Gyroscopic Investing

Mountaineer wrote: Anyone - repeat anyone - who continues to believe in and support this insane, inane and economy-killing regulation with ZERO attendant benefits indeed qualifies for the Fool of the Entire Human Race Since the Beginning of Time award.

There are health benefits to reducing coal pollution as anyone living in the Appalachian regions would know.  But as to global warming?

doodle wrote: I should also say, morality is a "concept" and as such doesnt exist outside of the imagination.

Wrong.  Morality is hardwired into the brain as experiments with babies and young children have shown.  But I digress.

doodle wrote: You have two options: (1) Do nothing, and the trolley kills the five people on the main track. (2) Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person. Which is the correct choice?

The correct choice is (3) blow up the track before the trolley reaches either the main track or diversion track.  Reality isn't black and white and morality is always on the side of do the least harm.

doodle wrote: As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you – your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?

This one is easy.  No, because the fat man is an observer and not a participant, so to do anything to the fat man would involve class one murder whereas the five people would be merely an accident.  Tough cookies.  Context matters, not just intent.

Benko wrote: Are there any solutions to any problems in which the lefties don't propose more/bigger gov't?

Yes, but they're called libertarians.  One must first step outside their box to broaden one's thinking skills.  But I guess the libertarians aren't such a big rah rah social group because very few cross-over.  Conformity and belonging are valued more than prudent and thoughtful action.

moda0306 wrote: But even if we assume it is pretty regularly meaningless, then all we have is truth.  In the face of a lack of the ability to discover truth, you have risk.

Thats the nux of the crub.  Truth is subjective; honesty is objective.  Facts are to honesty what truth is to Climategate.  Is the risk that anthropomorphism causes global warming worth the high costs?  So far, I haven't seen that the high costs are worth the risk because the outcomes are so disparate (i.e. costs are high, risk reduction practically minimal).  Doing something/anything just to assauge fears of turning into Venus is worse than waiting and doing the correct thing.

I would love to move to solar energy, hydrogen fuel cells, wind power, solar collectors, thorium reactors, fission energy, etc. but none of it has anything to do with global warming to me, it's just common sense and technological progress.  I refuse to hijack an agenda to get my agenda.

Even climate-skeptics are accepting some sort of accepted "consensus" truth when they produce their data.  Most of them haven't actually put their nose to the grind-stone.  But many have built a lifestyle they can't afford with a big house, big vehicle, fun toys, and long commute, so I think we really know what is driving the challenge to the consensus by climate scientists.  And in most cases, it is not careful analysis of the facts.

Global warming is a huge growth industry of climate-apologists whose careers and filthy lucre are made or broken each and every day.  Gore is the classic example.  Those at the top are not in it to save the planet but are raking it in all for themselves.  I don't know about the other side, but I would fully expect to find the same behavior, i.e. Murdoch.  There's a lack of honesty on both sides.

doodle wrote: Hear, hear! Good points all..... This is not an issue of absolute certainty, but rather one of risk mitigation. What irks me so much about global warming deniers who use the permanent portfolio is that they see the need for risk mitigation in their investment decisions based on the notion that one can truly never know, but when it comes to the scientific consensus on global warming they are absolutely certain that is a 100% hoax and that the dire predictions will never come to pass. Their approach towards global warming is the same as the investor who pours all of their money into one asset class.

Did you see the EPA report?  The new coal regulations will only reduce GHG by 1/25th of a percent or something liek that.  That is totally pointless in terms of reducing the alleged onslaught of global warming that is gonna light a fire under Venus's buttocks.  If it is truly anthropomorphic in cause, then why are the planned reductions of anthropomorphic causes so hideously minimal?  I can't see how it will solve the problem, so winding up with both high taxes and overregulation AND a global warming problem is so typical of government approaches to "solving problems".

doodle wrote: If logical scientists like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan (both of whom have little tolerance for BS) look at the data and think that this is a concern, what makes you so quick to poo-poo it? What is their agenda?

That doesn't mean they know how to actually read the data and ferret out the flaws.  They're culturally popular talking heads, not "efficiency experts".

doodle wrote: Look, Im a nihilist. I ultimately don't think it matters one iota in the universe whether our planet explodes tomorrow or not. Im just frustrated by global warming deniers....its like arguing with creationists or flat earthers. At the very least I would expect people in a permanent portfolio forum to understand risk mitigation....but when it comes to this topic they are like fossil fuel zealots.

