Aggregate demand flows — with doubling either upper or lower 50 percentile wages:
Doubling upper 50 percentile wages would send prices up but not as much as upper 50 incomes. Only 88 percent of overall income goes to them so it would lead to some lowering of prices relative to their incomes.
Businesses catering more to upper 50 earners likely hire more upper 50s employees – higher prices reflecting higher wages. Shifting a small slice of overall income to upper 50s (from lower 50s – via inflation) likely shifts a small bit more demand toward more upper 50 catering/hiring firms – which could actually lead to upward pressure on wages in some firms!
Since lower 50s represent(ed) only 12% of overall income, businesses catering more to lower 50s could suffer in proportion to their customers investigating haircut, but the downturn might be moderate for most (much or most of their demand possibly coming from upper 50s). Lower 50 consumers would suffer horrendously — lower 50 earners would face more unemployment.
* * * * * *
We can usefully imagine boosting lower 50 wages by half – on the average. Today’s minimum wage ($7.25 an hour) being half today’s median wage ($15 an hour) we can just raise the minimum to the median. Above 50 percentile wages would then feel upward pressure but not necessarily that much – LBJ’s median was only 20% higher than his minimum.
Adding half again to lower 50 percentile wages would raise prices only a little compared to their hefty income increases — because only 12 percent of overall income goes to bottom half earners. As incomes make up only 2/3 of the cost of GDP output, figure that half again of 8 percent (2/3 of 12%) = 4% added to prices (not counting other wage push ups).
Reality check: an average $8,000 yearly raise for 70 million employees = $560 billion. Divide that by $15.8 trillion GDP and we get 3.6% direct inflation.
Businesses catering more to lower 50s tend to hire more lower 50s – lower prices generally reflecting lower wages. Shifting a small slice of overall income to lower 50s (from upper 50s – via inflation) means shifting extra demand to lower 50 catering/hiring firms – which could actually lead to upward pressure on wages in some cases!
Since upper 50s represent(ed) 88% of overall income, businesses catering more to upper 50s would suffer only in proportion to their customers very moderate shave, but even that marginal downturn might be partially filled in by newly affluent lower 50 consumers. Upper 50 consumers would feel a small pinch (as my doctor says, needle in hand). Upper 50 earners could face a similar pinch in unemployment.
Reality check: if LBJ’s federal minimum wage of $10.69 an hour had kept pace with both inflation and per capita income growth (click on the first link: “All Races”) it would have reached $14.11 an hour* by 1978 – when per capita income was only 2/3 of what it is today!
* http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2013/06/my-minimum-wage-worksheet.html
The cry for austerity again rears its ugly head. There should be a requirement that journalists who “report” on economic issues have a license to do so and be required to adhere to some semblance of the truth. Caroline Baum was on Bloomberg this AM with the argument that government spending is interfering with growth of the GDP. She had a written report of the same intent just two days ago on the Bloomberg web site: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-19/why-government-spending-does-nothing-for-jobs.html.
To support her contentions hse refers to recent reports from the IMF, a Heritage Foundation “expert”, and the European Central Bank. She makes this bold statement, “There seems to be widespread agreement — among academics and economists at the IMF, European Central Bank, World Bank and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, if not among the policy setters themselves — that government spending has a sizeable negative impact on growth.” The claim of “wide spread agreement” is based on the report from Dan Mitchell, the Heritage “scholar”; http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2013/06/15/other-than-obama-and-krugman-is-there-anybody-who-still-thinks-bigger-government-is-good-for-growth/
They don’t give up their worst ideas without a struggle.
The rate of warming of over the past 15 years has been lower than that of the preceding 20 years. There is no serious doubt that our planet continues to heat, but it has heated less than most climate scientists had predicted. Nate Cohn of the New Republic reports: “Since 1998, the warmest year of the twentieth century, temperatures have not kept up with computer models that seemed to project steady warming; they’re perilously close to falling beneath even the lowest projections”.
as all the pieces discussing the warming plateau make perfectly clear, climate scientists are actually pretty baffled about the failure of their predictions. Is it the oceans? Clouds? Volcanoes? The sun? An artifact of temperature data?
As a rule, climate scientists were previously very confident that the planet would be warmer than it is by now, and no one knows for sure why it isn’t.
If this is true, then the public has been systematically deceived. As it has been presented to the public, the scientific consensus extended precisely to that which is now seems to be in question: the sensitivity of global temperature to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Sammy contoinues to amaze us with his total ignorance. Has it not occurred to you that models which seek to predict future phenomenon are using statistical averages of the past phenomenon. Averages are in some sense an approximation of measured phenomenon. Models smooth out those approximations over time. This is especially true when the measured phenomenon may be affected by a multiplicity of factors.
Sammy, I’d like to think that global warming is all a hoax because the alternative, the more likely truth, is very worrisome to me. If you really believe the foolishness that you write here (and I suppose else where) then you’ve got your head in the sand. Or is it actually tucked up into a lower orifice?
Yes, the planet is getting warmer, slightly. The question is: why?
One theory is that anthropomorphic CO2 is causing it. Yet the warmest year on recent record was 1998, 15 years ago, as the C02 concentration continues to increase (slightly). And, over the past several years, all of the other CORRELATIONS supposedly proving a link between CO2 and warm temperatures have fallen apart.
So what we have left is a theory, with no historic evidence supporting it, and is not performing to the models. The previous sentence contains all facts.
The probable real story is that atmospheric CO2 can influence global temperature, but only very slightly, and is swamped by a myriad of other influences (solar output, solar winds, clouds, ocean currents, volcanic activity, etc, etc,). If this is, in fact, the case, how much money do we spend to control CO2?
Whilst China is building a coal plant a day?
“Joel ” rhymes with “troll.” Isn’t it unusual that a commenter that continually brags that he is a “scientist” only debates by calling people names? How is this part of any scientific method? Maybe Joel is a omniscient scientist that has unique claims on the truth.
“Jack, sammy is a troll. For some reason, the owners of this site have not yet seen fit to ban him.”
