big on love, tolerance, and the human potential
Tsunami on the sun? Well of course.
Towering waves rise quickly, a 100,000 kilometer-high tsunami sprinting across the surface of the sun at about 900,000 kilometers per hour, and spread out in a circular pattern millions of kilometers in circumference … a footprint of a coronal mass ejection.
Elizabeth May:
A Different Picture Emerges When You Read Them All
Strange, isn’t it that media are not wondering about who hacked into the computers and who paid them? Or why Dr. Andrew Weaver’s office in Victoria has been broken into twice. My guess is that all the computers of all the climate research centers of the world have been repeatedly attacked, but defenses held everywhere but East Anglia.
The scientists at East Anglia, plus colleagues around the world, are being hung out to dry as though they did something wrong.
I did not want to spring to their defense until I read all their emails. Yes, all 3,000 or whatever of them.
“Seven hundred billion was a number out of the air,” Neel Kashkari recalls, wheeling toward the hex nuts and the bolts. “It was a political calculus. I said, ‘We don’t know how much is enough. We need as much as we can get [from Congress]. What about a trillion?’ ‘No way,’ Hank shook his head. I said, ‘Okay, what about 700 billion?’ We didn’t know if it would work. We had to project confidence, hold up the world. We couldn’t admit how scared we were, or how uncertain.”
“Don’t try to score a touchdown. Just — if Paulson throws the ball, catch it.”
In February 2008, that meant drafting an emergency plan in the unlikely event of an economic meltdown. Kashkari and a colleague wrote, “Break the Glass: Bank Recapitalization Plan.”
When the banks actually tanked later that year, the 10-page plan laid the basis for TARP. Amid the chaos, Kashkari was appointed czar.
[ unlikely event? actually tanked? ]
Thoughts tended toward the apocalyptic.
Carbon dioxide indirectly causes up to 50% more global warming than originally thought…
“we do not want to be alarmist here”
But if people are thinking about stabilizing CO2 at a certain atmospheric level, or putting together a treaty, or having a debate about what the levels should be, it really is important to know what the long-term consequences of those emissions are going to be, because CO2 hangs around for so long.
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Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial.
We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.
The science is complex but the facts are clear.
But one does not need to believe in climate change to support the potential climate deal which is scheduled to replace the Kyoto Protocol after 2012. The climate deal means much more than just carbon cuts, carbon trading and adaptation fund. A scientifically sound climate deal would bring many other positive changes for the environment, economy and the society.
At many regions exposed to air by various activity, the land sinks because bacteria then eat the dirt.
New Orleans, for instance. Florida. California. Yes, Holland.
Few subjects rival the federal budget deficit in its power to provoke muddled thinking.
It’s a pity, because there are really only three basic truths that policy makers need to know about deficits:
- It’s actually good to run them during deep economic downturns.
- Whether deficits are bad in the long run depends on how borrowed money is spent.
- Eliminating deficits entirely would not require any painful sacrifices.
To eliminate deficits, we need additional revenue.
The encouraging news is that we could raise more than enough by taxing activities that cause harm to others. Called Pigovian taxes [wiki] … such levies create a burden that is more than offset by the reductions they cause in costly side effects of everyday activities. …
- When producers emit sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere,… the resulting acid rain harms others. As the … Clean Air Act demonstrated, the most efficient … remedy was to tax sulfur dioxide emissions. …
- When the transactions of financial speculators fuel asset bubbles, they increase the risk of financial meltdowns. A small tax on those transactions would reduce this risk. …
- Carbon dioxide emissions contribute to global warming. Here as well, taxation offers the most efficient and least intrusive remedy.
Anti-tax zealots denounce all taxation as … depriving citizens of their right to spend their hard-earned incomes as they see fit.
… nowhere does the Constitution … grant us the right to harm others with impunity.
No one is permitted to steal our cars or vandalize our homes. Why should opponents of taxation be allowed to harm us in less direct ways?
Found at Economist’s View
The EPA will declare carbon dioxide a ‘Public Danger‘.
Such an “endangerment” decision is necessary for the EPA to move ahead early next year with new emission standards for transportation and large emitters such as power stations, cement kilns, crude-oil refineries and chemical plants, triggering a carbon cut of 17% below 2005 by 2020.
More people have more money.
Global production of meat is currently around 260 million tons and will increase 21% by 2015. Two thirds of the growth is expected to be in China, according to market research bureau Gira. [news clip]
Big winners of the increased consumption are poultry and pork.
Poultry production will grow 25%, an additional 24 million tons by 2015 reaching a total of 105 million tons.
World population will eat 125 million tons of pork in 2015, over 21 million tons above 2005 (+10%).
Beef will increase 13% (8 million tons) to a total of 70 million tons in 2015.
Michael Pettis:
How fast does consumption need to grow in China in order for a meaningful rebalancing to take place? Probably a lot more than you think. This is arithmetically the case because China is starting from such a low base.
