The vague, blatantly inadequate “agreement” wrangled out of the Copenhagen conference—or to give the meeting its official name The United Nations Climate Change Conference—by President Barack Obama is nonetheless a game changer.
Oh, not because any of the countries that the signed on to effort at global saving face have committed to actually do much of anything. But because the very inadequacy of this agreement forces all meaningful action back onto national governments.
If you want to know where the profits—and costs—of global climate change will be for the next decade, then I think you need to study not the technologies of climate change but the nature of the governments and economies that will stumble toward addressing this problem.
The nature of the U.S. economic and political system, for example, tells an investor a great deal about how to make money on global climate change in the next few years.
Sometimes looking at the challenges of global climate change I think this problem was designed by some mad economist temporary sitting in God’s chair: It plays to just about every weakness in capitalist market economies.
Shall I count the ways?
First, you can’t prove that global climate change is happening, or that it’s caused by human activity, or that the consequences will be a disaster. And that leaves plenty of room for honest dissent. And for pandering dishonest dissent too.
I think the models point in that direction. I think the best explanation for the data is that it is man-made. And I think that extrapolating from current trends such as the drying of California, sub-Saharan Africa, and Australia makes a good case that global damage if we don’t do anything is actually going to be greater than the $9 trillion estimated in the 2006 Stern report.
But is any of that absolutely certain? No way. The climate is a complex system that we don’t understand very well. All we can say, if we’re honest about it, is that the theory that man-made carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are warming the planet and creating a massive change in our climate fits the facts better than other theories.
That leaves the United States well short of a consensus. And if you need a refresher to what happens to our political process when you don’t have a consensus just look at the nearly terminal disfunctionality of the U.S. Senate on healthcare in the last few weeks.
Second, because global climate change is a really, really complex theory where the outcomes are incredibly sensitive to small changes in initial conditions and the relationship between variables, it’s really hard to put a cost on either the cost or the benefit. The 2006 Stern Report estimated the cost of a 3 to 4 degree Celsius rise in the average global temperature at $9 trillion. I don’t know whether the hundreds of millions of people likely to be displaced or who might starve to death under that scenario would agree with the report’s total. And, of course, those who don’t believe that global climate change theory is correct would put the benefit at $0. On the cost end I’ve seen everything from $20 billion (based on fixing the problem with a solar umbrella to $10 trillion. Put those numbers in your cost benefit analysis and you can justify every conclusion from spending nothing to spending whatever it takes.
Third, this is one of those pay now in real hard cash for hard to quantify benefits later situations that market economies are so terrible at pricing. How much would you pay today to avoid a broken leg tomorrow? That’s easy. You’ve got some idea of how inconvenienced you’d be, what services you might have to pay for, your tolerance for pain, and what’s on your schedule that you’d have to postpone or cancel if you broke a leg. But now let’s make the problem harder. How much would you pay today for a 60% chance of a broken leg? Or a 50/50 chance that the broken leg happens to either you or your neighbor Fred? Or that it’s an 80% chance of a broken leg, a 15% chance of two broken legs, and a 5% chance of death?
I live in New York City. One potential climate change scenario is that the melting of the Greenland ice cap sends so much fresh water into the northern Atlantic that it stalls the Gulf Stream. One possible result (possible because it has happened before—look up Younger Dryas) would be to cover parts of North America, including New York and Europe (including the United Kingdom) with glacier. What would I pay to avoid that tomorrow? Well, tell me how likely it is, for a start? And then I’ll fork over some tax money for a fix.
Fourth, we’re actually not talking about how much I’d pay now to avoid a disaster to myself. We’re talking about cash for kids, here. If the computer projections are right, we need to take decisive action within the next 20 years or we pass a tipping point that makes it extremely difficult (and even more horrendously expensive) to fix the problem if it’s then fixable at all.
In other words, if I don’t put up the cash now, my kids or their kids are going to either learn a lot about how to dig a snow cave—really deep, right Larry?—or they’re going to inherit a beach front apartment on what is now the third floor in northern Manhattan.
