Posts by James Bremner
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the China-bashing was a specific campaign by Bush, Howard and the oil industry who, as the climate science began to firm up considerably in the late 90's, began pointing the finger at China as the [future] problem [and ignoring historical emissions].
Of course, it had to be the evilchimpybushhitler's fault, everything is isn't it? How about considering the fact that China is now the world's largest emitter of CO2? Maybe, just maybe that is a relevant fact to discussion around any cap and trade or emt scheme meant to save us all from impending doom.
Interesting article on China's energy related activities. Good for China for working on clean coal and coal gasification technologies, these technologies will make a real and very positive difference to the world as opposed to the Kyoto and Copenhagen circle jerks.
Wind and solar generation will never be as big as so many people seem to think (never more than single digits of energy produced) due to inconsistency and energy density. Sometimes the wind don't blow and the sun don't shine so you can't rely on it for base load use, and wind and solar energy is very diffuse, meaning it takes massive amounts of wind and solar generators to generate much power.
Wind and solar are bit of a great leap backwards anyway. Mankind's progress has been achieved by riding the increased energy density curve. Simply put that means that coal has more energy per unit than wood. Oil has more energy per unit that coal and nuclear has much more energy per unit that oil. As far as mobility is concerned, coal (steam engines) has more energy per unit that carbohydrates (grass and hay consumed by horses) and oil (cars truck and planes) has more energy per unit than coal. So expecting very diffuse wind and solar to be transformational in any way is a pipe dream. A useful addition, but that is as far as it goes.
Plug in hybrids will be a big deal (charged by coal burning power stations, which brings us back to clean coal tech again) but the biggest positive technological change for the environment and our lives will be safe small local nuclear power stations, if the environmentalists let it happen!!
A couple of very interesting books on energy that are well worth a read:
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Another quick gw link.
http://www.nbr.co.nz/opinion/nevil-gibson/no-worries-climate-change-debate-goes-nowhere-fast
There are 3 separate issues to consider, is agw true? If agw is true will it lead to the dooms day scenarios some predict? And lastly regardless of your views on the first 2 questions, is any kind of collective action going to happen to address agw by reducing co2 emissions?
A year ago I would have said that the chances of a cap and trade type scheme coming into reality in the US and in a lot of countries were quite high, even without China's participation (whether it would be effective is another question entirely).
What a difference a year and global financial meltdown makes. I think one thing we can say for sure is that we will find out whether the agw and its negative consequences theories are true because cap and trade/emt et al is dead and mankind is going to keep putting bucket loads of CO2 into the atmosphere for as long as any of us are around and for a long time after that.
Not exactly being a believer in the religion of agw, that prospect doesn't concern me in the least. What does concern me is the crap that coal fired anything puts into the atmosphere: particulate matter, SOx, NOx, various heavy metals such as Mercury etc. To me the greatest need is for scrubbing technology to reduce these emissions at the thousands of coal fired plants around the world and especially in China and India. Improved coal emissions cleaning technology would make a real difference to the environment. The sooner we can get over this agw bs circle jerk, the sooner we can spend resources on real problems.
Danielle, thank you for your question on the healthcare debate over here. I am short of time right now but will write a post to answer your question. Very short take is that the system over here needs reform, just not most of the ideas that are on the table at the moment from the Dems. The last thing healthcare over here needs is more direct govt involvement with a public option, there are very good and viable ways of helping those who need med insurance but can’t afford it without actual govt involvement in the marketplace.
Regardless of one’s position on the content of the debate, Obama has fucked it up spectacularly. Letting the House write a bill? Is he crazy? Pelosi et al made a dogs’ breakfast of the Stimulus bill and he wanted a repeat performance on healthcare, his signature issue, his number one priority? It is nuts, it could never have a good result. He should have his own program that he can explain in a compelling fashion to the public and work with the House and Senate to write the final bill along the lines he laid out. Obama is really showing the fact that he is a person with no substantial accomplishments and achievements in his career to date (except winning elections, which is a means to an end, not the end in itself). Perhaps he needs to change his name to Obumbler, not Obama. If he screws up healtcare, which he is well on the way to doing, his credibility, and therefore his ability to get anything done, will be greatly reduced.
