Saturday
Oct192013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Light blogging
Oct 19, 2013 Blogs It's half term here, so blogging will be light this week. I have quite a few threads lined up to appear so there will be something to talk about.
Reader Comments (24)
Ah, yes. Half-term. I remember them. In our case it was usually a boat on the Midlands canals for a week. Always good and cheap because we missed the English half-term week (usually!)
'Ave a nice time, guv.
(Are you leaving somebody behind to keep Zed in her box? If she knows you're away she'll be all over the blog like a dose of ... better not say it, I suppose.)
I too remember half term - spud-bashing week where I came from. Yes, keep an eye open for zebedee, she'll be like a rat up a drain pipe with her cut'n'paste insults.
If anyone is looking for something to read, I've got a thought provoking article full of interesting graphs called: Enerconics: The Relationship between Energy and GDP which might be just the thing for some light half term reading.
Although based on a presentation I did for a Scottish audience, the conclusions that green economics is economic suicide and that we must increase energy availability to stimulate the economy are applicable worldwide.
@MikeHaseler : SNP spokesman on Radio 5Live yesterday, 4.55pm
told us about his fantasy universe "the renewables program is going so fantastically well, they have achieved such enormous CO2 reduction that an Independent Scotland, would simply go to the EU and they will hand them the £200m necessary to refund the green/assistance taxes to the Scottish public."
- OK so it's ridiculous that at the moment green/assistance taxes are hidden in the bills so raising the bills of the poor, so necessitating raising prices further to pay the poor a rebate. Therefore it's good that green tax/subsidies are moved in general taxation, but SNP don't say how they are going to cope with a future where either subsidies are multiple more or world energy prices have pushed customers bills to double of todays.
- (on past record I don't think we can believe the CO2 reduction figs, they will have done things like ignore all the CO2 used for windfarm concrete etc.)
Just found this great lecture by Freeman Dyson, if anyone hasn't seen it yet (from 2010). Big section on AGW.
Stew, the SNP administration have turned Scotland into a renewable banana republic and when (now that they have) the public realise this they will turn against them and kick them out.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2002/dec/05/comment.climatechange
WTF?
Seems an eminently reasonable assessment of the situation, dolphinlegs, wouldn't you say? ;-)
Dolphinlegs: Well it was 11 years ago. Things have changed at the Grauniad since then and slow warming is now not good for the Grauiniadistas.
sorry guys when I posted it did not realise it was weather not climate
this should go viral but probably won't
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ9fqcbC1WI&feature=youtu.be
Matthew Sinclair of Taxpayers Alliance on green taxes
Mike Haseler, your little piece on the link between energy and GDP implies that we could increase our GDP very simply by reversing all of the energy efficiency measures taken over the last 20 years. And equally, if we set about using energy more efficiently, we can expect it to make us less prosperous (according to GDP)! This wacky idea might appeal to readers of this blog and yours but you might have trouble selling it to the world.
Mike Haseler
Your presentation on the link between energy and wealth seems eminently sensible to me and contains nothing either controversial or to which a trained economist would take exception.
The idea that reversing energy efficiency measures (why would you?) would lead to an increase in GDP appears nowhere in what you wrote and neither does the idea that energy efficiency leads to relative poverty.
The modern world is bedevilled with economic illiterates, not to mention trolls.
Which Robin Guenier (tolerant fellow that he is) has at last decided to stop feeding. I suggest we follow Robin's good practice here.
I gave up FingTTs a long time ago. They just disrupt things without having any added value (rather like wind turbines).
Red Alert!.....Doomsday Asteroid, Head-Ed for London....
http://fenbeagleblog.wordpress.com/2013/10/20/doomsday-asteroid-heading-for-earth/
Interesting read on energy prices and media stupidity at autonomous mind today
autonomousmind.wordpress.com/
Mike Jackson, are you sure there is nothing to which a "trained economist" would take exception? Try this:
And compare to this from Wiki:
In my experience, people on this sort of blog who accuse others of being economic illiterates are often exactly that themselves.
BTW, physicist might object to:
Another "fact" at which a trained economist might raise an eyebrow is Haseler's figure 7 which shows EU per capita GDP to be lower in 2010 than in 1980! He uses that to show that EU CO2 reductions have reduced its GDP. Any person of an even vaguely skeptical nature would find this slightly ludicrous and look for an explanation. Mr Jackson, meanwhile sees it as entirely uncontroversial.
(Hint, the EU gained ten extra countries in 2004 and 2007, plus 17 million poor East Germans.)
It was, of course, the very expansion of the EU which was a contributory factor in the per capita reduction in GDP.
You do understand the concept of 'per capita', I take it.
As for the rest, I have heard some of it better phrased but only someone who could quibble about 'sceptic' vs 'sceptical' would make an issue of it.
Bingo, you got it! It was the expansion that caused the per capita drop in GDP. But according to Haseler,
So you are now contradicting Haseler, despite saying earlier that his text is "uncontroversial". I guess you meant uncontroversial but wrong but were too polite to say so.
Darth Vader an Author at the CRU?
http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/10/darth-vader-author-at-cru.html
Chandra
It really is hard to know where to begin with you, which is probably why most people have given up and I will join them after this posting. "Shape-shifting" doesn't even start to describe it.
There is nothing contradictory in my comment. The reason for the fall in GDP in the EU was the admission of a large number of people who were a lot poorer than the people of Western Europe.
And why were they poorer? Something to do with lower energy use, perhaps?
Now be a good boy and stop spouting half-digested rubbish across this blog.
Don't be dense. Haseler says, " The polices that try to reduce energy appear to either go hand in hand with reducing GDP, or reducing energy is CAUSING reducing GDP." It would be absurd to say that the policy aim of EU expansion is energy reduction, but I'm sure that won't stop you.