Ergodic Economics and the Non-Ergodic Mr. Keynes — Ergodische Ökonomik und der nicht ergodische Herr Keynes

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A post in English and German.

Recently, I worked on a text that suggested: the future is uncertain, therefore it is prudent to make estimates based on probabilisitic models.

Kürzlich habe ich an einem Text gearbeitet, in dem es hieß: Die Zukunft sei unsicher, deshalb sei es klug, Prognosen anhand probabilistischer Modelle zu erstellen.

This is actually the fundamental tenet of mainstream economics.

Das ist tatsächlich die Grundannahme der herkömmlichen Ökonomie.

It is thoroughly wrong.

Sie ist grundfalsch.

According to Keynes.

Laut Keynes.

Keynes had written a treatise on probability before he wrote The General Theory.

Keynes hatte ein Standardwerk über Wahrscheinlichkeit geschrieben, bevor er seine Allgemeine Theorie verfasste.

A basic supposition of The General Theory is that the future is unknown.

Eine grundlegende Annahme der Allgemeinen Theorie ist, dass die Zukunft unbekannt sei.

In fact, he insisted that the link between the past, the present and the future was non-ergodic.

Er beharrte darauf, dass die Beziehungen zwischen Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft nicht-ergodischer Art seien.

That is to say, it is not possible to make accurate predictions by looking at past data.

Das heißt, es ist nicht möglich, genaue Vorhersagen aus historischen Daten abzuleiten.

Modern economics, however, is highly ergodic, assuming that statistical analysis can lift knowledge of the future from past data.

Die moderne Wirtschaftslehre ist jedoch hochgradig ergodisch – sie geht davon aus, dass uns die Vergangenheit zuverlässiges Zukunftswissen liefert.

Put differently: Keynes thought that the economic world cannot be adequately captured by probabilistic models, for these presuppose ergodicity. But if the underlying frequency distributions are not stable, there are no stable patterns that can be drawn from the past to be applied to the future.

Anders gesagt: Keynes war der Meinung, dass sich die Wirtschaft mit probabilistischen Modellen nicht angemessen erfassen ließe, denn diese setzten Ergodizität voraus. Sind aber die zugrunde liegenden Häufigkeitsverteilungen nicht stabil, liessen sich auch keine stabilen Muster aus der Vergangenheit auf die Zukunft übertragen.

It is ironic that economists would recommend probabilistic models to come to grips with an unknown world.

Es entbehrt nicht der Ironie, dass Ökonomen ausgerechnet probabilistische Modelle für das geeignete Mittel halten, um mit einer ungewissen Welt zurecht zu kommen.

Keynes would have argued that these economists are making wild guesses, only to drape them with the paraphenalia of scientific dignity.

Keynes hätte gesagt, dass sich diese Ökonomen in Spekulationen ergehen, die sie mit den Merkmalen wissenschaftlicher Würde bemänteln. 

Wall Street Journal At Its Worst? — WSJ so schlecht wie noch nie?

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Hat das Wall Street Journal je einen schlechteren Artikel geschrieben? 

So lautet ein interessanter Blog-Beitrag von Cullen Roche: Is This The Worst Thing The WSJ Has Ever Published?

Der Autor beklagt unter anderem folgende sachlichen Irrtümer im Artikel des WSJ: 

(1) Die Zentralbank zahlt Zinsen auf Reserven, um ihren Leitzins zu verteidigen, und nicht um Banken auf diese Weise effektiv dafür zu belohnen, dass sie KEIN Geld verleihen. Die Banken hätten gerne Kredite vergeben, wenn sich Kreditnehmer von ausreichender Bonität gefunden hätten, was nach der Finanzkrise aber nicht der Fall war.

(2) Obama war nicht „schuld“ an höheren Staatsschulden nach der Finanzkrise; die Staatsschulden  sind gestiegen, weil die „automatischen Stabilisatoren“ wirksam wurden – das Zusammenspiel schwächeren Wachstums, geringerer Steuereinnahmen und höherer Staatsausgaben vor allem für sozialpolitische Zwecke (Arbeitslosengeld etc.).

(3) Banken leihen nicht ihre Reserven aus. Die brauchen sie nur, um Nettozahlungen untereinander zu ermöglichen. Bankreserven sind ein "Spezialgeld", dass nur zwischen Banken und der Zentralbank zirkuliert. Sie sind das Zahlungsmittel, das von der Zentralbank verrechnet wird, um Nettozahlungen zwischen Banken zu dokumentieren und zu vollziehen.

(4) Die an den meisten Universitäten noch heute gelehrte Theorie vom Banken-Multiplikator ist pure Fantasie. Weder leihen Banken ihre Reserven aus, noch sind die von ihnen ausgereichten Kredite an einen solchen Multiplikator (einen Prozentsatz der Mindestreserven) gebunden.

