Just a Little More Fair

What will we do when the US runs out of money? A few months ago it seemed that the American public may actually grasp the size of the numerical problem, but the elections revealed that people in bulk are not capable of basic math. It only takes the most cursory of reviews to understand that increased taxes will not even dent the overspending, yet somehow that is not a problem. Unfortunately, it takes a slightly larger intellect to understand that more taxes do not always equate to more revenue. It takes still more for people to understand that top-loading the wealthy, dramatically affects the poor.

For myself, as a business owner, it is difficult for me to understand how people think our current situation ‘might’ be ok. It clearly is not, and more of the same will simply destroy our future, as well as that of our children. After this past election, I’m expecting future generations to experience tremendous difficulties in America as well as the world. It doesn’t take much historic review to see where liberal cradle-to-grave policies will take us. There is nothing wrong with wanting to give people everything, except that we require them to create in order to be able to give it. When you incentivize people to stay home and not work, that is exactly what you get.

See, the basic problem with government control of populations is that the people making the rules, don’t focus on the incentives they create. They never will and that is why less government is nearly always beneficial. If you make a rule that allows life-sustaining payment for extended unemployment, the people are incentivized to remain unemployed. Yes, some will seek jobs, but many times they chose unemployment as a reasonable and understandable alternative. In the past two years, I have seen dozens of examples of people who turned down employment in favor of government checks. When you allow “permanent disability” to mean anything from a broken back to emotional harm, a lot of people are suddenly incented to experience serious emotional harm! Duh.. Disability claims have absolutely skyrocketed in recent years and people who really qualify are being left off the list in favor of those who should not. It has been a common theme of this blog that groups of people incentivized to a certain path, are numerically biased to that path. It is no different than the fake Mannian math which preferentially choses data to create hockey sticks. If you bias the population, you skew the “average” result toward the bias.

But tax hikes are still the solution to insane overspending…

Just a little more from the “rich”.

The numbers don’t add up, and worse yet, they are not even close! So…… When a tiny little country like Greece, with less per-capita debt than the US, economically collapses and sends shudders through the global economy, what will the world do when the US does something far worse? I can’t even imagine what it will be like, and at the same time, after this election, I can’t even imagine how we will manage to avoid it.

While the liberals in America make the false argument that the rich don’t pay their “fare share”, whatever that is, it is business owners who are actually being targeted. Of course the truly rich politicians won’t tell you that. When real wages are dropping across the country and a minimum wage job draws a thousand applicants, does it really make any sense to tax business further? Liberals tax cigarettes because they say they want less of them. Obama taxes the rich because he believes that redistribution is the key to happiness. This government has not enacted one single pro-business reform in the last 4 years and we are reaping the benefits in spades. Guess what that means for the workers wages a company hires when high unemployment creates an oversupply of qualified candidates?

In the past decades, regulations and costs have been added to business operations. Business owners have continually pointed out the consequences and are regularly ignored or demonized in return. Higher electric cost, higher compliance cost, higher reporting requirements, hundred page tax filings, higher employment compliance costs, communication taxes, gas taxes, border crossing taxes, foreign business taxes……on and on. These are all added costs. These have continued to increase over the past 20 years, the result has been a herkey-jerkey decrease in real income for the middle class and poor in America. Just like every socialist country in the world, the population is generally poorer, and the separation between those with money and those without is generally larger. Of course the media blames corporate greed rather than the obvious governmental problem.

And on we go, down the same stupid path.

This time though, is very different than any other in history. America holds a huge fraction of the wealth of this planet. An enormous amount of business is controlled by this country, yet these American customers of the globe are about to go flat broke. No amount of tax increase on the wealthy can even dent the over 1 trillion per year deficit. In fact, it is my contention that a further tax increase will result in a reduced net revenue. Of course you have to adjust for inflation and you have to estimate GDP with and without the tax. A second method, which is far easier to understand, is to simply calculate what a manufacturing business would have do to react to higher taxes!

Unlike the fake government economics, business actually has to live within their budget or they go broke. In the current banking environment, often there is literally zero backup.

Below are a hundred individual numbers. 10 rows of 10 representing the income of a 10 million dollar fictitious S corporation manufacturing company.

1234567890
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In this company 40% of the total income goes to pay for product material cost.

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Twenty five percent of the income goes to pay employees including the company contribution to federal taxes.

67890
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Five percent goes to employee benefits.

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Five percent goes to material transport.

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Five percent goes to various utilities, insurance, supplies and materials which support operations

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Two percent more is invested in commissions and sales activities leaving about 18 percent profit after every possible writeoff has been taken. This is the money reported on an S corporations owners personal tax return as income. One point eight million dollars.

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Currently the Federal government taxes this money at 35% and the state of Michigan taxes it at 5%. Then there are various property taxes and fees which must be paid so the effective rate is about 45% on income.

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So 10 percent is left to invest in growth, savings and profit for distribution. If the company doesn’t invest in growth, it will die.

The company above invests 5% into growth leaving 5 percent for the owners to distribute or save for a less productive time.

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Now in a 10 million dollar company, that 5 percent represents 500,000 dollars which is not an insubstantial amount of money. Except that that 10 million dollar company burns through an average of about 40,000 dollars for every weekday it exists, so 500K isn’t much of a cushion for operations. The federal government sees that 18 percent profit as personal income of course, and taxes it as though the owners were professional hockey players who actually took home 1.8 million dollars.