I could go on but I think even those four problems suggest the shape of any potential global climate change solution here in the United States and globally.
Since in the United States we don’t have anything like a political consensus on the nature of the problem or what to do about it, any solution will be the result of intense political horse-trading. Remember how the Democrats got Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu to vote for cloture on healthcare? That put $300 million into the bill earmarked for Louisiana.
Anything that emerges from the U.S. Congress will be a grab bag of goodies for this industry and that, with the biggest share of goodies going to the most powerful industries: utilities, agribusiness (and no I don’t mean family farms), and oil and chemical companies. Alternative energy will get thrown a bone—so it won’t look quite so much like the give-away that it is but you can estimate the size of the bone from the $5 billion that the Obama administration has just proposed in a new jobs initiative as its big commitment to creating green jobs.
$5 billion? That’s just five times the cost of the new Dallas Cowboys football stadium. The people of Arlington, Texas, voted to raise the sales tax, the hotel tax, and the rental car tax to kick in $325 million in taxpayer dollars to the construction of a stadium that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has compared to Rome’s Coliseum. Surely, I’m not suggesting that U.S. taxpayers would be unwilling to pay $5 billion for a green jobs initiative but willing to pay $325 million for a football stadium?
Of course, I am. For reasons two, three, and four above. Football stadiums provide an immediate and tangible benefit. You don’t have to wait for your kids to enjoy them. You can buy tickets now. (So what if you have to mortgage your house to buy a season ticket package. The kids will be better people if you don’t leave them anything.)
So whatever funding the United States government does provide toward fixing global warming is going to be the form of the least obviously painful tax or fee possible. Even if it is horrendously inefficient and perhaps ineffective.
So stop worrying about a carbon tax. Too obvious.
It’s cap and trade or nothing. Such a program of creating tradable credits earned by companies for reducing carbon emissions that can then be traded—for money—to companies that have exceeded their carbon limits fits in well with the log-rolling needed to get a bill passed. Need to diffuse industry opposition? Give them a bushel basket of cheap carbon credits that they can sell. ey Hey, if it works in the U.S. Senate, it should work with CEOs too, no?
Of course, cap and trade hasn’t exactly built a sterling track record around the world. The United Nations program designed to encourage emissions reductions in the developing world that can then be sold in the developed world has run into problems since a sizeable percentage of projects, the United Nations has suddenly discovered, would have been built anyway. According to the rules projects like that aren’t supposed to earn credits. But many did. (Ah, bureaucracy. The only thing worse than an inefficient market economy is an inefficient bureaucracy. Or maybe it’s the other way around.)
And in Europe, the European Union program initially granted so many credits that market prices are too low to encourage much in the way of alternative energy development. Right now carbon credits trade for about $20 per metric ton on the European Union’s system. According to estimates by the Carbon Trust, co-fired biomass needs a carbon price of $105 a metric ton to be financially viable with current energy prices. Onshore wind power needs a carbon price of $190 a ton, offshore $360 a ton. Solar photovoltaic needs $835 a ton.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for those prices. (Or maybe that’s the idea: If we all stopped breathing, then that would reduce global carbon dioxide emissions.)
So where does this leave you as an investor?
- Convinced that Congress will pass something that addresses global climate change. The move by the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency to set rules for carbon-dioxide and other greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act guarantees that Congress will act. Industry is almost positive that they can get a better deal from Congress than they will get from the EPA. So much of industry will start telling its lobbyists to start working for climate change legislation. (For an example of how this will play out, look at the recent Healthcare “Reform” legislation.)
