Wherefore art thou, Reason?

This report from a New Zealand youth delegation at COP-21 gives significant insight into the real drivers of this dangerous anthropogenic global warming (DAGW) nonsense, especially as seen by the young.

Many of our youth unschooled in reason by watchful family or teachers are being systematically indoctrinated both to expect a cataclysmic future and to distrust science. Cataclysmic expectations are created by endless descriptions of it; distrust of science is efficiently created by refusing to teach it. It is a campaign of exceptional lunacy shot through with avarice.

The alarmists have claimed for decades that global warming is the greatest threat facing mankind and they’re right: if we’re not careful their evil campaign will destroy us.

Three quotations convey the essence.

1. Today’s update from COP21 comes from Ben Abraham, who is part of the youth delegation’s policy team. Ben loves Dunedin, where he finished his undergraduate degree, but he is now living in the UK, doing a PhD in public policy, with a focus on climate change governance, at Oxford University.

Western education systems are now herding our best and brightest into career avenues that aim to destroy western capitalism, and breed future David Suzukis and Tim Flannerys.

2. Another sticking point in the finance discussions is how to make sure that money goes towards both mitigation (the reduction of emissions) and adaptation (efforts to live with impacts of climate change that have now become unavoidable). There’s a very large bias among donor countries to want to give towards mitigation because that’s where the business opportunities are, for example for energy companies, whereas there’s a lot less potential for returns from adaptation measures.

Out of the mouths of babes… whoever would have guessed that commerce rather than saving the planet was the prime motivation for the powerful among the DAGW set?

3. Following the news that New Zealand’s government has adopted the 1.5 degree temperature limit, the youth delegation is calling for an immediate ban on further exploration for oil, gas and coal reserves in New Zealand.

Words almost fail me. We all use oil, gas and coal to improve our health and productivity. Since growth in energy demand is not allowed to be serviced by hydro or nuclear, presumably future demand is to be met by linking hands in a candle-lit circle at the bottom of the garden and chanting kumbaya.

Following Green activist “logic”, of the available sources of energy these poor young people imagine that only solar and wind generated power are acceptable — despite each being both uneconomic and environmentally damaging.

It is very hard to imagine how our processes of democratic government could have led to such malignantly diseased attitudes among younger (and many older) people. It is no satisfaction at all that as they make their bed, so in future they are going to have to lie in it.

Visits: 102

45 Thoughts on “Wherefore art thou, Reason?

  1. Andy on 15/12/2015 at 10:05 am said:

    I was having a discussion on Desmog by a group who insisted that CO2 is not plant food, and that water (vapour) is not a greenhouse gas.

    They outed me as a “denier” because I let slip the phrase “CO2 is plant food” which is verboten under the Scriptures of SkS.

    The Red Guard were then able to set the Stasi upon me and re-educate my “denier’ brain.

    CO2 is not plant food, in the real world. In the unreal world of the tomato greenhouse, CO2 actually is plant food, however.

    We are DOOMED, Capn Mainwaring, DOOMED…..

  2. Simon on 15/12/2015 at 10:46 am said:

    If the aspirational target is a maximum increase of 1.5 degree C, then there is too much CO2 in the atmosphere already. There would be no point in further exploration because no one would ever be able to use it.
    You should consider the very real possibility that this Oxford PhD student knows what he is talking about and that you are actually the one who has been systematically indoctrinated into distrusting science.

  3. Andy on 15/12/2015 at 10:51 am said:

    If we have already used to much CO2 then the Oxford student should have stayed in Dunedin and not gone to COP21 with his church group to lecture us about not using air travel.

    Maybe air travel is only for the ubermenschen?

  4. Andy on 15/12/2015 at 10:52 am said:

    Yes of course we have been “indoctrinated”. If only I could accept the Scriptures of SkS that Co2 is not plant food. Maybe I could also accept that Islam is the Religion of Peace?

  5. Andy on 15/12/2015 at 10:58 am said:

    If we can’t explore for oil anymore, who would make the plastic for the kayaks for the anti-oil protestors?

    How would we make the windmills that are needed for the “100% renewable low carbon economy”? How would we power the diesel generators required to back up the windmills when the wind isn’t blowing?

    How would we smelt the steel and fabricate the silicon for the PV panels?

    Warning, “denier” words. You may be “triggered”.

  6. Richard C (NZ) on 15/12/2015 at 11:48 am said:

    >”Maybe air travel is only for the ubermenschen?”

    Exactly, the words “aviation” and “shipping” were conspicuously absent from COP21. So was the word “teleconference”. How did Ben Abraham get to the UK? Hitchhike? I know a guy who did the overland by motorcycle but given some of his near-death experiences on the way I don’t think that’s a realistic alternative.

    Shipping is actually a real polluter (except for CO2) although there are pollution control measures being introduced to new designs just as there are for new coal-fired power stations that pass emission control regs.

    However, for national economies and many people, including climate activists, it’s “next cruise/container ship into dock please” or “next flight to Paris/UK please”.

  7. Richard C (NZ) on 15/12/2015 at 11:49 am said:

    >”If the aspirational target is a maximum increase of 1.5 degree C, then there is too much CO2 in the atmosphere already.”

    Huh? This is woollier than usual Simon.

  8. Andy on 15/12/2015 at 12:47 pm said:

    I think they should call for a ban on all further air travel, with a priority given to climate activists. Ben and his chums can stay in Oxford amongst the dreaming spires and perspiring dreams and lecture us via Skype

    They can also use hemp canoes when making anti-oil flotillas

    Bloody hippies…

  9. Richard C (NZ) on 15/12/2015 at 12:55 pm said:

    From the feature article linked in the post:

    Spokesperson Ben Abraham says the text is “heavy with the illusion of ambition without the reality of action”.