(5) Nein, es ist nicht richtig zu sagen, die Banken hätten früher keine Überschussreserven bereitgehalten (oder nicht in der Größenordnung wie dies seit der Politik der quantitativen Lockerung (QE = Quantitative Easing) der Fall sein sollte), weil ihnen dafür kein Zins geboten worden ist. Die Banken sind von der Zentralbank dazu gezwungen worden, Überschussreserven zu halten, weil die Fed das QE einigermaßen kompromisslos durchgezogen hat (den Banken gegen Bankreserven Aktiva abgekauft, als einen Aktiventausch in den Bilanzen der Banken bewirkt hat). Die auf die Überschussreserven gezahlten Zinsen hatten die Funktion, den Leitzins zu verteidigen, d. h. die Banken daran zu hindern, den Leitzins – im Bemühen unrentierliche Bankreserven untereinander wenigstens gegen eine geringe Zinszahlung zu verleihen – bis auf null Prozent herabzubieten.

New York Times, Der Spiegel, and Their School of Fish

Notice, the above illustration was featured in an 1894 issue of Puck magazine. Image credit.

I've been on about it for years.

In Germany, this is quite a scandal in media circles, because Der Spiegel is like their version of New York Times. That is, it positions itself as the official arbiter of truth, with regards to public morality. They not only decide what is true, they decide which truths can be said. Worse yet for them, they have been bragging about their fact checking for a long time. As a result of this tent pole toppling over, the German media is scrambling to convince everyone that it is an isolated incident, not a system failure. 

The amusing bit is the German media is rushing around looking puzzled, as to how the vaunted fact checking system could have failed. After all, the best people are in control of the media. How could the best people have made such basic errors? As is the case in America, whenever these things happen, the media hand-wringing is just a dodge. What really concerns them is how easy it was for two bumpkins from dirt country to sluice out the facts from the fiction in this particular article. 

That’s always the thing with these scandals. The media big shots always come off as if they have been insulted about their shenanigans being revealed. In this case, the other major media outfits are rallying to defend Der Spiegel. In the dreaded private sector, competitors are always quick to take advantage of the mistakes of a competitor. In the main stream media, the opposite is always true. They circle the wagons and begin lecturing the hoi polloi about the dangers of questioning the media. 

That is the real cause of these scandals. For a long time, the mass media in the West has been a mono-culture. You can’t have a career in the media if you don’t hold all the right opinions. To call the media an echo chamber for the left is to understate the problem. The better analogy is a school of fish. Each individual just reacts to those around him, giving the effect of the school having agency as a whole. What looks like collusion is just the result of a uniformity of mind, experience and social class. 

That’s why no one at Der Spiegel, or anywhere else in the German media, noticed the fraudulence of Claas Relotius. He was writing the things his coevals and superiors said at luncheons, cocktail parties and in the office. His story about slack-jawed yokels in the American heartland ticked all the boxes popular with the left-wing cultural outlook. He was not sent there to report on the place. He was sent there to confirm what his employers already knew about Middle American and Trump voters. 

This is why Western media is something worse than propaganda. The person hired by the state or hired by the corporate marketing department has self-awareness. They know their job is to polish the apple of their superiors. The tricks they employ to do that are done with a knowledge and forethought. The guy telling the public that his employer, the pesticide company, is deeply concerned about the environment does so knowing full well that no one believes him, including his family. 

The media is a different thing. They really believe their own nonsense. They think they are part of a special class of human, a priestly class that not only reports facts to the public, but provides moral instruction. The mass media is so intoxicated by their own self-righteousness, they lack the ability to question their own actions. [An attitude aped, internalised and rapturously  paraded by the politically correct German. Which explains the politisch korrekt vorauseilende Gehorsam of readers of Der Spiegel and Süddeutsche Zeitung and New York Times, who invoke these papers as sources of unassailable objectivity like my friend here; IGTU.] When Claas Relotius came back from the bush, reporting exactly what his bosses knew was the case, they had no reason to question it. It was too good to check.

The source.

Truth Made in Germany (2)

 

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Make sure to read the entire piece:

"We are concerned that the leadership of Der Spiegel encourages this form of reporting and that the reporters appear to deliver what the leadership wants," wrote Grenell, who accused the paper of anti-American bias, and said the German paper "routinely included information and stories which could have been proven untrue if they had checked the facts with the Embassy first."

Read also Truth Made in Germany (1).

Poor Performance of Expensive Hedge Funds — Temporary or Structural?

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Here is an attempt at answering the question: Why Are Hedgefunds Underperforming?

I have commented:

Thank you for this interesting analysis. Have hedge funds ever performed better than passive strategies — on an enduring basis? Any evidence to this effect or to the contrary?

Truth Made in Germany (1)

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„Wir haben keine Erfahrung mehr im Umgang mit wirklichen Ernstfällen. Das führt dazu, dass wir Katastrophen geradezu lustvoll herbeiphantasieren. Zum Beispiel die Klimakatastrophe, die ich für ein erstaunliches Phänomen massenhafter Verblendung halte”.

