A Cold, Wintry Morning in Perth, Australia ...

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...yonder the rainbow.

Kleine, nützliche Freuden — The Joys of Handy Trivia

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Ich freue mich auf die Post morgen, die mir eine Lösung bringen wird für meine von schweren Herausforderungen angefochtene Küchenspüle.

Looking forward to the postman's crop of handy trivia tomorrow, as I am searching for better solutions to the challenges surrounding my kitchen sink:

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Sturmsonate

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Finance and the Economy — Jan Toporowski

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[I]t is wrong to approach the financial markets as being brought into equilibrium by some kind of price system. They are not brought into equilibrium; they are, for most of the time, in a state of disequilibrium. And the important thing is to understand what that disequilibrium does to the markets, and how it changes them. [W]hich really requires quiet a lot of thinking through but also research in the business press, in the financial press, so that you can understand the connections between the various markets.

Jan Toporowski, between time marks 02:20 - 03:04 

What Toporowski appears to be arguing is that the funding of nationwide pension schemes has boosted capital markets, especially equity markets, which in turn have become self-inflating through a bias toward very large corporations that "overcapitalise", crowding out smaller firms, and thus making capital markets less effective in supporting investment than they could or ought to be.

A Conservationist's Dream

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I have left the below comment at Nick Johnson's blog:

No system is more advantageously responsive to damage from waste than capitalism. Karl Marx explicitly lists the waste disposal industry as among the most profitable industries under capitalism and stresses the pressure on capitalists to curb waste.

Whichever economic system we have, we shall have to shape and control it politically. I prefer being required to politically shape and control capitalism to any other economic system. This is why I have come to appreciate Keynes, who, I think, had a similar attitude.

The overly popular insinuation that capitalism is particularly prone to catastrophes of waste and environmental degradation is contrary to fact and, indeed, logic.

Loosely speaking, capitalism is the invention of systematic and effective waste reduction. Once we are agreed what to us is waste and what sort of degradation we wish to avoid, there is no economic system that is able to support us more powerfully in our conservational aims than is capitalism.

Politics and Economics (2)

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Below "Lord Keynes (LK)" writes about the economic thinking that is behind president-elect Trump. I admire LK for the depth of his economic reasoning and his valiant defence of classical social democracy, which is an important yet increasingly neglected force at the bottom of the wealth, peace, and success of the West. However, I do have reservations concerning the condemnation of free enterprise laissez faire capitalism and the one-sided emphasis of the good that state capitalism is supposed to be capable of. The truth lies in the middle, we need a lot more laissez faire than LK seems to be willing to tolerate, and a lot more state intervention than free market supporters consider wholesome.

Paradoxically, those who are in favour of "more capitalism" — as I am at times — are vitally dependent on "more politics" and indirectly on "more [democratic] government", if  they are to benefit from swings in public perception and volition back toward economically and socially more effective corrections to phases in which the wish for "a lot more politics and the state" used to prevail.

While I am prepared to accept the need for certain measures of national protectionism, I admit that I am not clear as to the border area where the good that comes with free trade may or may not actually trump the egotism of nations — see also Politics and Economics (1):

A fascinating excerpt from the first article:

“‘I’m an economic nationalist,’ [Bannon]… tells me. ‘The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f—ed over. If we deliver’ — by ‘we’ he means the Trump White House — ‘we’ll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we’ll govern for 50 years. That’s what the Democrats missed. They were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It’s not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about.’ …

‘Like [Andrew] Jackson’s populism, we’re going to build an entirely new political movement,’ he says. ‘It’s everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything.”

“Ringside with Steve Bannon at Trump Tower as the President-Elect’s Strategist Plots ‘An Entirely New Political Movement’ (Exclusive),” Hollywoodreporter.com, 18 November, 2016.

It seems that Stephen Moore (Trump’s economic adviser) has recently delivered a similar message to top Republicans as well. Apparently, they weren’t happy to be told that they are now part of “Trump’s populist working-class party.”

We can see that Bannon is essentially an anti-neoliberal conservative, but a confused one, and the terminology he uses to refer to neoliberalism is “globalism” and “crony capitalism.”

Regrettably, he also falls for the “unfunded liabilities” nonsense about social security, but – on the whole – he is obviously superior to standard Republicans and doctrinaire free market conservative fanatics.

As is common to many populist conservatives, Bannon seems to imply that there is a pure “authentic, free-market capitalism” that fundamentally works and has only been corrupted by corporatism and crony capitalism.

