Here's my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 1 pm today. As always, we welcome your additions in the comments below or via email to bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz.
See all previous Top 10s here.
My must read today is #7 to understand why inflation is so tepid globally.
1. Lake Buttermilk - This week is the week when Fonterra's spring flush peaks.
The Wall of Milk is at its biggest now and this year Fonterra and farmers are struggling to cope with a 5% rise in production, and in some cases up to 20%.
I've just driven through the Waikato from Auckland to Rotorua and back.
It's as lush and productive as I've ever seen it.
No wonder Fonterra is struggling to handle the volume.
So much so that excess butter milk is being dumped in a natural basin near Atiamuri to form a butter milk lake. I won't be water skiing on it...
2. Genius - As a new Wellingtonian I've learned the most important thing in any real estate choice is getting sun and avoiding one of those dark holes behind a hill.
But maybe I'm not thinking outside the box enough.
The Atlantic reports two towns in deep valleys in Norway and Italy stumbled upon the idea of putting a mirror on the top of a hill and shining it down into the valley.
Now all they need is a really big magnifying glass and they won't need cigarette lighters either...
3. Never again - Will I ever eat a chicken nugget.
Not after this Atlantic dissection of this staple of modern freezer cabinets and fast food joints.
4. Show me the profit - Amazon is a darling of the stock market. The trouble is it makes almost no profit. Xero haters will love this.
NYTimes takes a sceptical view.
Amazon shares are up around 150 percent since mid-2010, which perhaps not coincidentally was the last time the company had sizable profits. In other words, investors really decided they loved the company only when net income began to slide.
“This isn’t supposed to happen,” said William H. Janeway, an economist and venture capitalist. “It violates mainstream finance theory. Very few companies have been valued this way outside a systemic bubble.”
No one is asserting that Amazon is a flat-out bubble, but there is an increasingly noisy debate about when it will — or even whether it can — deliver the sort of bottom-line profits that investors normally demand from a company expected to post $75 billion in revenue this year.
5. No wonder Auckland homes are so popular with Chinese buyers - WaPo reports much of Northeast China is basically unliveable because of smog.
Now if only I could get them interested in Wellington... Very clear air here. :)
6. Japan's debt mountain - Roger Bootle writes at The Telegraph that Japan's debt is near a tipping point.
Hmmm. How many times have we heard this before?
The Bank of Japan is printing up a storm. It should just buy its government bonds back and cancel them.
7. Blue babies - The Press reports Canterbury's Chief Medical Officer is warning young mothers near Ashburton not to feed bore water to their babies if they are using one of the bores poisoned with nitrate. If they do they risk giving their babies blue baby syndrome.
This clash between dairy intensification and those who worry about water quality will be a theme of the next decade.
The health board has been working with maternity carers in the Ashburton area to ensure pregnant women and parents know the risks of consuming water with high nitrate levels.
"It's a ticking time bomb,'' Humphrey said.
"Sooner or later, a mother will not be aware of her water supply and she might make up some formula and that might lead to a tragedy."
The Ashburton water management zone committee needed to deal with the increasing nitrate levels as it would probably take decades to reverse the upward trend, he said.
"We know that clean farming is possible but clearly it is not happening," he said.
7. China's over-capacity problem - One of the drivers of endemic deflation for manufactured goods is huge over-capacity in China's factories.
The Chinese Government plans to do something about it, the FT reports.
I'll believe it when I see it. It's why deflation is more likely than inflation.
The State Council released on Tuesday “Guidelines to Resolve Severe Overcapacity Problems” on its webpage. The five sectors targeted are steel, cement, electrolytic aluminium, sheet glass and shipping. New projects will be blocked and current projects may be reappraised.
Capacity utilization rates in the above five sectors are well below the international standard – the plan said all sectors were in the 70 per cent range. Margins in the sectors declined sharply, with many enterprises suffering heavy losses, but there is still a pipeline of expansion projects, it said.