I have been a participant on this blog for many years, submitting multiple main posts that have been recognized by sources, including the Wall Street Journal; as worthy to read. Many of my predictions, in the face of prevailing opinion, have proven true.
Your participation, on the other hand, has consisted of:
1) Claiming you are a “Scientist”
2) Calling people names.
I, too, have participated on this blog for many years. I don’t regard the extent to which you or I have participated here to be dispositive on the issue of global warming.
I’ve read many of your posts here. They are frequently characterized by being partisan, lacking in understanding and calculated to provoke. That’s what I mean by trolling. There are several examples on this thread.
I previously posted links rebutting your inane and obtuse lack of understanding of climate change data. Others have also pointed out the faults of your posts. Yet you keep returning with the same tired bafflegab. Sorry, sammy, that’s just trolling. Don’t blame the victims.
Here, sammy is a link that summarizes the diversity of evidence that global warming is ongoing:
Jack, you completely mischaracterize the GCMs (the climate models). you claim: “… amaze us with his total ignorance. Has it not occurred to you that models which seek to predict future phenomenon are using statistical averages of the past phenomenon.” Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_climate_model tells us this: “A general circulation model (GCM) is a mathematical model of the general circulation of a planetary atmosphere or ocean and based on the Navier–Stokes equations on a rotating sphere with thermodynamic terms for various energy sources (radiation, latent heat)….” Simplified, the GCMs reflect the latest and best scientific UNDERSTANDING of how climate works.
Name calling is the norm in these discussions when alternative views or even non-supportive DATA are presented. AGW is happening! The amount and impacts are in serious question. Joel’s first chart on his reference, http://climate.nasa.gov/system/content_pages/main_images/evidence_CO2.jpg shows a clear correlation of CO2 and temperature. What it does not show is that CO2 rises lag temperature. Accordingly temperature drives CO2 and not the reverse.
Why is GW a critical subject for economics discussions? Attempts to lower a mis-perceived culprit, CO2, raises the prices for critical FUNDAMENTAL resources, food and energy. Those basic economic drivers compound weak growth. Its fundamental to economics! Worse they can kill those on the edge subsistence existence.
“Accordingly temperature drives CO2 and not the reverse.”
No, not accordingly, not according to any principle of logic nor of science.
In the past, climate change was primarily driven by variations in solar energy output. In those cases, temperature rise was driven by the Sun, and when the oceans heated, the solubility of CO2 in them decreased and the atmospheric concentration of CO2 increased. This in turn caused more heating than would have otherwise occurred, due to the greenhouse effect which every schoolchild learns.
At this time, solar energy output is decreasing not increasing, and climate is being driven by the burning of hundreds of millions of years worth of sequestered carbon in fossil fuels in a couple of centuries.
The truth is, temperature drives CO2 and CO2 drives temperature. No one who cannot or will not understand this is worth debating. After that point is understood, the next step is to understand the statistical difference between weather and climate, and evaluate the logic of those who select a high point of weather variation from a decade or so ago and compare it to a recent low point in order to claim temperature increase is declining, rather than doing a valid time-series statistical analysis.
Jim V, I’m not sure what point you are trying to make. First you say: “”Accordingly temperature drives CO2 and not the reverse.”
No, not accordingly, not according to any principle of logic nor of science.” and then admit: “…when the oceans heated, the solubility of CO2 in them decreased and the atmospheric concentration of CO2 increased. ” That confirms what I said: Accordingly temperature drives CO2 and not the reverse.”
Even RealClimate http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/ admitted the lag in CO2 and temperatures as far back as 2004, and confirms my meaning: “This is an issue that is often misunderstood in the public sphere and media, so it is worth spending some time to explain it and clarify it. At least three careful ice core studies have shown that CO2 starts to rise about 800 years (600-1000 years) after Antarctic temperature during glacial terminations. These terminations are pronounced warming periods that mark the ends of the ice ages that happen every 100,000 years or so.
Does this prove that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming? The answer is no.” Then as today, climate scientists are trying to explain why climate has not followed their model predictions. The difference today is much of that science is being written for print in IPCC AR5, and continues to explain the hiatus.
Perhaps you misunderstood the meaning of CO2 and temps, but I never said CO2 did not cause some warming. Even you say that, and caveat it with: ” In the past, climate change was primarily driven by variations in solar energy output.” I do not quite understand the use of ” In the past”?
BTW, your comment re: …”evaluate the logic of those who select a high point of weather variation from a decade or so ago and compare it to a recent low point in order to claim temperature increase is declining, rather than doing a valid time-series statistical analysis.” actually is a comment re: the validity of the official data sets. Take it up with the various teams managing the official data. Otherwise how do we test the difference from the previous high without including that high in the analysis?
your last paragraph probably shows why people don’t want to talk to you.
Jim V was trying to point out to you the invalidity of picking one point of a data series… the high point over a short time… and comparing it to a subsequent low point and claiming a “decline..” To be valid, for the kind of thing we are talking about, you would need to (statistically) look at a trend line (and then do the statistics to see how likely that trend line could have occured just by chance.) I don’t see any evidence from your reply that you have the slightest idea what this means.
The reason you, and Jack, and Joel, won’t engage with co rev is that you just can’t hang with him. First you try to marginalize him with insults. When that doesn’t work you just ignore.
There is a real difference between Sammy and CoRev. Sammy has to my knowledge never been banned and CoRev has.
Otherwise much of a muchness. Except Sammy has a wider range of topics. CoRev historically only had two: one, why all of us who opposed Bush Iraq war policy and doubted the evidence of WMD were not only dead wrong but poo poo heads besides, and two climate change denial.
Well the Iraq thing didn’t work out well for CoRev at which point he doubled down on Climate Change. In fact Open Threads and later Global Warming Open Threads were introduced at AB specifically to give CoRev an outlet that would get him out of non-related post comment threads. But he still managed to ride his One Trick Pony into the dust and was given a time out from AB.
