Ephemera

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( Fair Use Excerpt )
Full story: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aMu0qWjYtbA4

California Electric-Cars Push May Raise Power Costs
By Alan Ohnsman and Mark Chediak

Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- California’s push to lead U.S. sales of electric cars may result in higher power rates for consumers in the state, as a growing number of rechargeable vehicles forces utilities to pay for grid upgrades.

The autos’ effect on electricity fees is being reviewed by California’s Public Utilities Commission this month as the most populous U.S. state will require Toyota Motor Corp., General Motors Co., Honda Motor Co., Ford Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. to sell more plug-in vehicles from late 2011.

Power companies including Southern California Edison, the state’s largest, have to install new transformers and meters to handle greater demand and prevent blackouts when autos are being charged at outlets. Utility rates will rise to cover the costs, said Travis Miller, a Morningstar Inc. analyst in Chicago.

“If you look at the kind of money that will be needed for a full smart grid and support for electric vehicles, then you are talking about a substantial amount,” Miller said in a phone interview. The spending may total “multiple billions” of dollars over a decade or more, he said.

From model years 2012 through 2014, the largest carmakers by volume in California must sell about 60,000 plug-in hybrids and electric cars combined, according to the state Air Resources Board. President Barack Obama is aiming for 1 million plug-in cars on U.S. roads by 2015 to curb tailpipe emissions and cut dependence on foreign oil.

System Overload
Rosemead, California-based Edison International, the owner of Southern California Edison, has identified the city of Santa Monica as a community with many potential battery-car customers that may require transformer upgrades.

A typical Santa Monica circuit, which serves about 10 households, may be overloaded should two or three of those customers charge vehicles simultaneously, even if they do so overnight during off-peak hours, Ted Craver, Edison’s chief executive officer, said in a phone interview on Oct. 20.

While surplus power is available at night at cheaper rates, the grid needs adjustments to handle such charging, Craver said. For example, additional or larger transformers may be needed in neighborhoods with numerous plug-in car owners.

“If all those people do it at off hours, in the middle of the night, a lot of our system is designed so the transformers cool down at night,” Craver said. “That’s part of how they are able to function at full capacity during the day.”

Electricity Rates
Edison, PG&E Corp., owner of Pacific Gas & Electric Co., and Sempra Energy’s San Diego Gas & Electric have said in filings with the state utilities commission they’ll have to make infrastructure investments related to plug-ins, without proving specific figures.

Expenses will start next year for plug-in “readiness efforts, and will require a reasonable process for seeking recovery of these costs,” Edison said in its filing.

Vehicle charging may wear out electric distribution equipment faster at some locations, Mark Duvall, director of electric transportation research at the Electric Power Research Institute, said at an event in San Francisco yesterday.

“It will raise costs and make rates go up” Duvall said...

 

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http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/10/alarmism-contra-science

The science of deceit
by Bob Carter, Ph.D.
October 26, 2009

Science is about simplicity

A well-accepted aphorism about science, in the context of difference of opinion between two points of view, is “Madam, you are entitled to your own interpretation, but not to your own facts”.

The world stoker of the fires of global warming alarmism, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), cleverly suborns this dictum in two ways.

First, the IPCC accepts advice from influential groups of scientists who treat the data that underpins their published climate interpretations (collected, of course, using public research funds) as their own private property, and refuse to release it to other scientists.

Thus, confronted in 1996 with a request that he provide a U.S. peer-review referee with a copy of the data that underpinned a research paper that he had submitted, U.K. Hadley Climate Research Centre scientist Tom Wigley responded:

First, it is entirely unnecessary to have original “raw” data in order to review a scientific document. I know of no case at all in which such data were required by or provided to a referee ….. Second, while the data in question [model output from the U.K. Hadley Centre’s climate model] were generated using taxpayer money, this was U.K. taxpayer money. U.S. scientists therefore have no a priori right to such data. Furthermore, these data belong to individual scientists who produced them, not to the IPCC, and it is up to those scientists to decide who they give their data to.​

In the face of such attitudes, which treat the established mores of scientific trust and method with contempt, it is scarcely surprising that it took Canadian statistics expert Steve McIntyre many years to get the primary data released that was used by another Hadley Centre scientist, Keith Briffa, in his published tree-ring reconstructions of past temperature from the Urals region, northern hemisphere. When he finally forced the release of the relevant data, McIntyre quickly proceeded to slay a second climate hockey-stick dragon which - like the first such beast fashioned by U.S. scientist Michael Mann, and widely promulgated by the IPCC – turned out to be based on faulty statistical methodology (see summary by Ross McKitrick here: http://www.financialpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=2056988 ).

A variant on this, along “the dog ate my homework” path, also involves the Hadley Centre – which is the primary science provider of global temperature statistics to the IPCC. Faced with requests from outside scientists for the provision of the raw temperature data so that scientific audit checks could be undertaken, Hadley’s Phil Jones recently asserted that parts of the raw data used to reconstruct their global temperature curve for the period before about 1980 cannot be provided to outsiders because it has been lost or destroyed. In other words, it is now impossible to conduct an independent audit of the Hadley temperature curve for 1860-2008, on which the IPCC has based an important part of its alarmist global warming advice.

So much for data perversions. The second type of common distortion of normal scientific practice by the IPCC and its supporters concerns not data but hypotheses – which IPCC likes to define in its own way to suit its own ends. This attitude often manifests itself in the fashion expressed in a recent letter sent to me, viz:

Proponents of AGW claim that their theory is supported by peer reviewed literature whilst the case against it is not. This is a very effective argument and, although Solomon's book The Deniers goes some way to counter it, I am not aware of an equally effective refutation. If there is one I would be most grateful if you could point me to it.​

In an Australian variation of this, Greg Combet, assistant to climate Minister Penny Wong, earlier this year asserted with blatant inaccuracy that “we use only peer reviewed science and our opposition doesn’t”. Other IPCC sycophants phrase it slightly differently, such as: "if you climate sceptics had a scientific point of view it would have been published in reputable, peer-reviewed journals".

Statements such as these all reflect a fundamental lack of understanding about the way that science works. They also exemplify the way in which climate alarmists always seek to frame the debate in ways that delivers them control, especially by clever choice of language (clean energy; climate change instead of global warming; carbon dioxide is a pollutant instead of a beneficial trace gas, etc.), or, in this case, by framing a hypothesis for testing that suits their political ends rather than Science’s ends.

If you accept at face value questions and comments like the ones enumerated above, you fall into a carefully laid climate alarmist trap. For the question “why are there no papers in peer-reviewed journals that disprove the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming” is predicated, as is all related IPCC writing, on faulty science logic; specifically, it erects a wrong null hypothesis.

Scientists erect hypotheses to test based upon the fundamental science assumption of parsimony, or simplicity, sometimes grandly referred to as Occam’s Razor. That is to say, in seeking to explain matters of observation or experiment, a primary underlying principle is that the simplest explanation be sought; extraneous or complicating factors of interpretation, such as “extraterrestrials did it”, are only invoked when substantive evidence exists for such a complication.

Concerning the climate change that we observe around us today – which, importantly, is occurring at similar rates and magnitudes to that known to have occurred throughout the historical and geological past - the simplest (and therefore null) hypothesis, is that "the climate change observed today is natural unless and until evidence accrues otherwise".

In regard to which, first, no such evidence has emerged. And, second, like any null hypothesis, that about modern climate change is there to be tested, as it has been. There are literally tens of thousands of peer-reviewed papers in major scientific journals that contain observations, data, experiments and theoretical reasoning that are consistent with the null hypothesis, which has therefore yet to be falsified (but, of course, one day might be).

The onus is therefore on Penny Wong and her scientists to provide some “evidence otherwise”. To give a clue how hard that task is, note that since 1988 (when the IPCC was created) western nations have spent more than $100 billion, and employed thousands of scientists, in attempts to measure the human signal in the global temperature record. The search has failed. Though no scientist doubts that humans influence climate at local level - causing both warmings (urban heat island effect) and coolings (land-use changes) - no definitive evidence has yet been discovered that a human influence is measurable, let alone dangerous, at global level. Rather, the human signal is lost in the noise of natural climate variation.

That the correct null hypothesis is the simplest hypothesis is, of course, no reason why other more complex hypotheses cannot be erected for testing. For instance, should you wish to test (as the IPCC should) the idea that "human carbon dioxide emissions are causing dangerous global warming", then there are several ways that that can be done.

The result, long ago, has been the falsification of the dangerous human-caused warming hypothesis. Failed tests include: that global cooling has occurred since 1998 despite an increase in carbon dioxide of 5%; the lack of detailed correlation between the carbon dioxide and temperature records over the last 100 years; consideration of cause and effect timing of past carbon dioxide and temperature levels in ice core records; the absence of the model-predicted temperature hotspot high in the tropical troposphere; the low sensitivity of climate to carbon dioxide forcing as judged against empirical tests; and the demonstrable failure of computer GCMs to predict future climate.

These matters, and that the dangerous warming hypothesis fails numerous empirical tests, have been described in many places. Such writings, whether in refereed journals or not, are simply disparaged or ignored by those who wish to pursue the alarmist IPCC line.

It bears repeating that the onus is on Minister Wong, or her advisory IPCC scientists, to provide any evidence that the null hypothesis regarding modern climate change is false. Because she cannot do so, the clever trick is used of inverting the null hypothesis to demand that climate rationalist scientists demonstrate that human-cased global warming is not occurring.

