jeffmori7

I do hear a lot of talk about a carbon tax though. This would be just a bundle of cash sucked out of the economy and into the general coffers to be pissed away. It wouldn't help the situation and could delay the development of real technologies that would. If nothing else it would make us all poorer and slow progress in the developing world as well. We went through our polluting stage and are now making progress on renewables, recycling, and conservation, the best thing we can do for the planet is get the developing world through its industrialization stage as quickly as possible. Getting rid of trade restrictions, protectionism, and tariffs will do more for the planet in the long run than just about anything else the government could do. But a carbon tax or any mechanism on pricing the carbon would be a way to make capitalism work by using the market mechanism to account for many externalities. It should help us to reflect the true cost of many things. Where currently many private companies get all the profits, and then send back the real cost to government (so to us in the end). Solving global warming and protecting the environment is not about left or right, but at least you have to find a way to quantify environmental damage and put a price on it, so at least the market can do its magic for real, not like it is going nowadays.

I have a special place in my heart for QM skeptics like Bohm, Jaynes and John Bell. I am another Jaynes fan. He wrote the best book ever on probability. All investors who can handle the math should read it. The scientific consensus on climate change is crystal clear: science says that the Earth is warming because of man-made CO2 emissions. Nothing to argue about there. So I would frame the discussion in different terms: Which are the odds that the climate science community is wrong? Looking at how science works in general, it is very unlikely that they have screwed up so badly. It is true that after WWII, there have been a few cases in which a scientific area has been proven embarrassingly wrong. One of the best recent examples is the Clovis-only paradigm. Nutrition will probably be next. But it happens quite rarely, and usually in softish sciences. One of the best (and funniest) ways of making your bones as a scientist is proving that all those old professors don't know squat about something important. Of course they fight back like ailing dictators, and will deny grants, positions, recognition, etc. to dissenters; the incentive system favours conformity. But nobody would become a scientist if they cared about incentives, so there is always a significant fraction of the community plotting against mainstream doctrine. That continuous fight is the reason why science gets it right most of the time. I agree that the evidence is not so compelling as the one we have for evolution, let alone QM. For instance, if you look at the historical record, at least in Europe, we've had climate changes not so different in amplitude to the ones we are going through now without any CO2 increases. However, the current warming does coincide with a spectacular rise of the CO2 concentration. So yes, climate scientists are comparing apples to melons, correlation is not causation, etc. But absent certainty, one has to bet on who is right, and climate scientists look by far like the best option. Good comments txitxo. What particularly intrigue me about the skeptics is the lack of scientific studies proving their points. It is easy to point flaws in the modelling (which is incredibly complex) but to propose something else is a lot trickier. So should we blame scientists for at least attempting to explain it and improving their models over time, or could we also blame deniers who most of the time do cherry-picking and/or use esoteric explanations without much scientific work behind to support their thesis?

This story reminds me so much Flight 714, one of the latest Tintin adventures! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_714

So far, I'm counting 15 Sears, and the balance are Kmarts. krazeenyc, you should add this stat to your 1st post.

Yep, on the regular site, it is easy to see the new posts and reach them directly, which do not seem possible on the mobile version. So far on my iPad, I think I will stick to the regular version of the site.

Should we expect the letter today?

Don't confound weather and climate..but anyway.. As a skier, I'm pretty jealous, hope you will lear to enjoy the snow like I am trying to explain everyone, skiing, snowboarding, snowball fight, snowshoeing, whatever, have fun and act like kids in the snow, that's the spirit to enjoy winter! Like they were telling all over the place with the Olympics hockey tournament, we are winter!

Did I miss something? Where did he go? Did he get a job at Apple and he can't tell anyone? It's just written Guest now under his handle...I don't know more than that!

valueInv is now gone. Bad timing, I would have like to hear his opinion on Facebook and WhatsApp. Hope he will comeback someday and be more kind with others. Anyway, we have a new board now, kind of!

valueInv, of course everyone should be able to point out some ameliorations they would like to see. As often with you, it is not what you say, it is how you say it. Maybe you should just sometimes take the time to tell yourself before writing something : What if I was in front of one of them, instead of a anonymous message board? Would I act like this with them, or would I argue with them without being so arrogant and self-important? And by the way, I appreciate some of your contributions, and don't want you to go, just to change your attitude toward everyone, that we agree with you or not! As for this board, I think this is quite ironic that one solution is to use Google (so shitty business according to valueInv) to search among the various threads! And keep on the good work Sanjeev! For me, maybe the biggest improvement could be to organize some threads hierarchically, but I won't stop reading the board just because it is not!

