JayB

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Hmm. Lots of passion there. It sounds as though if you read the materials that I linked, you'd be able to translate this set of convictions into concrete statements about the optimal discount rate and, by extension, the optimal carbon-tax schedule.

Meth is a hell of a drug... Saying yes to anyone, WaMu built empire on shaky loans By PETER S. GOODMAN AND GRETCHEN MORGENSON THE NEW YORK TIMES "We hope to do to this industry what Wal-Mart did to theirs, Starbucks did to theirs, Costco did to theirs and Lowe's-Home Depot did to their industry. And I think if we've done our job, five years from now you're not going to call us a bank." -- Kerry K. Killinger, chief executive of Washington Mutual, 2003 SAN DIEGO -- As a supervisor at a Washington Mutual mortgage processing center, John D. Parsons was accustomed to seeing baby sitters claiming salaries worthy of college presidents, and schoolteachers with incomes rivaling stockbrokers'. He rarely questioned them. A real estate frenzy was under way and WaMu, as his bank was known, was all about saying yes. Yet even by WaMu's relaxed standards, one mortgage four years ago raised eyebrows. The borrower was claiming a six-figure income and an unusual profession: mariachi singer. Parsons could not verify the singer's income, so he had him photographed in front of his home dressed in his mariachi outfit. The photo went into a WaMu file. Approved. "I'd lie if I said every piece of documentation was properly signed and dated," said Parsons, speaking through wire-reinforced glass at a California prison near here, where he is serving 16 months for theft after his fourth arrest -- all involving drugs. While Parsons, whose incarceration is not related to his work for WaMu, oversaw a team screening mortgage applications, he was snorting methamphetamine daily, he said..." http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/393914_wamu28.html Then:CrackMeth. Now: Xanax and beta-blockers...

Seems like the useful take-aways from techno-threads involving traditional pro usually amount to something like: 1. If you're on a multi-pitch route, get in bomber pieces as soon as you can to protect against a factor two fall onto the anchor. 2. All things being equal, putting in pro at closer intervals after you've started a route/pitch will help reduce the risk that the high-impact forces generated by small amount of rope between you and your belayer will result in a ground/factor-2 fall, but you can space things out a bit more as you move away from the ground/belay if the pro's good and you're looking at a clean fall. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Sort of related... ~Doubling up on pro before sections that are cruxy and climbing through them to the next good stance/placement instead of thrutching around pumping out while trying to get an intermediate piece of gear in the cruxy stretch seems to be useful for me, when the conditions allow it, but that's more of a "mentally optimal pro" thing than a "mathematically optimal pro" thing.

