Howard Richman

Trade Deficit, New Home Tax Credit and Easy Fed Policies Threaten Double Dip Recession

Peter,

You are predicting that when the stimulus spending ends, "Unemployment could rocket to 15 percent."

I agree. I do my analysis through a sort of Keynesian rubrik which holds that when total savings (domestic savings plus foreign savings) is greater than investment, total savings must fall, the decline occuring through a decline in GDP that forces domestic demand down until savings and investment reach equilibrium.

In other words, we have to run constant huge government budget deficits or face huge unemployment, all because we are unwilling to require more balanced trade of our trading partners.

Do you think this analysis is sound, or do you think I'm missing something?

Howard

Good News on Jobs, But Don't Break Out the Champagne

Peter,

In a September 20 interview with CNN, President Obama predicted that employment would start increasing this year and that unemployment would start decreasing next year. His advisors were predicting that the country would be gaining employment during the remainder of 2009, but that the unemployment rate would not fall because of a rising labor force. Neither the rise in employment nor the rise in the labor force has materialized so far. Maybe, as you suggest, they will happen next year.

By the way, I had a different take on the employment numbers in my seeking alpha commentary today. I pointed out that the trend is away from skilled jobs toward unskilled jobs:

seekingalpha.com/artic...

Howard

Copenhagen to Establish New Entitlement: Borrowing to Give?

whoops, meant to write, "that ended WW I"


On Dec 02 07:00 PM Howard Richman wrote:

> Genankoomist speculated, "Obama will get the money by simply having
> the FED print it. Or as you say, China will pay, with money it's
> own central banks prints."
>
> Next time I have a chance I'm going to look up Keynes' correct prediction
> that the reparations forced upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles
> that ended WW II would cause the economic problems in Germany that
> would in turn cause WW II.
>
> Obama seems to be voluntarily committing the United States to pay
> reparations into perpetuity.

Copenhagen to Establish New Entitlement: Borrowing to Give?

Genankoomist speculated, "Obama will get the money by simply having the FED print it. Or as you say, China will pay, with money it's own central banks prints."

Next time I have a chance I'm going to look up Keynes' correct prediction that the reparations forced upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles that ended WW II would cause the economic problems in Germany that would in turn cause WW II.

Obama seems to be voluntarily committing the United States to pay reparations into perpetuity.

Climategate: Revolt of the Physicists

Physicists getting more vocal:

The following comment by a reader identifying himself as Neil Hudson of IL currently appears as the top posting under an article posted by US News and World Report, entitled "Penn State Will Investigate Climategate":
<blockquote>
Bias Cannot be Accepted in Any Scientific Pursuit

As a physicist who has carefully followed the global warming / climate change literature for nearly ten years, I can honesty say that these e-mails do not come as a surprise. A careful reading of the peer-reviewed literature and a comparison with the IPCC and the likes of Al Gore easily reveal the political (not scientific) nature of this issue. The literature doesn't make sense and doesn't match the hype. One can quickly come to the conclusion that there is political pressure to stick with the storyline of anthropogenic global warming. I can only find it in the models and the manipulated data. Mann made his whole career on one graph of temperature proxies. When he produced it, he was an adjunct assistant professor. He was under pressure as well to build his career. He cherry-picked data and performed statistical tricks to get the graph he wanted and has continued to play tricks with the data, even including his most recent paper. I do hope that people do an un-biased and full analysis of everything these "scientists" did over the past 15 years.

www.usnews.com/blogs/p...

Climategate: Revolt of the Physicists

Whoops,

I left out the word *not*: "He pointed out that the pattern for warming being low in altitude not high was *not* the pattern predicted by greenhouse models. Was he correct?

Climategate: Revolt of the Physicists

Wayne S.,

Thank you for your additional data about the ionosphere and the warming there that is being caused their by volcanoes, radio waves, and CO2.

I was wondering if you could explain something for me. Kirkby included some graphs which showed the distribution of warming in terms of altitude and latitude. The X-axis showed latitude on the earth with the equator in the middle. The Y-axis showed altitude in the atmosphere. He pointed out that the pattern for warming being low in altitude not high was the pattern predicted by greenhouse models. Was he correct?

Howard


On Nov 30 06:48 PM WayneS wrote:

> Thirty-some years ago in Physics 201, a test question was: if a train
> starts to leave the station and Billy goat comes up from behind and
> pushes, is he doing work and how much? The answer was yes and the
> answer was obtained by work as being force exerted over distance
> moved.
> Is there global warming? Of course, even Exxon said so in the 1980's.
>
> Are we affecting it? Probably.
> We are maybe producing more CO2 than we did 100 years ago.
> (Why can't we burn wood anymore?)
> Acres of rain forest are destroyed every second (I just heard on
> a commercial), reducing ability to absorb CO2.
> There are a hundred active volcanoes in the Pacific that may not
> have been there a hundred years ago.
> Several governments are bombarding the ionosphere with radio waves.
> Their own research says that they are heating up the atmosphere and
> are changing the weather.
> All of the other planets are (maybe were) in a warming trend.
>
> Let's make CO2 a commodity and let people buy and sell it while we
> make money on each transacton.

