Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Two small (seemingly unrelated) quotations

Stern und Drang (about the so-called Stern-report, the latest/hottest of doomsday predictions): "The Review takes the A2 family of scenarios as being the baseline. This is what he bases all of his subsequent calculations upon and he calls it the 'business as usual' model or BAU. Furthermore, he adds to the effects, puts in a few feedbacks that the IPCC certainly doesn't include, extends matters out for a far longer period of time, uses those very low discount rates and......aieee! But it is made very clear indeed in the SRES that A2 is not the baseline, it is not the business as usual case. All forty of the scenarios are equally likely and all forty of them contain no mitigating actions at all. That's actually in their very definitions: so to choose one of them only is, as far as all of the other climate science that's going on, simply wrong."

Have We Outgrown Recessions? (context very clear after reading the following): "Recessions, which are set in motion by a tight monetary stance of the central bank, are about the liquidations of activities that sprang up on the back of the previous loose monetary policies. Rather than paying attention to the so-called strength of real GDP to ascertain where the economy is heading, it will be more helpful to pay attention to the rate of growth of the money supply."