Econstories.tv is a place to learn about the economic way of thinking through the eyes of creative director John Papola and creative economist Russ Roberts.

In Fear the Boom and Bust, John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek, two of the great economists of the 20th century, come back to life to attend an economics conference on the economic crisis. Before the conference begins, and at the insistence of Lord Keynes, they go out for a night on the town and sing about why there’s a “boom and bust” cycle in modern economies and good reason to fear it.

Just recently we’ve heard about a bank tax, applying the Medicare tax to capital gains and other “passive” or “unearned” income, raising the Medicare tax rate, raising or broadening the capital gains tax, an income tax “surtax,” a tax on tanning – and of course the tax on private health insurance to pay for the expansion of government insurance has moved to the top of the list.

And, he is the list:

• Raise the top income tax rates from their current 33 percent and 35 percent rates to 36 percent and 39.6 percent in 2011
• Limit itemized deductions for people paying high rates
• Increase capital gains and dividend taxes by 33 percent for people paying high income tax rates
• Impose a value-added tax (VAT) on all goods and services
• Raise the Social Security tax by lifting the cap
• Raise a variety of business taxes by $353 billion over 10 years, including repeal of LIFO rules, restoring Superfund taxes, seven tax increases on energy companies, and more
• Tax employer-provided health benefits
• Implement a cap-and-trade system for emissions permits, the functional equivalent of a massive new tax
• Tax drivers on their mileage
• Change rules to raise gift taxes
• Restore the estate tax at 45 percent
• Raise cigarette tax by 62 cents a pack
• Raise taxes on beer, wine, liquor, and soda
• Eliminate health savings accounts and flexible savings accounts
• Tax employer-provided cellphones
• Tax AIG employee bonuses
• Raise taxes on overseas corporate earnings

Official statistics say that 634 dead bodies of Tajik labor migrants arrived in Tajikistan from Russia within 9 months of 2009. This is for 64 more than the same period of 2008.

According to statistics, the lethal cases were reasoned by 79 murders, 57 car accidents, 247 deceases, 148 incidents, 17 suicides, 10 fires. The reason of other 76 cases was not identified.

Tajik Labor Migrants.

Some/Most of the murders are organized by Neo-Fascists (skin-heads). Moreover, along with targeting dark-skinned people from Central Asia and the Caucasus, Russia’s neo-Nazis have increased their assaults on Russian antifascists and other activists.

It’s worth to mention that there are cases of internal conflicts, when one tajik/kyrgyz kills the another one. Or, many people died in the accidents: many migrants have to be carpenters, house painters, and bricklayers; at the same time, they do not follow basic safety instructions.

According to Tajik Labor and Social Security Ministry, 0.8-1 million out of 4.3 million able-bodied residents of the country work abroad, predominantly in Russian Federation and Kazakhstan. Another 1 million people are involved in seasonal works within the republic while half of these people are represented by unemployed, including women.

Author tells us that in 1910 in the Russian Empire, which also included Turkestan from where the Central Asian Republics would rise during the Soviet Union, there were 6,278 charitable organizations, 75% of which were financed by private donations. In Moscow alone there were 628 charitable institutions: hospitals, schools and almshouses. In Kyrgyzstan, most specifically in Karakol Russian and Tatar merchants were traditionally engaged in patronage, publishing books and founding the first theater companies.

So far as Soviet citizens were not allowed to be enterprising and any mark-up on goods constituted as illegal the system of private charities fell down. After the fall of the Soviet Union, entrepreneurs used to think only about themselves, which is actually good, but all social projects started to be financed by various international donors: the European Commission, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), OSCE and many different embassies.

Author says that the situation in Kyrgyzstan today still leaves a lot of room for improvement:

…our legal norms don’t include sponsorship and charity. A business giving social support to a project has to do this surreptitiously, altering its accounts secretively in order to avoid incurring additional taxes. Although, of course, it is also important to understand that the government is not in the position to solve all social problems, especially on a local level. It simply cannot reach every village. Only corporations and the community itself have the necessary resources for this.

• Children of economists recall how tightfisted their parents were. Lauren Weber, author of a recent book titled, “In Cheap We Trust,” says her economist father kept the thermostat so low that her mother threatened at one point to take the family to a motel. “My father gave in because it would have been more expensive,” she says.
• David Colander, an economist at Middlebury College in Vermont, says his wife — his first one, that is — was miffed when he went shopping for the cheapest diamond. Economist Robert Gordon, of Northwestern University, says he drives out of his way to go to a grocery store where prices are cheaper than at the nearby Whole Foods, even though it takes him an extra half hour to save no more than $5.
• In recent research, University of Washington economists Yoram Bauman and Elaina Rose found that economics majors were less likely to donate money to charity than students who majored in other fields. After majors in other fields took an introductory economics course, their propensity to give also fell.
• “The economics students seem to be born guilty, and the other students seem to lose their innocence when they take an economics class,” says Mr. Bauman, who has a stand-up comedy act he’ll be doing at the economists’ Atlanta conference Sunday night. Among his one-liners: “You might be an economist if you refuse to sell your children because they might be worth more later.”
• University of Wisconsin sociologists Gerald Marwell and Ruth Ames, in a 1981 paper, found that in experiments, economics students showed a much higher propensity to free ride than other students. In questioning after the experiment, the sociologists found that for many of the economics students, the concept of investing fairly “was somewhat alien.”
• Stanford University economist Robert Hall, incoming president of the American Economic Association, values his time so highly that his wife, economist Susan Woodward, occasionally puts her foot down. “Bob doesn’t see why we can’t just hire people to trim the Christmas tree,” she says. “I tell him that’s not what it’s supposed to be about.”