Perhaps none of this would matter particularly were we dealing only with a squabble amongst scientists. But when ministers in our governments write, as did the Queensland Minister for Climate Change recently, that “The Queensland Government, along with the Australian Government and governments around the world, supports the findings of the IPCC”, it becomes a critical matter of necessity to understand that, in addition to being political in the first place, IPCC advice is also based upon faulty, indeed manipulative, science practice.

As independent scientific advisors to Senator Fielding have shown, the IPCC-derived science advice that the Australian Government is using as the basis for its carbon dioxide tax legislation is utterly flawed. This finding has yet to be rebutted.

Senators who vote for the second version of the misbegotten and misnamed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme bill will be supporting strongly harmful legislation that is based upon faulty science. Thereby, they will be abandoning their duty of care for the welfare of the Australian people.

DISCLOSURE: Bob Carter is one of the four independent climate scientists who, at Senator Fielding’s request, undertook a due diligence audit of the global warming advice being provided to Climate Minister Penny Wong by her Department. The three other scientists were David Evans, Stewart Franks and Bill Kininmonth.

 

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http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/10/an-expensive-urban-legend/

An Expensive Urban Legend
October 24th, 2009
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.


About.com describes an “urban legend” as an apocryphal (of questionable authenticity), secondhand story, told as true and just plausible enough to be believed, about some horrific…series of events….it’s likely to be framed as a cautionary tale. Whether factual or not, an urban legend is meant to be believed. In lieu of evidence, however, the teller of an urban legend is apt to rely on skillful storytelling and reference to putatively trustworthy sources.

I contend that the belief in human-caused global warming as a dangerous event, either now or in the future, has most of the characteristics of an urban legend. Like other urban legends, it is based upon an element of truth. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas whose concentration in the atmosphere is increasing, and since greenhouse gases warm the lower atmosphere, more CO2 can be expected, at least theoretically, to result in some level of warming.

But skillful storytelling has elevated the danger from a theoretical one to one of near-certainty. The actual scientific basis for the plausible hypothesis that humans could be responsible for most recent warming is contained in the cautious scientific language of many scientific papers. Unfortunately, most of the uncertainties and caveats are then minimized with artfully designed prose contained in the Summary for Policymakers (SP) portion of the report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This Summary was clearly meant to instill maximum alarm from a minimum amount of direct evidence.

Next, politicians seized upon the SP, further simplifying and extrapolating its claims to the level of a “climate crisis”. Other politicians embellished the tale even more by claiming they “saw” global warming in Greenland as if it was a sighting of Sasquatch, or that they felt it when they fly in airplanes.

Just as the tales of marauding colonies of alligators living in New York City sewers are based upon some kernel of truth, so too is the science behind anthropogenic global warming. But there is a big difference between reports of people finding pet alligators that have escaped their owners, versus city workers having their limbs torn off by roving colonies of subterranean monsters.

In the case of global warming, the “putatively trustworthy sources” would be the consensus of the world’s scientists. The scientific consensus, after all, says that global warming is…is what? Is happening? Is severe? Is manmade? Is going to burn the Earth up if we do not act? It turns out that those who claim consensus either do not explicitly state what that consensus is about, or they make up something that supports their preconceived notions.

If the consensus is that the presence of humans on Earth has some influence on the climate system, then I would have to even include myself in that consensus. After all, the same thing can be said of the presence of trees on Earth, and hopefully we have at least the same rights as trees do. But too often the consensus is some vague, fill-in-the-blank, implied assumption where the definition of “climate change” includes the phrase “humans are evil”.

It is a peculiar development that scientific truth is now decided through voting. A relatively recent survey of climate scientists who do climate research found that 97.4% agreed that humans have a “significant” effect on climate. But the way the survey question was phrased borders on meaninglessness. To a scientist, “significant” often means non-zero. The survey results would have been quite different if the question was, “Do you believe that natural cycles in the climate system have been sufficiently researched to exclude them as a potential cause of most of our recent warming?”

And it is also a good bet that 100% of those scientists surveyed were funded by the government only after they submitted research proposals which implicitly or explicitly stated they believed in anthropogenic global warming to begin with. If you submit a research proposal to look for alternative explanations for global warming (say, natural climate cycles), it is virtually guaranteed you will not get funded. Is it any wonder that scientists who are required to accept the current scientific orthodoxy in order to receive continued funding, then later agree with that orthodoxy when surveyed? Well, duh.

In my experience, the public has the mistaken impression that a lot of climate research has gone into the search for alternative explanations for warming. They are astounded when I tell them that virtually no research has been performed into the possibility that warming is just part of a natural cycle generated within the climate system itself.

Too often the consensus is implied to be that global warming is so serious that we must do something now in the form of public policy to avert global catastrophe. What? You don’t believe that there are alligators in New York City sewer system? How can you be so unconcerned about the welfare of city workers that have to risk their lives by going down there every day? What are you, some kind of Holocaust-denying, Neanderthal flat-Earther?

It makes complete sense that in this modern era of scientific advances and inventions that we would so readily embrace a compelling tale of global catastrophe resulting from our own excesses. It’s not a new genre of storytelling, of course, as there were many B-movies in the 1950s whose horror themes were influenced by scientists’ development of the atomic bomb.

Our modern equivalent is the 2004 movie, “Day After Tomorrow”, in which all kinds of physically impossible climatic events occur in a matter of days. In one scene, super-cold stratospheric air descends to the Earth’s surface, instantly freezing everything in its path. The meteorological truth, however, is just the opposite. If you were to bring stratospheric air down to the surface, heating by compression would make it warmer than the surrounding air, not colder.

I’m sure it is just coincidence that “Day After Tomorrow” was directed by Roland Emmerich, who also directed the 1996 movie “Independence Day,” in which an alien invasion nearly exterminates humanity. After all, what’s the difference? Aliens purposely killing off humans, or humans accidentally killing off humans? Either way, we all die.

But a global warming catastrophe is so much more believable. After all, climate change does happen, right? So why not claim that ALL climate change is now the result of human activity? And while we are at it, let’s re-write climate history so that we get rid of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice age, with a new ingenious hockey stick-shaped reconstruction of past temperatures that makes it look like climate never changed until the 20th Century? How cool would that be?

The IPCC thought it was way cool…until it was debunked, after which it was quietly downgraded in the IPCC reports from the poster child for anthropogenic global warming, to one possible interpretation of past climate.

And let’s even go further and suppose that the climate system is so precariously balanced that our injection of a little bit of that evil plant food, carbon dioxide, pushes our world over the edge, past all kinds of imaginary tipping points, with the Greenland ice sheet melting away, and swarms of earthquakes being the price of our indiscretions.

In December, hundreds of bureaucrats from around the world will once again assemble, this time in Copenhagen, in their attempts to forge a new international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. And as has been the case with every other UN meeting of its type, the participants simply assume that the urban legend is true. Indeed, these politicians and governmental representatives need it to be true. Their careers and political power now depend upon it.

And the fact that they hold their meetings in all of the best tourist destinations in the world, enjoying the finest exotic foods, suggests that they do not expect to ever have to be personally inconvenienced by whatever restrictions they try to impose on the rest of humanity.

If you present these people with evidence that the global warming crisis might well be a false alarm, you are rewarded with hostility and insults, rather than expressions of relief. The same can be said for most lay believers of the urban legend. I say “most” because I once encountered a true believer who said he hoped my research into the possibility that climate change is mostly natural will eventually be proved correct.

Unfortunately, just as we are irresistibly drawn to disasters – either real ones on the evening news, or ones we pay to watch in movie theaters – the urban legend of a climate crisis will persist, being believed by those whose politics and worldviews depend upon it. Only when they finally realize what a new treaty will cost them in loss of freedoms and standard of living will those who oppose our continuing use of carbon-based energy begin to lose their religion.

 

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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/64/GAO_Slide.png

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0b/Medicare_%26_Social_Security_Deficits_Chart.png

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b3/Medicare_and_Medicaid_GDP_Chart.png

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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a4U.RNBZ6lJw

Governments Never in Default Pay More Interest Than Companies
By Darrell Preston

Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- California is the world’s eighth- largest economy. Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc. is the largest U.S.-based deepwater oil driller.

The state known for its wine, Hollywood and earthquakes collected about $80 billion in taxes in the year ended June 30, compared with $3.6 billion in revenue for Houston-based Diamond. The two have similar credit ratings, and the state can rely on its taxing authority to address deficits. Still, the company got a better deal than California when each borrowed money this month.

Even though California has never defaulted on its debt, the state paid 1.5 percentage point more in interest -- a difference that translates into about $785 million in additional cost for taxpayers over the 30-year life of $1.75 billion in Build America Bonds.

California and so many of the 50 states aren’t helping themselves get a better rate, partly because they’re not requiring municipalities to file timely financial information. The disclosure that state and local governments provide to investors is in the “dark ages,” Gary Pollack, of Deutsche Bank AG’s Private Wealth Management unit in New York, said in an interview.

“The municipal bond market is the last bastion of hidden information,” said Timothy Koch, chairman of the finance department at the Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina in Columbia.

Public officials financing in the dark in the $2.8 trillion tax-exempt bond market is costing U.S. taxpayers as much as $6 billion a year, according to data and interviews from more than a dozen states, while the worst recession since the Great Depression forces municipal governments to cut spending or raise taxes.

