Effects of burning fossil fuels:

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nh mike

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TornadoRed said:
This seems like a pretty good source:
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2186rank.html

For the US, public debt as a percentage of GDP: about 65%
For Germany: 67%
For Japan: 175%
Italy: 108%
Canada: 66%
France 64%
India: 53%
Brazil: 51%
China: 22%
South Korea: 21%
Australia: 14%

So the US is in the middle of the pack of major industrialized nations, and Japan is the one which is heavily indebted. I think some low-debt countries have poor credit ratings and aren't able to get loans, while others are growing rapidly so have a low debt-to-GDP ratio.
You ignored the rest of my post, where I pointed out that it's not *just* having high public debt that is the problem - it's also that we have extremely high private debt, and a large (and rapidly growing) trade deficit.

Yes, Japan's public debt is huge, and has been a big source of concern for economists. They don't have the other two problems to the extent we do though.

Are you aware of how quickly manufacturing output has grown in the US?
From the Federal Reserve Bank:

What are they measuring in the upper plot? All it says that it's a manufacturing production relative percent compared to 2002, but doesn't say anything about how they measure production. Part of the problem is that the way it's currently measured is very misleading, as I tried pointing out with the example I gave. So, how are they measuring production? In the example I previously gave, does that count in their data as production?
 

nh mike

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TornadoRed said:
Here's about 11.5 years of data, showing the relationship between the US dollar and the Euro.


I don't see much change in the last 36 months -- isn't that a sign of a currency that is neither appreciating nor depreciating?
How can you claim it's not changing? Going from 0.82 Dollars to the euro 6 years ago to 1.34 dollars to the Euro now is not changing? Sure, you can arbitrarily pick one time interval over which there was no change (36 months), due to the unexpected drop of the euro in the latter half of 2005 making the value change over a 36 month interval negligible. But, other than that drop, there has been a continual decline in the value of the dollar in the past 6 years.

And this is the problem - most of the loans we've taken out over the past 6 years are going to likely end up being a net loss for the lender, since in the past 6 years the dollar has dropped in value compared to the euro by around 50% - considerably more than the interest would return on the investment. So, who is going to want to make that investment?

It was only 3 days ago that I wrote about interest rates adjusting to reflect changes in demand for one currency or another. Since you point out (correctly) that I don't read everything you link to, I can only ask that you read what I write.
I read that - you made a statement of your belief on how it works, which I disagreed with. Your point?
 

nh mike

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nicklockard said:
I made that same challenge 25 posts back or so....not a single taker. So, I conclude that they are full of crapola. Urban Myth Hooey! (UMH, kinda like a UFO...no conclusive evidence it ever existed.) More bullcrap propagandists...cheap, transparent propaganda too.:rolleyes:
Hey, don't be dissing on UFO-ologists now. ;)

On subject though - I find it interesting how frequently this claim that scientists previously collectively made claims about a great cooling comes up, but how nobody can offer any papers or such that were published making such claims. Typical.
 

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The dollar-euro relationship is an interesting one and is not necessarily reflective of trade or borrowing but of general fiscal policy. How much money is printed etc.

The point should be made that as we are aware of the US economy and its problems, often from slanted news coverage, we are not so aware of the economies of other countries.

Socialist economies themselves are at a disadvantage as well as third world dictatorships. How about explaining the Canadian dollar's slide against the US dollar? Its all a bit perplexing and cannot reliably be used to critique one policy or another, IMO.

The fact that we have a large trade deficit by itself is of concern. The value of the dollar on the open market is determined by many factors.

As for the "consumer" economy, yes, its probably a bit too skewed toward consumption, but it also has a lot of economic power in creating money from low unemployment and high corporate profits.

To think that foreign investment is shouldering the debt burden of the US may be a bit misleading. What is the percentage of foreign investment? How much do profitable US banks put back into lending to create the consumer borrowing ease? How bad has the housing bubble made it for debt holding (not really related to anything but lower interest rates and a very strong housing market read: economy).

I don't know the answers to all these questions, but I sure don't depend on popular sentiment and political reporting from the skewed generally poorly informed/educated media folks.

