Dang, An Existing PAC Has Already Grabbed the name Throw The Bums Out

I thought I had an inspired idea the other day. It seemed to me that a "Throw The Bums Out" political action committee was a great idea. Given the anger much of United States shares with me in regard to our current Congress, it seemed like this would be an ideal vehicle for a fund raising effort.

The idea behind the PAC would be to fund the campaigns of challengers that were close in the polls and appeared to have a legitimate chance to defeat an incumbent.

I have been beaten to the punch, and not just be a few days, but by years. Although their site does not seem to be active http://www.generalecommerce.com/bumsout.org/ has a copyright date of 2006.

It is a shame that few Congressman will suffer any sort of threat to their re-election bids despite fomenting the stalemate on raising the debt limit and the harm they are doing to the U.S. economy. Election districts have been so gerrymandered that few seats are in competitive districts. Thus, despite the complete breakdown of competent action on the part of Congress, the U.S. electorate is likely to get basically the same Congress even after the 2014 election.  Sadly, the anger felt toward Congress in general is unlikely to be translated into votes against individual incumbents

Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Stifle the U.S. Economy to Set A Good Example on Greenhouse Gas Emissions?

One of the assumptions that guides the posts in this blog is that mankind's pumping of billions of metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is likely to result in an environmental calamity. Mankind is conducting an incredibly risky science experiment regarding the sensitivity of the atmosphere to increasing levels of CO2.  Yet, does it make sense for the U.S. to unilaterally hamstring our economy in order to set a "good example".

An editorial in the New York Times describes the Obama administration proposed federal limits on power plant emissions of carbon dioxide as a "welcome sign".  Yet, how does it make sense to feed the world's growing demand for coal by shipping U.S. mined coal to countries around the world, while restricting the use of coal by power plants in the U.S.  Restricting the U.S. use of cheap coal to generate power will hinder the U.S. economy while barely having any impact of global emissions of greenhouse gases. Try telling coal miners and communities that are dependent on coal mining that their jobs should be killed in order to set a "good example" for the rest of the world. Furthermore, making U.S. energy more expensive serves to unilaterally impose a tax on the U.S. economy while the rest of the world gets a free ride.

Frankly, I am glad that I don't have to make a decision on which way to vote on this proposed legislation. While a worldwide reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is urgently needed, unilateral legislation that hamstrings the U.S. economy is challenging to support. And the New York Times rationale of endorsing the proposed power plant emissions limits in order to set a "good example" is not particularly compelling.  

Climate Change Will Be Unstoppable By The Time Politicians Take Steps to Mitigate

It boggles the mind that climate change skeptics think mankind can continue to emit billions of metric tons of greenhouse gases and toxic chemicals into the atmosphere every year without altering the environment. Given that Los Angeles, Mexico City and Beijing demonstrate how severely pollution can foul the air on a metropolitan basis, is it such a leap to reach a conclusion that the global atmosphere may be sensitive to the massive greenhouse gas emissions produced by gasoline and diesel combustion in cars and trucks, coal fired power plants, and the plenitude of other sources of air pollution?

It seems unlikely that the pause in the rising global surface temperature during the last decade proves that "global warming is a hoax". Further, any claim that the pause in the earth's warming trend has been greater than a decade should immediately activate BS detectors. A claim that global warming stopped in 1998 can only be made by someone that is illiterate regarding statistics. While the trend of  increasing surface temperature of the earth has has taken a pause for the last decade, it is an exaggeration to indicate the pause has been for 15 or 16 years. The starting point of skeptics exaggerating the length of the pause in global warming is typically 1998, a particularly warm year because of a strong El Nino weather pattern. Cherry picking 1998 as a a starting point is either an indication of statistical illiteracy of an overt attempt to obfuscate the results.

The link between green house gas emission and climate change impacts are firm in some cases and circumstantial in others. The impact upon the oceans are almost certainly related to mankind's activity. The west coast fires, the cycle of heat waves, drought and flash floods around much of the world, and the increased destructiveness of storms such as Hurricane Sandy and other examples of weather on steroids all are indicative of a changing climate.

The greenhouse gases and toxic chemicals emitted to date are already having an impact on the world's oceans. Sea level is rising by 1/10th inch per year and the ocean is becoming more acidic. The mercury content in deep water fish is increasing. Fish are migrating away from the tropics.  Arctic sea ice is declining in the area it covers.

The negative impacts of climate change are leading to worrisome outcomes. As examples, 1) the migration of pests, and 2) reductions in the flow of the Colorado River, could have disastrous impacts if these trends pick up speed. Property insurance rates are increasing to unaffordable levels for many living in flood prone areas.

Yet the question becomes - how much loss of life, property destruction, famine, and economic harm must occur before action is taken to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions? Given that any action that would truly be meaningful to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions must be taken jointly by the U.S., China, and the world's other leading economies, it seems unlikely that anything significant will be agreed upon this decade. The Chinese are moving in slow motion in acting to control the life shortening pollution that clouds the country's major cities. It seems unlikely that a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions will become a priority in that country. And in the U.S., much of the Republican party continues to spout a "global warming is a hoax" message.

Thus, given the growth  in greenhouse gasses and CO2 in the atmosphere, we may well be on the path to a climate catastrophe. If the predictions of the climate Cassandras turn out to be true, a very challenging environment awaits future generations. And mankind has no better option than to hope that the most pessimistic predictions of climate change are wrong, because the world's politicians are unlikely to take any action to avert climate change until the impact is upon us and unstoppable.

Environmentalists Block Sensible Solutions To Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions

A case can be made that the "greens" are often the biggest enemy of reducing greenhouse gas emissions utilizing methods that do more than simply reduce economic activity. The roadblocks the environmentalist put in the way of the development of energy sources hugely hinders the deployment of lower polluting solutions.