Exempt From Laws
Federal securities laws that exempt states, cities and school districts from disclosure rules that apply to corporations created an information vacuum that doesn’t help states get the favorable terms they deserve, and boosts yields on public debt issues. A 2008 study found that as many as 25 percent of municipal borrowers go three years or longer without giving investors any information.

“When disclosure is weak or sometimes nonexistent, it allows deals to come at more attractive yields,” said Michael Camarella, portfolio manager on the Rochester, New York-based team that manages about $29 billion in municipal bonds for OppenheimerFunds Inc. “I think it’s a great thing. I wouldn’t want to see it change.”

Kentucky’s Issue
Kentucky taxpayers might. The state sold $209.2 million of Build America Bonds in June at rates of more than 6 percent, and Kenneth Monaghan didn’t order any. Monaghan, who helps manage $35.9 billion as a partner with Rogge Global Partners Inc. in New York, said he avoids state and local government debt because issuers don’t provide enough financial information.

Greater disclosure and information might have saved Kentucky at least $8 million over the 20-year life of the bonds, according to trading records that show interest rates on some bonds dropped more than 30 basis points in less than a month. A basis point is one one-hundredth of a percentage point. The amount would be enough to buy textbooks for 5,400 public high school students each year.

“The interest rates on Build America Bonds should be lower,” said Peter Coffin, president of Boston-based Breckinridge Capital Advisors Inc., which oversees $10 billion of bonds. “Buyers are uncomfortable with the perceived lack of disclosure in the municipal bond market.”

Corporations and Municipalities
Federal law requires publicly held companies to issue quarterly financial statements, details of pending litigation and financial plans. Municipal borrowers must present an annual financial statement and update investors on so-called material events, such as missed payments, instances in which reserve funds are tapped, credit-rating changes or other circumstances that might affect the debt.

California gives investors more information than it has to, said Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for state Treasurer Bill Lockyer.

“The notion that California pays more to borrow because of inadequate disclosure is complete bunk,” he said in an interview. The novelty of Build America Bonds, which have been marketed only since April, may explain why some taxable investors avoided them, he said.

“Issuers may be paying some premium for that newness,” he said.

There’s no penalty for localities that refuse to disclose. Many localities fail to file, according to a 2008 study by DPC Data Inc., a Fort Lee, New Jersey-based company that tracks and supplies municipal disclosure to investors. About a fourth of issuers didn’t provide documentation for three or more years, the company found, led by borrowers with the riskiest credit.

Concentrated Problems
“California, the largest issuing state, has concentrated disclosure problems in the most sectors, particularly economic development, school districts, higher education, local governments, multifamily housing, water utilities and sewer/wastewater treatment,” according to the DPC study.

The study found that 1,771 of a sample of 4,230 California issuers were delinquent on disclosure, almost 42 percent.

While some tax-exempt issuers voluntarily present detailed information about their risk of losing money from interest-rate swaps or other hedging, they’re not required to. Swaps backfired for scores of municipalities during the past two years, costing billions in new debt as they paid banks and insurers to unwind the transactions.

Jefferson County’s Debacle
Jefferson County, Alabama, did several such transactions from 2002 to 2004 as it refinanced more than $3 billion in sewer debt. The financing fell apart as the swaps -- contracts in which officials agreed to exchange payments with banks to hedge against increases in borrowing costs -- backfired and some variable rates more than tripled.

Now the county is on the edge of bankruptcy, and the former president of the county commission, Larry P. Langford, the current mayor of Birmingham, is on trial in federal district court in Tuscaloosa. Langford is charged with accepting Rolex watches, clothing and cash from an investment banker who received $7.1 million from county debt transactions.

As municipal issuers embraced swaps tied to variable-rate debt, they shunned competition in selling their bonds. This year, through September, public officials issued debt without seeking bids for more than 85 percent of the $308.9 billion in new issues, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

That’s up from 17 percent in 1970 and 68 percent in 1982, according to a 1983 report by the Government Accountability Office.

Pushing Costs
Studies of sale methods, including a 2005 review by the Missouri state auditor, found that, on average and all else equal, negotiated bond sales result in higher borrowing costs than auctions, in which the market determines yields. Most findings have put the difference at 17 to 48 basis points, according to a 2008 article published in the Municipal Finance Journal by Mark D. Robbins and William Simonsen, professors at the University of Connecticut at Storrs.

The no-bid deals and private discussions further limit transparency and present what Christopher “Kit” Taylor, a former top regulator, called “an irresistible invitation to corruption.”

When borrowing, municipalities aren’t obligated by law to provide even such basic financial data as other debts and income that consumer borrowers must disclose.

Regulatory reform that Congress is considering, including an oversight agency for consumer finance, can help bring the market for tax-exempt securities into the open, said Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Demanding Transparency
“We need a worldview change about transparency and that includes municipal finance,” Warren said in an interview this month.

“I believe the single biggest change a consumer finance protection agency would make is to give people financial products they understand, and once that happens they’ll never go back,” she said. “They’ll demand it in other areas, areas such as municipal finance.”

Congress is also considering new financial regulations for public borrowers, including proposals to limit political contributions to local officials from financial advisers and to require credit rating companies to judge municipalities on the same criteria as corporations.

Yet any attempts to improve disclosure standards will encounter opposition from public officials, who say making changes would cost too much, said J. Ben Watkins, director of bond finance for the state of Florida.

High Cost
Providing the same sort of information that corporations do would cost hundreds of millions of dollars nationwide, Watkins said. Most state and local governments already disclose as much information as corporations, or more, he said.

Academic studies suggest that municipalities’ savings could reach billions of dollars. Better disclosure could reduce borrowers’ interest costs as much as by 20 basis points, or 0.2 percentage point, according to Lisa Fairchild, professor and chairwoman of the finance department at Loyola College in Maryland, in Baltimore.

Applied to the entire tax-exempt bond market, that’s $5.6 billion a year -- enough to repave a city street 37,086 miles (59,671 kilometers) long, based on Durham, North Carolina’s average cost of $151,000 per mile. Such a street could circle the earth almost 1 ½ times.

Part of any savings would result from forcing issuers with poor disclosure habits out of the market, improving municipal bonds’ image, Fairchild said.

Rules With Teeth
“If you have disclosure rules with teeth, the riskier issuers may not try to come to market,” she said. “They might get scared away if they knew they had to disclose.”

Build America Bonds, part of President Barack Obama’s economic recovery package, afford a close comparison between municipal issuers and corporate borrowers because interest on them is taxable, as is interest on corporate debt.

Most municipal issues are tax-exempt, a benefit that costs the U.S. Treasury about $36 billion a year and induces investors to accept lower yields for them.

Public borrowers will pay at least $6.1 billion more -- discounted to present value -- over the life of their Build America Bonds than their corporate counterparts will for borrowing, according to an analysis by Bloomberg. Data from Moody’s Investors Service show that corporations are 98 times more likely to default over a 10-year period.

Expected Savings
California was expected to save $350 million using Build America Bonds instead of tax-exempt debt, said Dresslar, the treasurer’s spokesman. Obama’s program provides a 35 percent subsidy for borrowing expenses, essentially transferring that cost to the U.S. Treasury.

And while he doesn’t dispute California’s unfavorable borrowing terms compared with similarly rated companies, he said the gap isn’t because of inadequate disclosure. California provides investors with more than enough information, from required filings to additional financial data on its Web site, Dresslar said.

As the state struggled to close a $26 billion deficit, giving IOUs to creditors in June, investors couldn’t get information they needed, said Richard Ciccarone, chief research officer for Oak Brook, Illinois-based McDonnell Investment Management, which oversees about $11 billion.

“We’d call California and we couldn’t find out how much they had set aside for debt service,” Ciccarone said in an interview. “They always talk like there’s plenty of money. How do we verify this?”

Answered Questions
Dresslar said that on conference calls, state officials answer investors’ questions, including queries about how much cash California has. He also disputed the notion that corporations provide investors with up-to-the-minute details on their cash position.

Municipals investors are becoming more insistent on verifying information, said Taylor, the former head of the Alexandria, Virginia-based Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, which governs dealers that underwrite and sell bonds in the market.

“The world changed last year,” he said. “You can no longer issue a bazillion dollars of debt and expect investors to take it on blind faith.”

Municipal bond defaults exploded to $7.8 billion in 2008 from $348 million in 2007, according to Miami Lakes, Florida- based Income Securities Advisors Inc., which tracks distressed securities. So far this year, defaults total $4.2 billion. Menasha, Wisconsin, Vallejo, California and 105 community development districts in Florida have defaulted or drawn on reserves since May 2008, although no state has done so since the Great Depression.

Insurers Lose Ratings
Last year marked the first time that seven of the largest AAA-rated insurance companies that guaranteed repayment on nearly half the tax-exempt bonds outstanding lost one or more of their top ratings, forcing investors to rely more on disclosure.

“The rating alone isn’t sufficient to entice investors,” said Paul Rosenstiel, a principal in the San Francisco office of E.J. De La Rosa & Co., an investment banking firm. “There’s concern about disclosure that needs to be addressed.”

The Securities Acts of 1933 and 1934 exempted the municipal bond market from direct federal regulation, said Robert Dean Pope, a public finance attorney with Hunton & Williams in Richmond, Virginia, and author of “Making Good Disclosure.”

State and local debt wasn’t seen as risky at the time because it was composed of general obligation bonds, which are backed directly by taxpayers, Pope said in an interview.