Today these owners are being asked to pay their “fare share” and are looking at a 5% tax hike along with a massive increase in health care costs, as well as increased capital gains tax which will massively limit investment opportunity.

So now assume that the federal portion of our hypothetical company’s taxes went from 35% to 40% as is currently proposed. Then we are looking at about a 50% rate of taxation. If you are an investor in the company who contributes less than 500 hours of work per year, your rate goes up an additional 3.8% from Obamacare, but we will assume you are an active partner and we will ignore the projected twenty to forty percent increase in health care costs.

After tax, you have then:

123456789

Or 9 percent to spare from your 10 million dollar company.

If you invest 5% as before, you only have:

1234

Four percent left from your nice 10 million dollar manufacturing company that just paid 900,000 in taxes. That is actually 20% less take-home income after tax from a 5% increase. What’s more is that your company just paid the federal government 900,000 dollars instead of a measley 800,000, while retaining 400,000 for the owners to either save or distribute. Over two times the money you can actually spend on growth or personal profit is paid in tax.

Something is going to have to give, and my guess is that it won’t be the liberals. After the economy gets worse, they will just blame something else and find a new way to attack business. The media has completely brainwashed the public into believing that this tax hike is about ‘increased revenue’ and paying your fair share, when the propaganda has literally zero basis in reality.

Now while this example does not represent my company, this is a very typical scenario for a manufacturing firm in the United States. Just to add a little more “real world” flavor to the discussion, one of our largest competitors just got bought out by a Taiwanese company. Of course Taiwan only taxes their corporations at 17 percent so it is no surprise to see American business being bought out. This Taiwanese company will manufacture at its own plant and charge the maximum amount of cost to the American branch to limit US tax. Even a mental midget can guess what Obama’s expansion of that tax differential means for American competitiveness with Taiwan in a global economy.

In my case the numbers have worked out such that I will pay 4 times more in taxes to the various United States Governments than my personal take home income in 2012. Not 40% tax but 400%.

The general public is completely ignorant of these things. Consider for a moment though what a business must do to react to this massive cost increase. In our case, price hikes are not possible as it is a global economy, so the cash will have to come from somewhere else in the company. Benefits, pay, number of employees, investment, etc… In the end, investment and growth will necessarily suffer as both our company and our customers have less purchasing power. It is absolutely clear that both the government and employees will actually receive less money from us than they would have in the long run.

If you are an employee in private industry, you will likely continue to watch the un-reported inflation of prices rise faster than your check. This isn’t corporate greed, as the idiots on MSNBC would tell you, it represents the cold fact that evil business owners will have less money to pay out. So when you are asking your boss for a raise in the coming years, don’t be surprised if his answer is – go get it from Uncle Sam.

Camp 2012

Another deer season gone, no luck for me.  This time I did see several doe and maybe a spike buck in the morning of the first day but it was too dark to tell. Camp is a special place and I have a few minutes so here are some of my favorite images and videos from camp.

First a quick 360 video of the cabin:

Then we have the second of two deer taken by one of the camp owners.   A very nice 10 point which weighed 180 lbs dressed.

A typical gourmet dinner at camp:

Deer warning sign explaining the rules of the woods in plain English:

Gorgeous shot of lake Superior Beach at the mouth of the two-heart river. Yes it was cold!!

This is a short video of the aftermath of a huge forest fire which burned 33 sq miles this summer. None of the trees in this video are alive. Even in the most distant background, they are simply cooked at their bases with dead needles on the trees. The logging companies have come in and cut most of the useful standing wood before the beetles moved in. Lots of cabins were destroyed but fortunately the fire was a substantial distance from our cabin.

As always, the trip was an excellent break from the world with plenty of laughing and relaxation for everyone. Well….except the deers!

Climategate Season!

Gone hunting for invisible deer again. It is climategate season!! The week will probably end with nothing new (including deer-s) but the UK police managed to leak (publish) that nobody involved in Climategate could be prosecuted after three years.

Hopefully, the boys/(manly girls) aren’t so eager for recognition that they fall into that trap. There are always ways to prosecute. Was the second release really not a second alleged violation? Is there really no other way to prosecute? I don’t know UK law but breaking and entering, theft of personal property, copyright, illegal accessing of national security data, who knows!? The rule is, if you have done something difficult to those who make the rules, you have broken whatever rule they can think of. Just another reason to stay away from leftism.

Be smart instead!

Anyway, if I see bambi, I’m taping some antlers on his fuzzy head and shooting them back off! I will be back in a week.

Left Behind

The media complain that Blogs are too powerful for their own good, but when a story of serious consequence has negative political implications to the left, the media reactions are universal.  Ignore it!

This time they have gone too far.

I wouldn’t vote for anyone involved in this situation no matter which party they were affiliated with.   The ex-Seals, you know the dead ones, apparently broke their orders to go and save the incessant calls for help in Benghazi. Oh, you haven’t heard yet?   That is because Fox news is the only major outlet covering it – even hours after it was released.

EX SEALS BROKE ORDERS TO SAVE UNARMED PEOPLE.

 

I wonder where that buck will stop?

Required Reading

For those seriously interested in climate sensitivity, Paul K has a very interesting post up at Lucia’s.

Pinatubo Climate Sensitivity and Two Dogs that didn’t bark in the night

 

Will Penn State Ever Learn?

Michael Mann has decided to sue for defamation because someone compared him to Sandusky.  Besides the general disgust for the Penn State sexual scandal, there was a certain  irony for me in that  brought about an article discussing what is a solidly apparent cultural deficiency in the university.  I compared the decades of head-in-the-sand treatment of Sandusky to a very similar Penn State investigation of Mann’s work   In Case You Were Wondering.

