Carbon tax:
Australia’s economic suicide
Less than two years after a proposed carbon tax felled Australia’s Labour Party Prime Minister, his replacement, an utter economoron if ever there was one, appears ready and able to pass such a tax through the Australian Parliament with the support of a couple of independent members of that body.
It’s a tax which will raise the cost of everything in Australia, the damage from which government will further compound by redistributing income in the form of subsidies to lower-income Australians so that the burden on them is felt less, whereas the burden on the economically productive sector of society is increased. It’s an extremely complicated scheme…and it’s even worse than it sounds at first with some people likely to end up getting subsidy payments larger than the negative impact of the carbon tax on them. This is especially true for people who don’t drive a lot and don’t earn income, namely older retirees. In other words, big companies and high earners will become an even greater blood source for government parasites and their remoras.
It’s remarkable that a country which is so dependent on the energy-intensive mining industry would kneecap itself so badly, but such is the nature of enterprise- and profit-hating leftists.
And at the end of the day, people get the government they deserve.
Julia Gillard is Australia’s own Nancy Pelosi, arm-twisting her caucus into voting for something which is likely to cost many of her members, and probably Gillard herself, their jobs when the next election comes around. Nevertheless, she, like Madame Defarge, keeps on knitting the seeds of economic destruction into the fabric of the Australian economy.
Furthermore, like Pelosi, Bob Brown, the head of Australia’s Green Party says that despite a more than 2-to-1 public opposition to the tax, he thinks Aussies will “change their mind on the carbon tax” once it passes. If ever politicians embodied what Hayek called “the fatal conceit”, it’s people like Pelosi, Gillard, and Brown.
I wonder if Federal Infrastructure and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese recognized the irony in his words when he says that he, referencing his support of a carbon tax, is “in government to make a difference to people’s lives.” No doubt the tax would do just that, raising the cost of essentially everything in Australia while redistributing wealth to cover the tax’s especially damaging impact on lower incomes, thus making business development that much less likely among the entrepreneurial class.
The carbon tax is like sacrificing Australia’s virgins to some mythical spirit and hoping the climate happens to go along. The only problem is that if it does go along, it will make you think that the pagan ritual actually had an impact. After all, the same “scientists” told us in the mid-1990s that we were going to suffer large temperature increases only to have no increase in global temperatures for at least a decade starting in 1998.
When destroying the economy and killing camels become the best-known proposals of the industry-hating cult currently running, and profiting from, Australia’s federal government, it’s time for a new government, not a new tax.
[One quick science and polling note: Poll questions about carbon taxes are often worded in terms of “pollution”, “polluters”, etc. But carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It’s plant food. And such questions are fundamentally dishonest.]
JustMEinT's General Blog 
Labor’s popularity drops to a record low
July 12, 2011 – 7:25AM
Read more: http://www.watoday.com.au/national/labors-popularity-drops-to-a-record-low-20110712-1hb5z.html#ixzz1RtLYBVuV
Federal Labor’s popularity has dropped to a record low, as Opposition Leader Tony Abbott continues to extend his lead over Julia Gillard as preferred prime minister.
The latest Newspoll, conducted from Friday to Sunday, shows that in the two weeks leading up to the announcement of the carbon tax on Sunday, Labor’s primary vote fell from 30 per cent at the end of June to a record low of 27 per cent over July 8 to 10.
Conversely, the coalition’s support rose three percentage points to 49 per cent during the period – its highest primary vote since the Howard government in October 2001.
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The Newspoll results, published today, was done before the final details of the carbon tax were released.
It found voter satisfaction with Ms Gillard’s performance as prime minister improved slightly from a previous record low of 28 per cent at the end of June to 30 per cent over the weekend, while her dissatisfaction rating fell from a record high of 62 per cent to 59 per cent.
However, for the first time Tony Abbott has a clear lead over Ms Gillard as preferred prime minister, with his polling up three points to 43 per cent and hers down a point to 38.
Mr Abbott is now polling better than any opposition leader since John Howard lost the election to Kevin Rudd in 2007.
Voter satisfaction with the Liberal leader rose three points to 42 per cent, while his dissatisfaction rating went down three points to 49 per cent.
The opposition also recorded its highest two-party-preferred vote of 58 per cent and the ALP its lowest of 42 per cent, based on preference flows from the election in August last year.
The coalition’s two-party-preferred vote is the second biggest in Newspoll history.
The previous record – 63 per cent to 37 per cent – was set by Kevin Rudd’s Labor government in early 2008 when Brendan Nelson was opposition leader, the Australian reported.