But this is a delusion. The populist conservatives will never fully understand economics unless they understand that laissez faire capitalism is inherently flawed: the more laissez faire capitalism becomes, the more it becomes unstable, inefficient, and dysfunctional.

It is a well-designed state capitalism, guided by macroeconomic management and regulation, that is the form that truly “works.”

The source.

See also Politics and Economics (1)

Gone with the Wind ...

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... not quiet. But the wind is veering. 

More and more people

are becoming fed up and furious, and are now demanding an end to “pointless, subsidised wind power”.

 [...]

The reasons for the exploding resistance [against wind parks] are many and include destruction of forests, death to wildlife, blighting of the landscape, infrasound causing illnesses, high costs, technical inadequacy and grid instability, to name some. Probably no other product on the planet delivers so much misery for so little common benefit.

Wind energy opposition site “StopTheseThings” writes a couple of reports coming from Europe, which tell us of growing opposition to and serious health problems from wind energy. We are now witnessing how a rogue industry is well past its heyday.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that wind energy has gone from being welcome with open arms, to being furiously opposed. [The] only things keeping it afloat is special interest, junk science and corruption.

Under the auspices of fake emergency conditions (supposedly "deadly" global warming), green technologies have been forced upon us brutally and undemocratically, and thus the wind

industry had been used to getting its way by bulldozing over and marginalizing opposition and corrupting officials. 

But that strategy seems to be backfiring now, as StopTheseThings writes that “communities are as angry, if not angrier, than ever about the manner in which wind power outfits have ridden roughshod over their basic human rights – such as the right to sleep, live in and otherwise enjoy their family homes, free from incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound – aided and abetted by a political ‘system’ that can be described as ‘crony capitalism’… ”

Recently there was a “monster Dublin protest” where “the leaders of community defence groups from all over Ireland descended on the Dáil Éireann to drive home their message – that wind power is a failed experiment and that these things do not work on any level: social, economic or environmental“.

The source.

Politics and Economics (1)

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Cullen Roche has a readable piece about the effect of mainstream economics on the presidential election in the US.

Of course, talking about mainstream economics as such is rather a mouthful. First, there is no such thing; and second, anything approximating a complete and absolute body of economics is likely to be of such high complexity as to be virtually intractable.

On the other hand, we need to talk about the economy and it is sensible to reflect on our notions of it (economics). 

Roche makes at least three points that pique my curiosity, for I think they are important, and while I have no settled opinion on them, I feel it is worth our while looking into the issues more attentively:

There’s little doubt, in my opinion, that orthodox economic ideas contributed to the post-crisis period of discontent. This can be summarized in two ideas:

1. Orthodox economics ignored the linkage between the real economy and the financial economy. This failure set the stage for the financial crisis and exacerbated its impact.
2. Orthodox economics, being dominated by monetarist influence, had (has?) an excessive faith in the influence of monetary policy. This distracted from other potential policies and resulted in a weaker economy than we would otherwise have.

The third point is this: 

The hyperglobalism of the last 30 years is primarily the result of technological changes that have made a big world a very small place as well as the way the US economy has shifted from a manufacturing economy to a services economy. These changes almost certainly would have occurred without or without free trade.

The source.

I am sympathetic to the first two points, and even to the third point, on which latter, however, I feel considerably less certain than on the first two.

Modern businessmen, bankers and economists do not understand money. Developments in the monetary areas are especially prone to bringing forth crises that are impossible for the economist to foresee and understand, because his guild has been systematically ignoring money almost as a trade mark.

As for the costs and benefits of free trade, nationally and internationally, I am less decided, but I suspect that one has to move away quite some stretch from either idealisations, the adulation of free international trade and its summary condemnation.

The fact that trade can be hugely advantageous must never be forgotten, but it is also necessary to be aware of the possibility that it may have harmful effects. Regrettably, people tend to emphasise one of the two extremes.

It may well be that intensified free trade (globalisation) will have positive long-term effects, while at the same time requiring attenuating interventions in the short- and medium term, to avoid excessive disruptions, not least in the countries that used to be economically unassailable by (former) third world countries that now quickly develop to be (soon) on a par with the leading economies of the West.

See also my Economics's Runaway Standstill. And Politics and Economics (2).

CO2 Is Good for You — Prof. Happer on the Myth of Carbon Pollution

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Professor Happer explains that we are in a CO2 famine, rather than suffering from an over-abundance of it.