The State Council warned that “proper measures must be taken now, or cut-throat competition would effect the market, which will cause bigger industry losses, unemployment and increase banks’ bad debts… and even escalate to influence people’s livelihoods and social stability.”
8. Pay it forward - Fast food style. The NYTimes reports on a growing movement to pay for the fast food being delivered to the car behind you.
These Americans have some interesting ideas. Is this what charity looks like in the modern age?
9. Meanwhile - The Guardian reports America's top 10 CEOs took home US$4.7 billion in pay, bonuses and shares last year. Fair enough? I wonder if they pay for the Big Macs ordered by the car behind them...
Or maybe they don't buy fast food...
10. Totally the Daily Show's Jon Stewart interviewing Alan Greenspan.
The Daily Show
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62 Comments
#4 As I understand it, investor are giving a premium for "future growth potential" aka acheiving total market dominance as an unregulated monopoly. Amazon is an interesting comparison to the rather more profitable but subdued Apple shares, which are precieved as being near their ceiling of future growth.
The aticle mentions a few weighty products that Amazon gives free shipping on, I can also recall this example from last year
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-elephant-in-amazons-mail-room-2012…
Poor Greenspan! He never believed people would be irrational and if unregulated take enormous risks with other people's money that might benefit them personally but endanger their company and their country's entire economy. Really? Could he and the other economists still preaching neoliberal rubbish really have had their heads buried so far up their backsides? Hard to believe it's a genuine mea culpa after he bailed the finance sector out after the 87 crash, LTCM, Dot Com bust.... Must have dawned at some point that his Greenspan Put was encouraging reckless, greedy behaviour. He and his bretheren are either stupid or mendacious. After watching their collective performance on Inside Job I'd pick the later.
Poor Greenspan! He never believed people would be irrational and if unregulated take enormous risks with other people's money that might benefit them personally but endanger their company and their country's entire economy. Really? Could he and the other economists still preaching neoliberal rubbish really have had their heads buried so far up their backsides? Hard to believe it's a genuine mea culpa after he bailed the finance sector out after the 87 crash, LTCM, Dot Com bust.... Must have dawned at some point that his Greenspan Put was encouraging reckless, greedy behaviour. He and his bretheren are either stupid or mendacious. After watching their collective performance on Inside Job I'd pick the later.
mendacious, yes I like that word....even today he takes no responsibility....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/alan-greenspan-still-thinks-hes-…
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/the-worst-ex-central-banker…
"What Pearlstein doesn’t mention, but I think is important, is Greenspan’s amazing track record since leaving office — a record of being wrong about everything, and learning nothing therefrom. It is, in particular, more than three years since he warned that we were going to become Greece any day now, and declared the failure of inflation and soaring rates to have arrived already “regrettable.”
maybe add amoral, fanatical...
regards
Here is a messenger to shoot.
Estimated net benefits to agriculture due to increased atmospheric CO2 levels: $3.5 trillion between 1961 and 2011.
http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/co2benefits/MonetaryBenefit…
A climate denier website and "think tank" with an opinion piece. ie no peer review on method or accuracy, more spin and denial.
I mean at one point they say because its warmer its better for ppl as they wont be so cold. Um, cost of ppl dieing from heat stroke? massive deadly weather events? floods? Starvation, due to total crop loss? yeah thats better for ppl.
The [re-]insurance industry is having a fit over the financial losses and may not re-insure in the future, or at great cost, that will sure have an economic impact.
This is so bad its funny.
regards
You'd better tell the green house boys to stop pumping CO2 into their green houses. It is a simple fact that plants are essentially starved of CO2 and the word has greened certainly in the satellite era. The 1954 Chapman CO2 paper is beauty. Never realised that windy vs. calm days could stuff up my fertiliser trials so much.
As for the insurance industry can you not see they are utterly compromised? They love chicken littles. Their perfect business model is to get people to buy insurance they don't need. There is no evidence that extreme weather events are on the increase – even the IPCC agree with that. Have to remember to adjust for GDP growth. “There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change.”
