This review goes to eleven

The Responsible Puppet provides 11 reasons to buy RGD:

1. It includes a simply told, but not simplistic account of the last 25 years in global economic history.

2. If you know nothing about economics (which I didn’t), the Glossary alone is worth the price of the book.

4. If you do not know nothing about economics, this book has a good primer on Austrian Economic Theory – which you may have never heard of, but probably should acquaint yourself with.

3. Are you thinking that nothing can stop our economic prospects from getting better? This book is a study on why you may be wrong.

It should be pointed out that the aforementioned glossary was the Responsible Puppet’s idea in the first place. When he heard I was writing a book on economics, he emailed me to suggest that a glossary might be of some utility to those innocent of economic theory and jargon, so I’m glad that he found it to be useful.

Climategate: a prediction

This time, it’s bound to be right. But when did the scientific method become: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

Copenhagen climate conference: Met Office predict 2010 will be warmest on record. A new forecast for 2010 predicted it will be almost 1F (0.6C) higher than the long term average of 57F (14C) across the globe as a result of natural weather patterns and global warming…. However skeptics point out that the Met Office said 2007 would be the warmest on record, but it was not in the top five.

A “new forecast”? One that unexpectedly predicts record heat, no less? How very timely! I have little doubt that there was a “scientific” debate at Met Office that went something like this:

Scientist #1: “We need to do something to distract the press from that $%*#($% Jones and his leaked emails.”

Scientist #2: “Well, the PR boffins said they have almost two thousand signatures on the integrity statement.”

Scientist #3: (sarcastically) “Yeah, $*%”&*($# brilliant! ‘You think we’re fabricating the data already, so we’re going to throw more data you won’t believe at you.'”

Scientist #1: “Nine out of ten scientists believe that scientists have integrity… hmmmm, that wasn’t the best idea.”

Scientist #2: “Well, they did the falling polar bears… yeah, we really need a new PR agency.”

Scientist #1: “So, what do we do?”

Scientist #3: “We tell them that next year is going to be the Ecopolypse. Hell on Earth. The hottest on record. If they’re not scared any more, then we need to crank it up to eleven. New York under water. Polar bears stalking the streets of London. Artic beach vacations.”

Scientist #2: “But models say that it’s going to be relatively cool!”

Scientist #3: “So what? When have our models ever been right? Our climate models suck so completely that Tiger hit on them at the last British Open. It’s a no-lose proposition. Sure, we’ll probably get it wrong and then we’ll have to hope the media will cover our asses. But they’ve been solid on the CRU leak, and if we get it right, we’re @*%#(%^* gold!”

Scientist #1: “Actually, if I run Mike’s Nature trick on the latest GISS numbers, it could be 0.2F hotter next year.”

Scientist #3: “&*%* that 0.2F! We need one whole $*%$&(#$*%&$*% degree. It’s got to be simple enough that every idiot dumb enough to take this $*%! literally will do a linear extrapolation and panic when they realize that in a century, it will be 100 degrees hotter!”

Scientist #2: “You really think we can get away with it?”

Scientist #3: “Why not? We did in 2007.”

The doubts mount

Even the warm-mongering faithful are beginning to experience doubts:

I can imagine a sort of selection bias in the grant process. I cannot imagine hundreds of scientists thinking, well, I put ten years into getting my PhD–time to spend the rest of my life faking data in order to get some grant money! One, yes. All of them, no….

To me, the worry is the subtler kind of bias that we indisputably know has led to scientific errors in the past.That is the actual worrying question about CRU, and GISS, and the other scientists working on paleoclimate reconstruction: that they may all be calibrating their findings to each other. That when you get a number that looks like CRU, you don’t look so hard to figure out whether it’s incorrect as you do when you get a number that doesn’t look like CRU–and maybe you adjust the numbers you have to look more like the other “known” datasets. There is always a way to find what you’re expecting to find if you look hard enough.

While I lack the sort of naive faith in human nature possessed by this so-called libertarian who voted for Obama because she believed his hype, I do think that in the majority of cases outside the CRU and company’s little circle of fraud, the bad science is most likely the result of the Millekanian process she cites Richard Feynman explaining combined with an insufficient understanding of physics, chemistry, and statistics on the part of climate scientists.

