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Evidence for man-made global warming hits 'gold standard'

reuters.com

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Re: Evidence for man-made global warming hits 'gold standard'

#71

Post by sbenitoj »

arcticbull wrote: post #68
sbenitoj wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point that my comment is off topic, I’ve been rightly downvoted and flagged for it : ( But I’ll respond to your comment in hopes that it might pique the interest of some sensible non-commenting lurker, and if it’s my lucky day perhaps you’ll genuinely consider my response as well. When you say it’s a “totally reasonable system of money” I’m going to make the assumption that you believe this because there has bee…

Thing is since the switch wages have kept pace with inflation even at the low end, and logically the poor have the least money so by extension the least exposed to inflation of cash on hand. Either way nobody should be holding money but instead using it to buy productive assets in which case it wouldn’t affect them right? On average home values outpace inflation in the US too, and that’s most Americans biggest invest…

“It inflates away debts, too, in that the principal always decreases in value in constant dollars.”

Need I mention that the US Govt is the biggest debtor in the world? They have a massive incentive to inflate away their debt — they’re not doing something noble by inflating the monetary supply, it’s self-serving.

Re: Evidence for man-made global warming hits 'gold standard'

#72

Post by arcticbull »

sbenitoj wrote: post #71
arcticbull wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is since the switch wages have kept pace with inflation even at the low end, and logically the poor have the least money so by extension the least exposed to inflation of cash on hand. Either way nobody should be holding money but instead using it to buy productive assets in which case it wouldn’t affect them right? On average home values outpace inflation in the US too, and that’s most Americans biggest invest…

“It inflates away debts, too, in that the principal always decreases in value in constant dollars.” Need I mention that the US Govt is the biggest debtor in the world? They have a massive incentive to inflate away their debt — they’re not doing something noble by inflating the monetary supply, it’s self-serving.

Sure, but so what? If you just use the money you get to invest in anything yielding more than 2%, or even gold, what difference does it make to you? If you can take advantage of this information, all the better.

For instance if you're a well-paid tech worker in the 35% federal income tax rate bin in California (11% more there) in a world with 2% inflation, a 30-year fixed 4% APR mortgage is 'free' money (4.0 becomes 2.4% after tax deduction, and 0.4% after inflation). You don't have to be mad about the situation, you can take advantage of it.

Re: Evidence for man-made global warming hits 'gold standard'

#73

Post by sbenitoj »

arcticbull wrote: post #70
sbenitoj wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes — increasing the supply of money decreases the purchasing power over time of all other dollars in existence and simultaneously encourages people to make risky investments to avoid the value of their money from decreasing.

They needn't be risky, just yielding more than 2% like government bonds. If the government goes under their bonds are no good, but neither would your dollars be. Literally anything other than stuffing them under your mattress. Nothing's stopping you from buying precious metals either (physical, ETF or mining company shares). If you want your own wealth to be "gold backed" ... just buy gold. Then you can even borrow a…

You’re defining risky from your perspective, just because YOU don’t perceive an asset designed to keep pace with inflation as risky doesn’t mean it’s not and it also doesn’t mean those investors wouldn’t prefer to keep it in cash.

If being your own bank weren’t threatening to govts, why don’t they just let gold backed currencies circulate and compete (eg see the Liberty Dollar — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_dollar_(private_curr...)

Re: Evidence for man-made global warming hits 'gold standard'

#74

Post by [deleted] »

sbenitoj wrote: post #69
arcticbull wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is since the switch wages have kept pace with inflation even at the low end, and logically the poor have the least money so by extension the least exposed to inflation of cash on hand. Either way nobody should be holding money but instead using it to buy productive assets in which case it wouldn’t affect them right? On average home values outpace inflation in the US too, and that’s most Americans biggest invest…

Yes — increasing the supply of money decreases the purchasing power over time of all other dollars in existence and simultaneously encourages people to make risky investments to avoid the value of their money from decreasing.

[deleted]

Re: Evidence for man-made global warming hits 'gold standard'

#75

Post by arcticbull »

sbenitoj wrote: post #73
arcticbull wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They needn't be risky, just yielding more than 2% like government bonds. If the government goes under their bonds are no good, but neither would your dollars be. Literally anything other than stuffing them under your mattress. Nothing's stopping you from buying precious metals either (physical, ETF or mining company shares). If you want your own wealth to be "gold backed" ... just buy gold. Then you can even borrow a…

You’re defining risky from your perspective, just because YOU don’t perceive an asset designed to keep pace with inflation as risky doesn’t mean it’s not and it also doesn’t mean those investors wouldn’t prefer to keep it in cash. If being your own bank weren’t threatening to govts, why don’t they just let gold backed currencies circulate and compete (eg see the Liberty Dollar — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libert…

Based on a cursory skim of the wikipedia article you linked the liberty dollar was taken down because it was a haven for "...money laundering, mail fraud, wire fraud, counterfeiting, and conspiracy."