"We no longer have experience in dealing with real emergencies. This leads us to fantasize about catastrophes. For example, the climate catastrophe, which I consider an amazing phenomenon of mass delusion."

And the Lügenpresse is thriving on it. 

I do not expect Germans to complain much about being lied to by DER SPIEGEL. 

They are being lied to by the Media including the very popular state broadcasters every day on a massive scale. There are ample opportunities for the German public to discover that these media outlets are lying, serving as propaganda outlets of the government and the dominant political parties. 

Germans are less concerned with truth than with a good yarn based on a simple story that can be conveniently repeated to ensure one if culturally accepted by one's fellow citizens.

What should be the subject of critical discussion and vibrant dissent has been turned in Germany into unassailable dogma to be regurgitated in the manner of a social convention.

Germans repeat state ordained lies as a matter of social acceptability. 

More on how Germans willfully give up their inclination to think critically and  make themselves eager speaking trumpets of their masters in politics and the state:

Subservience Rushing Ahead of the Command - Vorauseilender Gehorsam

and

From the Pages of an Infallible Newspaper

How do you say "good morning" in German? "Guten Morgen". Correct. 

Is there another way of saying"good morning", or "hello", for that matter?

Yes: "Trump ist ein Arschloch." ("Trump is an asshole.")

A German who says that can expect to be considered a jolly good fellow by his peers, even by complete strangers. You say this to be liked. It is not the result of careful examination — one is being relieved from this job by the media.

I left this comment here:

You would think, the alarmist crowd would use their ample resources to avoid CO2-emitting mega events, utilising and even innovating online-capabilities instead. 

But the hordes of believers are overwhelming, their self-reenforicng "credo" ("I believe") is an unstoppable impetus in its own right. They are beyond the discipline of facts, having lost their capacity for rational self-control. 

I like the quote from the Bamberg sociology professor - however, I do not like the fact that no source is given. 

One of the many things I like about NoTricksZone is the accuracy with which sources are quoted. 

Thanks for the excellent translation.

The source.

Continued here.

Science versus Censorship and Repression — A Murry Salby Lecture

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No words.

MMT and the External Sector

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Continued from here. 

Ramanan expands his assessment of the export issue to cover broader problems in the MMT-conception of the external sector:

Hi Georg,

Basically, there's Post-Keynesianism and there's MMT. MMT is part of Post-Keynesian theory. 

To be more precise: what's correct in MMT is not original and what's original is not correct. 

But still, it is very useful, as it provides non-economists to become immediately interested in economics and they can start learning. 

Some work of MMTers like Scott Fullwiler is useful in central bankey stuff. 

MMTers are right side of the political economy generallly, not always. 

MMT is million times better than mainstream. 

But MMTers fail to understand the importance of the external sector. 

Free trade puts a large constraint on nations and "exports are cost" is wrong. Rich nations impose free trade on poor nations while they themselves had protection in their early stages of development. 

A poor nation if it expands demand, its imports will zoom and might soon be faced with balance of payments crisis, fixed or floating. 

So the solution is a reform of the world order, WTO, IMF etc so that surplus nations can't run surpluses beyond a point. 

Etc. 

Ramanan

My reply:

Hi Ramanan,

Thank you for your enlightening synopsis. I can entirely relate to it. Other than criticising the Mosler-export-doctrine, I had not yet come to appreciate wider problems with MMT's treatment of the external sector. Thank you for this pointer. I shall also consult Godley on this issue, which I have become aware of very recently thanks to your posting.

Best regards,

Georg

Here Comes the Sun

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A good overview of (1) the facts that call into question CAGW and (2) the politico-religious pressures that keep the myths socially influential.

Willie just happened to choose solar science as a career and, like many solar scientists, after nearly three decades of scientific research in his case, came to believe that changes in the sun’s brightness, sunspots and energy output, changes in the orbital position of the Earth relative to the sun, and other powerful natural forces drive climate change. In brief, our sun controls our climate.

Even the IPCC initially indicated agreement with him, citing his work approvingly in its second (1996) and third (2001) Assessment Reports. That later changed, significantly. Sure, everyone agrees that the sun caused the waxing and waning of the ice ages, just as solar scientists say. However, the sun had to be played down if carbon dioxide (CO2) was to be played up – an abuse of science that makes Willie sick.

Unfortunately for the IPCC, solar scientists think solar changes also explain Earth’s most recent warming period which, they point out, began way back in the 1830s – long before we burned enough fossil fuels to make any difference. They also observed the shrinking of the Martian ice-caps in the 1990s, and their return in the last few years – in perfect time with the waning and waxing of Arctic ice caps here on Earth.

