Whats happened in the last few years is reminiscient of the dying days of Atlas Shrugged. The South Africans have been having forced promotions of black people and a lot of the dudded skilled people have left. So the power engine is running down. Instead of throwing their hopes behind John Galts engine they are now hoping to get hold of French nuclear energy. There are blackouts the whole time. Every time there is a blackout this must cost millions in lost production.

Once you get to such a dire situation there is no innovating your way out of it. There is no substitution towards different non-carbon technologies to get out of that sort of mess because energy and capital are one. Capital takes energy to build and energy to run and cheap enough energy to make the lengthening of the structure of production worthwhile.

A progressing (growing) economy grows by the lengthening of the structure of production. The Gross Domestic revenue must grow a great deal faster then the Gross Domestic Product. This means that growth implies DISSPROPORTIONATELY increased per capita energy consumption. With any energy efficiencies an afterthought.

Fortunately we have abundant energy. We just need the capital to gather it. Capital needs energy. Energy needs capital. Hence no talk of the vanity of solar, wind and other nutball bean-sprout-munching energy methods ought to be condoned as a way of dealing with a looming crises.

These vanities are to be invested in only when we are back under conditions of cheap energy. Which we won’t be for some decades thanks to the environmentalist movement.

Now supposing that the South Africans, who appear doomed by the way, suppose they didn’t get this French nuclear power to bail them out. And instead they engaged in endless chatter about seaweed-biodiesel and carbon taxes? Supposing whenever an investor thought of sticking up another coal-electricity generator alarm bells went off in his head at the contemplation of the harrassment, legal costs, and political hurdles he would encounter. And supposing the South Africans starting madly subsidising solar power, wind farms and solar towers?

Each of these measures would hasten their econonmic collapse. If their total economic collapse was fated for 5 years time, which is realistic from where I sit, instead that collapse would come in two years lets say.

Because Humphreys feels he is allowed to and within his best behaviour to merely DODGE rather than BEST arguments against his arguments …………. he has therefore not seen fit to educate himself in the understanding of the capital structure or of energy economics.

THE CAPITAL STRUCTURE

The amount of money spent between and within businesses vastly dwarfs GDP. And the whole thing runs on energy. I won’t address the issue of Keynesians here because they are lunatics who don’t understand economics at all. But neo-classicals have put GROSS INVESTMENT into the too-hard-basket. They think of capital as one big undifferentiated blob. They have to work hard in their mind to untangle physical capital spending with whatever it is a Hedge Fund is doing. Its a big confusion to them and they prefer to brush up on otherworldly theories of the firm and assure people of their credentials.

GDP=C+I+X-M

Now notice something strange and entirely bogus about GDP.

We have these gross figures lumped together. But I is NET investment. Which is something of an accounting fiction since it contains highly processed notions of retained profits and depreciation.

What if we were dealing with GROSS INVESTMENT?

As it turns out Gross investment is the whole deal in econonmics. The figure of Gross investment vastly dwarfes the other figures. It is internal spending within and between business. Its a massive figure. Its where all the important economic action is. Its where the vast bulk of the energy is consumed AND NEOCLASSICAL ECONOMISTS ARE TRAINED TO VIGOUROUSLY BLOCK IT OUT OF THEIR MINDS.

So they cannot see the economy as such. They cannot think about it properly. They do not register the importance of so many things. And so the notion that you could run 1000 households with some solar tower sounds like relevant information to them because they vaguely see the shops and the ships and they see the households in their minds eye….. but they are trained not to see most of the economy most of the time.

So thouroughly are they trained not to see the bulk of the economy, that they come up with all sorts of daft notions like the “service economy” and the “information economy” and they imagine we can all be landscape gardeners, fast-food franchise operators and hedge-fund managers.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

THE FRAGILITY OF ELECTRICITY GENERATION. EXCESS CAPACITY IS CRUCIAL.