And here he is again, apparently having give his Pony the Breath of Life, and united again with his Amigo Sammy. And the two of them using the same tactics and selective use of sources and evidence as always.
Few knowledgeable about the subject actually question the validity of the CO2/Temp lag which is well documented: “Petit et all 1999 — analysed 420,000 years of Vostok, and found that as the world cools into an ice age, the delay before carbon falls is several thousand years.
Fischer et al 1999 — described a lag of 600 plus or minus 400 years as the world warms up from an ice age.
Monnin et al 2001 – looked at Dome Concordia (also in Antarctica) – and found a delay on the recent rise out of the last major ice age to be 800 ± 600
Mudelsee (2001) – Over the full 420,000 year Vostok history Co2 variations lag temperature by 1,300 years ± 1000.
Caillon et al 2003 analysed the Vostok data and found a lag (where CO2 rises after temperature) of 800 ± 200 years.
See Palisad for the most informative detailed graphics on what the Vostok and Dome Ice cores mean and why they strongly mathematically suggest CO2 follows temperatures and has little effect on them.This is what you need to see to understand “feedback” or the postulated “amplification”.”
Note to the data questioners: That lag is evident in data from both hemispheres, Greenland and Vostok, Antarctica ice cores. As Joel’s neat NASA CO2 chart shows there is a clear cyclical pattern when we stand back from the current ~135 year wiggle in temps. Even in the current temp records there is a clear sinusoidal pattern correlated to ocean oscillations AMO/PDO/etc. Work is being done on their relationships, now that the CO2 emphasis has be reduced.
Climate Science has changed in the past year. Unless one is staying current with the science, views are often dated and wrong. Discussions are too often rife with rancor and innuendo driving the emotions of the commenters, see the above comments. Even the President’s views can be considered dated and inaccurate.. His Climate Change program, to be announced tomorrow, will be received with a great deal of skepticism by the knowledgeable and accepted without question by those with dated and inaccurate views.
As for Climate Change spending’s importance to economics, Climate Change policies are more fundamentally important to economic development than other subjects as Social Security or transfer payments. When basic commodities, food and energy sources, and electric energy, are made more costly to solve a questionable CO2 issue, it slows economic growth in more useful areas.
did you copy this from someone? or do you have a “helper”? Unfortunately a reasonably close reading shows that it is essentially meaningless. You don’t know what you are talking about, and the person who wrote this for you is counting on most readers being impressed by the intellectual sounding language…. while saying exactly nothing that means anything.
All I can say to anyone who cares is try to recognize when you don’t understand something. Then DO NOT be impressed by how “smart” it sounds. Then if you really care, do some homework. Lots of homework. But be carefful: There are people out there with lots of money who want to keep you fooled or at least “in doubt.”
If at the end of the day you still can’t honestly “understand” it, or are not convinced, then just go on about your real life. It won’t matter what you or I think.
I don’t know why CoRev chooses to waste his life repeating arguments he doesn’t understand. Back in the beginning I tried to be “nice” to him. But it never ends, until the logical twists and turns become so pathetic that one has to give up.
What it seems to come down to in the end is that there are people who make a lot of money out of the way things are (you spending a lot of money on gas) and these people don’t give a damn about you or your children or the future of this country or the planet. This might be “honest” in a sense that I have seen on the playground… it’s all great ape dominance display: Once you challenge someone’s “security” in the pecking order (or in their own mind) they will fight you with everything they have, even if they have to make it up.
real, honest, logic is slow and doesn’t stand a chance in a playground fight, which is what we have here.
I have no hope, and I am trying to stay out of it. But there are great apes in my ancestry too.
Substance?.. there is no reason to think reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions will be “costly”. you’ll spend less on gas. other ways of doing things will be invented… capitalism used to be good at that. but destroying our capacity to grow food… by changing the climate, and now poisoning our water… that will be expensive.
Texas is dying of thirst, Colorado is burning, and Calgary is drowning.
But ‘sinusoidal’. So I am convinced.
CoRev in the midst of your “few knowledgeable” claims do you ever admit that they represent more than 95% of climate scientists (and no I am not including weathermen cum meteorologists) on public record and that this vast swing that has “Climate science has changed in the last year” is pretty much to be taken on your say-so? Because NONE of your cites is actually FROM this year.
Your modes operandi has always been as alluded (sardonically) in my first comment: claims of authority based on nothing (because your track record on most topics is crappy) accompanied by sneering dismissals of everyone else. Which of course drew responses in kind and triggers the standard right-wing victimology (“You know the white man just can’t get a break in this country”).
Ten years ago and on this very site believers in anthrogenic climate change argued that if they were right we could expect a series of increasingly severe weather events at both ends of the drought-flood spectrum and in wind events. Whereas deniers implicitly were arguing that such events should revert to the mean.
Well it has been a hell of a ride since then with many parts of the world experiencing ‘100 year’ ‘500 year’ and ‘historical’ weather events with an alarming frequency. I mean Calgary is drowning from what is in ‘normal’ years a seasonal stream. Suggesting a ‘new normal’.
But thank God you got “Petit et al 1999” and “Caillon et al 2003” that allows you to dismiss all that pesky empiricism and falsificational crap derived from the last decade of data.
“But, but, but The Little Ice Age!” Well fine. But we have the facts of 2013 on the ground and in the air and you are appealing to “Vostok data” looking hundreds of years back. Because Gosh we might revert to the mean any time. Well probably not THIS season. But soon. Because CoRev. Known to his admirers as ‘The Knowledgeable’.
Pull the other finger. Because the first one is hurting and out of joint.
Bruce, you have conflated a couple of points. My references (thanks for actually going to them) was to support the point CO2 lag has been know for some time. The long term records are important to make the point that current “extreme” events are actually within the norms. Without the “unprecedented” claims there is no alarm.
BTW, the Vostok and GISP ice core data are used to document records in tens and hundredths of thousands of years. Not ” looking hundreds of years back ” o make the point and define weather/climate norms. human hubris allows us to exaggerate the meaning of a mere ~135 year record.
