The NY Times had his annual article about air travel and airport congestions on the week leading to Thanksgiving. (“Seeking Deals, Holiday Fliers Get Early Start”, NY Times, November 2009).

The day before Thanksgiving is “known” to be the busiest day in air travel. The article reports that this year, the delays started even before

But the long lines and frayed nerves actually started last week, as many penny-pinching travelers booked earlier, and less expensive, flights.  As a result, what used to be a quick holiday trip home is now stretching to a week or more.

The article claims that due to the economic situation people are willing to travel early (or late) in order to avoid congestion in the airports during the busiest days of the year.  But is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving really the busiest day… or has it even been the busiest day in recent history. According the CBS News’s article (“Holiday Travel Myths Exposed”, November 2009), it is not. It is not even close to being the busiest

In reality, the day before Thanksgiving is not the busiest day of the year,” said Roger Dow of the U.S. Travel Association., In fact, according to official government data, when it comes to the number of airline flights, today doesn’t even rank among the top 25 busiest days.

Last year, there were 220 days with more flights than the day before Thanksgiving.  Basically, it’s a myth, which is fostered by multiple parties: the media (who else – otherwise what will the NY Times do with their annual article about airport congestion before Thanksgiving), the airlines (who can charge a premium for flights on a day with no unusual demand), and us (who still have memories of long delays).

The simple explanation for the diminishing number of flights is that customers are strategic in choosing when to travel, and given that everybody “knows” these are the busiest days, a smart customer will avoid them (and thus airlines reduce the number of flights). My colleagues Prof. Marty Lariviere  (who blogs here), and Prof. Jan Van Mieghem have a very interesting paper about customers choosing, strategically, when to be served (Strategically Seeking Service: How Competition Can Generate Poisson Arrivals). The fact that the “busiest” day of the year is only the 220^th busiest of a specific year, is very much in line with their predictions.  The good news is that, we all benefit from that:

Mr. Dillman said the bargain-hunting Thanksgiving travelers actually increased the airline’s chances of running a smoother operation.

The Menace and Immorality of the Welfare State
by Richard M. Ebeling

In the United States policies are being promulgated by those with political power in Washington, D. C. that will involve a massive and dangerous growth in the size and scope of government. At the core of the Obama administration’s push for implementing a comprehensive national health care system and related programs is a radical ideological belief in political paternalism and the welfare state.

In the face of the euphoria of those demanding such a huge expansion of “Big Brother” over even more of our lives, it is worthwhile reminding ourselves of the premises behind and the realities of welfare statism.

continue reading…

The Austrian Investor posted the following at his site:

Compassion vs. Compulsion
November 26, 2009 by Austrian Investor

Here is an excellent interview with Dr. Richard Ebeling where he is defending the free market and why it is the only moral choice.  Charity = Compassion whereas Redistribution = Compulsion and the Loss if Liberty.

Radio Interview

The only opinion I would add is that even seemingly “necessary” government services such as “the protection of property” and “national defense” can be better provided by the free market where there is competition for your dollars.  In a free market you have the ability to withdraw your support if you are not satisfied with the services being offered forcing the provider to earn your business (see Chaos Theory by Dr. Robert Murphy).    A little bit of compulsion is like being a little bit pregnant.  Limited government often grows to unlimited government.

What if your customers tell you they are liking what you do but give you no insight into whether they actually like what you’re trying to accomplish.

For example, I assume there is some non-zero part of the population that derives real value from ‘junk mail’ (the paper kind) and phone books that are still delivered to houses across the nation by transforming them into great fire starters and fuel for indoor fires.

On surveying that audience, you’d likely hear glowing praise for the practice and encouragement for more. Survey everyone else and they’ll likely toss your form of neatly arranged ‘on a scale of one to five’ questions into the nearest recycle bin.

A more sensible approach (which I’m sure is common practice) would be to measure conversions and really see how effective direct mail campaigns are. I question how easy that would be to do with a phonebook however, so perhaps the annual yellow pages still has a few years of opportunity left yet.

This area is not an official neighborhood but is a popular area to live. This narrow band of land that runs between MoPac and Barton Creek south of the Colorado River along the western bank of Barton Creek is home to one of the largest concentrations of town homes, condos and apartments in Austin.

The views of the creek and the city skyline are great, the easy access to MoPac and nearby Loop 360 make it a convenient address, plus downtown Austin is just minutes away. The shopping centers along Bee Caves Road just West of Mopac in Westlake Hills provide all of the conveniences you need. But one of the most compelling reasons to live in the area is its location along the Barton Creek greenbelt and its proximity to Zilker Park.

Some people may throw this area in with Barton Hills but officially Barton Creek is the Western border of that neighborhood. The reason for the name is because the two primary, and pretty much only, roads in the area are Barton’s Bluff and Spyglass. Barton’s Bluff is just a short artery off Mopac’s feeder road and Spyglass makes a loop next to Barton Creek and hits the same Mopac feeder road twice just South and just North of Barton Skyway’s Western section. Barton Skyway, however, does not connect to its Eastern brother because of the greenbelt.

Increasingly, editorials and news reports are calling into question not only the accuracy of the federal government’s stimulus spending and jobs allegedly created, but the fundamental wisdom of massive government spending, instead of reducing the tax burden on individuals and businesses to fuel economic growth.

“As the nation looks at the prospect of continued high unemployment despite a modest economic recovery, some economic policy choices made by President Obama and senior congressional Democrats at the beginning of the year have become apparent political traps,” said the Post & Courier in a November 23 editorial. “Among these was the decision to emphasize government spending over tax cuts in the fiscal stimulus bill and to call it a ‘jobs bill’ to ‘create or save’ 3.5 million jobs.”

A November 22 story in The Herald reports that a debate “over phantom congressional districts and the number of jobs created by the $787 billion economic-stimulus plan… is raging across South Carolina among private-sector recipients of stimulus money and among state government officials tracking the funds and their impact.”

The Herald reported that, as South Carolina unemployment reached 12.1 percent, South Carolina Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom said “the true number of stimulus-related jobs in South Carolina is likely half the number claimed by Obama.” Even boasts by South Carolina politicians about saving teachers’ jobs is “demagoguery,” Eckstrom charged in an article in The State. “We’re not going to fire teachers,” he said. “We never have, at least not in my lifetime.”

Although the Obama administration has changed the recovery.gov Web site so that it no longer lists nonexistent congressional districts, the embarrassment and damaged credibility continue. In ZIP code 29211, for example, recovery.gov reports stimulus spending of more than $640 million, and zero jobs created. In downtown Columbia, ZIP code 29201, the government says it created 5,186.7 jobs with just under $400 million in stimulus spending.

“Accurate reporting on the jobs bill’s impact may not be possible,” said the Post & Courier, adding that “controversy over stimulus jobs undermines the expectation that government can lead a way out of the ‘jobless recovery’ by spending more.”

If aggregate numbers for both for spending and job creation are unreliable and inflated, at least you can drill down to see specific example of what your tax dollars, by way of stimulus money, are buying.

Visit Stimulus Watch 2.0 to find and rate stimulus projects in your area. Here are a few examples, according to the most recent data available from Stimulus Watch:

• The South Carolina Research Foundation received $264,491 for research on “Damped and Sub-damped Lyman-alpha Absorbers: What Are They, and What Do They Tell Us About Galaxy Evolution?” Jobs created: 1. (The South Carolina Research Foundation has received more than $15 million in stimulus dollars for research funding.)
• Aiken has received the most stimulus money, more than $1.634 billion, most of which will be spent to decommission two nuclear reactors at the Savannah River site.
• In Rock Hill, $399,195 for salary increases and longer hours for Head Start employees. Job creation: none.
• When in doubt, pave. Statewide, $440,991,384 has been funneled to the Department of Transportation for road resurfacing, vehicles, maintenance, and other projects.

South Carolina has its own version of stimulus dollars: special-interest tax breaks to a few businesses in the state, while the vast majority of businesses struggle under high corporate taxes and burdensome government regulation. Research published this month by the Policy Council in Unleashing Capitalism: A Prescription for Economic Growth and Prosperity in South Carolina, shows how dramatic growth in government and corresponding decline in free market forces have stalled economic growth in the state, increased unemployment, and made South Carolina one of the poorest states in the nation.

South Carolina’s bloated tax-and-spend government, like the federal stimulus dollars that are fueling even more government control over state and federal economies, stifles the economic freedom necessary for meaningful, long-term economic growth.

It’s not economic theory; it’s a drain on all citizens of South Carolina that’s playing out every day.

Cartoon by John Cole, Scranton Times-Tribune.

Increasingly, editorials and news reports are calling into question not only the accuracy of the federal government’s stimulus spending and jobs allegedly created, but the fundamental wisdom of massive government spending, instead of reducing the tax burden on individuals and businesses to fuel economic growth.

“As the nation looks at the prospect of continued high unemployment despite a modest economic recovery, some economic policy choices made by President Obama and senior congressional Democrats at the beginning of the year have become apparent political traps,” said the Charleston Post and Courier in a Nov. 23 editorial. “Among these was the decision to emphasize government spending over tax cuts in the fiscal stimulus bill and to call it a ‘jobs bill’ to ‘create or save’ 3.5 million jobs.”

A Nov. 22 story in the Rock Hill Herald reports that a debate “over phantom congressional districts and the number of jobs created by the $787 billion economic-stimulus plan… is raging across South Carolina among private-sector recipients of stimulus money and among state government officials tracking the funds and their impact.”

The Herald reported that, as South Carolina unemployment reached 12.1 percent, South Carolina Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom said “the true number of stimulus-related jobs in South Carolina is likely half the number claimed by Obama.”

Even boasts by South Carolina politicians about saving teachers’ jobs is “demagoguery,” Eckstrom charged in an article in The State. “We’re not going to fire teachers,” he said. “We never have, at least not in my lifetime.”

Although the Obama administration has changed the recovery.gov Web site so that it no longer lists nonexistent congressional districts, the embarrassment and damaged credibility continue.