Now you have a turbine running. Its turning through a magnetic field which is creating a resistance. You have all these transformers all over town.

That giant turbine cannot be let slow down because it will take hours to fire it up again. So if its slowing the resistance must be eased. The strength of the field must be reduced. Hence electricity generation must be reduced if the giant turbine is losing momentum.

The transformers are all over town. They might be dealing with 132000 volts or something. ACDC. And they cannot allowed tot drop below about 49.95 Hertz or they will do just enourmous damage, screwing up everyones electrical equipment.

So if demand for energy exceeds what the system can handle one of the transformers must be shut down causing millions of dollars in lost production.

So supposing we open up a lot more land for housing development or we have some sort of investment boom, double digit GDR growth and all that. The energy production must always be the first tent in the peg. We must have an investment environment that leaves us with massive overcapacity at all times.

If the new suburbs and economic growth goes ahead without this overcapacity we can bugger ourselves up.

I have anecdotal evidence that our system doesn’t have much excess capacity. In wartime a single bombed coal-electricity plant could screw us up bad. Could make it near impossible to conduct sane econonmic activity while our boys got on with the butchering.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
A MANY AND VARIED CAMPAIGN.

The environmentalist movement has been pushing us into a situation of energy stress for three or four decades now. They have made everyone frightened of nuclear and coal. This energy-deprivation-crusade predates the global warming lying campaign by two decades at least.

We cannot be reinforcing their lies. It doesn’t take a total ban on nuclear, coal-to-electricity or coal-to-liquified-coal to set us up for disaster. Money is a coward.

MONEY IS A COWARD. Investors are easily discouraged. And for no reason at all Humphreys wants to discourage them more.

There is no alternative to coal and nuclear that can be put up in an age of energy stress. Post-war up until the 1970′s was a cheap energy age. It didn’t need to stop but we had to move to coal and nuclear. And the environmentalist movement wouldn’t let us.

Before 1973 when we left a room we’d leave the light on. Wouldn’t even bother to switch it off. Those were the good days when even mind-blowingly stupid Keynesian practices couldn’t stop economic growth. We can only get those days back with massive expansion of coal and nuclear use.

So we have to start talking differently, we have start taxing differently, and we cannot have policy which reinforces lies.

The plan of the energy-deprivation crusade is and always has been global energy rationing as spelled out this very day on Late Night Live. To promote carbon tax literally is not to promote carbon tax actually. To promote carbon tax is to promote a global scheme of per capita CO2-rationing. Which means energy-rationing, global governance, massive payments to socialist countries and on and on.

Why on earth does Humphreys imagine that if he promotes his policy he also gets to nuance it?????

This is a childish delusional fantasy that Humphreys and Soon entertain.  You cannot both push and nuance policy. This was the one devastating anti-war point that Humphreys made against me on another subject. You push an idea you don’t get to nuance it.

But the Humphreys policy itself is typical neoclassical economic illiteracy. Since it fails to see the economy entire and its just one more nail in the coffin for energy investment.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
(Tapping the hitman on the hand like the nazi in marathon man.)

The environmental movement did not kill tens of millions of black children through a total DDT-Ban. They killed them by a variety of methods including just simple discouragement.

DDT-discouragement. DDT-bureaucratisation. And a closed factory there. A price increase here. A ban here and there. And that was enough to get the job done. Millions of wailing Mothers screaming all night long. 300 million chronically sick people on top of the kiddie-killing.

And so it goes for this current campaign. Its a tax there. A stupid misconception there. Somebody over here is convinced to be fearful of nuclear power. Some kids are taught to be bigoted about CO2. Its a Lamberting campaign. And there is some nutball out there that keeps wanting a carbon tax. He’s a nutball whose out there and he refuses to fucking LISTEN!!!!!!!

This nutball that keeps wanting a carbon tax. We say why we cannot-must-not have one. And he just ignores our argument, waits another freaking month. And he springs it on us again.

