Was the American Middleclass an Historical Aberration?

[aaron]

Re: Was the American Middleclass an Historical Aberration?

The emoticon is supposed to be a smily face. I wish the icon would be replaced with the standard. That dancing thing aggravates me too.

all things being equal, yes, CO2 increases temperatures. But, things are not equal.

Maybe it is just compensating for the ice age we were all told was going to happen back in the 70s. And, although over-all temps may not have gone up, last summer was fricken hot. Only time will tell. There will be nothing done, except when we run out of fossil fuels. So, what is the point of worrying?

For humans, warm is better than cold. More CO2 grows crops faster and bigger. Yes, there will need to be some migrations, some mitigation, and maybe some of those water front properties might have to be raised a few feet. The arctic might open up for energy and transportation. Canada might be a bit warmer further up north, opening large swaths of land for agriculture and living space. We will adapt.

[cmalbatros]

Re: Was the American Middleclass an Historical Aberration?

CAGW - http://climaterealists.com/?id=10813 , lots of stuff debunking man made global warming.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: Was the American Middleclass an Historical Aberration?

. . .
CO2 is the dominant mechanism. It may not drive direction convincingly during a cherry picked time period, but it always drives direction. . .

I question whether "c02 is the dominant mechanism".

The graphs show a highly periodic wave form, consistent with Malinkovitch orbital cycles.

If C02 is released as the ocean warms, and contributes to additional warming, then how does the earth ever cool off?

If CO2 is "dominant" and has a positive feedback dynamic, the temperature history would not be periodic, but always "hot".

This graph shows no obvious connection between C02 and temperature.
http://www.biocab.org/Carbon_Dioxide...Timescale.html

I think the strongest argument you could make about C02 is that "at this time, since no other factors are changing, C02 is the driver of climate change". But it is not clear to me that no other factors are changing.

[don]

Re: Was the American Middleclass an Historical Aberration?

all threads on the 'tulip end in global warming . . .

[GRG55]

Re: Was the American Middleclass an Historical Aberration?

Maybe the unique 236 year old experiment called the United States of America is itself an historical aberration?

[c1ue]

Re: Was the American Middleclass an Historical Aberration?

Um...I was talking about the author Rose...not c1ue. Rose is the denier, it's not about you.

The fact that you use this term is itself highly offensive. I do not generally refer those who subscribe to the Anthropogenic-CO2-Climate-Catastrophe in such terms, though some others do. At the end of the day, you've still failed to address valid arguments, instead switching into derogatory terms and rhetoric.

Possibly you have a theory that contradicts thermodynamics. Maybe you've published a paper that shows how 40% additional CO2 does not effect the earth's energy balance. That would be a neat trick since no one else has this opinion.

Heh, more amusing anecdotes. Somehow the 'theory of thermodynamics' trumps observation? At what point will you acknowledge the possibility that the 'theory' you espouse can possibly be incorrect if real life fails to behave as 'projected'?

CO2 is the dominant mechanism. It may not drive direction convincingly during a cherry picked time period, but it always drives direction. For anyone interested in how earth's natural cycles sometimes offset additional CO2, see this link: http://www.skepticalscience.com/goin...or-part-1.html

Heh more self-induced contradiction. You say CO2 is the dominant mechanism, but it hasn't dominated for 15 years - or 40% of the entire satellite instrumental observation period. That's hardly cherry picking. It seems more like entire branches of tree picking. I've asked you before what would constitute an event which would shift your belief in Anthropogenic-CO2-Climate-Catastrophe - I ask it again. 20 years of no warming? 50?

See above. Your dancing emoticon aside, this is a serious issue.

Skeptical Science has been, and as this article shows, continues to be a very poor science popularizer. For one thing, the article focuses only from 1973 onwards. You might recall that 1973 was when Schneider and others were proclaiming Ice Age. Kettle calling pot black in terms of cherry picking. More importantly, the article fails to do any work examining the relationship between CO2 and temperatures - which is to say, there is very, very poor correlation. The period of greatest warming in the modern (non-satellite) instrumental record was in the 1930s - well before the largest CO2 spikes. That's why the recent aberration in behavior is such a serious issue: besides invalidating 2 decades of IPCC projections, it also seriously weakens the assumed link between CO2 as a dominant climate driver and temperature.

[shiny!]

Re: Was the American Middleclass an Historical Aberration?

