Haha, good point.

It's too bad we don't have some sort of prediction market that could assess the accurracy of Luskin's article. Like, if people were somehow able to buy and sell the rights to companies' future profits.

The stock market is not the economy.

and the S&P futures closed down almost 5%.

Nowhere else in the blogosphere can I read such comedy material.

T repeat, the climate models based on CO2 forcing DID NOT predict the last decade of cooling.

According to those models, it was supposed to keep warming.

And curse you for bringing this up here.

… this is not what's going on with Lehman and it never was. Paulson was steadfast throughout the negotiations that the taxpayers will not provide backstops for these deals.

Then what is Paulson doing in the negotiations?

Did you even read the article or look at the graph?

Yes, I did. I summarized the article to prove that I had read it, but you ignored the summary and responded with this rhetorical question.

We have direct measurements of cosmic radiations and they don't even show a correlation with temperatures at all.

You've linked a chart without reference to temperature and then you've linked another site claiming that a third source's claim of a correlation is based on "arbitrary" adjustments, though the experimenters themselves presumably didn't consider their analysis arbitrary. You don't really know much about the details of this controversy. I don't either of course, but I'm not the one claiming sufficient certainty to spend billions, perhaps trillions, of dollars of other people's money here.

There is NO CORELLATION much less explained mechanism for cosmic rays and climate change.

Your own source says that a correlation is claimed while disputing the claim.

There IS a correlation of the current rise of CO2 from man made sources with a subsequenbt consistent and markedly anamolous rise in global temperature.

But there was no correlation in the sixties and seventies when global temperature was falling, and the current rise is "anomalous" only because you use this word to describe it. We know that more extreme swings in global temperature have occurred in the past, only a few centuries ago, and we have no reason to attribute the swings to fossil fuel burning or even to CO2 increases from other causes, yet you call the current rise "anomalous". Why not call it "a rise within historical norms"?

THERE IS a definite mechanism as to the reason for believing CO2 will cause a rise in temperature as it's levels increase.

Actually, there isn't a very good mechanism. There are models that theoreticians tweak to fit temperature data. You concede yourself above that cloud cover is a major uncertainty in these models. You acknowledge that the models depend on feedback effects for the warming they predict, because a CO2 rise itself is not adequate, CO2 being a relatively impotent greenhouse gas. Most scientists agree that water vapor and clouds are more important, so the "it's all down to CO2" theory must somehow have rising CO2 cause rising water vapor and clouds, and that's how the modelers build their models.

To argue against it is to argue against the sky being blue because it is a fact of fundamental physics, electromagnetic theory and the absorption spectrum of the CO2 molecule.

But I'm not arguing against any well established science. In fact, the Climate Change models you champion here don't rely on IR absorption by CO2 for most of the warming they predict, because physicists long ago agreed that this effect is too small if the CO2 rise accounts somehow for observed warming, just as your sources claim that the effect of cosmic rays on cloud formation is too small.

Oil Shock, while I agree that there is nothing creative about bailing out private companies with taxpayer funds (who are we kidding about the funds being "public"?), this is not what's going on with Lehman and it never was. Paulson was steadfast throughout the negotiations that the taxpayers will not provide backstops for these deals. This time. For once. I'm very quick to call the out the Fed and Treasury, but I this time they did the right thing.

Did you even read the article or look at the graph? We have direct measurements of cosmic radiations and they don't even show a correlation with temperatures at all.

Also from Real Climate;

"This comes in addition to the previously shown fact that the correlation of cosmic ray flux with paleoclimatic data proposed by Shaviv and Veizer (2003) only arises “by making several arbitrary adjustments to the cosmic ray data” (Rahmstorf et al. 2004)."

There is NO CORELLATION much less explained mechanism for cosmic rays and climate change.

There IS a correlation of the current rise of CO2 from man made sources with a subsequenbt consistent and markedly anamolous rise in global temperature.

THERE IS a definite mechanism as to the reason for believing CO2 will cause a rise in temperature as it's levels increase. To argue against it is to argue against the sky being blue because it is a fact of fundamental physics, electromagnetic theory and the absorption spectrum of the CO2 molecule.

Credible scientist understand that a change in orbital parameters can indeed lead to one of the oceans warming out-gasing CO2 then warming more from the positive feedback effect of CO2.

You miss the point. CO2 concentration and temperature are correlated in ice core and other measurements in fact. The question is: which of the two (if either) is the cause and which (if either) is the effect. I don't know what you mean by "orbital parameters" here, but we know that temperature varies. The Thames regularly froze over in the 15th century, during the Little Ice Age. We have paintings of people skating on it. The Thames never freezes over now, so climate certainly changes without men burning fossil fuels.

