs or whatever.
Just another of Krugman’s failed predictions following the election of Trump.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/election-night-2016/paul-krugman-the-economic-fallout
By PAUL KRUGMAN
2016-11-09
It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover? Frankly, I find it hard to care much, even though this is my specialty. The disaster for America and the world has so many aspects that the economic ramifications are way down my list of things to fear. Still, I guess people want an answer: If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.
In fact, by the time the markets opened a few hours after he wrote this piece, the markets had already recovered…and never looked back.
Exhibit 1 in the Krugman is a dumb ass hack museum.
Motivated solely by my dislike of people like Klugman whose aim in life appears to be to make billionaires of socialist politicians and , it being a zero sum game, paupers of the rest of us I looked at the Dow Jones historical record on macrotrends.net .
Strangely it seems that immediately after Obama’s 2 election victories the index dropped 500 points before recovering , whilst immediately after the Trump victory it gained 500 points.(If I read the charts accurately).
On that website , as most US readers are probably fully aware I am sure, you can see how the Index fared during recent presidencies . Trump appears to be following in Clinton’s (Bill that is ) footsteps . Interestingly Obama and Reagan ended their presidencies with exactly the same percentage gain – perhaps forces other than Presidents dominate the stock market to an extent that Klugman surely knows but refuses to publicly acknowledge.
And what happened in Sep 2015 and Jan/ Feb 2016?
To be fair, Krugman has no interest in ‘predictions’ – these are ‘sales pitches’, ‘campaigning’, ‘messaging’.
Or you could just throw it all under the umbrella heading of ‘propaganda’. There’s really nothing else there.
Krugman is not a brilliant economist. He has never even done anything in macroeconomics.
From the lead-in to this thread –
“It’s Not Your Imagination: Summers Are Getting Hotter.” So read a recent headline in The Times, highlighting a decade-by-decade statistical analysis by climate expert James Hansen. “Most summers,” the analysis concluded, “are now either hot or extremely hot compared with the mid-20th century.”
Here in Australia, we are being told a similar story.
So I looked at the raw data from 6 capital cities that house most of the Australian population that is supposed to be scared of the looming or present threat.
It is not true.
http://www.geoffstuff.com/are_heatwaves_more_severe_version2.pdf
http://www.geoffstuff.com/SummaryGraphHeatwaveWord.pdf
http://www.geoffstuff.com/century_days_sydmelb.jpg
http://www.geoffstuff.com/highest_sydmelb.jpg
More evidence for Australia being hotter in the 1930’s than it is now.
The high temperature extremes of the 1930’s looks to be worldwide.
I read in the June, 2017, Astronomy magazine where Jupiter’s Great Red Spot has been “steadily shrinking and growing more circular since the 1930’s, a trend that continues today”. The Great Red Spot used to be about 25,000 miles in diameter in the 1800’s and it is down to about 10,000 miles in diameter now.
I’m not saying there is any correlation with Earth’s 1930’s weather, whose severity seems to also have diminished over the same time period, but it’s something to think about. 🙂
The US EPA keeps a “heat wave” index made up of annual high-low temps. There’s nothing alarming in it, as far as I can tell:
No, you can’t say “hotter and hotter” and “hottest year evah!” looking at that EPA chart. It demonstrates that all this alarming rhetoric from the alarmists is just that, rhetoric. Reality is totally different from the doom and gloom scenarios they paint. Reality is much more benign, and doesn’t need fixing.
You can see from that chart why alarmists would want to compare to 1951-1980.
Orson,
The only things that look really anomalous is the 1930s and 1958 to 1979. It does look like there has been a slight upward trend since about 1990.
There is a shirt pithy 4 letter Anglo Saxon word that describes Krugman.
Sadly I do not want to get banned by using it.
Krugman “believes” in Monopoly Money and AGW. nuff said.
“Krugman is a brilliant economist . . .”
++++
Say what?
Why would anybody take Krugman or Miley Cyrus seriously on climate change? At least Miley can twerk. Krugman’s pathetic rant is not even amusing
http://i.huffpost.com/gen/3360070/images/o-MILEY-CYRUS-TWERK-facebook.jpg
Economists are a joke. If they understood the subject so well, they would all be rich from their investments. They wouldn’t have to write editorials. They can’t even predict interest rates.
Same for weather forecasters. If they could really predict the weather 6 months in advance, they would all be wealthy from their investments in commodity futures.
If Krugman can’t create a straw man opponent when he writes, he finds that he has nothing to say.
And as pointed out here, if one performs even a cursory review of Krugman’s essays, it is obvious he really has nothing to argue except to demonstrate how shallow and reactionary he is.
You give Krugman way too much credit.
He did contribute to economics years ago, but has since descended into pure far left demagoguery. The fact is that much of his political advocacy is refuted by his own economic papers.
The guy was never a good economist nor a compelling author. In fact he is a BS artist who plies his craft perfidiously.