About 98 per cent of respondents would not have seen the government’s detailed package on carbon pricing and compensation for industry and households, which began to be released at lunchtime on Sunday, the newspaper reported.
However the government did leak details of its carbon package during the survey period.
Read more: http://www.watoday.com.au/national/labors-popularity-drops-to-a-record-low-20110712-1hb5z.html#ixzz1RtLjVZ00
It is of small comfort to know that liberals think alike around the world. I am convinced that it is a mental illness.
Blessings and keep on writing and publishing
John
And, of course, I’ll provide a dissenting opinion. John, what is a liberal? Someone who disagrees with you?
Yes, as the article notes, the Left is against the profit system. Why? Because it’s taxation without representation. You’d have to be a fool not to know the basis of the economic mode you support. Capitalism, of course, is based on the undercompensation of productive labor. Workers produce value but receive only a fraction of that value in return. The resulting capital is concentrated in the hands of property owners, who then use it as they see fit with no recourse toward the workers who actually produced it. That is a form of taxation without representation. It’s worse, of course, because property owners also dictate the conditions of labor–with little involvement from workers (except at the risk of losing their jobs). And they dictate what will be made. And they are free to use capital to influence politicians and corrupt the democratic process, further disempowering those who do the work.
That’s an essential feature of your beloved profit system.
A wise man, often associated with libertarianism and right-wing economics, once said that there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Not true. For capitalists, every day has a free lunch provided. Security for their families. Plentiful food. Plentiful recreation and leisure time. All dependent on the generation of capital–all dependent on the desperation and poverty that drives down labor costs, drives up productivity, and pits human against human in a battle for jobs (and in many cases survival).
Am I wrong? Have I misread the history of the last 150 years? Or am I guilty of being one-sided (I must be the only poster here guilty of such a thing). Ok, I’ll also point out (along with Karl Marx) that capitalism is a tremendously energetic economic mode. Its primary benefit is the rapid development of the means of production. Its encouragement of technology and science has helped democracy to rip Truth from the hands of religion, patriarchy, and other medieval authorities. It has helped improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Fantastic stuff, but it doesn’t make the mode immune to contradiction.
Back to the free lunch thing for an example. CO2, as has been explained on this blog without any response from those who doubt, absorbs and emits a range of frequencies of longwave radiation. More CO2, more absorption and emission. A molecule of CO2 is like a round bumper in a pinball machine. If the atmosphere is such a pinball machine, you can see what adding more bumpers does: longwave radiation takes longer, on average, to reach the other side of the machine (and radiate into space, the only way that energy can exit into space from the earth). This is pretty simple stuff. And the more energy that’s rolling around in the troposphere (H2O also happens to be a very good bumper, by the way), the more work it can do (like melting ice or making people turn on their air conditioners).
Well, we’ve been dumping CO2 into the atmosphere for 150 years, at a growing rate. And our dumping has benefited us tremendously. Fossil fuels! The wonder of the world! Cheap energy! Just set up a few oppressive . . . err stabilizing regimes in the Middle East, and voila! Your nation can Prosper as it did under slavery! Unlimited economic growth can be yours! You can grow a large population based on this cheap energy, and the growth will be ethical, because the energy will never run out, and it will never cause harm! The miracle juice straight from Heaven!
Yeah, right. As it turns out, we simply ignored the costs. We, as in the modern world, are eating our free lunch and have been for a century. There are costs to emitting CO2, it turns out, but suddenly we’re all social contractarians saying, “Hey, that wasn’t part of the deal! I’m not responsible!” Well, guess what: either you take responsibility for the free lunch now, or you remain irresponsible and make my children and grandchildren pay for it.
I find it interesting that every so often in the pages of the WSJ, Forbes, and other pro-capitalist rags, there’s an article on the need for “ethical capitalism.” Pro-cap theorists admit that the system is essentially without an ethical component. In other words, if you buy into the system, there’s nothing inherent within the system that says something like, “you will do no harm to humans” or “this is the right way to conduct yourself.” Morality or ethics has to come from an outside source, a different and competing system. Would Christ embrace the profit system? There has been much debate about the poverty of Christ, but I’ve never heard anyone say, “Oh yeah, and if Christ were alive today, he’d be all for private property and the development of a system that requires poverty and unemployment. Christ would be a CEO, baby, workin’ for the shareholders, driving up productivity!” Uhhh, no.
This isn’t about you being taxed unfairly. This is about you paying for the lunch you’re already eating.
