Global Warming

Gawnsoft said:

I don't see why you have H. Pylori in that group.

The gap from first mention of H.Pylori's possible role in stomach
ulcers in New Scientist to the introduction of Zantac was very short,
iirc.

The important gap is that between the discovery of H. Pylori's role
and the treating of stomach ulcers with a short course of antibiotics,
not a permanent course of ranitidine (the selling of which has been
under investigation for price fixing, as well).

Not that this helps me, as it's not H. Pylori that gives me stomach
acid when I program. Something psychological, I guess.

A

Jon Senior said:

Keith Willoughby [email hidden] opined the following...

Quoted message said:

Economics may be abstract, but the market is all too real.

Nah. The market is economics. In a time when we have the ability to
transport goods around the world in the blink of an eye it is farcical
to believe that economics is actually necessary.

We need a way to determine how resources are distributed. Economics just
describes that way.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

See the Great
Depression, for example. Nothing fundamental about the world had really
changed, but that didn't stop people starving, and it took a scatter-gun
policy of massive government spending and a World War to drag the world
economy out of the slump. Given a big enough drag on the economy, we
could see it again.

Ecomonics works on relative wealth. If everyone gets poorer then the
relative situation is the same.

If everyone gets poorer, then it's likely that fewer goods are being
produced. A fall in production is a genuine loss for everyone. I assume
you're talking about a monetary 'poor', but that genuinely is an
abstraction.

Quoted message said:

The only reason that _everyone_ could starve would be a genuine
shortage of food.

Food doesn't get grown magically. It has to be produced by people with
an incentive to grow it. If they think people won't be able to afford it
(and not necessarily in money terms, but in equivalent production terms)
then they won't voluntarily grow it.

Now, if you're saying that it's crazy for people to starve in a
situation where we *could* grow food to feed them if we wanted to, I'll
agree. And, certainly, the government has a huge role in making sure
that it doesn't happen. Nonetheless, it's not simple. Roosevelt tried
anything and everything to drag the US out of the Depression, sticking
with what worked and discarded what didn't, and it still probably took
the biggest war the world has ever seen to jumpstart production to
levels high enough to ensure full(ish) employment.

--
Keith Willoughby
Welcome to the police state - http://tinyurl.com/3cptb

Keith Willoughby [email hidden] opined the following...

Quoted message said:

We need a way to determine how resources are distributed. Economics just
describes that way.

Fundamentally though the restrictions on resources that once existed are
no more. If you remove the financial side of things (I know, wooly
headed pinko liberal commie thinking!) then there is no sane reason for
resource management like that.

Besides, economics does nothing of the sort anymore. The last I heard,
the American economy was being sustained by international trading in the
"dollar". Hardly a physical thing.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Ecomonics works on relative wealth. If everyone gets poorer then the
relative situation is the same.

If everyone gets poorer, then it's likely that fewer goods are being
produced. A fall in production is a genuine loss for everyone. I assume
you're talking about a monetary 'poor', but that genuinely is an
abstraction.

What other definition of poorer is there if nothing has changed in the
world? Try re-writing the first sentence of that paragraph without
reference to abstract wealth.

Quoted message said:

Food doesn't get grown magically. It has to be produced by people with
an incentive to grow it. If they think people won't be able to afford it
(and not necessarily in money terms, but in equivalent production terms)
then they won't voluntarily grow it.

If there is a problem with equivalent production then something physical
has changed (Worker's strike. Material shortage. etc.)

Quoted message said:

Now, if you're saying that it's crazy for people to starve in a
situation where we *could* grow food to feed them if we wanted to, I'll
agree. And, certainly, the government has a huge role in making sure
that it doesn't happen. Nonetheless, it's not simple. Roosevelt tried
anything and everything to drag the US out of the Depression, sticking
with what worked and discarded what didn't, and it still probably took
the biggest war the world has ever seen to jumpstart production to
levels high enough to ensure full(ish) employment.

I believe that the complexity of economics is self-sustaining. Because
no-one understands it, it continues. If anyone could ever model global
economics properly a lot of people would have to find some other use for
their bean-counting skills.

I would continue down this line or reasoning, but sounding out the
arguments in my head, I'm starting to sound like Marx. Time for bed
methinks! :-)

Jon

Quoted message said:

Welcome to the police state - http://tinyurl.com/3cptb

Downright hilarious. I remember the fuss over his UK visit but had no
idea how ridiculous it had got over the pond!