At roughly $1.2 trillion in 2008, total Chinese private consumption is only a little more than that of France (around $1.0 trillion) and still less than that of Germany (about $1.3 trillion, not to mention the UK’s $1.4 trillion and Japan’s $3.2 trillion). This fact alone should cause us to be extremely skeptical of feverish claims about the role Chinese consumers can play in making up for any contraction in US consumption – which at roughly $9.4 trillion last year is nearly eight times the size of China…
I think too many commentators underestimate the magnitude of the problem.
In a sense, this crisis is about values (the prices paid for many assets) and the rules (regulations governing financial markets). It is also about rules (rigid model based formulations of price) and values (ethics or the lack thereof).
Copenhagen’s agenda reduced to a nutshell: :
That’s it.
And all of you are leaders in your communities — in the business sector and the labor sector, in academia, we even have a few pundits here — it is important to understand what’s at stake and that we can’t keep on playing games.
I mentioned that I was in Asia on this trip thinking about the economy, when I sat down for a round of interviews. Not one of them asked me about Asia. Not one of them asked me about the economy.
I was asked several times about had I read Sarah Palin’s book. (Laughter.) True. But it’s an indication of how our political debate doesn’t match up with what we need to do and where we need to go.
Obama at the Forum on Jobs and Economic Growth:
We have a structural deficit that is real and growing, apart from the financial crisis. We inherited it. We’re spending about 23 percent of GDP and we take in 18 percent of GDP and that gap is growing because health care costs, Medicare and Medicaid in particular, are growing. And we’ve got to do something about that.
You then layer on top of that the huge loss of tax revenue as a consequence of the financial crisis and the greater demands for unemployment insurance and so forth. That’s another layer. Probably the smallest layer is actually what we did in terms of the Recovery Act. I mean, I think there’s a misperception out there that somehow the Recovery Act caused these deficits.
No, I mean, we had — we’ve got a 9-point-something trillion- dollar deficit, maybe a trillion dollars of it can be attributed to both the Recovery Act as well as the cleanup work that we had to do in terms of the banks. In turns out actually TARP, as wildly unpopular as it has been, has been much cheaper than any of us anticipated.
So that’s not what’s contributing to the deficit. We’ve got a long- term structural deficit that is primarily being driven by health care costs, and our long-term entitlement programs. All right? So that’s the baseline.
Now, if we can’t grow our economy, then it is going to be that much harder for us to reduce the deficit. The single most important thing we could do right now for deficit reduction is to spark strong economic growth, which means that people who’ve got jobs are paying taxes and businesses that are making profits have taxes — are paying taxes. That’s the most important thing we can do.
We understand that in this administration. That’s not always the dialogue that’s going on out there in public and we’re going to have to do a better job of educating the public on that.
The last thing we would want to do in the midst of what is a weak recovery is us to essentially take more money out of the system either by raising taxes or by drastically slashing spending. And frankly, because state and local governments generally don’t have the capacity to engage in deficit spending, some of that obligation falls on the federal government.
Having said that, what is also true is that unless businesses and global capital markets have some sense that we’ve got a plan, medium and long term, to get the deficit down, it’s hard for us to be credible, and that also could be counterproductive. So we’ve got about as difficult a economic play as is possible, which is to press the accelerator in terms of job growth, but then know when to apply the brakes in the out-years and do that credibly. And you know, we are trying to strike that balance, but we’re going to need help from all of you who oftentimes are more credible than politicians in delivering that message.
Because we want to leverage whatever public dollars are spent, and we are under no illusion that somehow the federal government can spend its way out of this recession. But it is absolutely true that any of the ideas that have been — been mentioned here are still going to require some public dollars, and those are actually good investments to make right now.
Brad DeLong says, “It’s so nice to have an intelligent, thoughtful, and industrious president….”
We can only marvel at the disarray.
Here we are, 17 years after the signing of the UN framework convention on climate change, two years after the decision in Bali to agree a new climate policy, one year after Barack Obama’s election, and days out from the Copenhagen conference. Yet a real global strategy to avoid catastrophe remains elusive.
The truth is that even if we reach a political agreement, we’re not yet on track to achieve practical, significant and sustained progress.
Yes, there is some progress. … The mayhem, however, is at least as great.
Big savers got us into this mess, as well as big spenders.
The world is trapped in a global savings glut. It is both the source of our economic woes and an obstacle to the task of pulling ourselves out of the ditch.
Worse yet, the glut’s continued existence will feed a succession of asset bubbles until we confront it, head on, and find ways to soak up the excess.
Yes, we can blame the City and Wall Street for turning the global savings glut into fissile material. But that’s like saying, “hyenas do what hyenas do”. Given extraordinarily lax regulation and a flood of money to play with, bankers were just acting according to their incentive schemes. They merely took advantage of the opportunities the glut presented. The real culprits are thrifty Germans, and state-owned enterprises in China – along with governments of other countries, of course, turning a blind eye to the escalating problems.
well, we just gotta:
well, we just are:
A once-in-a-generation shift in U.S. science is being spurred by Obama’s push to solve the nation’s energy problems in a massive federal program that rivals the Manhattan Project.