Hi DSL, I thought that America was / is a Republic, not a Democracy. I know that the Democrats would like it to be a ‘democracy’ hence their names. Capitalism is the financial system in the West, socialists / communists prefer to ‘share the wealth’ that is they want you to share your wealth with them. That was the whole original purpose of the Labor Unions as I recall. The real problem with that is, that now we have the Greens too who want us to stop ‘polluting the planet’ their way. They claim that we are spewing out Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere, and altering the earth’s Temperature / Climate. But the Sun with it sunspots, or as we have seen recently, lack of sunspots has caused some of the ‘changes’. The last ICE AGE, almost wiped out mankind, but the earth was saved by Global Warming. Not that I am noticing much ‘warming’ here in Melbourne, where we are having one of the coldest winters in years.
God is the one who is in charge of the weather, not mankind. Julia Gillard claimed that the ice is melting at the Poles, and the seas are rising. Why then don’t we see the effects of this? Beach homes do not have the water lapping at their doors, here try this experiment, put some water in a cup, and drop in something large and solid, the water fills everything evenly, not just in some places, because water always seeks its own level.
You recall incorrectly. Unions are an attempt to drive up wages, just as encouraging productivity is an attempt to drive down wages. Why is full employment a nightmare for capitalists? Why is a certain level of poverty desirable? If you’re hiring, what sort of worker do you want? One that can leave the job and go somewhere else for employment the moment you say, “work harder”? No, you want workers who need the job, who are desperate for job security.
Sea ice melt does not contribute directly to sea level rise. After all, it’s sea ice. However, now that you’ve mentioned it, you should also be aware that global sea ice (Arctic + Antarctic) is approaching an historical low extent. The Arctic is melting more rapidly than the previous record rate set in 2007.
If God is capable to setting aside his/her/its own natural laws, then there is no point in performing science. If that is your view, then we’ll set aside the physics, and I’ll point out to you that the Arctic ice is melting rapidly. I don’t know why God wants this to happen, but it’s happening.
As for local weather, look at what’s happening in the US right now. Global warming? Not necessarily, but the drought in the SW US was predicted by those dastardly climate models. Climate models were wrong, though, about the rapidity of sea ice decline (models underestimated).
DSL
Oh where do I begin with you. Your thinking is so distorted by liberal thinking that you utterly lack logic and facts. For the record, I have a degree in Bible. Christ never railed against thte capitalist system. He recognized it an d even supported it in the Parable of the Talents. There is a whole bible study that I could do with you here on this topic alone, but go read the Parable of The Talents and tell me why Christ is against the Capitalist free market system. He also said that the poor you will always have with you. You better know your bible history a whole lot better before you start speaking for Christ.
Socialism has always failed every time that it has been tried. China was starving until they allowed farmers to grow their own crops on their own little piece of land and sell the fruits of their labor. The Soviet Union collapsed on itself. Cuba remains a third world country.
You need to read my article on the Great Global warming hoax. First of all CO2 is not a pollutant. Secondly of all it is 152% heavier than air and sinks to the ground when it is released. That is why they use it in fire extinguishers. The increase of CO2 after a 100 years of the industrial revolution is only 80 PPM. The fractional equivalent of that is 8/100,000ths of 1%. To graph this, I would have to have a graph 694 feet long and the increase would represent 3/4 of 1 inch on that long graph. Can we spell trace amount. The government even allows trace amounts of rat droppings in 0ur food.
You are so deluded that you make no sense. Stop drinking the Kool Aid.
John Wilder
Should any reader assume I was rather short in a previous comment on carbon taxes, forgive me. You Tasmanians are in a terrible position already thanks to the Tasmanian Government’s own carbon taxes.
It’s just that the genuine case has been deliberately suppressed by certain quarters reaching inside the Liberal Party. No wonder, Will Hodgman and his Shadow Cabinet enthusiastically supports the Tasmanian Government’s version of carbon taxes and the Federal Shadow Cabinet has another in Greg Hunt’s Direct Action and the “alternative” carbon tax, Malcolm Turnbull’s ETS.
The fight is now in a very late phase. The true case is simple once understood, but it’s not straightforward. The result is Australians have been left unarmed because it has not been carefully presented. This is terrible, it makes it very difficult to deal with this side of the fight, the economics.
So, I injected a sharp comment to state the essentials and as vividly as possible to assist you Tasmanians with a vital insight into what you are now enduring, Victorians are fast following, and if Gillard succeed so will all Australians but the Gillard carbon tax means a truly horrendous disaster.