More people die in the winter than in the summer - especially now that greenies have pushed up the price of energy. Blood in hands and all that.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/search/index.html?newquery=excess+winter+mort…
"to buy insurance they don't need"
Actually if you bother to read their latest work they clearly want to pass the risk and costs on to others and even not insure as the cant quantify the risk.
So actually I think we are likely to be un-insurable for climate events...
Maybe check out similar with how NZ houses are now being insured, to a maximum payout after that you are on your own.
regards
I would say IPCC does not, evidence please?
"Projected Changes in Extremes In most regions the frequency of warm days and warm nights will likely increase in the next decades, while that of cold days and cold nights will decrease. Models project near-term increases in the duration, intensity and spatial extent of heat-waves and warm spells."
"The frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation events over land will likely increase on average in the near term."
"Increases in near-surface specific humidity over land are very likely. Increases in evaporation over land are likely in many regions."
"Zonal mean precipitation will very likely increase in high and some of the mid latitudes, and will more likely than not decrease in the subtropics."
So more droughts and more heavy rains....doesnt seem to match with your claim that the IPCC sees no evidence of more extreme events.....
Can you supply some URLs please?
All your quotes are predictions. I am quoting empirical evidence. Given the lousy predictions of the chicken littles to date quotes like this are worthless. They are pounced upon by gravy trainers, politicians and insurance johnnies to raise taxes and premiums, and to scare children. Climate scare johnnies need a scary prediction to keep the reseach funding going and to inflate their ego by saving the world.
To name a few climate scientists predictions of the last decade: "snow will become a rare and exciting event. Children are not going to know what snow is." 10 million climate refugees by 2010". "Himalayan glaciers melted by 2035". etc. etc. I see now the Arctic ice area is practically the same as it was in 2000 and the Antarctic area is the greatest since the satellite era began. I assume you kept the links for those quotes the last time you asked for them. As for the IPCC quote:
"There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change (Choi and Fisher, 2003; Crompton and McAneney, 2008; Miller et al., 2008; Neumayer and Barthel, 2011)."
p.268, Ch4, SREX http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/images/uploads/SREX-All_FINAL.pdf
"The question is who is paying for such shyte?"
ExxonMobil mostly- at least they are one of the bankrollers of Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (president Sherwood B. Idso, vice president Keith E. Ido, chairman (and author of this particular work) Craig D. Idso. Here is a backgrounder:
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/12/dirty-dozen-climate-chan…
Meanwhile the greenhouse industry getsa billion dollars a day in funding... The guy does bother to provide 50 odd references at the end of the paper. He didn't just make it up. Papers like the 1954 one I listed on CO2 above corn fields show a pretty good picture as to why there would be increased crop growth from elevated CO2. He has just attempted to quantify the extra growth.
This was written before all the chicken littles came along so can't have been funded by "big oil".
LaMarche Jr., V.C., Graybill, D.A., Fritts, H.C. and Rose, M.R. 1984. Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide: Tree ring evidence for growth enhancement in natural vegetation. Science 223: 1019-1021.
Those pesky papers written before "big oil" and bigger green.
Keep in mind that the LaMarche paper is focusing on trees at the very edge of the tree line in altitude. Subsequent research has found it wasn't the CO2, it was increasing temperatures increasing the growing season at the high alpine levels. See:
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/48/20348.full
Thanks for responding to the link. They didn't rule out CO2 just said it wasn't predominant which wasn't surprising given there was a longer growing season. The CO2 still had a beneficial effect..
Did you read the Chapman 1954 paper on CO2 above corn fields? It is fascinating.
From the satellite stuff:
Field observations and time series of vegetation greenness data from satellites provide evidence of changes in terrestrial vegetation activity over the past decades for several regions in the world.