Maybe the unique 236 year old experiment called the United States of America is itself an historical aberration?

I think you got that right, unfortunately. On that happy note, Merry Christmas.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: Was the American Middleclass an Historical Aberration?

Maybe the unique 236 year old experiment called the United States of America is itself an historical aberration?

It is not an aberration, but egalitarian societies are not necessarily "the trend".

The best analysis I have seen is in "why nations Fail", where they discuss "the iron law of oligarchy". Once a class gets political privilege, it works to continue that.

If you read "the end of history", you might think we are converging on free market democracy. However, I think Fukuyama is re-thinking the optimistic tone of his great "think piece".

[NCR85]

Re: Was the American Middleclass an Historical Aberration?

Maybe the unique 236 year old experiment called the United States of America is itself an historical aberration?

I'd take it just one step further: economic growth in general (above, maybe 0.25% a year) is a historical aberration:



http://www.nber.org/papers/w18315.pdf

[NCR85]

Re: Was the American Middleclass an Historical Aberration?

Thanks Don. These are great bits of data. The charts above offer a very clear message. Maybe the trend changes but I don't think so. The forces creating additional productivity since the mid-70s, largely, do not emanate from workers. As technology and robotics advance, manufacturing and service based workers will become less and less relevant.

I would suggest instead that the reason why productivity diverged from compensation is simply because the "wealth" represented by the productivity numbers is a financial fiction engendered by the Fed's new monetary actions in the wake of the relinquishment of the Bretton Woods system. The de-linking of the two happens almost exactly when the gold standard was dropped and the time since 1971 was always either plagued by high inflation (1971-1983) or unsustainable credit market growth (1983-2007), both of which were precursors to the asset market crises of the 2000s which wiped out a lot of the paper wealth that those productivity figures were supposed to represent.

[Polish_Silver]

Animal Slaughter

. . ..
Look at how we've mechanized the death of animals for cheap protein to understand where humanity is trending. We would make medical doctors slaves if we could figure out how to do it and still receive decent care. I suppose insurance companies have sort of figured that out already.. . .

Modern slaughter houses concentrate animal killing in one place. But it is doubtful whether the animals suffer more in that situation that in 1000 smaller slaughter houses. I worked with an engineer who grew up in rural china. He explained that when a farmer decided to butcher a cow, the children would draw lots. The "winner" got to kill the cow, by cutting it's neck with a knive. All the children would get the cow into a narrow chute, and then lock it's head between timbers. They would place a large bowl under the cows head. Then the child with the knife would try to kill the cow as slowly as possible, to get as many tears into the bowl as he could.

We should not glamorize the past, especially when unfamiliar with it's details.

All over the developed world, the trend has been towards more equality, not less. The last 40 years have been very hard on the middle class, and the trend may continue. But we should keep things in perspective. 150 Years ago there were slaves in my town. Now the descendants of those slaves are policeman and senators.

[Polish_Silver]

Long term Growth Rates

I'd take it just one step further: economic growth in general (above, maybe 0.25% a year) is a historical aberration:

This is a very interesting question. Much of the "growth" is just popoulation increase, or leveraged consumption. Most articles I have seen put productivity growth at about 1%/year. This 1% figure is probably a ceiling for overall growth of profits and incomes.
There is no guarantee that technology can keep improving productivity. What is guaranteed is that any non-renewable resource will be depleted, just as we are observing with oil. So the question is, will technology be able to replace the depleting resources with new ones?

As an engineer, I see many areas where efficiency could be vastly improved. One of the biggest hurdles is the political environment and irrational public perceptions, "nimbyism".
The debate over GMO foods, for example, seems to be doing little to improve the safety of food on the shelves. The "anti-gmo" movement seems to want to a total ban on GMO foods. A better program would be to demand better scrutiny from ecological and public health perspectives, not only on GMO foods, but "non-gmo" foods, including pesticides, fertilizers, etc. But voters are just not that enlightened.

[aaron]

Re: Animal Slaughter

You sure it was tears? At least with pigs, I have seen similar kill methods. They caught the blood with a bucket to make soup.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: Animal Slaughter

He said tears. His memory could have been wrong, or mine, but I doubt it.

[LorenS]

Re: Animal Slaughter

Maybe being middle class is just too much work, a lot of guys seem to not care to participate:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...cross-america/