Australians have been abandoned to that. So, I apologies, JustMeinT and to your readers too but it is the urgency of the situation and the peril we are all now in that spurred me to write that crisp but unintentionally short comment.
Regards, Douglas.
John, you have evidence for the capitalist mode in operation 2000 years ago? We’re not talking slavery or an apprenticeship system. We’re talking a widespread economic mode based on the concept of buying labor value at a forced discount. It would be a bizarre and sickening piece of revisionist rhetoric if a Bible contained any reference to capitalism.
“…do not take advantage of each other, but fear your God.”
—Leviticus 25:17 (NIV)
What is capitalism but taking advantage of one another?
“If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to support himself among you, help him as you would an alien or a temporary resident, so he can continue to live among you. Do not take interest of any kind from him, but fear your God, so that your countrymen may continue to live among you…”
—Leviticus 25:35-36 (NIV)
Do not take interest of any kind from him. Oh yeah, that’s a dandy. And perhaps you’ve heard of the forgiving of debts every seven years.
That’s the problem with any religious text: human interpretation and the assumption that the interpreter speaks from the mind of the deity. In actual practice, most religious folks believe whatever suits their interests.
And you’ve once again copied and pasted that stuff about CO2 being heavy–no answer to Dikran, no answer to me, just the same old line over and over again. You bring no recognition of physics to the argument. You give no explanation for the observed fact that CO2 is well-mixed in the atmosphere. Delusion is the self-accommodating failure to account for observed reality.
How many people are actively “in on” the hoax, John? Is this Masters of the World type stuff? Stuck inside Focault’s Pendulum, are you? Actually, I doubt if you really care one way or another. Most doubters seem to attack without remotely providing an alternative theory that covers the same range of data and physics that the theory of AGW does. It’s just pick, pick, pick, trying to find just one hole, one moment where one can say, “see! because this scientists said this, none of it is true! ah-ha!” Such an approach indicates that the most important thing is that the narrative that results from a human-caused warming of the globe not be true. That we could be responsible for rapidly altering global climate generates a large measure of cognitive dissonance for some folks.
Dave
First of all, I can show you rank fraud. Punch into google the phrase “black balloons”. It is a slickly produced commercial that Gore touts featuring his former roomate in college, Tommy Lee Jones doing the voice over. In this commercial they depict black balloons being filled with CO2 at offending appliances and then breaking free and floating up to the ceiling and out the window only to join thousands of other black balloons. The absolute rank fraud is that they filled the balloons with helium instead of CO2 to get them to float. I don’t care how mixed CO2 is in the atmosphere, it still only amounts to 8/100,000th of 1% after over a 100 years of the Industrial Revolution. It is a trace amount increase and can’t possibly be resposible for the 1 degree increase in world wide temps.
The capitalist system does not take advantage of labor. You are not required to take any job that you don’t feel pays adequately. Frankly I am all for more people going into business for themselves because you have a better chance of making a better living. We live in a free market society where you can choose to do anything that you want to do or not want to do. People come from all over the world to get into our free market system and escape from socialism. I don’t even begin to buy into your socialist propaganda.
John
“It’s remarkable that a country which is so dependent on the energy-intensive mining industry would kneecap itself so badly, but such is the nature of enterprise- and profit-hating leftists.
And at the end of the day, people get the government they deserve.”
Nailed it there, Just Me. I found this post very somber, but with some very bright metaphors mixed in. Very sobering writing. I wish some on the left would take a moment out of their busy day agitating and read your thoughts.
I’m not interested in what Al Gore is doing. He’s not a climate scientist. CO2 makes up, currently, .0387% of the atmosphere. N2 and O2 make up 99% of the atmosphere. What do you know about the radiative properties of N2 and O2?
Consider:
1. The sun emits at wavelengths between .01 and 5 um.
2. The earth reflects about 30% of the solar radiation that reaches it.
3. About 70% of solar radiation is absorbed, adding energy to the surfaces it reaches.
4. Those surfaces then radiate in the infrared wavelength range, between 3 and 100 um.
Are you with me so far? This is all textbook stuff. Now . . .
5. The earth’s atmosphere is 78% N2 (nitrogen). N2 only absorbs radiation of a wavelength around 4.3 (and somewhat less effectively in a slightly broader range due to pressure broadening). In other words, it can intercept a very narrow range of solar radiation but cannot intercept infrared radiation emitted by the Earth.
6. Another roughly 21% of the atmosphere is O2 (oxygen – but not including O3, ozone). O2 absorbs a little infrared around the 6 um wavelength, but primarily it absorbs below the 2 um wavelength. Keep in mind no. 4 above.