Jon

Tony Raven said:

The article states that the correction method used in the Nature paper
will, based on the authors own experience of trying that method some 13
years ago, would give erroneous results. Do you agree or disagree with
his analysis?

Oh, I haven't looked into it in detail. I do think it is poor form if
the paper was published as a direct criticism of Spencer and Christy,
without giving either of them a chance to defend themselves. It is,
however, something that has happened to me in the past, so not
necessarily an Establishment fix. The original paper might not even have
been a direct criticism of them (it certainly was in my case, the title
was "Comments on the paper..."😉, and they certainly can't expect to
referee every contribution in the field.

I haven't looked at this aspect of the debate any great detail (not my
field) but myy understanding is that S+C originally claimed the world
was getting cooler, and after several revisions of their work now find a
warming that is merely at the low end of the widely accepted range. I
don't find this particularly troubling, someone has to be the outlier,
and one expects diffferent methods and analyses to converge over time.
However, their choice of publication outlets does lead me to consider
whether their politics are interefering with their science to an
unacceptable degree.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

As for your suggestion that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is due to
outgassing from a warmer ocean, that is particularly risible even by
the standards of the "sceptics", failing on at least 3 of the most
elementary reality checks. Of course, your mind is sufficiently "open"
to this nonsense that it doesn't seem to occur to you to even give it
the most cursory validation.

Do tell what the elementary reality checks are

Well, you could start with:
1 the effect is an order of magnitude too small
2 the ocean has been measured to be getting more acidic (by the right
amount to account for the "missing" CO2 that has been emitted but is not
found in the atmosphere)
3 the isotopic signature of atmospheric CO2 has been measured and is
known to come from fossil fuels
4 where on earth do you think the fossil fuel CO2 might have gone, if
the extra CO2 in the atmosphere has merely bubbled out from a warmer
ocean all by itself?

Try telling your anonymised "peer leaders" of your theory and see how
they laugh. Of course, they might manage to keep straight faces as they
tell you that it is an "interesting" idea.

James
--
If I have seen further than others, it is
by treading on the toes of giants.
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/julesandjames/home/

Tony Raven said:

I do and I talk to the people leading that research.

Yeah, and we get only your version of what they say to you privately,
and cannot check that against what they have said in public if you will
not name names.

Quoted message said:

That's why I am
familiar with some of the range of other possibilities other than CO2
and/or human activities being responsible for GW.

"Scientific evidence strongly indicates that natural influences cannot
explain the rapid increase in global near-surface temperatures observed
during the second half of the 20th century."

None of these "other possibilities" are anything more than scratching
around at the edges, and many of them are laughably wrong.

James
--
If I have seen further than others, it is
by treading on the toes of giants.
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/julesandjames/home/

Jon Senior said:

Keith Willoughby [email hidden] opined the following...

Quoted message said:

We need a way to determine how resources are distributed. Economics just
describes that way.

Fundamentally though the restrictions on resources that once existed are
no more.

This isn't close to being true. Energy, raw materials, labour are all
resources that are finite. Every bit of it is rationed, and needs to be
distributed.

Quoted message said:

If you remove the financial side of things (I know, wooly headed pinko
liberal commie thinking!) then there is no sane reason for resource
management like that.

How else would people decided what to make, if not the market? Command
economy? No thanks. I'd rather choose what I want to buy, rather than
told what I am able to buy.

Quoted message said:

Besides, economics does nothing of the sort anymore. The last I heard,
the American economy was being sustained by international trading in the
"dollar". Hardly a physical thing.

It's being sustained by the Asian tiger economies purchasing the
perceived safety of the dollar with goods they physically produced.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Ecomonics works on relative wealth. If everyone gets poorer then the
relative situation is the same.

If everyone gets poorer, then it's likely that fewer goods are being
produced. A fall in production is a genuine loss for everyone. I assume
you're talking about a monetary 'poor', but that genuinely is an
abstraction.

What other definition of poorer is there if nothing has changed in the
world?

A lack of goods and services.

If people lose their jobs, and lose their purchasing power, then they
personally are poorer. However, that means that they can no longer buy
the product of the labour of those who still have jobs. Some of those
guys will be out of a job, too, because demand has gone down. They
therefore can't afford to buy stuff.