- Running toward carbon intensive companies in politically powerful industries. Especially if they are developing some real green technologies as well. American Electric Power (AEP), which I just added to my Dividend Income portfolio, is one. DuPont (DD), another Dividend Income pick is another. Dow Chemical (DOW) is worth a look. (For more on picking utility stocks see my post https://jubakpicks.com/2009/12/11/new-rules-for-investing-in-utilities-the-risks-and-rewards-are-up/ )
- Looking for alternative energy companies that are near breakeven or promise to get to breakeven quickly so they’re not dependent on consistent, long-term government support. (And are therefore likely to be around on the day that the global warming methane producing by-product of cattle production hits the fan and the government launches a crash program to save us all.) In the solar sector First Solar (FSLR) and SunPower (SPWRA) are both operating cash flow positive.
- Focused on the solutions that don’t need taxpayer money because they actually make money now. Intelligent utility metering companies such as Itron (ITRI) or building energy management companies such as Jubak’s Pick Johnson Controls (JCI) belong in this group.
- And cynically trying to identify companies that provide cheap quick fixes—or at least fixes that can be made to look cheap with accounting magic. I think natural gas falls into the category of real cheap fixes since it’s cheap to build a gas-burning power plant and replacing a coal plant with a natural gas plant does reduce emissions—I’d look at Ultra Petroleum (UPL) and Devon Energy (DVN) in that sector. (For more on the trends in natural gas see my post https://jubakpicks.com/2009/12/14/exxonmobil-buys-u-s-natural-gas-for-31-billion-i-told-you-this-was-a-big-trend/ ) Nuclear can be made to look cheap—as long as you don’t include the costs of decommissioning or storing nuclear waste until humans are replaced by cockroaches. Here you might look at a nuclear-focused utility such as Exelon (EXC).
And, of course, you shouldn’t forget to invest in Chinese companies tackling the problem. Chinese leaders, who aren’t troubled with problems of 60-vote margins in the Senate or being excoriated by electoral opponents for raising taxes, have targeted alternative energy technologies as a global growth market they want a big piece of. The obvious choice here is Suntech Power Holdings (STP), which has recently announced that it will build a production plant in the United States. The most intriguing plays in China are those that combine that kind of practical mercantile economics with national pride. I’ll have a few suggestions like that in a post-Christmas post.
So don’t get distracted by arguments at the Copenhagen conference about whether the world’s rich nations should give the world’s developing nations $20 billion or $100 billion a year in aid help them move their economies to a low carbon emission path.
Global climate change is indeed all about the money. But it’s not the money you can see but the money you can’t that sets the rules of the game.
Full disclosure: I own or control shares of Devon Energy, Johnson Controls, SunPower, Ultra Petroleum, and one share of American Electric Power in my personal accounts. And I am not a Giants or Jets fan.
Jim,
I am curious, why one share of American Electric Power !!
BTW I agree with you in general on the global warming issue, but I think you should also include the fact that we have an ever changing environment. The planet has been warmer and colder before, and the sun is warming up as it ages. Humans cannot change to inevitable, only re-arrange the deckchairs.
Hello, I’d like to point out that we have increasing information about climate from well before the historical record (ice cores, sediment cores, geological strata, etc.) and all this data point out one very important fact – the climate changes! It was changing before man evolved and it will continue to change when man is long gone. Basing OUR effect on climate on temperature measurements for the last 100 years is just plain silly, since we don’t know whether our supposed heating of the planet will prevent the next ice age or warm it beyond some imagined ‘tipping point’ (I don’t personally subscribe to the ‘tipping point’ concept with regard to our current climate situation). Our effect on climate to date is just a ‘butterfly effect’, that is to say, we can’t reliably predict whether it will lead to further warming or eventual cooling in the future.
Water accounts for the vast majority of the ‘greenhouse gas effect’ and we should all be thankful for greenhouse gases (without them we would have a snowball Earth).
If you really want to ‘save the planet’, start figuring out how to prevent the next major meteorite strike or volcanic eruption… 😉
rkreisa, great objective posts. Glad to see somebody who can talk about the matter without losing their head. I just finished “SuperFreakonomics” which had a very interesting chapter named “What do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo have in common.” It discusses volcanic sulphur dioxide, the same stuff emitted by coal plants, and how it actually cools our planet by diffusing the sun, and actually helps many forms of plant life by turning direct sunlight into ambient light.