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Angus, you wrote:
We could impose carbon taxes based upon the actual carbon footprint of goods consumed in NZ. This would be local action to create impetus among local and foreign suppliers to improve their carbon efficiency. The most efficient producer having a price advantage to the consumer. This will impact positively on the world’s climate and not cost our industry much at all, because taxes do not get placed on exports. It will however require ditching Kyoto, this will be bad PRNZ's market is too small to justify anyone making an effort solely to satisfy any NZ regulations. All that your suggestion would do is eliminate foreign products, reducing competition and consumer choices and increasing prices paid by consumers. All for no benefit. There are a lot of advantages to NZ being so small, but it has its downside too. No one takes much, if any notice of anything NZ does, let alone changes their behavior as a result.
I watched that video clip Richard Llewellyn linked to on global warming. The obvious flaw in his logic (and it is really obvious) is that he assumes that the dire predictions of global doom if agw happens are true. As I understand it, in previous times the earth has been hotter than it is today with higher concentrations of CO2 and the earth and life did just fine, so that assumption is wrong. Doom might happen, it might not, we don’t know. Adding this to his presentation would make it much less compelling.
A key aspect about Kyoto Copenhagen etc. that is never discussed has to do with China’s govt. The only thing that is keeping the lid on social and political unrest in China is continued economic growth (and you have to say that the Chinese govt has done a pretty damned good job since 1979 of managing its growth). A prerequisite to that economic growth (and most economic growth) is cheap energy. In China’s case, that cheap energy is almost exclusively coal fired generation. Is the Chinese govt, a thoroughly mercenary bunch if ever there was one, going to risk their existence on the possibility that the agw dooms-dayers are correct? Forget it. Not a chance in eternity. Perhaps they will pay lip service to it at some stage, but as to an actual effort to reduce emissions, it is just never going to happen. I believe that over the last few years the annual increment in Chinese CO2 emissions is more that the UK’s total annual emissions. Without China onboard any effort to reduce emissions cannot succeed, and China will never be onboard.
Add India blowing off emissions reductions and cap and trade being DOA over here in the US, the US electoral calendar, a global economic downturn the effects of which will linger for some time, and you can see that it is best to get used to the idea that emissions reductions just aren’t going to happen. Guess those special ulcers might get an extra tweak out of that!!
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Climate Change Measure Should Be Set Aside, U.S. Senators Say
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ah3CTKEw4HQc
Looks like cap and trade is dead in the US Senate. It was always very marginal as so many mid west states with Dem senators would get royally screwed by c&t. The current political climate in the US is very hostile to anything that smacks of more govt involvement, spending or taxing (reference the current furore over healthcare), and next year is election year. Very hard to see c&t passing in an election year.
India and China have already said "forget it" with regard to any kind of caps on CO2 emissions and now cap and trade is dead in the US, so that makes it 0 from 3 in terms of the major emitters. The rest of the world could cease to exist and it would make barely a dent in CO2 emissions.
It is a tough situation for a country like NZ. Nothing NZ could ever do will make even a speck of difference, no matter how badly NZ damaged its own economy, but there is the global pr aspect. Glad it is not my decision.
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Take a look at Obama's 10 year budget projections and tell me everything's hunky dory. There is a lot of genuine head shaking going on over here. Trillion dollar deficits reducing to about $600b before increasing again, and that includes some quite possibly optimistic revenue assumptions. I remember you going on about the deficits Bush ran. If they bothered you, the current and projected ones certainly should.
Obama's "stimulus" package is a load of crap, but even if you gave him a pass for that, how can you justify the kind of spending he plans on undertaking in the subsequent years? Where is all this money coming from? The world doesn't have the kind of savings required fund Obama's on going deficits. I don't see how we get out of the kind of ultra loose monetary policy we have right now and the kind of over the top fiscal policy we have now and that will apparently continue in the coming in the years ahead without significant inflation. No wonder the Chinese are getting concerned about having their US debt inflated away. The irony of the Chinese “communists” lecturing the (former?) citadel of the free market about spending and debt levels would be just too funny if the Chinese weren’t right.
As for a few cable people blowing hard, where have you been for the last 8 years? Heard of Keith Olberman? How many completely unhinged conspiracy theories and rantings did he put forward on a weekly basis?
As for other meanings for "teabag". Just goes to show you who the perverts are. Normal people don't do that kind of crap and so don't know of the other meanings.
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Friedman is a total blowhard. The only thing that changes is the subject on which he is hyperventilating. Buffet is much more on the money.