You still haven't explained how you're any worse off by buying literal gold, or if you don't want to carry it around yourself, shares in a gold ETF like GLD. In what way is a share certificate of GLD any different than a gold-backed currency? It's even government-regulated (albeit by the SEC instead of the department of the treasury). Salaries track inflation, so you're always getting the same in real dollar terms. Inflation is irrelevant if you don't hold money. If you want a gold-backed dollar, you can achieve the same result buy using your money as quick as you get it to buy gold or in lieu, shares of GLD. You can even buy precious metal currency minted by governments like the platinum, gold and silver coins from the Royal Canadian Mint [1] -- not that they're a good value. This isn't a problem. AFIAK you can even put any of the above into an IRA.

[1] https://www.mint.ca/store/buy/gold-and-platinum_coins-cat120...

Re: Evidence for man-made global warming hits 'gold standard'

#76

Post by jhanschoo »

midwest1 wrote: post #60
jhanschoo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who defines credible? If you want to convince others, you can provide a direct argument with data/popularly cited paper that a significant proportion the science in the field is bad. There are always reasonable people, not necessarily the ones you are replying to, that you may yet convince. Alternatively, you can also provide an example for illustration and good reasons why it should generalize. > If I mocked someo…

jhan - If you calculate a linear trend from subsets and get largely different results, a linear trend though the entire data set is only meaningful if you have several cycles of data. I would argue we do not have several cycles of data. Allow me to point you to a climate scientist (who does not deny global warming). Her site is quite comprehensive. Avoid the comments section. www.judithcurry.com

Thanks for the link! That looks like a good read.

What kind of cycles are we talking about? I'm under the notion that typically the only effect that should not be captured should be seasonal change with yearly periods.

Re: Evidence for man-made global warming hits 'gold standard'

#77

Post by dang »

basurihn wrote: post #3

Take two parts physics, four parts advocacy science, and two hundred parts advocacy journalism, and what do you get? In Christian circles, you get creation science. It's cute when climate scientists pretend their work is on the level of finding the Higgs boson. Advocate science is garbage.

Would you please stop posting flamebait to HN? It's against the rules and we ban accounts that do it, regardless of which views they're battling for or against.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Evidence for man-made global warming hits 'gold standard'

#78

Post by dang »

basurihn wrote: post #40
saagarjha wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Scientific fraud is not a thing of the past. It's not even rare. Sure, but even accusations of scientific fraud require evidence to back them up. Can you provide some credible evidence to show that the majority of the scientific community is engaging in fraud?

Who defines credible? If I provide you PhDs and studies, what ingredient is necessary to override your confirmation bias? How do you even know what the majority of the scientific community believes? Do you know any scientists? If I mocked someone for using a linear regression on cyclical data, do you know why that's bad?

If you continue to do flamewar like this on HN we will ban you. That goes double for your comments that crossed into personal attack.

If you know more than other people, the thing to do here is neutrally provide correct information, so people can learn. If you can't or don't want to do that, please don't post.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Evidence for man-made global warming hits 'gold standard'

#79

Post by SamReidHughes »

api wrote: post #7
basurihn wrote: post #3

Take two parts physics, four parts advocacy science, and two hundred parts advocacy journalism, and what do you get? In Christian circles, you get creation science. It's cute when climate scientists pretend their work is on the level of finding the Higgs boson. Advocate science is garbage.

Creation science is a purely religious viewpoint with basically zero physical evidence. Climate science has a clear physical mechanism (CO2 traps more solar energy than N2, O2, etc.) and quite a bit of observation confirming the effect. It's simple to do an experiment showing that increasing CO2 increases a primary mechanism of the greenhouse effect. It's really pretty simple. The only debate is just how significant…

It's not just the fossil fuel industry -- it's every industry that buys energy, and consumers that buy it -- it's politicized because the prosperity and growth of the economy as a whole is at stake.

Re: Evidence for man-made global warming hits 'gold standard'

#80

Post by api »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #79
api wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creation science is a purely religious viewpoint with basically zero physical evidence. Climate science has a clear physical mechanism (CO2 traps more solar energy than N2, O2, etc.) and quite a bit of observation confirming the effect. It's simple to do an experiment showing that increasing CO2 increases a primary mechanism of the greenhouse effect. It's really pretty simple. The only debate is just how significant…

It's not just the fossil fuel industry -- it's every industry that buys energy, and consumers that buy it -- it's politicized because the prosperity and growth of the economy as a whole is at stake.

I don't think that argument works. According to caiso.org (California) about 30% of my electric power right now is solar and over 50% are non-fossil-fuel sources including solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear power. In Texas wind sometimes provides over 50% of power for some regions. 20 years ago that would have been under 10% in both cases.

If fossil power is phased out it will just increase demand for other sources of energy. These will at first be more expensive, but high demand causes investments in scaling which reduces unit cost as in virtually every industrial process. Look at the cost curves for solar and wind for the past 20 years. It's almost like Moore's Law.

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