Quotes of the day

With the Federal Reserve, Fannie, Freddie, Ginnie, farm subsidies, medical subsidies, and on and on we are guaranteeing that we will have ‘bubbles’ in the economy. The lesson of subsidies: they encourage uneconomic use and valuation of whatever is being subsidized.

It doesn’t matter if it is a direct cash subsidy or a tax subsidy via refund or exemption, the effect is the same. Iran subsidizes natural gas use and went from a net exporter of natural gas to a net importer of it… of course they killed their petroleum refining industry to the point they have to import gasoline, too. China subsidizes gasoline and gets whipsawed at the top by price fluctuations and the people drive more with a steady fuel price. We subsidize sugar production and pay more for it via subsidies than we would via market prices. We subsidize medical insurance via the tax code for employers and employees, and rates skyrocket as people over-use the system because they don’t have to pay market prices. In fact no one can say what the unsubsidized market price of medicine would be as we have done this for so long we no longer have reliable data.

With science the base state is a given and any changes from it must be proven and demonstrated via experiments that can be replicated. Such results predict other things that can be used to test a hypothesis. Einstein had to hastily amend his calculations for relativity as he had gotten the deflection path of starlight near a large mass wrong… and that would have cast doubt on his theory and we would now be talking about the man who CORRECTED Einstein’s theory noting that person had done substantial work to demonstrate the bad math of Einstein. Thus, when talking about the planet it is not the assumption that ‘things are going wrong and prove otherwise’ but that things continue on as they have been via regular processes and it must be demonstrated that this is not the case. Geology had a grab bag of problems heading into WWII and sea floor geomagnetic data set the jumping off point to wipe out many previous ideas and describe a uniform system known as plate tectonics. That needed proof, lots of proof, over a decade and more from all around the world to finally get it nailed down. Anything like AGW must have a complete, cross-science dataset like that used to form plate tectonics as it is far, far more than ‘climate’ that is being impacted.

Consistent experiments and results, with outcomes that can be measured give a foundation for future work. Economics has had this with subsidies and science has this continually as any new reading that is not in accordance with what is known must be examined and explained. AGW has done none of the heavy lifting to engage the other sciences and demonstrate validity of the claims given… they ran from the geologists who study ancient climate beyond the last million years as they could get no sense out of the climate models presented in the 1990′s and still can’t to this day with updated ones. The conditions of atmosphere, climate and other factors were in play then and now, thus a theory must cover climates deep into our planet’s history, not just today’s.

We will still get ‘bubbles’ in the economy due to subsidies and encouraging non-market valuation of goods and services. Scientific fraud is halllmarked by its insularity an inability to deal with other sciences. I was in a front row seat for a couple of major changes in the sciences, that happened not so long ago. I know what science looks like, how it works and that it is a full contact body sport, not for cloistered analysts trying to fudge data and determine who their peers are and corrupt journals via that process. That is corrupt science and that is now how the game works. And there are some damn hard-assed scientists who love to participate… too bad the AGW proponents didn’t come out and play. Now they pay the price.

ajacksonian on February 22, 2010 at 7:53 AM