Are we in for a bad time? Most likely, yes. Why? Due to previous, currently being made, and likely future bad policy decisions. Is this preordained and unavoidable, signally that the growth we have had over the last fifty years is no longer sustainable? What a load of crap.Bad policies have bad consequences. Which policies? All the ones that we all should all have heard of by now. The Community Reinvestment Act which forced banks to make bad loans and created the sub-prime loan market. Fannie & Freddie gorging on sub-prime shit. Congress preventing proper rules & regs being implemented around Fannie & Freddie. Greenspan’s nutty low interest rates from 2001 to 2005. Ratings agencies which must have had their heads up their asses to rate mortgage backed CDOs as triple A in an obvious housing bubble. Companies that levered 30 to 1 to buy stuff with sub-prime shit in it in an obvious housing bubble. People who took on mortgages they couldn’t afford. Administrations that bail out organizations that failed and need to die, and keep bailing them out. Congresses that pass absurd “stimulus” bills that are nothing more than increases in govt spending and programs and pork. Administrations that propose insane budgets with massive deficits as far as the eye can see. Who the fuck is going to fund all that debt? Planning to increase taxes on the people and small businesses that create jobs. Take away all those bad policies and decisions and you don’t have a problem.
So where to from here? Back to the 1970s. Inflation and stagnation. Stagflation. For quite sometime. We may well do better this year than expected, then inflation will kick in (monetary policy has a 12 month lag). Interest rates will have to go up to fight inflation and to attract people to fund the insane deficits (why would you buy debt in a currency that is inflating?) And in a similar timeframe tax rates are set to go up.
In 1965 the Dow crossed 1000 for the first time. In 1981 the Dow was below 1000 (inflation adjusted, it lost 80% of its value) Sixteen years of the kind of policies we are heading into caused a decade and a half of stagnation. And it was all down to bad policy decisions. But back then you could make an argument that policy makers didn’t really know what was the right policy or not. We don’t have that excuse anymore. We know very well what works and what doesn’t. It is just that the powers that be are in the grip of the set of policies that prevailed from 1965 to 1980. It sucks. Why can’t people in power read a bit of economic history?
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Damn it. Now the Washington Post is at it.
Iraq's Winning Vote
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/03/AR2009020303284.html
Honestly, what bloody nuisance. How are you all supposed to maintain your "Iraq’s a disaster, blah, blah, blah" diatribe in the face of an onslaught from the decidedly non-neocon WP and the NYT? (NYT link in my first post)
How inconvenient. I am sure many of you would be so much happier if Iraq was still going badly so you could screech “Told you so, told you so. Liar liar Dubya’s pants are on fire” at the top of your voices.
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Didn't think my previous poston Iraq would be a popular, but I obviously don’t care about that do I?
Matthew Poole, so Saddam's Iraq was just a swell place was it? I mean for fuck's sake, do you know anything, anything at all about the Hussein regime? Does the thought of 2 million dead bodies move you at all? Hussein’s regime was one of the most brutal Police states in history, on a par with Stalin's Soviet Union. Does Halabja ring a bell for you? When you add up the Anfal campaign, Iraqis killed for whatever reason, the Iran Iraq war, invasion of Kuwait etc, you get to about 2 million dead people thanks to Saddam's tender mercies or actions. And Iraq was a lovely place was it? Fuck off.
What is it about you lefties? There doesn’t seem to be a murdering tyrant or Marxist you don’t love, admire and whose ass you don’t want to kiss. Saddam, Castro, Che, Mao, Stalin, never heard a leftie say a bad word about the Marxist nut in Pyongyang who has starved millions to death. And you think of yourselves as the nice guys. Bizarre.
As for Iraq under a continued Hussein regime and Iran developing WMDs or nukes to threaten/defend against the other, repeat after me: one plus one equals two. It is about at that level of strategic analysis. A long history of enmity, Persian/ Arab Shia/Sunni fault line, wars, millions of dead bodies in the recent past, nutters running both countries and you are telling me there was no likelihood of future confrontation? Please.
If you were an Iranian would you want to protect yourself from the nutter who killed over at least a million of your people from 1980 to 1988? If you were Saddam would you want to protect against Iranians who have every reason to want vaporize you? Was a future confrontation certain to happen? No one can say. But was it a potential scenario with potentially very bad consequences? Absolutely. Risk equals probability multiplied by consequence. If you can't figure any of that out, your little bumpkin head is stuck in a rather dark smelly place.
I didn't say every displaced Iraqi was former Baathist. But a significant portion is. Did Saddam run his little sadistic state with just himself and his two sons? No he didn't. Every thugocracy needs people in every region and every city and town to keep the screws on the population. Do the math, that adds to quite a few people. And a lot of them fled Iraq to avoid their deserved fate. Made up? BS. Why would anyone give a shit about those people now?