Yours Truly, I have more or less done that for years. We financed a major home reno from a Heloc, and other life related items rather than increasing the mortgage. Then I deduct the interest against investment gains. After the market run up the Heloc is empty, and I am paying whatever advances the bank allows me on the mortgage each year. If there is a major market downturn I can borrow the money back instantly to invest. Of note: we got the Heloc in winter 2010, a year after the meltdown. The drawback is the flexible interest rates (its 3.75%) but it looks like the BofCan wont raise rates until the Fed does, and judging by the "disinflation" numbers that isn't happening soon. From what I understand, if you use your HELOC to invest, you cannot use it at the same time for other stuff like home reno. Or I should say, you can do that, but you won't be allowed to deduct your interest. You can deduct interest only if your HELOC is use as an investment vehicle only. Am I right on this?

Munger portfolio on Dataroma: http://www.dataroma.com/m/holdings.php?m=DJCO

Whoa. Who did you choose to manage your Roth? Roughly 30% with Sanjeev&Alnesh (MPIC). The rest I decline to say. Congratulations to Sanjeev on this one!

Or people pretending to be experts in the topic at hand. So valueInv, what is precisely your background?!

Actually, it is quite the contrary. It is known to be much more damageable to the brain during your teenager years, when you are still growing up. It would be much less damageable if people started only when they are adults! Anyway, I think it could be comparable to alcohol, but what I have seen is that it more often leads to more damageable paths (tougher drugs) or higher frequency consumption (but I don't have any data about this, just empirical observation with my bad own sampling!).

Fluid dynamics, hydraulic turbines, numerical simulation.

Hey, nothing to be ashamed of..I'm around 33% YTD, and we are right in the middle of the distribution according to the poll!

I find this poll perfectly fine on my side. I think it was implied here that manage other people's money meant to be paid for it. So far we have about just under 20% professional manager as opposed to 80% "amateur". Thanks for sharing guys.

http://www.moneysense.ca/spend/the-2013-charity-100

I find it crazy that we are wasting useful GPU resources around the world to mine Bitcoins instead of applying to more useful purposes...but people go where there are some short term gains to be made, I understand that.

Banning incandescent will probably bring down LEDs cost so in the end, everyone will win. As the alternative already exist, I think it's stupid to fight for freedom of choice while energy could be used much more efficiently elsewhere. I really think, like Cardboard said, that this is not worth the fight. Cardboard, you also made a great point about basic knowledge in heat transfer, but I tend to think that while it could probably be helpful, sometimes strict regulation are far more efficient in the short term because people don't act rationally, even if they were teach the knowledge. I think it is also our duty to share our knowledge around us if the education system fails to do so!

I understand your point, but it is not because you don't apply this policy elsewhere that it is a bad policy. It is not because I choose to eat healthier food without doing more physical activities that healthier food is bad. Of course I should do both, but still better than nothing.

If you are using 50W Halogen you'll likely be taking some losses in the amount of light output if you switch to LED. It's still worth it in my opinion as you'll save the hassle of changing the bulbs 2 times a year but it's good to know. BeerBaron Yeah halogen bulbs don't seem reliable at all..I'm pretty tired of changing them. Most of my bulb are 50W MR16 with dimmers in the house, and usually, there is too much lighting so I don't need the full power anyway. Thanks for the advice. Eric, why haven't you changed your halogen? In this case, the price difference also seems less than LED vs incandescent so it appears to me a good choice economically?

LEDs is my area of expertise. Make sure you buy EnergyStar labelled bulbs and you should be fine. EnergyStar has wisened up and now they require manufacutrers to provide in situ proofs that all components will meet about 20 000 (not sure 20 is the exact number but it's in this range) hours. This forces manufacturer to choose electrical components that cost more but last longer (ceramic cap VS electrolytic). I would confidently buy the Phillips remote phosphor bulb (it's yellow on top) as it has won the L Prize. It's been running for something like 25 000 hours now and last time I check it had still around 99% of it's initial light output. http://www.lightingprize.org/overview.stm So in other words pay the price and you can be confident it will last longer than advertised. BeerBaron Thanks BeerBaron, I will probably change my halogen bulb as they die over the next year!

In Quebec, we have near 100% renewable energy, and we use this electricity for heating our house for the most part, so it makes sense to use LED bulb as it you are not losing in winter (heat coming from electricity anyway) and you are saving during summer and for outside lighting all year long.