BTW, it still has to be determined whether the Calgary floods will actually exceed the 2005 floods. 2005 is a long way from: ” …experiencing ’100 year’ ’500 year’ and ‘historical’ weather events…” Beware how one measures these kinds of events. Too often they are not normalized for population and inflation change, and just sensationalized headlines to sell papers.
As for Hurricanes we are at a relative low for US land impacting, and tornadoes are also at a lower rate than in many years. This is Dr Pielke’s report on the 2011 IPCC SREX study: “Most importantly, the IPCC should be congratulated for delivering a message that cannot have been comfortable to deliver. The IPCC has accurately reflected the scientific literature on the state of attribution with respect to extreme events — it is not there yet, not even close, for events such as floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, bushfires and on other topics there remain enormous uncertainties. That is just the way that it is, so that is indeed what the IPCC should have reported.” Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX) http://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/report/
If we look at the recent metrics since we would be surprised to find they mostly continue to fall in frequency.
Bruce, you asked an interesting, confused but incomplete question re: consensus scientists: “CoRev in the midst of your “few knowledgeable” claims do you ever admit that they represent more than 95% of climate scientists… on public record …” ? 1) Incomplete because you didn’t complete the “on record” about what? 2) Interesting because we have a recent “peer reviewed” study the claimed 97.1% supported (??? used three definitions in the paper) the AGW hypothesis. 3) Confused because I do not know of any study showing 95% (climate scientists?) on the public record (about what?)?
As for you implicit consensus (correct me if I am wrong) Global Warming is caused (completely, mainly, somewhat) by man, the third definition (somewhat) would have almost universal agreement. Wording of the survey question/consensus hypothesis is critical here. When the definition is restricted to ACO2/AGHG the results are completely different from when we conflate is with “somewhat” which relates to farming practices, resource mining, and Urban Heat Islands.
BTW, if I was banned there was no notification. Moreover, it appeared all the conservative commenters were disappeared, with the exception of Sammy. The issues at the time were election politics, SSA, budgets and to a lesser extent by that time climate change. A far cry from one issue.
SPIEGEL: Do the computer models with which physicists simulate the future climate ever show the sort of long standstill in temperature change that we’re observing right now?
Storch: Yes, but only extremely rarely. At my institute, we analyzed how often such a 15-year stagnation in global warming occurred in the simulations. The answer was: in under 2 percent of all the times we ran the simulation. In other words, over 98 percent of forecasts show CO2 emissions as high as we have had in recent years leading to more of a temperature increase.
Von Storch concludes that, at the outside, the models will have been proven wrong if the constant temperatures continue for another 5 years. This leads to the next question: What could be wrong with the models?
Storch: There are two conceivable explanations — and neither is very pleasant for us. The first possibility is that less global warming is occurring than expected because greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have less of an effect than we have assumed. This wouldn’t mean that there is no man-made greenhouse effect, but simply that our effect on climate events is not as great as we have believed. The other possibility is that, in our simulations, we have underestimated how much the climate fluctuates owing to natural causes. http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/06/24/Climate-Scientist-Von-Storch-Some-Scientists-Behave-Like-Preachers
CoRev 97.1 is more than 95. I was being careful. You are missing forest for trees.
Similarly 100s of years adds up to thousands of years once extended. And don’t get me started on ‘hundredths of thousands of years” which would seem to arithmetically mean “decades”.
You are not even a good Fisker. Even if the disparaging sense of ‘fisking’ by war-mongrels like you actually ended up being justified considering Fiske’s analysis was proved right and all the gleeful ‘Fiskers’ proved dead wrong.
And nothing in my comment would lead a CAREFUL reader to infer that I had actually read the 1999 Petit or the 2003 Caillon studies, only that I was using them to debunk your claims that there was some seismic shift among the ‘knowledgeable’ in the last year. Your claim that there WAS, based on studies that by your own cites were ten and more years old were ALMOST self-contradictory. Not quite but frankly you are too lazy a thinker to see why your own argument is not EXACTLY self-refuting. But I am not about to make your case for you.
Aggregate demand flows — with doubling either upper or lower 50 percentile wages:
Doubling upper 50 percentile wages would send prices up but not as much as upper 50 incomes. Only 88 percent of overall income goes to them so it would lead to some lowering of prices relative to their incomes.
Businesses catering more to upper 50 earners likely hire more upper 50s employees – higher prices reflecting higher wages. Shifting a small slice of overall income to upper 50s (from lower 50s – via inflation) likely shifts a small bit more demand toward more upper 50 catering/hiring firms – which could actually lead to upward pressure on wages in some firms!
Since lower 50s represent(ed) only 12% of overall income, businesses catering more to lower 50s could suffer in proportion to their customers investigating haircut, but the downturn might be moderate for most (much or most of their demand possibly coming from upper 50s). Lower 50 consumers would suffer horrendously — lower 50 earners would face more unemployment.
* * * * * *
We can usefully imagine boosting lower 50 wages by half – on the average. Today’s minimum wage ($7.25 an hour) being half today’s median wage ($15 an hour) we can just raise the minimum to the median. Above 50 percentile wages would then feel upward pressure but not necessarily that much – LBJ’s median was only 20% higher than his minimum.
Adding half again to lower 50 percentile wages would raise prices only a little compared to their hefty income increases — because only 12 percent of overall income goes to bottom half earners. As incomes make up only 2/3 of the cost of GDP output, figure that half again of 8 percent (2/3 of 12%) = 4% added to prices (not counting other wage push ups).
Reality check: an average $8,000 yearly raise for 70 million employees = $560 billion. Divide that by $15.8 trillion GDP and we get 3.6% direct inflation.
Businesses catering more to lower 50s tend to hire more lower 50s – lower prices generally reflecting lower wages. Shifting a small slice of overall income to lower 50s (from upper 50s – via inflation) means shifting extra demand to lower 50 catering/hiring firms – which could actually lead to upward pressure on wages in some cases!
