TimG

Productivity = output/costs. That means the productivity gains are likely due to the stagnant wage market and increasing wages will cause a drop in productivity. It is supply and demand. There is surplus of labour available in the world but a relative shortage of capital that can be invested. This means wages go down and return on capital goes up. There is nothing that can be down about this until the excess labour in China and India is absorbed into a modern economy.

Housing prices are determined by what people can afford to pay. If interest rates go down - prices go up. If two people work - prices go up. If mortgage interest is made tax deductible - prices go up. Here is one reference that talks about this problem. I did a quick check with the BOC inflation calculator for my parent's prairie town home. Easily double the inflation rate.

Ultimately it is about lifestyle choices. Families that have one parent stay home reduce their expectations in terms housing/vehicles/vacations. That is why I see subsidied daycare as nothing but a wealth transfer from people that are willing to reduce their expectations to raise their kids to those that refuse to reduce their expections.

Taking money in tax dollars to subsidize daycare makes everyone poorer too. If you want to talk about straight economics: if a parent does not make enough money to pay market rates for daycare then there is no economic benefit to be had keeping that parent in the work place. In fact, there may be more economic benefit to be gained by having the non-stay at home spouse work more hours if that spouse has a job with adds more value.

Daycare at workplaces only helps in years 1-4. As soon as the kids need to be in school there is a need for after school care at the schools. However, subsidized daycare does nothing for shift workers, business owners or professionals with long hours. Nor does it help when the kids get sick and cannot be left in a group setting with other kids. The best solution is a system that encourages one parent to fore go the income and take care of their own kids (I know many dads married to professional woman who end up taking on child care - so it does not have to be the woman). For that reason, I oppose any subsidized daycare unless an equal amount is given to families who adjust their lifestyle in order to allow one parent to stay home.

I am not sure what you mean. Are you implying that a declining population is a bad thing that needs fixing? I disagree. There are too many people on the planet as it is and the unfortunate economic reality is poor people will always have more kids because the opportunity cost is lower.

In the US case it is a large minority group which is much poorer than the average. In Canada the Native fertility rate is high for the same reason.

Obviously the leak itself is the fault of BP. I only expect Obama to take responsibility where he had the power to do something. In the case of the getting those Dutch skimmers to work he had the power but refused to exercise it and as a result the US government is now partially responsible for the damage caused by the spill. Every gallon of oil cleaned up before the leak is capped is one less gallon to clean up later. There is no reason to delay cleanup waiting for a cap.

Obama had the power to suspend the application of those laws. He choose not to. He is responsible.

I think you are minimizing the magnitude of the bureaucratic screw up here and why it reflects badly on Obama because Obama was the only one with the power to say screw the rules lets get those ships working ASAP. I don't follow your logic. The oil needs to be cleaned up. The fact that more oil is being released does not eliminate the need to clean up oil that is already floating.

I could not find any such argument in this thread.For me, the refusal to allow the Dutch skimmers to work because they could not meet the EPA regulations was worst example of government incompetence that I have seen in a while. BP might even have a legal case now that the government is responsible for part of the damage because unreasonably delayed the cleanup effort.

Here is an interesting article that illustrates why anti-CO2 policies in Canada will accomplish nothing other than making lower and middle class Canadians a lot poorer.

What I said was we can adapt to whatever changes are likely to occur. Part of the problem with the entire is CAGW narrative is it assumes that humans are idiots and will do nothing to adapt to a changing climate. I assume humans will quietly and automatically adapt to most changes and question is whether we are likely to see changes that exceed our capacity to adapt. I am waiting for the day when our political leadership will have the guts to tell CAGW crowd to go pound salt but that may never happen because CAGW has become religion to many. What really matters is the actual policies that get adopted. So far other than pissing away billions on useless CCS projects Harper has not done much damage on the environmental front which is fine with me.

Where is your evidence that the current climate is, in fact, the optimum climate for humans? After all, primates first appeared the in fossil record when the planet was much hotter and CO2 levels were around 2000ppm so there is no biological argument for claiming the current levels must be preserved at all costs. Life adapts. Polar bears and a few other over specialized species may die out but others will thrive. It all comes down to a cost benefit equation and I see no compelling reason to adopt the economically destructive and completely ineffective policies being pushed by CAGW activists given what we know of climate today.BTW: here is alternative analysis based on the historical experience with fossil fuel reserves that suggests the IPPC has grossly exagerrated CO2 emissions in the future at that the levels will stabilize around 800ppm even if we do nothing.

Try looking at the IPCC reports. They claim that CO2 sensitivity is likely in the range 1.5degC to 4.5degC but could be higher or lower. The generally accepted 'safe' level of warming is 2degC. If CO2 levels double to 800ppm and climate sensitivity is 1.5 (within the IPCC range) we would get a maximum temperature rise of 1.5-2.0 degC under the business as usual scenario. The problem is not the IPCC reports but the CAGW activists that insist on ignoring the uncertainty reported by the IPCC itself. So? You prove my point. They do not have data for a climatically significant period of time (>30 years) which means extrapolating recent trends is not necessarily a valid thing to do. This debate was captured in the IPCC AR4 which made it very clear that there were 3 scientific opinions on the merits of extrapolating from the data available. It will take another 15-20 years of data from the GRACE satellite to determine if there is any real trend in the data. Claiming that we know there is a trend is premature at this point. That is a bit rich coming from someone who uses the term 'denier' several times in each post. Personally, I think the term 'Catastrophic AGW advocate/activist' is a fairly neutral, non-judgemental term that accurately summarizes the position of people I disagree with.

