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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alighieri who wrote (718939)	6/1/2013 3:24:45 PM
From: longnshort	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1580506

The End of Snow, 13 Years On In 2000, the British newspaper The Independent ran an articleabout the end of snow, quoting one of the world’s more prominent climate scientist like so: According to Dr. David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said. 13 years later, people are skiing in Spain in June. This should not be taken as proof there is no global warming, but it is very clear proof indeed that green experts don’t understand climate change nearly as well as they think they do. And given that their track record on developing workable policies to address climate change is even worse than their record at predicting the weather, we are not surprised that greens find it harder and harder to get traction for big, complicated and expensive laws that somehow never perform as advertised. Incidentally, there might be an opportunity here for the GOP if it’s smart enough to seize it. That’s the argument made by James Pethokoukis in a must-read piece over at AEI. There are several smart ways to start talking about climate change that don’t involve massive top-down schemes that are almost by definition destined to fail, and Petholoukis points to some of them. A properly-designed revenue neutral carbon tax is something we’d like to see debated a bit more by the politicians and analyzed more by the wonks. We think shifting more of the tax burden from payroll taxes to energy use might encourage job creation and accelerate the shift from an industrial to an information economy, in addition to any climate change benefits it could offer. (We also think that promoting telework would be good for society generally as well as having significant environmental effects.) In any case, happy skiing to our friends in the Pyrenees, and best summer wishes to our UK friends putting a hard and snowy winter behind them. And we wish the global greens a happy summer of announcing every heat wave as proof that the climate disaster is already here—until winter returns and they go back to telling us, correctly, that “weather isn’t climate.”

To: Alighieri who wrote (718939)	6/1/2013 3:40:13 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1580506

>> you'd just be changing the payer...and you'd likely add a shitload of cost, having lost the power of government and having to pay profits to private insurance companies. It makes no sense at all. What makes no sense is your comment. First of all, you realize that commercial insurance company profits don't amount to crap. $12 Billion/year, 0.5% or less of the cost of health care. That, for efficient and effective management of half the health care finance system. A total bargain. Secondly, it has been shown time and again that private health insurance companies operate more efficiently that government payers. By a wide margin. And that is before you take into account the waste, fraud, and abuse differential. But those are MINOR points compared with the big one -- the fact that government involvement in health care is, quite obviously, the most important single driver of health care cost increases. Has been that way since 1965, when government first got involved. Practically every credible study over the years has pointed to cost shifting to private plans as among the most important drivers of cost increases. There are tons of such studies, but here's an example: unh.edu There is just no doubt at all that GOVERNMENT is the basic cause of our health care crisis. Aside from the rather obvious correlation (after all, health care costs were not a problem for anyone until Medicare and Medicaid screwed it up, although the seeds date back to WWII), there is plenty of empirical evidence that doesn't just SUGGEST, but PROVES that government is the problem. So, you're going to solve this problem with MORE government?