7. Thusfar, we have over 99% of the atmosphere absorbing almost no infrared radiation. Huh? How, then, does the Earth atmosphere stay warm? Something must be absorbing/emitting infrared radiation, but that something would have to comprise less than 1% of the atmosphere–a “tiny fraction.”
8. Well, let’s see. We do have an obvious choice. H20. Water vapor accounts for .4% of the atmosphere–a tiny fraction. Yet water vapor absorbs/emits quite broadly within the infrared range emitted by Earth. It is the most powerful greenhouse gas. However, it doesn’t have a long residence time in the atmosphere, which means that over a long range–say a year–average global water vapor remains pretty steady. Atmospheric water vapor does not, of its own accord, trend upward or downward over time. Water vapor is also primarily a tropospheric gas. It exists in tiny quantities in the stratosphere.
9. CO2 is the next most plentiful atmospheric gas, at .0387%. The rest of the gases are present in much smaller amounts, and only CH4 (methane) is a strong absorber/emitter in the infrared range we’re dealing with. CO2 emits/absorbs quite strongly in the range of Earth’s thermal radiation–not nearly as strong as H20, and at some wavelengths they overlap. CO2 does act as a so-called “greenhouse gas.” It must, according to its physical properties and the radiative environment in which it exists. It must absorb and emit at its wavelengths. More CO2, more absorption (in all directions), more emission (in all directions), and a longer average path length to space.
10. CO2, like water, also has a natural cycle, and without any external forcing it should be in equilibrium. In other words, the natural world will have adapted to its presence, and atmospheric CO2 will have adapted to the presence of the natural world, in an ongoing dynamic attempt to establish equilibrium (never actually achieved of course).
11. We are part of the natural world. We have been dumping CO2 into the atmosphere at high rates for a century. The atmosphere, according to its physical properties, is responding. The natural world, according to its physical properties, is responding.
Bottom line: the argument that “such a tiny fraction of atmospheric gas couldn’t possibly cause the earth to warm” is a total fail according to the physics. Now, if your physics is not science-based, well then anything goes.
And thanks for the standard, ahistorical defense of capitalism. I have three questions for you:
1. Would you, John, privatize the air we breathe if you could?
2. Capitalism produces social stratification. What is the logic of that stratification? In other words, why are rich people rich and poor people poor?
3. What is the more effective means of expressing power, voting or money?
Hey DSL
You do realize that we have been in a world wide cooling cycle setting record low temps around the globe for the last 10 years or do you just filter out info that conflicts with your theory?
No I would not privatize air.
There has always been social stratification. It has to do with mental ability and drive.
the answer is both voting and money
John Wilder
John have you read Ken’s latest?
http://tgrule.wordpress.com/2011/07/16/there-has-been-no-global-warming-since-1998/
Ugh, not that slowdown thing again. There have been two other “stoppages” of GW in the last 30 years. Keep in mind that only four things can force global climate change: changes in the intensity of solar radiation, orbital changes, continental drift, and changes in atmospheric composition. Ice ages are typically caused by cyclical orbital changes. The sun doesn’t vary its output very much, and those changes are cyclical. Continental drift occurs very, very slowly–far too slowly to enter any conversation about climate change on a millennial or multi-millennial timescale. Solar output for the last decade–the decade of your “global cooling”–has dropped to its regular cyclical minimum. It also seems to be heading toward a grand minimum, which is a century-scale trend. Orbital changes are also pushing us slowly toward the next ice age. Setting aside CO2 for the moment, look at atmospheric composition. The 1970s saw aerosol regulation, sharply dropping atmospheric particles that reflect incoming solar radiation. However, China’s increasing output of these aerosols in the last decade has been well-documented.
So why isn’t global cooling occurring? Why has the last decade been the warmest in recorded history, despite the solar minimum, aerosol increases, and the general orbital trend? Here’s something else to keep in mind: only one global temperature data set tries to include polar temperatures, yet the Arctic is warming faster than any other part of the planet, and the Antarctic has been warming slightly for at least 20 years. Arctic sea ice extent and volume will both break record minimums this summer (records set in 2007). A great deal of energy goes into melting ice. Indeed, the IPCC, much maligned in the blogosphere, severely underestimated the decline in sea ice extent and volume. For the last five years, doubter bloggers have been predicting strong rebounds in ice, but even the rate of decline seems to be increasing. And, of course, albedo is a major feedback mechanism. Less ice, less solar radiation reflected to space, more solar radiation soaked up by the ocean blue.