Fraud, Deception, Scandal
“Back in the New Deal, the municipal bond market hadn’t produced fraud, deception and scandal,” Pope said. “As the municipal bond world has changed, the bonds have become more complex and riskier.”

Last year, general obligation bonds made up 28.6 percent of new issues, according to Thomson Reuters data. The rest of the market is composed of bonds tied to specific cash flows for everything from hospitals to convention centers to golf courses.

Under the federal laws, the Securities and Exchange Commission is largely powerless over the municipal bond market. The MSRB writes rules for the market, with SEC oversight, and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which oversees financial professionals who work with municipal issuers, enforces them.

Both self-regulatory organizations, which are overseen by employees of investment banks and securities dealers that operate in the market, attempt to ensure disclosure by requiring bond underwriters to insist on it in their contracts with borrowers -- leaving enforcement to banks that depend on issuers for business.

Regulators Don’t Agree
Investor Lou Fiorentino said he learned that sometimes the two regulators don’t agree on the rules.

Alarmed by increasing writedowns and losses among financial companies, Fiorentino, 62, of Potomac, Maryland, moved $290,000 into Main Street Natural Gas Inc. bonds in April 2008, he said. He thought he was buying a safe security, backed by natural gas and supported by a municipal government in Georgia.

Less than six months later, he learned it was none of the above. He owned a bond guaranteed by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., which was by then a bankrupt financial services company.

Since Lehman’s bankruptcy, the bonds have traded for less than 40 cents on the dollar, sometimes as little as 7 cents. Fiorentino said his brokerage, TD Ameritrade, didn’t give him enough information. Kim Hillyer, a spokeswoman for the Omaha, Nebraska-based company, declined to comment for this story.

Official Statement
Later, Fiorentino asked the MSRB and Finra why he wasn’t given an official statement explaining the risks.

The MSRB told him he should have been given one, he said, while Finra said otherwise. In its response, Finra told Fiorentino that he had bought his securities in the secondary market, where there’s no requirement for statements, he said.

That’s not the case, Fiorentino said in an interview. He bought the bonds as a new issue. Finra is “conducting a sweep” looking into the sales and marketing of the Main Street bonds, Herb Perone, a spokesman for the authority, said in an e-mail.

MSRB’s rules require that investors in new issues receive an official statement before the final settlement of their trade, which is within three days of the purchase, Perone said - - not before they buy. Any purchase within 25 days of a bond issue’s closing is considered a new issue.

“Some customers mistakenly believe that they must receive the official statement prior to the purchase trade date,” Perone said.

New Authority
SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro has hinted in public comments that the commission needs new regulatory authority in the municipal market.

Florida’s Watkins said that’s a bad idea. “The SEC has shown its inability to discharge its existing regulatory functions,” he said. John Heine, an SEC spokesman, declined to comment. Most municipalities provide all the information investors need anyway, Watkins said: “We’re an open book, completely transparent.”

Some issuers, including the city of Detroit, only open their books every so often.

In March, Detroit, the largest U.S. city with a below- investment-grade credit rating, presented investors with its annual report for 2007, more than 18 months after the end of the fiscal year. It did so just as it was about to borrow $120 million for its water system.

Patching Disclosure
Issuers often “patch up disclosure problems just before they come to market with a new deal,” said Matt Fabian, managing director and analyst with Westport, Connecticut-based Municipal Market Advisors, a market research firm. “Investors in the new offering don’t know that there is a problem at all.”

Detroit’s budget deficit has widened to $275 million from $155.6 million in 2007, said Elizabeth Foos, an assistant vice president and analyst for Moody’s Investors Service who wrote an August report that accompanied a reduction in the city’s credit rating to Ba3 from Ba2.

The city’s lack of disclosure was one factor in cutting the rating, she said. Lower ratings raise borrowing costs as investors demand higher yields.

“It’s been difficult to get reliable audited financial information from the city in a timely manner,” Foos said in an interview.

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, who has been in office less than six months, is “committed to fixing the process,” said his spokeswoman, Karen Dumas.

Other approaches to improving disclosure are under way as well.

Information Online
As of July 1, for the first time, investors can find all available disclosure for municipal issuers at the MSRB’s Electronic Municipal Market Access Web site, or EMMA. The site will show how much information each issuer is sharing.

“EMMA will provide evidence for the first time on whether the market rewards strong disclosure practices by municipal issuers,” Lynnette Hotchkiss, the agency’s executive director, said in an interview.

The board has proposed to the SEC that the EMMA Web site note which issuers voluntarily release audited financial statements within 120 days of the end of a fiscal year -- an idea that issuers such as Eric Johansen, debt manager for the city of Portland, Oregon, have criticized as too costly.

“There aren’t enough accounting firms to do that many audits,” Johansen said. Portland would have to hire a dozen employees to prepare the data in time for auditors, he said.

Not Enough Savings
While he agreed that the market would reward issuers’ better transparency with lower yields, he said he doesn’t think the savings would match the increased cost of complying.

Taylor, the former regulator, said that while issuers have resisted for years, improvements in disclosure are inevitable.

“Change is coming to the municipal bond market,” he said. “Whether issuers want it or not, it’s coming.”

 

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http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/near_earth_asteroids.png

A 10-meter wide asteroid hits Earth and explodes in the atmosphere with the energy of a small atomic bomb. Frightened by thunderous sounds and shaking walls, people rush out of their homes, thinking that an earthquake is in progress. All they see is a twisting trail of debris in the mid-day sky.

This really happened on Oct. 8th around 11 am local time in the coastal town of Bone, Indonesia. The Earth-shaking blast received remarkably little coverage in Western press, but meteor scientists have given it their full attention. “The explosion triggered infrasound sensors of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) more than 10,000 km away,” report researchers Elizabeth Silber and Peter Brown of the Univ. of Western Ontario in an Oct. 19th press release. Their analysis of the infrasound data revealed an explosion at coordinates 4.5S, 120E (close to Bone) with a yield of about 50 kton of TNT. That’s two to three times more powerful than World War II-era atomic bombs.

The asteroid that caused the blast was not known before it hit and took astronomers completely by surprise. According to statistical studies of the near-Earth asteroid population, such objects are expected to collide with Earth on average every 2 to 12 years. “Follow-on observations from other instruments or ground recovery efforts would be very valuable in further refining this unique event,” say Silber and Brown.

http://spaceweather.com/

 

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Professor Lindzen's lecture slides

Why do we need to deconstruct global warming? Simply because it has been an issue that has been routinely treated with misinformation and sophistry abetted by constant repetition, institutional endorsements, and widespread ignorance even (perhaps especially) among the educated. Because of the increasingly dangerous and expensive approaches being promoted to deal with this alleged problem, it is, I think, important to understand what is being said as well as to understand how climate actually works.

Richard Lindzen, Ph.D.
Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Fellow American Academy of Arts and Sciences, AGU, AAAS, and AMS
Member Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
Member National Academy of Sciences

 

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An Open Letter to the Community from Chris Landsea
(Resignation Letter of Chris Landsea from IPCC)


Dear colleagues,

After some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from
participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view
the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become
politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC
leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns.

With this open letter to the community, I wish to explain the basis for my
decision and bring awareness to what I view as a problem in the IPCC
process. The IPCC is a group of climate researchers from around the world
that every few years summarize how climate is changing and how it may be
altered in the future due to manmade global warming. I had served both as an
author for the Observations chapter and a Reviewer for the 2nd Assessment
Report in 1995 and the 3rd Assessment Report in 2001, primarily on the topic
of tropical cyclones (hurricanes and typhoons). My work on hurricanes, and
tropical cyclones more generally, has been widely cited by the IPCC. For the
upcoming AR4, I was asked several weeks ago by the Observations chapter Lead
Author---Dr. Kevin Trenberth---to provide the writeup for Atlantic
hurricanes. As I had in the past, I agreed to assist the IPCC in what I
thought was to be an important, and politically-neutral determination of
what is happening with our climate.

Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane
section for the AR4's Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a
press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic "Experts to
warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense
hurricane activity" along with other media interviews on the topic. The
result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly
connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by
anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and
reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is
apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in
such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media. These media
sessions have potential to result in a widespread perception that global
warming has made recent hurricane activity much more severe.

I found it a bit perplexing that the participants in the Harvard press
conference had come to the conclusion that global warming was impacting
hurricane activity today. To my knowledge, none of the participants in that
press conference had performed any research on hurricane variability, nor
were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current
research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable,
long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones,
either in the Atlantic or any other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and
2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the
hurricane record.

Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent
credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon
hurricane will likely be quite small. The latest results from the
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of
Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and
rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been proposed that even
this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of
the 21st Century (Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate,
2005, submitted).

It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an
unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global
warming. Given Dr. Trenberth's role as the IPCC's Lead Author responsible
for preparing the text on hurricanes, his public statements so far outside
of current scientific understanding led me to concern that it would be very
difficult for the IPCC process to proceed objectively with regards to the
assessment on hurricane activity. My view is that when people identify
themselves as being associated with the IPCC and then make pronouncements
far outside current scientific understandings that this will harm the
credibility of climate change science and will in the longer term diminish
our role in public policy.

