The potential threat from more frequent and stronger hurricanes is a favorite scare scenario of climate alarmists. They point to disasters like Hurricane Katrina as examples. However, such anecdotal evidence, while dramatic, says little about overall cyclonic activity. A greater document of documented storms does not necessarily mean that more storms have occurred, only that more have been recorded. As Gabriel Vecchi and Thomas Knutson of NOAA state:
Two recent papers (Vecchi and Knutson; and Landsea et al) suggest that, based on careful examination of the Atlantic tropical storm database (HURDAT) and on estimates of how many storms were likely missed in the past, it is likely that the increase in Atlantic tropical storm frequency in HURDAT since the late-1800s is primarily due to improved monitoring.
Vecchi and Knutson find this increase among moderate-duration storms (storms lasting longer than two days). Their adjustment for “missing” storms is shown in the chart above . They go on:
Existing records of past Atlantic tropical storm numbers (1878 to present) in fact do show a pronounced upward trend, correlated with rising SSTs (see Figs. 1 and 9 of Vecchi and Knutson 2008). However, the density of reporting ship traffic over the Atlantic was relatively sparse during the early decades of this record, such that if storms from the modern era (post 1965) had hypothetically occurred during those earlier decades, a substantial number would likely not have been directly observed by the ship-based “observing network of opportunity.” We find that, after adjusting for such an estimated number of missing storms, there is a small nominally positive upward trend in tropical storm occurrence from 1878-2006. But statistical tests reveal that this trend is so small, relative to the variability in the series, that it is not significantly distinguishable from zero (Figure 2). Thus the historical tropical storm count record does not provide compelling evidence for a greenhouse warming induced long-term increase.
As for greater economic losses from storms, there are simply more people living on the coasts than ever before, which means more buildings along the coasts than ever before.
For more on hurricanes, see the segment and comments on the topic from Marlo Lewis’s film, Policy Peril. (Thanks to Margaret Griffis for the tip.)
A new NBER working paper by Andrew Gelman, Nate Silver, and Aaron Edlin finds that “On average, a voter in America had a 1 in 60 million chance of being decisive in the [2008] presidential election.”
Live in a swing state like Virginia? 1 in 10 million.
The ITA’s antidumping duty on pressure-sensitive plastic tape from Italy was set to expire soon. Unfortunately, ending the levy would “likely to lead to continuation or recurrence of dumping,” so it’s here to stay.
Domestic tape producers must be pleased. Consumers, not so much.
Germany is a lot smaller than the U.S., but it has a lot more health insurers to choose from, and cheaper health-care costs. One reason might be more competition: in the U.S., you can’t buy individual health insurance from an out-of-state insurer, since an obsolete federal law lets states block purchases across state lines, taking away interstate-shopping rights that citizens would otherwise enjoy under the the Constitution’s Interstate Commerce Clause. That leaves patients with fewer choices, higher prices, and less competition among insurers, who may control as much as 80 percent of the market in a particular state. In Germany and France, by contrast, you can buy from an insurer anywhere in the country.
The so-called health-care “reform” bills backed by Obama actually worsen this situation, by extending the reach of this anti-consumer restriction on competition beyond individual health-insurance policies to many employer-based health-insurance policies. They do this by gutting the preemption provisions of a federal law known as ERISA.
When John McCain proposed cutting the cost of health insurance by letting Americans shop for cheaper insurance across state lines — the way they can buy almost any other product across state lines — he was bashed by the Obama campaign and Joe Biden.
Washington Post columnists explain how ObamaCare would make the status quo even worse in many other ways as well, while exploding health-care costs. ObamaCare will cost far more than its predicted trillion-dollar price tag. Charles Krauthammer explains how the cost-savings Obama keeps talking about are mythical and non-existent.
That is if you find the usual crowd of holier than thou, environment-angelical, yuppie-types slightly annoying to navigate through while you purchase your organic produce and cage-free eggs. The aisles might just be a little less crowded since the Wall Street Journal published CEO, John Mackey’s op-ed on health care reform on 8/12.
“While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction-toward less government control and more individual empowerment”
That was the statement that launched a thousand smart cars in the opposite direction of Mackey’s supermarket. Perhaps the most inflammatory thing Mackey proposed in his article was the idea that health care is not a right. Perhaps this is why the 5000+ facebook users joined the “Boycott Whole Foods” group (no I am not linking to the group–find it on your own if you want to join). Or perhaps it is because Mackey had the audacity to express any difference in opinion from the ‘great one’
“Whole Foods is NOT a company that cares for communities and they have built their brand with the dollars of deceived progressives. No more. My $ will no longer go to support Whole Foods’ anti-union, anti-health insurance reform, right-wing activities.”
Thus screeches the description of the group. All because of the op-ed that they believe exposes Mackey’s belief that “healthcare is a commodity that only the rich, like him, deserve”.