In ZIP code 29211, for example, recovery.gov reports stimulus spending of more than $640 million, and zero jobs created. In downtown Columbia, ZIP code 29201, the government says it created 5,186.7 jobs with just under $400 million in stimulus spending.

“Accurate reporting on the jobs bill’s impact may not be possible,” said the Post and Courier, adding that “controversy over stimulus jobs undermines the expectation that government can lead a way out of the ‘jobless recovery’ by spending more.”

If aggregate numbers for both for spending and job creation are unreliable and inflated, at least you can drill down to see specific example of what your tax dollars, by way of stimulus money, are buying.

Visit Stimulus Watch 2.0 to find and rate stimulus projects in your area. Here are a few examples, according to the most recent data available from Stimulus Watch:

• The South Carolina Research Foundation received $264,491 for research on “Damped and Sub-damped Lyman-alpha Absorbers: What Are They, and What Do They Tell Us About Galaxy Evolution?” Jobs created: 1. (The South Carolina Research Foundation has received more than $15 million in stimulus dollars for research funding.)
• Aiken has received the most stimulus money, more than $1.634 billion, most of which will be spent to decommission two nuclear reactors at the Savannah River Site.
• In Rock Hill, $399,195 for salary increases and longer hours for Head Start employees. Job creation: none.
• When in doubt, pave. Statewide, $440,991,384 has been funneled to the Department of Transportation for road resurfacing, vehicles, maintenance, and other projects.

South Carolina has its own version of stimulus dollars: special-interest tax breaks to a few businesses in the state, while the vast majority of businesses struggle under high corporate taxes and burdensome government regulation.

Research published this month by the Policy Council in Unleashing Capitalism: A Prescription for Economic Growth and Prosperity in South Carolina, shows how dramatic growth in government and corresponding decline in free market forces have stalled economic growth in the state, increased unemployment, and made South Carolina one of the poorest states in the nation.

South Carolina’s bloated tax-and-spend government, like the federal stimulus dollars that are fueling even more government control over state and federal economies, stifles the economic freedom necessary for meaningful, long-term economic growth.

It’s not economic theory; it’s a drain on all citizens of South Carolina that’s playing out every day.

At last, recycling is to be encouraged not delivered under threat of criminality. George Osborne’s announcement today took me back nearly 20 years, to when I was PR adviser to the first attempt to incentivise better recycling practice through supermarket vouchers. The scheme envisaged trailers in car parks, staffed by people endlessly sorting the rubbish shoppers brought back and rewarding them with store vouchers. It was the early days of the barcode (revolutionary technology then which made the idea possible). It seemed hugely ambitious, thoroughly unwieldy and years ahead of its time. After all, most people’s idea of recycling was still limited to the bottle bank at the end of the road.  Then came store cards and the ‘voucher’ incentive died a death. Eventually, the supermarkets did their own thing, with reverse vending machines giving storecard points. But most people now want to recycle from home, under the auspices of their local council – kerbside collection is convenient and, if properly sorted, should give us the best quality recyclate.

So, where Windsor and Maidenhead residents lead, we might all follow. The voucher is back; a potent symbol for cash strapped Britain. And why not? Demographic evidence shows that those households who are most reluctant to get the recycling habit are also the ones most likely to benefit from and use shopping vouchers. Some may say, go the whole hog and give money off the council tax; that has its merit as well – the important thing is that those who create the public benefit reap the private benefit.

The beauty of this scheme is that it uses classic retail marketing techniques to benefit the environment. So, we can give special promotions and incentives depending on what is needed. If there is a shortage of clear glass in the system (as there often is) offer double reward points for clear jars and bottles – now there’s a good reason to rinse out that empty pasta sauce pot or jam jar.

It’s inherently flexible and treats the householder as a partner not a potential felon. There isn’t  a council in the land that wouldn’t gain from saying thank you to its residents. As Osborne says, “Carrots work better than sticks” – and soon you might get them more cheaply as well.

The following is a response by one of our readers to a friend’s question regarding deflation vs. inflation and the impact on the gold price:

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for sending over that report by Nick Guarino. He makes some great points and I believe he is right in many cases although I have some contrary opinions on gold. I have not looked at his oil or stock scenario. I’ve listed his arguments below with my responses to each of them. I also recommend listening to the following audio interview with John Williams of ShadowStats.com where he specifically addresses the inflation/deflation debate:

John Williams Interview
http://wp.me/pHQmz-68

I also recommend listening to the radio interviews with Jim Willie (mentioned below).

1. Nick says: “IMF has plenty of gold to sell into the market.”

Response: This is true. But the real question is will there be sufficient demand to absorb it? I say yes. India bought the 200 tons (which is money they spent on gold instead of U.S. Treasuries). China has continued to buy and plans to continue. This is being referred to as the “Beijing Put” (http://tinyurl.com/n3nvrs). Sri Lanka just recently announced a major purchase of gold and Russia has stated its intention to buy more gold too (http://en.rian.ru/russia/20091119/156903575.html).

2. Nick says: “Prices are in deflation not inflation.”

Response: Yes, prices are down but they are down primarily in financial assets which were previously “inflated” with easy credit. These debt-financed assets will continue to fall in price as defaults rise and lending shrinks. Prices in consumer goods and services will begin to rise as the dollar drops.

It is important to note that the proper definition of inflation is “an increase in the money supply”. Rising prices are only a result of an increase in the money supply and these rising prices may not show up right away or they may show up in specific assets over others (gold and stocks versus houses).

3. Nick says: “Collapsing credit is deflationary”.

Response: Not necessarily. When a debtor defaults on his debt, the money that was lent stays in the financial system. It is not taken out. These debt defaults show up on the financial statements of the banks (more on this later). The pay-down of debt does shrink the money supply but most people can’t pay off their debt because they owe more than the assets securing these debts are worth. This will continue to cause defaults.

4. Nick says: a.) “The dollar and the U.S. Government are too big to fail; b.) If the dollar fails the world will be thrust into an economic Dark Age therefore foreign governments will not let it happen; c.) Foreign governments must buy every dollar of U.S. Government debt otherwise they will be wiped out first; d.) Demand for U.S. Debt is at an all-time high evidenced by low rates.”

Response: I will Respond to these individually:

a.) “The dollar and the U.S. Government are too big to fail” They are not too big to fail. Yes, this would create a lot of pain but at some point foreign lenders will cut off the credit card. There is a point when creditors realize that they will never be repaid and it no longer makes sense to throw good money after bad. Of course, foreign governments can’t do this all at once without hurting themselves so they play a risky game of slowly and quietly diversifying out of dollars hoping not to spook others and create a stampede out of the dollar – hence, the steady dollar decline and relentless gold rise. This is hard to do safely and will likely fail as the dollar flight accelerates. China has been buying every resource company they can get their hands on which is another way of dumping/trading their dollars for these real assets (http://tinyurl.com/y8jby2z).

b.) “If the dollar fails the world will be thrust into an economic Dark Age therefore foreign governments will not let it happen.” In addition to the response in “a.” above, foreign governments must choose between some pain now or more pain later. As they diversify out of dollars and buy gold they hope to be the first ones out of the burning theater. It is their intent to offset dollar losses with gold gains. This will likely turn into a stampede. Yes, a Dark Ages will happen but the longer they wait the worse it will be.

c.) “Foreign governments must buy every dollar of U.S. Government debt otherwise they will be wiped out first.” Same responses as “a” and “b” above.  Also, they are going to be wiped out anyway so they might as well get rid of their dollars as fast as they can while they still can.

d.) “Demand for U.S. Debt is at an all-time high evidenced by low rates.” Yes and no. The demand is high but unsustainable for the reasons stated above. There is also substantial speculation that the Fed is already buying these treasuries (Quantitative Easing) through back door foreign intermediaries (Jim Willie: Systemic Crisis: audio interviews http://tinyurl.com/ydakvlw). Could this be one reason why they don’t want an audit?

5. Nick says: “Foreign Countries are taking coordinated steps to stabilize the dollar. China, Japan, Philippines, Middle East, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea.”

Response: This is mostly all talk. I’ve already shown above how several of these countries are slowly diversifying out of the dollar in favor of gold. What most countries fear is their currency strengthening against the dollar causing their exports to become expensive and “bad for business”. To combat this, they can either buy dollars or devalue their own currency. Many are simply choosing to devalue their currency. This causes their currencies to devalue against the one currency that cannot be devalued: Gold. Gold is resuming its supreme role as a currency (not just a commodity). Gold is the oldest form of currency and has been around since biblical times – longer than any other currency. (see “What is Money?” http://tinyurl.com/y8ay3y4).

6. Nick says: “M3 money supply is not growing, global liquidity and credit are collapsing…there is no freakin’ money.”

Response: Yes, M3 has slowed but this is only temporary. Here’s why. Banks’ excess reserves have exploded from 2 billion in July, ‘08 to 1.06 trillion today (Money Supply chart: [http://tinyurl.com/yfv54aq] and Dr. Reisman article: http://tinyurl.com/yfnv4rn). These excess reserves are funds that have not been lent out and have not created additional credit expansion. In my opinion, the reason is that the banks are still experiencing (and expecting) horrendous losses and are looking to restore their balance sheets. At some point their insolvency and inability to resume lending will frustrate the government (due to the continued cratering of the economy) and the banks will be nationalized. This will give the government, as the new owners, the ability to begin lending again which has the potential to increase the money supply by an additional $132 trillion! (see Reisman: http://tinyurl.com/yfnv4rn). Of course, the FED can be forced into QE beforehand if foreign governments dramatically slow their treasury purchases.

The lack of cash, or as Nick says “there is no freakin’ money”, is due to the incredible leverage before the crash. Instead of saving more, folks found it more profitable to invest most of their cash and borrow multiples on top of it. When the leveraged investments failed, their equity and cash holdings were wiped out.