Ironically, but not surprisingly so, doubters who out of one side of their mouths claim that “climategate reveals the fraud!” in the HADCRU global temp set also use the HADCRU global temp set to claim “global cooling.” Why? Because HADCRU doesn’t use polar data, so it typically shows a cooler trend. And please don’t start in with the “since 1998” line. Anything that starts in 1998 is an obvious cherry pick, just as anything that starts in 2001 is an obvious cherry pick in the other direction. Here‘s a summary of global “cooling” in the last decade. I draw your attention to the second figure and let you draw your own conclusions. And don’t mistake El Nino/La Nina as a source of energy. It is not a source or forcing (like the four listed above); it is an oscillation.
I guessed right on all three of your answers.
1. Then why privatize food, water, and shelter?
2. Mental ability agreed, to an extent. Drive is both nature and culture. That having been said, I know a large number of smart poor people, and I know a large number of idiotic and/or willfully ignorant capitalists and managers. I would say, though, that, setting aside a certain level of basic mental competence (that most people demonstrably have), there is one essential feature for rising high in the hierarchy defined by capitalism: a willingness to accept the generation of capital as the core, driving value, above any other values derived from any other moral or ethical system. Interestingly, though, you set “mental ability” against the absence of “hard work.” Difficult to bring up “hard work” as a response to this question, isn’t it? After all, the people engaged in actual production are working the hardest, expending lots of energy, dulling the mind with endlessly repeated actions that require intense concentration, often at the risk of losing life or limb. And they are the ones being undercompensated for their effort.
3. Stuck in a bind here, eh? Don’t want to give up on democracy, but don’t want to appear naive to the extent of denying the influence of wealth. I’m in the U.S., John. Here, democracy has been a laughable thing for close on a century. We now have an open organization that allows multinationals and power domestic corporations to dictate law at the local, state, and federal levels. Economic power is real power, John, and capitalism concentrates economic power in the hands of the few. That is, indeed, its very definition.
Drive is related to work. Hard work alone obviously does not necessarily end up in wealth. It is the abilty to work smarter and not harder. Capitalism is the only economic model that works every time. Socialism has failed every time that it is tried. I am not sayhing that capitalism is the perfect system but it is the best system that we have available.
WE were told in the seventies that Freon was causing global warming. As a result, the libs got Freon banned. It has made no difference at all. They never explained how Freon was able to adopt magical magnetic properties that caused it to race to the poles (the only place that the air was thinning, there never have been holes in the ozone. There has only been seasonal differentiations) and then reconsitituted itself and concentrated itself into this toxic soup that renounced its heavier than air qualities (specific gravity of 1,34) and shot up into the Troposphere where the actual thinning took place. They never bothered to explain how we got warming in the rest of the world from this thinning over the poles but the arctic ice did not melt.
For the record, the poles are where the earth spins on its axis and creates a vortex effect which in reality better explains the seasonal thinning. Boules and Charles law of gasses also contribute.
John
Freon (CFC-12) helps break down O3–ozone. Ozone is actually a greenhouse gas, so technically the loss of ozone would help to cool the globe. On the other hand, though, the ozone layer also blocks about 99.9% of the incoming UV-c radiation (high frequency radiation). So the destruction of the ozone would allow much greater genetically-damaging insolation–a much worse situation than GHG warming for the biosphere.
As far as the claim of magnetism goes, learn a little. A “hole” does develop over the S Pole, seasonally, and it was the size anomaly that told us that something was wrong.
You have two premises that contradict one another:
1. Capitalism is the only system that works every time.
2. Capitalism isn’t perfect.
Just out of curiosity, “works every time” to do what? What is the goal?
Brewer-Dobson circulation is a model of atmospheric circulation, proposed by Alan Brewer in 1949 and Gordon Dobson in 1956, that attempts to explain why tropical air has less ozone than polar air, even though the tropical stratosphere is where most atmospheric ozone is produced.
Note that this is a model and a theory ATTEMPTING TO EXPLAIN.
Banning freon has made NO DIFFERENCE in the atmosheriic SEASONAL thinning of the ozone. Therefore we should relegalize Freon because it is an inert gas that is a far cheaper refrigerant than its replacement.
DSL, you are what I like to call “smart-stupid.” Read my latest post and spread your crappy argument, which veils the effect of water vapor, 95% of the greenhouse effect. Man only maximum controls 3% of the 3.9% of non-water vapor greenhouse gases.
Love how you wrap it up with some commie doublespeak, just to show that you’re entire argument isn’t about science, it’s about politics. Forget you control freak commies, and the horse you rode in on. Try to force me against my will into communism, and you and your pals are going to taste lead. Are we clear?