TM
 

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"As for the 'consumer' economy, yes, its probably a bit too skewed toward consumption, but it also has a lot of economic power in creating money from low unemployment and high corporate profits."

To be fair, I think you'd need to add 'stellar job-creation in the low-wage service sector' as a caveat to the item on 'low unemployment'

I would wish to put this question to the U.S. populace:
'When did we sign up for having low-wage jobs replace the ones being lost, so corporate profits can go up?'
 

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nh mike said:
Ya gotta love it when non-scientists use this "scientists have been wrong in the past, so why should we believe anything they say" argument. Essentially, it doesn't matter if science theories are right 999 times out of 1,000, if there has ever been one theory that was wrong, we should apparently discount any scientific model, no matter how much consensus there is behind it in the scientific community, and how much data there is to support it.

It's a nice trump card to essentially toss away any scientific evidence. So, if you want to rely on that, what really is the point of participating in this discussion?


This supposed "global cooling scare" has largely been blown out of proportion by right wing media groups. At the time, all it was was some media people completely misinterpreting what the scientific community was saying (that based on natural trends we are heading towards a cooling era - of course it will take thousands of years for a significant cooling to happen from the natural cycle though).

I know Rush and their ilk like to make this claim about a massive global cooling scare the scientific community supposedly created in the 1970s, to argue that "they were wrong before, they can be wrong again". Can you point to any papers from then in peer-reviewed journals making such claims about a great cooling that was coming immently? How about point me to an international panel of scientists set up back then that agreed there was an imminent cooling coming?

No? Didn't think so.


I didn't brand anyone evil - just misinformed.


That's like saying "after someone shoots you in the head and your dead, *maybe* I'll admit that someone is trying to kill you, and that you need protection.

The whole point of making these models is so we don't HAVE to wait until disaster hits before knowing we need to do something about it.


So, who cares if hundreds of millions of people may die, and wars may end up being fought to try to get usable land? (that was the Pentagon's prediction, remember)


Your argument is so absurd I honestly can't tell whether you're joking or not.


Massive droughts *don't* affect the survival of billions of people? Complete shifting (and in some cases halting) of ocean conveyors, causing massive cooling in some areas, and heating in others, doesn't affect the survival of billions of people? Massive flooding if/when Greenland's ice sheet melts *doesn't* affect the survival of billions of people?

Seriously, are you joking?


It would be worse - but it's not something that's going to happen anytime within the next 10,000 years.
I think you just perfectly summed up exactly what's wrong with the
Global Warming scare. You think Greenland's ice sheet is *suddenly*
going to melt? You think shifting of the ocean conveyors is suddenly
going to happen? Define "suddenly"? Can I get Vegas odds on these?
What were the Vegas odds on an Ice Age going to happen "suddenly"
back in the 1970s?

When did scientists become god-like in their predictive ability?

If people start passing laws that costs huge gobs of money, do we
get to file a class-action lawsuit against those same idiots if the world
start to cool a little?

Or will the stakes become so high that that data would be buried?
Or will the theory be "modified" constantly, and consistently, when
the data doesn't quite fit the theory conveniently?

You know, I have little faith in humankind. We are idiotic, stubborn,
holier-than-thou fools who believe so completely in our own views
of the world that they're wiling to bomb buildings (9/11) or pass laws
out the wazoo restricting the rights of others for the (fill in the blank)
reason of day, or otherwise think the other guy is going to hell because
they aren't following a particular religion.

And I'm now more and more inclined to group scientists into a new
religion called Science based on this extremely powerful tendency to
meddle with the lives of others in order to "save" them - from Global
Warming or the devil (pick your synonym).

Geez, I could be wrong. I've learned a hell of a lot about a lot of
things in my life, but I've never advocated passing a law to restrict
the freedoms, economic or otherwise, based on beliefs that have
crystallized over the years. I'd love to hear a lot more of, "We could
be wrong about Global Warming" disaster scenarios, but I'm not holding
my breath.

Maybe you're right: the world is coming to an end. But I don't think
Global Warming will be the blame. Methinks we have much more
pressing things to worry about and fix first.
 
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BioDiesel

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"And I'm now more and more inclined to group scientists into a new
religion called Science "

If you don't know the difference between religion and science, perhaps you should be reading books written during the Enlightenment by Voltaire, etc...
 