Conclusion:

In dollar terms, if someone is short gold it means that they are long the dollar. I see no reason to have any confidence whatsoever in the dollar. I tell people to look at the dollar as the “common stock” of the USA – just like you would look at the stock of a corporation. When valuing a stock you would look at the management and balance sheet of the corporation to determine what you would pay for the the stock. When I apply this same analysis of the USA I conclude that the dollar is not a “stock” that I would want to own. Sure, the government can increase revenue because they have the power to tax but even a 100% tax is not enough to correct the problem (source: ShadowStats.com Hyperinflation Special Report: http://www.shadowstats.com/article/hyperinflation).

If you are still unsure as to which scenario to believe, it might make sense to put half of your assets in cash and the other half in gold.  Any drop in purchasing power in one would likely be offset by the increased purchasing power in the other and your original purchasing power will likely be preserved.

Today, more than ever there is a need for Industry to be responsible in its environmental judgements and actions. With the haste to improve the over-all environmental situation and push on Industry to reduce its carbon footprint, it is important to educate yourself on the short term and long term ramifications of the “Green” solutions you implement. In the case of lighting upgrades, there is a great opportunity to reduce corporation and municipality electricity expenses and more importantly to reduce the electricity demanded from the energy providers who are the greatest contributors of CO2 gases released into the environment. In selecting the lighting solution, you want to ensure you investigate not only the short term purchasing costs, but also the long term costs associated with waste; i.e. labour costs due to installation, maintenance/cleaning and light bulb replacements; and lamp consumable cost expenses which are significant yet typically ‘hidden’ or looked over and purposely not highlighted in the selling process of fluorescent (FLUO) and LED based lighting products.

When considering the type of lighting for your new or retrofit high-bay or low-bay lighting application, it is essential to be educated and made aware of what long term costs will be incurred over the lifetime of the lighting system. One very important aspect to consider is the maintenance and labour costs associated with the cleaning and the changing of lamps. Fluorescent and LED lighting systems have the problem that the light quality they emit inherently degrades over the operating life of their lamps, increasing the lamp replacement frequency and over-all expenses of operating those systems.

Comparing Digital Ballast powered High-Intensity Discharge lighting (Digital HID or DHID lighting) to fluorescent and LED, end-users agree that the added value offered in terms of the DHID solution’s low buying price, energy efficiency, light quality/performance, and reduced labour and maintenance costs, ensures end-users benefit with the best lighting for the shortest payback or return on investment time. Furthermore, when considering the upgrade or retrofit of an existing inefficient lighting installation, one must consider the labour costs involved in the installation; such as the removal of the old lighting system, re-wiring, changing of the lighting grid pattern, and all the consumable costs and other indirect waste created as a result. In the case of the upgrade of an existing core and coil (magnetic) powered ballast fixture, the DHID digital ballast solution is simple, cost-effective, outperforms and is the most environmentally responsible.

It is wise to consider the long term costs associated with fluorescent lighting to truly appreciate the “realistic” return on investment of fluorescent based lighting for factory/warehouse, retail, and general building high-bay and low-bay lighting applications. The following facts about DHID lighting versus FLUO lighting serves to highlight the performance and the common costs associated with the installation and operation of each in the short and long term to help you accurately conclude your own realistic return on investment calculation.

Capabilities and Benefits of DHID Vs. FLUO

This is a direct comparison between both DHID and fluorescent lighting solutions for a 40ft high-bay ceiling application where antiquated core and coil (magnetic) 1000W ballasts in existing HID fixture are already installed.

The recommended Digital HID retrofit solution is a dimmable 575W DHID ballast powering a 575W Metal Halide (MH) bulb. The proposed fluorescent high output high-bay T5 solution features 8 lamps at 54W each and 2 non-dimming electronic ballasts.

Installation Complexity and Cost?

DHID: A simple ‘plug and play’ retrofit of one digital ballast into the existing HID fixture and one new HID bulb installed where needed. The existing fixture is re-used and the efficiency is significantly improved by 50% to 75%. The performance and light quality is also better offering 40% brighter, whiter, penetrating light over the old system. The typical labour cost to retrofit a fixture is $50.00 US and takes approximately 30-45 minutes per fixture. The typical total package cost to retrofit a 1000W magnetic ballast application is $250-$300 US including the DHID 575W ballast, light bulb and installation cost.

FLUO: To install fluorescent you need to remove and recycle the used HID fixtures including ballasts, bulbs, reflectors, wires and the exterior metal housings. You then need to create new hanging structures for the new standard size fluorescent T5 8 Lamp high output fixtures. The lighting grid layout will need to also be changed as more T5 fluorescent fixtures will be needed to ensure a uniform light coverage (overlap) at the floor between them. In most cases, extra mid level or low-bay lighting needs to be installed where illumination from the fluorescent high-bay is not significant enough. There are also costs associated with the assembly of the individual fluorescent fixtures which is a labour cost the electrical contractor will invoice. With 8 bulbs and 2 ballasts, the complexity of a fluorescent system is high, adds cost and inhibits performance. The typical cost for a fluorescent T5 8 lamp high output fixture is starting at $280 US or more and this cost does not include the assembly/installation and the cost of the 8 lamps needed per fixture and for inventory.

Luminous Efficacy and Lumens Per Watt Performance?

DHID: Luminous efficacy of 118lm/W for digital ballast powered Metal Halide (MH), High-Pressure Sodium (HPS) and Ceramic Metal Halide (CMH) HID bulb applications. If retrofitting an existing HID fixture which has an antiquated 1000W core and coil (magnetic) ballast, a new 575W digital ballast would be installed in place powering a 575W MH bulb for a new total fixture lumen output of 67,850lm (575W X 118lm/W).

FLUO: Luminous efficacy of approximately 81lm/W if 54W bulbs in a fluorescent T5 8 lamp high-output fixture operating with 2 ballasts. If 54W bulbs offer a total lumen output of 4400lm output each, then 4400 X 8 lamps = 35,200 total lumen output from the T5 8 lamp high output fixture.

Ballast / Fixture Efficiency Performance?

DHID: One digital ballast is 97% efficient. For the existing magnetic 1000W MH, we retrofit the 575W DHID ballast operating a 575W MH bulb at 592W with 3% losses. At 575 Watts, the DHID system will produce more lumens at the ground than both the existing 1000W MH and fluorescent consideration. Moreover, the notable increase in lumen output performance will bring the existing fixtures back to life, with more light at the ground, and with more light over-laps between the fixtures for a brighter white facility and working area. Due to the increase in the lumen output of the DHID ballast high-bay installation, 30% to 40% of the existing mid level fluorescent lighting can be removed adding additional energy savings. And since the 575W DHID can be dimmed, even more electricity savings are possible; e.g. instantly dimmed to 20%, the 575W ballast only consumes approximately 474W yet still outputs bright penetrating light to the target.

FLUO: Two electronic ballasts are 90% efficient. Operating 54W x 8 bulbs = approximately 480W total with heat losses. Due to the poorer lumen output of T5’s, more fixtures should be added to the lighting grid to compensate for the lower lumen output to the ground. The 2 ballast design and the accumulation of 8 bulbs creates 10% losses to heat and increased wear on the bulbs leading to a more rapid degradation in light quality. The T5 fixture in this example does not have dim capabilities; to dim would add extra cost and complexity due to the ‘special’ dimming ballasts required. As a result of dimming fluorescent, there is also increased wear and tear on the lamps adding to lamp change increases and ultimately increased labour and consumable costs in the short and long term.

Light Quality Throughout Bulb Life?

DHID: Due to Digital HID’s 118lm/W luminous efficacy performance, more lumens, and natural white bright light penetrates to the facility floor. The light quality is guaranteed over the entire life of the bulb due to patented digital ballast technologies. The bulb does not degrade more than 5% from the life start to life end of the bulb creating huge benefits to retail, factory/warehouse or any applications where consistent bright white light is mandatory. The DHID ballast increases the life of HID bulbs radically by 100% (or more if dimming is utilized). A bulb with an original mean time before failure (MTBF) rating of 20,000 hours will now last 40,000 hours or more and will suffer no less than 5% light degradation throughout the bulbs life. The high luminous efficacy of the DHID ballast delivers brighter more penetrating lumens to the factory or retail application floor for less cost. Compared to LED, fluorescent, and induction based lamp systems, DHID powered systems easily offer the best light quality/performance for the lowest total operating/consumable costs.

FLUO: The fact is that all fluorescent lamps, be they hot cathode, cold cathode or electrode-less will suffer from phosphor degradation. The rate of this degradation is a function of the type and the amount of phosphor, and the type of glass used for the tube. The temperature of the phosphor and glass and the intensity of the UV flux from the discharge also play a role in enhancing the degradation of a fluorescent bulb. High Output (HO) and Very High Output (VHO) bulbs will normally degrade faster than standard output bulbs.

Most standard output fluorescent bulbs claim 10,000 hours to 20,000 hours or more operating lifetimes, but can fall to 80% or less of their original light intensity after only 10,000 hours of operation. One must take into account the long term costs of this realistic bulb degradation and failure in considering fluorescent for your lighting application. If dimming ballasts are installed, please factor in this extra cost and also the increased cost of labour and consumables due to increased lamp changes as dimming has an adverse effect on the life of the fluorescent bulb, degrading it even quicker.

Fixture Noise, Static; Light Quality Psychological Impact?

DHID: The proven DHID ballast is silent, and operates warm as only 3% losses are to heat; the ballast is 97% efficient and does not create significant static electricity. Pulse start MH bulbs are inexpensive and produce a natural white light which is more pleasant to work under. Studies have shown that humans working in brighter, more naturally lit environments are more alert and more productive.

FLUO: Some of the common nuisances end-users underscore about fluorescent lighting are the noise, the light quality/flicker, the colour, and rapid light quality degradation by or before the bulb’s mid-life and inevitably thereafter. Fluorescent lighting fixtures require increased maintenance and cleaning due to the dust that collects on the static charged surfaces of the system. The dust and debris accumulation on the bulb and on the reflector surface is unhealthy and further adds to the degradation of light quality and total lumen output.

Lamp(s) and Ballast(s) Change Frequency?