Also, I saw a post about going back to a “mud-hut” agrarian society. Given our current population, this would arguably be worse for the environment given an increased use in wood burning stoves. Even the “buy local” movement has environmental implications as local farms are less efficient and actually produce greater quantities of methane.
Do humans impact the environment? Yes.
Does this mean everywhere is getting warmer? Maybe. Lets continue to monitor and study (as civilized people mind you).
Will it get too hot to inhabit earth? Even less likely.
Does this mean we still should invest in renewables, a smart energy grid, and efficiency. Of course. We still import energy from nations that hate us (security) and need to ensure this country has affordable energy for many years to come (economy). We should be focusing on what we know to be true, and if we prevent a catastrophic warming that hasn’t yet been proven, all the better.
I think many of you miss the point: if climate change is real, we should do something NOW…
if it’s not, then no worries.
So, We either do something now, and prevent an issue from occurring,which is awesome, and if it doesn’t occur anyhow, still awesome.
If we do nothing about climate change, and doesn’t happen, then awesome, and if we do nothing, and it does occur, we’re f**ked.
Look at it that way, I really would rather hedge my bets on doing something. It has a bit more longevity.
Another thing with being environmentally friendly.
Remember the push for recycling back in the 80’s? and remember how McDonalds switched from styrofoam containers to biodegradable cardboard?
I doubt people have stopped littering, but you sure as hell see a lot less burger boxes and other no biodegradable containers. Now its cell phones and water bottles that seem to overflow the landfills.
Again, keeping the planet clean, switching from resources that are in limited supply to unlimited (renewable) resources? Where’s the negative in taking these actions???
rkreisa:
1. Climate change is a very slow process. Do you need another 100 years of data to be convinced? Don’t you see the correlation among carbon emissions, CO2 concentrations and temperature change?
http://hdgc.epp.cmu.edu/teachersguide/teachersguide.
htm
2. Science should be above politics but in the absence of better data and theory, we should accept consensus knowledge until better one if found. What is the better, more convincing climate knowledge?
This sounds like the debate whether Pluto is a planet. Well, Pluto is NOT a planet because the majority of the scientists do not accept it so. Pluto will stay as a non-planet until some scientist comes up with a better explanation of why it should be. That is for sure: Scientists sooner or later converge to the true knowledge. Until then, it is the right thing to stick with what they say. We should not simply sit around and do nothing because we don’t know what the true knowledge is. Otherwise, someone like yourself could always come out and say we should be skeptical and that would lead us to eternal paralysis.
doydum
Please note that I did not refute the temperature trend over the last 100 years or so, nor am I unaware of it. But thanks for pointing it out.. I just said that climate trends of that duration (and magnitude) don’t establish where the climate is really going. THAT (the projection for the climate going forward) is coming from the simulations. Nor did I say that anthropological climate modification is not possible. Nothing that I DID say is untrue.
But here is something for you to think about: You seem to be getting your information from the media and perhaps a politician (Al). Much of what is “reported” in the media is inaccurate. Some of what Al says is inaccurate. I am not sure what has convinced you that it is certain that anthropological climate change is happening. Maybe it was Al’s movie. Maybe it was that climate scientists have reached “consensus” that it is occurring. Same guys had “consensus” that we were headed into another ice age in the early ’70’s. And in the ’30’s, earth scientists had similar discussions, meetings and research symposiia and reached a “consensus” on a wild new theory. They decided overwhelmingly that continental drift is not happening and could not happen.
Science is not done by consensus. My advice is that you be skeptical of what you see in the media, especially once there is a run away freight train like this one. And ALWAYS be skeptical of politicians.
One other thing: be nice.
EdMcGon:
You’re not making sense. Being minory is no proof that you are wrong or that you will never be majority. For example:
1. People who believed in slavery and segration were sometime majority
2. People who believed HIV was a gay people’s disease were sometime majority
3. People who believed seat belts would never be fashionable were sometime majority
4. For God’s sake, people who beleieved the Eart was flat and the center of the universe were sometime majority.
romingerd:
Your post has no substance.