Before I revisit the story, I believe a disclaimer is in order.  There is no accusation of any criminal activity against Mann.  I can’t imagine what comparison’s anyone could make between Michael Mann and Sandusky, they look nothing alike and Mike likely stinks at football as well as all other athletic endeavors.  The money the two made for Penn State was vastly different. Oddly enough, they probably are about equally accurate at math and science but that is a different story.  There simply is no rational comparison to be made between the damaging of young lives and the tweaking of obscure nearly useless statistical methodologies for love of money and politics.

This is what I wrote about Penn State, and I believe it is a reasonable interpretation of the news:

Well Penn state, which famously ignored its own employee’s role in climategate, has been caught pretending another situation didn’t exist. This time the situation was so horrific on an individual level that the comparison to previous indiscretions is nearly impossible but the amount of Penn State money involved was so much greater that it can legitimately be made.  Recently Penn State President Graham Spanier  was forcibly retired from office.   This is not proof or even evidence that the president was directly involved or even had any knowledge of the insane sexual behavior by PSU employees which appear to have been deliberately ignored by senior management, but firing was the right thing to do.   PSU has an illness in the form of a culture in management which ignores even hideous error in favor of business-as-usual cash flow.  Morality at PSU has taken a back seat to gold.

The money in the organization simply overwhelms doing the right thing.   “Don’t be evil” used to be the childish corporate slogan at Google.  That was before they realized that their true value to the corporate world was collection of information about the public.  Don’t bash Google though as  Apple and Microsoft never seem to have suffered these childish delusions.  I suppose the new unspoken slogan probably is “Don’t be evil unless it is wildly profitable!”

I also wrote:

When the Penn state climategate reviews came out, the typical media’s uncritical acceptance of nonsense words out of Penn State was stunning.  It revealed to all who were paying attention just how deeply invested the university and media are in insuring that the global warming message and money flow not be reduced by even the most blatantly false actions.  The result was that Penn State has been successful in maintaining its public scientific reputation (and cash flow) in the same pre-climategate mode and the enviro-team has continued down their paths undaunted and likely re-invigorated that they are untouchable.  The only thing I can do is write about it here on my blog and make a personal guarantee to Penn State University that when my sons go to college (which they will), not one dollar will intentionally come from our family to this corrupt, and truly disgusting institution.  Don’t think for a moment that these messages are not being unintentionally communicated to Penn State students as thousands were idiotically rioting in the streets over the football coach’s firing.

The brainwashing of the public in favor of profit has spread across all media outlets distorting everything from sports to politics to climate science™.   There has to be a functional backlash at some point though where Penn State, and the like ,are held accountable for their distortions of the truth in favor of profit.   It isn’t only big ‘private’ business which can corrupt the system after all, and Michael Mann not being Sandusky, is far from Michael Mann being innocent of other lesser improprieties  — for “the cause”.  We all know that propaganda and spin have become the norm on all news channels.  We should aslo know that it is the not-s0-meek lawyers whom have inherited the Earth to date.  When I think about the future, it seems that the deeper we sink into the morass of poverty, mediocrity and false uniformity, the harder and more violent the backlash will be.   Not many claim to know the future though, and I certainly won’t count myself as one who does.

To me, there is a sad irony in watching what is in my opinion one of the most undeservedly arrogant and disingenuous public figureheads file a lawsuit, wholly supported in his own gamesmanship by a broken and corrupted university, against others for a comparison to another man who was protected by the same university’s defunct managerial culture.

It should be interesting to see how this latest waste of a few hundred thousand dollars turns out.

 

Crazy Stuff on Michigan Ballot

PROPOSAL 12-3
A PROPOSAL TO AMEND THE STATE CONSTITUTION
TO ESTABLISH A STANDARD FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY
This proposal would:

Require electric utilities to provide at least 25% of their annual retail sales of electricity from renewable energy sources, which are wind, solar, biomass, and hydropower, by 2025.

Limit to not more than 1% per year electric utility rate increases charged to consumers only to achieve compliance with the renewable energy standard.

Allow annual extensions of the deadline to meet the 25% standard in order to prevent rate increases over the 1% limit.

Require the legislature to enact additional laws to encourage the use of Michigan made equipment and employment of Michigan residents.
Should this proposal be approved?
YES __
NO ____

Envirowhackos want us to produce 25% of our power from things that don’t work.   What’s more is that they want to incorporate the idiocy right into the State constitution.   My guess is that the media propaganda about “renewable” energy has brainwashed the public into thinking that this is probably ok.  What linguistic magic empowers the thinking that it will only add a little cost because the price increase is legislated in the bill?

Surprisingly they forgot to list potato batteries as one of the renewable sources.  What is the problem? We know potato batteries can’t effectively replace combustibles either, so why aren’t they on the list?

Maybe they are potato racists.

Tax the 3%

I am tired of politics but in the recent debate a topic which I have frequently discussed here took center stage. Taxation of private business in America. Recently, I was critiqued by several readers for making the exact same points that were stated by Romney and Obama. Those unknown wealthy people Obama would tax by allowing parts of an old law to expire, are actually comprised heavily of business owners. Some here even felt I was being disingenuous and several believe that what I wrote was tainted by political views and cannot possibly be realistic. The fact is that about ninety five percent of all businesses in America are forms of S corporations. The profits in these types of corporations are reported by shareholders directly on their tax returns. These profits are never fully spendable cash by the shareholder as reinvestment is absolutely necessary for the continued function of the company. The net tax rate vs personal cash in a pass through S corporation is often very high.