One of the reasons Krugman thinks “doing something” is better than “doing nothing” is that 1) he and other alarmists tend to way lowball the costs of renewables (e.g., Denmark even with modest renewables –and a link to France’s nuclear for backup) has 3x the cost of US electricity) and efficacy of “doing something” and downplays the problem of intermittancy) and 2) they ignore how much the developing world is harmed by even a small increase in the cost of energy. Africa might be able to develop, but not at all if energy costs twice as much. Poverty is ignored by comfy western elites.
Krugman is a junk scientist and a junk economist.
“the fringe that denies the reality of global warming.” Please define that reality. I might join the fringe if your reality includes imminent catastrophe and the ability of a mix of wind mills and socialism to stop it.
‘why 30 years of climate crusading has produced so little policy action in the US.’
Hmmm. I’ve actually seen a LOT of policy action – just nothing that does anything to remotely affect the climate one way or another (insert standardized quote ‘just a beginning, just a BARE beginning’), but they have produced a near-constant barrage of economy-damaging, anti-human, anti-liberty-stuff that, for some reason, makes the eco-types feel good.
Krugman is a brilliant economist
********************************************
bull**it
I stopped reading there
Clever would be a better word.
Krugman is a brilliant clever?
Hmm…that may be.
What is a clever?
I remember when C02 was 5000 ppm and we thought nothing of it! The fishing was good, and those trilobites, steamed with some kelp, delicious!
Yeah, but it sure was hard to find a decent pizza.
The published record of temperature change since 1880 appears to provide a good map of what future temperature change will be. The pause in temperature rise that began in about 2004 should last until about 2034. It will no doubt be punctuated with some El Nino years with their temporary temperature spikes whose cause is known. The amount of continuous warming during the rest of this century will probably be only about thirty-six years worth (2034-2064 and 2094-2100) unless the pattern established in the available temperature record changes.
“The published record of temperature change since 1880 appears to provide a good map of what future temperature change will be.”
This is like saying that a graph of the temperature change from 6:00 AM to 4:00 PM gives us a good trend line for what the temperature will be tomorrow.
Saying that the temperatures on the earth will either be flat or up over the next century is 100% speculation.
It is not in the least bit supportable by either empirical observations or by logic.
The only support for the notion is the warmista religious tenet that says that CO2 is the temperature control knob of the atmosphere.
It is not.
Cooling over the nest several decades is more likely than warming or flat temps.
In fact, the surface may already be cooling, given that the published records are a worthless pigslop of unjustified manipulations of what was actually recorded, made up crap inserted for huge swaths where no surface measurements are made, and unmeasured and unaccounted for corruption due to increasing amounts and density of pavement and buildings around many recording stations.
The actual trend in the only place on Earth with good coverage and long term record keeping is clear: Hot days are decreasing dramatically for over 80 years.
If we are lucky, the mild weather will continue unabated for a century or more.
Actual history tells us that we are more likely to get a 30 year cooling trend, which may be sharp and dramatic.
There is no basis to correlate the temperature change from day to day to the temperature change over 137 years. While a pattern may not occur from day to day, one could be discerned over a period of 137 years. Will it continue? Maybe not but best evidence would lead one to believe it probable. As far as the quality of the recorded temperature data, we can choose not to use it but would that be a wise choice? .
Based on the information I am aware of, climatologists believe that a 500 year period of warming began around 1850. It followed the 500 year period of cooling that began around 1350 and which included a period nicknamed “The Little Ice Age.” That 500 year cooling period had been preceded by a 500 year warming period that began around 850 which included a period known as “The Medieval Warm Period.” The question I would have is did these periods feature 30 year cycles of warming or cooling alternating with 30 year periods of pause in the warming or cooling?
It is tragic that what should have been a debate among scientists evaluating the data on weather and climate objectively, has instead degenerated into a partisan political diatribe. Krugman’s recent article (7i/8) only adds to that tragedy. In pursuit of his political agenda, facts are distorted and thousands of scientists including myself are insulted and denigrated. Thus, instead of citing the abundant data in its totality, he denounces us as tools of the fossil fuel industry, of trying to destroy civilization, of acting in bad faith, and of denying the facts: all ad-hominem slurs and hardly the proper behavior from a Nobel Loreate discussing an issue with fellow scholars.
I have been studying the issue of anthropogenic global warming/climate change for the last thirty years and have published some dozen articles on the subject. No doubt Krugman hasn’t read them yet he tells us that he knows what “bogus arguments look like”. There is nothing in the data that supports the supposition that atmospheric CO2 is the driver of weather or climate. Atmospheric CO2 is controlled by a variety of other sources and sinks and not by human emissions. Furthermore, the greenhouse effect is an undefined, pure fiction. Carbon Dioxide is not a pollutant but is a basic ingredient in the Earth’s ecosystem on which all life depends via its essential role in photosynthesis.
In addition to the unfolding tragedy, there is a kind of delicious irony in witnessing Trump, that pathological liar and megalomaniac, becoming the instrument for finally bringing the nation back to its senses about climate change.