My concerns go beyond the actions of Dr. Trenberth and his colleagues to how
he and other IPCC officials responded to my concerns. I did caution Dr.
Trenberth before the media event and provided him a summary of the current
understanding within the hurricane research community. I was disappointed
when the IPCC leadership dismissed my concerns when I brought up the
misrepresentation of climate science while invoking the authority of the
IPCC. Specifically, the IPCC leadership said that Dr. Trenberth was speaking
as an individual even though he was introduced in the press conference as an
IPCC lead author; I was told that that the media was exaggerating or
misrepresenting his words, even though the audio from the press conference
and interview tells a different story (available on the web directly); and
that Dr. Trenberth was accurately reflecting conclusions from the TAR, even
though it is quite clear that the TAR stated that there was no connection
between global warming and hurricane activity. The IPCC leadership saw
nothing to be concerned with in Dr. Trenberth's unfounded pronouncements to
the media, despite his supposedly impartial important role that he must
undertake as a Lead Author on the upcoming AR4.

It is certainly true that "individual scientists can do what they wish in
their own rights", as one of the folks in the IPCC leadership suggested.
Differing conclusions and robust debates are certainly crucial to progress
in climate science. However, this case is not an honest scientific
discussion conducted at a meeting of climate researchers. Instead, a
scientist with an important role in the IPCC represented himself as a Lead
Author for the IPCC has used that position to promulgate to the media and
general public his own opinion that the busy 2004 hurricane season was
caused by global warming, which is in direct opposition to research written
in the field and is counter to conclusions in the TAR. This becomes
problematic when I am then asked to provide the draft about observed
hurricane activity variations for the AR4 with, ironically, Dr. Trenberth as
the Lead Author for this chapter. Because of Dr. Trenberth's pronouncements,
the IPCC process on our assessment of these crucial extreme events in our
climate system has been subverted and compromised, its neutrality lost.
While no one can "tell" scientists what to say or not say (nor am I
suggesting that), the IPCC did select Dr. Trenberth as a Lead Author and
entrusted to him to carry out this duty in a non-biased, neutral point of
view. When scientists hold press conferences and speak with the media, much
care is needed not to reflect poorly upon the IPCC. It is of more than
passing interest to note that Dr. Trenberth, while eager to share his views
on global warming and hurricanes with the media, declined to do so at the
Climate Variability and Change Conference in January where he made several
presentations. Perhaps he was concerned that such speculation---though
worthy in his mind of public pronouncements---would not stand up to the
scrutiny of fellow climate scientists.

I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I
view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being
scientifically unsound. As the IPCC leadership has seen no wrong in Dr.
Trenberth's actions and have retained him as a Lead Author for the AR4, I
have decided to no longer participate in the IPCC AR4.

Sincerely,

Chris Landsea

17 January 2005

http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/LandseaResignationLetterFromIPCC.htm

 

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You're correct in guessing that "my subject" is science-based. My BSc is in Physics and my PhD is in computational science. Consequently (a) I am very much at home with "numbers", and (b) have been able to look thoroughly at the code of the few GCM models that have been made public - I'm old enough actually to have worked with the somewhat archaic, but nonetheless still adequate, languages (usually FORTRAN) in which they're written.

My scepticism is driven by three main forcings..

One, the models are really very poor. The best way to describe them is that they are (to use a computer nerd term) "kludges" and they're far too simplistic, you can't accurately model a process that you understand very imperfectly. They only backcast because they are heavily parameterised - said parameters can thus be tweaked so that the model's result, when run against historic data, produces the "correct" result for "today". I think it was John von Neuman who reckoned that "With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk" and these models tend to have dozens. Unfortunately, the chaotic nature of climate more or less guarantees that this won't make them any more accurate when they're forecasting. As all "catastrophic" AGW predictions are derived from the boundary results of these models I feel it incumbent upon myself as a scientist to be extremely sceptical.

Two. I am very wary of the continual "adjustments" that are being made to the historical data record. Especially, as in the case of the GISS record, when the overwhelming result is to make the past colder. An attempt was made a while ago to try to extract the adjustments from "official" temperature record - which seemed to suggest that in truth "global warming" was indeed "man made" as the size of the adjustments matched almost exactly the reported warming!

Three. The planet doesn't exactly seem to be cooperating with the modelers. CO2 has continued its steady increase but the temperature has, if anything, been going the other way. The Tripati, Roberts and Eagle study showed, if anything, that CO2 and temperature are not coupled - despite being used as an AGW scare story "The last time CO2 levels were the same as today it was 10F warmer and sea levels were 20 feet higher" would tend to suggest that, as at the moment they're not, there's not a very strong link.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2009/10/climate_issue.html?page=2#comments




http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/d18o_temperature.png

 

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http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_predict_l.gif

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/images/deepsolarminimum/irradiance.jpg

A 55-year low in solar radio emissions:
After World War II, astronomers began keeping records of the sun's brightness at radio wavelengths. Records of 10.7 cm flux extend back all the way to the early 1950s. Radio telescopes are now recording the dimmest "radio sun" since 1955. Some researchers believe that the lessening of radio emissions is an indication of weakness in the sun's global magnetic field. No one is certain, however, because the source of these long-monitored radio emissions is not fully understood.

All these lows have sparked a debate about whether the ongoing minimum is "weird", "extreme" or just an overdue "market correction" following a string of unusually intense solar maxima.

"Since the Space Age began in the 1950s, solar activity has been generally high," notes Hathaway. "Five of the ten most intense solar cycles on record have occurred in the last 50 years. We're just not used to this kind of deep calm."

Deep calm was fairly common a hundred years ago. The solar minima of 1901 and 1913, for instance, were even longer than the one we're experiencing now. To match those minima in terms of depth and longevity, the current minimum will have to last at least another year.

In a way, the calm is exciting, says Pesnell. "For the first time in history, we're getting to see what a deep solar minimum is really like." A fleet of spacecraft including the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), the twin STEREO probes, the five THEMIS probes, Hinode, ACE, Wind, TRACE, AIM, TIMED, Geotail and others are studying the sun and its effects on Earth 24/7 using technology that didn't exist 100 years ago. Their measurements of solar wind, cosmic rays, irradiance and magnetic fields show that solar minimum is much more interesting and profound than anyone expected.

Modern technology cannot, however, predict what comes next. Competing models by dozens of top solar physicists disagree, sometimes sharply, on when this solar minimum will end and how big the next solar maximum will be. Pesnell has surveyed the scientific literature and prepared a "piano plot" showing the range of predictions. The great uncertainty stems from one simple fact: No one fully understands the underlying physics of the sunspot cycle.

Pesnell believes sunspot counts will pick up again soon, "possibly by the end of the year," to be followed by a solar maximum of below-average intensity in 2012 or 2013.

But like other forecasters, he knows he could be wrong.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/01apr_deepsolarminimum.htm


Solar Wind Loses Power, Hits 50-year Low
Sept. 23, 2008: In a briefing today at NASA headquarters, solar physicists announced that the solar wind is losing power.

"The average pressure of the solar wind has dropped more than 20% since the mid-1990s," says Dave McComas of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "This is the weakest it's been since we began monitoring solar wind almost 50 years ago."

Curiously, the speed of the million mph solar wind hasn't decreased much—only 3%. The change in pressure comes mainly from reductions in temperature and density. The solar wind is 13% cooler and 20% less dense.

"What we're seeing is a long term trend, a steady decrease in pressure that began sometime in the mid-1990s," explains Arik Posner, NASA's Ulysses Program Scientist in Washington DC.

How unusual is this event?

"It's hard to say. We've only been monitoring solar wind since the early years of the Space Age—from the early 60s to the present," says Posner. "Over that period of time, it's unique. How the event stands out over centuries or millennia, however, is anybody's guess. We don't have data going back that far."

Flagging solar wind has repercussions across the entire solar system—beginning with the heliosphere.

The heliosphere is a bubble of magnetism springing from the sun and inflated to colossal proportions by the solar wind. Every planet from Mercury to Pluto and beyond is inside it. The heliosphere is our solar system's first line of defense against galactic cosmic rays. High-energy particles from black holes and supernovas try to enter the solar system, but most are deflected by the heliosphere's magnetic fields.

"The solar wind isn't inflating the heliosphere as much as it used to," says McComas. "That means less shielding against cosmic rays."

In addition to weakened solar wind, "Ulysses also finds that the sun's underlying magnetic field has weakened by more than 30% since the mid-1990s," says Posner. "This reduces natural shielding even more."

Unpublished Ulysses cosmic ray data show that, indeed, high energy (GeV) electrons, a minor but telltale component of cosmic rays around Earth, have jumped in number by about 20%.

These extra particles pose no threat to people on Earth's surface. Our thick atmosphere and planetary magnetic field provide additional layers of protection that keep us safe.

But any extra cosmic rays can have consequences. If the trend continues, astronauts on the Moon or en route to Mars would get a higher dose of space radiation. Robotic space probes and satellites in high Earth orbit face an increased risk of instrument malfunctions and reboots due to cosmic ray strikes. Also, there are controversial studies linking cosmic ray fluxes to cloudiness and climate change on Earth.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/23sep_solarwind.htm

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Tropics_Christy.jpg

 

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http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3073/2987801016_b3b3d7ba7d_o.jpg

 

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Public Option Skeptics Find Support in CBO Health-Care Study
By James Rowley

Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Economists skeptical about a U.S. government-run health-insurance plan received new evidence to support their argument that it won’t force private insurers to cut premiums.

The Congressional Budget Office says a version of the so- called public option backed by House Democrats would charge “somewhat higher” premiums than the average private insurance policy offered on a government-sponsored exchange to be set up to sell coverage to small businesses and individuals.

That counters claims by President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that the public option would charge lower premiums to “keep insurers honest.”