BioDiesel

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"And I'm now more and more inclined to group scientists into a new
religion called Science "

If you don't know the difference between religion and science, perhaps you should be reading books written during the Enlightenment by Voltaire, etc...
 

Tin Man

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Mike_Van said:
"As for the 'consumer' economy, yes, its probably a bit too skewed toward consumption, but it also has a lot of economic power in creating money from low unemployment and high corporate profits."

To be fair, I think you'd need to add 'stellar job-creation in the low-wage service sector' as a caveat to the item on 'low unemployment'

I would wish to put this question to the U.S. populace:
'When did we sign up for having low-wage jobs replace the ones being lost, so corporate profits can go up?'
Again, this is a politically charged view, not necessarily realistic with the technological improvements in manufacturing etc., and mimed by the media.

It would be good to explain it as well as the alternatives: keeping unnecessary jobs? Socialism promotes government support of unnecessary jobs. Is that what you want?

The facts speak differently (see above graphs) including the productivity of the American workforce being extremely high. We have foreign companies producing automobiles, monitors/TV's, etc. in the US. Isn't it more a problem of US corporate culture and workforce? Are not the US car-makers showing signs of similar "being out of touch" with the marketplace?

TM
 

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nh mike said:
How can you claim it's not changing? Going from 0.82 Dollars to the euro 6 years ago to 1.34 dollars to the Euro now is not changing? Sure, you can arbitrarily pick one time interval over which there was no change (36 months), due to the unexpected drop of the euro in the latter half of 2005 making the value change over a 36 month interval negligible. But, other than that drop, there has been a continual decline in the value of the dollar in the past 6 years.
And before that, a continual rise in the value of the dollar. So now the dollar is close to what it was worth in 1996.

As for choosing the last 36 months... your argument was that the dollar was losing value. That is true UNTIL 36 months ago -- since then it has been fluctuating in a narrow range.

And this is the problem - most of the loans we've taken out over the past 6 years are going to likely end up being a net loss for the lender, since in the past 6 years the dollar has dropped in value compared to the euro by around 50% - considerably more than the interest would return on the investment. So, who is going to want to make that investment?
There seems to be good demand for the dollar, and good demand for dollar-denominated assets. You presume to know more about the future value of these assets than the present owners do.. and of the people who buy and sell trillions of dollars worth every day.

If we've been fortunate enough to borrow money at low rates, so low that the lender will lose money, then I propose that we keep doing this as long as we can get away with it.
 

Tin Man

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Another thread hijacked by socialistic leftist thinking. Its all America's fault! Those darn corporations!

Can we somehow get back to the topic?

TM
 

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nh mike said:
You ignored the rest of my post, where I pointed out that it's not *just* having high public debt that is the problem - it's also that we have extremely high private debt, and a large (and rapidly growing) trade deficit.

Yes, Japan's public debt is huge, and has been a big source of concern for economists. They don't have the other two problems to the extent we do though.
RE: the trade deficit. When the rest of the world (ROW) sells us stuff, they have two choices about what to do with the dollars: buy goods from us, or buy assets from us. Holding cash is another option, I guess, as it's a zero-interest T-bill.

You seem to think that the trade deficit is a debt which must be repaid. In fact it is something that will correct itself, if and when the ROW decides it has enough dollar-denominated assets and wants good instead. This could happen in 1, 5, or 10 years, and will likely be a gradual shift in preferences.

RE: private-sector debt. We borrow because money is cheap. When it's not cheap, we will slow our borrowing and increase our saving. If the ROW wants to lend money so we can refinance our mortgages, what's wrong with that? Are you afraid they won't make a profit?

What are they measuring in the upper plot? All it says that it's a manufacturing production relative percent compared to 2002, but doesn't say anything about how they measure production. Part of the problem is that the way it's currently measured is very misleading, as I tried pointing out with the example I gave. So, how are they measuring production? In the example I previously gave, does that count in their data as production?
Manufacturing production is not a misleading concept. But I think your widget example is based on bad accounting.
 