I admire Sagan, but no one is perfect and no one can be an expert in all areas and you are always limited by the data available, how it is presented and making the personal assumption that it is honest and can be trusted.  Honesty has been rapidly declining for the last couple of decades and Sagan was not around to live through most recent corruption of it in science.

Maybe if you actaully looked at the data the skeptics present, you would stop giving up your responsibility for your morality and thinking skills to others, always thinking that "experts" always know better than you can possibly do yourself.  That's disempowering.  As I asked moda several times which he refuses to answer, do you believe in the cholesterol hypothesis?  Because if you do, you are a sucker victim, so what makes you think are competent to know whether or not global warming is anthropocentrically caused in the face of contrary data?

Tyler wrote: Believing in something is not risk mitigation.  My risk mitigation for the alarmist warming futurists potentially being wrong is that I object to handing the global economy over to them with no oversight, and I support actionable and measurable environmental improvements we can implement today.  Imagine how much better the environment could be virtually tomorrow if we spent just half of the money we direct towards global warming "projections" on simply cleaning the rivers, reducing industrial waste and emissions, and providing sustainable agriculture for the poor. 

Well said!  "Global Warming" is just another expensive government boondoggle like the War on Cancer, War on Drugs, War on Poverty, War on Morality, War on Drinking, War on Muslims, War on Women, War on Blacks, etc..   

Oh silly me, I was wrong! NeoCons aren't mysteriously the only ones with the inability to see the consequences of their actions.

Kshartle wrote: What is it the climate doom porners are actually worried about? What do you think is going to happen? This reminds me of all those idiotic predictions for decades that food production would not be able to keep pace with the growth of human population. Ummm.....if food production can't keep up then there won't be more people. Duhhh. We have more people than ever before and also more food (despite government intervention paying people to not grow crops or restricting farmland).

In cause you didn't catch that from my previous posts, they are worried the Earth will turn into Venus.  It is a valid theoretical concern, but it hinges on "doing something" and they need someone to blame to guilt into action, so what better tactic than attacking capitalism and progress which is now globally popular?  Once a Communist, always a Communist.

Kshartle wrote: NAP does not extend to animals and I've never even whispered that idea. *Please no one take that as carte blanc to torture puppies on the front lawn* I realize how confusing that first statement can be for some .

Unfortunately, this is why I'm not a practical anarcho-capitalist.  It would have no mechanism to prevent things like torture and people like you simply wouldn't provide any mechanism at all which is a truly scary thought.  It is completely delusional to think you can use persuasion alone to prevent the torture of puppies, kitties or baby cows aka veal, vivisection, rats in experiments, etc..  And even worse if its a baby or a child.  Expecting everyone to always be on their best honor 100% of the time doesn't work in the real world.  When we have Minority Report-style Big Brotherism, I will start the gradualism into being a practical anarcho-capitalist.

Kshartle wrote: Does anyone know where water levels are rising?

Tens of thousands of the South Pacific islands.  They are threatened by the rising sea levels and are slowly disappearing.  They will have to be relocated to other countries.

doodle wrote: e innability to look at the facts and acknowledge that their is a very likely relationship between human activity and global warming.

Correlation is not causation.  "very likely relationship" isn't strong enough to justify globally impoverishing people with carbon taxes and supply constraints.

doodle wrote: Tyson Degrasse brought up a good point in cosmos. If there were a way to color the gases that we emit into the atmosphere so that they were noticeable, humans would likely be shocked into action when they SAW what they were emitting.  If green gas poured out from your light fixtures and AC units when they were on, people would be more apt to realize the effects of their actions.

I thought that part was very clever.  Pomp and circumstance over true cause and effect.  Typical dumb humans.

doodle wrote: As far as the free market and the environment....the issue is that environmental problems are generally long term issues with consequences that are hard to undo and the market operates on a very short time horizon. The market is not an effective way to deal with issues that develop over many decades. Short of placing a cost on pollution, it is very difficult if not impossible for the market to deal with environmental issues.

I support all in costs of production that includes externalities.  So that would imply cap and trade which is a market-based solution.  Yet it got shot down as a consequence of questions about anthropomorphist causes of global warming.

doodle wrote: Now, that all of this is provable...the only question remains as to how serious the effects will be.

Re: Benko, do we have any evidence of recent temperature increases in the last 15 years that does not come from strategically placed weather stations to induce a pro-warming bias in the results?  I believe the hockey puck temperature chart (first featured in An Inconvenient Truth) has been discredited.