Since upper 50s represent(ed) 88% of overall income, businesses catering more to upper 50s would suffer only in proportion to their customers very moderate shave, but even that marginal downturn might be partially filled in by newly affluent lower 50 consumers. Upper 50 consumers would feel a small pinch (as my doctor says, needle in hand). Upper 50 earners could face a similar pinch in unemployment.
Reality check: if LBJ’s federal minimum wage of $10.69 an hour had kept pace with both inflation and per capita income growth (click on the first link: “All Races”) it would have reached $14.11 an hour* by 1978 – when per capita income was only 2/3 of what it is today!
* http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2013/06/my-minimum-wage-worksheet.html
Correction in the opening line above: should have been “Aggregate demand flows — with large movement in upper or lower 50 percentile wages”
The cry for austerity again rears its ugly head. There should be a requirement that journalists who “report” on economic issues have a license to do so and be required to adhere to some semblance of the truth. Caroline Baum was on Bloomberg this AM with the argument that government spending is interfering with growth of the GDP. She had a written report of the same intent just two days ago on the Bloomberg web site: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-19/why-government-spending-does-nothing-for-jobs.html.
To support her contentions hse refers to recent reports from the IMF, a Heritage Foundation “expert”, and the European Central Bank. She makes this bold statement, “There seems to be widespread agreement — among academics and economists at the IMF, European Central Bank, World Bank and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, if not among the policy setters themselves — that government spending has a sizeable negative impact on growth.” The claim of “wide spread agreement” is based on the report from Dan Mitchell, the Heritage “scholar”; http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2013/06/15/other-than-obama-and-krugman-is-there-anybody-who-still-thinks-bigger-government-is-good-for-growth/
They don’t give up their worst ideas without a struggle.
GLOBAL warming has slowed.
The rate of warming of over the past 15 years has been lower than that of the preceding 20 years. There is no serious doubt that our planet continues to heat, but it has heated less than most climate scientists had predicted. Nate Cohn of the New Republic reports: “Since 1998, the warmest year of the twentieth century, temperatures have not kept up with computer models that seemed to project steady warming; they’re perilously close to falling beneath even the lowest projections”.
as all the pieces discussing the warming plateau make perfectly clear, climate scientists are actually pretty baffled about the failure of their predictions. Is it the oceans? Clouds? Volcanoes? The sun? An artifact of temperature data?
As a rule, climate scientists were previously very confident that the planet would be warmer than it is by now, and no one knows for sure why it isn’t.
If this is true, then the public has been systematically deceived. As it has been presented to the public, the scientific consensus extended precisely to that which is now seems to be in question: the sensitivity of global temperature to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/06/climate-change
Sammy contoinues to amaze us with his total ignorance. Has it not occurred to you that models which seek to predict future phenomenon are using statistical averages of the past phenomenon. Averages are in some sense an approximation of measured phenomenon. Models smooth out those approximations over time. This is especially true when the measured phenomenon may be affected by a multiplicity of factors.
Sammy, I’d like to think that global warming is all a hoax because the alternative, the more likely truth, is very worrisome to me. If you really believe the foolishness that you write here (and I suppose else where) then you’ve got your head in the sand. Or is it actually tucked up into a lower orifice?
Jack
read carefully… Sammy has no logic function:
“scientists were previously very confident… now, no one knows for sure why”
but
“the public has been systematically deceived.”
see, if you believe something and tell someone else what you believe, then you are “systematically deceiving them.”
note, this is just an observation on “logic” or “mental function.” it says nothing about “global warming.”
which is happening whether sammy understands it or not.
Jack, sammy is a troll. For some reason, the owners of this site have not yet seen fit to ban him. Until then, please ignore him.
coberly,
Yes, the planet is getting warmer, slightly. The question is: why?
One theory is that anthropomorphic CO2 is causing it. Yet the warmest year on recent record was 1998, 15 years ago, as the C02 concentration continues to increase (slightly). And, over the past several years, all of the other CORRELATIONS supposedly proving a link between CO2 and warm temperatures have fallen apart.
So what we have left is a theory, with no historic evidence supporting it, and is not performing to the models. The previous sentence contains all facts.
The probable real story is that atmospheric CO2 can influence global temperature, but only very slightly, and is swamped by a myriad of other influences (solar output, solar winds, clouds, ocean currents, volcanic activity, etc, etc,). If this is, in fact, the case, how much money do we spend to control CO2?
Whilst China is building a coal plant a day?
“Joel ” rhymes with “troll.” Isn’t it unusual that a commenter that continually brags that he is a “scientist” only debates by calling people names? How is this part of any scientific method? Maybe Joel is a omniscient scientist that has unique claims on the truth.
Joel: you are underemployed. Joel for Dictator!
Joel,
“Jack, sammy is a troll. For some reason, the owners of this site have not yet seen fit to ban him.”
I have been a participant on this blog for many years, submitting multiple main posts that have been recognized by sources, including the Wall Street Journal; as worthy to read. Many of my predictions, in the face of prevailing opinion, have proven true.
Your participation, on the other hand, has consisted of:
1) Claiming you are a “Scientist”
2) Calling people names.
So…… whose comments are more worthy of reading?
Ah, young sammy,
I, too, have participated on this blog for many years. I don’t regard the extent to which you or I have participated here to be dispositive on the issue of global warming.
I’ve read many of your posts here. They are frequently characterized by being partisan, lacking in understanding and calculated to provoke. That’s what I mean by trolling. There are several examples on this thread.
I previously posted links rebutting your inane and obtuse lack of understanding of climate change data. Others have also pointed out the faults of your posts. Yet you keep returning with the same tired bafflegab. Sorry, sammy, that’s just trolling. Don’t blame the victims.
Here, sammy is a link that summarizes the diversity of evidence that global warming is ongoing:
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence
That’s science, sammy.
You’re welcome.