Only the sun – not the CO2 from our fires – could cause that Earth-Mars synchronicity. And surely it is no mere coincidence that a grand maximum in solar brightness (Total Solar Irradiance or TSI) took place in the 1990s as both planets’ ice caps shrank, or that the sun cooled (TSI decreased) as both planets’ ice caps grew once again. All that brings us back to Dr. Soon’s disagreements with the IPCC.

The IPCC now insists that solar variability is so tiny that they can just ignore it, and proclaim CO2 emissions as the driving force behind climate change. But solar researchers long ago discovered unexpected variability in the sun’s brightness – variability that is confirmed in other stars of the sun’s type. Why does the IPCC ignore these facts?

[...]

Surely Willie and solar scientists are right about the primacy of the sun. Why? Because the observable real world is the final test of science. And the data – actual evidence – shows that global temperatures follow changes in solar brightness on all time-scales, from decades to millions of years. On the other hand, CO2 and temperature have generally gone their own separate ways on these time scales.

Global temperatures stopped going up in the first two decades of this century, even though CO2 has steadily risen. The IPCC blames this global warming “hiatus” on “natural climate variability,” meaning something random, something not included in their models, something the IPCC didn’t see coming.

This confirms the fact that their models do not add up to a real theory of climate. Otherwise the theory would be falsified by their incorrect predictions. They predicted a continuous increase in temperature, locked to a continuous increase in CO2. But instead, temperature has remained steady over the last two decades, while CO2 climbed even faster than before.

[...]

Unlike the IPCC, Willie and I cannot simply ignore the fact that there were multiple ice ages millions of years ago, when CO2 levels were four times higher than now. And even when CO2 and temperature do trend in tandem, as in the famous gigantic graph in Al Gore’s movie, the CO2 rises followed temperature increases by a few centuries. That means rising CO2 could not possibly have caused the temperature increases – an inconvenient truth that Gore doesn’t care about and studiously ignores.

Many Weighty Reasons to Leave the EU (2)

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Fortgesetzt von hier.

Ich habe folgende Replik erhalten:

Es gibt bestimmt andere Aspekte wie z.B. kulturelle. Mein Punkt war, darauf hinzuweisen, dass die politische Rechte das Thema Einwanderung als Sündenbock für die belastenden Auswirkungen der harschen Sparpolitik nutzte. 

Die Globale Finanzkrise war offensichtlich ein sehr wichtiges Ereignis an sich. Aber sie hätte sicherlich nicht zu fiscal austerity führen müssen.

Meine Antwort:

Ich gebe Ihnen in allen drei Punkten völlig recht.  

Gleichzeitig möchte ich betonen, dass (1) es schon immer eine Skepsis in der breiten Bevölkerung Großbritanniens gegenüber dem politischen Europa (EEG etc.) gegeben hat und gerade die Linke, denken Sie an Tony Benn, sich in der Problematisierung dieser supranationalen Konstrukte hervorgetan hat - zu Recht. 

(2) Es war auch die inzwischen verschwundene Linke, die ein sehr differenziertes und problembewusstes Bild von der Immigrationsfrage gezeichnet hat und ganz entschieden gegen "open borders" aufgetreten ist. 

(Ich rechne mich weder der Linken noch der Rechten zu, komme aber aus dem Staunen nicht heraus, wie schnell sich die moderate Linke, sagen wir die Sozialdemokratie eines Willy Brandt, nicht nur in Deutschland in Luft aufgelöst bzw. sich - endgültig mit dem engagierten Gutheißen der EU - auf die Seite der Neoliberalen geschlagen hat - eben auch in Sachen "open border"). 

Es stört mich sehr, dass man heutzutage in Bausch und Bogen als Rechtsradikaler oder gar als Nazi abgestempelt wird, wenn man für eine No-Open-Border-Politik mit klarer Gesetzeslage, also für eine klassisch linke Position eintritt. Und eine solche, nach dem Positiven wie nach dem Negativen offene Haltung wird - was zurzeit der Tabuisierung unterliegt - auch das Problematische in Vorschlägen zur Immigrationspolitik berücksichtigen - z. B. auch die Nachteile einer Open-Border-Politik für die Länder, denen die Menschen davonlaufen.

Siehe auch The Left Used To Be Anti-Open-Border. 

Many Weighty Reasons to Leave the EU (1)

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Ich habe hier folgenden Kommentar eingestellt:

Ich schätze Ihren Blog sehr. 

Darf ich anmerken, dass ich es für verständlich halte, dass ein Demos sich dagegen wendet, sich die Zuwanderungspolitik für das eigene Land von einer fernen Bürokratie (oder Potentaten anderer Länder wie Frau Merkel) diktieren zu lassen.

Die Konsequenzen der Immigration sind vielfältig, bei ihrer Beurteilung sollte man sich nicht auf nur eine Variante einer (unter vielen unterschiedlichen Ansätzen einer) ökonomischen Bewertung beschränken. [Im Übrigen ist eine rein ökonomische Einschätzung von Effekten der Zuwanderung kaum sachgerecht – viele andere Gebiete wollen ebenso berücksichtigt werden. Siehe auch The Left Used To Be Anti-Open-Border.]