    [Renée Annan (Day Eleven)] – “The Paris agreement is an ambition in words but not in action,….”

    Well yes (duh). That’s the only reason there was an agreement. It’s an aspiration statement for show. Carrying out the aspirations is another matter entirely. There was nothing really new, INDC’s and $100 billion per year are from past years and of no real consequence:

    Ben says the biggest issue yet to be resolved is finance. The Paris agreement will come into effect in 2020 and, back in 2009 at the Copenhagen COP meeting, rich countries have already pledged to deliver $100 billion per year in financial support for poor countries to develop technology and build infrastructure to cut emissions.

    “That money is yet to materialise, so there is the issue of making that happen and ramping up the short-term ambition to what has already been agreed.”

    It’s not going to happen and to think it might is extraordinarily naive. And what has already been pledged has little to do with climate:

    66% of pledges have nothing to do with the climate. Billions in claims “inflated”
    http://joannenova.com.au/2015/12/billions-of-dollars-on-irrelevant-pledges-that-have-nothing-to-do-with-the-climate/

    The global recession underway will do more to mitigate fossil fuel emissions than INDC’s ever will (the “I” in INDC being “intended”), as 2009 showed. The recession is real, the outcome of aspirations and intentions not so much.

    Zoe Lenzie-Smith takes the prize for ignorance though (Day Nine):

    With Beijing at standstill because of air pollution, ………….., she wonders “how much is it going to take for the negotiators to actually feel it and act accordingly”.

    How much is it going to take for people like Zoe (and news outlets like Al Jazeera) to discover that the air pollution they see or feel in the air is not CO2, or climate change?

    Sudhvir Singh (Day Seven) sees it a little better:

    “The things we need to do to reduce our carbon pollution are exactly the things we need to do to confront the major public health problems we’re facing all around the world. Obviously reducing pollution improves air quality,

    Yes sort of, if the notion that CO2 is a pollutant is discarded and climate conflation removed. If China had learned from the industrialized West and imposed pollution control on flues from the outset of their industrial boom then they wouldn’t have the pollution they have now. But they didn’t learn, they were gung-ho for growth and skipped that initial cost. Now they’re just closing factories temporarily. I haven’t heard much about retrofit from them. Ask the US about the economics of that.

  10. Richard C (NZ) on 15/12/2015 at 1:19 pm said:

    What China didn’t do…..

    ‘Advanced Emissions Control Technologies for Coal-Fired Power Plants’

    Introduction
    Coal is one of the most abundant energy sources in the world. Advanced emission control technologies are needed to cleanly use coal for electricity generation. Environmental regulations of coal-fired power plants in Asia cover a broad range of requirements. Depending on the area within Asia and the type of coal to be burned, different combinations of technologies are needed to meet local regulations. There are a multitude of advanced emissions control technologies available to address the most common targeted pollutants such as sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and particulate matter (PM), as well as other pollutants which are increasingly becoming targeted worldwide, such as mercury, sulfur trioxide (SO3), condensable PM, and other trace metals. This paper examines state-of-the-art emissions control systems that are available to meet the multi-pollutant requirements for coal-fired power plants. These technologies include selective catalytic reduction (SCR), electrostatic precipitators (ESP), fabric filters, flue gas desulfurization (FGD), wet ESP, dry sorbent injection, and mercury control methods.

    http://www.babcock.com/library/Documents/BR-1886.pdf

    # # #

    This is what the activists don’t want to know about and don’t want known by anyone else. But when this is done, all we’re left with is water vapour billowing out of cooling towers for activists to photograph and rail against. Not sure what can be done about that.

  11. Andy on 15/12/2015 at 1:45 pm said:

    They get to have a nice career in “public policy”, inventing new acronyms, flying to pointless conferences where they hold hands, sing songs, and cuddle fake polar bears.

    I just wish they would leave us alone. I don’t even mind paying a little for it. At least it keeps them off the streets and I think most jobs at Burger King are taken already.

  12. Richard C (NZ) on 15/12/2015 at 1:52 pm said:

    >”I haven’t heard much about [pollution control] retrofit from [China]. Ask the US about the economics of that.”

    Or India:

    ‘Retrofitting Pollution Control Equipment In Indian Power Plants and Other Industries To Meet The Present More Stringent Norms’
    http://www.isesp.org/ICESP%20IX%20PAPERS/ICESP%2009%20B06.pdf

    The US Administration is hell-bent on shutting down coal stations but there are retrofit projects going on, for example:

    ‘Power plants install emissions controls’ — San Juan Generating Station and Four Corners Power Plant
    October 13, 2015

    Four Corners Power Plant

    The plant, owned and operated by Arizona Public Service Company, or APS, shut down its three older generating units in December 2013. Those units are expected to be demolished and removed from the plant by 2017.

    The remaining two units, Units No. 4 and No. 5, which are two separate flues housed together in one common stack, will be retrofitted with pollution controls starting this week.

    The work, which began several years ago, involves the installation of pollution controls, called SCRs, or selective catalytic reduction technology. The technology and installation will cost approximately $635 million and is expected to be operational by July 2018.

    http://www.daily-times.com/story/news/local/four-corners/2015/10/12/power-plants-install-emissions-controls/73823014/

  13. Richard C (NZ) on 15/12/2015 at 2:02 pm said:

    >”They get to have a nice career in “public policy”, inventing new acronyms”

    But is there a career progression after CBDRILONCWRC ?

