Page 57 of 228 FirstFirst ... 747555657585967107157 ... LastLast
Results 561 to 570 of 2276

Thread: OT: Politics

  1. #561
    Quote Originally Posted by Lurker27 View Post
    Gordon's entire position is basically here:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer...Empirical_data

    Note that the 2005 CBO study (conducted under GWB) undermines Josh's point.

    https://www.cbo.gov/publication/17507?index=6908

    Further note that all taxes aren't created equal. Corporate taxes, by all means, let's lower them. For low income earners, yes, by all means, let's lower those too - people who spend every dollar they make are nearly guaranteed to increase the overall monetary velocity of an economy. Personal income rates should be high, in my opinion. It's only because so many small business owners (myself included) use pass-through taxation structures for ease of bookkeeping that this is even a somewhat reasonable argument. Simplifying corporate regulations while raising taxes for high wages earners would be a great start towards a balanced tax plan, IMO (for the record, this is against my own interest since my wife outearns me).

    Jobs are created by companies needing to fill (newly created) demand. Jobs aren't created by allowing the wealthy to keep higher profits.
    I'd be happy to see a zero corporate tax and a dividend yield tax set at the personal income rate. One can dream....

  2. #562
    Insider
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Location
    Knoxville, TN
    Posts
    2,303
    Now, the Ocean Acidification is a lot of noise about a small potential. But to answer it properly, you have to realize a lot of past history and the normal effects of the oceans.

    First, let's look at the claims from the TED talk:

    "But I'll tell you as more carbon dioxide enters the ocean, the seawater pH goes down. And this basically means that there is an increase in ocean acidity."
    There has already been an increase in ocean acidity of 26 percent since pre-industrial times, which is directly due to human activities. Unless we can start slowing down our carbon dioxide emissions, we're expecting an increase in ocean acidity of 170 percent by the end of this century.
    They were placed in seawater at a pH we're expecting by the year 2100. After six months, the coral has almost completely dissolved.
    Lets start with the agreements:

    ph is dropping: The water is becoming more neutral. Since the Ocean starts as a light base, it still has a ways to go till it is neutral and even further still till it becomes acidic. The slime on fish is to protect them from a ocean that is not acidic, but actually a light base.

    The 26 percent increase since industrial times: This is again where we run into a data issue, and an argument. In the report she uses the graph from is from Dr. Richard A. Feely, and Feely’s four-page report:
    Carbon Dioxide and Our Ocean Legacy.This chart, titled “Historical & Projected pH & Dissolved Co2,” begins at 1850. Feely testified before Congress in 2010—using the same data that shows a decline in seawater pH (making it more acidic) that appears to coincide with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide.
    The problem with that was, well:
    Mike Wallace is a hydrologist with nearly 30 years’ experience, who is now working on his Ph.D. in nanogeosciences at the University of New Mexico. In the course of his studies, he uncovered a startling data omission that he told me: “eclipses even the so-called climategate event.” Feely’s work is based on computer models that don’t line up with real-world data—which Feely acknowledged in email communications with Wallace (which I have read). And, as Wallace determined, there is real world data. Feely, and his coauthor Dr. Christopher L. Sabine, PMEL Director, omitted 80 years of data, which incorporate more than 2 million records of ocean pH levels.
    So, that chart has a huge omission of data. And the process with which they needed to get it? Well, the authors wouldn't turn it over for review, so in the end it required a FOIA request to get it.

    The interesting bit was the resulting data was obtained by Wallace, from NOAA with the missing 1.5 million points, and put into a chart:



    This is rather troubling. With all of the data inserted, not modeled by Feely, the oceans show a slight, to use the vernacular, de-acidification, though it is easy to see a drop in ph in the last 20 years. So, some of the basic assumptions from the talk can be rejected. That being said, what was found after that?

    Let's ignore the long, long term trend and look from about 1970 onward, where we have better data, and a definitive change in CO2 levels in the ocean. This does show a trend towards neutral. Of about .018 +/- .001 per decade. This might result in a change of .2 ph in 100 years. So, a small change, if the ph is changed simply because of co2 in the atmosphere. There is Henry's Law also, but I will include that later.

    Conclusion: pH is dropping. Not as fast as Freely said. So the projections are extreme. But that doesn't mean they are not changing, and skeptics agree that there is the potential for a change in pH.