DHID: Only 1 lamp needs to be replaced per HID fixture and with little labour cost/time needed as HID fixtures are typically easy to maintain with easy access to the light bulb. HID bulbs operated with the DHID ballast are rated to 30,000 hours to 40,000 hours or more life expectancy (with dimming) and the bulb lumen output is guaranteed to not decrease more than 5% over the lifetime of the bulb. The DHID ballast will output 118lm/W right up until the bulb’s life end. The DHID ballast is rated to a 10 year MTBF and will output the same 118lm/W up until its life-end. At ballasts life-end, it is again a very simple and cost-effective replacement to upgrade the HID system without having to replace entire fixtures.

FLUO: 8 lamps per fixture need to be replaced and much more frequently than DHID which adds more labour and maintenance costs. If mean time before failure of the fluorescent bulb is 20,000 hours then lamps need replacement every 2 to 3 years. If the lamps are considered to be failed at 10,000 hours due to significant light quality and brightness degradation, then lamp change frequency needs to be every 1 to 2 years. Since the 8 lamp fluorescent fixtures need two ballasts each, then at the ballasts life-end two ballasts need replacement. If you factor in the labour costs to remove the old ballast and reinstall new ballasts, it becomes evident that a lot of waste is created due to the limitations of the fluorescent lighting technology.

Long Term Realistic Bulb And Ballast Expenses?

DHID: Simple example: 1 bulb per existing fixture x 500 fixtures X $20 US approximate HID bulb cost for a 575W Pulse Start Metal Halide bulb = 500 bulbs at $10,000.00 US total every 4-6yrs+. Very simple procedure, 1 lamp to replace and it is easy to do in the existing fixtures since the bulbs are really easy to access. This decreases the maintenance labour costs noticeably. The DHID ballast is rated to 10 years MTBF and is also easy and cost-effective to replace at that time.

FLUO: 8 x T5 high output bulbs X 500 units = 4,000 bulbs. At an approximated bulb price of $5 USD X 4,000 bulbs the total bulb consumable costs alone is $20,000 US. If the bulb lasts 15,000 hours without significant degradation, you would incur this expense every 2 years approximately. In addition, there will be increased labour costs incurred to change 8 lamps per fixture. At the end of the ballasts life there will again be expenses incurred to replace either the entire fixture (more waste), or to retrofit two new ballasts in the existing fixture. Either option with fluorescent will result in inevitable labour and consumable expenses and environmental waste.

Motion Sensor Dimming Capabilities?

DHID: It is possible to dim Metal Halide, High-Pressure Sodium and Ceramic Metal Halide HID bulbs with DHID digital ballasts. Dimming is simple and instant and it adds to the already sizeable savings in energy consumption since the DHID ballast can dim the HID bulb from 100% power to 50% power or any step in between this range. The dimming of a DHID ballast powered bulb is barely noticeable because the system still delivers high lumen output in the dimmed state. With smart dimming, the electricity costs to operate the system are further reduced without disrupting the operation or safety of the working environment. Motion sensors are strategically placed to detect human and operator activity to determine lamp on times at full power.

In the case of a 575W DHID ballast powered HID bulb replacing a magnetic 1000W system drawing 1200W with approximated heat losses, the end-user can expect 50% or more savings without dimming. The system can then be dimmed down via motion sensor or switch by 20% to the 460W setting for the additional 20% in savings in electricity (1200W – 592W – 118.4W = 489.6W / 1200W = 59%+ savings total).

With the advancement in the DHID technology over magnetic based HID systems, lamp start times are 1 minute, dimming is instantaneous and start-up after a hot re-strike is 3 minutes. In most Industry applications, instant dimming capabilities are preferred since HID lighting systems are typically installed in areas where the lights are to be on for extended time periods. Where it is essential to have the lights on always, the dimming of a HID system is ideal since lumen output is still high in the dimmed state, yet more electricity is saved since the lights are only at full power when needed.

FLUO: Yes and No; it is possible to dim fluorescents, but you need special and expensive ballasts with this capability for T5 fluorescent bulbs. This adds expense as you need two ballasts per each 8 lamp high-bay fixture. Without dimming there is a great limit on electrical energy savings possible with fluorescent lighting. One should also consider the original lumen output performance when considering the fluorescent solutions versus a DHID retrofit solution since DHID offers a much higher output of lumens to the target, even in the dimmed state. Secondly, one should consider the effect of dimming on the fluorescent bulb since increased dim-on and dim-off cycles reduce the bulbs life. Fluorescent lighting was not originally designed for dimming, and is typically not recommended due to the associated expenses, performance limitations and poor return on investment.

Return On Investment?

DHID: With DHID the short term return on investment payback is 0.5 years to 1 year for a total DHID retrofit package including bulb, ballast and installation. In the long term, if utilizing an MH bulb with a MTBF of 30,000 hours to 40,000 hours+ with dimming, operated at 6,240 hours yearly, the bulb would need to be replaced every 4.8 years or 6.4 years+ with dimming respectively. At a bulb cost of $20 US, the total consumable cost is miniscule over the lifetime of the system. The DHID ballast is rated at 10yrs MTBF with the potential to have its life extended further depending on the application. With fewer bulbs and less frequent lamp changes, maintenance/cleaning time is more infrequent making the money saved in labour and consumable expenses over the system life noteworthy. The DHID solution guarantees high energy efficiency, and high-quality, penetrating light over the entire lifetime of the bulb and the DHID ballast.

FLUO: The short term return on investment payback time is poor due to the initial cost of purchase and installation; i.e. the labour to assemble the new T5 8 lamp fixtures; the removal of the used HID fixtures; the install and wiring of the new T5 fixture; the installation of the 8 lamps and the accumulated costs of all the fixture hardware and individual lamps for each fixture. Furthermore, in the short term one must factor in the costs of how frequently the fixtures will require cleaning due to decreased light output as a result of dust accumulation. If the T5 high output bulb is able to last 15,000 hours without noticeable degradation due to cleaning and efficient bulb operation, then bulb change labour and consumable expenses will be frequent; every 2 years or less making the return on investment of fluorescent over the long term (5 years or more) most unfavourable when compared to the DHID retrofit solution.

 
The Environmentally Responsible Lighting Retrofit Solution

The DHID ballast retrofit solution is the most environmentally responsible and cost-effective upgrade for inefficient lighting installations. By simply retrofitting the Digital HID ballast into an antiquated HID lamp system, the old fixture is re-used and rejuvenated, bringing new life and a drastic improvement in performance to the HID bulb based system. This simple procedure leaves only the magnetic ballast to be recycled (and bulb in circumstances) and therefore creates much less strain on the environment.  The DHID solution is able to reduce Industry’s carbon footprint, and the over-all CO2 emissions released into the atmosphere due to the measurable amount of energy consumption reduced and physical and time waste reduced as a result of the DHID solution.

Digital HID lighting promises and delivers the optimal balance of energy efficiency, light quality/performance, and reduced maintenance benefits for the shortest realistic return on investment payback time in the Industry. We welcome the opportunity to discuss our findings with you further; please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions.

Anthony Borges
aborges@accendoelectronics.com
www.AccendoElectronics.com

To help promote environmental initiatives, jobs, and overall sustainability, it remains vital to encourage our students and young professionals from all backgrounds through program incentives and rewards. Helping our energy sector curb dependency on foreign oil and fossil fuels will help create and begin the process of establishing a sustainable-based economy, but it is within our students and young professionals that we should be putting equal or greater importance towards.

They are the ones who will bring about the innovation, invention, and implementation of new design needed to help a sustainable economy become a reality. Scholarships, directed student programs, and rewards, are a great way to help our young and future generations get not only the tools they need to implement a sustainable future, but also the motivation. Here are 10 such scholarships.

A Pro-Free-Market Program for Economic Recovery

by George Reisman, Ph.D.

[This talk was given at Economic Downturn: Cause and Cure (Mises Circle, Sponsored by Louis E. Carabini) Newport Beach, California, November 14, 2009.]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen:

As you all know, we are in a severe economic downturn. The official unemployment rate now exceeds 10 percent and according to many observers is actually substantially higher. Within the last year or so, our financial system has been rocked to its foundations. The collapse of the housing bubble and the numerous defaults and bankruptcies connected with it brought down major financial institutions, such as Bear-Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch. It also brought down numerous small and medium-sized banks and threatened to bring down even such banking giants as Citigroup and Bank of America. The Dow Jones stock average fell from a high of 14,000 to about 6,500. Important retailers such as CompUSA, Circuit City, Mervyns, and Linens ‘N Things went under, as did countless small businesses throughout the country. Practically every shopping mall gives testimony to the severity of the downturn in the form of vacant stores.

The collapse of the housing bubble and the massive losses and mounting unemployment that have resulted from it have unleashed a veritable firestorm of hostility against capitalism, in the conviction that it is capitalism and its economic freedom that are responsible. It is now generally taken for granted that any solution for the downturn requires massive new government intervention, to curb, control, or abolish this or that aspect of capitalism and its alleged evil.

Continue reading…

The current issue of Wired (not available on-line as of this posting) has a must-read article cover story: Gone.  The premise was to determine how easily someone could disappear and adopt a new identity in the digital age.  While people can easily adopt a new life on-line, it would appear exceedingly difficult to avoid detection in an age when all of our personal information and, to some extent, our every move is captured and accessible electronically.

To test this idea, Wired asked writer Evan Ratliff to disappear for one month.  He could tell no one of his plans (not even his family or girlfriend).  They announced the contest online on August 14th, set a bounty for his discovery ($5,000–$3,000 of which was Ratliff’s own money), and invited the general public to find Ratliff through whatever means they liked (preferably, legal).  The contest would be over when someone came face to face with Ratliff, snapped a picture of him, and said the word “fluke”.  All told, it took 17 days to catch Ratliff.  The article is a must read, providing the fascinating details of Ratliff’s moves as well as those of his pursuers.