Climategate: Revolt of the Physicists

I have a question for the man-made global warming advocates posting here.

In the video Kirkby shows a graph of sea level that shows a rather steady rise in sea level over the last hundred years or so. There are several pauses during the rise which Kirkby shows are closely related to solar-activity. These pauses show that this graph is quite sensitive to outside influences. But there is no evidence in the graph of a "hockey stick."

Does this mean that the "hockey stick" is based upon bogus data? Or is there another explanation of why the "hockey stick" does not show up in the sea level data?

Howard

Climategate: Revolt of the Physicists

EVNow,

Thank you for suggesting the link to realclimate.org's discussion of the cosmic ray theory. It gave me the flavor for your position.

You consider to be bogus each of the many studies that have shown links between temperature and cosmic rays or solar activity. You have conducted your own studies that appear to show no link during the time period illustrated by the hockey stick.

However, if you watched the above Ceres lecture, you realize that there is study after study that has shown incredibly close correlations between temperature and cosmic rays or solar activity using many, many different data sets.

The proponents of the cosmic ray theory do not spend time denying your theory. In fact, their theory does not rule out yours. It may very well turn out that once the contributions of cosmic rays and solar activity have been fully worked out, there could be an additional contribution of carbon dioxide buildup that can be worked out also.

Your theory, on the hand, does rule out theirs or your responses would not be so blanket. You used to call those who questioned your theory "deniers", but now you are the "deniers", not they.

Howard

Climategate: Revolt of the Physicists

Whoops, I meant "fewer clouds and thus *more* warming"

Climategate: Revolt of the Physicists

DelphiLies:

Actually, you didn't get it right. The contention is that solar activity (as indicated by sunspots) shield the earth from cosmic rays, that cosmic rays cause low-level clouds to form, and that low-level clouds reflect sunlight back into space where it does not warm the earth. As a result, increased solar activity causes fewer clouds, and thus less warming.

Howard


On Nov 30 12:40 PM DelphiLies wrote:

> Did I get this right? This is a stripped down summary of the article:
>
>
> Agreement: global warming is real.
>
> Contention #1: it is possible that the Sun's output is causing global
> warming.
>
> But then,
>
> Contention #2: the solar data shows that we are entering a global
> cooling phase.
>
> Make up your mind!
>
> I love how the idiot wears the facade of intelligence by claiming
> to speak the words of the brilliant.

Global Warming Models: 'Out of Order'?

I urge all of the AGW advocates reading this blog piece to get out a cigarette, a cup of coffee, or a glass of brandy, whatever helps you think best, and then watch the CERN colloquium:

cdsweb.cern.ch/record/...

When it gets to the screen showing Shaviv and Veizer's plot of temperature change over the last 500 million years and the cosmic ray variation that explains it, take a close look at the line that never appeared in their 2003 report. It plots CO2 over the same period.

Note that that line doesn't correspond at all to the temperature variation. Also note that CO2 concentration used to be much, much, higher than they are today.

The climate scientists that you have been reading used to have the only model in town. But then the physicists got involved. The average IQ of a physicist is above 150. They discovered that cosmic rays cause climate change and that solar activity shields the earth from cosmic rays. They haven't completely worked out the mechanism yet, but they think it has to do with cloud formation. They are competing now at locations across Europe to discover the mechanism.

Howard

Global Warming Models: 'Out of Order'?

bob adamson,

I understand your argument. You are saying that just in case it turns out that AGW theory is right, we need to do something. I do not agree for two reasons:

1. CO2 is tremendously beneficial. The more we have of it the better plants grow. Suppressing it is simply foolish.

2. The price is too great. Current plans to deal with CO2 give China much of our remaining industry and insure that any new energy-efficient technologies developed in America will be produced in China. Look at the governments currently supported by China (Burma, North Korea, and Sudan). The cost in freedom is too high.