Now what is going on here?

Now the other thing is this. All our readily profitable non-nuclear energy sources are hydrogen-poor and carbon-rich. So much so that they are solids. Hence the next move is towards heavy carbon fuels. And carbon tax will get in the way of that. Our vehicles will be dieselised. The gasoline is on the way out and diesel has to come in.

THIS MUST HAPPEN. Because of the basic hydrogen-dearth. Its got to happen. But money is a coward. And another tax sitting directly on this transformation will hobble us horribly. Its a total disaster that Humphreys is talking about here.

We will go to heavy fuels everywhere they can be applied. That means diesel and liquified-coal.

And this must continue until such time as we have saturation nuclear power, which will provide the extra hydrogen atoms that will progressively lighten the fuels towards the methane end of the spectrum.

Now all of you must understand everything I’ve said here. Just keep reading it, and reading it, and reading it until you understand it all the way down to your blood-and-bones …….marrow-and-mitochondria. You must understand the energy landscape viscerally to fight this ugly ugly environmentalists looming disaster.  They have replaced a make-believe disaster in the space of the real one they are pushing us towards.

This is a matter of the utmost seriousness.

I’m trying to separate the real arguments from the personal stuff, so please help me out people and try to keep the ALS discussion relevant. Thanks.

========================= 

JC – it pains me that you get precious when two of your own are being attacked (by each other) but you think it funny when somebody outside the “cause” is on the receiving end. I think that you are overly tribal and I note that the threatened defamation case against Catallaxy also named you. You should maybe get your own house in order and practice being respectful towards a wider audience. It is possible to disagree with people respectfully.

http://alsblog.wordpress.com/2007/03/14/the-bird-cage-is-partially-open/#comment-6315

In an attempt to remove the ongoing meta-analysis and personal insults from the ALS blog I am moving the comment here for people to discuss and debate at their will. This blog will never be moderated for any reason, so feel free to be as rude, repetitive and hurtful as you think appropriate.

Terje

The threatened Libel action is a threat that I only wish Quiggin would carry out, as I would like to see him in court explaining how almost every second comment he makes is a personal attack against people who disagree with his warped far left views. Unlike you I take on bullies even if they scream in pain and agony. Unlike you I don’t suck up to him as you do which a one of the reasons I find most of what you say to be phony and insincere.

Quiggin has been trying to crack heads since the first day he started up his pathetic bog. He shows he doesn’t like it when it’s dished out to him by the backhanded pathetic way he goes behind people’s backs to make threats. In other words he is a typical fucking coward and people like you are his enablers by sucking up to the prick. Count how many times he’s attacked people, Terd. Count how many times he’s tried to trash people’s professional ethics and “whose pockets they are in”. Have you ever bothered to count, Terd.

A few years ago he threw me off his bog because I defended Keith Windshuttle after he accused KW of being a racist. However Quiggin had never read his book. When I protested at his obvious lack of academic professionalism he accused me of being a racist as well. This is just one of the many examples I have carefully filed away. He has even trashed one of the nicest people in the OZ blogsphere, Jen Marohasey by attempting to impugn her motives because of her views with global warming.

I fucking well hate that.

Of course Quiggin has never apologized for the pathetic book he wrote in 1994 outlining his “plan” to get the country back to full employment. He solution was massive doses of government spending by hiring people in the people services like social work. That was his idea of getting people back to full time work. He has never apologized for writing such worthless crap, yet he is quite prepared to attack other people.

As I said. Quiggin is quite free to sue me. I will outlawyer him, I will out smart him and I will win in addition to the costs I incur. You think I didn’t take his threat seriously, you dope? I asked for legal opinion the day after he made those cowardly threats and accusations.

Your insincerity just oozes out, Terd. Even the “regards Terje” you place at the end of each post makes most people want to puke. It also oozes out by the fact that you suck up to Quiggin like he is a dying relative when 9999% of what he says ought to be poison to a self described libertarian. So please spare me the platitudes and what you think.