Net greening was detected in all biomes, most conspicuously in croplands and least conspicuously in needleleaf forests.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02578.x/abs…
On the topic of disgusting fast food this article gives insight, if we needed it, into who is profiting from crap food and also in what direction NZ agriculture should not go.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ocean-robbins/huge-gmo-news_b_4129311.html?utm_hp_ref=canada&ir=Canada
#7 - Alister the Humph is not gettin' good press down here. The risks are limited to private bores, and these all need to be tested as YMMV.
So the lazy and unscientific link of nitrates=dairy is rather wide of the mark - I'm surprised that Interest has gone for this Repeating, not Reporting schtick. Looks like a cheap way to get to 10.
It's at least as likely to be the crop and seed crew and the fert they spread (the N in NPK...), which activity has been going on for around 150 years now in the area and fert application for 100 of that, the long-established meatworks and other intensive rural-related uses, or the septic tanks in the many small settlements, not to mention (as in the Manawatu) the sewage plants associated with the large towns like Ashburton.
Reality is soooo messy....
#1 Fonterra is in the process of creating a huge mess. It sells it's powder at auction, limiting the available supply to artificially keep the price high (just like the oil companies and crude), so is left with excess product that no one wants. Good business model!! And for years now they have been exporting our dairy technology and animals to China, South America and North America thus opening the door to future competition. Good business model!! Farmers should make the most of what they are getting now, because it cannot last, their own company is giving away all that is in the cupboard.
#4 Mr Janeway should read the writing that is on the wall. The economic model he and other economists have been selling the world is bogus BS created by big egos who then dismiss and denigrate anyone who disagrees with them. Watch the comments that this gets to prove this point!
Im not sure its limiting to push up price (evidence?).
Also there are alternative food bulkers like soy and other milk producers to compete with?
Actually I think manufacturers use milk solids as its cheapest?
Isnt buttermilk the "waste" product? so if we sold milk solids cheaper and hence more wouldnt there would be more buttermilk to dispose of?
regards
No 1 - Shame there is not enough room to process all this Buttermilk.......I keep thinking of Ricotto Cheese.
No 2 - would be very unlikely to ever happen in NZ......by the time you applied for Resource consents for such a project one would be rather worn out......and you would still have to obtain building consents on top and any other regulatory requirement that is enforced upon the not free people of this little country.
#5 well course you got clean air in Wellington Bernard, it doesn't stay long enough to get dirty, not unlike most tourists, bored out of their minds when not being driven against shop windows by Wellington's retail winds.
No their not looking in the shop windows, they're stuck there by that bloody wind.....Shopkeeper goes out ,scrapes em off and sells them some ballast to head out again.
Still could be worse , you could have moved to Hamilton.
Why do you want the Chinese to come to wellington anyway..? you thinking on selling again..?
Interesting thread.
Spin to the fore.
First Profile - anyone who gets down to the minutae of rubbishing the Insurance approach to Climate Change, is a paid tout. Who pays you, 'Profile'?
Then GBH. needing to muddy the contaminated waters. National Party, GBH? Did the edict go out?
So PDK, your response to the link regarding increase of food production caused by rising CO2 levels is that the poster is an imposter, furthermore a paid tout.
Did you read the article? Have you no actual rebuttal of it?
Your response demonstrates once again your smug, smarmy, arrogance to anyone and anything that in any way contradicts your pet theories. Read the link. If you have any trouble with the big words I'm here to help you out.
Hi,
a) There are some peer reviwed articles out on the web regarding this. Yes in controlled bubbles (literally growing drugs in a plastic bad = more) a bit more CO2 for some plants gives a bigger output, some not so.
b) The change in climate from more co2 also means that there is,
i) A change in growing areas.....things like Iran which used to be huge grain food bowl may again become so, but areas that are now may well become not.
ii) Increasing variables and extremes, this means any questionable increase in output from a higher co2 content is offset by huge losses due to droughts, floods etc.
c) Academic work, and literature, not so much PDK's or my "pet theories"
I'd offer to help you but frankly the info is out that and its obvious I'd be wasting my time.
regards
Simple, its for a person of equal or better standing such as an academic to rebutt, However most wouldnt even bother to. So I suggest you read real work and draw your own conclusions on which one stands up..