One reason premiums may be higher: Pelosi, seeking votes to pass a $1.055 trillion House health bill, decided against a “robust” public option, which would peg doctor reimbursements to Medicare rates to cut costs. Instead, she proposed that the public option negotiate fees it pays providers.

“The robust option had a lot more power to buy services from providers at much lower rates than private insurers paid,” said Paul Ginsburg, an economist who heads the nonpartisan Center for Studying Health System Change in Washington. “That would have been a big deal.”

The House and Senate are considering legislation to expand health coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans and try to rein in costs. The public option is among the most contentious issues, opposed by every Republican and by some Democrats, who say it would offer unfair competition for insurers such as Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc. and Hartford, Connecticut-based Aetna Inc.

Vote Coming Up
Pelosi, a California Democrat, is considering a plan to debate and vote on the health-care legislation on Nov. 6, a leadership aide who briefed reporters and who asked for anonymity said last night.

The budget office yesterday also reported that health-care costs would eat up as much as 20 percent of income for some families, even those getting subsidies, under legislation being considered by the House.

A family of four with an annual income of $66,000 would be eligible for $10,500 in subsidies if they purchased insurance on health exchanges created under the bill, and would still pay $10,000 to cover premiums, deductibles and copayments, the CBO said.

On the public option, the budget office estimated in an Oct. 29 letter to congressional leaders that rates the program pays doctors and hospitals would “on average, probably be comparable to those paid by private insurers” that sell on the exchange.

Won’t Curb Benefits
The public option wouldn’t curb benefit payouts as much as private insurers by managing how people use health care, the CBO said. It would also incur higher costs because it would draw a “a less healthy pool of enrollees.”

“Attracting sicker people” and doing less “utilization management than private plans” would “put the public plan in a weak competitive position,” said Ginsburg.

The CBO estimated the House public option would attract about 6 million people. Some economists say that to dictate lower fees it pays to doctors and hospitals, the public option would need more enrollees.

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, a California Democrat, said the new program would “be competitive because it will not be putting money into shareholder dividends and executive salary bonuses.”

Questioned about the public plan’s competitiveness at an Oct. 30 conference call with reporters, Miller said it “would operate on a level playing field” that “in some years makes it more expensive than other plans, on other years it may be more competitive or less expensive.”

Unfair Advantage
Some economists also say the public option would have the unfair advantage of not being taxed and, if it loses money, to ask Congress to make up the shortfall.

“I am skeptical of the ability of the public plan to deliver meaningful competition while keeping within a break- even budget constraint,” said Leemore Dafny, a health economist at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in Evanston, Illinois. “Sure, it will inject competition if they don’t have to break even.”

Republican lawmakers, insurance industry officials and some economists contend that the advantage of government subsidies would eventually push private competitors out of the market.

“It’s a risk,” said Maine Senator Olympia Snowe, the only Republican in Congress to show willingness to support a Democratic health plan.

Working With Democrats
Snowe said she’s working with Democrats who oppose the public option, which is included in the proposal Democratic Leader Harry Reid says he will submit to the Senate for a vote.

The public option would be included on the new online exchanges intended to extend insurance to individuals and small business owners. House leaders said the CBO estimates on premiums confirm that their bill will curb costs.

“This underscores that this legislation will control health costs and lower health-care premiums for families and individuals,” said Representatives Henry Waxman, Charles Rangel and Miller, in a joint statement.

Waxman, a California Democrat, is chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Rangel, of New York, heads the Ways and Means panel.

The chairmen said under their bill premiums for a family making $102,100 would be $15,000 by 2016. “This is well below the $24,000 family premium expected if Congress fails to act and premiums grow as projected under current law,” they said.

 

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[ Emphasis is mine ]


"Modern agriculture has been described as a way of turning hydrocarbons into food. Without cheap energy— a single gallon of gasoline is the energy equivalent of 100 hours of old-fashioned labor— the world would certainly have trouble producing half of the current food supply, and that fraction could be substantially less. Hydrocarbons are not only critical to farm equipment and food distribution over very large distances, but also play a dominant role in fertilizer production. With sparse hydrocarbon usage, American agriculture would have to be totally and painfully restructured..."


-Jeremy Grantham







Thermopylae

Honor to those who in their lives are committed and guard their Thermopylae.
Never stirring from duty; just and upright in all their deeds, but with compassion too;
generous when they are rich, and when they are poor, again a little generous,
again helping as much as they are able; always speaking the truth,
but without rancor for those who lie.
And they merit greater honor when they foresee (and may do foresee)
That Ephialtes will finally appear, and in the end the Medes will go through.

-C.P. Cavafy (translated by Rae Dalven)

___________________________________________________________

“So he had grown rich at last, and thought to transmit to his only son all the cut-and-dried experience which he himself had purchased at the price of his lost illusions; a noble last illusion of age.”

-Honore de Balzac

_____________________________________________

“Why should we faint, and fear to live alone, since all alone, so Heaven has will’d, we die?”

-Thomas Hardy
“Jude The Obscure”

_______________________________________________

“Teach me to live, that I may dread the grave as little as my bed. Teach me to die.”

-Thomas Hardy
“Jude The Obscure”

______________________________________________________

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear- not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word.”

-Mark Twain
“Pudd’nhead Wilson”

____________________________________________________


“We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again.”

-Nathaniel Greene

______________________________________________________

“She was listening, smiling, approving, and yet not finally agreeing. This was due to a lack of power on his part, a lack of that majesty of passion that sweeps the mind from its seat, fuses and melts all arguments and theories into a tangled mass, and destroys for the time being the reasoning power. This majesty of passion is possessed by nearly every man once in his life, but it is usually an attribute of youth and conduces to the first successful mating.”

Theodore Drieser
“Sister Carrie”

_________________________________________________________

“However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a thing; the more’s the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.”

Herman Melville
“Moby Dick”

__________________________________________________________

“In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.”

Herman Melville
“Moby Dick”

____________________________________________________
“Know ye, now, Bulkington. Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.”

Herman Melville
“Moby Dick”

_____________________________________________________________
“No. People didn’t tell each other things much in those days, did they? But he admired you enormously for what you did. And if you assume- as I suppose you do- that he’s now in a world of completer enlightenment, why not take it for granted that he’ll admire you still more for you’re going to do? Presumably……, people realize in heaven that it’s a devilish sight harder, on earth, to do a brave thing at forty-five than at twenty-five.”

Edith Wharton
“Old New York”

_______________________________________________________
“But how should we reach our long-promised homes without encountering Cape Horn? By what possibility avoid it? And though some ships have weathered it without these perils, yet by far the greater part must encounter them. Lucky it is that it comes about midway in the homeward-bound passage, so that sailors have time to prepare for it, and time to recover from it after it is astern.

But, sailor or landsmen, there is some sort of a Cape Horn for all. Boys! Beware of it; prepare for it in time. Grey-beards! Thank God it is passed. And ye lucky livers, to whom, by some rare fatality, your Cape Horns are placid as Lake Lemans, flatter not yourselves that good luck is judgment and discretion; for all the yolk in your eggs, you might have foundered and gone down, had the Spirit of the Cape said the word.”

Herman Melville
“White Jacket”

_______________________________________________________

“The few people who thought they knew something were more in error than those who knew nothing.”

Henry Adams
“The Education of Henry Adams”

_______________________________________________________

“Young men want to be faithful and are not; old men want to be faithless and cannot.”

Oscar Wilde
“The Portrait of Dorian Gray”

_____________________________________________________

“The only place you’ll find free cheese is in a mousetrap.”

Russian proverb

______________________________________________________

“An artist is a bloke who can hold two fundamentally opposing views and still function.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

____________________________________________________________

“I rather like Karla’s description of committees, don’t you? Is it Chinese? A committee is an animal with four back legs.”

John Le Carré
“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”

______________________________________________________________

“Girls had it better from the beginning, don’t kid yourself. They were allowed to play in the house, where the books were and the adults, and boys were sent outdoors like livestock. Boys were noisy and rough, and girls were nice, so they got to stay and we had to go. Boys ran around in the yard with toy guns going kksshh-kksshh, fighting wars for made-up reasons and arguing about who was dead, while girls stayed inside and played with dolls, creating complex family groups and learning to solve problems through negotiation and role-playing. Which gender is better equipped, on the whole, to live an adult life, would you guess? (APPLAUSE, SHOUTS) Is there any doubt about this? Is it even close?”

Garrison Keilor
“The Book of Guys”

___________________________________________________________

“Burr was talking about justice. ‘When I get to run the world,’ he said comfortably to the steaming lake, ‘I’m going to hold the Nuremberg Trials Part Two. I’m going to get all the arms dealers and shit scientists, and all the smooth salesmen who push the crazies one step further than they thought of going, because it’s good for business, and all the politicians and the lawyers and accountants and bankers, and I’m going to put them in the dock for their lives. And you know what they’ll say? ‘If we hadn’t done it someone else would have.’ And you know what I’ll say, ‘Oh, I see. And if you hadn’t raped the girl some other fellow would have raped her. And that’s your justification for rape. Noted.’ Then I’d napalm the lot of them. Fizz.”

John Le Carré
“The Night Manager”

_____________________________________________________________

“There are millions of wildebeest on the African plains. None of them will die of old age.”

-Unknown author

__________________________________________________________

“If you wish to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”

-John Chancellor

___________________________________________________________

“Praise makes me humble. But when I am abused I know I have touched the stars.”