Discussion in NYRB prompted by the original article: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21811 "The economics of climate change is straightforward. Virtually every activity directly or indirectly involves combustion of fossil fuels, producing emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide accumulates over many decades and leads to surface warming along with many other potentially harmful geophysical changes. Emissions of carbon dioxide represent "externalities," i.e., social consequences not accounted for by the workings of the market. They are market failures because people do not pay for the current and future costs of their actions. If economics provides a single bottom line for policy, it is that we need to correct this market failure by ensuring that all people, everywhere, and for the indefinite future are confronted with a market price for the use of carbon that reflects the social costs of their activities. Economic participants—thousands of governments, millions of firms, billions of people, all making trillions of decisions each year—need to face realistic prices for the use of carbon if their decisions about consumption, investment, and innovation are to be appropriate. The most efficient strategy for slowing or preventing climate change is to impose a universal and internationally harmonized carbon tax levied on the carbon content of fossil fuels. The carbon content is the total amount of carbon dioxide emissions that are emitted, for example, when people use a kilowatt-hour (kwh) of electricity or burn a gallon of gas. To understand a carbon tax, consider an average American household, which consumes about 12,000 kwh of electricity per year at a price of about $0.10 per kwh. If this electricity were generated from coal, that would lead to about three tons of carbon emissions. If the carbon tax were $30 per ton, it would increase the annual cost of coal-electricity purchases from $1,200 to $1,290. By contrast, the costs of nuclear or wind power would be unaffected by a carbon tax because these forms of energy use no carbon fuels. Raising the price on the use of carbon through a carbon tax has the primary purpose of providing strong incentives to reduce carbon emissions. It does this through four mechanisms. First, it will provide signals to consumers about what goods and services produce high carbon emissions and should therefore be used more sparingly. Second, it will provide signals to producers about which inputs use more carbon (such as electricity from coal) and which use less or none (such as electricity from wind), thereby inducing them to move to low-carbon technologies. Third, it will give market incentives for inventors and innovators to develop and introduce low-carbon products and processes that can replace the current generation of technologies. Finally, a market price for carbon will reduce the amount of information that is required to do all three of these tasks. Ethical consumers today, hoping to minimize their "carbon footprint" (the amount of carbon they use), would have serious difficulties making an accurate calculation of the relative carbon emissions that result from, say, driving versus flying. With a carbon tax, the market price of all activities using carbon would rise by the tax times the carbon content of fossil fuels. Many consumers would still not know how much of the market price is due to the carbon content, but they could make their decisions confident that they are paying for the social cost of the carbon they use.... However, the major economic question remains: What is the appropriate price of carbon? It is at present infeasible (or at the least ruinously expensive) to prevent any and all future warming; yet unchecked warming poses serious threats to human and especially natural systems. We need therefore to strike a balance between the competing objectives of preventing climatic damage, maintaining economic growth, avoiding catastrophic risks, and not imposing undue hardships on poor people or future generations..." Etc

There is little reason to think the science isn't already mostly right despite the continuing rhetoric of the denialists. Starting today, global greenhouse gas emissions have to decrease by at least 80% by the end of the century to avoid warming greater than 2degC, which implies we'll have to do better since we contribute already a disproportionate amount. Peak oil and the present severe recession combined with climate change represent an opportunity to rebuild the economy on a truly sustainable basis. Maybe - but IMO the rougher things are in the present, the less willing people are to make sacrifices that might lead to a better future if doing so will their lives even tougher. No matter how how small the uncertainty is concerning the science, bankrupting the present to pay for the future isn't ever going to be a a viable way forward, so the path to lower carbon emissions is going to have to be paved with investments that create outputs worth more than their inputs within a time frame that will provide enough incentive to get them built. In practice, barring something truly revolutionary, that'll probably mean that we have to content ourselves with a series of incremental improvements in efficiency, gradually build solar/wind/etc capacity, and rely on conventional power sources until we transition to a technological state where we can generate the vast majority of our power without producing C02. Seems like after allow for incremental increases in solar, wind, increasing efficiency, conservation, etc - the gap is going to get filled with either coal, natural gas, or nuclear. I know which one will get my vote. *NYRB article that you might be interested in reading. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21494

When it comes to Global Warming, getting the science right will be the easy part. Deciding how to respond will involve moving into the realm of conflicting value judgments based on the same evidence, and determining how to allocate scarce resources that have many alternative uses in response to the science will be infinitely harder.

Impeachment and ejection from office is something different than a court trial and conviction/incarceration. Taking away someone's official position in government via a vote in the legislature is something fundamentally different than potentially taking away their basic rights and freedoms in a court of law. Consequences are different, rules of evidence are evident, process is different. Pretending that citizens and legislators can't draw a reasonable conclusion about someone's fitness to continue in office, no matter how clear and substantial the evidence is, unless they base their decision on the outcome of a court trial is retarded. Per the contrary argument a governor could wear a Klan outfit and smoke crack while accepting bribes at a press conference and neither the citizens nor the legislators would have any basis for removing him from office until there was a court judgment confirming that he was guilty of something.

More info at various ski/snow forums. No doubt old news to the folks that frequent them.