Really if you cant see how bad the piece is, well I'd be wasting my time that Id rather and will spend elsewhere.
regards
You are dismissing a paper coherently offering evidence that increased CO2 emissions have positive as well as negative effects on food production as "pathetic" yet cannot take one of his points and rebutt it.
This is a chance for you to demonstrate there is some substance behind your endless comments. Do it or STFU!
Its not a paper, its got no academic standing, its an opinion piece by a paid for right wing "think tank"
Yes there is some evidence there are positives, I never said there was not, however the negatives far outweigh any positives.
There are proper academic papers out there.
"STFU" yeah what ever,
It conforms exactly to the accepted standard for an academic paper. Who says it's got no academic standing? You?
I am still waiting to know which bit made you laugh (of the little you say you read), and brand it pathetic. I'm genuinely interested since you deem it necessary to take up half the space on this comments board, as an insight to how your thought processes work.
I'll ask again, what specific bit, quote please, made you laugh.
This will be interesting until your name fades from the site (as they all do).
That was spin 101: throw at your opponent that which you are guilty of. (some of it will stick and they'll waste time cleaning it off, goes the thinking).
Sorry, some of us are past that - we prefer to deal with all facts on the table, and correctly weighted.
Table 2. % Biomass Change for 300ppm for Wheat 34.9% (for the same footprint though they don't actually say so.
For some reason the author then projects the data back to the start of the industrial revolution, but...
Increase in atmospheric carbon 1961-2011, about 75ppm (not exactly but it makes the maths easy). About a quarter of 34.9% is about 9%.
Now, wheat is a crop that has been studied pretty intensively over the years so there are good historical numbers on how much of it there is, so it is easy to ask the question did real wheat yields in bushels per acre (or whatever other area based measure your prefer) increase dramatically in line with the dramatic increase in CO2 Emmissions in the graph on the title page since the early 2000s. The answer is a clear no. The imaginary increases in the paper show no such increases in actual measured output.
I hope that answers your question about why the article is ridiculous.
The author is making the specific claim that due to a theoretical connection between increased CO2 and increased plant growth, there has been 3.1 trillion dollars worth of added plant biomass. The thing is, for that claim to hold, the theoretical relationship calculated by the author should actually be visibile in the 30 years of observed data. In particular, when atmospheric carbon emmissions spiked in the early 2000s, that difference should have been measurable in the rate of area productivity increase compared to previous periods. There was no such jump in wheat (which was the one I checked). Now it is possible that the difference made by the increase in atmospheric carbon is too small to measure, in which case there is not 3.1 trillion of economic benefit. Either way the article is junk science.
It is like if I have data showing a ships direction and speed, and a theory that it hit an iceberg and sank. If I have data showing an iceberg in the area, and at the same time the ships GPS showed it stopped mving hoziontally and began sinking, I would have evidence (but not proof) that the ship had hit an iceberg, as the two events are linked. On the other hand, if the ship direction and speed were unchanged, that is pretty good evidence for rejecting the theory that it hit an iceberg and sank, because there is no correlation between the presence of an iceberg and an effect on the ship (lack of correlation provides good evidence for ruling things out, but correlation only provides the possiblity of a causal relationship- this confuses a lot of people). Now increases in wheat yields show a pattern like a ship not hitting the iceberg, they just truck on as normal, unaffected by the spike in atmospheric carbon emmisions. This is why we can rule out the theoretical article- because we can actually measure the claimed end result.