If that spiral is not arrested, then everyone becomes poorer. The
economy needs a jump start, and governments try to administer
it. Recovery of aggregate demand has to start somewhere, but it takes
more than the snapping of fingers.

Quoted message said:

Try re-writing the first sentence of that paragraph without reference
to abstract wealth.

We live in the same world as the inhabitants of the dark ages. They had
rich people and poor people then too, but the vast majority of the
people alive in the UK now are richer than even the richest of people
then, even if they are still relatively poor compared to Bill Gates. We
have communications, and holidays, and health-care, and variety of diet,
and transport, and leisure time, that those from 1500 years ago could
only dream about.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Food doesn't get grown magically. It has to be produced by people with
an incentive to grow it. If they think people won't be able to afford it
(and not necessarily in money terms, but in equivalent production terms)
then they won't voluntarily grow it.

If there is a problem with equivalent production then something physical
has changed (Worker's strike. Material shortage. etc.)

No, not at all. It's all about confidence. If those who control the
capital have confidence that they can sell their production at greater
than the opportunity cost, they'll do so. If they don't have that
confidence, they probably won't. If nobody has confidence, you end up
with the Great Depression, where nobody wants to risk making stuff that
they can't sell, and therefore don't employ people, and therefore don't
pay those people, who can't therefore afford to buy goods.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Now, if you're saying that it's crazy for people to starve in a

situation where we *could* grow food to feed them if we wanted to, I'll
agree. And, certainly, the government has a huge role in making sure
that it doesn't happen. Nonetheless, it's not simple. Roosevelt tried
anything and everything to drag the US out of the Depression, sticking
with what worked and discarded what didn't, and it still probably took
the biggest war the world has ever seen to jumpstart production to
levels high enough to ensure full(ish) employment.

I believe that the complexity of economics is self-sustaining. Because
no-one understands it, it continues. If anyone could ever model global
economics properly a lot of people would have to find some other use for
their bean-counting skills.

I think it's far simpler to just assume that the reason why it's so
damned complex is that people themselves are complex. It's hard enough
to model known individuals, let alone the chaotic interactions of
billions of unknown consumers and producers.

Quoted message said:

I would continue down this line or reasoning, but sounding out the
arguments in my head, I'm starting to sound like Marx. Time for bed
methinks! :-)

Marx was trying to come up with an economic theory.

--
Keith Willoughby
Welcome to the police state - http://tinyurl.com/3cptb

In article <[email hidden]>,

Keith Willoughby said:

We live in the same world as the inhabitants of the dark ages. They had
rich people and poor people then too, but the vast majority of the
people alive in the UK now are richer than even the richest of people
then, even if they are still relatively poor compared to Bill Gates. We

It was Stephen Bailey, I think, who pointed out that thanks to BIC
almost anyone can now buy a disposable razor that will shave them
smoother than anything available to Louis XIV.

ian

Keith Willoughby <[email hidden]> wrote:
: Jon Senior wrote:

:> Besides, economics does nothing of the sort anymore. The last I heard,
:> the American economy was being sustained by international trading in the
:> "dollar". Hardly a physical thing.

: It's being sustained by the Asian tiger economies purchasing the
: perceived safety of the dollar with goods they physically produced.

That and the fact the the US$ is the world's reserve currency of choice
(not just for the Asian countries though they are a large buyer of dollars)
and the fact that oil is priced in dollars.

Large parts of American policy have been explained as trying to maintain
this state of affairs (not that I necessarly agree with that mind), and
other commentators are worried that the whole situation is unstainable
because of the US current account defict.

All of this is economcs of course 🙂

Arthur

--
Arthur Clune http://www.clune.org
"Technolibertarians make a philosophy out of a personality defect"
- Paulina Borsook

Ian G Batten <[email hidden]> wrote:

: It was Stephen Bailey, I think, who pointed out that thanks to BIC
: almost anyone can now buy a disposable razor that will shave them
: smoother than anything available to Louis XIV.

I'd agree with the general point, but is this one true? You can get a
cut-throat razor (or indeed a knife with the right angle edge) very,
very sharp indeed. Certainly as sharp as a bic.

The general point is true though. I like my central heating and other
creature comforts.

Arthur

--
Arthur Clune http://www.clune.org
"Technolibertarians make a philosophy out of a personality defect"
- Paulina Borsook

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

That and the fact the the US$ is the world's reserve currency of choice
(not just for the Asian countries though they are a large buyer of dollars)
and the fact that oil is priced in dollars.