Energy savings through increasing efficiency and substitution is indeed an essential part of the equation toward sustainable energy consumption. I don't really believe in true altruism so most of my attempts aren't really out of the ordinary and were guided by finances and philosophy; most important changes needed modest investments that we are fortunate to be able to afford and are confident will eventually pay off. To tell the truth, it wasn't very hard because I have always despised most conspicuous consumption and non-durable goods. I strongly feel that quality of life is enhanced through sobriety and quality over quantity , which doesn't imply I am always sober. To be more specific yet brief, over the years we have increased the efficiency of our old house (new insulation, new windows, new appliances that I am concerned have little durability due to planned obsolescence, >90% energy efficient furnace coupled with a heat pump, for the big ticket changes). We regulate closely the temp of our home and put on a sweater before we turn up the heat, unplug electronics, etc ... In other areas, we got rid of all but one of our cars. We are left with a 35mpg, 10 years old japanese car that is shared by everyone in the household; we bike, take public transit, walk and have a zipcar membership for the times we need an extra vehicle. We try to buy local product to avoid susbidized long transport of goods, eat little red meat (once every few month perhaps) and pretty much prepare all food from scratch. I think that for most people - even those who are extremely concerned about reducing their consumption for environmental reasons - it's hard to justify investments in alternative energy generation and/or major capital upgrades to improve efficiency because the payoff period may exceed the length of time that they'll stay in the house, and they may not recoup the investment via energy savings or a higher sales price. Seems like one way to promote bottom-up investments in energy/efficiency would be to channel some of the subsidies that we pay the average homeowner via the mortgage-interest deduction into some sort of an incentive scheme that reduces people's reluctance to invest in alternative energy/efficiency upgrades for their homes. In an ideal world, there'd be no mortgage subsidy, but since we've already crossed that threshhold and made the majority of home owners dependent on federal subsidies - there's little ground left to oppose putting strings on it that would reduce energy consumption, boost output from alternative sources, etc.

There are plenty of alternatives, but the implementation of alternatives needs politcal will and financial investments. [serious Question] You seem like a guy who has probably made investments in your own home to conserve energy and/or make use of alternatives. What investments have you made in one or the other, and to what extent did financial considerations influence your choices. [serious question/]

Two of each that you read/listen/would-recommend/think other folks might enjoy but may not be aware of? Podcast(s): Skeptics Guide to the Universe. www.theskepticsguide.org/ Point of Inquiry. http://pointofinquiry.org/ Blogs: Calculated Risk http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/ Science Based Medicine. http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ Probably not everyone's cup of tea, but might be enjoyable for folks of a particular bent.

Yeah - just seems like it'd be tough for new member/passerby who never gave up on the swami belt to know that there was a subgroup of kindred spirits that he could join without some kind of fixed public header/link to the group. Seems like the usual model is some kind of a list of sub-groups, a clickable link that takes you to a page where you the folks that put the group together can post their invite/overview, etc, and a deal where you can ask to join the group if no one has invited you. Not a huge deal though, just an idea. The new route-wiki thing looks like a much more significant enhancement than the private forum thing, so if that gets off the ground that'll satisfy my site enhancement cravings for quite a while. Seems like something like that has been batted around for years, so I'm psyched that it looks like it's on the table.

Seems like the exclusivity/dilution thing is a function of the size of the user base, but there's no doubt that what you are saying is true. As far as invite only forums are concerned, I don't think that the death of the "I Never Gave Up on the Swami Belt" sub-forum after it has run its course and/or succumbed to discord and disarray after the "Leg Loops, or No" debate got *way* out of control is necessarily going to reduce the vitality of the larger site that's hosting it. That is, as long as long as there's a mechanism for groups of like minded people to create the "I Only Climb in Prana", "I Hate Cams," and other new sub-forums as long as the interest is there to create/sustain them. On this site in particular, it seems like having this option might have made life a bit easier for people who were trying to use the site to have a constructive dialogue about a sensitive issue with other folks who want to help, have something at stake, etc, and would have been beneficial even if the conversation eventually ran its course and died. Might be useful for folks organizing a big trip or event, etc, in addition to giving the sub-groups a home.