Steven, a) there were 50 odd references in that paper. Even time you ask me for the reference I give it to you. b) even patent clerks should be able to write papers. When you say academic circles do you mean wagon circles? c) I posted some papers written before politics became involved d) climate is billion a day industry
Steven
a) the 1984 paper is not in a plastic bag it is in the mountains.
b) one the whole there is more growth - this is proven by the satellite data.
c i) as per b) on the whole the planet is greening.
c ii) I've already given you the IPCC link further showing there are no increases in losses once you account for GDP
d)The academic work I posted has stood the test of time since 1954 and has been borne out by the satellite data.
a) and my comment is its the NET effect thats the one that will effect us. So sure some plants show an increase in biomass....but when we get a drought or a flood there is no or a greatly reduced output.
b) Cant comment, however there is one that the growing belts move...so Iran a dry spot might well become a breadbasket, US might grow nothing, now that would be interesting.
c) Forget GDP its a construct....all you are doing is smoke and mirrors....
d) Lots of newer work, lots of questions....be that as it may...the NET impact on our economy is worse and projected to get worse. If you want to take a business perspective on this just read what the insurance companies are saying.
Because, Snodgrass, I can think.
When you run such an experiment, with such inertia and lead-times, there is only one valid approach. That is known as the precautionary approach. Apologies for the big word.
If it turns out that the vast majority of scientists are right and it is a problem, then cessation of the cause will have been the right move, albeit far too late.
If it turns out that we can indeed burn all the oil, coal and gas (we have bigger problems at that point, but I'm guessing you're a one-thing-at-a-time animal) then every drop, lump and whiff will still be there to burn. We'll have lost nothing.
Oh wait, the folk to come after us will have lost nothing. The folk here, now, might have. That's the nub of it. Folk who advocate continuance, are advocating for their own greed. How about just being honest about that? Whether it be personal (wish to drive, investment) or corporate, that is all it is. Selfishness, when you get right down to it.
You might want to look in the mirror - you have offspring?
Mate, I'm a forester. I get paid when you wipe your shyte. If only I could get paid when people talk shyte I would have it made! I just post few good news stories to balance out all the doom so chicken littles can sleep easier at night and stop worrying about the children.
Here is another good news story for you. Exciting times.
http://www.districtenergy.org/blog/2013/10/15/fortum-to-start-supplying…
Good link , cobber ... there's been a few around here today , showing the progress we are making ..
.. things seem to be on the up & up ... as a forester's career should be ....
Exciting is " Sorbent's " double ply extra thick hypo-allegeriatric bog roll .... .. lets you go in comfort , as you let go ...
Mate, I'm a forester. I get paid when you wipe your shyte. If only I could get paid when people talk shyte I would have it made! I just post a few good news stories to balance out all the doom so chicken littles can sleep easier at night and stop worrying about the children.
Here is another good news story for you. Exciting times.
http://www.districtenergy.org/blog/2013/10/15/fortum-to-start-supplying…
Here is the link again:
http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/co2benefits/MonetaryBenefits...
Nowhere in the article does the author advocate "continuance". Nowhere in my comments did I advocate "continuance". Yes, I do have offspring, and they to have sprung. My focus and actions, like yours is on sustainability. I love it. It's one of the good reasons to get out of bed in the morning.
My gripe was that you responded to the paper with a ridiculous asertion as to the motives of the poster of the link. The author of the paper puts forth an extremely well constructed piece positing that increased CO2 levels will lead corresponding increases in useful biomass and you seem to think an ad hominem response is better than a reasoned debate on the content.
I agree with the author's (a PhD in geography) conclusion. So my approach is to try to ascertain what may be the repercussions of the increase in bio mass, and yes, with investment in mind. (My time and personal energy as well as capital.
Your's seems to be that unless an article is a portent of impending doom, attack the credibility of the author. You are to the sustainability community what the National Front is to race relations.
The author in this case is posting an opinion based on a political viewpoint,
"Craig Idso was a speaker at the Heartland Institute's 7th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC7).
DeSmogBlog researched the co-sponsors behind Heartland's ICCC7 and found that they had collectively received over $67 million from ExxonMobil, the Koch Brothers and the conservative Scaife family foundations."
and may even be paid,
"Craig Idso is currently the head of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), a group dedicated to attacking the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In February of 2012, internal documents detailing budgets and strategies from the Heartland Institute were released to DeSmogBlog. These documents indicated that Heartland pays Craig Idso $11,600 per month for his work attacking legitimate climate science"
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=15
Amazing how often Heartland comes up when you dig.
and not good science in an overall context of crop output when all factors are considered.