In the below lecture, commenting on Al Gore who airbrushed a picture of the earth taken from space to populate it with hurricanes rotating the wrong way around and moving in parts of the world where hurricanes are impossible, Professor Happer suggests: 

The people who speak the strongest, in the most alarming terms about climate, don't know anything about the physics of climate. Not even such simple things ... as which directions hurricanes rotate and where the hurricanes form. (Time mark 06:00)

Cluttering the World with White Elephants

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One of the biggest white elephants ever to have been trotted out, the move toward renewables intended but not able to reduce CO2 emissions, is increasingly faced with evidence, conveniently ignored by politics, especially in "green" Germany, that increased CO2 emissions are not only NOT A PROBLEM but in fact a vast NET IMPROVEMENT.

But even by the misguided standards adduced in their favour, the main energy sources in the service of the renewable fad demonstrably fail:

The wind parks do not fulfil ‘sustainable’ objectives. They cost more fuel than they save and they cause no CO2 saving, in the contrary they increase our environmental ‘foot print’.

A decision to invest thousands of millions Euros in the construction of windparks ‘to save fossil fuel and to reduce CO2 emission’ is irresponsible. There are no savings, THERE IS LOSS! 

The source.

Consider more evidence of the quixotic waste of resources and the damaging effects brought about by renewables:

The unspoken truth about renewables was succinctly summarized in a 2012 Los Angeles Times analysis :

“As more solar and wind generators come online, … the demand will rise for more backup power from fossil fuel plants.”

The full article, entitled “Rise in renewable energy will require more use of fossil fuels”  also points out that wind turbines often produce a tiny fraction (1 percent?) of their claimed potential, meaning the gap must be filled by fossil fuels:

Wind provided just 33 megawatts of power statewide in the midafternoon, less than 1% of the potential from wind farms capable of producing 4,000 megawatts of electricity.

As is true on many days in California when multibillion-dollar investments in wind and solar energy plants are thwarted by the weather, the void was filled by gas-fired plants like the Delta Energy Center.

One of the hidden costs of solar and wind power — and a problem the state is not yet prepared to meet — is that wind and solar energy must be backed up by other sources, typically gas-fired generators. As more solar and wind energy generators come online, fulfilling a legal mandate to produce one-third of California’s electricity by 2020, the demand will rise for more backup power from fossil fuel plants.

Observational analysis from Michigan points out that much of the power generation thought to be attributed to wind actually came from backup sources, or fossil fuels:

“More than half the electric generation nominally credited to wind power is actually produced by fossil fuels, mostly natural gas.”

Analysis from a recently published resource management paper suggests that overall CO2 emissions will actually double in the next 16 years (by 2032) in Canada (Ontario) as more more wind and solar capacity is added.  Wind and solar require reliable backup when the Sun isn’t shining and/or the wind isn’t blowing…and fossil fuel energies (natural gas, coal) are the reliable backup(s) of choice.

Why Will Emissions Double as We Add Wind and Solar Plants?  [pg. 15]

Wind and Solar require flexible backup generation.  Nuclear is too inflexible to backup renewables without expensive engineering changes to the reactors.  Flexible electric storage is too expensive at the moment. Consequently natural gas provides the backup for wind and solar in North America. When you add wind and solar you are actually forced to reduce nuclear generation to make room for more natural gas generation to provide flexible backup.

Ontario currently produces electricity at less than 40 grams of CO2 emissions/kWh. Wind and solar with natural gas backup produces electricity at about 200 grams of CO2 emissions/kWh. Therefore adding wind and solar to Ontario’s grid drives CO2 emissions higher.

From 2016 to 2032 as Ontario phases out nuclear capacity to make room for wind and solar, CO2 emissions will double (2013 LTEP data).  In Ontario, with limited economic hydro and expensive storage, it is mathematically impossible to achieve low CO2 emissions at reasonable electricity prices without nuclear generation.

Scientists Increasingly Conclude Global-Scale Renewables-Driven Power Supply Will Never Happen

Scientists have increasingly weighed in on the vacuousness of the current emphasis on renewable energy generation.  For example…
—
Solar power is a “non-sustainable energy sink” and “will not help in any way to replace the fossil fuel” even though “many people believe renewable energy sources to be capable of substituting fossil or nuclear energy.”
Ferroni and Hopkirk, 2016

Abstract: Many people believe renewable energy sources to be capable of substituting fossil or nuclear energy. However there exist very few scientifically sound studies, which apply due diligence to substantiating this impression. … The main reasons are due to the fact that on one hand, solar electricity is very material-intensive, labour-intensive and capital-intensive and on the other hand the solar radiation exhibits a rather low power density.