Jack, you completely mischaracterize the GCMs (the climate models). you claim: “… amaze us with his total ignorance. Has it not occurred to you that models which seek to predict future phenomenon are using statistical averages of the past phenomenon.” Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_climate_model tells us this: “A general circulation model (GCM) is a mathematical model of the general circulation of a planetary atmosphere or ocean and based on the Navier–Stokes equations on a rotating sphere with thermodynamic terms for various energy sources (radiation, latent heat)….” Simplified, the GCMs reflect the latest and best scientific UNDERSTANDING of how climate works.
Having said that, this is how well the GCMs are performing: http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-73-models-vs-obs-20N-20S-MT-5-yr-means1.png From here: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/still-epic-fail-73-climate-models-vs-measurements-running-5-year-means/ For those who do not know Dr Spencer, he is one of the originators and current manager of the satellite temperature tracking system: UAH. Here: http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_May_2013_v5.5.png
Name calling is the norm in these discussions when alternative views or even non-supportive DATA are presented. AGW is happening! The amount and impacts are in serious question. Joel’s first chart on his reference, http://climate.nasa.gov/system/content_pages/main_images/evidence_CO2.jpg shows a clear correlation of CO2 and temperature. What it does not show is that CO2 rises lag temperature. Accordingly temperature drives CO2 and not the reverse.
Why is GW a critical subject for economics discussions? Attempts to lower a mis-perceived culprit, CO2, raises the prices for critical FUNDAMENTAL resources, food and energy. Those basic economic drivers compound weak growth. Its fundamental to economics! Worse they can kill those on the edge subsistence existence.
“Accordingly temperature drives CO2 and not the reverse.”
No, not accordingly, not according to any principle of logic nor of science.
In the past, climate change was primarily driven by variations in solar energy output. In those cases, temperature rise was driven by the Sun, and when the oceans heated, the solubility of CO2 in them decreased and the atmospheric concentration of CO2 increased. This in turn caused more heating than would have otherwise occurred, due to the greenhouse effect which every schoolchild learns.
At this time, solar energy output is decreasing not increasing, and climate is being driven by the burning of hundreds of millions of years worth of sequestered carbon in fossil fuels in a couple of centuries.
The truth is, temperature drives CO2 and CO2 drives temperature. No one who cannot or will not understand this is worth debating. After that point is understood, the next step is to understand the statistical difference between weather and climate, and evaluate the logic of those who select a high point of weather variation from a decade or so ago and compare it to a recent low point in order to claim temperature increase is declining, rather than doing a valid time-series statistical analysis.
Joel,
Here is a graph of atmospheric CO2 over a longer period of time: http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=atmospheric+CO2+over+time&FORM=HDRSC2#view=detail&id=3BB137FE42D69FCD00A402832B30AE54B0A9B4D7&selectedIndex=0
We are relatively starved of CO2 by historical standards.
Note also the lack of correlation between CO2 and global temperatures.
Jim V, I’m not sure what point you are trying to make. First you say: “”Accordingly temperature drives CO2 and not the reverse.”
No, not accordingly, not according to any principle of logic nor of science.” and then admit: “…when the oceans heated, the solubility of CO2 in them decreased and the atmospheric concentration of CO2 increased. ” That confirms what I said: Accordingly temperature drives CO2 and not the reverse.”
Even RealClimate http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/ admitted the lag in CO2 and temperatures as far back as 2004, and confirms my meaning: “This is an issue that is often misunderstood in the public sphere and media, so it is worth spending some time to explain it and clarify it. At least three careful ice core studies have shown that CO2 starts to rise about 800 years (600-1000 years) after Antarctic temperature during glacial terminations. These terminations are pronounced warming periods that mark the ends of the ice ages that happen every 100,000 years or so.
Does this prove that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming? The answer is no.” Then as today, climate scientists are trying to explain why climate has not followed their model predictions. The difference today is much of that science is being written for print in IPCC AR5, and continues to explain the hiatus.
Perhaps you misunderstood the meaning of CO2 and temps, but I never said CO2 did not cause some warming. Even you say that, and caveat it with: ” In the past, climate change was primarily driven by variations in solar energy output.” I do not quite understand the use of ” In the past”?
Since you believe that today: “…climate is being driven by the burning of hundreds of millions of years worth of sequestered carbon in fossil fuels in a couple of centuries.” Perhaps you would like to explain today’s divergence in CO2 to temperatures? http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/rss/from:1997/plot/rss/from:1997.9/trend/plot/uah/from:1997/plot/uah/from:1997.9/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.9/trend/detrend:-0.0735/offset:-0.080/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/trend
BTW, your comment re: …”evaluate the logic of those who select a high point of weather variation from a decade or so ago and compare it to a recent low point in order to claim temperature increase is declining, rather than doing a valid time-series statistical analysis.” actually is a comment re: the validity of the official data sets. Take it up with the various teams managing the official data. Otherwise how do we test the difference from the previous high without including that high in the analysis?
co rev
your last paragraph probably shows why people don’t want to talk to you.
Jim V was trying to point out to you the invalidity of picking one point of a data series… the high point over a short time… and comparing it to a subsequent low point and claiming a “decline..” To be valid, for the kind of thing we are talking about, you would need to (statistically) look at a trend line (and then do the statistics to see how likely that trend line could have occured just by chance.) I don’t see any evidence from your reply that you have the slightest idea what this means.
Jim V and coberly,
The reason co rev and I reference recent data is that this is where the AGW theory of global temperature has fallen apart. See this graph: http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=average+global+temperatures+over+the+last+50+years&FORM=HDRSC2#view=detail&id=828ED171BF20F10F38E19B5D0432E0B294893FB8&selectedIndex=24
I agree with you that a longer time series is preferable. If you look at global temperatures over the past 2,000 years you will see that the present time is nothing unusual: http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=global+temperatures+over+the+last+2000+years&FORM=HDRSC2#view=detail&id=B4CE6FEC52B5459DB2CFD69ECDD3BD3F9FEFC086&selectedIndex=0
The Medieval Warm Period was warmer than present day. I don’t think they were producing a lot of excess CO2 at that time
And coberly,
The reason you, and Jack, and Joel, won’t engage with co rev is that you just can’t hang with him. First you try to marginalize him with insults. When that doesn’t work you just ignore.