Good for staying in touch with friends and catching up with old ones. The mode of interaction there is fundamentally different than you get on a typical message board or blog in that - from what I've seen at least - most communication occurs in a closed format, amongst people who know one another and share a friendship or something close to it. As kind of an aside, one of the ideas that I had for this site was the addition of invitation-only sub-forums that people could create and control admission to "Madrone Wall Access Forum" or "Secret Crag Bolting Forums" that would facilitate communication amongst interested parties without the said parties having to contend with bomb-throwing jackasses and other distractions. Aptly enough - I proposed this in the moderator only forum - but the idea never made it out of that setting. I'm still partial to the idea.

Good for staying in touch with friends and catching up with old ones. The mode of interaction there is fundamentally different than you get on a typical message board or blog in that - from what I've seen at least - most communication occurs in a closed format, amongst people who know one another and share a friendship or something close to it. As kind of an aside, one of the ideas that I had for this site was the addition of invitation-only sub-forums that people could create and control admission to "Madrone Wall Access Forum" or "Secret Crag Bolting Forums" that would facilitate communication amongst interested parties without the said parties having to contend with bomb-throwing jackasses and other distractions. Aptly enough - I proposed this in the moderator only forum - but the idea never made it out of that setting. I'm still partial to the idea.

That would certainly be more reasonable than CAFE standards and other schemes that congress has used to drive fuel efficiency thus far, and would also account for the fact that CO2 emissions are driven by a person's total consumption, not simply what they choose to drive. The fact that owning a 4,000 square foot house with bay windows doesn't make you an eco-pariah so long as you put the recycling bin out front and have at least one Prius in the driveway has always been amusing to me. A carbon tax might even be politically palatable if it was packaged so that gross personal income taxes had to be reduced by the amount collected via the carbon tax, and the tax-offset were somewhat skewed towards the lowest income taxpayers, for whom the actual burden of the tax would be highest.

The only certainty is change... "Like a Rock: Hybrid Car Sales Plummet Posted by Keith Johnson Is Congres smarter than Detroit? Put another way, what does it mean that sales of hybrid cars in the U.S. fell 50% in November—more than car sales fell overall in a terrible month for automakers? Prius_art_257_20081209120527.jpg Back to regular sticker shock (AP) U.S. hybrid sales in November fell to 16,571 units, notes Green Car Congress. The slump affected everybody from Toyota and its market-leading Prius to smaller hybrid players like Ford and General Motors. That puts U.S. hybrid sales back where they were in November, 2005. That also raises questions about the wisdom of Congressional insistence that Detroit retool its product line to build more hybrid and electric cars and fewer trucks and SUVs. As we noted earlier, Ford’s most resilient product in November was its F-150 pickup truck. What’s behind the drop in hybrid sales? There are explanations for all tastes. In a nutshell, the economic slump and credit crunch have kneecapped all car sales. Falling gasoline prices have been the coup de grace for hybrids. Gasoline prices have fallen 58% since breaking $4.11 this summer; nationwide prices now average about $1.73 a gallon, the AAA says. Cheap gas makes expensive upfront investments in more fuel-efficient hybrids a difficult proposition–especially as some analysts talk of gas plunging toward $1 a gallon before long." Link Retooling that permits auto makers to respond as quickly and inexpensively as possible to changes in buyer preferences would be smart. Retooling that leaves them unresponsive and committed to cranking out cars that people outside of the car business think that the public should want, based on their personal value judgments and predictions about various elements of the future is dumb. Companies that can't evolve go extinct. End of story.

Representative democracy is one thing, mob rule is quite another. I'll refer you to The Federalist Papers for a primer on the distinction between the two. Now, be a sport and name your country (might also be useful to explain why you haven't moved there)....