    Story here:
    https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2015/11/fallacy-of-carbon-footprint/comment-page-1/#comment-1388045

    Hard to top I would have thought. Aren’t they working themselves out of a job?

  14. Andy on 15/12/2015 at 2:08 pm said:

    SJW’s will need to balance their CBDRILONCWRC when reaching out to the LBGTIQWERTY community.

  15. Andy on 15/12/2015 at 2:52 pm said:

    I wonder if our new PhD in public policy will use tools like RCPs that are not designed for public policy, just as our PCE (who also has a PhD in public policy) does?

    When something says “do not use for X”, why do they use for X?

    Especially when they have a PhD in X

  16. Richard C (NZ) on 15/12/2015 at 2:56 pm said:

    >”The global recession underway will do more to mitigate fossil fuel emissions than INDC’s ever will”

    That’s kicking in already. From previous thread (don’t be fooled by global economic growth – see below):

    ‘Global Growth In CO2 Emissions Stagnates’

    A new report claims that the rate of growth in global CO2 emissions has fallen and indeed, stalled. The report does not explain how this links to the continuing increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations

    From the European Commission Joint Research Centre 30.11.2015

    After a decade of rapid growth in global CO2 emissions, which increased at an average annual rate of 4%, much smaller increases were registered in 2012 (0.8%), 2013 (1.5%) and 2014 (0.5%). In 2014, when the emissions growth was almost at a standstill, the world’s economy continued to grow by 3%.

    The trend over the last three years thus sends an encouraging signal on the decoupling of CO2 emissions from global economic growth. However, it is still too early to confirm a positive global trend. For instance India, with its emerging economy and large population, increased its emissions by 7.8% and became the fourth largest emitter globally.

    http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/news-stories/article/global-growth-in-co2-emissions-stagnates.html

    Citation

    Trends in Global CO2 Emissions 2015 Report by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC) and PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

    Get the report here.
    http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/news_docs/jrc-2015-trends-in-global-co2-emissions-2015-report-98184.pdf

    Source. EC JRC news release here
    https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/news/global-growth-co2-emissions-stagnates

    # # #

    >”don’t be fooled by global economic growth”

    ‘We are shrinking! The neglected drop in Gross Planet Product’

    Peter A.G. van Bergeijk 07 December 2015

    Presenting the October 2015 IMF World Economic Outlook, Maurice Obstfeld (2015) identified the fall of commodity prices as one of the powerful forces shaping the outlook for the world economy. The strength of this force, however, is underestimated by the official forecasts in the IMF’s flagship publication. As illustrated in Figure 1 the IMF world economic outlook database reports a reduction of Gross Planet Product (GPP) for the year 2015 by -3,8 trillion dollar (-4.9%). A nominal reduction of GPP of this size has occurred only once since 1980 (the starting year of the IMF database), namely at the start of the Great Recession when GPP contracted by -5.3%. Table 1 illustrates that all previous contractions of nominal GPP are associated with major crises in the world economy.

    Figure 1. Gross Planet Product at current prices (trillions of dollars, 1980 – 2015)

    http://www.voxeu.org/article/shrinking-planetary-gdp

  17. Richard C (NZ) on 15/12/2015 at 3:12 pm said:

    >”I wonder if our new PhD in public policy will use tools like RCPs that are not designed for public policy”

    Speaking of which:

    ‘A closer look at scenario RCP8.5’ Posted on December 13, 2015 | by Larry Kummer

    Unfortunately scientists often inaccurately describe RCP8.5 as the baseline scenario — a future without policy action: “a relatively conservative business as usual case with low income, high population and high energy demand due to only modest improvements in energy intensity” from “RCP 8.5: A scenario of comparatively high greenhouse gas emissions” by Keywan Riahi et al in Climate Change, November 2011, This is a material misrepresentation of RCP8.5. Scientists then use RCP8.5 to construct horrific visions of the future. They seldom mention its unlikely assumptions.

    http://judithcurry.com/2015/12/13/a-closer-look-at-scenario-rcp8-5/

  18. Andy on 15/12/2015 at 3:12 pm said:

    “The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars”

    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/dec/14/the-paris-agreement-signals-that-deniers-have-lost-the-climate-wars

    Hooray! The Eco-Fascists have won the climate wars! Hip hip hooray!

    Time to go out and hug a local eco fascist.

    be a good sport!
    .

  19. Andy on 15/12/2015 at 3:21 pm said:

    Yes I posted the JC RCP article to the CCRU facebook page. The message is getting though that the one metre sea level projections are in fantasy land

  20. Andy on 15/12/2015 at 3:29 pm said:

    One of Herr Thomas of Hot Topic’s Year 9 students has come up with a really great idea called “climate saver”

    The idea is you put money into an account, and then withdraw it later so you can buy “low carbon” products like electric cars and solar panels.

    You could, of course, just buy them in the first place. This seems to be a point that remains unanswered at this stage.

    Maybe one of the “Youth Delegation” can pick this idea up. In between hugging each other.

  21. Richard C (NZ) on 15/12/2015 at 3:33 pm said:

    From the Kummer post above:

    (1) An introduction to scenarios about our future

    In AR5 four Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) describe scenarios for future emissions, concentrations, and land-use, ending with radiative forcing levels of 2.6, 4.5, 6.0, and 8.5 W/m2 by 2100. Strong mitigation policies result in a low forcing level (RCP2.6). Two medium stabilization scenarios lead to intermediate outcomes: (RCP4.5, RCP6.0).

    Theoretical CO2 forcing as at 2015 is 1.9 W.m-2 and increasing.

    Actual TOA energy imbalance 2000 – 2012 is 0.62 W.m-2 and trendless.

    http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2014/earths-energy-imbalance/ [Ed Hawkins]

    Why does anyone bother with this RCP rubbish?