Die EU liefert zahlreiche andere schwerwiegende Gründe für einen Austritt aus ihr, die gewiss eine Rolle in der Entscheidungsfindung im Vereinigten Königreich gespielt haben: ihr undemokratischer Charakter und die dazu passende fait-accomply-Politik der einflussreichsten Mitglieder (allen voran Deutschland – die EU sollte ja andere Länder gerade vor deutscher Willkür schützen).

Zudem ist die EU schon in den eigenen Vorabeinschätzungen ihrer Lebensfähigkeit und Zweckmäßigkeit glatt durchgefallen (Werner Report und MacDougall Report) und hat sich dennoch mit denen darin angemahnten Merkmalen einer schweren Fehlkonstruktion (ihr prozyklischer Nicht-Verschuldungs-und-Austeritäts-Fetischismus, der auf dem Rücken von hunderten von Millionen Europäern ausgetragen wird) ohne angemessene demokratische Entscheidungsfindung und dank des Alleingangs von Politikern (die die Möglichkeiten der EU, am Volk vorbeizuregieren, begierig unterstützt haben) selbst inthronisiert.

Die Entscheidung des britischen Demos darauf zu reduzieren, dass sich ein immigrationsfeindlicher Populismus durchgesetzt habe, erscheint mir deshalb verfehlt.

28. November 2018 um 15:39

Fortgesetzt hier.

Doing It With Models

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The Coyote describes how they are doing it with models:

I seldom trust a computer model I did not build and I NEVER trust a model I did build (because I know the flaws and assumptions and plug variables all too well).

By the way, the mention of plug variable reminds me of one of the most interesting studies I have seen on climate modeling, by Kiel in 2007.  It was so damning that I haven't seen anyone do it since (at least get published doing it).  I wrote about it in 2011 at Forbes:

My skepticism was increased when several skeptics pointed out a problem that should have been obvious. The ten or twelve IPCC climate models all had very different climate sensitivities -- how, if they have different climate sensitivities, do they all nearly exactly model past temperatures? If each embodies a correct model of the climate, and each has a different climate sensitivity, only one (at most) should replicate observed data. But they all do. It is like someone saying she has ten clocks all showing a different time but asserting that all are correct (or worse, as the IPCC does, claiming that the average must be the right time). 

The answer to this paradox came in a 2007 study by climate modeler Jeffrey Kiehl. To understand his findings, we need to understand a bit of background on aerosols. Aerosols are man-made pollutants, mainly combustion products, that are thought to have the effect of cooling the Earth's climate. 

What Kiehl demonstrated was that these aerosols are likely the answer to my old question about how models with high sensitivities are able to accurately model historic temperatures. 

When simulating history, scientists add aerosols to their high-sensitivity models in sufficient quantities to cool them to match historic temperatures. Then, since such aerosols are much easier to eliminate as combustion products than is CO2, they assume these aerosols go away in the future, allowing their models to produce enormous amounts of future warming. 

Specifically, when he looked at the climate models used by the IPCC, Kiehl found they all used very different assumptions for aerosol cooling and, most significantly, he found that each of these varying assumptions were exactly what was required to combine with that model's unique sensitivity assumptions to reproduce historical temperatures. In my terminology, aerosol cooling was the plug variable.

When I was active doing computer models for markets and economics, we used the term "plug variable."  Now, I think "goal-seeking" is the hip word, but it is all the same phenomenon.

Money and the Impossibility of Equilibrium

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I commented here:

I wish I could pack as many good points into the space of 13 minutes [see video below]. 

From my very specific point of view, what needs more spelling out is the connection between the ideological compulsion to view the economy as a barter economy (unaffected in its basic relationships by money) and the misconceived idea of a benignly equilibrating system of free markets (capitalism). 

See my  (2) Neutrality of Money — Say's Law and The Need to Believe in a False Theory.

I see a great strength of MMT in its ability to show that money as it operates in a real economy disproves the mechanisms of equilibration asserted by mainstream economics (e. g. loanable funds theory).

IPCC Summary Report 15 — To Actually Look at It

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Climate science is a complex blend of chaotic, dynamic systems. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Summary Report 15 (SR15) attempts to predict the implications of a 1.5°Celsius (C) rise in Global Surface Mean Temperatures (GSMT) over the temperature of the pre-industrial era.  The focus of the report is on the influence of human industrial emissions of carbon dioxide as the assumed driver of climate change and recent warming. Despite the number of scientists involved, science can go astray for no other reason than a singular focus through ‘the same lens.’