Large parts of American policy have been explained as trying to maintain
this state of affairs (not that I necessarly agree with that mind), and
other commentators are worried that the whole situation is unstainable
because of the US current account defict.

A brief analysis recently suggested that if certain Asian economies
switched to the Euro (Apparently they were looking at it) the result
would be the collapse of the American economy. This is the sort of thing
that makes economics seem ridiculous. Nothing would have changed at all
but the financial superpower would suddenly become a poodle.

Quoted message said:

All of this is economcs of course 🙂

"The reflected sound of underground spirits"?

Jon

Jon Senior <jon@restlesslemon_dot_co_dot_uk.remove> wrote:

: A brief analysis recently suggested that if certain Asian economies
: switched to the Euro (Apparently they were looking at it) the result
: would be the collapse of the American economy. This is the sort of thing
: that makes economics seem ridiculous. Nothing would have changed at all
: but the financial superpower would suddenly become a poodle.

I don't see why this makes "economics seem ridiculous".

--
Arthur Clune http://www.clune.org
"Technolibertarians make a philosophy out of a personality defect"
- Paulina Borsook

In article <[email hidden]>,

Arthur Clune said:

: A brief analysis recently suggested that if certain Asian economies
: switched to the Euro (Apparently they were looking at it) the result
: would be the collapse of the American economy.

The world would stop propping up that massive deficit by holding such
large dollar reserves. It has been said that Saddam's *real* crime[1]
was to threaten the US economy by pricing his oil in Euros - which
could have set a precedent.

Quoted message said:

This is the sort of thing
: that makes economics seem ridiculous. Nothing would have changed at all
: but the financial superpower would suddenly become a poodle.

That's why they're trying very hard to keep the EU divided. What they'll
do about the rising threat of China may be altogether nastier.

Quoted message said:

I don't see why this makes "economics seem ridiculous".

It looks bad when it collapses. Cf. the Great Depression, or more
recently Argentina's woes. Or even the collapse of a different
economic system in the old Soviet Union.

But the forthcoming global environmental collapse is far, far bigger
than any economic depression. And given the lack of political will
to fix it, the only thing that can stop it is a superbug that'll
kill billions of people. But Dubya expects to develop an antidote
before _that_ happens.

[1] All his worst atrocities were of course in the 1980s when he was
supported by the west and Rumsfeld was making his millions selling
arms to him.

--
Nick Kew

Jon Senior said:

A brief analysis recently suggested that if certain Asian economies
switched to the Euro (Apparently they were looking at it) the result
would be the collapse of the American economy. This is the sort of thing
that makes economics seem ridiculous. Nothing would have changed at all
but the financial superpower would suddenly become a poodle.

Of course something would have changed. A massive swing of investment or
debt-funding from the USA to Europe is a huge change. If your credit
rating became bad due to poor payment records, would you say that it was
ridiculous that you could no longer get an overdraft even though nothing
physical had changed?

When you buy a dollar with your goods, you haven't bought a piece of
paper. You've bought a promise that the dollar will still be worth a
dollar (roughly) when you cash it in for different goods. It implies a
huge amount of trust in the USA as issuing country, because they have
the power to inflate the value out of the dollar, and therefore decrease
both the value of savings and the amount of dollar-denominated
debt. This trust is the reason why the Asian economies choose the
dollar, and the flip-side is that in return for this trust, the USA gets
effectively very cheap loans from the Asian countries. If the supply of
loans dries up, that's just as much a fundamental problem for the USA as
it is for a random individual who can no longer get an overdraft.

--
Keith Willoughby
Welcome to the police state - http://tinyurl.com/3cptb

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden]
says...

Quoted message said:

Jon Senior said:

A brief analysis recently suggested that if certain Asian economies
switched to the Euro (Apparently they were looking at it) the result
would be the collapse of the American economy. This is the sort of thing
that makes economics seem ridiculous. Nothing would have changed at all
but the financial superpower would suddenly become a poodle.

Of course something would have changed.

We were discussing physical change. America would not have suddenly lost
its internal oil supplies. Its armed forces would not suddenly have
fewer guns. Its land mass would not suddenly have shrunk.

Its _perceived_ value however... This is not a tangible thing, and this
is why I find economics ridiculous.