Conclusion: [A]n electrical supply system based on today’s PV [photovoltaic] technologies cannot be termed an energy source, but rather a non-sustainable energy sink … [I]t has become clear that photovoltaic energy at least will not help in any way to replace the fossil fuel.

—
For wind and solar, the “energy return on energy invested falls, and environmental costs rise” as more wind and solar power capacity is added.
Moriarty and Honnery, 2016

Highlights: We argue it is unlikely that RE [renewable energy] can meet existing global energy use.

The most important RE [renewable energy] sources, wind and solar energy, are also intermittent, necessitating major energy storage as these sources increase their share of total energy supply. We show that estimates for the technical potential of RE [renewable energy] vary by two orders of magnitude, and argue that values at the lower end of the range must be seriously considered, both because their energy return on energy invested falls, and environmental costs rise, with cumulative output.

—
The “numbers just don’t add up” to curtail world temperatures with wind and solar, and thus our current efforts “will almost surely fail.”
Jones and Warner, 2016

Efforts to curtail world temps will almost surely fail

The Texas A&M researchers modelled the projected growth in global population and per capita energy consumption, as well as the size of known reserves of oil, coal and natural gas, and greenhouse gas emissions to determine just how difficult it will be to achieve the less-than-2 degree Celsius warming goal.  “It would require rates of change in our energy infrastructure and energy mix that have never happened in world history and that are extremely unlikely to be achieved,” explains Jones.   “Just considering wind power, we found that it would take an annual installation of 485,000 5-megawatt wind turbines by 2028. The equivalent of about 13,000 were installed in 2015. That’s a 37-fold increase in the annual installation rate in only 13 years to achieve just the wind power goal,” adds Jones.  Similar expansion rates are needed for other renewable energy sources.  “To even come close to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement, 50 percent of our energy will need to come from renewable sources by 2028, and today it is only 9 percent, including hydropower. For a world that wants to fight climate change, the numbers just don’t add up to do it.”

The source.

Do not forget, even if we managed to reduce the carbon footprint of humans to nil, climate change and global temperature alterations would be unaffected. Firstly, under the theory that CO2 serves as a driver of temperatures (which it clearly does not), it is preposterous to assume that only the 3% of global CO2 emissions produced by humans matter, whereas the remaining 97% produced by other sources do not. Secondly, science suggests that temperatures and climate changes are affected far more significantly by a complex mix of other factors, among which CO2 is negligible, and certainly not the main driver as suggested in the mythology underlying the move toward renewables.

Voting and Democracy

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While, the essence of the below analysis strikes me as thoughtful and right, the author does occasionally drift off into polemics that I do not endorse. 

In different contexts, too, I keep pointing out that there is no such thing as a direct democracy, and there never has been, not even in classical Greece. The expectation of a direct democracy seems to be a derivative of the immature reduction of democracy to majoritarian vote—for more see my The Political Logic of Freedom. Democracy involves far more than the ultimate act of counting votes, a process that in itself will always be characterised by indirectness and special conditions and provisos.

Clinton now leads popular vote by over 2,000,000. Electoral college hinged on 55,000 voters in 3 states. Curious flavor of democracy.

— Brian Greene (@bgreene) November 23, 2016

Well, that's a painful tweet, Brian, one that shows how sick political positions are considered normal in the Western universities.

I have tried to explain to him that "democracy" generally means "the participation of the most general public at power" but the detailed implementation of this general concept requires additional laws and the U.S. implementation involves the electoral votes. There's nothing non-democratic about this recipe: the "demos" still rules by picking a sensible number of electoral votes etc. During the presidential elections, the U.S. democracy is defined by the rules involving the electoral votes. The rules involving the electoral votes aren't a "curious" flavor of democracy but the "U.S." flavor of democracy, perhaps the world's most celebrated flavor of democracy.

Leftists are used to bending and twisting the rules whenever they can (also changing the rules during the game) – e.g. when they are selectively hiring women or people of color or other privileged groups at the U.S. universities or when they harass conservatives in the Academia – and they seem to be shocked that the same dirty tricks can't be easily done after the presidential elections.

At any rate, Brian Greene and many others point out that Hillary Clinton ultimately won the popular vote by nearly 2 million votes. They implicitly claim that Hillary would have become the president if the popular vote were the quantity that mattered.