As an economics writer, I witness the complete ineptitude of scientists opining outside their field on a regular basis; indeed, I recently published a book that chronicles the astonishing amount of ineptitude of scientists opining inside their field. Given that so many scientists still refuse to accept the law of supply and demand, which has been around for more than 230 years, or the economic calculation problem, which dates back to 1920, it should come as no surprise that it will take more than 10 years of colder temperatures to convince them that they are incorrect about anthropogenic global warming/climate change.

The amusing thing is that the dear little muddle-headed white coats still think that appealing to their own authority is going to convince anyone of anything any more. They have clearly failed to understand that their corruption and fraud has cost them the larger part of their credibility in the eyes of the public. If the scientific community wants to begin working to regain the public’s respect, then it needs to return to a) using the scientific method, b) showing their work, and c) making all of the relevant information, especially the raw data, available to the public.

As it stands, the arm-twisting and politics behind the signed statement only makes the division between professional scientist and actual science appear even greater.

The Met Office has embarked on an urgent exercise to bolster the reputation of climate-change science after the furore over stolen e-mails. More than 1,700 scientists have agreed to sign a statement defending the “professional integrity” of global warming research. They were responding to a round-robin request from the Met Office, which has spent four days collecting signatures. The initiative is a sign of how worried it is that e-mails stolen from the University of East Anglia are fuelling scepticism about man-made global warming at a critical moment in talks on carbon emissions.

One scientist said that he felt under pressure to sign the circular or risk losing work. The Met Office admitted that many of the signatories did not work on climate change.

Who does public relations for these blithering blunderers? And why do they think that the opinion of government-funded scientists who are obviously not in any position to discern the integrity or lack of integrity of other government-funded scientists is of any significance to anyone anyhow?

Yes, the books are that cooked

You may recall that I warned you to expect further revisions to the third quarter GDP numbers. Japan’s massive reduction of reported growth won’t be the last:

Japan’s Government today hit the Tokyo market with a “ridiculous” revision of its previous estimates for third-quarter gross domestic product (GDP), effectively admitting that the country’s economic rebound may have been only a mirage. The new figures revealed a misreading of corporate investment, which, it now emerges, shrank rather than grew between July and September. There was a similar confusion over deflation, with new numbers showing that the GDP deflator fell 0.5 per cent in the quarter, rather than rising 0.2 per cent as previously reported.

As a result, GDP rose by 1.3 per cent in the third quarter, compared with the previous estimate of 4.8 per cent.

In fact, I won’t be the least bit surprised if the numbers eventually turn negative over time. Remember, GDP is simply an abstract estimate, and as such, it is less important than unemployment. Although you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise courtesy of the statistical obsessions of modern Keynesians, Keynes’s master work was not actually the general theory of GDP, CPI, and the targeted discount rate. There has not been any economic growth; since GDP measures government spending, all of the “growth” that has been reported is nothing more than the stimulus spending. In fact, if you compare the amount of the spending to the amount of the reported growth, you’ll soon see that a) the numbers don’t add up, and, b) if they did add up, (i.e. if the entire amount of government spending was included in the GDP equations), then the economy is contracting much faster than would seem possible.

Sub-optimal messengers

Predator sends an article about the failure of the New Atheism with the comment: “So people with Asperger’s AREN’T the best ambassadors for atheism?” Christianity is often fortunate in those who name themselves its enemies.

Three years ago Wired magazine popularized the term “New Atheism” with a cover story about the “crusade against belief” launched by Richard Dawkins (No. 18), Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris. (Christopher Hitchens, No. 47, filled out the roster later.) Now the crusade is encountering powerful and possibly pivotal resistance….

All the great religions have shown time and again that they’re capable of tolerance and civility when their adherents don’t feel threatened or disrespected. At the same time, as some New Atheists have now shown, you don’t have to believe in God to exhibit intolerance and incivility. Maybe this is the New Atheists’ biggest problem: As living proof that religion isn’t a prerequisite for divisive fundamentalism, they are walking rebuttals to their own ideology.