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At least its not a 505.01 versus Amsoil debate :D

Tin Man said:
"Can we somehow get back to the topic?"
Yup. Burning fossil fuels releases CO2 to atmosphere that was trapped for many millenia. This traps a fraction of infrared wavelength heat in the atmosphere through the very efficient symmetric C=O stretch vibrational absorption mode of O=C=O {that's what carbon dioxide looks like} at night when the blackbody radiation of the Earth normally emits a fraction of its heat to space.

That extra heat retention in turn throws many other complicated things out of whack. So much so that the Earth's climate is on a collision course with major change, most of them very bad for humanity and our profitable and goodly activities. It doesn't just throw things out of whack in a sedate, perfectly predictable, linear way however, as the Earth is a complex system of dynamic equilibriums, most of which we don't have fully mapped out mathematically. However, we do have the equilibriums mapped out sufficiently to say: "Oh sh|t, this is gonna be bad." When you go about mucking up complex equilibriums, odd ball things can happen, sometimes suddenly. The cold temperatures can be dramatically cold, and at the weirdest times! Same goes for the hot temps. The AVERAGE might go up, but the spread (sigma, standard deviation, what-have-you) and skew may also increase/change notably...so much so that humanity will collectively say: "Oh shi|t, this is bad."

One of the major implications of the IPCC report is that precipitation patterns are already changing. Mostly higher elevations are getting more precipitation, and lower elevations are getting less. This trend is expected to accelerate but no one knows when it will stop and reverse. The Gobi desert in China is growing at an exponentially increasing rate. China is having to start expending money to fight off the vastly detrimental effects of desertification. Other areas in low lying regions are expected to undergo desertification as well.

One of the problems of our discussions is that we would like to get into economics and related topics to do this broader topic justice, but it is very hard. We have a few posters who throw up plots and graphs willy nilly w/o much understanding of their meaning and interpretation, but who like to play economist on the intarweb. What we could really benefit from is having a few legitimate economists on the club to help us understand the outlines of the discussion--because definitions DO very much matter. You know I've said many times how inter-related GW-fuel insecurity-global trade-taxes are....well I'm at a loss for words to explain that more fully because I lack the rigorous background in economics.

But! I can confidently say this: sh|t this is gonna be bad.
 
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nicklockard

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TornadoRed said:
RE: the trade deficit. When the rest of the world (ROW) sells us stuff, they have two choices about what to do with the dollars: buy goods from us, or buy assets from us.
Wrong. Patently wrong. Most of the dollars go to purchase O-I-L, and not from us. The residual dollars can be:

a. converted to another currency *but then they'd have to lose money on the exchange rate and transaction fees, so very little of this is done, in general.

b. circulated within their own nations to buy their OWN goods and sell their OWN services (much of South America does this.)

c. invested into public works and infrastructure in their own nations like ports, roads, irrigation projects, etcetera since most construction firms will happily accept dollars (everyone needs oil and we have the de facto currency.)

d. purchase dollar denominated assets through international finance institutions which generally offer fairly priced transaction costs of this nature.

e. buy our goods
 

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nicklockard said:
One of the problems of our discussions is that we would like to get into economics and related topics to do this broader topic justice, but it is very hard. We have a few posters who throw up plots and graphs willy nilly w/o much understanding of their meaning and interpretation, but who like to play economist on the intarweb. What we could really benefit from is having a few legitimate economists on the club to help us understand the outlines of the discussion--because definitions DO very much matter.
If I choose to keep it simple, that's my choice. I've forgotten more economics than most people know. So I'd welcome a few real economists, though preferably not of the Marxist school.
 

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nicklockard said:
Wrong. Patently wrong. Most of the dollars go to purchase O-I-L, and not from us.
Most? You mean more than 50%? I doubt this is right.

But if you mean many countries try to pay for oil with exports, that is true. How else can they get dollars with which to buy oil?

But those dollars will end up, eventually, being used to buy US goods or else dollar-denominated assets.

