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* Posts by Jim Middleton

4 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Jun 2008

Wikimadness XVII: The Return of Byrne

Jim Middleton
Go

Just about everyone who is invested in the US market should care...

And how exactly do you figure Byrne is demented? It looks to me like he is right, both about naked shorts and Wikipedia.

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Are the ice caps melting?

Jim Middleton
Boffin

If you actualy look at the graph...

You'll see this statement is incorrect:

"Summed up over the entire earth, polar ice has remained constant. As seen below, there has been no net gain or loss of polar sea ice since records began."

If you actually look at the graph, you'll see that the global sea ice area is clearly trending downward over the period depicted. The blue line is the reading for a certain day, the brown line is the mean over all the years depicted for that calender date. The blue line is above the brown line in the early years, and clearly below the brown line now. i.e. the global sea ice is trending downward - I'd say by about 5% over the last 30 years, by eyeballing it.

Is it due to man made global warming? I don't know. But if you are going to use graphs, at least understand what they represent before you publish them.

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Cap, trade, subsidise - Obama's energy plan goes off piste

Jim Middleton

@Simon Ball

"Even in the US, I would have thought that using increased fuel taxes to lower income tax would be politically viable."

This *should* be viable, but it the two sides are too dug in... the dems see any reduction in the income tax as a reduction in wealth redistribution and the GOP sees any new tax as bad because once a new tax exists it is easier to increase both taxes in the future. Neither side seems willing to budge. Both stances are short sited at best, but that seems to be the political reality.

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Jim Middleton
Go

Not as bad as it sounds at first...

Generally, I agree. Refunding the proceeds of the cap and trade to the utility customer will reduce its efficiency in cutting CO2 because some of the tax will be returned as subsidy thus decreasing the incentive to reduce electricity consumption.

It is not as crazy as it sounds at first, however, if the refunds are given to all utility customers regardless of the source of the electricity. That results in a net tax on CO2 emitting generation while subsidizing non-emitting generation. It will not result in a short term increase in prices across the board. Instead clean generation costs will actually decrease while dirty ones increase. It is bound to get additional support that way. Not as bad as it sounds at first...

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