What occurred to me when reading the article was that, without saying so, Wired essentially crowdsourced the manhunt for Ratliff.  Rather than hire a single investigator or firm to find him, Wired outsourced the task to a large, undefined, diverse group of people (basically, Jeff Howe’s definition of crowdsourcing).  For crowdsourcing to work (or for crowds to be “wise”) the crowd generally has to have three attributes, all of which the hunter group seemed to possess:

• Diversity: The more diverse a crowd is, the more likely it is to be intelligent. Why? Because a diverse crowd will bring many different views to bear on a problem, thereby increasing the likelihood that a solution will be found. From what I can tell, the crowd chasing Ratliff was quite diverse and included people of all ages, professions, and skill sets. And it was an interesting mix of people who eventually nabbed him.
• Independence: The crowd must also be relatively independent, meaning individuals are not reliant on the same source of information. This is important for two reasons. First, when information is independent it’s more likely the ‘errors’ of each individual will cancel each other out. Second, independent individuals are more likely to bring unique information to the table. The article provides evidence for the independence of individuals and clusters of individuals working on the search. While many people were sampling the same information via the Twitter #vanish hashtag, there were tons of individuals bringing their own information to the party.
• Decentralization: The more decentralized, or localized, members of a crowd the smarter it will be, the idea being that the more localized and spread out a crowd is the greater the sources of information that the crowd can pull from. The hunters in this case were highly decentralized, located all over the country and providing local intelligence that the group as a whole could benefit from.

It also occurred to me that the story reveals and illustrates a few other important aspects of crowdsourcing:

• Rewards: Motivating a crowd is a key component when implementing a crowdsourcing strategy to problem solving. If the crowd isn’t properly motivated they are unlikely to put the time and effort into the task at hand. Wired did provide a monetary incentive (the $5K), the crowd seemed just as motivated (if not more so) by the reputational incentive of being known across the Wired-world as the one who found Ratliff. And not to ruin the ending of the article, but readers will see that on balance the reputational motivation won the day in this case. The lesson is that you should take into account multiple types of incentives, not just monetary, when trying to motivate a crowd.
• Self-organization & Collaboration: Even though there are individual incentives to solve the problem, it did not deter hunters from pooling their knowledge and working together in teams. The story mentions that almost immediately folks shared their information and thoughts via the hashtag #vanish, formed groups on Facebook, and even relocated to secure chat rooms to prevent moles from providing Ratliff with counterintelligence. Most of these people had never met each other. Almost instantly hunters self-organized, without the benefit of hierarchical direction. And much like the recent Netflix contest, individual hunters banded together in ad hoc and informal teams to work collaboratively towards finding Ratliff faster than if they simply worked alone.

Be sure to check it out.

…für eine große Veranstaltung März 2010 mit mehr als 250 Gästen.

Market Designer: a grave problem of-supply and demand

Wanna rent an apartment – forever?

Grave sites, once sold and occupied, are intended to be occupied for a very long time, and their sale can’t easily be negotiated if more valuable uses turn up. So there is less turnouver than in other kinds of real estate, with predictable consequences, as this Globe article attests: Supply limited, demand eternal, graveyards fill up.

Is this important in other settings? Yes, indeed. Conservation banking and biodiversity offsets, for instance, are proving a tough pill to swallow by many environmentalists, politicians and public at large. To help tackle some of the questions, conservation easements (the contracts that create a conservation bank) are being sold to society at large as meant to ensure conservation of a species in perpetuity.

However, things change. What happens to a conservation bank when a fortunate species gets unlisted?

The brown pelican, listed as an endangered species even before the 1973 U.S. Endangered Species Act existed, is officially back from the brink of extinction, the Interior Department said on Wednesday.

Source: Reuters

I don’t think there were any conservation banks for Brown Pelicans, but if there were, bank owners and investors would find themselves in a very odd situation, loathing the good news because their assets and investments would have become worthless overnight. 3 S policy, anyone?

Punchline: things change. Don’t create now the perverse incentives of later.

I realize that I take a lot of surveys. And I somewhat like doing so. Usually I do it for incentives, but other times I do it under some strange assumption that companies actually care what I think.

I try to always fill out those surveys on the bottom of Target and Home Depot receipts (with the hope that I win $5K in gift cards) or at Old Navy/Gap for 10% off. I also am a part of 3 different survey programs online. One I take surveys for various rewards (that I’ve redeemed for magazine subscriptions), one that I take for airline miles, and one that I take for NBC Universal just because I like them.

Its just odd because it seems like most people do not do any sort of surveys. I figure, why not, it doesn’t take much time and I’ve always been of the belief that someone will win and it might as well be me. (Yet I’ve never won, but I always put my business card in at Chipotle and have won twice lunch for me and 4 of my friends!)

below is a one-line note i got one friday afternoon from a friendly entrepreneur who wanted advice over the weekend:

“Is it hard when people love you for your money ?”

Environmentalism, Liberty, and the Socialist Agenda

By freemarketstudies

It is no doubt honorable for man to take care of his surroundings and eliminate waste where he can.  What is dishonorable is when those pretended “enlightened ones” use this worthy cause to further their hidden agenda.

There are certain types of people in the world who feel that they have the superiority to decide what is best for other people.  In this assumed superiority they feel it is their right to control others and to deprive them of their free agency.  These central planners are drawn by the lures of power – the ultimate power being able to decide the fate of the “lessor ones”.    These people are Socialists.  W. Cleon Skousen, in his book The Naked Communist, describes this personality as “the criminal mind”.  The criminal mind has no conscience nor morals.  It is evil and has no hesitation in lying to achieve its objectives.  It is fundamentally anti-human.

There are three important parts in this article that reveal the hidden motivations present in the current environmentalist movement.  The conclusion is that this agenda – if not stopped – will enlarge socialism (under the guise of “environmentalism”) which can only result in the further loss of individual liberty.

Part One:

The following excerpt is from a 2001 interview Dr. George Reisman, economics professor at Pepperdine University:

AEN: On environmentalism, you seem to go way beyond your teacher.

REISMAN: Mises has some relevant discussions. For example, he speaks about monopoly pricing of very scarce resources acting as a means of conservation. But mostly, this political ideology we call environmentalism began in the mid-1960s. I remember that I was in San Francisco in 1967, reading a column by Eric Severeid. He predicted that environmentalism would be a leading political movement in the next decade. I recall thinking: that’s preposterous.  It seemed so ridiculous, I couldn’t understand how anyone could take it seriously.

The whole movement seemed to grow out of Lady Bird Johnson’s objections to billboards on interstate highways. It began as a kind of silly political program to get rid of junkyards because they were unsightly. I recall that Al Capp had a solution to the problem of junkyards. He wanted Andy Warhol to put his signature on them and call them works of art. That was about the level of answer the whole thing deserved.

AEN: But in time, the movement would grow.

REISMAN: It is so large that it is impossible to get away from. A student told me that as a child he was exposed to all sorts of cartoons featuring children who fight dirty capitalists who own sludge factories. These kids are being indoctrinated, not only by cartoons but in school and in the culture at large.

What’s at issue here is a philosophical problem. The movement is fundamentally antihuman. That is what motivates it. This is a more widely occurring phenomenon than you might suppose. We know of serial killers, but every once in a while similar mentalities gain political power, as happened with the communists and the Nazis. There is a lot of hatred and hostility in many people that is just looking for something to attach itself to.

AEN: An attack on human life by another means.

REISMAN: That is essentially what environmentalism amounts to. It is the political movement where the destructive impulse has parked itself today. First you have the hatred, then you have a cultural vehicle, such as a totalitarian political movement or an insane religion, that allows and encourages the hatred to be expressed.

Intellectually, environmentalism is nothing more than the death rattle of socialism and should be much easier to overcome. Socialists used to masquerade as defenders of science and reason, and now they are openly anti-science and technology, as we see with environmentalism.

AEN: Also, they don’t promise to better our lot.

REISMAN: It’s true that the communists always claimed that if they had control, they would improve the material lot of mankind. The environmentalists don’t offer that; quite the opposite, they say that mankind is too well off.  They claim they want collectivist control in order to avoid what they claim will be immense catastrophe.

But their idea of success is thwarting human success. In their view, the environment is only destroyed by human beings. The caribou eat the vegetation, and that’s okay. The wolves kill the caribou, and that’s okay. Microbes are  killing them both, and that’s okay. The only thing that’s not okay is if human beings attempt to do anything. Only then does the environment need protection,  in their view. We can conclude from this that it is only human beings they are really after.

AEN: What about the economic arguments?

REISMAN: We can distinguish between two types of natural resources: what nature provides and the fraction of what nature provides that man has become able to make useable and accessible. The whole physical world and universe consists of nothing but natural resources— matter, in all of its elemental forms, and energy, in all of its forms—provided by nature. The useable, accessible fraction of those resources can be progressively enlarged.

Menger speaks to this issue. He shows that we must create the goods character of any resource. If we do not, it is not a good and has no value. The more knowledge and physical power we exercise over nature, the larger becomes the supply of useable, accessible natural resources.

Our use of nature’s resources—of the chemical elements and energy provided by nature—does not reduce their overall physical quantity. It merely improves their relationship to our well-being. It thereby improves the external material conditions of our lives, which means: it improves our environment.

Despite all the propaganda, the market has led to vast improvements in such things as air quality. The fact that I’m sitting in an air-conditioned room in August in Alabama and not sweating is quite a testimonial to the improvement in air quality. So is central heating in winter time, and modern ventilation systems in kitchens and bathrooms. So is the automobile, which has eliminated the stench of horse manure and horse urine in the streets.   So is the iron and steel industry, which made possible the low-cost pipe that enabled the streets to stop serving as sewers.

AEN: What other problems are they responsible for?

REISMAN: The waste involved in the forcible imposition of environmental regulations is incalculable.

Part Two:

Here is a post by Dr. Gary North:

It’s Not Just That Global Warming Is Fake. What Matters Is Why This Fakery Is Being Promoted.

Gary North

July 3, 2009

Global warming is based 100% on junk science. The most vocal promoters are not interested in the details of physical science. They are interested in two things: political control over the general public and the establishment of international socialism.