I supported Hussein’s overthrow, so I own a portion of the blame for the difficulties and mayhem that existed and still exist to a much lesser extent. I also own a small piece of the progress of Iraq going forward. If you advocate for a policy, you own a piece of it, absolutely fair enough. But I’d much rather own that than having effectively supported the continuation of one of the worst regime’s in human history, or handing the country over to a bunch of head hacking psychopaths. Every one of you who have opposed the undertaking own a piece of that. You might not like it, or be intellectually honest enough to admit it, but that is the truth.
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Well Iraq certainly doesn't stir passions at PAS like it used to does it? Hardly a post or two on the subject. That in of itself is a commentary on the subject.
You would have thought it would have been hard to obscure the success of the election (and why would you want to anyway?), but I guess you can always scratch around and dig up a negative to any piece of good news. Is Iraq going to be picture perfect anytime soon? No. But that is a truly ridiculous standard to judge it by at this point in its development. Is it better then it was under Hussein? Just a little bit.
A positive write up in of all places the Guardian. Progress must be truly undeniable!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/03/comment-iraq-elections
The NYT has a good article on the election
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/world/middleeast/03iraq.html?_r=1&ref=world
A positive take on Iraq from an Iraqi (pre election)
http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/
Mistakes were made and lives lost but the US is always blamed for 100% of that. But don't the terrorist bastards who blew themselves up, or sent people to blow themselves up in crowded marketplaces, or the countries that supported and enabled these bastards bear some responsibility for their actions and the death and mayhem they caused? Just a little bit? Maybe, perhaps?
Many of the still displaced Iraqis are former Baathists and their families, who gives a shit about them and why on earth would anyone anyway? They had it good at the expense of the rest of their countrymen for a long time, and now they are paying the price. If I was one of them I would stay out of the country also out of fear of the deserved revenge of fellow Iraqis. Plenty of them deserve a stretched neck, not sympathy.
And the bottom line is that there was a choice that had to be made in 2002, after 13 years of a failed sanctions regime, the UN oil for food fraud etc. Take the Hussein regime out, and have some version of what we have had over the last nearly 6 years, with lots of risks, but the possibility of a good payoff with a friendly regime that doesn't support terrorist groups or try to build WMDs, and an example of a better future for other countries in the region, or leave that terrible regime in place continuing to threaten its neighbors and brutalize its own people. The sanctions would have come off and Hussein would have been back in business building conventional forces and unconventional capabilities. Hussein himself said after he was captured that was his plan, so this is not speculation.
Hussein had well documented ties to many terrorist organizations, a demonstrated desire to have WMDs and use them, and a record of making rally bad decisions, like invading Iran & Kuwait, so pessimism about the future track of an Iraq still under Hussein’s cruel heel was the only reasonable view to take. The risk that Hussein would hand off something nasty to one of the many terrorist organizations with whom he had working associations with was real, especially in a post 9/11 world.
By now we would be almost certainly be watching a nuclear arms race between an idiot in Iraq and some nutters in Iran, located in the most strategic region in the world. If they ever went at each other with nukes, what a mess. Our modern economy is based on mobility and whether we like it or not we use oil for that (and that is not changing anytime soon). No oil, no economy. Think the current downturn is bad? Try oil at $500 a barrel, if you could get it. The great depression would look like a cake walk.
You can get all pissed off about it as much as you like, but that was the basic strategic situation and decision that had to be made in 2002. A choice between a difficult path or several potentially very bad outcomes.
At the end of the day, I am very glad that the position I took on the issue wouldn't have resulted in the continuation of one of the history's worst regimes. That would be a nasty piece of baggage to have to carry around, because the murder and misery caused by that regime prior to 2003, and likely to be caused post 2003 if it was still in power, is objectively so much worse than that incurred getting rid of it and setting up a more hopeful future for Iraq.
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We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.
More robust than I would have expected.
To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West
Plenty of people in the West need to stop doing that as well.
To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history
That would be the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Iran, Syria, Burma, North Korea. Hamas as well.
Good luck to the guy. President. What a hell of a job. Certainly quite a day with the first African American sworn in as President.
I wonder what all the crazies are going to do with themselves now that chimpybushhitler is gone? The troofers and all those nutters. Back to disrupting trade talks like Seattle in 1999 I guess.