Howard


On Nov 28 02:43 AM bob adamson wrote:

> The usual focus of SA discussion is economics and related matters
> and we all know the checkered but useful (and sometimes vital) role
> models play in economic analysis. Few would seriously argue that
> an economic issue should not be raised simply because attempts to
> model that issue are preliminary of incomplete. Arguably the same
> lattitude should be given to the use of climatic models.
>
> What can we surmise as intelligent non-specialists, not only from
> the specific details which Mr. Richman chooses to relate in his article,
> but from the broader debate about climate change generally? First,
> it is clear that in many parts of the world dramatic shifts in settled
> climatic patterns are occurring over a short time span with major
> negative impacts on our environmental capital. In Canada where I
> live, for example, there have been significant northern shifts in
> habitat with resultant major die-offs and infestations of plants
> and animals. Large regions of permafrost are melting creating stagnant
> swamps and destroying infrastructure. Erratic and destructive weather
> extremes occur much more frequently. The area of year around Arctic
> Ocean ice coverage is rapidly shrinking. Etc.
>
> It appears that the large majority of scientists, particularly those
> who specialize in the study of the environment, weather patterns
> and biology, attribute these changes to a significant degree to the
> byproducts of human activity. A minority of scientists, largely specialists
> in geology and astrophysics, and some statisticians, while most of
> them do not dispute the fact of changing climatic patterns, argue
> that human activity is not a significant factor or that current patterns
> will reverse naturally. In particular, the relevance of naturally
> occurring warming and cooling climatic cycles and changes in solar
> emission patterns are part of the debate.
>
> While it may be premature to draw hard conclusions on the scope of
> climatic challenges the world faces or on the precise impact that
> human activity plays on the magnitude and speed of climatic change,
> we need to determine what practical steps can be taken to slow and
> mitigate climate change (whatever its causes) insofar as this change
> threaten or curtail environmental health. Given the risks of major
> irreversible damage, it is only prudent to begin to take significant
> measures to control the human outputs and mitigate effects however
> caused that probably influence climatic change. This includes getting
> the nations of the world to work on these issues seriously and in
> concert and encouraging in a determined way the development of new
> technology and practices. It is foolish to advocate waiting for absolute
> proof before beginning to take action, to attribute concern for the
> issues to folly or conspiracy, to assume that even if climate change
> is real and significant it is beyond the capacity of mankind to do
> anything but endure its impact or to ridicule proponents on either
> side of the many debates that must logically arise. It would be equally
> foolish to undertake too much too soon at great cost if firmer findings
> are needed to justify such measures but we must diligently seek more
> conclusive findings.
>
> In short, there is enough of a base for concern to incur the high
> cost and take the initial measures to address climate change with
> conviction but these needs to be done in a measured way that doesn’t
> get too far ahead of our real knowledge.

Global Warming Models: 'Out of Order'?

billgatesisevilus,

Thank you for the link. It's well worth watching! Jasper Kirkby of the Cern cloud project in Bern (Switzerland) is dispationate, articulate, and interesting. His illustrations are great!

I especially liked his discussion of Shaviv and Veizer. I've never seen the graph of CO2 which he plotted along with their results. Not only was CO2 much higher in concentration in the past, then it is today, but its variations, unlike cosmic rays, is not appear to correlate with the periodic shift in climate between greenhouse and ice ages.

He didn't give Soon and Yaskell credit for their analysis of the Little Ice Age, but he did briefly show their data without mentioning their names.

His reporting on the study of sun spots which predicted the current quiet spell and that the sun would reach a Mauder minimum by 2015 was quite chilling (literally). We are in for some cold years ahead. Too bad those brilliant authors were initially rejected because of AGW orthodoxy. (I'll have to watch the video again sometime to learn their names.)

Apparently climate science is moving beyond AGW to the much more predictive contributions of cosmic rays and the sun. The science is not denying that CO2 can have an effect, but it is recognizing that the effect is not dominating, nor is it consistent.

The science has gone way beyond AGW. The world's press, political leaders, and the IPCC haven't yet realized it.

Howard


On Nov 27 09:21 PM billgatesisevilus wrote:

> A video of the CERN colloquium is at cdsweb.cern.ch/record/.../

Global Warming Models: 'Out of Order'?

billgatesisevilus,

You're right, Svensmark does deserve mention. You'll find his institute's website if you click on "cosmoclimatology" in my commentary.

My fantasy is that the world leaders invite him to speak to them when they are in his backyard for the Copenhagan conference next month.

Howard


On Nov 27 08:53 PM billgatesisevilus wrote:

> You should add Svensmark to your list of cosmoclimotologists. He
> has performed experiments that demonstrate the effect. After the
> DYI basement version demonstrated things, he managed to get some
> accelerator time to run an small experiment called CLOUD6. The results
> have been promising enough to go forward with a much larger version
> called CLOUD9 which will be tested when the LHC is fully functional.
> It is back in limited operation at the present. You do not get time
> on that kind of instrument with wild conjectures.
>
> A description of the experiment is at: cdsweb.cern.ch/record/...
>
>
> A slide show presentation presented at a CERN colloquium on the topic
> may be downloaded at: indico.cern.ch/getFile...;materialId=slides&...