In terms of increasing CO2 causing AGW, the overall or NET effect is worse. Sure there maybe some small increase in a crop if any of that crop survives to harvest.
This guy is a AGW denier....smoke and mirrors continue.
Ph.D. in Geography from Arizona State University; his thesis was on the amplitude of the difference between winter and summer atmopheric CO2 levels, and his thesis advisor was ASU's global warming skeptic professor Robert C. Balling, Jr.
No real climate degree but one done under the school of Geography.
V all the other scientists with more relevent credentials.
Now yes OK attacking the author is one way to look at it, or checking out the author to see how reliable what he is saying maybe.
regards
So are you saying that because you suspect Idso writes at the behest of people you don't like that there will in fact be no beneficial increase in biomass from increase in CO2?
Are theories only valid if put forth by beard sporting, sandal wearing muesli munchers?
Please dont put words in my mouth.
a) I didnt say I didnt like them.
b) When looking at the issue we need to consider the total outcome or really its smoke and mirrors. So maybe there is a biomass advantage in some crops from the effects of CO2. However there are more significant effects from CO2 on crops that come from more CO2 in the atmosphere that effect crop output, ie extreme weather events. So really when we look at annual crop output used to feed our global population every day year in year out without fail, a small increase in output in one "prefet" growing year is meaningless if we lose an entire crop due to flood or drought the next.
c) Nope to sandales, but theories come from people who have studied in the respective area and have published credible papers should carry the most weight when considering all sides of the argument in order to make the best decision.
So we have one opinion of dubious quality from a person of dubious background, probably pushing a political agenda v scientific academics.
Well you can go see a witch doctor if you want when ill, I'll go see my GP.
regards
Snoddy - Bollocks,
Perhaps we could start with who you are - I'm Murray Grimwood, as is well known hereabouts. I suggest you won't come out of hiding.
I also suggest your definition of 'sustainability' will be flawed. The fact that you put up that link - yes, I had read it and laughed - tells me so. Here is the best look at sustainablility:
http://www.openfuture.co.nz/unsustainability/meaningofsustainability.html
I'm guessing you won't agree. Some folk make the stupid mistake of transferring the value of things, to the proxy we call money. Your writer is clearly on who purports to 'think' like that. Do you? Your reference to 'capital' suggests so.
Your author, fatally, includes the post-combustion result of increasing application of fossil energy, but not the extraction of the finite resource, nor is the increase in the use of same included in the graphs. Last I checked, PhD students were asked to defend such overlays - so many graphs rise from 1800 on, only one can be the underlying driver.
He also fails to include any relativity between the 'beneficial' influence, vs the obvious impacts on growth (via desert-band shift and Hadley-cell alteration) of Climate Change.
I suggest the outfit is a front/lobby for the industry (and/or a benefitting one) and that you are not sustainable. Indeed, you've said this. Anyone who 'invests capital', expects to 'spend more'. That's growth in consumption on a finite planet, which is unsustainable.
Good luck dealing with your problems.
These people used to say there's no such thing as global warming. Then they moved to claiming that even if there was it wasn't caused by humans burning fossil fuels. Now they seem to accept all that and the argument is moving to global warming isn't that bad, in fact it could be pretty awesome. What's the next phase of the denier arguement?
steven - you can do better than that - much better - want some links - try this
iconoclast - bushfires - strontium - red dust - CO2
it's out of our control - what can we do?
My word Murray, that sure is a healthy robust ego you've got there. What on Earth do you feed it!
Silly old me even daring to enter a debate with the Great Global Guru Grimwood on sustainability.
I'll give up my anonimity on here the same day as your ventriloquist doll steven does. Hell, I'll even post my address and invite anyone on here round for Friday night drinkies.
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