Moncton is a buffoon. But you completely evaded to real issue: governments only have so much money to spend. If they waste it on scams designed to fool the people into believing that something is being done about CO2 emissions then that money is not available to spend on other things such as building the infrastructure we need for adaptation.Your kind of thinking is the kind of thinking that led to 1.2 billion being spent on a two day photo op.

I don't ignore it. I am simply saying the analyses is not conclusive and cannot exclude the possibility that the CO2 effect is being exagerrated. The real test will be the next 10-20 years. If it warms at the rate predicted the consensus view will be validated. If warms at a rate much slower than the consensus view then the consensus view will be repudiated. You keep missing the big picture. What we have is a short period of data were ice sheet shrinkage has been measured. The scientists that you prefer believe that this short period of data can be extrapolated into the future. Others feel such extrapolations cannot be justified with the data. What puzzles me is you get quite upset when sceptics extrapolate short term variation into the future but you have no problems when CAGW advocates do the same.

Your entire response was (losely translated) "Tol is a associated with evil (sic) people so I am going to completely ignore what he said". You only bothered to post a reply after I called you on your vacuous ad hom response. If you really just wanted note relevant associations then you would not have noted them until after you addressed the substance of argument. Again - only to point your hypocrisy when it comes to these things. Tol addressed that criticism: The problem is there are not a lot of people doing the kind of quantitive analyses that he reviewed.You also miss the most important point: even if you take Stern's estimates we are looking at 5% of GDP for 3 degC of warming. A price that I see as a bargin compared to the economically destructive policies being proposed for mitigation.

Why not? Humans already live in every possible climate zone. In fact, given a choice humans migrate to warmer climates like Phoenix and Florida. The biggest barrier to adaptation is poverty and the best way to deal with that problem is economic development. Denying people access to low cost fossil fuels will actually make adaption more difficult. Most of the technologies we need for adaption already exist (air conditioners, dams, sea walls, migration, drought resistent crops, etc). You touch on the entire point. It has not occurred because the technologies do not exist and they are not likely to appear in the near future. Nothing the government does is going to change that. I will get out of the way once people like you stop trying to take my money to pay for these hair brained schemes.

I do not exclude it as a possibility but I do not feel we have the data that allows anyone to make the claim that 'CO2 is the principal cause' of recent warming with any confidence. It is a hypothesis. Nothing more. Life outside of the cyberspace goes on and usually demands attention.Last I checked you were forced to concede that the IPCC AR4 did not knowingly underestimate the SLR but that there was no consensus on how recent ice sheet data should be interpreted (i.e. some felt that the recent melt was transiant and would not continue - others felt it would accelerate). Studies published since AR4 have tried to quantify the acceleration but do not have any evidence that resolves the orginal point of contention (i.e. can you extrapolate recent data into the future).

Useless semantics. You are making the claim that anyone with an association with groups that express opinions you do not like must be ignored because you do not like those groups. It is a pathetic ad hom argument. I only pointed out the ideological biases of your source to expose your hypocrisy on this point. The reality is the overwhelming majority of sources (including scientists) form an opinion on the policy based on the ideological convictions and then seek out evidence that supports their preferred policies. There are no unbiased observers in this debate. Again. You claim, without any evidence, that being a 'skeptic/denier source' automatically means the source can be ignored. It is a nonsense ad hom that you use an excuse to ignore arguments you do not like. Again, so what? You throw around "big tobacco" as an ad hom when I doubt you have any knowledge of what the Cato institute said and the state of knowledge at the time it was said. What's more, even if they were wrong on of the tobacco issue that has no bearing on what they might say today on climate. More importantly, it has absolutely no relevance when discussing Tol's opinions on economics.I tire of this silly debate about 'associations'. Every source has 'associations' that suggest a bias one way or another because every source IS biased. It is intellectually dishonest to pretend that only your preferred sources are unbiased.

I said nothing about geo-engineering. I am saying is let it warm. Humans can/will adapt. I am saying that governments cannot dictate that technological innovation will occur on the schedules that politicians set. The government can invest in R&D but ultimately the decision on when to deploy new technologies should be driven by economics - not wishful thinking. My hold back is as soon as governments start insisting they need to meet targets/timetables they will waste billions trying to pretend to reach those targets with various scams. This diverts resources that are better used elsewhere and creates special interest groups that become dependent on funding. Eliminate all discussions of targets/timetables and all discussion of subsidies for deployment and production of energy and I have no issue.

You seem to be missing the point. The is issue is not whether X% of the recent warming was caused by CO2. The issue is whether CO2 represents a threat that can be addressed by actions today. My own opinion is CO2 induced warming is not the threat people make it out to be and (most importantly) even if it was we can't do anything about it with the technology we have today.

Here is Tol's response to Nelson: Here is their overview of their economic theory: http://ase.tufts.edu/gdae/advancing_theory/theory_overview.html Classic left wing economic thinking. They list John Kenneth Galbraith as inspriration. They claim in their own materials that they wish to counter the 'right wing bias' in high school materials. GDAE is a ideology driven organization like the Cato institute and you cannot credibly argue otherwise. This means that Nelson has no credibility according to your standards for academics. If you are OK is Nelson's association with GDAE then you can hardly complain about Tol's association with Cato.

Nuclear will be the long term solution once people are desperate enough they will accept it.