I’m not some fat cat capitalist, I own my own labor and have no problem selling it to the highest bidder. Got a problem with that? GFY and start a commune with your hippie friends.
Uh-oh, we have a Rhetorician. Let’s swim past the waves of saliva to get at the meat of Rogue’s statement.
1. What latest post? You have a link?
2. Yes, as I said in my post that you apparently didn’t read, H20 is by far the strongest GHG. Where did you get 3%, though? Your own calculations? The Earth is about 33C warmer thanks primarily to water vapor, clouds, and CO2. CO2 provides roughly 20% of GHG warming. It absorbs and emits at a number of places (plus pressure broadenings) in the relevant part of the spectrum.
3. Yes, Rogue, I did talk about politics. Shocking in the comment stream of a blog post that combines the two. Gasp! And then we get the “C” word. Oh no! *slaps cheeks* Not the commies! Grab your copy of Atlas Shrugged and run! Chuckle.
The fascinating thing here is that you appear to want to protect your right to sell your labor to the highest bidder, and this is precisely what communism wants as well. Before your head explodes, let’s separate the historically and materially developed form of “communism” that took place in the Soviet Union from the analysis that concludes with the need for communism. It all starts with labor. The question, then, is whether you’re going to work together with other laborers to force property owners to drive up your wages, or whether you’re going to work alone to try to get the best price for your labor. Working alone gives property owners leverage, especially in the less skilled categories of labor. Working together (unionism) forces property owners to increase wages.
You know all this.
I assume, then, that you’re a skilled laborer. Are you a productive laborer, though? In other words, do people need what you produce every day, or does only the specific economic mode need your labor? If the global economy totally collapsed, would your skill set provide something useful? I’ll use the example of my uncle-in-law. He builds planes for executives. He labors with his hands to do so, and he is very well-paid. He appears to be working class, but if there were no managerial (middle) class that needed these planes, his skills would be not very useful. His knowledge would be useful, to some extent. The only mode that produces a largish managerial class is capitalism, and you can bet that my uncle-in-law supports capitalism. He knows where his individual bread is buttered.
He gives the same argument that you imply: to hell with everyone else, I’m going to get what I can while I can. I don’t disagree with him, but my argument is a little more involved, because of what I do for a living. I’m a sort of information manager. It’s my job to understand what goes on in the world, how it has developed, and where it’s going. I see that we all appear to operate according to rational self-interest, always taking into account the inescapable drive to propagate the species. Acting in one’s own rational self-interest, though, creates a problem: when do you know that an action is in your self-interest?
How do you know that what you do today isn’t going to make your life hell tomorrow? Is it because your actions are inherently the right actions? Is it because God would not let something bad happen to someone as good as you? It couldn’t be that you don’t care what happens tomorrow, because that would not be rational (or, rather, would not allow rationality to operate).
Or is it that you are willing to believe in something up to the point of it interfering with the source of your short-term food-water-shelter security? You believe that there are atoms, molecules, and radiation, and laws that govern the interaction of these matters. You believe these laws when it comes time to design a new motor or a computer. You refuse to believe the conclusion of these laws with regards to CO2.
I don’t know what GFY means. I suspect what it means, but I can’t say it without having my comment deleted. How you can get away with it is beyond me. As for the command to go join a commune, how stupid would that be? Island communism doesn’t work. It didn’t work for Stalin or Castro. It didn’t work for Mao, either, though his successors appear to believe what Marx did: capitalism is a necessary precursor to socialism; organize capitalism and you begin to prepare for the future.
Just wanted to thank you for all your contributions to this thread. As is usual I am rushing out…. but thought you may be interested in the Blog from Rogueoperator today…… has quite a lot to say about man’s (supposed and actual) contribution to climate change.
Cheer’s JustME
Thanks, JustMe. Forgive my confrontational tone. Some of us aren’t playing around. Best regards, RO
Not only is Julia Gillard wasting OUR Aussie money on this rogue Carbon Tax, but check this out.
Set-top box program costs $70m in admin fees
ABC July 16, 2011, 7:12 am
Set-top box program costs $70m in admin fees
New figures show more than 20 per cent of the budget allocation for the free digital set-top box program is being spent on administration.
The Federal Government expanded the $308 million program in the May budget to help more pensioners switch to digital television.
Figures released to the Coalition show almost $70 million is going towards administering the program.
Opposition spokesman Jamie Briggs says it is an extraordinary example of waste.