Friends of Science Society is critical of the IPCC SR15 report, pointing out the following:

1. We are in the Meghalayan, not the Anthropocene. The IPCC SR15 report claims to view climate change through “the lens of the Anthropocene.” This term is popularly used to describe a modern geological period wherein humans are assumed to have a larger impact on the world than nature. On July 13, 2018, the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) issued a statement that the earth is now in the Meghalayan, a period that began 4,200 years ago.  In response to questions as to why the term “Anthropocene” had not been included, at least for the past 50 years of presumed human influence, the IUGS responded that the term “Anthropocene” has not even been submitted for consideration and that the term has only sociological, not scientific relevance.  The IPCC should not use this ‘lens.’
2. All climate models (simulations) used by the IPCC run ‘too hot’ versus observations. The computer simulations project future warming (thus being the rationale for global warming climate policies) show significantly higher temperatures than what is being observed. Only the Russian climate model and satellite/weather balloon data closely match present temperatures in the lower troposphere. This suggests that most climate models ascribe too great an effect of warming (climate sensitivity) to carbon dioxide. This means the climate models should not be used to set public policy.
3. No temperature can be accurately measured to a precision of less than ±0.1°C. global temperature data is a metric of averaged and adjusted data from many sources, suggesting that a 0.5°C difference in temperature is moot and an arbitrary figure. It does not reference an actual measurement of earth’s temperature; people are being misled.
4. The IPCC claims, in its founding principles, to be policy neutral. However, the IPCC SR15 makes many recommendations regarding Carbon Dioxide Removal Systems (CDRS), most of which are untested and unvetted and proposed with no cost-benefit analysis. Such recommendations are contrary to the purpose of the IPCC and should be disregarded by policymakers. The IPCC should simply report on scientific findings.
5. Rapid decarbonization is impossible and unrealistic as proposed by the IPCC. The world runs on more than 80% fossil fuels for energy; all other forms of power generation, including hydro, nuclear, wind and solar are completely reliant on fossil fuels for their creation. Millions of people would die if rapid decarbonization was implemented. There is no suitable, equitable alternative to fossil fuel energy for modern society. Any official, international body of scientists who are recommending a course of action leading to mass deaths should be disbanded.
6. There is no clear evidence that the changes or warming since the mid-1800s are caused by human use of fossil fuels – though indeed there has been some warming and various perceptible changes in some natural features. Indeed, the range of climate change discussed falls well within natural variation since 1850. Likewise, global temperature records are incomplete, inconsistent, methods/placement of monitoring stations have changed, and temperatures are not monitored at equidistant places at the same time. The validity of the Global Average Surface Temperature is imprecise.
7. The proposed remedies of wind and solar increase carbon dioxide and cause warming. Rather than reduce fossil fuel use or aid in carbon dioxide reduction, wind and solar in fact require vast quantities of fossil fuels for productions, installation, and natural gas back-up – resulting in an increase in carbon dioxide. Wind and solar are ineffective, expensive and cause power grids to destabilize, putting society at risk, harming industry, jobs, and consumers through heat-or-eat poverty. The devices are made of bonded materials and are largely unrecyclable. Wind and solar are contrary to sustainability and environmental goals.
8. Extreme weather events are an integral part of climate. The IPCC’s AR5 report and their SREX special report on extreme weather both make it clear that human effects on climate are not deemed to increase extreme weather events; neither is an increase of carbon dioxide. The IPCC should clarify this with the media rather than allowing the press to engage in terrifying hyperbole.
9. Extremely disproportionate cost-benefit ratio should dissuade policy makers and citizens from following IPCC SR15 recommendations on carbon pricing. The cost of emissions reduction in 2030 is about 95 times the benefit assuming the climate sensitivity to CO2 from the climate models. When using the Lewis and Curry 2015 climate sensitivity estimate determined from measurements, the cost of emissions reduction in 2030 is about 210 times the benefit, however this estimate doesn’t account for natural climate change. Using the best economic model that include benefits of warming and CO2 fertilization of crops, and accounting for the natural warming from 1850, each $880 spent on mitigating a tonne of CO2 would prevent a net benefit of $8, increasing the loss to $888 per tonne of CO2 mitigation. Indeed, Dr. Judith Curry notes that carbon reduction efforts to ‘stabilize climate’ may be futile in the face of natural climate change.
10. The science is not settled. Anderegg et al (2010)[1] revealed that 34% of IPCC contributing authors disagreed with the IPCC declaration on human influence on climate. Hundreds of other scientists have disputed IPCC findings on human-causation in peer-reviewed papers, books, blogs and videos. There is inadequate scientific review by the IPCC of the Nongovernmental International Panel Climate Change reports. There is limited review of natural forces of the sun and planetary dynamics, and natural internal variability like ocean currents, volcanic eruptions and tectonic activity and its correlation to earth’s magnetism (and thus solar influence). Reducing carbon dioxide from human industrial activity is a futile response to the continuous climate changes on earth; adaptation and investment in resilient infrastructure and response is a better use of public funds.

The source.