When Reagan came in, energy research was cut. All the early advantage that the US had in transportation and renewable R&D went overseas. The Obama Administration has increased funding for the Department of Energy back to comparable levels of the Carter administration.
The $1.4 million M-ATV seats four plus one gunner. Powered by a 370 hp Caterpillar C7, it weighs just under 25,000 pounds. Top speed is 65 mph using four terrain settings with central tire inflation.
I am forecasting that the world will not successfully transition from oil to a broad basket of renewable energy and power sources over the next twenty years.
Instead, I strongly favor an outcome in which oil, the construction fuel for the global build-out of new power generation, becomes so expensive that the world becomes energy poor, and turns instead back to coal.
In case you hadn’t noticed, the process of energy impoverishment has already begun.
Those who would propose a successful energy transition over the next 20 years have failed to produce a holistic model that pays respect to both the history of previous energy transitions, and to the hurdles that lay before us.
When you’re impoverished you burn coal.
America Without a Middle Class
Can you imagine an America without a strong middle class?
If you can, would it still be America as we know it?
Pundits talk about “populist rage” as a way to trivialize the anger and fear coursing through the middle class. But they have it wrong.
Elizabeth Warren
Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel
Today, one in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work. One in nine families can’t make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month. The economic crisis has wiped more than $5 trillion from pensions and savings, has left family balance sheets upside down, and threatens to put ten million homeowners out on the street.
Families have survived the ups and downs of economic booms and busts for a long time, but the fall-behind during the busts has gotten worse while the surge-ahead during the booms has stalled out. In the boom of the 1960s, for example, median family income jumped by 33% (adjusted for inflation). But the boom of the 2000s resulted in an almost-imperceptible 1.6% increase for the typical family. While Wall Street executives and others who owned lots of stock celebrated how good the recovery was for them, middle class families were left empty-handed.
The crisis facing the middle class started more than a generation ago. Even as productivity rose, the wages of the average fully-employed male have been flat since the 1970s.
But core expenses kept going up. By the early 2000s, families were spending twice as much (adjusted for inflation) on mortgages than they did a generation ago — for a house that was, on average, only ten percent bigger and 25 years older. They also had to pay twice as much to hang on to their health insurance.
To cope, millions of families put a second parent into the workforce. But higher housing and medical costs combined with new expenses for child care, the costs of a second car to get to work and higher taxes combined to squeeze families even harder. Even with two incomes, they tightened their belts. Families today spend less than they did a generation ago on food, clothing, furniture, appliances, and other flexible purchases — but it hasn’t been enough to save them. Today’s families have spent all their income, have spent all their savings, and have gone into debt to pay for college, to cover serious medical problems, and just to stay afloat a little while longer.
“We started our research seeking men in their 20s who had never consumed pornography,” said Professor Simon Louis Lajeunesse. “We couldn’t find any.”
The study found that men watched pornography that matched their own image of sexuality, and quickly discarded material they found offensive or distasteful.
On average, they first watched pornography when they were 10 years old.
“Not one subject had a pathological sexuality.”
Robert Brenner’s Into the Eye of the Storm:
Bubbles were no accident.
The massive expansion of credit was the only way to cope with manufacturing overcapacity.
If this is correct, there is no easy fix for our problems.
The blowing of asset bubbles is not an unfortunate side effect of regulatory capture or Wall Street’s greed.
It was the only way governments could keep economic growth from falling below politically dangerous levels once traditional Keynesian methods of fiscal stimulus through deficit spending were no longer adequate to compensate for the sclerosis at the heart of the advanced capitalist economies: “worsening difficulties with profitability and capital accumulation.”
via Yves Smith.
On a general point, here’s a brain dial calibration, something to re-frame the actual world from the pseudo-world that preoccupies our daily politics.
Our media impresses politics and governments as if the entire globe is hinged on policies and statements of a few capitals and committees …or pulpits and pundits. Perhaps because profit margins are greater when managing only a few offices and stringers.
How much do we know about the real world?
Stock and currency markets turn over about $900 trillion each year and derivatives another $625 trillion while Congress frets over healthcare crippling us at well under $1 trillion. I don’t have the numbers handy on industrial transactions, inter-port carry, etc. etc.
We are uninformed.
In 1958, financial sector debt was 6% of GDP. Last year, it was 115% of GDP. Compare this to the day to day drumming about federal government debt.
But if the amount of DNA evidence is too small to be definitive, because we do that with dinosaurs already, should Amanda Knox be convicted of murder?
Yes, forensic DNA can now be built from the DNA of everyone.
I said, building evidence from the DNA of anyone.
Dr Karl’s Great Moments In Science.
Let’s look at these myth about the hyena, one at a time.
One, the horrible hyena is a pussycat.
