The s-word

Click Green has a piece on the increased use of sustainable energy in the US. An increased use of natural gas is also mentioned, but the word shale is nowhere to be seen.

The s-word appears to be unwelcome in certain circles.

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Microalgae prove ideal for green facades | Arup | A global firm of consulting engineers, designers, planners and project managers

Microalgae prove ideal for green facades | Arup | A global firm of consulting engineers, designers, planners and project managers

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment.Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

This new humanistic religion

If there be a saving way, at all, it is obviously this: Substitute health and happiness for wealth as a world-ideal; and translate that new ideal into action by education from babyhood up.

To do this, states must reorganise the spirit of education — in other words, must introduce religion; not the old formal creeds, but the humanistic religion of service for the common weal, the religion of a social honour which puts the health and happiness of all first and the wealth of self second. The only comfort in the situation is the curious fact that, underneath all else, the sociability inculcated in modern nations by quick communications and incessant intercourse is already tending toward the formation of this new humanistic religion.

The real and supreme importance of the League of Nations consists in its power of giving such a mood the first chance it has ever had in international affairs. For it must freely be confessed that, without this chance in international affairs, there is no hope that the mood will be adopted and fostered nationally.

John Galsworthy – Castles in Spain (1927)

In Galsworthy’s day many intelligent middle class people thought like this in spite and because of the Great War. They were not afraid to express their faith in a kind of universal secular bonhomie overseen by the benign gaze of the League of Nations.

How times have changed. The optimism of secular idealism has faded, its language tangled in caveats. Politically, secular optimism has become furtive, technical and rather weird.

Yet one Galsworthy phrase seems prescient to me, especially in the light of mass air travel and the internet: the sociability inculcated in modern nations by quick communications and incessant intercourse. Global sociability – maybe that’s our route to a more pragmatic optimism.

If so, then the stumbling block becomes obvious. Our political class has no wish to be sociable with the electorate because they don’t yet see us as their moral and intellectual equals, let alone their superiors.

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Market timing

Conventionally, we are told that market timing is impossible and that you'll miss short,sharp gains by staying out, etc.

But the market is no longer conventional. The swings have become much greater, there's all sorts of jiggery pokery behind the scenes (how is co-location legal?) and debt is a sword of Damocles over the whole system.

Rob Arnott at PIMCO (htp: Wall Street Ranter) recently contrasted US equities with emerging markets stocks, thus:

Reversion to the long-term US mean would involve a 29% drop  in value - and usually there's a significant overshoot. Let's not forget that the market has halved twice since the year 2000, and the recoveries seem to be down to monetary life support rather than healthy fundamental economic growth.

There's a San Andreas Fault running under this financial edifice. And the US market and economy are so large that a fall there would surely shake the foundations in other parts of the world.

Doubtless there are some traders who will make, are making, fortunes on short-term speculation, but the odds against outsiders managing to do it make the game one not to join.

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Does Monsanto engage in cyber warfare against its critics?

An article by Marianne Falck, Hans Leyendecker and Sylvia Miebrich published in Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung on 13th July 2013 asks the question. Translation here:

http://sustainablepulse.com/2013/07/13/the-sinister-monsanto-group-agent-orange-to-genetically-modified-corn/#.UeMjl9LVB8F

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Arguing The Toss On Climate Change

Following hard on his purposeful assault on Michael Fallon two weeks ago, the redoubtable Andrew Neil had a go at Ed Davey this time around, and only peripherally on energy policy per se. His main thrust was an outright challenge to a simplified version of what one might call the warmist-scientific consensus. Of course, Neil is the better debater in every dimension than Davey - a Jesuitical novice could have mounted a better defence without raising his voice above a conversational level - but it's just a low-grade spectator sport with carefully-briefed sophistry on both sides. Taken at face value, there are rarely any knock-down points scored in such encounters, and I can't imagine many viewers changing their minds.

But points of interest still arise.

• The days when the Beeb's policy was for active suppression of climate-change skepticism are, it seems, over. (Davey was more than just called upon to defend his position: Neil made it clear that in his view, Davey had failed to do so.) That's not a trivial development. 
• Davey's principal fall-back arguments were (1) a Pascal's wager: even given uncertainty, it's still appropriate to insure against the downside of possible climate change (2) "a lot of our policies are 'no-regrets' policies" - we should be doing them anyway. 

Lots of people relish the fight over forecasts of temperatures - hockey-sticks at dawn - but I don't find that fruitful at all (go to Bishop Hill if you want to vent steam, though as one contributor says there, it can become a "back-slapping echo-chamber"). Better by far is a practical approach, where knock-down points can truly be scored. (1) and (2) above are perfect cases in point. Because it's trivial to demonstrate that current UK / EU policies don't represent any type of insurance policy against climate change: they don't even reduce CO2 emissions, thereby failing against even the most basic of their own criteria.

(The only thing that might represent insurance is adaptation and, as we know, UK expenditure on flood defences is pitiful.)

As for 'no regrets' policies, Minister, You Are Having a Laugh. Only self-financing, unsubsidised energy conservation measures and small-scale biomass / waste incineration could conceivably fall in this category: everything else is a massive gamble on rising gas prices - a huge speculative long. With our money.

At best, the other steps being taken might contribute to a bit of security of supply, and to Keynsian job-creation. But there would be cheaper and more effective ways of doing both. Nope, it isn't remotely difficult to paint the 'regret' scenarios.


This post first appeared on the Capitalists@Work blog


All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

PRISM follow-up: I was right

Last month I said about PRISM, "the FS is denying that GCHQ is breaking the law without denying that we have all our telecommunications spied on, thus confirming that the law here already permits what the Americans are doing."

Now it's official:

It has been alleged that GCHQ circumvented UK law by using the NSA’s PRISM programme to access the content of private communications. From the evidence we have seen, we have concluded that this is unfounded.
 
 We have reviewed the reports that GCHQ produced on the basis of intelligence sought from the US, and we are satisfied that they conformed with GCHQ’s statutory duties. The legal authority for this is contained in the Intelligence Services Act 1994.

 Further, in each case where GCHQ sought information from the US, a warrant for interception, signed by a Minister, was already in place, in accordance with the legal safeguards contained in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.