Except that this conclusion is unjustifiable. What mattered were the electoral votes and Trump won 306-to-232, a very solid victory (not surprising given his dominance in 30-against-20 of the U.S. states). I pointed out that Donald Trump's tweet about the same issue

If the election were based on total popular vote I would have campaigned in N.Y. Florida and California and won even bigger and more easily

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2016

was far more intelligent than Brian's tweet. You know, Donald Trump not only realizes that the outcome of the election depended on the rules. But he even knows what he would have done if the rules had been different. If the popular vote mattered, he wouldn't worry about getting swing states which would be irrelevant. Instead, he would organize rallies at places with lots of people and a great potential to make a difference in the popular vote. He quotes New York, Florida, and California as the three relevant states. Trump would still lose New York and California but it wouldn't matter and he would get many more votes from them.

In a sense, Donald Trump's political intelligence seems to be not one but two categories above Brian's. He not only realizes that the rules matter for the ideal campaigning and the result. He has also thought about the way how the campaigning should be adjusted assuming different rules to achieve the desired outcome.

You know, I can't be any certain that Trump would have won the elections if the popular vote were decisive. But I am certain that the assumption that Hillary would have won it – because she "won" it in the system where the popular vote isn't important – is simply logically invalid. It's equally justifiable or unjustifiable as the statement that the winner would probably be the same under any rules.

This is a physics blog and I can't resist to share an analogy. You may see that the measurement of "Trump's popular vote" and "Trump's electoral votes" interfere with each other. If Trump focuses on the former, he may get a different result than if he focused on the latter, and vice versa. This seems very analogous to the measurement of the position and momentum in quantum mechanics. If you measure the position, you unavoidably influence or change the particle's momentum, and vice versa. So you can't accurately measure the position and the momentum at the same time.

The source.

A Physicist's Yarn — Zealotry versus Science

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Feelings versus facts.

Form your own opinion.

I regret the occasional invective.

Make a Pig of Yourself at a Dinner Party - What's Wrong with 'Green'

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Geologist Ian Plimer:

That is where I struck difficulty with the global warming movement: that there is a huge body of evidence — and that is mainly in life science / geology — that shows that the argument that human emissions of carbon-dioxide drive global warming is not substantiated by evidence. [Time marks 40:15 to 40:35, in the second video below]

In the below radio interview, which I find very substantial and persuasive, Plimer (between time marks 18:05 and 18:50) makes a point that to my flabbergasted incomprehension is never made even by sceptics [my comments in brackets, and my emphasis]:

There is a fundamental question that has never been answered ... Can you show me that the human emissions of carbon-dioxide drive global warming [—however, there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary, temperatures driving CO2 rather than the other way around]? Now, assume that I am wrong ... and that you can show me, then I ask you the supplementary question: ... The IPCC tells us that 97 % of carbon-dioxide emissions are natural [i.e. not caused by human beings]. Please show me that the 97 % of carbon-dioxide emissions from natural causes don't drive global warming. It's checkmate before the game starts."

There is far more CO2 being emitted by dying vegetation, volcanoes, animal flatulence and the oceans than by humans. Why is global warming supposed to be ended or satisfactorily controlled only if those 3% of all CO2 ascribable to human activities is subjected to a significant reduction? And in doing so preposterously one will have to eliminate a substantial part of that little portion of 3%, meaning bring human life as we know it to a standstill.

Modelle kontra Messungen — Kritisches zur Aufregung um das CO2

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EIKE berichtet:

Klaus-Eckart Puls: Die Achillesferse der Klimamodelle

Der Diplom-Meteorologe Klaus-Eckart Puls sprach über die „Achillesferse“ der Klimamodelle: die Wasserdampf-Verstärkung. Einzelheiten dazu finden Sie hier. Das Fazit: „Die Treibhaus-Wirkung von zusätzlichem CO2 ist marginal, und liegt im natürlichen Rauschen der Klima-Temperaturen. … Die Treibhaus-Eigenschaften von CO2 können bei Konzentrations-Verdoppelung in einer realen, also wasserdampf-haltigen Atmosphäre nur etwa ein halbes Grad Erwärmung bewirken. Die Klima-Modelle ‚benötigen’ für ihre spektakulären Temperatur-Prognosen hypothetische Verstärkungs-Prozesse, allen voran die Wasser-Dampf-Verstärkung. Allerdings – die Natur macht etwas anderes. … Die Messungen der Wasserdampf-Konzentration in der Troposphäre widersprechen weitgehend  den Annahmen und Ergebnissen der Klima-Modelle…. Die Messungen  zeigen, daß es global in der Atmosphäre weder mehr Wasserdampf noch mehr Niederschläge gibt.“