Faulty Mainstream "Science" — The Case of LNT versus Hormesis

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I support the conclusion expressed in the first sentence of the below excerpt. It is of the utmost importance that political opponents unite in recognising the crisis of science that they are culpable of having fostering.

Government and the constitutionally established political system must acknowledge and put to the forefront of their tasks the duty of government to protect science from political pressures and distortions.

The 2018 elections underscore the need for bipartisan efforts to address scientific frauds that promote and justify ever more stringent regulations – often to the great detriment of people, patients and society. 

In fact, world-renowned toxicology expert Dr. Edward Calabrese has now discovered and documented fraud behind the award of the 1946 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. The prize was given to Hermann Muller for his claimed discovery that even small or infinitesimal amounts of radiation can cause cancer. It is the ridiculous assertion that there is no threshold below which any kind of radiation is safe. 

By contrast, toxicologists have long used actual experiments to establish dose response models and determine what exposure to various kinds of radiation (or chemicals) actually pose cancer (or other) risks for humans.  

Low doses are generally benign, they have found. In many cases, low doses even help animals and humans ward off disease, safeguard bodies against certain chemicals or diseases, or actually cure cancer and other diseases. Higher doses can cause problems, and therefore must be calculated and regulated.  

For example, via a process called hormesis, low levels of radon exposure can protect against cancer; 80 milligrams of aspirin are thought to prevent strokes; and trace amounts of selenium help our bodies counteract the harmful effects of mercury in our blood.  

However, despite this evidence, government agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have followed Muller’s straight-line Linear No Threshold (LNT) model for decades. Besides giving rise to what many say are overly restrictive and even unnecessary regulations, the LNT model has actually harmed patients, by greatly precluding the use of radiation in curative medicine.

The source.

Donning a mummery of "science", political activists and political consumers are blocking the progress that genuine science leads to. Increasingly, society is losing its capability to exercise rational self-control. An unexpected outcome of unprecedented levels of wealth part of which is used to subsidise projects informed by magical thinking.

How Good Is Science Today Really?

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What people do not understand is that science IS NOT AN AUTHORITY but A PROCESS OF CHALLENGING AUTHORITY.

A very primitive, immature and unscientific conception of science has captured the public mind — science as the repository of ultimate truth. The dignity and authority of good science — which is always fallible and hospitable to questioners — is being abused to make people believe in ultimate truths when the purview of genuine science is not final but incessantly evolving knowledge.

By debasing science to the status of "ultimate source of apodictic truth", the charlatanry is invited of those who are eager to impress the seal of unquestionable authority on their agendas, no matter what. Some will act this way because they are dishonest, even quite consciously so; others succumb to dazzlement and self-conceit. Both have lost touch with the scientific method. As science is moved away from its critical-corroborative capacity toward a role of validator of what is socially acceptable,  the type and attitude of those associated with it shift away from the profile of the soberly objective researcher toward the zealot — high priest or humble believer — of socially fashionable articles of faith.

At some point the latter type is so predominant in terms of power and numbers that "scientists" no longer understand the point of science, having lost the capacity for rational self-control. At this point, a modern society tilts back into an age of mythical thinking.

The source.

Health Effects of Infrasound

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The lecturer presents the subject very clearly.

Why Is So Little Attention Being Paid to the Physics of CO2?

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I feel that the empirical evidence and many more arguments suggest that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) is an erroneous hypothesis that is certainly not fit to support large scale projects purportedly stopping or reducing apocalyptic weather and climate effect. While being mostly more sympathetic to skeptics of the hyped scare, I keep wondering why the skeptics shun criticism of CAGW based on the physics of CO2. 

Loosely speaking, my impression is that the physical foundations are little understood both by alarmists and skeptics.

Apparently climate "science" is at best a very immature fledgling subject of which it is misleading to speak of as a science similar to highly developed Newtonian physics. A budding torso-"science" attracts many hypothesis sooner or later to be filtered out. A torso-"science" is a magnet for wrong-headed ideas, charlatanry and opportunistic political abuse.

Below find another example of an argument challenging CAGW on the basis of fundamental physics. I am not in a position to judge whether it is pertinent or wrong and confused.

Still further below is a comment in German from a friend of mine. I agree with her that the author's claim that leading skeptics — by virtue of entertaining their own theory of a greenhouse effect — prove to be really alarmists in disguise is abstruse. Discussions with my friend yielded the result that we are not even able to establish whether other aspects of atmospheric physics might render his refutation invalid.

All in all, we feel there is a dire need to explain the physical foundations of the atmospheric sciences (or the mix of subjects most effective in explaining the climate). Scientifically sincere elucidations will not come from the alarmists, as they possess absolute knowledge of the "problem" and know the "only and ideal solutions" thanks to being zealous members of a climate church. I hope the skeptics will make the physics of CO2 more transparent. This might add maturity to climate "science", so that unscientific and anti-scientific components will find it harder to become part of received wisdom.