    _______________________________

    But this is where it is important to make it relative.

    The ocean is not one level ph. Nor even really well blended.



    We can see a range of ph, and even within one location, ph can vary a large amount:

    So the rate of change in ph is less than the amount of error in many locations, and less than the cycle of ph that these areas are exposed to.

    These observations reveal a continuum of month-long pH variability with standard deviations from 0.004 to 0.277 and ranges spanning 0.024 to 1.430 pH units. The nature of the observed variability was also highly site-dependent, with characteristic diel, semi-diurnal, and stochastic patterns of varying amplitudes. These biome-specific pH signatures disclose current levels of exposure to both high and low dissolved CO2, often demonstrating that resident organisms are already experiencing pH regimes that are not predicted until 2100.
    What about the coral and shell dissolving? Well, when they tried to recreate that effect out in the oceans, instead of in a tank, the results were far less. The experiment was interesting:

    Georgiou, et al. did their experiments in situ the open ocean by building enclosures that are open on two sides and on the bottom and raising the level of CO2 in the “treated” enclosures. They compared the results to nearby corals that were in enclosures with no added CO2 (the “controls”). They found no reef growth differences between the two environments. This implies a high degree of tolerance to ocean acidification. The enclosures for injecting CO2 and the control enclosures are called FOCE (Free Ocean Carbon Enrichment) and are described in Kline, et al., 2012. They describe a very ingenious way to measure the effects of sea-water carbon dioxide concentration differences on corals in-situ.
    This really was a cool study. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep00413.pdf

    They simulated 600-1000ppm CO2 levels.

    Conclusion: pH level change quite a bit in The effect on coral will be less than expected, when tested in real world situations, which is encouraging.

    __________________________________________________

    Henry's Law and the rest:

    Henry's law is the beer law. It states how much CO2 or otherwise can be in a liquid at what pressure and temperature.

    CO2 is trapped in the ocean. In fact, it is an interesting bit that the oceans hold 38,000Gt of CO2, and we put out, like 9 or 10.



    If the oceans warm up, they can't hold as much CO2. As the cool, they absorb more. Looking at the Volstok Ice samples, we find that CO2 falls behind the warming of the other interglacial periods. By about 600 years. What happens is, as the Earth warms the oceans warm, but slower than the atmosphere, and more CO2 is released. Then as the air cools, then the oceans cool and it absorbs more of the CO2.

    That is why you had a net rise of CO2 following 1850 till 1950 - that was natural in origin, following the warming of the ocean. Henry's law is why. Humans, in the post WWII development finally started to put out CO2 in a measurable amount.



    The ocean surface area is 360 million sq. kilometers, or 360 trillion sq. meters. The top meter is 360 trillion tons of water. A change of temperature of one degree for cold water changes the solubility by:

    360 X 1012 tons = 360 X 1015 kg X 0.08 g/kg = 28.8 X 1015 g CO2 or 28.8 Petagrams CO2. A tenth of a degree temperature change changes solubility by 2.88 Petagrams CO2. This is about 780 Gigatons carbon equivalent. (3.7 grams CO2 = 1 gram carbon.)
    The atmosphere? Well, that has only 843Gt of CO2. I am not saying all of the CO2 is from a warming ocean - but a large portion is, and the natural cycles drive a large portion of the CO2.

    SO, what does this mean? Well, go back 10,000 years, and the oceans were a lot cooler than now - we are normally in an Ice Age. So the Co2 levels are higher - and hence, the pH would be far more acidic. Well, more neutral.

    And we still find large deposits of shells. It actually is one of the proxy items used to find out past temperature.

    Conclusion: CO2 levels in the ocean cycle up and down, and the corals and related animals survived those period also.

    ________________________________________

    Over all conclusion from the skeptic side:

    The ocean data shows less change in pH than the Feely reports, when all data is accounted for.
    Projections of damage from the Feely report would not likely arise because of the problem with the conclusions in that report.
    Actual in ocean testing of the extremes from the Feely report show no adverse effect.
    Oceans have cycled at higher pH extremes than proposed in the Feely report, and ocean life still has survived, including corals.