Die IPCC-Modelle arbeiten mit Verstärkungshypothesen

Das zusammengefasste Ergebnis von Puls lautet: „Bei CO2-Verdoppelung in einer realen, wasserdampf-haltigen Atmosphäre beträgt der zusätzliche Treibhaus-Effekt von CO2 auf der Basis von Labor-Messungen nur etwa ½ Grad. Die Modelle der IPCC-nahen Institute erzielen daher die ständig propagierten 2 … 5 Grad globaler Erwärmung nicht mit CO2, sondern mit Verstärkungs-Hypothesen, insbesondere mit der Wasserdampf-Verstärkung. Daraus folgt: Nach der säkularen Erwärmung im 20. Jahrhundert um ca. 0,7 Grad müsste einerseits die Wasserdampf-Gehalt der Atmosphäre schon messbar zugenommen haben, andererseits müsste die Temperatur von Jahrzehnt zu Jahrzehnt beschleunigt ansteigen. Beides wird von den meteorologischen Messungen widerlegt: Weder in der Troposphäre noch in der Stratosphäre sind solche Trends zu beobachten, eher ein leichter Trend zu weniger Wasserdampf, und auch zu weniger Verdunstung am Boden. Auch stagniert die Global-Temperatur seit 15 Jahren.“Oder ganz kurz formuliert: Real messen statt theoretisch modellieren

Die simulierte Klimakatastrophe

Die angebliche Klimakatastrophe ist für Puls, wie er in Berlin sagte, eine simulierte Katastrophe, keine gemessene. Die kritischen Fakten stünden auch in den IPCC-Basisberichten, aber in der 40-seitigen Zusammenfassung stehe das genaue Gegenteil. 

Quelle.

Le raté du siècle devant le but ...

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Der Jahrhundert-Blindgänger vorm Tor.

The goal-missing screw up ("dud") of the century:



The source.

Le match a repris, feuilles mortes contre trains

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A little French — my daily exercise:

The match is on again - autumne leaves against trains ...

Elles semblent inoffensives, si petites, avec leurs belles couleurs, mais les feuilles mortes donnent chaque automne des sueurs froides aux cheminots, font subir aux voyageurs retards et annulations, et coûtent cher à la SNCF.

Lorsqu'elles tombent sur les voies, et sous l'effet de l'humidité, elles forment une pellicule qui recouvre le rail, et rend plus difficiles l'accélération et le freinage.

*

They seem so inoffensive, so tiny, with their beautiful colours; but, fallen leaves put railwaymen in cold sweat every autumn, subjecting rail travellers to delays and cancellations that cost SNCF dearly. Settling on the tracks they form under the effect of humidity a film covering the rails which makes it harder to break or accelerate.

The entire article.

See also Les feuilles mortes.

1 Year of Quaesivi

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One year ago I started this blog with an article entitled Government Spending Not Limited by Ability to Tax or Borrow - On MMT (1).

Geister über den Wassern — Spirits over the Waters

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Franz Schubert's musical rendering of a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

SONG OF THE SPIRITS OVER THE WATER

The spirit of Man

Resembles water:

Coming from heaven,

Rising to heaven,

And hither and thither,

To Earth must then

Ever descend.

It leaps from the heights

Of the sheer cliff,

In a pure stream,

Then rises sweetly

In clouds of spray

Against smooth stone,

And lightly received

Flows like a veil

Streaming softly

To depths beneath.

When the sheer rocks

Hinder its fall,

It foams angrily

Flowing stepwise

Into the void.

Along its flat bed

It wanders the vale,

And on the calm lake

All the bright stars

Gaze at their faces.

Wind is the water's

Sweet lover:

Wind stirs up foaming

Waves from the deep.

Spirit of Man

How like water you are!

Man's fate, oh,

How like the wind!

Gesang der Geister über den Wassern

Des Menschen Seele Gleicht dem Wasser: Vom Himmel kommt es, Zum Himmel steigt es, Und wieder nieder Zur Erde muß es, Ewig wechselnd. Strömt von der hohen, Steilen Felswand Der reine Strahl, Dann stäubt er lieblich In Wolkenwellen Zum glatten Fels, Und leicht empfangen Wallt er verschleiernd, Leisrauschend Zur Tiefe nieder. Ragen Klippen Dem Sturz entgegen, Schäumt er unmutig Stufenweise Zum Abgrund. Im flachen Bette Schleicht er das Wiesental hin, Und in dem glatten See Weiden ihr Antlitz Alle Gestirne. Wind ist der Welle Lieblicher Buhler; Wind mischt vom Grund aus Schäumende Wogen. Seele des Menschen, Wie gleichst du dem Wasser! Schicksal des Menschen, Wie gleichst du dem Wind!