The residual dollars can be:

a. converted to another currency *but then they'd have to lose money on the exchange rate and transaction fees, so very little of this is done, in general.
This does not change the number of dollars in circulation, merely the ownership.

b. circulated within their own nations to buy their OWN goods and sell their OWN services (much of South America does this.)
Yes, zero-interest bills.

c. invested into public works and infrastructure in their own nations like ports, roads, irrigation projects, etcetera since most construction firms will happily accept dollars (everyone needs oil and we have the de facto currency.)
Again, only changes the ownership of those dollars.

d. purchase dollar denominated assets through international finance institutions which generally offer fairly priced transaction costs of this nature.

e. buy our goods
In the end, most export earnings end up in these categories.
 

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"It would be good to explain it as well as the alternatives: keeping unnecessary jobs? Socialism promotes government support of unnecessary jobs. Is that what you want?"

Don't think for a moment that your posts are apolitical, TM.
For the record, not everyone who finds faults with capitalism's rawest incarnations is a 'Socialist.' Even Sweden's system has far too many traits of a market economy to be called 'Socialist.' I believe the Swedes and Germans call it Social Democracy.


A lot of jobs that are deemed 'unnecessary' are only deemed so, because corporations believe that to compete, they too, must race to the bottom.
"Hmm, what if we could get someone to do this for...um...$3/day, yeah that's it, and we'll have them buy all they consume from the company store." The next year, they're shooting for $2/day.
We've been there as a nation, we just don't read our history.

What I would like is for corporations to again pay their fair share of income taxes, as they used to do here in the 1950's. I would like them to pay out, in higher wages or retirement savings contributions, more of the profits that their employees make possible.
When Daimler bought Chrysler, it was stunned by the level of the U.S. Executives' pay. Did lower Exec pay in Germany (where even higher tax rates hit the wealthy) prevent MB from making world-class vehicles? Of course not. These Chiefs of U.S. industry think they're worth millions a year, even when the company loses money, and that they deserve golden parachutes when their leave or the company folds. There is something spectacularly wrong with Execs making in one day what their average underling makes in a year.

What I would also like, as has come up in another thread, is to strip corporations of their rights as 'individuals,' so as to level the playing-field with real, living, breathing individuals. When one combines the rights of an individual with a system in which money = speech, you have a system where influence peddling thrives and corruption results. If a corp. has sufficient resources to hire enough lobbyists to baby-sit members of Congress and hand them, or their favorite PACs, fat checks, what incentive do you think a Rep. or Senator has to listen to the individuals who elected him/her?


Having money equate to speech ultimately perverts the right of the individual to petition/lobby Congress for the redress of grievances.


And if Congress is in the habit of doing what's good for corporations, rather than what's good for the people, then we usually end up with bad policy.
Essentially having a U.S. (non-)energy policy since 1980 of just having others drill/pump more, with little more than lip-service to conservation and efficiency, it's really no surprise that many now see it as a 'drastic change' that we couldn't possibly implement without 'harming the economy' when people propose that we need to use energy to have less of carbon footprint. Maybe $130/bbl. will do what no legislation can.
Back OT. Happy now?

 
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Tin Man

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Political? No. Practical.

BOTH extremes are bad. Your leftist babble about how those that feel Socialism is not the answer must be under the syndicate or "Mafia" Darwinist system, right? Taxing corporations more only taxes the consumer/income earner more - the government gets to collect several times... sort of like hitting the "community chest" each time you go around the Monopoly game.

Well there is such a thing as too little regulation: witness the Savings and Loan debacle. Government needs to fulfill its duty and even the playing field to make a free market possible for capitalism to be "good."

Sorry, but I prefer a more practical approach. Without the propaganda.

TM
 
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Mike_Van said:
What I would like is for corporations to again pay their fair share of income taxes, as they used to do here in the 1950's. I would like them to pay out, in higher wages or retirement savings contributions, more of the profits that their employees make possible.
Corporate income is already taxed AT LEAST twice: once at the corporate level, again when individual taxes are paid on dividends or capital gains. Corporate tax revenues are at record highs right now -- if it's not broken, don't fix it.

What I would also like, as has come up in another thread, is to strip corporations of their rights as 'individuals,' so as to level the playing-field with real, living, breathing individuals.
I don't know where you got the notion that outlawing corporations would be a good idea. If you think about it, corporations are a very efficient way for people to organize their economic lives. Perhaps everyone ought to incorporate.
 
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