Ok Jeff, we get it.

So remember what happens when a politician wants to limit something they don’t like, something unpopular that a small fraction of the population uses to their own detriment, what do they do? Hmmm…….

They tax it to increase the cost and limit usage. Examples are Cigarettes, Alcohol, CO2, sugary drinks, speeding, junk food, energy, or whatever product becomes the target in the popular media that day. The cost is a load which reduces the buying power of the consumer to direct them away from the behavior.

About half the jobs in the country are created by pass-through S corporations known as “small business” even though they can have hundreds or even thousands of employees. Obama had the guts to actually say, I don’t want to tax them all, only the top 3% of the businesses. Unfortunately, those 3% he mentioned are are comprised of the successful owners who employ a huge portion of America. Many of the rest have little or no income whatsoever. I also own part of a technology holding corporation which by intent creates almost zero income. Those top earning individuals (businesses) are the same people who fall into the 1% known as the “wealthy” that Obama has been intending to hammer all along.

I have to tell you folks, you don’t need to be a very big business to fall in that 1 percent. You also don’t have to be very rich. All you have to really do is be successful at growing to a moderate size and you will get hammered and looking at the various other tax increases proposed, none of it is good for business. No surprise considering the relentless demonization business owners have been suffering for the last 50 years by the left-wing press.

“Jeff it is only a return to the Clinton era tax he is proposing. It isn’t that much money.”

Not true my friends, not at all. Many large expenses have increased faster than inflation since the Clinton days. Fuel – due to left leaning law. Employment insurance – due to left leaning law. Health care premiums (way more than 4%/year by the way) – due to left leaning law. Minority favoritism due to left wing fairness. Environmental regulation, accounting reporting, tax filing, product liability, workmans comp, all skyrocketing due to left wing law. Not that conservatives haven’t added cost also, but this is absolutely the result of a left sided anti-business mentality in media and popular culture.

All of these are hidden costs which could be considered taxes for the common good, that have gone up faster than inflation. Some of it might be ok, but taken together, it has become amazingly destructive to the economy. So after decades of anti-business policy, the economy has weakened severely and almost 20% of the employable workforce is sitting on the couch watching Phineas and Ferb and less tax is collected as a percentage of GDP.

Obama’s answer!! Tax the millionares. AKA, the 3% of small businesses that are actually still successful at creating jobs…..

This simply cannot be due to rational hope for a solution to the lack of jobs. There must be some other motivation because in every other case, when politicians from either party want less of something, they tax it. When they want more of it, they cut the tax.

In fact, Obama was so mixed up that after stating he would increase taxes on millionaires (business owners), he proposed a gigantic 1/4 tax cut on C corporations to create jobs!!! A good idea in my opinion but when you think about it rationally, he is saying we must cut tax for giant corporations (which are easily identified in popular culture as corporations) to create jobs, yet raise tax on other corporations which due to the nuanced tax law can be used to “trick people” by calling them “the millionaires”.

Tthe Obama proposed small business “millionaire” tax will literally have a cost equal to the salary of 10% of our company’s workforce. That money will come from somewhere important because the government still frowns on personal cash printing presses even though theirs are working overtime. It would be fun to try to make a good one though What I don’t get is why people can easily grock that a cigarette tax must limit cigarette usage, gas tax limits CO2 production, yet not notice the consequences of a business tax increase when jobs are nearly non-existent.

The world class irony is status-quo in my view, and that is the memo.

Good Stuff

Antarctic Experiences Record High Sea Ice Level – Within the margin of error.

Just now, from the Earth’s unloved backside, just when you thought the “death spiral” of northern polar sea ice had taken full hold of the public’s mind, the stupid Antarctic hits a new ALL-TIME high sea ice area record.

All time being defined as 34 ish years of course.  Stupid sea ice doesn’t know much about climate science does it!   From cryosphere today, using the very same gridded NSIDC data so often downloaded right here.
UPDATE: I have edited the title per comments below.  Thanks everyone.

UPDATE:A small step closer the absolute max ice area was recorded in 2007  – 16.232 Million Km^2 (per Sunshinehours1).  Without any checking needed, this is way inside sensor error range.

Arctic sea ice is still well below the previous record minimum:

Lewandowsky to Remove All Blog Based References

Over the past few weeks I have had several communications with Dr. Lewandowsky regarding his wonderful contribution to science very appropriately titled:

MOTIVATED REJECTION OF SCIENCE
NASA faked the moon landing|Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax:
An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science

“MOTIVATED REJECTION OF SCIENCE”

Think about that.   Who could reject the truth of “science”?….  It must be one who has such powerful beliefs on something that scientific fact, real proof, even unequivocal evidence has no effect on their opinion.  How much more Orwellian a title could be written?  As we have learned at Climate Audit, from the content of the paper the irony is difficult to overstate.

As you unfortunate victims readers know, I have a naturally acerbic personality which is even more poorly contained in blogland.   The very title of the Lewandowsky article attacks the open discussion on which science is necessarily based.  A more biased attack on reasoned skepticism is hard to fathom.