I believe JayB's arguments, so far as they go. He states the classic case of allowing a market to decide resource allocation and resource price. The problem comes, of course, when society (the government is us, right?) applies the market model to absolutely everything, or intervenes in ways that are not well-considered, and then unintended consequences lead to strange, counter-productive distortions, such as food shortages in Mexico because of hare-brained ethanol subsidies in the US. The other problem has to do with the fact that starving people cannot be placed in storage until there is food to feed them, nor can the environmental consequences of all those myriad individual decisions (like buying that SUV because I can) be put off until the 'market' prices in and 'solves' environmental degradation. It probably won't until too late. Species extinction, for example, is accelerating, largely because it makes market-sense to destroy habitat. Markets are pretty efficient (in general), but they are monstrously short-sighted, and the humans who participate in them will gladly take advantage of bad policy (or no policy) for immediate gain. This is why we need that part of our better natures to consider questions and responses outside of the market framework. For example, we (the government) should stop subsidizing the consumption of fossil fuels and should make them even more expensive than the market would price them, to encourage ceasing using them. I don't think that there are very many people who would argue that it's unnecessary to have laws in general, or laws that pertain to economics in particular. If there are, I'm certainly not one of them. When discussing laws that pertain to economics, I think it's important to distinguish intentions from outcomes. As I said above, if good intentions were sufficient to secure good outcomes, life would be much simpler, and the intentions behind a given law would be all that matters. They're not - so it's possible to argue against a particular government intervention, or for changes to a given law, without arguing against government itself. Ergo, I don't think that explaining why a particular government intervention in the marketplace is likely to have effects that are counter to those that the policymakers intended - no matter how noble their intentions - means that I recognize no legitimate role for law or government in society.

Other than answering "yes" to your question below, there's not much that I can do here other than accepting that either I failed to present my points in ways that you would understand, or that you chose to interpret them in a manner that's at odds with what I intended. I have to sign out in a moment, I'll add that I think that it is possible for people's private, selfish motives to produce outcomes that serve the public good, even if that's not their intention. Take attorneys, for example. Is it purely an interest in promoting the public good that inspires all lawsuits brought in this country? If not - does it follow that the public can derive no benefits from the effects of their litigation? The larger point is that when it comes to the public good, I think that we're much better off focusing on outcomes rather than intentions - whether we're talking about businessmen, attorneys, government officials, or what have you. If intentions were all that mattered, life would be much simpler.

You forgot the fact that deforestation brought about the collapse of the Roman empire, and threatened to leave all of North America critically short of energy until Gifford Pinchot intervened! It's not that I don't think any of the above depletions isn't a problem, it's just that I don't think that they are, by definition, insurmountable. Even if you accept the hypothesis that political, cultural, and economic variables had zero bearing on the fate of the poster-societies named above - and consequently that *any* group of people living in the same place at the same time in the same number would have met the same fate - it doesn't follow that hundreds of years of political, social, economic, cultural, scientific, and technological development have left humanity equally helpless to deal with the problems posed by resource scarcity. I'm also glad that the Green Revolution, and the higher-yielding crops that it brought about, spared hundreds of millions of people who might have otherwise starved to death in the 20th (and 21st) while mankind figures out how to deal with the said issues. The thought of what would have happened to the soil and water had these people and their societies been contending with chronic famines makes me even more thankful that the world didn't go down that path.

Remember when I asked you to identify the (real, existing) nation that most closely approximated your ideal society, so that we could compare and contrast the specific merits and shortcomings of that country and the US? If Obama had known that his task was to construct a utopia, rather than a cabinet, he may have been rather less keen on accepting the office.

Since you linked to this very same post as an example what - exactly - have I said in this thread that would justify including my name in your previous post? Just for a reminder, I'm talking about this: "You and KK and JayB may think that anyone who criticizes American use of torture is misguided and encourages terrorism." statement. Let's call this statement "A." Let's call the set of statements that you put forward in the second iteration statement "B." B does not logically entail A. With regards to nuance, is there something that you'd recommend as a substitute when dealing with complicated topics?

I'll extend the same invitation to you that I extended to Matt.