http://budiansky.blogspot.com/2010/09/you-may-be-right.html
FWIW, last night i went to the first of the three lectures being given by Lord Stern: the audience seemed very receptive, & he avoided using the expression “denier”, but was somehow (IMHO) unimpressive – admittedly he had a big job to do in only one hour. PowerPoint slides outlining all three lectures are expected to be available on UoA website on Monday 13 Sept. No mention of video of the lectures being made available, though the lectures are being filmed & “streamed” live to Victoria uni.
regards
m
Some marketing strategists reduced the information content of the messages given to the public and introduced popular symbols to indicate what they wanted us to believe was threatened by climate change.
For over 5 years we have been bombarded with images of polar bears, hurricanes, flooded cities, icebergs calving, drought-stricken deserts, and the like. Perhaps the most symbolic representation wasn’t even a picture, but a PowerPoint slide of paleoclimatic temperature reconstructions now famous as the Hockey Stick Chart.
Those symbols all have one thing in common. They were mistakenly used. As has been cataloged here and elsewhere, these ‘signature’ issues were either blown out of proportion or presented falsely.
Read further at:
“…How we make an impact
Another “sustainability” organisation that believes democracy isn’t sustainable?
regards
m
— how to restore “climate change” as a top global priority after the fiasco of last year’s Copenhagen summit;
— how to continue to try to make global redistribution of wealth the real basis of that climate agenda, and widen the discussion further to encompass the idea of “global public goods”;…………………….
Read the full article at:
The Govt. has legislated a new employment opportunity available to all who wish to avail themselves of it. The terms are; Employment will be for 40 hours per week for 25 years. The hourly rate is set at $10 for two years, after which market forces will determine payment rates. There is potential for huge variations in the hourly rate. It could go as high as $100 per hour. You will receive one payment a year. At the end of your employment term you will have two choices. You may continue your employment, but receive no more payments. If you choose this option, then either you or one of your descendants will be required to continue working for nothing. Forever. The other option is to change your career. At which point you will receive a bill for all hours worked at your current hourly rate. Hopefully $100 per hour. This will be 52,000 hours at $100 equals $5,200,000.
Do we have any takers for this new employment venture?
If you think this is being ridiculous, you would be right. Yet this is exactly what the govt. has done to forestry with the carbon credit scheme.
There is a saying; you can fool some of the people all of the time, you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
The govt is trying to fool all of the people all of the time and has failed.
Friedman rubbished the “green job ” argument donkeys years ago.
But this from DPF makes many good points that we should note.Spain, for example, should have thought before diving in at the deep end.
And, as is now evident in the USofA, Obama’s “green jobs” are either governmental (mostly temporary) or illusory. That “progressive-led” economy now has one in six ( 1 in 6) dependent upon government support.
(H/t to “scientificanomaly”, commenting on James Delingpole’s Tele article: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100052953/did-lord-oxburgh-of-persil-lie-to-the-commons-science-committee/. Pity about scientificanomaly’s choice of avatar / icon / thingy.)
regards
m
Come and join Rodney and John Boscawen at a public meeting to discuss the ETS and its implications for the New Zealand economy. New Zealand’s scheme is without equal and we are being charged for the privilege.
7:00 pm, Monday, 27 September
Royal Akarana Yacht Club, 8 Tamaki Drive, Okahu Bay
I wanted to bring to your attention an AGU session that Steve Sherwood and I are co-convening. I wanted to encourage you to submit results to this session if have something relevant. we’re looking simulations or theory or data that push the envelope what we think of as Earth’s climate. [Emphasis added]
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this;
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1
The sixth would pay $3
The seventh would pay $7
The eighth would pay $12
The ninth would pay $18
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59
So, that’s what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball.
“Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20”. Drinks for the ten men would now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.
So the first four men were unaffected.
They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men – the paying customers?
How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?
They realised that $20 divided by six is $3.33.
But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.
So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.
And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% saving).
The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% saving).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% saving).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% saving).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% saving).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.
“I only got a dollar out of the $20 saving,” declared the sixth man.
He pointed to the tenth man, “but he got $10!”
“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!”
“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back, when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!”
“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison, “we didn’t get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!”
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and government ministers, is how our tax system works.
The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction..
Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore.
In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics.
For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.