    I could expound a bit, there is quite a bit on the subject, but as a quick response the pH levels projected from Feely's paper should not be taken as truth, and testing in the ocean has shown no damage to coral. pH should change to a more neutral position, but it also should be expected to fall within the normal margin of error that ocean dwelling creatures are used to in the next 100 years.

    Oh, and if you want to be taken seriously as a scientist, you should allow your work to be examined. Feely didn't let other people try and replicate the work, resulting in a FOIA filing. The resulted in finding 80 years of data was removed to make the claims he did.

    That should be a huge warning sign to any body.
    Josh Coray
    J4 Paintball
    Lead Design
    www.j4paintball.com

  3. #563
    Insider
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Location
    Knoxville, TN
    Posts
    2,303
    Ryan: I see you didn't read the Heritage link I posted. It shows a very clear increase in individual take home money. Not a laffer curve projection. Actual numbers. Please, read it a couple times so that you understand it, can see the clear numbers, before trying to reply with laffer curve projections.

    Also, in NO WAY does your reply support Gordon's claims that there has never been an increase in revenue from a tax cut.

    Under the leadership of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon during the Administrations of Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, tax rates were slashed from the confiscatory levels they had reached in World War I. The Revenue Acts of 1921, 1924, and 1926 reduced the top rate from 73 percent to 25 percent.

    Spurred in part by lower tax rates, the economy expanded dramatically. In real terms, the economy grew 59 percent between 1921 and 1929, and annual economic growth averaged more than 6 percent.

    Notwithstanding (or perhaps because of) the dramatic reduction in tax rates, personal income tax revenues increased substantially during the 1920s, rising from $719 million in 1921 to $1,160 million in 1928, an increase of more than 61 percent (this was a period of no inflation).4


    The share of the tax burden borne by the rich rose dramatically. As seen in Chart 5, taxes paid by the rich (those making $50,000 and up in those days) climbed from 44.2 percent of the total tax burden in 1921 to 78.4 percent in 1928.
    President Kennedy proposed a series of tax rate reductions in 1963 that resulted in legislation the following year dropping the top rate from 91 percent in 1963 to 70 percent by 1965.6

    The Kennedy tax cuts helped trigger the longest economic expansion in America's history. Between 1961 and 1968, the inflation-adjusted economy expanded by more than 42 percent. On a yearly basis, economic growth averaged more than 5 percent.

    Tax revenues grew strongly, rising by 62 percent between 1961 and 1968. Adjusted for inflation, they rose by one-third.


    Just as in the 1920s, the share of the income tax burden borne by the rich increased. Tax collections from those making over $50,000 per year climbed by 57 percent between 1963 and 1966, while tax collections from those earning below $50,000 rose 11 percent. As a result, the rich saw their portion of the income tax burden climb from 11.6 percent to 15.1 percent.
    President Reagan presided over two major pieces of tax legislation which together reduced the top tax rate from 70 percent in 1980 to 28 percent by 1988.

    The economic effects of the Reagan tax cuts were dramatic. When Reagan took office in 1981, the economy was being choked by high inflation and was in the middle of a double-dip recession (1980 and 1982). The tax cuts helped pull the economy out of the doldrums and ushered in the longest period of peacetime economic growth in America's history. During the seven-year Reagan boom, economic growth averaged almost 4 percent.

    Critics charge that the tax cuts caused higher deficits, but they misread the evidence. The Reagan tax cut, though approved in 1981, was phased in over several years. As a result, bracket creep (indexing was not implemented until 1985) and payroll tax increases completely swamped Reagan's 1.25 percent tax cut in 1981 and effectively canceled out the portion of the tax cut which went into effect in 1982.
    The economy received an unambiguous tax cut only as of January 1983. Thereafter, personal income tax revenues climbed dramatically, increasing by more than 54 percent by 1989 (28 percent after adjusting for inflation).

    Contrary to conventional wisdom, it was the "rich" who paid the additional taxes. The share of income taxes paid by the top 10 percent of earners jumped significantly, climbing from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. The top 1 percent saw their share of the income tax bill climb even more dramatically, from 17.6 percent in 1981 to 27.5 percent in 1988.9
    Those are actual examples, here in the US. The source material?