The Air Vent blog isn’t exactly a great life achievement in my point of view but it is one of the far too rare science-first blogs skeptical of <b>catastrophic</b> anthropogenic global warming.  I didn’t imagine that a conservative engineer who started a free blog under a pseudonym complaining about political and monetary pollution of climate science would extend to being banned by climate blogs, being outed by the British press, surprise phone calls on Sunday morning,  hacked email drops, being contacted by the anti-terror squads of the British government and then recently being libeled with accusations of being an anti-science denier and advocate of conspiratorial whatever in Psychological Science..

You have to love liberalism in all of its wonderful forms.  Does anyone wonder now why I published under “Jeff Id” ?

Here is what Lewandowsky wrote under the guise of science:

Thus, AIDS denial has been linked to the belief that the U.S. Government created HIV; the tobacco industry viewed lung cancer research as an \oligopolistic cartel,” and climate deniers believe that temperature records have been illegitimately adjusted to exaggerate warming (e.g., Condon, 2009).

The article in the references is the lone Internet link of any kind in the references:http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/global-temperature-records-above-the-law/ (Accessed 6 May 2012).  Certainly the post is argumentative but it is about the collusion by Jones and UEA officials to ignore legal freedom of information requests.   Unlike Lewandowsky, it seems obvious that nobody really knew what data was used in CRU ground temperatures at that time.  Now we know even Phil Jones was a bit confused on the matter. Fortunately, after climategate, Dr. Phil became a lot more open to releasing the data and I believe tAV was the first blog to reproduce his results after code became available.

The accusations by Dr. Lewandowsky were allowed by the editorial review of the Journal of Psychology Psychological Science yet claims that I’m a climate change denier and that I believe temperatures were illegitimately adjusted are clearly false.  I wrote first to Lewandowsky regarding the error and received an automated reply about his travel so I wrote to his coauthor.  After some time, I was told that Lewandowsky didn’t believe he was in error using this rather cute bit of sophistry:

I don’t believe I cited you inaccurately given the context of what I was saying and referring to—although I agree that your  name was listed in a sentence with the noun “denier,” thereby creating a tacit association that was in fact not intended on my part.

So even after telling him of his error, Lewandowsky is still saying that I have accused someone of illegitimate temperature record adjustment for the explicit purpose of exaggerated warming but apparently I’m not a denier.  I have not made either claim of course, however, on a similar vein there are some UHI based embarrassments by the climate change extremist community that I could happily detail for him.  The funny bit is that Lewandowsky proposed to replace the Condon reference for climate change deniers with a “google search” that would include my blog amongst others:

I therefore suggest that I remove the citation “(e.g., Condon, 2009)” and replace it with “(see supplementary material for sources).” The supplementary material can then contain a set of links to 10 or so sites making claims about illegitimate adjustments, presented in an order based on Google-rankings, so that other than entering search terms, no human intervention is required in selecting citations. (Of course, that’s how I got to your post in the first place, so there is no guarantee that your link might not pop up again; I hope you can accept that because I don’t want to re-introduce human selection.)

I told him that listing my blog in any manner as supportive of his claim was clearly false at this point and it would not be acceptable.   I received no more replies from Lewandowsky after that point.

So I contacted the editor of Psychological Science….

Eric Eich didn’t respond at all at first.   So I threw a bit of a fit with him and got the reply that they were looking into the matter and ‘promised’ to get back to me when they had a decision.  I thanked him and provided these examples as to why the claims were false:

Not a denier of climate change:

http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/it-is-what-it-is-and-the-god-of-physics-will-have-it-no-other-way/


http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/radiative-physics-yes-co2-does-create-warming/


http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/radiative-physics-simplified-ii/

No claim of illegitimate adjustments to temp records:

http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/global-land-temps-cru-style/


http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/03/28/111/


http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/thermal-hammer-part-deux/


http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/cru-howto/

The links were sent with a few other details as well, so I waited another week without reply.   I wrote again asking what decision was made and received this a couple of days ago from Eric Eich:

Mr Id: Dr. Lewandowsky has agreed to remove your citation not because it was misleading–he does not believe it was–but because I think it is best replaced by a source other than a blog post. Any other blog post cited in the manuscript is also being replaced, for the same reason. … Eric Eich

Eric refused to use my last name during any of our communications despite the journal’s reference being to “Condon” and despite me signing all of my correspondence “Condon”.  I even pointed out the discrepancy in name after his first reply to no avail. His repeated inability to use my name, made it quite obvious that that the Editor of the Psychological Science is in no way emotionally detached from this issue.

Now some of the sophistry of the reply is due to the fact that they cannot admit libel even by accident but I found this resolution to be rather humorous.    Lewandowsky is claiming his false claims are not “misleading” but Eric Eich believes that all references to blog post must be removed for some unexplained reason.

Below is a complete list of the references with ALL of the blog references bolded:

The Healing Blog

A new election is coming and thankfully nobody is claiming that they will lower the ocean level this time.  My taxes are still insanely high and as a business owner, I’m expecting to be hammered in a very impressive way by the non-paying public for my reprehensible misdeed of trying to make money.  Yes it’s a shame that I’ve worked so hard, but this has turned into a country of the entitled rather than the empowered.  No we did not build our success, our company simply sprung into existence on its own by random chance.

That isn’t what the post is about though.

This post is about blogging on something as stupid as global warming.   I mean, why would someone so driven, so consumed with other avenues in life,  spend time on a subject that draws personal critique on blogs, ridicule in the media, libelous accusations in the journal of Psychology, and global governmental enforcement attention, all  on a matter which should be purely science?

It’s simple – maybe.