You, and your theory, just don’t have the stones.
There is a real difference between Sammy and CoRev. Sammy has to my knowledge never been banned and CoRev has.
Otherwise much of a muchness. Except Sammy has a wider range of topics. CoRev historically only had two: one, why all of us who opposed Bush Iraq war policy and doubted the evidence of WMD were not only dead wrong but poo poo heads besides, and two climate change denial.
Well the Iraq thing didn’t work out well for CoRev at which point he doubled down on Climate Change. In fact Open Threads and later Global Warming Open Threads were introduced at AB specifically to give CoRev an outlet that would get him out of non-related post comment threads. But he still managed to ride his One Trick Pony into the dust and was given a time out from AB.
And here he is again, apparently having give his Pony the Breath of Life, and united again with his Amigo Sammy. And the two of them using the same tactics and selective use of sources and evidence as always.
Happy Days Are Here Again (?!?!)
Its interesting to watch a self licking ice cream cone like Global Warming melt away.
JimV and Dale want a thorough statistical analysis of trends to verify claims. Well, the first step of statistical analysis is often an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) review of the time series. Like this http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/rss/from:1997/plot/rss/from:1997.9/trend/plot/uah/from:1997/plot/uah/from:1997.9/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.9/trend/detrend:-0.0735/offset:-0.080/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/trend for the current conditions. Nearly each trend line in peer reviewed papers undergoes an even more thorough analysis as you suggest. What makes you think that analysis hasn’t been done to get create the OFFICIAL data sets?
Few knowledgeable about the subject actually question the validity of the CO2/Temp lag which is well documented: “Petit et all 1999 — analysed 420,000 years of Vostok, and found that as the world cools into an ice age, the delay before carbon falls is several thousand years.
Fischer et al 1999 — described a lag of 600 plus or minus 400 years as the world warms up from an ice age.
Monnin et al 2001 – looked at Dome Concordia (also in Antarctica) – and found a delay on the recent rise out of the last major ice age to be 800 ± 600
Mudelsee (2001) – Over the full 420,000 year Vostok history Co2 variations lag temperature by 1,300 years ± 1000.
Caillon et al 2003 analysed the Vostok data and found a lag (where CO2 rises after temperature) of 800 ± 200 years.
See Palisad for the most informative detailed graphics on what the Vostok and Dome Ice cores mean and why they strongly mathematically suggest CO2 follows temperatures and has little effect on them.This is what you need to see to understand “feedback” or the postulated “amplification”.”
Note to the data questioners: That lag is evident in data from both hemispheres, Greenland and Vostok, Antarctica ice cores. As Joel’s neat NASA CO2 chart shows there is a clear cyclical pattern when we stand back from the current ~135 year wiggle in temps. Even in the current temp records there is a clear sinusoidal pattern correlated to ocean oscillations AMO/PDO/etc. Work is being done on their relationships, now that the CO2 emphasis has be reduced.
Climate Science has changed in the past year. Unless one is staying current with the science, views are often dated and wrong. Discussions are too often rife with rancor and innuendo driving the emotions of the commenters, see the above comments. Even the President’s views can be considered dated and inaccurate.. His Climate Change program, to be announced tomorrow, will be received with a great deal of skepticism by the knowledgeable and accepted without question by those with dated and inaccurate views.
As for Climate Change spending’s importance to economics, Climate Change policies are more fundamentally important to economic development than other subjects as Social Security or transfer payments. When basic commodities, food and energy sources, and electric energy, are made more costly to solve a questionable CO2 issue, it slows economic growth in more useful areas.
CoRev
did you copy this from someone? or do you have a “helper”? Unfortunately a reasonably close reading shows that it is essentially meaningless. You don’t know what you are talking about, and the person who wrote this for you is counting on most readers being impressed by the intellectual sounding language…. while saying exactly nothing that means anything.
All I can say to anyone who cares is try to recognize when you don’t understand something. Then DO NOT be impressed by how “smart” it sounds. Then if you really care, do some homework. Lots of homework. But be carefful: There are people out there with lots of money who want to keep you fooled or at least “in doubt.”
If at the end of the day you still can’t honestly “understand” it, or are not convinced, then just go on about your real life. It won’t matter what you or I think.
I don’t know why CoRev chooses to waste his life repeating arguments he doesn’t understand. Back in the beginning I tried to be “nice” to him. But it never ends, until the logical twists and turns become so pathetic that one has to give up.
What it seems to come down to in the end is that there are people who make a lot of money out of the way things are (you spending a lot of money on gas) and these people don’t give a damn about you or your children or the future of this country or the planet. This might be “honest” in a sense that I have seen on the playground… it’s all great ape dominance display: Once you challenge someone’s “security” in the pecking order (or in their own mind) they will fight you with everything they have, even if they have to make it up.
real, honest, logic is slow and doesn’t stand a chance in a playground fight, which is what we have here.
I have no hope, and I am trying to stay out of it. But there are great apes in my ancestry too.
Substance?.. there is no reason to think reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions will be “costly”. you’ll spend less on gas. other ways of doing things will be invented… capitalism used to be good at that. but destroying our capacity to grow food… by changing the climate, and now poisoning our water… that will be expensive.
Texas is dying of thirst, Colorado is burning, and Calgary is drowning.
But ‘sinusoidal’. So I am convinced.
CoRev in the midst of your “few knowledgeable” claims do you ever admit that they represent more than 95% of climate scientists (and no I am not including weathermen cum meteorologists) on public record and that this vast swing that has “Climate science has changed in the last year” is pretty much to be taken on your say-so? Because NONE of your cites is actually FROM this year.
Your modes operandi has always been as alluded (sardonically) in my first comment: claims of authority based on nothing (because your track record on most topics is crappy) accompanied by sneering dismissals of everyone else. Which of course drew responses in kind and triggers the standard right-wing victimology (“You know the white man just can’t get a break in this country”).