What you think is not important to me. It seems the only reason you made the above comment was that you hoped it would hurt me. It doesn’t, it only confirms that anyone who could seriously say they learned their economics from quacks like Wanniski with a straight face is into serious amounts of masturbation.

Terd, fuck off and don’t ever speak to me again, you insincere, phony dope.

Regards
JC

graemebird Says:

March 6th, 2007 at 5:31 pm e

Now Humphreys.

Take off the block you layarar.

And don’t get in the way of me getting the message out no more.

Goddam the number of layeyes you’ve been telling to third parties is just a disgrace.

And I swear I’ll destroy rather then just delay your political career if you don’t get out of my way.

graemebird Says:

March 6th, 2007 at 5:40 pm e

You piece of leyeing exrement.

Humphreys.

You leyeing queer homosexual with your hair matted with the come of sodomites.

Take all those Allah-forsaken blocks off and get in my way no longer.

graemebird Says:

March 6th, 2007 at 5:44 pm e

Take the blocks off HumphreZZZ you ex-politician.

Third parties.

These are the lengths these monetary cranks and leyers will go to to stop you from being educaten in monetary economics.

Everything Humphreezzz has sed is a leye.

Heez whacking on blox on me all over the shOH.

graemebird Says:

March 6th, 2007 at 5:46 pm e

you’re a moron Humphreez.

And you are wasting my time

Take the blox off.

graemebird Says:

March 6th, 2007 at 5:47 pm e

Take the blox off or I’ll start talking about your extremist Christian schismatic upbringing.

graemebird Says:

March 6th, 2007 at 5:50 pm e

TAke the blocs-off you leyeing ectomorph or I’ll fly to South-East-Asia and systematically track down and pork all your sheilas.

graemebird Says:

March 6th, 2007 at 5:55 pm e

We have a meeting on the 15th.

I’ll be moving that we kick your leyeing ace out of the party you founded.

Take the blocs off.

It pretty clear to me that you must be a monetary crank also or you wouldn’t be going to all these extreme lengths.

graemebird Says:

March 6th, 2007 at 5:59 pm e

Third parties.

Now I told you just how it is with these monetary cranks.

When it comes to money they start acting like leftists.

Suddenly we go to the topic of money.

And it appears that Sukrit and/or Humphreys has decided that they are now leftist communists and will not allow me to be heard on this topic in a timely way.

Instead Humphreys…. no doubt another monetary crank…. will allow it through only ass an anti-climax.

graemebird Says:

March 6th, 2007 at 6:06 pm e

Take the blocs off for the love of Allah and all his whores.

Humphreys.

I WORK for a living.

I’m not on the bludge after a single counterfeiting-inspired real-estate deal.

Any you are messiing with my night.

So stop leyeing and take the blocs off.

graemebird Says:

March 6th, 2007 at 6:07 pm e

You are ruining my night so take the bloks off!!!!

Do it now or go out the back and hang yourself with someone elses tie!!!

graemebird Says:

March 6th, 2007 at 6:11 pm e

Right.

Sick bloody ectomorph has got plausible-deniability.

He’ll say… I was just off on a bike-ride with some greenie push-bike riders….

I didn’t know that GMB was pissed with all these innocent little blocs????

But the South-East-Asian-Chick-BOTHERING WRAITH had me blocked from the entire thread.

I could go to the other threads but he had me blocked from this one thread.

Before he put together a series of blocks as a substitute and tried to bulldust his way out of it.

See how Jason is lying and implying that I was after an instant collapse of the money supply. By banning fractional reserve overnight without the cash to replace the destroyed FIDUCIARY MONEY….

See how he tried to lie to third parties in this way?

You might not have picked that he was lying. That is to say that he had an imbedded IMPLIED-LIE about me that he was trying to use to derail the argument.

Did you see him at it?