We also know that CO2 concentration changes over centuries, because we can measure it in ice core samples, and we know that a rise in temperature is correlated with a rise in CO2. This fact does not imply that a CO2 rise causes a temperature rise. It's possible that a temperature rise, from whatever source, causes a CO2 rise as oceans emit more CO2, and it's also possible that something else causes both. Oceans emit far more CO2 than man emits by burning fossil fuels, so a relatively small change in this emission is very significant.

Simply NOT TRUE and unsupported by the data. The experts admit the most uncertain part of their models has to do with cloud feedbacks.

Here again, you miss the point. A strong correlation between global temperature and solar activity (sun spots indicating storms on the surface of the sun emitting an ionic wind) is supported by the data. The correlation is a fact. We don't know how these changes in solar activity could affect global temperature on the Earth, because the sun does not radiate enough additional heat as a consequence to account for the temperature changes; however, the correlation exists regardless, and credible scientists suggest an indirect effect on cloud formation.

Claiming certainty or near-certainty of cosmic rays cloud formation effects and the subsequent feedback effects of said clouds is completely unfounded based on the evidence or lack there of.

Except that I never claim any certainty or near-certainty. On the contrary, I explicitly state that the theory might not hold up. I'm not the one pretending certainty that I don't have here.

I followed your link. The author essentially says that the question of a link between cosmic rays and cloud formation is open but then calls the theory "far-fetched" without any quantitative theoretical support. That's not an argument against the theory.

The author calls attempts to measure the effect "unstuck", but then he seems to concede a correlation between cosmic ray intensity and cloud cover. He goes on to say something about solar irradiance, but solar irradiance is irrelevant here. Cosmic rays don't come from the sun. They come from the cosmos (the entire sky in every direction). The theory is that the solar wind affects the intensity of cosmic rays reaching the Earth, the correlation in question is between cosmic ray intensity and cloud formation, not between solar activity and cosmic ray intensity.

The author then goes on to dispute the methodology of the measurements and to claim that measured variations in cosmic ray intensity can't account for temperature changes during the 20th century. That's fine, but you've apparently convinced yourself that this disputation is unassailable while disputation of Climate Change is not.

Don't want to debate climate science here but can't let a claim I know to be false go uncorrected.

You are debating it and then saying that you don't want to debate it. Why would you do that? You haven't shown any claim to be false. You've linked a web site that disputes a claim, as though this site settles the question. Real science doesn't work this way. You're still left with a correlation between solar activity and temperature to explain even if this theory of the correlation doesn't withstand scrutiny.

IAC, the Soviet economy didn't really collapse, it had always been a basket case sustained only by black market activity. What acrually collapsed was the USSR. The "union" broke apart.

Credible scientist understand that a change in orbital parameters can indeed lead to one of the oceans warming out-gasing CO2 then warming more from the positive feedback effect of CO2

"Physicists may soon explain the striking correlation between solar activity and global temperature measurements, correlations apparently more compelling than the dubious correlation with rising CO2 concentration. The possible theoretical explanation does not involve increasing heat from the sun. It involves the effect of cosmic rays on cloud formation and the effect of the solar wind on cosmic rays."

Simply NOT TRUE and unsupported by the data. The experts admit the most uncertain part of their models has to do with cloud feedbacks. Claiming certainty or near-certainty of cosmic rays cloud formation effects and the subsequent feedback effects of said clouds is completely unfounded based on the evidence or lack there of.

Climate myths: It’s all down to cosmic rays

Don't want to debate climate science here but can't let a claim I know to be false go uncorrected.

… the reason why the planet is able to support the current population level is the current level of industrialization.

Right. And the reason why most of the world's population lives in relative poverty is a lack of industrialization. We need to write off the bad debts a.s.a.p. and reorganize resources to address this poverty. Writing off the debts means that people who thought they were rich aren't as rich as they thought, because they're entitled to consume less of the economy's output than records now seem to indicate. We should correct these records.

The problem with "investments" like Treasury securities is that we can't correct the record. "Investments" like FNMA bonds are similar, because they irrationally conflate good investments with bad investments, so that rather than disentangling the good investments from the bad ones, "investors" simply expect the state to compel taxpayers to make up the difference. Debtors defaulting on their mortgages need not benefit from this bailout. The bondholders may.

There is no such thing as a deregulatory collapse. Soviet Union collapsed.

The Soviet Union's economy collapsed when the planners stopped regulating it. That's true enough. They stopped regulating it, because they had regulated it to death, so it wasn't worth regulating anymore. A less centrally planned organization doesn't just appear miraculously overnight.

Financialization of the economy is possible only because the monetary systems are not anchored to anything tangible.

Monetary systems are always linked to tangible things, but they needn't be linked to a single tangible thing with a fixed price.