Jon

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

Jon Senior <jon@restlesslemon_dot_co_dot_uk.remove> wrote:

: A brief analysis recently suggested that if certain Asian economies
: switched to the Euro (Apparently they were looking at it) the result
: would be the collapse of the American economy. This is the sort of thing
: that makes economics seem ridiculous. Nothing would have changed at all
: but the financial superpower would suddenly become a poodle.

I don't see why this makes "economics seem ridiculous".

Because it shows that we are capable of letting an abstract notion
govern reality. I grant modern economics the same esteem I give to the
notion of there being pixies at the bottom of my garden. Both are
entertaining fairy tales. For some reason, we rule the world with
economics, not pixies.

Jon

Jon Senior said:

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden]
says...

Quoted message said:

Jon Senior said:

A brief analysis recently suggested that if certain Asian economies
switched to the Euro (Apparently they were looking at it) the result
would be the collapse of the American economy. This is the sort of thing
that makes economics seem ridiculous. Nothing would have changed at all
but the financial superpower would suddenly become a poodle.

Of course something would have changed.

We were discussing physical change.

Well, you were. You can claim that it's ridiculous that people make
decisions based on non-tangible things like trust, perception, and
confidence, but I believe that's just decrying what makes us human.

Say I run a business, and get plenty of investment. Then, without
changing my business practises one iota, I start talking in public about
the world-wide conspiracy of the Illuminati to poison the water
supply. Now, nothing has changed about the way I do business - yet - but
would you feel less inclined to invest in me?

Quoted message said:

America would not have suddenly lost its internal oil supplies. Its
armed forces would not suddenly have fewer guns. Its land mass would
not suddenly have shrunk.

In this hypothetical example, of Asia putting their wealth in Euros,
there would have been a reason for it. Either weakness in fundamental
American strength, or a lack of trust in its government. It's real, even
if you can't kick it.

Quoted message said:

Its _perceived_ value however... This is not a tangible thing, and this
is why I find economics ridiculous.

You find the human decision making process ridiculous, then.

If you had to choose between two bikes, that were seemingly identical,
with identical components, the same geometry, the same materials,
effectively identical by all visible evidence, and one was made by
Cannondale, and one was made by me, which would you choose?

--
Keith Willoughby
Welcome to the police state - http://tinyurl.com/3cptb

Jon Senior said:

Because it shows that we are capable of letting an abstract notion
govern reality. I grant modern economics the same esteem I give to the
notion of there being pixies at the bottom of my garden. Both are
entertaining fairy tales. For some reason, we rule the world with
economics, not pixies.

Actually, my friends and I /are/ at the bottom of your garden...

--

Charles, Joey, Kim and David

"Nick Kew" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

In article <[email hidden]>,

Arthur Clune said:

: A brief analysis recently suggested that if certain Asian economies
: switched to the Euro (Apparently they were looking at it) the result
: would be the collapse of the American economy.

The world would stop propping up that massive deficit by holding such
large dollar reserves. It has been said that Saddam's *real* crime[1]
was to threaten the US economy by pricing his oil in Euros - which
could have set a precedent.

This was said by the same people who said the US wanted a strong dollar,
just before the US engineered a fall in the value of the dollar. Its
nonsense.

--
Tumbleweed

email replies not necessary but to contact use;
tumbleweednews at hotmail dot com

Keith Willoughby [email hidden] opined the following...

Quoted message said:

You find the human decision making process ridiculous, then.

Frequently. We have soldiers in Iraq. Every few days, a pedestrian looks
me in the eyes as I head towards them and then steps out into the road.
The human decision making process _is_ frequently ridiculous.

Quoted message said:

If you had to choose between two bikes, that were seemingly identical,
with identical components, the same geometry, the same materials,
effectively identical by all visible evidence, and one was made by
Cannondale, and one was made by me, which would you choose?

That would depend on the asking price. Assuming they were identical, I'd
choose the Cannondale because I know them.

My problem is that if economics provides a representation of material
wealth then it should be unaffected by public opinion. If it doesn't,
then it has little meaning. It's the same reasoning that means I find it
ridiculous when a one-bedroom flat in Edinburgh which is about the size
of a broom cupboard can sell for 150% of the asking price which is
already inflated over the "value" of the property. People have created
these "economies" but are incapable of controlling them. I can't easily
think of any other human creation that is capable of controlling the
originators (With the possible exception of religion, but don't get me
started on that one!).

Jon