Well thats a switcheroo. Because for a very long time he wouldn’t admit that banks could create money out of thin air…

… He wouldn’t admit to the money supply being more then just notes and coins.

And when I’d try to press him for this he’d be evasive and disappear for weeks on end ON THAT THREAD… of course he was going nowhere. He was just waiting until third parties had forgotten that he had been cornered.

But now he comes back here. And he appears to have finally discovered that fiduciary money is a real and legit. part of the money supply and that if you destroy it you will have a depression.

Whereas in the past he’s always launched his bullshit and tendentiousness from the contrary perspective.

Actually Terje could testify to this but would not likely be inclined to since I was pre-emptively laying the abuse onto him as well, and mostly simply because the serial bullshit artists Jason and Mark were present.

And now I’m not saying that Jason and Mark are always so very dishonest.

Matter of fact when Mark (for example) is just working things out for his own self he’s often very good.

But when they get talking about money they use all the same techniques that Lambert would try on over at Deltoid smug hard-leftists would more generally have you on with.

One reason they do this is because people just tend to go crazy on the subject of money.

The other reason is that on this subject they are like centre-left-wingers in that they have a PUNDIT…..

…..They are relying on a pundit or three…

… There is some pundit riding their shoulder like a midget-Hitler, eternally buggering their ear.

That tends to be how centre-LEFTISTS function.

And to Mark and Jason, whereas they have some understanding of economics more generally, they don’t have any understanding of monetary economics and so they use this pundit-buggery to fill in the gaps in their brain-space.

The main technique of the victim of earhole-pundit-buggery is the implied-lie.

So the idea is to come down on them very hard and then get Sukrit to show up and thin the posts down on both sides once an authentic and more honest debate starts up.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

What we need for a viable free enterprise system is for the demand-for-cash-for-holding to be high and very stable….

… And for the SUPPLY-OF-MONEY to NEVER fall…

To never fall and yet to grow only slowly.

THAT MIGHT SEEM EASY BUT ITS A VERY TOUGH GIG.

To never NEVER fall but to grow only slowly.

We want the money supply to grow, consistent with total spending growing only slowly but NEVER FALLING.

Now THAT’S even harder to do.

If we cannot get this with free enterprise money the leftist opposition has the edge in the political debate.

And they (under those circumstances) have some advantages in reality also.

Because if both the demand and supply of money are gyrating all over the place, then it makes sense to have a central bank that can increase the supply of cash to compensate for a sudden drop in the supply of fiduciary money, or for a sudden increase in the demand for cash for holding.

The only way we can outcompete the central bank devotees, both in theory and in practise, is to get rid of fractional reserve banking.

But this is the situation POST-TRANSITION.

In transition it is even more important to get to 100% backing.

Because in transition things can go horribly wrong.

And having 100% backing, means that the Reserve Bank Chairman…. now running the Reserve Bank as if it were a transitional authority…

………CAN HIT WHAT HE AIMS AT.

With 100% backing the Reserve Bank Governor can potentially guide the monetary system in transition.

Because he will quickly be able to hit the nominal GDR (Gross Domestic Revenue) targets he sets for himself.

So if we:

1. End Legal Tender Laws

or

2. Introduce government gold, silver, platinum and large copper coins.

or we then:

3. Phase out government coining and throw it open to all comers under light-touch-regulation….

or

4. The government starts hoarding precious metals as a war chest…

… and so on.

Under all these situations, under the current fractional-reserve monetary system…. if we were in transition to a totally free enterprise monetary and financial system….

… and we were facing any of these changes… then under the current system the Reserve Bank would likely BLOW-IT and send us into a bubble-economy, or a recession.

Currently they have an inbuilt bias to money-creation… This inbuilt bias is there for many reasons but one of them is that its very hard, under fractional reserve, to have very slow demand growth, without accidentally slipping into a recession…

The Reserve Bank Governor, while negotiating these changes, could very well send us into depression or even hyper-inflation (of at least the fiat currency) if we were succesful in pushing these changes through.