-Oscar Wilde

____________________________________________________________

“Any fool can carry on but only the wise man knows how to shorten sail in time.”

-Joseph Conrad

______________________________________________________________

“You’re from a free society. You’ve got no choice.”

-John Le Carré
“The Russia House”

_____________________________________________________________

“But if you had asked him now or at any time in the last thirty years what his definition of a hero was, he would have replied without a second’s thought that a hero was the first man out of the back door when they started asking for volunteers.”

-John Le Carré
“The Russia House”

___________________________________________________________

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

-George Bernard Shaw

___________________________________________________________

“I never did like dirty tales, true or false; if they’re any good, they just make you wistful; if not there’s nothing more boresome in the world, I reckon.”

-Thomas Berger
“Little Big Man”

______________________________________________________________

“I am fond of independence…. It is that feeling that prompts me to come up strictly to the requirements of law and regulations. I wish neither to seek nor receive indulgence from anyone. I wish to feel under obligation to no one.”

-Robert E. Lee
From a letter written to his son, Custis, dated June 22, 1851.

_____________________________________________________________

“The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel; if you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune.”

-Boris Pasternak
“Doctor Zhivago”

______________________________________________________________

“Frederick the Great, asked why he gave commissions in the Prussian army only to Junker, replied simply, ‘Because they will not lie and cannot be bought.”

-H.L. Mencken
“On Getting A Living”

______________________________________________________________


“Well, then, says I, what’s the use you learning to do right, when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same.”

-Mark Twain
“Huckleberry Finn”

____________________________________________________________

“Sex is something I really don’t understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are. I keep making up these sex rules for myself, and then I break them right away. Last year I made a rule that I was going to quit horsing around with girls that, deep down, gave me a pain in the ass. I broke it, though, the same week I made it- the same night, as a matter of fact. I spent the whole night necking with a terrible phony named Anne Louise Sherman. Sex is something I just don’t understand. I swear to God I don’t.”

-J.D. Salinger
Holden Caulfield
“The Catcher In The Rye”

______________________________________________________________

“Goddamn money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.”

-J.D. Salinger
Holden Caulfield
“The Catcher In The Rye”

______________________________________________________________

“Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable sub-human who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.”

-Robert A. Heinlein
“Stranger In A Strange Land”

_____________________________________________________________

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

-Robert A. Heinlein
“Stranger In A Strange Land”

_____________________________________________________________

“The race may not always go to the swift, nor the battle to the strong— but, that’s the way to bet.”

-Damon Runyon

 

[trysail]

Amazing. It never seems to end. Jean Buttner is the daughter of the firm's founder. Her family continues to control Value Line. There has been speculation for decades that the firm might be sold. I can't help but wonder if this might be the triggering event.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=aCEjfAVjHXwc

Value Line to Pay $43 Million to Settle Claims; Chief Resigns
By Joshua Gallu

Nov. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Value Line Inc., a mutual-fund investment adviser, said Chief Executive Officer Jean Buttner has resigned and the company will pay $43 million to settle U.S. claims it fabricated trades to generate fees from funds it manages. Buttner, also named in a lawsuit, will pay $1 million.

The firm reaped more than $24 million from 1986 to 2004 in bogus brokerage fees on trades funneled through its affiliated broker, Value Line Securities Inc., which didn’t perform bona fide services on the trades, the Securities and Exchange Commission said today on its Web site announcing the settlement.

The lawsuit also named Chief Compliance Officer David Henigson, who the SEC said was responsible for implementing the scheme. Henigson agreed to pay a $250,000 penalty, the SEC said. In settling, New York-based Value Line, Buttner and Henigson didn’t admit or deny the claims, the agency said.

Buttner allegedly directed a “commission recapture program” in which the company sent trades to outside brokers in exchange for a lower commission rate. Instead of passing the discount to the funds, the firm kept the rebate, falsely telling shareholders that Value Line Securities served the best interests of its customers, the SEC said.

“Value Line misappropriated millions of dollars from the mutual funds they managed by artificially allocating fund trades and then charging the funds for phantom brokerage services,” Robert Khuzami, head of the SEC’s enforcement division, said in a statement. “Such blatant wrongdoing will not be tolerated.”

Howard Brecher, Value Line’s chief legal officer, today was named to the additional post of acting chairman and chief executive officer after Buttner, 74, resigned, the company said in a regulatory filing. Buttner agreed to be barred from the industry and serving as a company officer, the SEC said.

Practice Ended
“During this period the affiliated brokerage revenue comprised less than 1 1/2 percent of Value Line Inc.’s total revenue,” the company said in a statement. “Value Line management ended the affiliated brokerage practice in 2004.”

William McBride, a spokesman for Value Line at Kreab Gavin Anderson in New York, declined to comment further. Rick Prins, a lawyer representing Buttner, also declined to comment. A phone call after work hours to Seth Taube, Henigson’s lawyer, was not immediately returned.

The company said in a Sept. 11 filing that it had set aside $48 million to settle the SEC’s allegations.

 

[trysail]

Putin thanks Sweden, Finland for approving Baltic pipeline

17:56 05/11/2009

MOSCOW, November 5 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's prime minister thanked Sweden and Finland on Thursday for approving the construction of a Russian-German natural gas pipeline through their economic zones in the Baltic Sea.

"Sweden's government has given its permission to the Nord Stream consortium to build two parallel pipelines to carry gas through the Swedish economic zone in the Baltic Sea," Vladimir Putin told the Cabinet. "I want to thank the Swedish government for this decision."

"And a big thank you to our Finnish partners," he said.

Denmark approved the $12 billion pipeline, set to bypass the traditional transit nations of Ukraine, Poland and Belarus, last month.

Russia and Ukraine, which transits around 80% of Russia's Europe-bound gas, have had a series of conflicts over gas prices and debts in recent years, which led to brief cutoffs in supplies in 2006 and at the start of this year.

The 1,200-kilometer (750-mile) Nord Stream pipeline is designed to pump some 56 billion cubic meters of gas a year from the Russian port of Vyborg to the German port of Greifswald.

Putin said the pipeline consortium had tackled environmental concerns expressed by Sweden.

"Nord Stream has consistently fulfilled what the Swedish government demanded," he said.

Poland, which receives gas fees from transiting Russian gas via its territory, has also objected to the project. Another Baltic state, Estonia, has lobbied against building the pipeline, citing environmental concerns. Some analysts in Russia have called the country's objections political.

The pipeline is being built by Russia's Gazprom, which holds 51% in the project, Germany's E.ON Ruhrgas and BASF-Wintershall which own 20% each, and Dutch gas transportation firm Gasunie with 9%.

Nord Stream and the South Stream gas pipeline to carry gas to southeastern Europe are part of Russia's efforts to cut dependence on transit nations. South Stream is a rival project to the EU-backed Nabucco, which would bypass Russia.

Russia and Germany are now to formally approve the project.

A senior official in Russia's Natural Resources Ministry said on Thursday Russia could approve the project in late November or early December.

The operator has already submitted the required documents to the environmental watchdog, Rosprirodnadzor.

"To my knowledge, a decision to approve the gas pipeline in Russian territorial waters is to be taken in late November - early December this year," Vladimir Ivlev said.

 

[trysail]

"Sandy" Weill is one of the all-time scumballs; he somehow always managed to skirt the long arm of the law. "Bob" Rubin is another one whose role in the Citigroup debacle is disgraceful.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Reed Says ‘I’m Sorry’ for Role in Creating Citigroup
By Bob Ivry

Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- John S. Reed, who helped engineer the merger that created Citigroup Inc., apologized for his role in building a company that has taken $45 billion in direct U.S. aid and said banks that big should be divided into separate parts.

“I’m sorry,” Reed, 70, said in an interview yesterday. “These are people I love and care about. You could imagine emotionally it’s not easy to see what’s happened.”

Citigroup was formed in 1998 when Citicorp, a commercial bank, combined with Sanford I. Weill’s Travelers Group Inc., which owned the investment firm Salomon Smith Barney Holdings Inc. The New York-based company lost $27.7 billion in 2008 and took $118 billion in writedowns. Now 34 percent-owned by the Treasury Department, Citigroup sought help in the wake of a credit freeze that claimed three of Wall Street’s biggest firms and led to the deepest recession in 70 years.

Congress’ overhaul of U.S. financial regulations should include ordering banks to hold more capital, ensuring executives’ compensation is aligned with long-term profitability and banning firms that take deposits from also engaging in equities and fixed-income trading, Reed said.

“I would compartmentalize the industry for the same reason you compartmentalize ships,” Reed said in the interview in his office on Park Avenue in New York. “If you have a leak, the leak doesn’t spread and sink the whole vessel. So generally speaking you’d have consumer banking separate from trading bonds and equity.”

Glass-Steagall Repeal
Lawmakers were wrong to repeal the Depression-era Glass- Steagall Act in 1999, Reed said. At the time, he supported overturn of the law, which required the separation of institutions that engaged in traditional customer banking services from those involved in capital markets.

“We learn from our mistakes,” said Reed, who wrote an Oct. 21 letter to the editor of the New York Times endorsing a division of banking activities. “When you’re running a company, you do what you think is right for the stockholders. Right now I’m looking at this as a citizen.”

Reed headed Citicorp for 14 years until the merger with Travelers. The deal created the world’s biggest financial company in a stock swap valued at about $85 billion. Reed and Weill were co-chairmen and co-chief executive officers until Reed’s retirement in 2000.