I wonder if most of the members of the group have actually read the article in which Mackey suggest 8 actions that the US government could take. These suggestions include equalizing tax laws so individual-owned health insurance could, like employer health insurance benefits, be fully tax deductible. He also suggests repealing laws that prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines, reforming medicare, and revising tax laws to allow people to give charitable donations that are tax-deductible for those without health insurance.
Yes, it his crazy ideas about letting consumers of medical care and insurance (including his own workers) retain the right to choose what kind of care and insurance they want that drove the angry boycotter to declare:
“Whole Foods has the right to cheat and lie and be as hateful and selfish as they wanna be.We also have the right to starve them of our $.”
Indeed you do. Personally, now this lot has decided to stop clogging up the aisles, I will selfishly enjoy shorter lines at checkout while I give a lot more of my $ to Whole Foods.
*I did not link to the facebook group for purely selfish reasons. I like Whole Foods and, while I relish the idea of shorter lines, I do not want to aid in an effort to “starve” the business into bankruptcy*
In one regulated area of the economy after another, it’s exasperating to hear journalists and pundits claim that, “The market has failed,” when in fact it hasn’t been allowed to function. That’s especially true in the case of insurance, which operates under a regime of state-level protectionism, as former CEI Brookes Fellow Tim Carney makes clear in his Washington Examiner column today:
Rep. John Shadegg, a conservative Republican from Arizona, has proposed a bill to allow interstate purchase of health insurance. Blue Cross has fiercely opposed this idea that could introduce more competition. Currently, Blue Cross companies typically have only a handful of competitors in each state.
Property and casualty insurers operate under a similar state-level protectionist arrangement.
CEI adjunct Ned Andrews argues for interstate insurance choice here.
Federal spending is going up. Tax receipts are going down. 2009′s federal budget deficit is now up to $1.27 trillion as a result. That’s about triple what even big-spending George W. Bush could manage. Total federal debt now stands at over $11.66 trillion.
Many other developed countries have built debt loads twice ours and more, and without apocalyptic consequences. So it appears such enormous shortfalls do not pose an existential threat to the economy. At least, not yet. But high long-run deficits do slow growth. To help end the recession, government should reduce the deficit by spending less. Three reasons why:
-Today’s deficit is tomorrow’s tax increase. Deficits are paid for by borrowing. What the government borrows, it has to pay back. Sometimes it puts off that taxation by borrowing money to pay back previously borrowed money. But some day, borrowed money ultimately has to paid back by taxpayers. Increasing deficits necessarily means increasing future taxes.
-Government borrowing crowds out private borrowing. The higher the deficit, the more crowding out. This point is underappreciated. There are only so many investor dollars to go around. The $1.27 trillion the government is borrowing to pay for this year’s spending is $1.27 trillion that now cannot go towards job-creating corporate bond issues or stock IPOs. Imagine the opportunity costs.
-More spending begets more regulation. Government money comes with strings attached, as GM now knows. And once a rule is in the books, it’s in there for good, usually. When government spends so fast that it has to borrow, the process accelerates.
The budget deficit is expected to rise even higher as 2009 runs its course. There are already 1,270,000,000,000 reasons for government to cut spending to levels it can afford. How many more do Congress and the president need?
The Technology Liberation Front group blog started five years ago today, offering free minds, free markets, free speech perspectives from technology policy experts at top think tanks. Tonight, they’re hosting an event at Rocket Bar in downtown DC to celebrate (7th and G st in Chinatown).
Even though 4 Democratic Senators are so nervous about the electricity tax called cap-and-trade they are urging their leadership to drop it from the global warming bill, no-one should count on that happening yet. More Senators need to wake up to the significant problems cap-and-trade has, and there is no better example of those than the European version of the scheme. With that in mind, my colleague Roger Abbott and I have written a piece for the American Spectator today that outlines just two of the problems the Europeans have encountered. We conclude:
To sum up, the failure of the European ETS should give pause to Senators considering a similar system for the U.S. Cap-and-trade will not result in emissions cuts. It will, however, greatly enhance the power of the government to regulate the economy. And it will lead to higher energy costs, as the costs of trading permits add to utilities’ cost of doing business.
Given these facts, why the strong push for cap-and-trade? The sad fact is that both President Obama and the Democratic Congress are misleading the public. Alternative measures such as a carbon tax have not been considered precisely because their costs are transparent and obvious to the public. By contrast, cap-and-trade allows the President and Congress to claim credit for “taking action” on global warming without acknowledging the real costs that entails — costs which the public, when informed of the facts, is rightly unwilling to accept.
Feel free to send a copy of our piece to your Senator!
If you’re planning on hunting migratory birds this year, be sure to read all 14 subparts and 61 sections in Title 50 of the Code of Federal Regulations pertaining to migratory bird hunting. Lots of rules to follow.
You should also read pages 41,008-41,031 of the 2009 Federal Register for the latest changes.
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