Ten years ago and on this very site believers in anthrogenic climate change argued that if they were right we could expect a series of increasingly severe weather events at both ends of the drought-flood spectrum and in wind events. Whereas deniers implicitly were arguing that such events should revert to the mean.
Well it has been a hell of a ride since then with many parts of the world experiencing ‘100 year’ ‘500 year’ and ‘historical’ weather events with an alarming frequency. I mean Calgary is drowning from what is in ‘normal’ years a seasonal stream. Suggesting a ‘new normal’.
But thank God you got “Petit et al 1999” and “Caillon et al 2003” that allows you to dismiss all that pesky empiricism and falsificational crap derived from the last decade of data.
“But, but, but The Little Ice Age!” Well fine. But we have the facts of 2013 on the ground and in the air and you are appealing to “Vostok data” looking hundreds of years back. Because Gosh we might revert to the mean any time. Well probably not THIS season. But soon. Because CoRev. Known to his admirers as ‘The Knowledgeable’.
Pull the other finger. Because the first one is hurting and out of joint.
Bruce, you have conflated a couple of points. My references (thanks for actually going to them) was to support the point CO2 lag has been know for some time. The long term records are important to make the point that current “extreme” events are actually within the norms. Without the “unprecedented” claims there is no alarm.
BTW, the Vostok and GISP ice core data are used to document records in tens and hundredths of thousands of years. Not ” looking hundreds of years back ” o make the point and define weather/climate norms. human hubris allows us to exaggerate the meaning of a mere ~135 year record.
BTW, it still has to be determined whether the Calgary floods will actually exceed the 2005 floods. 2005 is a long way from: ” …experiencing ’100 year’ ’500 year’ and ‘historical’ weather events…” Beware how one measures these kinds of events. Too often they are not normalized for population and inflation change, and just sensationalized headlines to sell papers.
Dt Pielke Jr is an expert on costs for extreme weather events this is just one of his articles on Super Storm Sandy; http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2012/10/sandy-and-top-20-normalized-us.html
As for Hurricanes we are at a relative low for US land impacting, and tornadoes are also at a lower rate than in many years. This is Dr Pielke’s report on the 2011 IPCC SREX study: “Most importantly, the IPCC should be congratulated for delivering a message that cannot have been comfortable to deliver. The IPCC has accurately reflected the scientific literature on the state of attribution with respect to extreme events — it is not there yet, not even close, for events such as floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, bushfires and on other topics there remain enormous uncertainties. That is just the way that it is, so that is indeed what the IPCC should have reported.” Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX) http://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/report/
If we look at the recent metrics since we would be surprised to find they mostly continue to fall in frequency.
Bruce, you asked an interesting, confused but incomplete question re: consensus scientists: “CoRev in the midst of your “few knowledgeable” claims do you ever admit that they represent more than 95% of climate scientists… on public record …” ? 1) Incomplete because you didn’t complete the “on record” about what? 2) Interesting because we have a recent “peer reviewed” study the claimed 97.1% supported (??? used three definitions in the paper) the AGW hypothesis. 3) Confused because I do not know of any study showing 95% (climate scientists?) on the public record (about what?)?
When the 2013 97.1% claim was actually reviewed, it was found that only ~.3 to .5% of the 11,994 peer reviewed papers actually supported the listed CONSENSUS hypothesis. See the latest review here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/24/quantifying-the-consensus-on-global-warming-in-the-literature-a-comment/#more-88649
As for you implicit consensus (correct me if I am wrong) Global Warming is caused (completely, mainly, somewhat) by man, the third definition (somewhat) would have almost universal agreement. Wording of the survey question/consensus hypothesis is critical here. When the definition is restricted to ACO2/AGHG the results are completely different from when we conflate is with “somewhat” which relates to farming practices, resource mining, and Urban Heat Islands.
BTW, if I was banned there was no notification. Moreover, it appeared all the conservative commenters were disappeared, with the exception of Sammy. The issues at the time were election politics, SSA, budgets and to a lesser extent by that time climate change. A far cry from one issue.
SPIEGEL: Do the computer models with which physicists simulate the future climate ever show the sort of long standstill in temperature change that we’re observing right now?
Storch: Yes, but only extremely rarely. At my institute, we analyzed how often such a 15-year stagnation in global warming occurred in the simulations. The answer was: in under 2 percent of all the times we ran the simulation. In other words, over 98 percent of forecasts show CO2 emissions as high as we have had in recent years leading to more of a temperature increase.
Von Storch concludes that, at the outside, the models will have been proven wrong if the constant temperatures continue for another 5 years. This leads to the next question: What could be wrong with the models?
Storch: There are two conceivable explanations — and neither is very pleasant for us. The first possibility is that less global warming is occurring than expected because greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have less of an effect than we have assumed. This wouldn’t mean that there is no man-made greenhouse effect, but simply that our effect on climate events is not as great as we have believed. The other possibility is that, in our simulations, we have underestimated how much the climate fluctuates owing to natural causes.
http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/06/24/Climate-Scientist-Von-Storch-Some-Scientists-Behave-Like-Preachers
CoRev 97.1 is more than 95. I was being careful. You are missing forest for trees.
Similarly 100s of years adds up to thousands of years once extended. And don’t get me started on ‘hundredths of thousands of years” which would seem to arithmetically mean “decades”.
You are not even a good Fisker. Even if the disparaging sense of ‘fisking’ by war-mongrels like you actually ended up being justified considering Fiske’s analysis was proved right and all the gleeful ‘Fiskers’ proved dead wrong.
And nothing in my comment would lead a CAREFUL reader to infer that I had actually read the 1999 Petit or the 2003 Caillon studies, only that I was using them to debunk your claims that there was some seismic shift among the ‘knowledgeable’ in the last year. Your claim that there WAS, based on studies that by your own cites were ten and more years old were ALMOST self-contradictory. Not quite but frankly you are too lazy a thinker to see why your own argument is not EXACTLY self-refuting. But I am not about to make your case for you.
Auto-correct: moron or genius?
I wrote ‘war-mongers’ it displayed ‘war-mongrels’.
I stand corrected.