“Just when we thought it couldn’t reach any lower they’ve managed to find new ways to waste Government money, taxpayers money on this program,” he said.
“When it was first announced, the Coalition made very clear we thought there would be waste contained, but even this has shocked the most hardened waste watcher amongst us.”
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/9858152/set-top-box-program-costs-70m-in-admin-fees/
Julia Gillard is spending OUR money like it is going out of style.
Tomorrow is yet another day. Our Dear Bob and Julia (arghhhh) will begin spending twelve million of your tax dollars on a TV ad campaign to sell you their Carbon Tax Scheme. Be prepared for some serious backlash!
I just got this by email from a US friend. I thought it sounded awfully familiar.
No one can sum it up better than Trump!
“Obama Care Explained”
Let me get this straight . . . …
We’re going to be “gifted” with a health care
plan we are forced to purchase and
fined if we don’t,
Which purportedly covers at least
ten million more people,
without adding a single new doctor,
but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents,
written by a committee whose chairman
says he doesn’t understand it,
passed by a Congress that didn’t read it but
exempted themselves from it,
and signed by a President who smokes,
with funding administered by a treasury chief who
didn’t pay his taxes,
for which we’ll be taxed for four years before any
benefits take effect,
by a government which has
already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare,
all to be overseen by a surgeon general
who is obese,
and financed by a country that’s broke!!!!!
‘What the hell could
possibly go wrong?’
well it is that time when candidates are showing off their skills ready for an election – forthcoming – in the USA. I also received this one about Obama Today…… says much about what the ‘elite’ think of us in the electorate!
America Is Too Dumb to Know Obama Is Always Right
By Michael Goodwin – Fox News
When President Obama started talking at his news conference Monday, I listened intently for 15 minutes or so. Then I got fidgety as his half-truths about the debt grew into full-blown whoppers. As he droned on, I did something I never did before during an Obama appearance: I turned off the TV.
Enough. He is the Man Who Won’t Listen to Anybody, so why should anybody listen to him?
Tuning out and turning off the president does not fill me with gladness. He cannot be ignored.
But for now, I will leave that unhappy duty to others. I am tired of Barack Obama. There’s nothing new there. His speeches are like “Groundhog Day.”
His presidency is a spectacular failure, his historic mandate squandered by adherence to leftist ideology and relentless partisanship. His policies are crushing the prospects for growth and dooming the hopes of 24 million Americans who are unemployed or working part-time.
Yet he is not going to change. He listens only to his own voice, which is why he has lost virtually his entire economic team.
The biggest media myth is that he is a centrist. Oh, please. It’s a theory without evidence, for there is not a single example on domestic issues where he voluntarily staked out a spot in the American middle.
Sure, on occasion, Obama will be to the right of the far, far left, but that is not the center. That just means he’s not Michael Moore.
Nor is he a centrist because he’ll make a deal under duress with Republicans, as he did last December. All politicians have a pragmatic streak, otherwise they couldn’t get anything done in a divided government.
But Obama’s default statist position remains unmolested by facts or last year’s landslide that was a rebuke to his first two years. He continues to push bigger and bigger government, higher and higher taxes and more and more welfare programs.
He will compromise if he must, but he still wants what he wants and will come back for it again and again.
That’s the subtext of the debt-ceiling talks and his press conference. He voted against raising the ceiling as a senator, calling the need for an increase a “failure.”
Now he is not embarrassed to demand a hike of about $2.5 trillion, and more hair of the spending-and-taxing dog. He reveals his belief that your money is really the government’s and it will decide how much you can keep. The only cut he is comfortable with is in the defense budget.
He says it’s time to “pull off the Band-Aid” and “eat our peas.” Translation: It’s time for Republicans to give him everything he wants. That’s his definition of being an adult and acting in the national interest.
His only concession to public will is to pretend he’s got religion about the fiscal problems and wants a “big deal.” What he really wants is to get through the election.
In answering a question about a poll showing that two-thirds of voters don’t want the debt ceiling raised, he blew off 70 million Americans by saying they aren’t paying attention.
There’s a novel campaign theme: Elect me because you’re too dumb to understand how smart I am.
Harry Truman ran against a “Do-Nothing” Congress. Obama is running against a “Know-Nothing” nation.
He can never be wrong. You always are, unless you agree with him.
That’s the story of his presidency. That’s who he is.
SOURCE
Hey Frances
Thanks for posting this. It is in a word: BRILLIANT!
kUDOS
John Wilder
Hey Justme
I did in fact read it. I just did not comment on it. I should have
John