Good for Everything That's Bad

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The all-purpose myth of humanly induced global warming and climate change is typically presented in ways that are inordinately crude but easy to digest for the average consumer of political claptrap. Here is another example of the slapstick-by-exaggeration  inherent in "green" zealotry:

One aspect of climate change propaganda is the claim that it’s good for everything that is bad, and bad for everything that is good. Of course that claim is preposterous because climate change will bring benefits and relief to places that have long been climatically stressed.

Already the Sahara region has greened up significantly over the past 35 years many studies and satellite images show. It’s be stupid to try to reverse this.

 Make sure to read the entire article.

Choking on a Myth — Chernobyl & Fukushima

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The left has become the trend-setter for the ideological cosmetics put on by the establishment. It is to be hoped that the left, or indeed any appropriate movement, will take up the vacant position of champion of real people with real concerns, rather than transforming — in an attempt at self-preservation — a tradition of crude anti-capitalism into eschatalogical narratives far removed from and detrimental to the lives of ordinary people.

The Guardian has a highly readable article on the ideological biases of the left concerning nuclear power.  I have been vilified for years for making the very points discussed in the piece. It is only to be hoped that people on the left will eventually learn to look at "climate change" with similar sobriety, and give up that myth, too.

But for ideological opponents of nuclear power, this reality [of relatively little damage to life and health at Chernobyl] is largely ignored; a Russian non-peer-reviewed report garnered headlines with the claim 985,000 died as a result of the accident, a number subsequently exposed as baseless by the Radiation Protection Dosimetry journal. The scientific evidence also undermined Greenpeace, who had long used the spectre of Chernobyl (and more recently, Fukushima) as a prop in their anti-nuclear narrative. They and European Greens scrambled to counter this by releasing “The other report on Chernobyl (Torch)” in 2006 as a counter to the Chernobyl forum. In it, they reported that more than 200,000 deaths might be attributable to the disaster. This figure too is devoid of merit, a transparent attempt to circumvent the scientific consensus. Such empty hyperbole and stubborn insistence on projecting ideology over reality isn’t merely intellectually vapid, it’s actively damaging to the psychological health of survivors. 

[...]

Unlike the accident in the Ukraine, events at Fukushima in March 2011 were not the result of ineptitude but rather a massive natural disaster in the form of a deadly 15-metre high tsunami. The wall of rushing water flooded the Fukushima plant, water-logging the diesel generators that had been cooling the plant, resulting in the leakage of small amounts of nuclear waste product. While the world media fixated on the drama unfolding at the plant, it lost sight of the fact that around 16,000 had just been killed in a massive natural disaster. Despite the preponderance of breathless headlines since the reality is that five years later, radiobiological consequences of Fukushima are practically negligible - no one has died from the event, and is it extraordinarily unlikely that anyone will do so in future. The volume of radioactive leak from the site is so small as to be of no health concern; there is no detectable radiation from the accident in Fukushima grown-food, nor in fish caught off the coast. This of course hasn’t stopped numerous organisations employing Fukushima as an anti-nuclear argument, despite the lack of justification for doing so. 

Make sure to read the entire article.

See also IPCC and the Politically Fabricated "Scientific Consensus" on Anthropogenic Climate Change

Economics's Runaway Standstill

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I have left the below comment here:

When I was studying economics at university, back in the early 14th century, I remember being bombarded by the same kind of complaints; everyone among the teachers felt they were a critical minority, fighting a lonely fight against the mainstream. Why have all these efforts at resistance and valiant pioneering never come to fruition, in the sense of giving rise to a new economic paradigm?

I suppose, complaining about the mainstream is good enough to stabilise the competing theological schools in economics. Viel Feind, viel Ehr', as the German saying goes: the more formidable my enemy, the grander my own cause.

Also, students of economics like to appear to one another and the rest of the world as being scientists, and among the paraphernalia of mainstream economics there is a lot of technical stuff that gives you a chance to maintain that appearance (econometrics etc.). This (really) pseudo-scientific ambition lends much stability to the subject.