Citigroup spokesman Stephen Cohen declined to comment.

Reed’s Compensation
From 1997 to 1999, Reed received salary and bonuses totaling $23.4 million, according to Citigroup filings. In 2000, he received a retirement bonus of $5 million, filings show. Citigroup provides him with an assistant and a New York office, for which he pays taxes, he said.

Citigroup, the third-largest U.S. bank, shed about $300 billion in assets, or 13 percent of its total, in the year ended Sept. 30 and is selling what it calls non-core properties, according to regulatory filings. The company said yesterday that it will spin off its Primerica Financial Services subsidiary.

CEO Vikram S. Pandit has eliminated about 100,000 jobs since late 2007, reducing the headcount by 26 percent as of Sept. 30.

Citigroup pioneered the production of collateralized debt obligations, bundles of loans whose cash flows were sold to investors. When subprime mortgage borrowers began defaulting on payments in 2007, the CDOs lost value and became part of Citigroup’s $118 billion in writedowns and credit losses.

In the last year, the bank received $45 billion from the U.S. government to bolster its capital and another $300 billion in loss guarantees. The Treasury Department retained its 34 percent stake after converting a portion of the $45 billion in rescue funds to equity.


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=albMYVE7D578&pos=7

 

[trysail]

Where does Europe get its energy supplies? About 25% of its natural gas comes from Russia.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Ukraine/images/NGPipestoEurope_Manuel.gif

 

[trysail]

Using the NCDC database, you can come to your own conclusion about what October 2009 was like.

October 2009 50.80° F Rank 3
October 1901 – 2000 Average = 54.77° F
That makes October 2009 in the USA almost 4° F colder than the 20th century October average.

So we can call October 2009:
The third coldest on record
The 111th warmest on record

You can try the plotting and ranking web tool out yourself here.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/cag3.html

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/ncdc-october-2009.png

 

[trysail]

STANDARD & POOR'S 500 INDEX

Normalized ROE 11.12 %
Current Dividend $0.04
Current Price $2.19
Current Book Value $1.00
Risk-free rate (10 Yr Treasury YTM) 3.50 %
Equity risk premium 5.00 %

Year 1
Book Value Begin 1.00
Earnings per share 0.11
Dividend 0.04
Book Value End 1.07

Justified Price-------- $1.99
Justified PE Ratio------- 17.9
Earnings Growth Rate------- 6.63%

Discount
Rate Value Current Price
6.5% 4.56 2.192523278
7.0% 3.60 2.192523278
7.5% 2.91 2.192523278
8.0% 2.39 2.192523278
8.5% 1.99 2.192523278
9.0% 1.69 2.192523278
9.5% 1.46 2.192523278
10.0% 1.27 2.192523278
10.5% 1.13 2.192523278
11.0% 1.01 2.192523278
11.5% 0.91 2.192523278
12.0% 0.83 2.192523278

 

[trysail]

While you temporize, rationalize, hem and haw, the world votes with its feet:

 

[trysail]

"The whole idea behind a democracy is that the passions of the ignorant should dictate policy."

-"Rupert von Keuhnelt"
( I do not know if that is a nom de internet or the gentlemen's real name )

 

[trysail]

Original Chesapeake Bay Foundation bumper sticker ( c. 1966 ):
SAVE THE BAY

More appropriate Chesapeake Bay Foundation bumper sticker ( 2009 ):
PAVE THE BAY

Suggested future Chesapeake Bay Foundation bumper sticker:
Where are you from? Go back

 

[trysail]

Emerson is one of the U.S.'s "Great Companies." The folks running this company are straight shooters. It is a shame to see what government regulation and policies have done to manufacturing in this country.

Virtually every entrepreneur I know has said essentially the same thing. Most of 'em are older now and their start-up days are in the past— but they all say the same thing:

"I'd never do it today. There are too many rules and regulations and too many ambulance chasers."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

( Fair Use Excerpt )

Full story:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=conewsstory&tkr=EMR:US&sid=a9Rn1Ct1ZwTI

Emerson’s Farr Says U.S. Is Destroying Manufacturing
By Will Daley

Nov. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Emerson Electric Co. Chief Executive Officer David Farr said the U.S. government is hurting manufacturers with regulation and taxes and his company will continue to focus on growth overseas.

“Washington is doing everything in their manpower, capability, to destroy U.S. manufacturing,” Farr said today in Chicago at a Baird Industrial Outlook conference. “Cap and trade, medical reform, labor rules.”

Emerson, the maker of electrical equipment and InSinkErator garbage disposals with $20.9 billion in sales for the year ended September, will keep expanding in emerging markets, which represented 32 percent of revenue in 2009. About 36 percent of manufacturing is now in “best-cost countries” up from 21 percent in 2003, according to a slides accompanying his speech.

Farr, in his presentation, also said manufacturers are being hurt by taxes and regulation. He said companies will create jobs in India and China, “places where people want the products and where the governments welcome you to actually do something.”

Emerson has shed more than 20,000 jobs since the end of 2008 to lower expenses.

“What do you think I am going to do?” Farr asked. “I’m not going to hire anybody in the United States. I’m moving. They are doing everything possible to destroy jobs.”

******​

 

[trysail]

http://www.spaceweather.com/images2009/09nov09/skymap_north.gif?PHPSESSID=d3rhismm9dmi4po3bomcop6310

 

[trysail]

The folk who decided to use polar bears as the poster child for the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming have to be some of the lowest, most cynical, conniving, Machiavellian, propagandists who draw breath. It is such a deliberate, baldfaced falsehood that it boggles the mind. My fondest hope is that the tactic backfires on them as the public wakes up to the fact that they've been intentionally deceived. That would be poetic justice.

I received an email from the Sierra Club urging me to sign a petition to declare the polar bear an endangered species.

The Department of the Interior is considering this and it would cover much of the Arctic, including the sea ice of the Arctic Ocean. The Sierra Club is worried because Shell Oil wants to drill for oil in the Beaufort Sea, a part of the “critical habitat for the bear.”

So, for anyone who doesn’t think that thwarting all attempts to drill for oil in the Arctic isn’t the real reason to “save” the thriving polar bear population, the answer is that it has nothing to do with polar bears and everything to do with the primary goal of all environmental organization, denying energy sources to Americans and everyone else.

Indeed, the Sierra Club said declaring the polar bear endangered was “necessary to stop harmful activities such as oil drilling.” So I guess it doesn’t get any more plain than that.

The Sierra Club went on to blatantly lie about the status of polar bears, claiming that “survival rates for polar bear cubs are plunging.” It is common knowledge that male polar bears are known to kill cubs, but the survival rates have much more to do with the mother bear’s ability to catch ringed seals.

Ironically, polar bears’ favorite delicacy is the pups of ringed seals. Mother Nature doesn’t much care who wins the survival marathon and the Sierra Club is not calling for an endangered species declaration for ringed seals.

The Sierra Club is lying. The Natural Resources Defense Council is lying. The World Wildlife Fund is lying. They could not care less about polar bears. Their objective is shutting off access to anywhere that has oil or natural gas reserves.

In a July 2006 a report, “Polar Bear Politics: Underestimating the survival capacity of one popular bear” by Jennifer Marohasy, the Director of the Food and Environmental Unit at the Australian based Institute of Public Affairs was published. The estimate of the population is “about 25,000 polar bears existing in 19 relatively discrete populations across Norway, Denmark, Russia, Alaska, Greenland, and Canada.”

“Forty years ago, there were only about 5,000 bears, the worldwide population depressed by hunting.” In the 1970s, nations agreed to restrict hunting, resulting in the growth of the population.

The BIG LIE is that the Arctic is melting because of “global warming.” The Arctic has, in fact, “warmed” over the past two decades and there has been a reduction in sea ice, but there has been no “global warming”, only a natural cycle of warming that followed a Little Ice Age that ended around 1850 after three hundred years.

In fact, in October 2007, NASA announced the results of an in-depth study of Arctic sea ice and concluded what melting had occurred was due “a change in wind patterns” that had “compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream, and then sped its flow out of the Arctic.” Wind patterns, not “global warming.”

The Earth is now into a new cooling cycle that began in 1998 and which meteorologists predict will last for several decades. What they won’t tell you is that they have their fingers crossed that it does not, in fact, signal a new Ice Age. The period between ice ages is about 11,500 years and the Earth is at the end of the interglacial period that has allowed for the rise of human civilization in the past five thousand years or so.

So, the fate of the polar bear is such that they are more likely to survive a new Ice Age than billions of humans in the northern hemisphere.

As should be obvious to everyone, the reduction of Arctic sea ice or the population of ringed seals has had no correlation whatever with the growth of the polar bear population. Indeed, if there hadn’t been a period of glaciation about 250,000 years ago and a bunch of formerly brown bears had not become isolated and had not adapted successfully, there would be no polar bears.

Further putting the lie to the Sierra Club and other environmental organization’s predictions is the fact that polar bears live in remote and inhospitable parts of the Arctic. In addition, they are not stationary, roaming over an area as large as two hundred square kilometers in search of tasty seals. Most of the time, humans can’t even visit or fly over the vast bulk of the Arctic to make any kind of count.

The Sierra Club has no idea how many polar bears actually exist in the Arctic and any claim that they are “endangered” is pure balderdash. I could use another word to describe such claims, but my Mother told me not to.

So, to sum up, the Sierra Club is LYING about polar bears and you would be well advised to take anything else they have to say with a grain of Arctic Sea salt.