Junk Science vs. Real Science

For a detailed, footnoted, 12-page article, written by three scientists, two with Ph.D’s from CalTech, click here.

This paper was sent to tens of thousands of natural scientists in the United States.

Over 31,000 scientists have put their reputations on the line and signed a politically incorrect petition opposing the 1997 Kyoto agreement or protocol. Here is a photocopy of a signed petition.

Here is a letter from a former president of the National Academy of Sciences. He asks recipients of the petition to sign it.

Back in the 1970’s, the bugaboo was the coming ice age, as this Time Magazine article promoted. Not to be outdone, Newsweek got on board. The article warned: “Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects.” Want more examples? Click here.

It, too, was based on junk science. It, too, had the same solution: government control over the economy. The goal never changes: government management over the economy. The justification has changed. If the voters won’t accept control over their lives on the basis of one brand of junk science, maybe they will accept another. As they used to say in the Nixon Administration: “Let’s run this up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes.”

Socialism’s Last Stand

The global warming movement is not about global warming. It is about the creation of an international political control arrangement by which bureaucrats who favor socialism can gain control over the international economy.

This strategy was stated boldly by economist Robert Heilbroner in 1990. Heilbroner, the multi-millionaire socialist and author of the best-selling history of economic thought, The Worldly Philosophers, wrote the manifesto for these bureaucrats. He did this in an article, “Reflections: After Communism,” published by The New Yorker (Sept. 10, 1990).

In this article, he made an astounding admission. He said that Ludwig von Mises had been right in 1920 in his article, “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth.” Mises argued that without private ownership, central planners could not know what any resource is worth to consumers. With no capital market, the planners would be flying blind.

Heilbroner said that for 70 years, academic economists had either ignored this article or dismissed it without answering it. Then Heilbroner wrote these words: “Mises was right.”

Heilbroner was one of these people. There is no reference to Mises in The Worldly Philosophers.

This admission was the preliminary section of Heilbroner’s manifesto. He was cutting off all hope by socialists that there is a theoretically plausible response to Mises. The free market economy will always outproduce a socialist economy. Get used to it, he said.

Then, in the second section, he called on his socialist peers to get behind the ecology movement. Here, he said, is the best political means for promoting central planning, despite its inefficiency. In the name of ecology, he said, socialists can get a hearing from politicians and voters.

The article is not online. An abstract is. Here is the concluding thought of the abstract.

The direction in which things are headed is some version of capitalism, whatever its title. In Eastern Europe, the new system is referred to as Not Socialism. Socialism may not continue as an important force now that Communism is finished. But another way of looking at socialism is as the society that must emerge if humanity is to cope with the ecological burden that economic growth is placing on the environment. From this perspective, the long vista after Communism leads through capitalism into a still unexplored world that roust [must?] be safely attained and settled before it can be named.Heilbroner did not care that a worldwide government-run economic planning system would not be called called socialism. He just wanted to see the system set up.

Heilbroner’s peers got the message. That was what Kyoto was all about.

Conclusion

If you like poverty, inefficiency, and bureaucratic controls over the economy, and therefore control over your choices, the “climate change” movement is ideal.

If you want to subsidize China and India, neither of which will enforce the rules laid down by unelected international bureaucrats, this movement is for you.

If you want to pay more for less energy, there is no better way than to pass the cap and tax bill which the House has passed. It will be sent to the U.S. Senate next week.

The rest of us should oppose it.

I hereby authorize anyone to reprint this article or post it on any website, just so long as the text is not changed.© 2005-2009 GaryNorth.Com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction without permission prohibited.

Part Three:

Now we come to see the “criminal mind” unmasked through this bombshell story:

ClimateGate – Climate center’s server hacked revealing documents and emails

November 20, 7:27 AMClimate Change Examiner – Tony Hake

Britain’s Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia, suffered a data breach in recent days when a hacker apparently broke into their system and made away with thousands of emails and documents. The stolen data was then posted to a Russian server and has quickly made the rounds among climate skeptics. The documents within the archive, if proven to be authentic, would at best be embarrassing for many prominent climate researchers and at worst, damning.

Story recap & latest news: ClimateGate emails provide unwanted scrutiny of climate scientists

The electronic break in itself has been verified by the director of the research unit, Professor Phil Jones. He told Britain’s Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition “It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails.”

The file that has been making the rounds was initially brought to light by the website The Air Vent. The 61mb file contains thousands of documents and emails. As the archive was just discovered within the last 24 hours, its authenticity has not been determined and as such readers should cast a skeptical eye on the contents.  It should also be noted that it appears the emails were illegally obtained by whoever originally posted them.

• File download: The archive is available on FileDropper.com here

At least one person that was included in some of the correspondence, Steve McIntyre of the website Climate Audit, verified the authenticity of at least some of the messages. McIntyre said, “Every email that I’ve examined so far looks genuine. There are a few emails of mine that are 100% genuine. It is really quite breathtaking.”

The contents of the archive contain documents and email correspondence from a veritable who’s who in climate science. Among those included in the emails are Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, his assistant, Michael Mann of the University of Virginia, Malcolm Hughes at the University of Arizona, Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies and others.

The emails contain an array of discussions including what appear to be concerted efforts to withhold data. Just as troubling is conversations that allude to potentially manipulating climate data to “hide the decline” of temperatures seen in the last decade.

Some of the excerpts of emails within the archives (edited for brevity, emphasis added):

From Michael E. Mann (witholding of information / data):

“Dear Phil and Gabi,
I’ve attached a cleaned-up and commented version of the matlab code that I wrote for doing the Mann and Jones (2003) composites. I did this knowing that Phil and I are likely to have to respond to more crap criticisms from the idiots in the near future, so best to clean up the code and provide to some of my close colleagues in case they want to test it, etc. Please feel free to use this code for your own internal purposes, but don’t pass it along where it may get into the hands of the wrong people.”
From Nick McKay (modifying data):

“The Korttajarvi record was oriented in the reconstruction in the way that McIntyre said. I took a look at the original reference – the temperature proxy we looked at is x-ray density, which the author interprets to be inversely related to temperature. We had higher values as warmer in the reconstruction, so it looks to me like we got it wrong, unless we decided to reinterpret the record which I don’t remember. Darrell, does this sound right to you?”
From Tom Wigley (acknowleding the urban effect):

“We probably need to say more about this. Land warming since 1980 has been twice the ocean warming — and skeptics might claim that this proves that urban warming is real and important.”

From Phil Jones (modification of data to hide unwanted results):

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

From Kevin Trenberth (failure of computer models):

“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.”

From Michael Mann (truth doesn’t matter):

“Perhaps we’ll do a simple update to  the Yamal post, e.g. linking Keith/s new page–Gavin t?  As to the issues of robustness, particularly w.r.t. inclusion of the Yamal series, we  actually emphasized that (including the Osborn and Briffa ‘06 sensitivity test) in our  original post! As we all know, this isn’t about truth at all, its about plausibly deniable accusations.”

From Phil Jones (witholding of data):

“The skeptics seem to be building up a head of steam here! …  The IPCC comes in for a lot of stick. Leave it to you to delete as appropriate! Cheers Phil
PS I’m getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act !”

From Michael E. Mann (using a website to control the message, hide dissent):

“Anyway, I wanted you guys to know that you’re free to use RC [RealClimate.org - A supposed neutral climate change website] Rein any way you think would be helpful. Gavin and I are going to be careful about what comments we screen through, and we’ll be very careful to answer any questions that come up to any extent we can. On the other hand, you might want to visit the thread and post replies yourself. We can hold comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or not you think they should be screened through or not, and if so, any comments you’d like us to include.”

From Phil Jones (witholding of data):

“If FOIA does ever get used by anyone, there is also IPR to consider as well. Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them.”

If the emails and documents are a forgery, it would be an extremely large one that would likely have taken months to setup. No doubt much more will be coming out about these emails and their possible authenticity. Stay tuned to the Climate Change Examiner for updates as more information becomes available.

Update, 10:30am – Since the original publication of this article, the story is gaining steam and now the BBC is reporting on it. They report that a spokesman for the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), “We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites.”

Analysis of the emails and documents in the archives continues. We must stress that the authenticity has not been proven however there have been no denials of such by the climate center.  Some of the more recent revelations include:

From Phil Jones (destroying of emails / evidence):

“Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.”

From Tom Wigley (data modification):

“Phil, Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean — but we’d still have to explain the land blip. I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips — higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from. Removing ENSO does not affect this. It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”. Let me go further. If you look at NH vs SH and the aerosol effect (qualitatively or with MAGICC) then with a reduced ocean blip we get continuous warming in the SH, and a cooling in the NH — just as one would expect with mainly NH aerosols. The other interesting thing is (as Foukal et al. note — from MAGICC) that the 1910-40 warming cannot be solar. The Sun can get at most 10% of this with Wang et al solar, less with Foukal solar. So this may well be NADW, as Sarah and I noted in 1987 (and also Schlesinger later). A reduced SST blip in the 1940s makes the 1910-40 warming larger than the SH (which it currently is not) — but not really enough. So … why was the SH so cold around 1910? Another SST problem? (SH/NH data also attached.) This stuff is in a report I am writing for EPRI, so I’d appreciate any comments you (and Ben) might have. Tom.”

From  Thomas R Karl (witholding data) :

“We should be able to  conduct our scientific research without constant fear of an “audit” by Steven McIntyre;  without having to weigh every word we write in every email we send to our scientific colleagues.  In my opinion, Steven McIntyre is the self-appointed Joe McCarthy of climate science. I  am unwilling to submit to this McCarthy-style investigation of my scientific research.  As you know, I have refused to send McIntyre the “derived” model data he requests, since all of the primary model data necessary to replicate our results are freely available to  him. I will continue to refuse such data requests in the future. Nor will I provide  McIntyre with computer programs, email correspondence, etc. I feel very strongly about  these issues. We should not be coerced by the scientific equivalent of a playground bully.  I will be consulting LLNL’s Legal Affairs Office in order to determine how the DOE and LLNL should respond to any FOI requests that we receive from McIntyre.”