Below, I quote from here.

Here is the IPCC definition of the greenhouse effect, upon which climate alarm and its socially, politically, economically and scientifically destructive movement is based: 

Note that radiant emission from a cooler atmosphere is adding as heat to a warmer surface below it, in an attempt to explain why the surface is warmer than the cooler atmosphere. 

Now consider the definition of heat, from “Thermodynamics”, G. J. V. Wylen, John Wiley & Sons, 1960: 

“Heat is defined as the form of energy that is transferred across a boundary by virtue of a temperature difference or temperature gradient. Implied in this definition is the very important fact that a body never contains heat, but that heat is identified as heat only as it crosses the boundary. Thus, heat is a transient phenomenon. If we consider the hot block of copper as a system and the cold water in the beaker as another system, we recognize that originally neither system contains any heat (they do contain energy, of course.) When the copper is placed in the water and the two are in thermal communication, heat is transferred from the copper to the water, until equilibrium of temperature is established. At that point we no longer have heat transfer, since there is no temperature difference. Neither of the systems contains any heat at the conclusion of the process. It also follows that heat is identified at the boundaries of the system, for heat is defined as energy being transferred across the system boundary.” 

Thus, there is no heat transfer from the atmosphere to the surface.  Thus, the climate science greenhouse effect is incommensurate to the modern definition of heat.  Thus, the climate science definition of the greenhouse effect, upon which alarmism and its associated socially, politically, and economically regressive and scientifically destructive political movement is based, is false.  Thus, climate alarm and much of the entire field of climate science itself, is in fundamental error. 

At this point a secondary argument for a radiative greenhouse effect arises, where emission from a cooler object “slows the emission” from a warmer object thus making the warmer object warmer still.  This is called the “blanket analogy”.
However, given the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, where an object’s emission is proportional to its temperature and given its emissivity: 

F = σεT4 

and given the definition of radiant heat transfer: 

Q = Fhot – Fcool = σThot4 – σTcool4 

then one can see that one cannot prevent something from emitting at the temperature that it is at.  That is, emission from a cool object does not slow the emission from the hot object. 

In other words, you cannot prevent something from emitting at the temperature that it is at.  And of course, again, radiant emission from a cooler object does not transfer heat to a warmer object. 

A blanket is about preventing convection, and has nothing to do with radiation.  And there is no stopping radiation – everything emits at the temperature it has acquired and you can’t stop it from emitting at the temperature that it is.  Whereas, one can prevent what would be open convection.  And so this alternative version of the radiative greenhouse effect is as logically baseless as the original IPCC one.  Radiant emission can’t be prevented, whereas convection can be prevented; therefore it is a false analogy.

And here my friends comment:

... ich glaube, der Schreiber will sagen:

die Klimakonzepte sowohl der Skeptiker als auch der Klimaretter basieren auf falschen physikalischen Annahmen.

Vermutlich will er sagen, dass es gar keine Möglichkeit gibt, an der Erdtemperatur zu "schrauben", weil sich die Erdtemperatur an die Weltraumtemperatur anpassen wird. Es lässt sich nicht verhindern, dass sich Wärme (oder Energie) vom wärmeren Objekt zum kälteren bewegt. Die Art und Weise, in welchem Maß dieser Austausch stattfindet lässt sich nicht beeinflussen, auch nicht, wenn man eine Art Wintermantel oder eine Decke um die Erde legt. Der Mantel oder die Decke verhindert nicht die Strahlung von warmen Körpern und die Angleichung/Übergänge an die kältere Umgebung. Ich denke, der Autor will damit sagen: es kann doch gar keinen Treibhauseffekt geben.

Dann fragt er sich: warum übernehmen die Kritiker die physikalisch falschen Annahmen der Retter? Warum zeigen sie nicht die Absurdität der Annahmen der Retter und greifen stattdessen deren falsches Konzept auf? Wollen sie letzten Endes doch eine[n] Klima-Alarm?

Der letzten Textabschnitt von CB und die Folgerungen, die der Schreiber daraus zieht, scheinen mir etwas fragwürdig, bin mir aber auch nicht ganz sicher, was er damit will. Anscheinend will er sagen: die Wahrheit in der Wissenschaft ist letzten Endes immer einfach (was nicht stimmt - ich ... habe früher auch so gedacht, aber bei Dir gelernt, dass das ein Trugschluss ist), auch wenn der Schreiber vermutlich mit seinem Fazit recht hat:
die Physik und in seinem Fall die Wärmelehre verändert sich nicht, also können wir davon ausgehen, dass die Theorie dahinter stimmt, während sich die Klima-Treibhaus-Theorien ständig ändern, anpassen, verschieben.

Zusammenfassend:

Mir scheint, der Schreiber reduziert das Treibhausthema auf die Wärmelehre, weiss nicht, ob man das so machen kann.


Liebe Grüße ...