No response to you.
GFY
Doydum, combine those numbers and you get under 50% of Americans believing in human-caused global warming. Last time I checked, that puts those people in the minority. Think about it: ONLY 50% of Democrats believe in human-caused global warming?
How successful do you think politicians will be who only have the approval of the minority? Even among the Democrats you can only get 50% support. Politically speaking, this is a dying issue, especially when you look at the numbers over the last few years. The more people learn about this issue, the less they support it.
Jim,
I think you write these articles so you can read the responses for you own entertainment! 🙂 Well, there are a lot of us out here who love the entertainment value of these hot-button issues…so keep writing!
Seriously, thanks for a great article. It is refreshing to see an analysis of a polarizing subject like this done with a great deal of care and objectivity…and you even managed to slide your own opinion in to boot. Well done.
Now I’d like to stir the pot a bit…just for fun. 🙂 Who among the readers is familiar with thermodynamics? How many BTU’s of heat are produced by human activity on this planet (with or without carbon production -that’s irrelevant)? I propose that the crowd of political elitists, who have thrust the sin of carbon production onto mankind’s collective conscience, will find that their next target. It won’t be enough to not burn anything…you must live in a mud hut to be a good citizen. And the poor saps like doydum will fall for that one too.
rkreisa:
The upward trend in temperature readings are NOT the results of computer simulations. They are hard core, undeniable, unbendable OBSERVATIONS. In order for your ilk to be right, there must be a huge coincidence that this trend overlaps with the fastest development in humankind’s history…
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/temperature-trends/
I call your “PhD climate research scientist” credentials into question.
EdMcGon:
Speak for yourself and for conservatives who think like you, not for ALL Americans… According to Pew, 75% of Democrates believe in global warming with 50% of those attributing it to human activity. Only 35% of Republicans recognize global warming with %18 seeing the hand of man. NewsWeek, 12/21/2009, p32.
Jim, just speaking on a strictly political basis, a majority of Americans don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming. As long as that is the case, politicians will move away from support for radical actions in this area, which in turn will limit political support for alternative energy companies and hare-brained ideas like cap-and-tax. If you want to see the future of the global warming movement in the U.S., I’d look towards Australia for the example.
My own prediction: Anything the Democrats pass now will get overturned by the GOP Congress in 2011 (including health care reform, but that’s another issue).
If you’re going to put your investment money on alternative energy, plan to pull it out before next November’s midterm elections.
rkreisa,
Great report! You should also add that most of the plants’ growth is limited by the supply of CO2, and the largest greenhouse gas is water vapor.
Jim,
Bravo for an excellent analysis as usual, especially for the objectivity to recognize both sides of the climate argument. And as a PhD research scientist who has studied climate cycles for four decades, I especially appreciate you repeated assertion that the climate is exceedingly complex. A lot of opinions are set on the issue, as reflected in posts here. I am not going to take sides directly, but I would like to add four facts that rarely seem to arise in any discussions, either with the public or the media.
1) We humans are egocentric. We tend to believe that climate and sea level, etc. are stable, and that if not, we have caused the changes. Not! The earth’s climate has changed dramatically over it’s history, often very abruptly, and the NATURAL causes for the changes are reasonably well understood. These changes have been much greater than anything that is being discussed now for man-made changes.
2) We are in one of the coldest periods in all earth history. We are in glacial epoch that has lasted more than 1 million years, and even though this an “interglacial” time, it is very cold compared to non-glacial times in earth history.
3) CO2 (or as the media has taken to saying, “carbon pollution”) is asserted to be the villain in man-made climate change. But how much of is there in the atmosphere? The atmosphere is 20% oxygen and 80% Nitrogen. Oops, where is the CO2? Sorry, I rounded to the nearest whole percent. There is about 0.3% CO2. If you you know, or can find, a “numerical modeler” (that would be a person who develops computer simulations of complex systems like the atmosphere) whom you can trust to tell the truth, he will tell you that such models that depend on minute factors like this will tell you whatever they (or you) want them to tell you. We just can’t model the atmosphere that well. And if you think that such modelers don’t have a vested interest in jumping on the climate change band wagon, then you don’t understand research and how it is funded.
4) You can’t blame BOTH droughts and floods on global warming as the media typically does. Really, you can’t blame either one on climate change. Water evaporates and it comes back down to earth as precipitation. It’s a zero-sum game. If you actually warm the planet, and increase the area covered by water (sea level rise) then you probably would have more precipitation on average. But the fact that Australia was dry this year, or that the dust bowl occurred in Oklahoma in the 30’s, has nothing to do with climate change, man made or otherwise. It’s just part of normal VERY short-term climate variability, mostly due to minor changes in ocean circulation patterns. Longer term, true climate change can SHIFT precipitation belts, but there will still be about the same amount of precipitation on the earth.
Back to your point about how “climate change” may impact us in terms of policy decisions and WRT investments: IF climate change is occurring (a few 100 years is not really enough time to be sure; the assertions of the change and it’s causes are coming from numerical simulations), then our policy decisions and where we decide to invest would be completely different if we understood that it was part of natural climate cycles that have characterized earth history rather than anthropological. If we are headed towards the beach-front scenario on upper floors of NY buildings and it is natural, then we would not invest anything in trying to reduce CO2. Our great, great, great grand children will probably have some notion about which is true.
Sorry, can’t resist one more: Warm times in earth history are very good for biodiversity. We can lament the polar bear’s fate, but absent other destructive behavior on our part, we would expect GREATER diversity if the climate is truly warming.
Jim
Great Article. I do think that people give a lot of lip service by stating they want to pass on a better world to their grandchildren. I’m not so sure. Even if we throw a lot of money at it and change our ways it is hard to know the impact. It seems that many conservatives think that it is some kind of left wing conspiracy. Check out this important link. It will change your mind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0pjm40RxEw
Jim,
Thanks for the interesting and balanced post. As for paying for this, don’t we just keep borrowing money from our kids? Whether it’s saving Ken Lewis or our planet or delaying our SOLC (Standard Of Living Crash), all roads lead to printing more money. Do you agree??
Can (some) Liberals please stop with the intellectually superiority blowhardness (is that a word?) and (some) Conservatives with the morally superior attitude? You people sound exceedingly angry all the time. You need a 300IQ to fix all the problems we currently have, no idealogy is close to having all the answers. my .02
Sorry. I did NOT mean to accuse…
Christopher,
I had to address my posting to somebody. I did mean to accuse Jim of brainless conservatism where protecting tobacco companies led to unhealty workforce, curtailing stem cell research led to retarded biotech industry, protecting insurance companies lead to tens millions of people outside the healthcare sectors services and products, protecting Wall Street led to the mess we are currently in and now, protecting the smoke spewing industries leads to the destruction of our planet.
Right DJBarber, I shouldn’t add fuel to the fire. 🙂
Of course as far as this discussion goes for the subject at hand it doesn’t matter what you believe or what is real, only what the people paying for all this (or borrowing for this) see some trend in the companies that will make money off of it.
“Cynical”, Jim? You?
I don’t think so. Maybe a bit skeptical of all the nonsense involved in this issue. Definitley realistic and hard-headed about what IS and IS NOT being done about it. Possibly somewaht dubious as to the outcome of all this flailing, and about the real interests of the various “stakeholders” involved. And very down-to-earth on how an investor ought to approach this mess [if investors ought to approach at all.]
No, cynical is that “grab-bag of goodies for industry”, that paltry “stimulus package” you mentioned- and the sheeple willing to settle for a football stadium instead of jobs and real infrastructure upgrades and repairs; cynical is exactly that bogus “Health Care Reform” bill which is exactly NOT; cynical- and ludicrous- is our non-existent National Energy Policy, as you have pointed out many times; cynical is all the lip service and hokum and smoke and mirrors that will benefit the status quo and ignore the future; and the most cynical is that $300 million it took for the Democrats to buy a vote from one of their own (the Senate did the same thing this weekend, with Ben Nelson. Hell, you can’t even build a taco stand for that pittance. THAT’S cynical- and shameful. So is the ignorance and arrogance that allows this cynicism to continue to bilk the people of this country at every turn.
Yes, I will attempt to make money on this madness, anyway I can- but I don’t believe that is cynical- more like survival. Thanks for hitting yet another nail precisely on its haid, Jim.
Here we go again….
doydum I’m not sure you have read this article or others that Jim has written, as if you did you will see that in general Jim belives in “global warming”, all he is saying here is that it hard to prove, and especially to the masses. And I totally agree.
Here is the way I see it. Human’s have always believed that they some how outside of nature because even though when the deer over populates an area it dies back that year, but humans have learned to delay that, but I have always believed that we are not preventing these things just delaying them, if it isn’t “global warming” it will be something else as we populate this world to the point where it can no longer sustain us, nature will push back and lots of people’s standard of living will go down not to mention, people will die.
As for “global warming”, I REALLY think that was a poor choice of words. “Climate change”, seems better, because we really don’t understand the climate enough to tell what will really happen, but I think it is highly unlikely that with everything humans are doing that we are having no effect on the climate. But of course the big questions are when, and how much, and for that matter what and where. Like it is very possible that you might make some places hotter while you make other places colder, but if that all happen 10,000 years from now…
Jim,
Germs are so small we cannot see them. And we know we have lots of them in our bodies all the time. And some times, they multiply to such an extent, we get mildly sick (cold) sick or gravely sick (HPV ) or definitely dead (ebola). We the humans are the germs of our planet. You cannot see a single human being from the space, yet we know we are here and at this point in time, with our numbers and our activities, we are making our planet sick. This is not cold virus that you can handle with hot camomile and Tylenol. Our planet is falling apart everywhere, soon to get bed-ridden.
Respectfully.
Viwi,
I hope that you live out your lack of respect for scientific method in other aspects of your life: that you refuse cat-scans or MRIs, say, because they involve that quirky conspiracy called “science”. Hey tumors have always been around, man; they’re part of life; let’s take it easy and not use science to actually treat them, or predict what will happen, 10 or 20 years from now if everyone smokes. I mean we can hardly predict what I’m going to eat for lunch. And so on. This anti-intellectualism that first states “global warming is not a problem”, then faults scientific method (“we can hardly predict”) to explain away data, and then admits that even if it is a problem “the earth went through these cooling periods before” (never mind that New Orleans and Manhattan didn’t exist when it did), is beyond contradictory: it’s dangerously dense. I wouldn’t bring this up on a financial site if you weren’t trying to rope Jubak into your view with your “Bravo, Jim”
As for the main post itself, Jim, it raises some questions. You pulled ITRI from your list of buys some time back on concerns about overvaluation and financing. Have you changed your mind on that? Also, I’m wondering if your post on Japan yesterday, changes your view of your recent sell of brazilian fund BRF? I also closed out my position and am thinking about buying again, but perhaps should wait a while yet? Thanks
Bravo, Jim!
While in my opinion, the problem of Global Warming does not exist, I am always looking at it as the way to make money. (Yes! If people are so stupid to pay for it, why can’t be on a receiving end).
In reality, we can hardly predict the weather for the next 24 hours, and someone is trying to convince us that they know for sure what will happen 10-20-100 years from now. Just take it easy: the Earth went through these warming/cooling cycles before, and life still exists on this planet.
Copenhagen did not solve any problem, and I expected it to be this way. UN is a complete failure – there were not able to stop wars, now they think that is the chance for them to do something … The only thing that really amazed me was how easy the US delegation came up with $100 bln (per year!). I am not sure where these monies are coming, when the US is about to become bankrupt if China stops buying our debt.