    Congressional Budget Office, The Economic and Budget Outlook: Fiscal Years 1997-2006, May 1996.
    Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 1 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976).
    Andrew Mellon, Taxation: The People's Business (New York: Macmillan, 1924).
    The Kennedy boom also was helped along by reductions, occurring in 1962, in the tax burden on investment and capital gains.
    Joint Economic Committee, "The Mellon and Kennedy Tax Cuts: A Review and Analysis," June 18, 1962.
    John F. Kennedy, speech to Economic Club of New York, December 14, 1962.
    Joint Economic Committee, Annual Report, 1992.
    Jack Kemp, An American Renaissance: A Strategy for the 1980s (New York: Harper and Row, 1979).
    Joint Economic Committee, "The Mellon and Kennedy Tax Cuts." Ibid.
    Joint Economic Committee, Annual Report, 1992.
    Sorry guys, but in the wall of that evidence, backed up over the last century showing a clear response to tax cuts every time, in real numbers not a projection, ruins your collective positions.

    The numbers are crystal clear, and they in no way or form agree with your assumptions.
    Josh Coray
    J4 Paintball
    Lead Design
    www.j4paintball.com

  4. #564
    Insider
    Join Date
    May 2012
    Posts
    1,182
    I do not think you know what Henry's Law is.
    "So you've done this before?"
    "Oh, hell no. But I think it's gonna work."

  5. #565
    Quote Originally Posted by Lurker27 View Post
    I do not think you know what Henry's Law is.
    gotta give him credit, he cal wall-o-text anyone to death.

    but his basic facts are wrong.

    maybe wall-o-texting works in his career field. it certainly doesn't in mine. still can't find the increase in TSI though.
    Last edited by cockerpunk; 02-06-2018 at 05:27 PM.
    social conservatism: the mortal fear that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.

  6. #566
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2014
    Posts
    1,581
    https://undark.org/article/dead-zone...-coastal-seas/

    http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/br...708-story.html

    Still seems like our fault.

    I guess the point, to me, is simple. We have a significant impact on the condition of the planet. Either in catastrophic areas like warming, or the state sized pile of trash floating in the ocean, to phosphates/ nitrogen run off, or deforestation and over fishing (or hunting). It bothers me when people don't take personal responsibility for their habits and how they damage everyone else plus future generations. People's benevolence isn't fixing the problem, so I am all for aggressive legislation to preserve and protect the planet.
    Last edited by ironyusa; 02-06-2018 at 10:15 PM.

  7. #567
    Insider
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Location
    Knoxville, TN
    Posts
    2,303
    I do not think you know what Henry's Law is.
    How so Ryan? If you are going to contradict what I say, bring some proof. A snarky comment as if you 'know something I don't' doesn't mean shit. It makes you no better than Gordon. I linked to it in the original post. I did bring it up for a reason. If you can't bring up supporting evidence, in my comments or yours, you bring nothing constructive to the discussion. Irony asked what skeptics think about ocean calcification, and I give a full reply, and you just try the equal to a schoolyard taunt? It really should be beneath you. I expect it out of Gordon or Steve, but not you. And, you are incorrect.

    "Henry's law is one of the gas laws formulated by William Henry in 1803 and states: "At a constant temperature, the amount of a given gas that dissolves in a given type and volume of liquid is directly proportional to the partial pressure of that gas in equilibrium with that liquid"
    If that is not how you see it, maybe you don't understand Henry's Law? Because if you alter the temperature, you alter the amount of given gas that is dissolved in a liquid. Do I need to point out the ocean is a liquid? As I showed, above with nice simple pictures, as the temperature rises the ocean is less able to retain CO2. So the ocean outgasses CO2. Here it is again:



    When it is colder, which the oceans were for 110,000 years out of the last 120,000 years, there is more CO2 in the Ocean at a higher concentration than now. Also during that time, the CO2 level in the atmosphere was far lower than the current level. This is seen in the ice core levels.



    See? Henry's law.

    Look here at a CO2 budget differences during glaciated and unglaciated time periods, and then look at the human contribution in the last line. As you can see there is a decent margin of error just for the oceans. It is larger than the human contribution by a large factor:


    The oceans have a LOT of thermal mass, and they take a long time to cycle up and down. 600 to 1000 years for the whole thing. We can actually see a bump in deep temperature due to warm periods from 600 years ago. Which is also where we get a large amount of the metastability you see. They also hold a huge amount of CO2 also. Most of it in fact. As I pointed out above. But when they do change temperature, they dramatically affect the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Far far more than humans do.