From Tom Wigley (ousting of a skeptic from a professional organization):

“Proving bad behavior here is very difficult. If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted.”

From Phil Jones (forging of dates):

“Gene/Caspar, Good to see these two out. Wahl/Ammann doesn’t appear to be in CC’s online first, but comes up if you search.  You likely know that McIntyre will check this one to make sure it hasn’t changed since the IPCC close-off date July 2006! Hard copies of the WG1 report from CUP have arrived here today. Ammann/Wahl – try and change the Received date!  Don’t give those skeptics something to amuse themselves with.”

From a document titled “jones-foiathoughts.doc” (witholding of data):

“Options appear to be:
1. Send them the data
2. Send them a subset removing station data from some of the countries who made us pay in the normals papers of Hulme et al. (1990s) and also any number that David can remember. This should also omit some other countries like (Australia, NZ, Canada, Antarctica). Also could extract some of the sources that Anders added in (31-38 source codes in J&M 2003). Also should remove many of the early stations that we coded up in the 1980s.
3. Send them the raw data as is, by reconstructing it from GHCN. How could this be done? Replace all stations where the WMO ID agrees with what is in GHCN. This would be the raw data, but it would annoy them.”

From Mick Kelly (modifying data to hide cooling):

“Yeah, it wasn’t so much 1998 and all that that I was concerned about, used to dealing with that, but the possibility that we might be going through a longer – 10 year – period of relatively stable temperatures beyond what you might expect from La Nina etc. Speculation, but if I see this as a possibility then others might also. Anyway, I’ll maybe cut the last few points off the filtered curve before I give the talk again as that’s trending down as a result of the end effects and the recent cold-ish years.”

Update, 3:45pm MDT: In regards to the authenticity, not one report disputing the veracity of the emails has come out. Many sources have talked to some of the email authors and they have not disputed the messages.

• RealClimate, a website on which many of the scientists in the emails actively write has posted a response and does not deny their authenticity.
• According to TIGF, a New Zealand new magazine, “The director of Britain’s leading Climate Research Unit, Phil Jones, has told Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition tonight that his organization has been hacked, and the data flying all over the internet appears to be genuine.”
• A spokesman for the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) told the BBC, “We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites.”
• Wired reports that Kevin Trenberth from NCAR “acknowledged the e-mail is genuine.”
• Nature reports quotes Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University as saying, “I’m not going to comment on the content of illegally obtained e-mails.”

It would appear at this point that there is little doubt that the emails are authentic.  If they were not, the principle players would certainly have said so by now.

U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and U.S. Congressman Dave Camp (R-MI) announced the Solar Manufacturing Jobs Creation Act last week. The bi-partisan legislation will offer a tax credit to support solar manufacturing in the U.S. These tax incentives are designed to encourage U.S. companies to produce solar equipment, create green jobs and invest in a domestic clean energy economy. Senator Stabenow joined fellow Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) to introduce the legislation in the Senate. In addition, Congressman Camp will be introducing related legislation in the House later this month. The Solar Manufacturing bill will provide additional tax credits for solar equipment manufacturers that will help the U.S. compete in the global clean energy race with countries such as China, South Korea and Taiwan.

Currently, the United States is falling behind in the global market for solar technology, as other countries provide incentives to invest in solar manufacturing. According to the Solar Energy Industry Association, the U.S. produced more than 40 percent of the world’s solar photovoltaic (PV) cells a decade ago. In 2008, the U.S. produced only 5 percent of the world’s solar cells. As a result, U.S. Congressman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) authored the Solar Technology Roadmap Act, which is designed to support domestic research and development (R&D) and manufacturing.

Currently, a 30 percent federal Solar Investment Tax Credit (SITC) exists for the investment in or installation of solar power technology, which was extended in the Recovery Act. Under the Solar Manufacturing Jobs Creation Act, equipment and facilities used to manufacture solar power technology would be included in the property list for the SITC. These technologies include solar cells, silicon, evacuated tubes, and flat-plate solar collectors. It has been estimated that the tax credits in this legislation will generate 315,000 new domestic green jobs.

Although China produces over 30 percent of the world’s solar photovoltaics, installed PV in China only reached a total of 140 (megawatts) MW in 2008, according to the state-owned newspaper, China Daily, accounting for less than 1 percent of the global market share. Today, however, solar PV is starting to increase its share in China’s energy portfolio due to favorable government support, decreasing solar power generation costs, and rising demand in response to emerging regulations ongreenhouse gas emissions. In fact, China recently revised its 2020 target for solar power capacity from 1.8 gigawatts (GW) to 20 GW, according to a recent report by Beijing’s state-own China Daily.

In order to promote the Chinese solar market, the Government has enacted several policies to support the expanding industry, including a regional feed-in tariff (FIT) and national subsidies for solar PV installations, as similar policies in Germany and Spain facilitated their world leadership with respect to deployment in recent years.

These policies have had an impact in East China’s Jiangsu province, which is home to more than 160 Chinese PV manufacturers, including Suntech and Trina Solar. In June, the Jiangsu government approved a feed-in tariff program. As a result, the price offered for each kWh of electricity from PV solar farms, rooftop projects and building integrated photovoltaics projects built this year is US $0.31, $0.54 and $0.63, respectively, which nearly covers project costs, according to Renewable Energy World. Several leading PV manufacturers such as Suntech and Trina Solar have pursued the opportunity and developed 80-MW and 30-MW rooftop PV facilities, respectively. However, state solar incentives and expanding renewable energy portfolio standards are attracting foreign companies to manufacture solar products in the U.S as well. For instance, Suntech, who exhibited its solar products at the recent International Greenbuild Expo in Phoenix, Arizona recently announced it will build a solar panel plant in this area in response to the state’s new solar tax credit.

The Beijing-based China Electricity Power Research Institution has stated that China would fail to meet 6.4 percent of the country’s electricity demand in 2010 and 10.7 percent in 2020. Thus, solar PV is considered a vital source to cover the missing resources.

But as the U.S. remains slow to act in setting a national renewable energy portfolio standardcompared to other major countries or a cap-and-trade system to stimulate sufficient demand for solar and other forms of clean energy across the country, many domestic solar cell manufacturers recognize the increasing demand in China. For example, Evergreen Solar recently announced it will be outsourcing its solar panel assembly manufacturing line in Devens, Massachusetts to China. This statement was made years after it received $58 million in state aid and being lauded by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick as a symbol of the state’s economic future. The announcement came as the company announced that it lost $167 million in the first nine months of this year. Approximately half of the 577 full-time and 230 contract employees at the Devens factory involved in panel assembly are expected to be laid off. Thus, this issue only strengthens the need for detailed national and state legislation without loopholes allowing companies to capitalize on incentives without making a long-term investment.

In order to deal with similar situations and to institute a balanced U.S.-China trade partnership, U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao announced a comprehensive clean energy agreement between the two countries during their joint talks this week. The two Presidents revealed several new programs including a new U.S.-China Renewable Energy Partnership. Under the Partnership, the two countries will develop roadmaps for large-scale renewable energy deployment in both countries. The Partnership will also provide technical and analytical resources to states and regions in both countries to support renewable energy installations and will facilitate state-to-state and region-to-region collaborations to share experience and best practices. A new Advanced Grid Working Group will bridge U.S. and Chinese policymakers, regulators, industry leaders, and civil society to initiate strategies for grid modernization in both countries. A new U.S.-China Renewable Energy Forum will be held annually as well.

In addition, the two presidents announced the creation of a new U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center. The Center will facilitate collaborative R&D in clean energy technologies by teams of scientists and engineers from the U.S. and China. Furthermore, this Center will be supported by public and private funding of at least $150 million over five years and be split equally between the two countries. Initial research priorities will be focused on building energy efficiency, clean coal including carbon capture and storage, and clean vehicle technology using advanced batteries and biofuels.

Similarly, a U.S.-China Energy Cooperation Program (ECP) will be established. This particular program will capitalize on private sector resources for project development work in China across a wide spectrum of clean energy projects, to the advancement of both nations. More than 22 companies are already listed as founding members of the program. The ECP will include collaborative projects on renewable energy, smart grid, clean transportation, green building, clean coal, combined heat and power, and energy efficiency.

Overall, the new U.S.-China partnership coupled with the Solar Manufacturing Jobs Creation Act will enhance America’s competitiveness in the clean energy race- not to become simply be a consumer of renewables to meet emissions standards, but a producer as well.

Source:http://www.examiner.com/x-8178-Phoenix-Green-Business-Examiner~y2009m11d18-New-clean-energy-policies-target-US-China-trade-balance

By Ameera Butt
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, November 19, 2009

Simon Property Group Inc. showed off the still-under-construction expansion of its Domain shopping center in North Austin on Wednesday. The 600,000-square-foot expansion is the biggest retail project under construction in Austin.

The expansion will include a new Dillard’s, smaller retailers and office space, and a Gold Class Cinema, an upscale movie theater where tickets will sell for about $20 apiece.

 Dick’s Sporting Goods, one of the new anchors, is already open, as are 438 apartments above the stores. Most of the other components will open in February. The Westin Austin hotel at the Domain is scheduled to open in March.

 The movie theater will be the fifth U.S. location for Village Roadshow Ltd., which operates theaters in Australia, Asia and Europe.

 Moviegoers can reserve seats in theaters that hold a maximum of 40 people. In an upscale version of the Alamo Drafthouse concept, customers may order food and drinks from reclining seats while they watch the movie. Menu prices at other Gold Class theaters range from $8 for appetizers to $19 for a steak sandwich.

 ”Our guests often make the comparison that going to the movies at Gold Class is like flying first class,” said Tim Carroll, global chief marketing officer for the Melbourne, Australia-based company.

 Whereas the original Domain is filled with high-end stores such as Neiman Marcus and Louis Vuitton, the expansion will include familiar mall brands such as Aéropostale, Bath & Body Works and Payless Shoes.