And it would be a tragedy for the individuals hurt by these fuckups… But as well it would come down on OUR heads for pushing through these changes in the first place.

But under 100% backing the Reserve Governor, even if he isn’t me, will be able to hit what he aims at…. and after awhile WILL HAVE NO EXCUSE FOR NOT!!!! HITTING WHA HE AIMS AT….

….he will be able to guide matters through these necessary changes, without screwing things up and discrediting the free-enterprise project.

What we must come down most strongly on is any of the monetary cranks suddenly PUTTING ON THE ANARCHO-CAPITALIST HAT when we know they are not anarcho-capitalists.

The most prominent anarcho-capitalist who is in favour of fractional reserve is David Friedman.

He has a vision of a near-perfect monetary system.
and it is not a vision that Mark or Jason or anyone who tendentiously puts on the anarcho-capitalist hat shares.

Now he has the right to put on the anarcho-capitalist hat and if he shows up I will argue with him that 100% backing is still more appropriate in transition….

…. and that debate would be an honest debate.

But if Mark and Jason or anyone else who is not an anarcho-capitalist makes the argument from the argument from SUDDENLY-PUTTING-ON-THE ANARCHO-CAPITALIST-HAT….

… then all of us, and not just me, must come down on any such person with mega-amounts of abuse.

Because this is them playing silly-buggers,arguing from bad faith, and getting in the way of this new free enterprise revolution that we are working to put in motion.

You know perfectly well my position on terrorism and the threat of islamic socialism. My opinion, based on the reality of deaths, injuries and damage caused, is that terrorism is a minor threat to the west. In Australia you have more chance of dying from pesticide poisoning, lightening strikes, smoking and many other activities that don’t warrant a pretend war. In my opinion, such a minor threat does not warrant your tax-eating and government-loving policy preferences.

But I don’t want to argue that point here. Instead, I want to confront you about these comments:

“No it [issue from previous debate] won’t go away. And neither will the terrorists.”

http://bigbirdbrain.wordpress.com/2006/11/12/lesson-2-global-warming/#comment-68

“And you might think that jihadism will go a way if you just treat it like a natural disaster. An act of God.”

http://bigbirdbrain.wordpress.com/2006/11/12/lesson-2-global-warming/#comment-95

You are clearly implying that I think that terrorism will go away.

I don’t think that. I have never said that. Further, you know I don’t think that. So you are intentionally misrepresenting me. Twice. Bad form Graeme.

I can only assume that you are lying on this issue because you think it helps you to score arguing points. Unforunately it just makes you look like a desperate liar. If you had a good point to make, you would have made it. The correct thing for you to do now is to recant and apologise.

At the core of libertarian philosophy is the simple idea that humans own themselves. 

Some people dismiss libertarianism as “propertarianism” because we believe in private property rights. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to own something. Ownership simply means the ability to control the use of something. Any time something is used it is effectively being owned (though if that thing is almost infinite in supply the ownership will never be formally claimed). So all political philosophies believe in ownership.

The issue is simply this — what is the legitimate way that ownership can be transfered. The unique thing about libertarians is that we believe property should be transfered voluntarily. We oppose violence and coercion (threat of violence) as something that undermines the freedoms and self-ownership of individuals & control of your own destiny, and therefore undermines what it really means to be alive.

No political philosophy defends the idea that violence should be indiscriminate. However, many people believe in the virtues of having one institution that should regularly use violence/coercion — the government. While most libertarians accept the need for some government, our opposition to violence/coercion means that we believe that the government should be as small as possible to maximise the scope for voluntary behaviour.

At the opposite end of the political spectrum are the socialists, who believe that government should run most aspects of life and free voluntary individual actions should be subject to state approval. That undermines the very essense of what it means to be alive and is subsequently the philosophy of death.