  22. Richard C (NZ) on 15/12/2015 at 4:26 pm said:

    AR5 Summary for Policymakers:

    “RCP2.6 is representative of a scenario that aims to keep global warming likely below 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures.”

    https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf

    Below 2°C is the COP21 agreement so RCP2.6 it is – strong mitigation policies required.

    Except we are at theoretical CP1.9 and actual 1°C at 2015 but the theoretical CP is 3 times greater than the actual TOA energy imbalance of 0.6 which according to the IPCC “controls” temperature i.e. CP is unrelated to energy or temperature whether recommended for the future or estimated right now.

  23. Richard C (NZ) on 15/12/2015 at 4:40 pm said:

    >”Except we are at theoretical CP1.9″

    Theory: dF = 5.35 ln(C/Co). Where: Co = 280ppm, C = 400ppm, dF = 1.9 W.m-2

    Actual forcing observed: = 0.6 W.m-2

  24. Richard C (NZ) on 15/12/2015 at 6:49 pm said:

    >”the words “aviation” and “shipping” were conspicuously absent from COP21.”

    Not quite, they were exempted:

    ‘In Paris, Climate Change Alarmists Con Everyone, Including Themselves’

    Written by Robert Tracinski, Federalist on 14 December 2015.

    The same Guardian report that proclaims “the end of the fossil fuel era” also admits that “The overall agreement is legally binding, but some elements — including the pledges to curb emissions by individual countries and the climate finance elements [a multi-billion-dollar giveaway to poor countries] — are not.” So everything is legally binding, except the actual heart of the agreement. Moreover, several big industries are exempted [hotlink – see below], including air travel, shipping, and the biggest one, agriculture. Together these industries account for about a quarter of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.

    http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/in-paris-climate-change-alarmists-con-everyone-including-themselves.html

    ‘3 big polluters (sic) the Paris climate deal won’t touch’

    by Jim Boulden @CNNMoney December 12, 2015:

    You would be forgiven for thinking the COP21 climate talks in Paris would take on some of the biggest polluters (sic, again). If governments have any hope of reaching the goal of capping global temperatures, environmentalists say there must be binding targets to cut emissions on food, aviation and shipping.

    Not one is on the agenda, and that’s on purpose. It just proved too politically sensitive.

    Airplanes and Shipping

    Environmentalists have dubbed aviation and shipping the “Elephants in the Room” in Paris. They claim that air travel is responsible for 5% of man-made emissions and shipping 3%. Aviation is expected to boom in the coming decades and environmentalists want binding caps on the sector. The European parliament called for transport to face binding emissions targets, saying the sector is the “second-largest sector generating greenhouse gas emissions.”

    The U.N. has encouraged aviation and shipping to work “with a view to agreeing to concrete measures addressing these emissions.” Aviation says it accounts for only 1.3% of man-made carbon emissions and that each new airplane that takes flight brings a 15% to 20% drop in emissions compared to older planes. The International Maritime Organization says it will “continue its endeavors to reduce environmental impacts from international maritime transport,” noting 900 new ships meet enhanced fuel efficiency standards.

    Agriculture

    Blame the animals. As the world eats more meat and converts forests into farm land, carbon emissions will surely rise. Agriculture already accounts for about 14% of global emissions and 25% when deforestation and other land use is included, according to the Brookings Institution. It warns food production will have to increase by 50% by 2050 as populations increase.

    Think tank Chatham House says demand for meat will rise 76% by mid century and says livestock alone accounts for 15% of carbon emissions, equal to “tailpipe emissions from all the world’s vehicles.” Emissions caused by the livestock sector range from converting land to grow feed, to transporting the livestock, and particularly the methane emitted, especially from belching cattle.

    But how do you slow the uptake of pork in India and beef in China, and tell Americans to eat less steak? Chatham House says nothing less than a radical shift in our eating patterns will cap agriculture emissions.

    http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/11/news/cop21-3-polluters-not-on-agenda/index.html?iid=hp-stack-dom

    # # #

    What a sham.

  25. Richard C (NZ) on 15/12/2015 at 6:55 pm said:

    >”What a sham.”

    ‘The Non-Binding Paris Deal And Its Implications’

    Written by Dr. Benny Peiser, GWPF, guest post on 14 December 2015.

    It’s is a fraud really, a fake. It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned. –James Hansen, The Guardian, 12 December 2015

    At the Paris climate conference, China has won praise for pledging to stop the growth of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, largely by reducing its use of coal. But these reductions are being undercut as Chinese state-owned companies, backed by state loans, build coal-fired power plants across the developing world despite concerns about global warming and air pollution. Once complete, the 92 projects will have a combined capacity of 107 gigawatts, more than enough to completely offset the planned closing of coal-fired plants in the United States through 2020. Coal-fueled power plants account for 68 percent of the electrical generation capacity built by China in the rest of Asia, and that figure is set to rise. –Michael Forsythe, The New York Times, 12 December 2015

    http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/the-non-binding-paris-deal-and-its-implications.html

  26. Andy on 15/12/2015 at 7:45 pm said:

    @NASAGISS 2015 meteorological year (Dec-Nov) crushes previous record by more than 0.1C
    https://twitter.com/thingsbreak/status/676590129230647300/photo/1

    “Crushes” by 0.1C

    oh please

  27. Richard C (NZ) on 15/12/2015 at 8:50 pm said:

    >Wherefore art thou, Reason?

    Sadly lacking. Hansen’s not fooled by the Paris Agreement though:

    James Hansen, father of climate change awareness, calls Paris talks ‘a fraud’

    “As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.”