Actually, the biggest problem that the New Atheists face is their fundamental dishonesty. They frequently dissemble, exaggerate, and lie. They also practice the fundamental bait-and-switch of selling a specific secular philosophy under the guise of science. They are deeply and profoundly ignorant of history, economics, politics, and theology; worst of all, when they are called out and shown to be ignorant, they do not bother to take their errors into account or alter their conclusions in the slightest.

This is what makes them irreligious fundamentalists. Indeed, the average New Atheist is demonstrably more blindly fundamentalist than the average Christian or Islamic fundamentalist. There is literally no information that is capable of changing their position because it is based on raw emotion, not reason, logic, or science. Because they cannot admit error, every dialogue with a New Atheist will inevitably turn into an intellectual fox chase, with the New Atheist frantically attempting to redefine basic dictionary terms, claiming that he didn’t mean what he previously wrote, moving the goal posts every time his previous position is shown to be incorrect, and attempting to change the subject whenever logical or factual errors in some aspect of his individual belief system are pointed out. The very concept of a New Atheist “intellectual” is a contradiction in terms, because New Atheists are uniformly close-minded ideologues. And by uniformly, I mean without exception. I have yet to encounter one; reasonable atheists don’t subscribe to the Dawkinsian myths. We have seen this again and again on this blog, and no doubt we will continue to see it until they fade from the scene as all of their predecessors have before them.

Which I can assure you they will. I say this not based on my religious beliefs, but my knowledge of historical patterns. Periods of wealthy decadence always see a weakening of religious belief, so the New Atheism can be safely expected to go the way of sub-prime mortgage securities and seven-star hotels built in the desert. This doesn’t mean a worldwide revival of Christianity or even Islamic domination; I expect to see a pagan revival beginning in Europe that incorporates strains of progressive politics, environmentalism, globalism, and pseudo-science.

Secret Copenhagen

Wait, it’s a SCAM? I always enjoy the part when the treacherous politicians discover that their betrayals were for someone else’s benefit:

The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN’s role in all future climate change negotiations. The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.

The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as “the circle of commitment” – but understood to include the UK, US and Denmark – has only been shown to a handful of countries since it was finalised this week. A confidential analysis of the text by developing countries also seen by the Guardian shows deep unease over details of the text. In particular, it is understood to:

• Force developing countries to agree to specific emission cuts and measures that were not part of the original UN agreement;

• Divide poor countries further by creating a new category of developing countries called “the most vulnerable”;

• Weaken the UN’s role in handling climate finance;

• Not allow poor countries to emit more than 1.44 tonnes of carbon per person by 2050, while allowing rich countries to emit 2.67 tonnes.

You really have to be obtuse to fail to realize that the AGW/CC scare is nothing more than the same device that Marius used to secure his primacy over Rome more than two thousand years ago. I can understand that the unthinking public and the credulous scienthologists would fall for it, but you’d think that politicians, at least, would know better.

Easy read

Voodoojock reviews RGD on Amazon:

The first thing that stands out about this book is the delivery. It’s fluid, conversational, and devoid of economic jargon that permeates most books on the subject. The book also exhibits none of the haughty arrogance displayed in books more suited for overworked graduate students of economics than public consumption. The graphs illustrate and illuminate rather than confound and confuse. There are ample anecdotes used to illustrate Day’s points. Having read von Mises’ “Theory of Money and Credit”, “The Anti-Capitalist Mentality”, “Socialism”, and Rothbard’s “America’s Great Depression”, “Return of the Great Depression” is about as easy to read and understand as Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson”.

As far as the book’s content goes, it’s thoroughly researched and uses cites numerous sources to illustrate his points. Though Day is a student of the Austrian School of economics, the manner in which he methodically examines the historical events and the personalities involved displays no trace of any personal bias.

In tangentially related news, Ben Bernanke decides that perhaps it is possible for a central bank to do what his predecessor declared impossible after all by detecting a financial bubble in the process of expanding.

“On the heels of a burst housing-and-credit bubble, Mr. Bernanke now calls financial booms “perhaps the most difficult problem for monetary policy this decade.” With Asian property prices soaring and gold prices busting records almost daily, the debate comes at a critical time. Mr. Bernanke wants to use his powers as a bank regulator to stamp out bubbles, but the Senate Banking Committee, which will grill him later this week, is considering stripping the Fed of its regulatory power.”