What I have described above is the deontelogical argument for freedom and against government. People should be free because freedom is better than the alternative (violence, slavery, socialism). While true enough, freedom isn’t the only moral good in the world. The other moral good is utility/happiness. Thankfully, liberty and utility are often correlated. Many libertarians started as utilitarians or economists (who are nearly always utilitarian) who simply worked out that letting people be free generally lead to them being happier, wealthier, healthier and better in bed.

There are of course moments of conflict between liberty and utility. A strict deontelogical libertarian may dismiss utilitarian concerns, but most libertarians accept that there can be an argument for government if (and only if) there is strong evidence that the governmet intervention will increase utility. But because of the inherent virtue in free voluntary behaviour the burden of proof lies with the person who wants to promote their preferred government policy.

Most people have a few “except for…” in their philosophy. Abortion. Guns. Environment. Labelling laws. Heroin. But while we all enjoy beating each other up on our issues of disagreement, we can recognise that we are generally on the same size because we recognise that the government is far too large and we don’t have enough freedoms. We are united in our love of human freedom and dignity, our skepticism of government, our appreciation that freedom is the best path to dynamic growth, success and happiness, and our belief that people should be free until proven otherwise.

That’s the basics. Unfortunately, Graeme seems to have confused these beliefs with communism. This isn’t an easy mistake to make. The topic of what communism actually means is complex enough to deserve it’s own post… but in brief it should be recognised that a fundamental difference is that communists reject the market — and a market is simply a voluntary exchange between free people. So communism is obviously inconsistent with libertarianism.

As an aside, communism in it’s strict form doesn’t exist. Not only do communists oppose the market (voluntary behaviour) but they oppose the government (involuntary behaviour), so they are left with no behaviour. Communists of the world, unite! And stand still forever! When most people say communist, they means socialist.

In response, Terje pointed out to you that “The ice age seems to have been favourable for us. Are you sure you want a new venue after 39 million years?”

Your response was: “Bullshit. Its been one holocaust after another.” 

Calm down big fella. Modern humans have adapted ourselves well to the world in a temperature range a lot narrower than the world has previously had. You may see recent history as one holocaust after another. I disagree. I see it as a story of progress: higher life expectancy, better health & education, higher incomes, more spare time, more freedoms, greater equality of opportunity, new fandangled technology. I don’t want to give up modern developed society, and despite your silly holocaust comment, I doubt you do either.

So it does matter if something is going to upset our current balance. My understanding of the relative costs and benefits is that a moderate warming will have a net benefit to the world (though spread quite unevenly)… but once we start getting above 3 degrees then the costs start to outweigh the benefits. On balance, given the uncertainty about what will happen and the early state of the economic debate, I can’t see merit in pursuing huge government spending projects. I know you like huge pointless spending projects based on fear campaigns that fail BCAs, but I always oppose them. Matter of principle.

P.S. You have also spent some time defending skeptic arguments and saying they haven’t been countered (“You haven’t covered or countered or refuted anything“). The reality is that many skeptic arguments have been found wanting (troposhere cooling). Or at least exagerated (eg urban heat island). If we want to be taken seriously as an intellegent party, then we have nothing to gain by clinging to embarassing junk science when the agreed reality is enough to defend our policy. There is no need to discredit ourselves like that.

P.P.S. And to count Terje among the pro-Kyoto mob shows an amazing lack of ability to read. Terje is perhaps the best and most respected skeptics left running around the blogosphere.

Indeed. Perhaps you should check which is a greater threat to your life — terrorists or lightning. Or pesticide poisoning. Or falling down stairs. Or smoking. Or sex.

Ignorance is not strength. Fearmongering is the number one tool of the government lover. Don’t fall for that trick Graeme. Stop being scared. Stop trusting your beloved government and learn to love freedom.

Stop stealing my tax money for your foreign adventures and stop taking away my right to privacy and liberty for the sake of your delicate and irrational peace of mind.