    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/12/james-hansen-climate-change-paris-talks-fraud#img-1

    Not hard to conclude one thinks. But in the same paper (Guardian), this:

    Paris climate agreement ‘may signal end of fossil fuel era’
    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/13/paris-climate-agreement-signal-end-of-fossil-fuel-era

    Other signals are that the end is some way off:

    ‘Russia plans $40 a barrel oil for next seven years as Saudi showdown intensifies’
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/12046185/russia-opec-saudi-arabia-bluff-40-oil-price.html

    There is a lot more to all of this that the climate-eye doesn’t see, “the sunk cost problem” for starters (see below). The fossil-fuel era certainly is under thread but not from the Paris climate agreement, it’s the end of a rather different era that will determine that.

    The following is a strong dose of the current reality:

    ‘The End Of The Bubble Finance Era’

    ……it is crucial to sketch the global macroeconomic context.

    In a word, we are now entering an epic deflation. Its leading edge is manifested in the renewed carnage in the commodity pits. This week the Bloomberg commodity index, which encompasses everything from crude oil to soybeans, copper, nickel, cotton and livestock, plunged below 80 for the first time since 1999. It is now down nearly 70% from its all-time high on the eve of the financial crisis, and 55% from its 2011 recovery high.

    Wall Street bulls and Keynesian apologists for the Fed want you to believe that there isn’t much to see here. They claim it’s just a temporary oil glut and some CapEx over-exuberance in the metals and mining industry. But their assurances that in a year or so current excess supplies of copper, crude, iron ore and other commodities will be absorbed by an expanding global economy couldn’t be farther from the truth. In fact, this error is at the heart of my investment viewpoint.

    We believe the global economy is vastly bloated with debt-based spending that can’t be sustained. And that this distortion is compounded on the supply side by an incredible surplus of excess production capacity. As well as wasteful malinvestments that were enabled by dirt cheap central bank credit. Consequently, the world economy is actually going to shrink for the first time since the 1930s. That’s because the plunging price of commodities is only a prelude to what will amount to a worldwide CapEx depression — the kind of thing that has not happened since the 1930s.

    There has been so much over-investment in energy, mining, materials processing, manufacturing and warehousing that nothing new will be built for years to come. The boom of the last two decades essentially stole output from many years into the future. So there will be a severe curtailment in the production of mining and construction equipment, oilfield drilling rigs, heavy trucks and rail cars, bulk carriers and containerships, materials handling machinery and warehouse rigging, machine tools and chemical processing equipment and much, much more.

    The crucial point, however, is that sharp curtailment of the capital goods industries has far more destructive implications for the macro-economy than a reduction in consumer appliance sales or restaurant and bar tabs. Service operations have virtually no working inventories and the supply chains for durable consumer goods such as dishwashers and cars typically have perhaps 50 to 100 days of stocks on hand. So when excessive inventory investments accumulate, the destocking and resulting supply chain curtailments are relatively short-lived.

    But when it comes to capital goods the relevant inventory measure is capacity in place. That’s where the bubble finance policies of the Fed and other central banks have done so much damage. Prolonged periods of below market capital costs induce business customers to drastically over-estimate investment returns. And therefore to eventually accumulate years and years worth of excess capacity.

    This is very different than your grandfather’s consumer goods recessions of the 1950s and 1960s. Those typically involved moderate production cutbacks and several quarters of inventory destocking. But this time the capital goods adjustment will take years, perhaps more than a decade.

    Here’s why.

    When iron ore mines are drastically overbuilt, for example, new orders for Caterpillars’ (CAT) big yellow mining machines can drop to nearly zero. That’s why CAT is already in the longest string of dealer sales declines — 35 straight months and running — in its 100 year history.

    That’s also why the coming global recession will be so prolonged and stubborn. When cheap credit generates a boom in long-lived and expensive capital goods, it gives rise to a pipeline of new capacity. This pipeline is not easy to shut-off and often makes sense to complete — say containerships, steel plants or new field mines — even if pricing and profitability have already headed south.

    That’s known as the sunk cost problem.

    Mining equipment orders are likely to remain deeply depressed for the rest of the decade. And this syndrome will be repeated in most other sectors such as heavy trucks, shipyards, oil drilling equipment etc. This depression in the capital goods industries, in turn, means the disappearance of thousands of typically high pay, high skill jobs at companies like Caterpillar. The same will happen among their extensive chains of outsourced components, materials and service suppliers. And the cascade of those contractions down the economy’s food chain will further intensify and extend the deflationary dynamic.

    During the last 25 years CapEx spending by the publicly listed companies of the world grew by an incredible 500%. Much of this happened in China and the Emerging Market (EM) economies, and in the transportation and distribution infrastructure that connects them. Yet this massive explosion of investment spending didn’t happen because several billion Asian peasants suddenly decided to save-up a storm of new capital. Instead, this unprecedented construction and CapEx campaign was financed almost entirely by a massive issuance of printing press credit at virtually zero real interest rates.

    That means capital was drastically underpriced and that waste, excess and inefficiency abounded. At length, the global economy became dangerously unbalanced. And these adverse consequences of the false central bank credit boom, in fact, highlight the investment opportunity ahead. Healthy capitalist investment based on market prices and savings set aside from current income can go on indefinitely, fueling rising efficiency, output and wealth. But CapEx based on printing press credit only temporarily enabled the world economy to have its cake and eat it, too. Now it’s payback time.

    Needless to say, during the expansion phase of central bank enabled bubble finance, optimism reigns and bulls and speculators insist that “this time is different.” Yet the laws of sound finance and market economics never change. It often just takes an extended time for all the excesses to work their way through the system and finally reach the blow-off stage.