This is extraordinarily disingenuous rhetoric from the Fed chairman. Mr. Bernanke can stamp out the bubbles without having any regulatory power over the banks at all. Raise interest rates, reduce the money supply and the bubbles will pop in minutes, if not seconds.

Predictable consequences

Carbon dioxide is “a dangerous pollutant“:

Officials gather in Copenhagen this week for an international climate summit, but business leaders are focusing even more on Washington, where the Obama administration is expected as early as Monday to formally declare carbon dioxide a dangerous pollutant.

Consider the following chain of logic:

1) Environmentalists and progressives believe there are too many people on the planet, having frequently declared this to be the case.

2) The U.S. government is reportedly going to declare carbon dioxide to be a dangerous pollutant.

3) Carbon dioxide is emitted by people who happen to breathe oxygen.

Now, are you really going to be surprised when progressives begin pushing for governments to forcibly reduce the number of mobile planet-threatening, pollution-producing factories known as “human beings”? After all, this hardly promises to be the first time it has been determined that slaughtering large quantities of people would be a necessary step in the construction of a desired societal vision.

Of course, most will deem this to be paranoia or a logical extreme. The problem is that history is very clear on the fact that the logical extreme is not infrequently an accurate predictor.

UPDATE – The Wall Street Journal on peer-review:

The Guardian even solicits “reader leaders” (to go with the extraterritorial editorial–ha ha, what wits), although if you scroll down on the page, you will see that a good many of the submissions have been “removed by a moderator.” That is what scientists call peer review.

Peer review is nothing more or less than editing. It’s not objective. It’s not even science. In fact, it’s almost the complete opposite of science, because it is entirely subjective.

Recovery!

The 0.2% decline in U3 unemployment isn’t necessarily the good thing it is commonly assumed to be:

Mara Proctor used to design limestone hearths and columns for luxury homes near Kansas City, drawing on her college education and six years of training. These days, she’s leading customers around a store that sells sculptured snowmen and Santa figurines. It isn’t by choice. Until a few weeks ago, Proctor was among the record 5.9 million Americans who have been jobless for at least six months. Now she belongs to a subset of that group: Out-of-work professionals and managers, engineers and teachers who have turned, in desperation, to holiday-season jobs as sales clerks.

Retailers report a surge in applications this year from professionals who had never applied for such jobs before.

As Pat Buchanan points out, it is insane to import 1.5 million immigrants when tens of millions of citizens are already out of work. Or rather, it is insane to do so if you have any interest at all in the well-being of the citizenry. On the other hand, since education is deemed to be so important, it’s obviously beneficial to the buyers of sculptured snowmen to have such a highly trained saleswoman at their service.

This is also the result of the higher education bubble. I don’t remember who said it, but he was correct in pointing out that expanding higher education to the masses doesn’t mean that you won’t have sales clerks any more, it simply means that you’ll have sales clerks with PhDs. As always, it’s about the supply and demand, and impoverished immigrants will always win out over middle class Americans for the simple reason that they will accept a lower wage. One thing the Ricardians always fail to recognize is that the benefit to the overall economic system from free trade does NOT accrue to those parties who were previously at an overwhelming advantage.

WND column

Never Enough

In his book, “Liberal Fascism,” Jonah Goldberg explains that the primary mechanism utilized by progressives in restructuring society to their liking is to disassociate every step in the program from the preceding and following ones. “It’s just this one little brick,” they explain to the conservative who is opposed to the idea of the proposed wall. “Don’t be so paranoid … you didn’t mean to take it seriously when we said we intended to build an entire wall. What’s the matter with this one brick?”

Of course, the minute that the conservative foolishly accedes to progressive blandishments and allows the brick to be placed, the progressive immediately declares the pressing need to move on to the next brick in the wall. Climategate notwithstanding, Al Gore must feel that the present brick is being satisfactorily laid at Copenhagen, because he has already moved on to declaring the need to further handicap the global economy by reducing the carbon emissions 25 percent more than the climate agreement that will be announced next week.