An effective energy policy would first seek to allow solutions to develop. If we want to shut down coal plants, don’t make it difficult to replace them.  Such a simple statement, however, one that is oddly prohibited by current policy.  Regulation makes it difficult to obtain permitting for new facilities, as an example water permitting can takes about five years before a construction permit can even be issued.  Want to build a nuke, better start permitting 10-years in advance.  Want to replace old reactors with new reactors, getting a design license through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes upwards of 15-years.  Want to build a new combined cycle plant, but you don’t have pipeline access.  Good luck getting the right-of-way for the new pipeline.  Our solution to this is to mandate clean energy, give subsidies, loan guarantees, fund extra research, create dedicated national laboratories, etc. None of these solutions address the fundamental problem, i.e. we presume to know what is best and prohibit meaningful action.  The climate crisis, the energy crisis, the anything crisis are a result of our continued interference and meddling presuming knowledge we don’t have.

Read the entire post by Cal Abel

If the Tea Party ever moves away from their denial of climate change, addressing the above hurdles to the development of cleaner energy sources would be productive.

Chicago's Extreme Weather - Are Rainstorms Being Amplified By Increased CO2 in the Atmosphere?

The Chicago area suffered record flooding the other day. While Chicago's weather is famously variable, the fact that 3 of the city's 8 heaviest recorded rainstorms have occurred within the last 6 years certainly raises suspicion that something is amiss. While this correlation between more frequent heavy rainfall and increased CO2 in the atmosphere could certainly just be a due to the random variability of weather, it is cause for concern.

Over at Weather Underground, meteorologist  Dr.Jeff Masters goes out on a limb and declares that

"The new normal in the coming decades is going to be more and more extreme flood-drought-flood cycles like we are seeing now in the Midwest, and this sort of weather whiplash is going to be an increasingly severe pain in the neck for society."

Given the cold spring we've had in the Midwest, it seems hard to accept the global warming could be occurring. However, confusing local weather with global climate change would be a mistake. There are lots of places around the globe which have experienced warmer than usual temperatures in 2013, including the Southwestern U.S., the Arctic and Australia.

The Chicago area  flooding led to my drive to work being greatly extended. As I zigged and zagged due to numerous closed roads, viewing the massive number of other cars on the road  made me pause and think about all the pollution that is being spewed into the atmosphere just from car exhaust. Regardless of how skeptical one is of about whether there is causation between higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and the unusually heavy rainfalls, this does not seem to be a good time to be buying a home on a flood plain.

Will A Physical Gold Squeeze Lead To A Rapid Retracement in Price?

One of the few aspects of the markets that seemingly makes sense is that the price of gold is stabilizing. Given the competition among central bankers around the world to win the money printing contest, it seems bizarre that the price of gold is heading toward the production cost of marginal producers. Further, the daily dose of bad economic news from the Euro Zone could also be bullish for the shiny metal.

Over at Zero Hedge, they are suggesting that a shortage of deliverable gold is starting to develop. Assuming that the Zero Hedge post is accurate (and since it is posted on the Internet, it must be true), then the potential develops for a rapid increase in the price of gold as those short of paper gold scramble to cover their positions.
I have no idea where the price of gold is headed in the short term, but suspect that over the long term this will turn out to be a nasty correction in the midst of a multi-year bull market. The risk/reward ratio for shorting paper based gold at this point in time seems abysmally skewed toward being risky. I am most certainly not taking any of my gold jewelry over to the cash for gold shops as long as the price remains close to the marginal producers cost of production.  

Global Warming Activists Are Foolish To Focus On 2050 - How About 5 Year Impact?

A new doom and gloom article about the impact of climate change in 40, 50, or 100 years is published at least once a week. However, for climate change skeptics, these predictions are little more than white noise. Given the misses in the predictions from 5 and 10 years ago for global surface temperature, it requires a leap of faith to assume that models can accurately forecast what will occur in the distant future. If meteorologists can only predict the weather 10 days out, how can researchers predict climate change 50 years out?

Climate change researchers should focus more attention on the impact of climate change during the next 5 years if they want to convert skeptics over to their agenda of greenhouse gas mediation. In order to capture the attention of skeptics and the undecided it needs to be shown that there is an immediacy to the impact of pumping billions of metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Gaining credibility for long term forecasts requires being able to demonstrate a capability to make accurate medium range forecasts.

While predicting moderate impacts due to climate change occurring during the next five years does not offer the opportunity for producing attention grabbing headlines in the manner that long term catastrophic forecasts do, they do offer a better opportunity for changing opinions.

So what sort of 5 year predictions should climate researchers be making? Here are some examples:

1. rise in sea level
2. reduction in arctic sea ice extent
3. number of hurricanes hitting the U.S.
4. increase in price of wheat due to extreme weather
5. increase in the price of rice due to extreme weather
6. increase in cost of property insurance
7. number of acres burned by forest fires
8. increase in pH of the ocean

Predicting global surface temperature should probably be ignored for a couple of reasons: 1)  the variability of  weather gives the expected global surface temperature five years out (2018) a randomness that probably makes it too challenging to accurately predict; and 2) attention should be focused on "climate change", not "global warming".  ("Global warming" still gets more searches than "climate change" according to Google - last month the ratio was 2.2 million searches versus 1.8 million, respectively).

While there is a downside to getting short term predictions wrong, as pointed out in a post by Roger Pielke, Jr., the upside is that getting predictions right offer the opportunity for a researcher to gain minor celebrity status. Maybe it is not a good analogy, but recall how much fame some psychics have gotten from making highly specific predictions that turned out to be accurate, regardless of their overall batting average. Accurate medium term climate change predictions offer a much greater opportunity to win over skeptics than do impossible to verify catastrophic long term predictions.