First, I know that I am regularly disappointed with the poor quality of thinking from the public.   How can we possibly believe that running a windmill or 100 of ‘em can compare to a coal or nuclear plant?   It is beyond my ability to grasp the logic.  Why don’t people understand that we don’t know the real damage from CO2 is, but do know the real damage from lack of energy (e.g. Zimbabwe)?   Why is there no recognition of the opportunity for blatantly obvious health/life/environmental advantage to huge amounts of low cost energy?

Very poor quality thinking in my opinion but it gets worse.

When the Mullers come out with the idea that because they generated a temp curve from the same data as everyone else, that they have somehow proven Co2 warming as well as attribution, it left my jaw in my lap.   They play themselves as scientists yet rational logic does NOT lead from temperature to attribution.  Of all things, attribution of temperature change in climate science is known to be absolutely unknown. Unless you are a Muller or a skydragon. Yet somehow these amazing people make the ridiculous sandwich board claim to know that 100% of the land temperature change is manmade – with unequivocal certainty.  IMO, stupider is now an official word. They get away with it because the left-wing media and government funded scientists want them to.   No reasoned thinker could stand by and accidentally miss how the amazing Mullers solved the attribution dilemma for the IPCC.

But the now enlightened Mullers know truth, and they are happy to tell anyone who will listen that through amazing science they have discovered the truth.  I, and many other skeptics, got the same temperature answers on blogs as the Muller BEST curve — well before they did. It didn’t change any of our opinions on global warming doom to my knowledge.  The answer only affected the Mullers.

No they are not being logical — in case you were still wondering, and that is disappointing.

So when I see a mannian (lowercase) curve, and I recognize that the data is nothing but regressomatic noise, it leaves the same sick feeling in my stomach as those who don’t recognize the future hell our government is intentionally creating in the US.   Just look at the government spending vs income and you should realize it cannot continue. You cannot spend 75% more than you take in for any length of time, yet somehow the question of whether it should continue is a 50-50 proposition in the public’s mind.  You also cannot tax your way out of the problem because we already sport some of the highest taxes in the world and there ain’t enough income left to tax.  Sorry MSNBC.

What kind of world is this when such simple logic cannot be followed?  The Muller stuff is simply more of the same dogmatic nonsense disguised as science that most humans cannot parse. The Muller’s know these facts so I spend time wondering how they rationalize their true intent, until I stop caring.

This all ties together in my mind under the guise of wrongthink.  When people don’t recognize that on average our own nature dictates that tough life choices lead to optimal solutions, we refuse to recognize our very nature.  Living according to what we are is not an easy path.  It’s the same kind of math which drives evolution.  Governments don’t need to hide the weak from tough situations, they need to expose them to the hardship and let the people show the world if they are truly weak.  A driven person is a very hard thing to stop and when exposed to one of these same “weak” people who thinks something needs to be done, I would suggest that you get out of that persons way.  A thinking public would recognize that people need saving from impossible situations, not tough ones, but politicians have long ago figured  out a different self-empowering mathematical balance.

At this point, it is unlikely that I will lose the money war because politicians will eventually need $$ from business again, but I feel very sorry for those who will not be given a reasonable opportunity to succeed.  Our population is impregnated with small beaten down minds filled with CNN redistribution nonsense.  They are left with weak hearts centered on racist or other victimization dogma, and give thanks to uncle Sam for writing tiny checks to them in exchange for jobs they otherwise would have had.  When you vote for a politician in the hopes that you will get a check from them, free health care, welfare without a work requirement, larger pensions, something is horribly wrong.

So it was almost exactly 4 years ago, on a sunny August day just before a presidential election, that I was sitting on the carpet in a nearly unfurnished house,  and wrote my first blog post.   I didn’t know what this blog would turn into but there was a little steam I had to let off.  People were about to vote for a man with a golden tongue who was promising to do his best to change America by giving the poor other peoples money — and voters fell for it.

“Once the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the Republic.” – Benjamin Franklin

Most people still think old Ben was a smart guy, though there is probably some wrong-think style discussion on the matter, I’m on Ben’s side.

So I started a climate blog, because in my opinion, people needed another scientific conservative who can understand math and is willing to accept the data for what it is. I truly don’t care if the warming from CO2 is worse than the IPCC predicts.  I don’t give one methane filled fart!  If that is the case, it would be nice to know so that we can find a true solution (not carbon exchange nonsense).  If we need a solution, and I’m not at all convinced that we do, then we need one which doesn’t involve the attempted destruction of same the economies which gave us the power to warm the environment in the first place.

I also like puzzles and many climate claims are simply puzzles to be considered.  So far, in my 4 years of puzzling, I’ve found nobody who really knows the answer on the future of climate.  There have been plenty of people who claim to know the answer in all different directions across the whole spectrum from skydragons to Muller with the IPCC awkwardly positioned in between, but when examined closely, these people don’t really know the future either.

So why climate?

I’m not entirely sure but at least in part it is because you can’t spend your life being mad at the world for acting stupid, but you can spend a few cathartic hours pointing out the idiots.

I’m feeling better already.

The Pragmatic Skeptic

I read some of this earlier, and hadn’t intended to post on it but now that I’ve read the complete version of the interview, this is very much worth reading.   Anthony Watts gave an interview to PBS whereby he made  a very accurate case for what makes myself and others climate skeptics.   The reality is nothing like the caricature Lewandowsky, Real Climate, Tamino, Skeptical Science and many other pro-government extremists would express to the world.   He did an excellent job and it is very much worth reading.   Others were involved too in a more complete interview published at WUWT, but like Mullers silly (and unscientific) statement that he somehow knows 100% of the measured  warming is human caused, they just confused the issues involved.    I’m not sure Muller ever really grocked the skeptic position in the first place.