Kshartle wrote: The free market is always working to solve this stuff, no need for jackboots. They won't help us have better lives.

But the free market doesn't operate in a vacuum.  To act or change, it needs moral persuasion from the wannabe coercive do-gooders even if they don't ever get to the actual point of using coercion.

Do you know how increasingly frustrating it was the pacifist Abolitionists to use moral persuasion for up to 40 years with no clear result?  People turn to the violent means to freedom when they feel they absolutely have no outlet left.  It took a Civil War to free the slaves; I hope like hell it doesn't take a Global Civil War over global warming.

doodle wrote: You must be reading the wrong sources. The science is pretty iron clad and conclusive.....

I would argue the consensus seems to be pretty iron clad and conclusive.  Humans have to interpret the science.  It doesn't mean the consensus is correct.  If the past few decades have told us anything, its that the concensus gets it wrong over and over and over on many topics.  Why be a wide-eyed wooly optimist true believer when skepticism is prudence?

Mountaineer wrote: PS and you agreed on something today.  Count me in on agreeing with you too.  "Control" is the operative word ... think climate control, gun control, birth control, traffic control, ordinances, laws, regulations thousands of pages thick.  We have far, far, exceeded the purpose of government being to reduce chaos and promote peace ... it has turned into control run amock!

LOL!  You actually lumped the self-empowerment device know as birth control into that cesspool?  What a true, die hard conservative! 

MachineGhost wrote:   If the past few decades have told us anything, its that the concensus gets it wrong over and over and over on many topics.

This is an important and true observation. 

The question is how does it keep happening?  IN many cases it happens because we have well meaning prejudices which don't agree with reality, and we ignore data which disagrees with reality.  Thus global warming without warming. Gun control which does not prevent gun violence, etc. 

MachineGhost wrote:

Mountaineer wrote: PS and you agreed on something today.  Count me in on agreeing with you too.  "Control" is the operative word ... think climate control, gun control, birth control, traffic control, ordinances, laws, regulations thousands of pages thick.  We have far, far, exceeded the purpose of government being to reduce chaos and promote peace ... it has turned into control run amock!

LOL!  You actually lumped the self-empowerment device know as birth control into that cesspool?  What a true, die hard conservative! 

Not preventative birth control which could be done by a woman's choice; I would debate the self-empowerment phrase as I would many things that are just "self" or selfish oriented; I would be more inclined to view it as a married couple's choice.  Birth control that is mandated for me rather than the user of it to pay for it and after-conception control such as abortion which I view as murder is "control".  Of course I view life as beginning at the biological beginning (conception), not when "man or government" says it begins.

... Mountaineer

This website might be of interest to some:

http://climateis.com

... Mountaineer

About
This website is designed to serve as a convenient repository for my writings on the general theme of “climate reality.”? My aim has been to be an informed and critical repackager of the original information found on the more technical and active blog sites, and to add my own editorial comments. It is not my intent to enter into an interactive blogging mode.

My pertinent biographical profile: An engineer by training with a M.S. in Electrical Engineering; a physician by training with an M.D. degree and Board Certified in Anesthesia. In the 1960s, I worked in support of the Apollo Lunar mission. Later, I served at the National Institutes of Health in the Biomedical Engineering Branch. I am now retired after spending the major portion of my working career as an anesthesiologist in both academic and private practice.

I live near Charlotttesville, VA.  After settling here about ten years ago, I became aware of the rich heritage of climatologists here, including, Pat Michaels, S. Fred Singer, Michael Mann, and Dennis Avery, as well as Chris Horner.

As there was no active local voice countering the “Al Gore”? version of climatology, I decided to become the local a “climate reality”? activist. Over the past ten years, my writings have appeared in the local press, in the Wall Street Journal, and in Barron’s. I have been invited to give presentations at various local social groups, and I appear on the local talk radio shows with some regularity. I spoke as a member of the public at four of ex-governor T. Kaine’s climate change commission hearings, countering the testimony of the commission members.

During the past two years, I attended three of the four Heartland International Climate Change Meetings. In 2009, Prof. S. Fred Singer appointed me as the president of the Piedmont Chapter (one of five chapters) of the Virginia Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment.

TennPaGa wrote:

MachineGhost wrote: the hockey puck temperature chart

That would be one interesting chart.

Oh puck!  "Stick" it in your ear.    ROFLOL ... that is the funniest thing I've read all day.  You made my day, TennPaGa!

... Mountaineer

I don't get that joke, but sadly I must now pull a Keynes on this topic: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"