I am occasionally amazed at the “Well, sure he has done this, but he wouldn’t do it to *me*. He *respects* me!” quality of people and institutions. Of *course* someone that has betrayed the promises they made to every other paper they acquired will betray the promises they make to you.

Sigh – Jonnan

I mean, it seemed quite clear to me when I read it: hedge funds are short the Euro, and big. Now, I realize most people don’t remember anything past a couple years ago, but here’s a little bit of history for you. Greece is not the first country to default on its debt (see, for example, the period 1970-2000, in particular emerging markets, China, Japan, pretty much all of Asia actually, Latin America, Mexico, Russia, etc.). And every time some country goes belly up, usually always after a great run and years of media adoration, low and behold we find out there were some big mean bank or hedge fund that bet on the collapse and made some money. Aghast!

This time though, hopefully everyone won’t be so shocked and downright appalled when this happens, because, well, you just read about it in the WSJ. My guess is you will nonetheless feign astonishment–that way you can then go and crank out a couple dozen “Goldman Sachs/SAC/whoever are Evil and Greedy” articles that are always so newsworthy. Speaking of which, I know one thing, I am a better person now that I know the average salary at Goldman Sachs for the last seven years. Much rather know that than say, the impending financial troubles that the continent of Europe has been experiencing for months now.

On the WSJ, I agree completely about the Euro article – ridiculous. Also the alcohol writing has trended sharply downhill with the end of the anachronistic cocktail column and the departure of the wine writers. Finally, the column last week about Greek swaps was completely incomprehensible – the writer obviously didn’t know how the pieces fit together and couldn’t explain the transaction. The bubbly piece about the Greek expat woman at GS who put the deal together made sense, but the actual financial news was useless, even with an (incomplete) diagram.

It is such a better paper, in so many ways, that it is completely mystifying to me why its circulation in the US is so low.

E – How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?

I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed.

From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/natur e/8511670.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/natur e/8511670.stm

Q: Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
A: Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different… I have also included the trend over the period 1975 to 2009, which has a very similar trend to the period 1975-1998. So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.

Q: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
A: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

Q: Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?
A: No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant.

Q: If you agree that there were similar periods of warming since 1850 to the current period, and that the MWP is under debate, what factors convince you that recent warming has been largely man-made?
A: The fact that we can’t explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing.

Q: Let’s talk about the e-mails now: In the e-mails you refer to a “trick” which your critics say suggests you conspired to trick the public? You also mentioned “hiding the decline” (in temperatures). Why did you say these things?
A: This remark has nothing to do with any “decline” in observed instrumental temperatures. The remark referred to a well-known observation, in a particular set of tree-ring data, that I had used in a figure to represent large-scale summer temperature changes over the last 600 years. The phrase ‘hide the decline’ was shorthand for providing a composite representation of long-term temperature changes made up of recent instrumental data and earlier tree-ring based evidence, where it was absolutely necessary to remove the incorrect impression given by the tree rings that temperatures between about 1960 and 1999 (when the email was written) were not rising, as our instrumental data clearly showed they were. This “divergence” is well known in the tree-ring literature.

Felix,

Why don’t you stick to covering your domain of expertise? It could save you some embarrassment in the future.
FYI, the scientific debate over the theory of man-made global warming is far from over.
You might be interested in reading this: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61 O3O820100225

I suppose the big beneficiaries in that segment would be the Financial Times and perhaps the New York Times business section. Maybe The Economist? Which other publications do you see as the leading sources for in-depth business news these days? Personally, I find myself getting more and more information from blogs like this one.