Anyway, here is the link to the Anthony Watts interview.

 

SKS Behind the Scenes – On Deaf Ears

The below discussion was passed to me by email. It is apparently from the hacked SKS background discussions. I found it revealing to see the kind of thinking which went on behind the scenes during the release of the corrected Antarctic temperature trends.

2011-02-09 04:45:30	Antarctic Temperature Trends
Robert	Hey all,There’s a feud going on pertaining to this post on RC http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/02/west-antarctica-still-warming-2/comment-page-2/#comment-199872 followed by these two by climate audit: http://climateaudit.org/2011/02/07/eric-steigs-duplicity/ http://climateaudit.org/2011/02/08/coffin-meet-nail/ I’m gonna be honest, this should be a lesson on what NOT to do as a scientist. Steig is refusing to read the criticism of his criticism and is refusing to engage the authors of the paper he is criticizing. In the “Borehole” at RC you can see some examples of comments by the others that are purely technical and include no *snark* that Steig calls snark and put in the Borehole. I know how ravenous the *auditors* can get but this type of non-response is exactly what gives skeptics momentum.
2011-02-09 05:03:09
Julan	Sigh, I do not know if i completely agree Robert.  They arebaiting him though– gotta keep those acolytes foaming at the mouth.  It is laughable of McIntyre to accuse Steig of duplicity  Good God is Mcintyre delusional?!  That title alone is reason not to engage– CA are clearly not acting in good faith.I do not blame Eric for not wanting to go to CA, it is a cesspit.  Honestly it is, the mean-spiritedness, vitriol and invective of the posters there is truly something to behold. Also, keep in mind the things that McIntyre have accused mann and Schmidt of– there is good reason for mistrust and a short fuse.That said, the best place to address these technical issues is with the journal with a comments that appear side-by-side– not on blogs, especially not partisan blogs.
2011-02-09 21:06:57	comment
Robert	My opinion on the subject is that using grudges as a rationalization is a poor strategy. Non-engagement because in the past Mcintyre and CO have insulted Mann, Steig etc… is not exactly rising above the fray.Pettiness in response to pettiness leaves them both looking like children.No one said that he has to go to CA to engage there, but moderating out some of the comments which were not filled with snark doesn’t make it appear like Steig is ready to have a serious scientific discussion.To be clear in all this, steig is wrong. CA is right in terms of their reconstruction and their subsequent response.They included way too much snark over at CA but that doesn’t detract from them being right statistically.Personally I think that if you are curteous and deal with the guys like Ryan O and Jeff ID properly then they will respect you. I watched the initial response and I remember thinking that some of the comments steig made in response to Ryan O were snarky and belittling. I’m not shocked they fired back, not shocked at all.As scientists aren’t we supposed to take the high ground and just go where the facts lead us?
2011-02-10 06:30:25
Julian	“As scientists aren’t we supposed to take the high ground and just go where the facts lead us?”I agree Robert.  That said, one has to keep several things in mind.  In the past, McIntyre et al. have done way more than insult Mann. They have also lied in the past (e.g., concerning the Yamal data). These guys ultimately have no interest in advancing the science– rather, their duty is to cast doubt, fabricate controversy and undermine the scientists’ credibility.  The is likely a no win for Eric– engage them he loses, ignoring them he loses.  They should both take this discussion to the journal and publish comments there, as is the professional thing to do.  These juvenile food fights on blogs are nonsense.As for Eric’s tone, I agree he needs to work on that, and a lot! That said, Eric’s poor people skills do not give permission to McIntyre et al. to engage in slander in a public forum– IMHO, he erred when he wrote his blog post at RC critiquing O’Donnell et al., that was the excuse they were just waiting for.  Then again, Eric has already likely had a cordial exchange and scientific discussion with the authors doing review.  I would also argue that it is not clear yet that the CA crowd have their stats right.  I have had run ins with Condon, and my distinct impression is that he is an ideologue and D-K victim Robert, and plays this game of claiming to be reasonable when he is in fact not.  Read some of his posts on the politics and economics of cutting GHGs….The sad and unfortunate thing about this is that is has all the hallmarks of the HS controversy– a huge debacle over sophisticated statistical techniques, which ultimately do not change the primary conclusion– western Antarctica is warming.  That important fact is what is at risk of being lost here…..and McIntyre et al. know that full well, and will milk this for everything it is worth…mark my words.Eric has promised a response soon…we’ll have to wait and see.
2011-02-10 09:48:54	Comment
Robert	Having read Steig’s response I don’t really know what my opinion on the whole matter is. I think realistically both of the children need a time-out.That being said Mcintyre needs to learn to call off the attack dogs. If he wants to work on “bridging” the gap between scientists and skeptics then he has to learn to not act like a child himself. I remembered I had question on something to do with temperature data way back and I sent an email to Gavin Schmidt and one to Steve Mcintyre. I got two responses: One from Gavin with some detailed instructions and two publications to look at and one from Mc stating something like “I’m too busy for this, ask someone else”What I find interesting about that is that if I were steve Mc I would post that exchange on my blog and use it as evidence that the other side was being dismissive… really shows the hypocrisy of it all.Nevertheless I think that O’donnell and Codon and them are probably more right than Steig statistically and I’m a little shocked to learn that Steig et al. made the same principal component mistake that Mann et al 1998 did but nevertheless the statistics in all this aren’t the lesson to be learned.What should be taken from this little issue is that tone is very important. If Steig et al remained curteous (even with the attacks) then for those watching on the sidelines it would be obvious that the science is in good hands. To react somewhat snarky just brings us down to their level. Keep talking the science and stay away from personal stuff and you will win in the hearts and minds.

[edit - my bold and ip removed]

Clearly Robert was understanding what was being said statistically but I don’t get the feeling that even Steig has figured out what was done. Aside from that, Robert is correct about what happened in the discourse.   I don’t miss the meanness of tone which went on publicly during the Steig paper days. In retrospect the tone did move things forward on both sides. In the end, all of the effort still left the climate science community generally confused about the Antarctic because starting with Chladni patterns, the expectation maximization math is too fancy and prone to operator error.  The ZOD and FOD of the IPCC where Steig 09 is still being cited is plenty of evidence to prove that.  One of the engineering-style critiques of the Steig method presented here so often is that if there are simpler methods which do nearly the same thing, those methods are usually better at getting the job done.  In this case, the job was to tell scientists what was actually measured in the Antarctic and for some reason, they still don’t know.

Oddly enough, this conversation from SKS is actually a caricature of the discussion which created the Steig Mess.  Julian, who was apparently unable/unwilling to grock even the Yamal discussion at Climate Audit, refused to express an opinion on the deficiencies of the Steig Antarctic work even after our publication.  When told repeatedly of the S09 statistical errors, instead of addressing the math, he redirected the conversation and referred to me in paraphrase as an incompetent ideologue using my opinions on the fake solutions to GHG presented by the IPCC as an example.  As though it is my fault that biofuels and windmills don’t work!  He even referred to the multiple Yamal problems as ‘lies’,  all the while missing the two points by Robert that Steig09 was wrong and scientists should stay above the fray.  I’m not sure he actually heard one word Robert said.

their duty is to cast doubt, fabricate controversy and undermine the scientists’ credibility.

From the various communications released by these groups, I am regularly astounded that these people think there is some kind of conspiracy or plan to undermine their message.   In 4 years I have had zero communications with other people on what message to send for or against AGW!  Zero.   I have regularly written about the reality of AGW, as well as the fact that Mann’s hockey stick work is a false representation of autocorrelated data.   A scientist with a clearer head will recognize that both situations can exist in the same universe.  Every climate scientist with some objectivity who has taken a serious look at Mann’s work, knows the problems do exist and are in fact severe.  Several recent papers over the past two years have been 100% directed at correcting these variance loss  (non-uniform variance) problems.   Still, to Julian, these issues are a fabrication by the evil skeptics who’s “duty” it is to destroy the scientists credibility.

Errors in a paper don’t destroy credibility guys, it is the denial of those errors in the face of raw facts which does.

Lewandowsky’s Bodge

The term “conspiracy” is one of the most overused words in climate jargon. Just using the word conspiracy with a person has become a popular way to discredit those who question any of the facts presented by an official body. With so much information available there is only enough time to focus on things that interest you. People simply shut their minds off to unfamiliar topics at the mere mention of the word.

A conspiracy in law is a plan by two or more people to break the law in the future – per wikipedia.
A conspiracy as described by dictionary.com definition 1 is an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons; plot.
But then there is definition 5 – any concurrence in action; combination in bringing about a given result.

The implication of Lewandowsky’s paper is that you cannot believe in a conspiracy and operate effectively in science. The paper was a blatant political attack to attempt to discredit those who disagree with both Lewandowsky’s childlike economic theory as well as his poor grasp of climate science. So he calls skeptics conspiracy theorists. Unfortunately we see everywhere, evidence of conspiracy per all definitions. Does the IPCC not conspire to expand awareness of their view of free market economics simultaneously with environmentalism. Of course it does, they have a whole section on economic impacts on the environment. Were there meetings between the government paid authors on how these messages should be conveyed? Of course. And if you are one who holds a different view of free market function than these government paid authors, does that planning seem to have a negative impact on the future of the human race and environment? It most certainly does in my opinion. In other words, the multi-author presentation of their preferred, message regarding free-market economics is both planned and negative in consequence.

I guess that makes me a conspiracy theorist – or does realist better describe the view?

A second issue though is that I took Lewandowsky’s survey over at WUWT for entertainment and couldn’t mark any of the conspiracies listed as things I believe. Most of them were complete nonsense, some of which I hadn’t even heard of. Others seem plausible but I don’t have enough knowledge on any of them to claim ‘belief’ at any level. In other words, I had straight negatives for all of his “conspiracy” answers. Aside from the now-obvious fake answers that Steve McIntyre and others identified, the types of conspiracy questions seem to give the study a little more credibility. However, due to the leading nature of the non-conspiracy oriented questions, I am certain that I would have dropped the survey part way in simply to avoid supporting the undisguised intent of the questions. In other words, it seems highly unlikely that the survey attracted many thoughtful climate skeptics.

Yesterday though, we found out from Steve McIntyre that the math of the study was bodged so badly that simple analysis REVERSES the conclusions of the paper.

If we weren’t so familiar with this sort of faked result from the catastrophic-warming-so-we-must-shut-down-our-economy advocates, you might not even believe it were true. At this time, I have no belief that Lewandowsky intends to be a scientist on the matter, but lets see if he offers appropriate retractions – starting with the title.