    Over the last two decades, global credit market debt outstanding has soared from $40 trillion to $225 trillion. This represents an incredible $185 trillion debt expansion. That eruption would be simply unimaginable without the help of money printing central banks.

    By contrast, global GDP only expanded by $50 billion during the same period, and even that’s an overstatement. Much of that reported gain merely represented the one-time pass-through of fiat credit, not real savings put to work in efficient production. Consequently, it is likely that the global economy accumulated more than $4 of new debt for every $1 of incremental GDP. Not only is that self-evidently an unsustainable financial equation, it also means that when credit growth stops, the bottom will drop out of reported GDP. It wasn’t new wealth in the first place, just production stolen from the future.

    See graphs>>>>>>
    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-13/end-bubble-finance-era

    >”the global economy became dangerously unbalanced”

    It was not the earth’s energy balance that became dangerously unbalanced.

    Just today reported on the news that Finance Minister Bill English will pump the NZ economy. How? The govt will “borrow another billion”.

  28. Simon on 16/12/2015 at 2:24 pm said:

    Andy,
    I estimate the standard deviation (using HadCRUT4) as 0.29C.
    So, the probability of a given year being 0.1C greater than the previously warmest year ever recorded is roughly 0.8%, assuming a baseline of 1961-1990.
    Extremely improbable if you are assuming that we are in a ‘hiatus’ or ‘pause’.

  29. Andy on 16/12/2015 at 3:52 pm said:

    I thought we were in an El Nino year. Anyway, it is not me assuming we are in a “pause”. I thought all those scientists writing papers about the pause were assuming a pause.

  30. Richard C (NZ) on 17/12/2015 at 8:28 am said:

    Let us know when the warming is CO2-forced Simon. It’s no where near that yet, even in a strong El Nino year.

    And what when the El Nino has passed by?

  31. Richard C (NZ) on 17/12/2015 at 9:13 am said:

    By Foster and Rahmstorf’s method of eliminating “noise” in the data, the 2015 record El Nino effect would have to be removed from the HadCRUT4 series.

    When that’s done, you get a negative inflexion which includes the end of the F&R series in 2010. In other words, the ENSO-neutral data is approaching a peak, even in GISTEMP.

    SkepticalScince (SkS) were big on F&R but seem to have forgotten them lately, since the new and improved GISTEMP incorporated Karl et al. data. Except the latest SkS post on this just supports the F&R approach and confirms my point above:

    ‘Betting against global warming is a sure way to lose money’
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/betting-against-gw-sure-way-to-lose-money.html

    Their GISTEMP figure roughly approximates the F&R2011 residual but with a more realistic curve:

    Figure: Observed global surface temperature data from NASA GISS (gray) and 10-year averages (blue)
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/12/5/1449334027332/7b0441ae-dc7a-4ca8-9003-ce265fbb3a14-620×480.jpeg?w=620&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=4483a163339bebabf9919e50712f4629

    1) The GISTEMP 10-year averages(blue line) has a negative inflexion contrary to CO2 which is rising with a positive curve.

    2) When GISTEMP 2015/16 El Nino years are eventually smoothed by 10 yr averaging (a 2020 graph say), the blue line will be very close to peak warming (that will probably occur very soon after 2020 on that trajectory).

    3) The GISTEMP 10-year averages(blue line) inflexion is even more pronounced than the HadCRUT4 residual found by Macias et al (2014):

    Application of the Singular Spectrum Analysis Technique to Study the Recent Hiatus on the Global Surface Temperature Record
    Diego Macias , Adolf Stips, Elisa Garcia-Gorriz Published: September 10, 2014
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0107222
    http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0107222

    Figure 1. SSA reconstructed signals from HadCRUT4 global surface temperature anomalies.
    The annual surface temperature (gray line), multidecadal variability (MDV, blue line), secular trend (ST, red line) and reconstructed signal (MDV+ST, black line) are indicated. ST represents 78.8% of the total energy of the series; MDV accounts for 8.8% of the energy and the reconstructed signal for 88%. The dashed thin red lines indicate the range of variability of the ST obtained by applying SSA to the temperature time series obtained for each individual month.
    http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure/image?size=large&id=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0107222.g001

    4) When the GISTEMP 10-year averages(blue line) is compared to GISS ModelE CO2-forced simulation (or Model Mean say), it is obvious that the GISTEMP data is not CO2-forced.

    Game over.

  32. Richard C (NZ) on 17/12/2015 at 9:34 am said:

    >”4) When the GISTEMP 10-year averages(blue line) is compared to GISS ModelE CO2-forced simulation (or Model Mean say), it is obvious that the GISTEMP data is not CO2-forced.”

    Average of 90 CMIP5 Climate Models vs HadCRUT4 (running 5 year means):

    http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/90-CMIP5-models-vs-observations-with-pause-explanation.png

    Game over.

  33. Richard C (NZ) on 17/12/2015 at 9:50 am said:

    Simon used to berate us for looking at the “noise” in the data.

    So OK, we look at data from which “noise” has been removed.

    But suddenly, Simon seems to think the “noise” in the data is a REALLY REALLY big deal (probability “roughly 0.8%”) since NASAGISS 2015 meteorological year (Dec-Nov) “crushes” previous record by more than 0.1C (wow).

    I’m beginning to wonder which has more “noise”, Simon or the data?