    During periods of cooling, the oceans become a significant CO2 trap - It absorbs a large portion of the total CO2 in the atmosphere because it is colder. Henry's Law (see reference graphs above). That affects the pH level of the ocean by far more than the small amount we could be doing now.

    Now, there is a LOT more to it, the top surface carrying CO2 levels and temperature, the time of the heat transfer downward, and related. (waves hands in the air) It is a very interesting process that I am familiar with, and this is but a small comment in a large picture, but it also is a very damning one in relation to the positions taken, and related alarmism. But since you missed how Henry's Law applies, and like a Grammar Nazi thought you had a point but missed, do you want to try again to comprehend what I am saying, or at least bring more than an ignorant comment? Stop trying to be a know it all. We know Steve and Gordon can't help it, but you can. I am not some country bumpkin with my first turn at the internets. Stop acting like you know something I don't and prove it. Leave snark to those who truly can't take a new position or comprehend something new or out of their bias due to cranial calcification.


    gotta give him credit, he cal wall-o-text anyone to death.

    but his basic facts are wrong.
    My comments are upheld with supporting information. Which you constantly fail to bring. At all. Snarky comments, misreading what I said, and then getting the basics so incorrect with no supporting proof doesn't make you look smart. Trying to ding me for bringing up a complete argument you lack the ability to comprehend isn't a point in your favor. That just makes you look silly Gordon. Your poor reading skills would piss off a smaller person, just due to the insult it really is, and I surmise that is possibly the total of the reason you do it, just to troll. But I think you also actually believe that is proof you know something. You don't. A snarky comment is proof you really don't know anything, or else you would have brought up some easy to access tid bit and actually ruined my positions. But you don't. Almost ever. Which means you can't comprehend actually what is being said, through experience or lack of it, or from laziness, or maybe you just like the troll. Maybe you type really slow? As something constructive, well, maybe you should stick to talking about Miatas. You write large informative posts about them. This obviously isn't your bag.

    To paraphrase my reply to Ryan, if you can't support your snark, it is worthless.
    Last edited by pbjosh; 02-13-2018 at 06:21 PM.
    Josh Coray
    J4 Paintball
    Lead Design
    www.j4paintball.com

  8. #568
    One downside of warming seawater is that unlike many other salts, calcium actually dissolves better at lower temperatures. Heat up the water, and you can see calcium carbonate precipitating out of the water, also called "snow". If the calcium precipitates out, the calcium/alkalinity balance goes out of wack... alkalinity raises as calcium bottoms out. Stony corals = dead. Just following along as someone who has been in the reef aquarium hobby since 2002.

    FWIW, I find the conclusions from this experiment to be dubious: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep00413.pdf I suspect someone had an agenda going into it. Any 'reefkeeper' will tell you: pH dips are common in a captive reef as well. Throw a party, and all the people breathing in your home will drop the pH of your tank, even if hundreds of gallons, rather rapidly. The key is that this is not sustained, and it is not combined with other challenges like high nitrates (organics), higher temperatures, less calcium, and less phytoplankton to feed on. Basically, corals can go through having to "hold their breath" on a regular basis.
    It's actually quite natural... some corals like Porites are dry all day in the sun due to low tide. Also, they chose Acropora millepora... one of the hardiest species of acro you could pick for this. I could almost cook my tank and this coral would be one of the last to die.
    Last edited by JimBobFett; 02-14-2018 at 09:58 AM.

  9. #569
    Insider
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Location
    Knoxville, TN
    Posts
    2,303
    So, a quick question JimBob: At what temp do you run your tanks, and at what temp does the 'snow' precipitate? I am curious how close the temperature matches the max temp the oceans hit.

    I am listening now to Peter Ridd interview concerning the reefs - he has a low opinion of quite a few of the studies done, partially because this has been his primary study for the last 30 years. It is a very interesting interview:

    http://www.2gb.com/podcast/peter-ridd/

    He says about the same thing you do, that it recovers, and how. It is a pretty biased interview though, as a warning.
    Josh Coray
    J4 Paintball
    Lead Design
    www.j4paintball.com

  10. #570
    thoughts and prayers.
    social conservatism: the mortal fear that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •