Reflections on Garden World Politics Douglass Carmichael

How come a big ice age happened when carbon dioxide levels were high? It's a question climate sceptics often ask. But sometimes the right answer is the simplest: it turns out CO2 levels were not that high after all.

The Ordovician ice age happened 444 million years ago, and records have suggested that CO2 levels were relatively high then. But when Seth Young of Indiana University in Bloomington did a detailed analysis of carbon-13 levels in rocks formed at the time, the picture that emerged was very different. Young found CO2 concentrations were in fact relatively low when the ice age began

via High-carbon ice age mystery solved – environment – 08 March 2010 – New Scientist.

Even if your favorite gadget isn't flaunting them, rare earth metals are vital to all sorts of high-tech gizmos, from your flat-panel TV and computer hard drive to the hefty batteries that power the Toyota Prius. But over 95% of the world's rare earth comes from China; and late last year, China told the world that they'd like to keep the lion's share all to themselves. What will we Westerners do? Well, we could let China continue producing mountains of e-waste on our behalf. But we could also find plenty of rare earth just by digging in our own backyard. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the United States has over 13 million metric tons of rare earth with concentrated deposits in Mountain Pass, California and Diamond Creek, Idaho. But since the private firms that control those deposits aren't willing to spend the requisite eight years and minimum $500 million to construct a chemical separation plant, Idaho-based U.S. Rare Earths is just sitting on their ore for now, while California's Molycorp Minerals is forced to send their material all the way to China (once again) for processing.

via Engadget.

It was a good year to be rich. Or ultra-rich, for that matter.The number of U.S. households with a net worth of $1 million or more — excluding wealth derived from a primary residence — grew 16 percent last year, according to a new report by the Spectrem Group, a Chicago-based consulting firm. After a 27 percent decline in the number of millionaire households in 2008, the ranks of U.S. millionaires swelled to 7.8 million last year.And it was an even better year to be an “Ultra High Net Worth Individual,” defined as someone with a net worth of $5 million or more. That population grew 17 percent in 2009 to 980,000.”The nations millionaires — together with its Ultra High Net Worth households — are bouncing back from the recession. Following a sharp decline in 2008, both groups saw their numbers advance nicely in 2009, with the U.S. millionaire population rising to 7.8 million. While still well short of its all-time high of 9.2 million in 2007, this years growth in the millionaire population is nevertheless welcome news for an economy still working to recover,” said George H. Walper, Jr., president of Spectrem Group in a statement.The number of American millionaires seems to have risen in tandem with both work productivity growth and, unfortunately, with the unemployment rate, which has hovered around 10 percent in the last few months.While productivity growth signals heightened efficiency, it also generally means that companies require fewer workers, so the countrys rapid rise in productivity — which surged 6.2 percent last quarter — may be, as a recent paper put it, one of the “main drivers” of the jobless recovery.Of course, household incomes have been growing unevenly for years — even during times of seeming prosperity. For 2007, the year for which the most recent data is available, the top one percent of earners — those with incomes of at least $398,000 per year — enjoyed a 6.8 percent growth versus the 3.7 percent average, boosting their share of the countrys total income to 23.5 percent.

via Number Of U.S. Millionaires Soared In 2009: Spectrem Group.

The power of the climate narrative and the empire falling – are they synching each other? Well, while figuring it out, here is one.

By Chris Hedges

There are no constraints left to halt America’s slide into a totalitarian capitalism. Electoral politics are a sham. The media have been debased and defanged by corporate owners. The working class has been impoverished and is now being plunged into profound despair. The legal system has been corrupted to serve corporate interests. Popular institutions, from labor unions to political parties, have been destroyed or emasculated by corporate power. And any form of protest, no matter how tepid, is blocked by an internal security apparatus that is starting to rival that of the East German secret police. The mounting anger and hatred, coursing through the bloodstream of the body politic, make violence and counter-violence inevitable. Brace yourself. The American empire is over. And the descent is going to be horrifying.

via Chris Hedges: Calling All Rebels – Chris Hedges’ Columns – Truthdig.

The krugman article ends,

For someone else, this loss might be a devastation, but even though for thirty years thinking deeply about economics was all Krugman really cared about, he has let it pass out of his life without regret. “I think he’s happy,” his friend Craig Murphy says. “A much happier person now than when we first met him. He feels like he’s done good things, and they’re greater than what he expected when he was young. If there is sadness in him at all, I think it is a tiny core of profound sadness of the kind that the Buddha understood—that we probably can’t use human rationality to make the world all better, and it would be really nice if we were able to.” ♦

via How Paul Krugman found politics : The New Yorker.

Pretty revealing, and of course not a interesting as understanding the ehy of what people actually do. Which won’t fit math because math is intrinsically cold.

It isn’t that freshwater types believe that actual people are perfectly rational—they just believe that making that assumption enables a more rigorous economics than is possible without it. After all, while there is only one way to be perfectly rational, there are an infinite number of ways to be irrational, and how do you choose? It all begins to look awfully arbitrary.

via How Paul Krugman found politics : The New Yorker.