  34. Andy on 17/12/2015 at 10:49 am said:

    The new “deniers”: James Hansen, Tom Wigley, etc
    http://judithcurry.com/2015/12/16/the-new-climate-deniers/

  35. Andy on 17/12/2015 at 12:13 pm said:

    Sweden is decommissioning some of its useless offshore birdchoppers after only 13 years rusting away in the sea

    http://quixoteslaststand.com/2014/09/20/sweden-offshore-wind-turbines-to-be-decommissioned-after-only-13-years-cheapest-option/

  36. Richard C (NZ) on 17/12/2015 at 12:22 pm said:

    In comments under ‘New Climate Deniers’:

    Stephen Segrest | December 16, 2015 at 4:47 pm |

    Obama Administration on Nuclear Power: http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-nuclear-paradigm-shift-1449014295

    Remember, President Obama tried not once but twice with Congress, to build ~13 new nuclear power plants

  37. Andy on 17/12/2015 at 1:10 pm said:

    Michael Mann has expressed support for Shale Gas. Presumably that makes him a “denier” too.

    The world is rapidly getting to the point where most people are “deniers”.

    Last person standing is Naomi Oreskes.

  38. Richard C (NZ) on 17/12/2015 at 1:42 pm said:

    Another comment under ‘New Climate Deniers’:

    Andy May | December 16, 2015 at 4:21 pm | Reply

    It seems we are seeing a huge reaction to the far left agenda in the US and much of the rest of the western world. Oddly, the most obvious sign of this is the somewhat comical Trump. Why is Trump popular? The large group of forgotten working poor and middle class with no college education and no future. They have been completely ignored for many years and they are justifiably angry about it. Both the Democrats and the Republicans better learn that they ignore them at their peril. Forget inequality, racism, planned parenthood, immigration, climate change, renewables, prairie chickens, “hands up don’t shoot.”

    No one cares, they want good jobs!

    Pretty easy to see their point, yet the media and the politicians never even mention their concerns. I think they will now. Trump may have done a good thing, even though I doubt he will win the nomination. How small the issue of climate change must look to this group of underemployed?
    ———————————————————————————————-
    Also see:

    ‘Marine Le Pen Will Reap What The EU Has Sown’

    ……it’s exactly as Le Pen herself said: “Nothing can stop us”.

    And instead of bemoaning this, or even not believing it, it might be much better to try and understand why she’s right. And that has little to do with any comparisons to Donald Trump. Or perhaps it does, in that in the same way that Trump profits from -people’s perception of- the systemic failures of Washington, Le Pen is being helped into the saddle by Brussels.

    [,,,]

    They [Europeans in general] find no resonance for their worries at home, however, other than with people like Le Pen, Nigel Farage and similar ‘political outcasts’. And therefore that’s where they will turn. All Le Pen has to do is wait for the economy to get worse, and it will, and she can reap what the EU has sown.

    http://www.theautomaticearth.com/2015/12/marine-le-pen-will-reap-what-the-eu-has-sown/

    And,

    ‘The New American Dream Is To Have A Job’

    ……why the message of populist politicians such as Donald Trump that America is not working resonate on the eve of an election year. “There’s a new American dream,” says Torrey Easler, a Baptist preacher who helps feed a growing population of poor in the town of Eden, North Carolina. “The old American dream was to own a home and two cars. The new American dream is to have a job.”

    http://www.theautomaticearth.com/2015/12/debt-rattle-december-14-2015/

    # # #

    The UN megalomaniacs want to “transform” the global economy, with a multi-Strillion price tag. They are idiots. Successive Washington-Brussels-Westminster-Beijing policies have already done that – at a multi-$trillion cost.

    Except it is now pay-back time for the latter, but how when the economies are tanking?

    Obama blew billions on renewables, he doesn’t have that option now and neither does the EU or China i.e. the UN’s “transformational” dream has run into an already transformed reality. Oreskes, Ki-moon, Figureres et al will understand this eventually (maybe).

  39. Richard C (NZ) on 17/12/2015 at 1:50 pm said:

    >”Obama blew billions on renewables,……”

    And on “too big to fail”. He ain’t seen nuthin yet.

  40. Richard C (NZ) on 18/12/2015 at 8:32 am said:

    ‘Paris talks: agreeing to dodge democracy’

    Climate advocacy has become a refuge for political no-hopers.

    Ben Pile

    This is the anatomy of every individual and institutional champion of climate change. Whether they come in the form of a man, a woman or an organisation, climate champions are characterised by their disconnection from ordinary people and everyday life. Yet they nonetheless occupy positions of power and influence. Unsure of the mandate from below, the concentration of gasses in the atmosphere above gives the climate champion authority and secures their privilege. The political consensus on climate change, then, is not an agreement on climate change, but a compact to close ranks against the putative climate champions’ own worthlessness: a mediocracy is formed. At a press conference in Paris, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon urged world leaders to ‘look beyond their national interest’ – that is, to ignore the wishes of their domestic populations. Climate change is presented as above such petty things as democracy.

    http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/paris-talks-agreeing-to-dodge-democracy/17736

  41. Richard C (NZ) on 19/12/2015 at 8:38 am said:

    ‘The IPCC doesn’t believe its own models. The 1.5C ambitious target = 400ppm. We’re already there!’

    http://joannenova.com.au/2015/12/the-ipcc-doesnt-believe-its-own-models-the-1-5c-ambitious-target-400ppm-were-already-there/

    According to “climate science”modeling.