Studying economics has a socialising and signalling function: it signals a competence for which people are prepared to pay a lot of money - you do not want to destroy that bonus by emphasising the theological and rather uncertain nature of economics. As far as socialising goes, irrespective of how close your particular affiliation/school/theological variant of economics may or may not be to the mainstream, most of us want to be taken seriously as economists after many years dedicated to the study of economics, even though the subject may not deserve to be taken quite that seriously.

This inherent conservatism of "economics" may give us a common language helping us express and expedite significant alterations and even revolutions every once in a while, as Keynes did, who left the neoclassical apparatus of economics largely intact, while attacking it in certain strategic places vehemently.

In a world that is free by historical standards, I suspect we will never arrive at a common corpus of economics that is beyond doubt and scorn. Economics is too much suffused with values (whose meaning and consequences we tend to interpret differently) to be able to ever attain the objectivity whose accomplishment is the claim of all the varieties in which it presents itself.

Listening to the Science - How Environmentalists Came to Love Nuclear Power

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A film made about environmentalists who have come to see through "green" misinformation about nuclear power, but have not yet come around to debunking the global warming scam.

Flying Dutchman — Ouverture

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I hate to say, I find Wagner repetitive and boring. Surely, I must be missing some faculty available to the many fans of his music. Wagner's compositions make me think of old feature films, the kind that may be spinning an entertaining story while never feeling entirely realistic as far as the visual experience goes, with the music eagerly prompting the feelings one is supposed to be gripped by. 

Either Wagner makes me sleepy or he irritates me by bursts of noise that are too sudden or overly lengthy.

Here is the overture to the Flying Dutchman — it does not manage to divorce me from my prejudice. It rather makes me feel like listening to corny film music without the benefit of actually watching the movie.

In a word, Wagner sounds hackneyed.

De Vliegende Hollander — The Flying Dutchman — Der fliegende Holländer

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With the help of this dictionary you will be able to translate what's being said in this Dutch video:

I read the cover picture thus: Central Beheer, being an insurance company:

Saving for later ... then I will be able to just relax wonderfully, enjoying my "long(est) holiday".

Getting the State Wrong

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I have made the below comment at Nick Johnson's excellent The Political Economy of Development:

This [progress and the hand of government] is a particularly important topic – thanks for drawing attention to it.

Political opponents (pro- and anti-state) tend to indulge in symmetric exaggeration, ignorance and distortion. The state-lovers tend to present government as a naturally beneficial agent, showing little regard for the tremendous potential that the state has for damage, destruction and maldevelopment.

One variant of their bias is a blanket condemnation of private enterprise and the role of personal initiative in a flourishing economy.

Symmetrically opposed: state-haters ignore the fact that the state (by dint of its interventions into human interaction) is the very precondition for freedom and the indispensable creator of the environment in which our most cherished values can blossom.

Early liberals were more aware of this than later libertarians. In spite of its tremendous potential for destruction, the state is an indispensable tool for creating the best society and the most advantageous type of economy we can possibly attain.

Just as some preposterously ignore the indispensable benefits of entrepreneurial activity, free markets, and free trade (all of which serve as powerful goods if properly constrained), certain types of “free marketeers” are entirely wrong in ascribing qualities to unfettered economic “freedom” that such a state of affairs simply is not productive of.

The cardinal sin of the libertarian is not to realise that free exchange is not an alternative to or an eliminator of competing interests and aims (which a free society calls to the fore much more vigorously than repressive societies do!) that are of a political nature (i.e. based on non-economic, non-tradeable preferences), and are in large measure capable of reasonable resolutions only by extra-economic, i.e. political means. In short: the economy and economic activities tend to be highly political phenomena.

The core libertarian idea that markets represent an alternative to a politicised world is utterly ill-conceived. It is due to the fact that markets cannot be guarantors of apolitical truth and harmony that the state is so important for a good society and a well-functioning economy, in proper shape furnishing a historically unprecedented means of making people compete productively in the ongoing quest for better knowledge, better ways for getting along with one another, and better ways of overcoming scarcity.

In nuce, the “libertarian” tends to deny conflict where it does exist (thereby paradoxically ignoring the main purpose of freedom, namely to let people express, compare and align their often diverging ideas, aims and plans). The “statist” tends to ignore the pluralistic constraints needed to keep the powerful state from acting as a totalitarian force (as in the “Green” power grabbing attempt à la “the science is settled”). Both positions are untruthful and dangerous. I have written more on “the state” here: The State [1] ...

The source.