 The 208,000-square-foot Dillard’s will be the retailer’s first new Austin store in more than a decade.

 Dillard’s has said it plans to close its Highland Mall stores but is entangled in a lawsuit with the mall’s owners, Simon and General Growth Properties Inc. Julie Bull, a Dillard’s spokeswoman, did not return calls and e-mails about its current plans.

 Aside from the Simon project, there is little other retail development going on in Central Texas. The recession, retail downturn and slowdown in the lending markets for commercial projects has stalled or shelved other projects. Austin is on track to add about 1.2 million square feet of retail space this year, down from 2.8 million square feet in 2008, according to the Weitzman Group , a Dallas-based retail brokerage firm.

 One of the highest-profile delays has been for the retail phase of Endeavor Real Estate Group’s Domain project, which is just east of Simon’s Domain. Endeavor plans to add a Whole Foods Market, Saks and Austin’s second Nordstrom to its development but postponed the retail phase this year because of the downturn. Recently, Endeavor said it would be at least three more years before that work starts.

 September, however, brought news of the region’s first major retail project to be announced in nearly three years, the Trails at 620, a $70 million, 300,000-square-foot center planned at RM 620 and Wilson Parke Avenue. Pending City of Austin approval of a site-development permit, the developers, Rodney Speaks and Leslie Perry Sloan, hope to break ground by June and anticipate a summer 2011 opening.

 Jeff Townsend, who heads the Austin office of Edge Realty Partners, which is recruiting retailers for the project, said it was “probably the only new development in Austin of its size” that is expected to get built over the next couple of years.

 Additional material from staff writer Shonda Novak.

 abutt@statesman.com; 445-3819

UPDATED: This story mistakenly said the new Dillard’s is the company’s first Austin-area store in more than a decade. Dillard’s opened its Hill Country Galleria store in Bee Cave in 2007.

By Shonda Novak

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Friday, November 20, 2009

 Rocky Creek Ranch, the western Travis County development that became one of the region’s biggest residential foreclosures in July, is on the market for $17.5 million. Commercial real estate firm CB Richard Ellis began marketing the 468-acre ranch off Hamilton Pool Road this week. The property, where Kerby Development LLC envisioned 396 high-end home sites, is expected to draw interest “from local developers as well as out-of-state groups attracted to the Austin and southwest Travis County market,” said Carter Breed, the listing agent with CB Richard Ellis. Kerby had borrowed $19.5 million on the project but subsequently filed for bankruptcy. Kerby’s proposed development, the first phase of which was to have been completed in 2008, would have been one of the first large subdivisions along picturesque Hamilton Pool Road. Breed said that although it’s early in the process, the property has generated high levels of interest. “We think the project will be very well-received due in large part to its beautiful Hill Country setting and its location in the Bee Cave/Southwest Travis County area,” Breed said. Asked if he expected the property to bring the full asking price, he said: “We’re in a very volatile real estate market, and we don’t like to make predictions. We’re just planning to market the project as widely and aggressively as possible.” Other properties that have been foreclosed or posted for foreclosure this year include Vizcaya, a luxury residential development planned on the south shore of Lake Travis; MDR Hollows LP, developer of the Hollows resort on the north shore of Lake Travis; and Avaña, a proposed 1,000-acre residential development at Texas 45 and Escarpment Boulevard. Cal Rossi Jr., an officer with Avaña’s owner, Dallas-based Transcontinental Realty Investors Inc., said negotiations are continuing between the lender and Transcontinental to work out an agreement to allow the project to move forward. “We’re in negotiations with several local builders to purchase lots,” Rossi said. David Armbrust, an Austin attorney, said the current real estate climate “is like wearing a size 9 boot on a size 10 foot, waiting for it to stretch. The market is resetting itself (meaning prices are coming down and stabilizing, before they move the other direction), and sometimes change can be painful. “There are still a number of bumps in the road in terms of pending foreclosures, but I think the worst of times are in the rearview mirror,” he said, predicting that next year will be better. “Some people have forgotten how quickly a recovery can occur.” snovak@statesman.com; 445-3856

Why do so many managers repeat the same mistakes and why don’t they do the things that would make their and their peoples’ lives easier, happier and more productive?

Three mistakes that waste billions and cause untold misery and harm include:
1. paying bonuses and incentives, specially individual rewards.
2. sending people on courses, but not helping them to implement their learning.
3. surveying employees, but instead of acting on the results, surveying them again (and again) and in more detail.

There is compelling evidence that these three things demotivate and disengage people. Research also shows what does engage and motivate people and does create sustained value. These things are simple, if not easy.

In 1967, Peter Drucker said, in “The Effective Executive”, that “The effective executive focuses on their own contribution, which, by itself, supplies the four basic requirements of effective human relations:
1. Communications
2. Teamwork
3. Self-development
4. Development of others”

In 1999, Curt Coffman, in “First Break All the Rules”, cites Gallup’s famous twelve questions that determine profitable engagement, of which the first four are:
1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the right materials do my job well?
3. Do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition for good work?

In 2009, David Macleod, in his UK Government report “Engaging for Success”, found (again) that people are motivated and engaged when:
1. They know where the organisation is going and their role
2. They have engaging managers who communicate clearly and give them timely, reinforcing feedback
3. They have a real voice that is listened to when giving bad news as well as good.
4. There is real integration of stated values and observed behaviours

So a quick insight is that there are simple things that work when you do them and there are things that cause real, enduring damage.

The things that do the worst harm are rewards, courses without implementation and surveys without action. I will look at each of those in detail later, but for now, I will just note that these three things seem relatively easy to make happen and give the early impression of positive action, even though they lead to negative effects later. They also get ever more complicated and worse, the more that managers try to make them work.

The things that bring the greatest benefits are all simple, but demand constant self-awareness and sensitivity to others, sustained discipline and resolution. They also require sufficient self-confidence to be able to enthuse and trust others and to be persistent and patient enough to allow the results to mature, blossom and bear fruit.

There are some leaders who do consistently do the right things and whose firms and people thrive. Some of them achieve fame and fortune and others succeed quietly. There are plenty of examples when we seek them, but even so, there are many more managers who hear the stories, who read the reports, who note the principles, but continue to mislead themselves and others by not following the examples, integrating the principles or implementing the learning. I wonder why?

In future posts I will suggest some reasons why well-intentioned managers consistently harm themselves, their people and their organisations. It has to do with illusion, self-delusion, and mistaken focus on the past and on possession. The best leaders keep very aware, focus on the future and act positively.

To set the tone, I’ll describe what I’m talking about through past examples.

Rock Doves (Columbo spp.) are large birds commonly known as pigeons. Evolved for cliff dwelling, they have taken to our built environment and are found in every city I have visited.

Problem : where they congregate is quickly spattered with corrosive droppings. Past remedies have included spike strips (they get around these), sloped roofs (they perch on anything), poisoning (kills every bird that eats the same things), fake owls (they can distinguish between a real and a fake) etc.

Solution: Ghent tried giving the pigeons what they wanted: great nesting sites. after establishing the best orrery sites in the city, researchers began replacing the pigeon egss with wood fakes. This cut the pigeon population in the city down by two thirds.

Give ‘em what they want, but manipulate the terms to meet you ends. If you hit ‘em with what they don’t want, they find a way to get around you to get what they want anyway. Make them come to you.

Photo: Dave Bullock (eecue)

I am a regular reader of the Incentive Intelligence blog and enjoy it very much. Today, I read a really interesting post about the negative use of the word “but” titled: Incentives AND Recognition – Forbes Article AND Some Thoughts. You should read it. I was distracted by one sentence in the post, representing an idea Paul writes about in his blog a lot:

Incentive programs are NOT contests and awards are earned NOT won

The last part of the sentence is so important and so powerful I get blown away by it every time I read it. Some might say this only semantics. But semantics have power. I wrote this in my e-book:

In her book, “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success“, Psychology Professor Carol Dweck, describes a study she and her colleagues conducted with adolescences. They gave a few hundred students a non verbal IQ test. When the students finished the test, they praised them for their results. Some students were praised for their ability: “Wow, that is a really good score, you must be really smart“. Other students were praised for their effort: “Wow, that is a really good score, you must have worked really hard“. Both groups had equal scores to begin with, but after the praise the groups began to differ.

Students who were praised for their ability were not inclined to taking on new tasks. They did not want to expose their flaws. They wanted to keep their smart appearances. In contrast, the group that was praised for their effort showed a different behavior, they actually asked for new challenging tasks to handle!

After interviewing the groups, the researchers gave a new test, much harder this time. The ability group reported feelings of failure. Most of them, when asked to describe their feelings of failure, said: “We are not so smart after all”. More importantly, the ability group, who reported enjoyment of the first test, told the researchers they did not enjoy the second one. In contrast to the ability group’s reaction to the second difficult test, the effort group did not see their lesser results at the second test as failure. When confronted with their failure in the second test they mostly said: “we will just need to put in more effort in order to succeed”. More importantly, they reported enjoyment from both tests. Even the one they failed!

Later, both groups were given an easy test again. The ability group performed worse than it did in the first test. They lost their faith in their ability. The effort group actually performed better than it had done in the first test. They used the harder test to enhance their skill. Not only did they enjoy the ride, in the long run, it improved their outputs.

We need to acknowledge, everyday, the results are not a windfall. They do not just happen. They come out of hard work. And it is the hard work that we want to incentivize. Not every type of hard work off course, but hard work that leads, in the long term, to desired results.

A few days ago I wrote about the difference between decisions and outcomes. And while I believe in outcome management I am also a big believer in the idea of processes. Not standardized processes that confine people in bureaucratic prisons. Individualized processes that are the product of experience, thinking and the understanding of our own uniqueness. And the only way to do that is focus on the effort and the work we put in the created the desired results.

Nothing worth gaining is ever gained without effort. And the effort is the important part of gaining it. As usual, my epic fantasy readings give me another perspective. In Best Served Cold Joe Abercrombie writes:

…It was what you gave out that made a man, not what you got back…

Elad