  42. Richard C (NZ) on 19/12/2015 at 9:38 am said:

    >”According to “climate science”modeling”

    It’s not just climate science. They have company in the US:

    ‘Sell The Bonds, Sell The Stocks, Sell The House —–Dread The Fed!’

    by David Stockman • December 18, 2015

    There is going to be carnage in the casino, and the proof lies in the transcript of Janet Yellen’s press conference [Fed Res Chair]. She did not say one word about the real world; it was all about the hypothecated world embedded in the Fed’s tinker toy model of the US economy. Yes, tinker toys are what kids used to play with back in the 1950s and 1960s, and that’s when Janet acquired her school-girl model of the nation’s economy. But since that model is so frightfully primitive, mechanical, incomplete, stylized and obsolete, it tells almost nothing of relevance about where the markets and economy now stand; or what forces are driving them; or where they are headed in the period just ahead. In fact, Yellen’s tinker toy model is so deficient as to confirm that she and her posse are essentially flying blind.

    That alone should give investors pause – especially because Yellen confessed explicitly that “monetary policy is an exercise in forecasting”. Accordingly, her answers were riddled with ritualistic reminders about all the dashboards, incoming data and economic system telemetry that the Fed is vigilantly monitoring. But all that minding of everybody else’s business is not a virtue – its proof that Yellen is the ultimate Keynesian catechumen. This stupendously naïve old school marm still believes the received Keynesian scriptures as penned by the 1960s-era apostles James (Tobin), John (Galbraith), Paul (Samuelson) and Walter (Heller). But c’mon.Those ancient texts have no relevance to the debt-saturated, state-dominated, hideously over-capacitated global economy of 2015.

    They just convey a stupid little paint-by-the-numbers simulacrum of what a purportedly closed domestic economy looked like even back then. That is, before Richard Nixon had finally destroyed Bretton Woods and turned over the Fed’s printing presses to power aggrandizing PhDs; and before Mr. Deng had thrown out Mao’s little red book in favor of a central bank based credit Ponzi. As you listened to Yellen babble on about the purported cyclical “slack” remaining in the US economy, the current unusually low “natural rate” of federal funds, all the numerous and sundry “transient” factors affecting the outlook, and the Fed’s fetishly literal quest for 2.00% inflation (yes, these fools apparently think the can hit their inflation target to the second decimal place), only one conclusion was possible.

    To wit, sell the bonds, sell the stocks, sell the house, dread the Fed!

    […]

    Yellen and her cohort have no clue, however, that all of their massive money printing never really left the canyons of Wall Street, but instead inflated the mother of all financial bubbles. So they are fixing to blow-up the joint for the third time this century. That was plain as day when our Keynesian school marm insisted that the Third Avenue credit fund failure this past week was a one-off event—-a lone rotten apple in the barrel.

    Now that is the ultimate in cluelessness.

    http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/sell-the-bonds-sell-the-stocks-sell-the-house-dread-the-fed/

    # # #

    The ultimate in cluelessness? Debateable. Remains to be seen how both climate change theory and the resulting mitigation and adaption stupidity plays out compared to what happens to the US economy now.

    I think the bigger crash will be the US economy. And that’s where the UN would source most of its Green Climate Funds (assuming they were actually forthcoming).

  43. Richard C (NZ) on 24/12/2015 at 8:53 am said:

    J’ohn Kerry Proves He Doesn’t Understand Climate Science’

    David Kreutzer / @dwkreutzer / December 23, 2015 /

    In an interview at the close of the recent Paris climate conference, Secretary of State John Kerry scolded Republican senators for saying out loud that the next president may not be a big supporter of President Barack Obama’s climate policies. Kerry asserted voters won’t allow a change, “I don’t think they’re going to accept as a genuine leader someone who doesn’t understand the science of climate change and isn’t willing to do something about it.”

    But Kerry disproves his own theory. In a widely covered speech in Jakarta, Indonesia Kerry gave an absolutely cringe-worthy explanation of CO2 and global warming.

    Of course the press totally ignored his bizarre CO2 science lesson:

    “I know sometimes I can remember from when I was in high school and college, some aspects of science or physics can be tough – chemistry. But this is not tough. This is simple. Kids at the earliest age can understand this.

    “Try and picture a very thin layer of gases – a quarter-inch, half an inch, somewhere in that vicinity – that’s how thick it is. It’s in our atmosphere. It’s way up there at the edge of the atmosphere. And for millions of years – literally millions of years – we know that layer has acted like a thermal blanket for the planet – trapping the sun’s heat and warming the surface of the Earth to the ideal, life-sustaining temperature. Average temperature of the Earth has been about 57 degrees Fahrenheit, which keeps life going.”

    He probably should have stopped with “physics can be tough.” His “a quarter-inch way up there” absolutely does not describe CO2 in the atmosphere. It seems what Kerry had in mind is a very abstract representation of the ozone layer. This may have been relevant a long time ago in a debate far, far away, but it is not a description of CO2 in the atmosphere.

    His notion that the Earth has had a steady temperature for “literally millions of years” is also way off base. This National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration webpage shows temperatures have bounced around by 10-25 degrees Fahrenheit ten or so times in the last 800,000 years.

    Kerry dismissively lecturing climate skeptics brings Emily Litella to mind. Emily was Gilda Radner’s “Saturday Night Live” character whose bad hearing led to impassioned, but hilariously misguided, editorial responses.

    Who knows what Kerry’s aides were thinking as he recited his mixed-up ozone lecture in the carbon dioxide forum? You can almost imagine them trying to catch Kerry’s attention, “Psst! We are talking about CO2, not O3.”

    http://dailysignal.com/2015/12/23/john-kerry-proves-he-doesnt-understand-climate-science/

    # # #

    One wonders about all the other politicians “understanding” of climate science, Tim Groser for example.

  44. Richard C (NZ) on 24/12/2015 at 9:54 am said:

    Just for the record, the banner of COP21 Paris was:

    “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,”

    Apparently climate was a minor concern – not worth mentioning.

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