We have an honor to present you our first 2009 Annual Report.

You can read and download the report in ENGLISH (.pdf, 12.75 mb) or RUSSIAN (.pdf, 12.91 mb).

We are also looking forward to seeing you in our office in Bishkek.

Sincerely, CAFMI Team

IAM underlines that nearly each attack against mass media representatives is taken under personal control of the law enforcement structure. However, this does not help out in the results of investigations. IAM note includes the following incidents:

1. The hooliganism against Jyldyz Bekboeva, the journalist of El aralyk newspaper.
2. The attempt to take over TRC Pyramida building.
3. The holdup of Ch. Abdiraimova, the manager of Keremet TV.
4. The holdup of lawyer K. Kasymalieva and cameraman A. Konushbaev, the employees of state television and radio corporation (STRC).
5. Intentional failure of TRC Pyramida property, the hopdup of the company’s employees.
6. The hooliganism against B. Bekeshov, the deputy General Director of STRC.
7. The holdup of Kairat Birimkulov, the STRC correspondent.
8. The holdup of Kushubek uulu Daniyar, the employee of TRC NTS.
9. The assault against T. Sopuev, the cameraman of Jalalabad-based Sentyabr TV channel.
10. The hooliganism against Aziz Egemberdiev, the journalist of 24.kg news agency.
11. The holdup of Matilda Guanek, the independent journalist and citizen of French Republic.
12. The holdup of Vladimir Plotnikov, the journalist of NBT TV company, and his wife Galina Plotnikov.
13. The hooliganism against Alisher Toksonbaev, the press-secretary of the Osh Oblast Governor and the correspondent of Agym newspaper.
14. The murder of Alisher Saipov, the journalist of Sayasat newspaper.
15. The hooliganism against Gulmira Umetalieva, the correspondent of NBT.
16. The murder of Yuriy Alexandrov, the correspondent of Vecherniy Bishkek newspaper, and his wife Alevtina Alexandrova.
17. The steal of property from A. Tashmatov, the journalist of TRC NTS.
18. The murderous assault against Syrgak Abdyldaev, the correspondent of Reporter newspaper.
19. Robbery-related assault against Bakhadyr Kenzhebaev, the cameraman of TRC OshTV.
20. The holdup of Elena Ageeva and Ulugbek Babakulov, the employees of Moskovskiy Komsomolets newspaper in Kyrgyzstan.
21. The attack against Yrysbek Omurzakov, the chief editor of Tribuna newspaper.
22. The hooliganism against Abdibakhab Moniev, the deputy General Director of Achyk Sayasat newspaper.
23. The infliction of bodily injury to Almaz Tashiev (earlier he worked in Agym newspaper) that caused his death.
24. The hooliganism against Kubanych Joldoshev, the correspondent of Osh shamy newspaper.
25. The murder of Seyibek Murataliev, the editor of Jylan newspaper.
26. The threat of homicide against Kubanychbek Joldoshev, the correspondent of Osh shamy newspaper.
27. The holdup of Alexander Knyazev, the citizen of Russia.
28. The assault against Alexander Evgrafarov, the citizen of Russia.

«Therefore, in 2005-2009 28 crimes and infringement of laws were committed against mass media representatives; 23 criminal cases have been filed while the rest 5 cases were disregarded. 11 out of 23 filed criminal cases were stopped, 8 cases are in the courts, 4 cases are being investigated”, the IAM press-service concludes.

It has to be mentioned that the official notes does not say anything about the murder of journalist Gennadyi Pavlyuk. There is a possibility that the case will not be investigated in Kyrgyzstan since the murder took place in neighboring Kazakhstan.

The customs union will unite three states with combined GDP of $2 trillion, and $900 billion in mutual trade turnover, Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev said. The group could emerge as a major oil and grain exporter, he predicted. Initial projections show the customs union can enhance Russian trade turnover by up to $400 billion, while Kazakhstan and Belarus could each gain upwards of $16 billion in additional trade revenue, according to Nazarbayev.

The Kremlin has long been urging all other EEC members to join. Kyrgyzstan has applied to join the customs union while Tajikistan also indicated interest in entering the trade group.

Meanwhile, some experts suggested that the customs union could act as a vehicle for the development of protectionist policies. It could help protect domestic producers from an “obvious economic expansion of third countries,” argued Vladimir Yevseyev, researcher at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations.

More @eurasianet

Better cut taxes than increase government spending

Gregory Mankiw, professor of economics at Harvard, wrote an interesting article for New York Times, where he argues for using tax cuts instead of increasing government spending as a tool of economic stimulus. Here’s the evidence:

1) Obama’s Fiscal Stimulus failed

When President Obama was elected, the economy was sick and getting sicker. Before he was even in office in January, his economic team released a report on the problem.

If nothing was done, the report said, the unemployment rate would keep rising, reaching 9 percent in early 2010. But if the nation embarked on a fiscal stimulus of $775 billion, mainly in the form of increased government spending, the unemployment rate was predicted to stay under 8 percent.

In fact, the Congress passed a sizable fiscal stimulus. Yet things turned out worse than the White House expected. The unemployment rate is now 10 percent — a full percentage point above what the administration economists said would occur without any stimulus.

2) Nothing better than tax cuts

When devising its fiscal package, the Obama administration relied on conventional economic models based in part on ideas of John Maynard Keynes. Keynesian theory says that government spending is more potent than tax policy for jump-starting a stalled economy.

The report in January put numbers to this conclusion. It says that an extra dollar of government spending raises G.D.P. by $1.57, while a dollar of tax cuts raises G.D.P. by only 99 cents. The implication is that if we are going to increase the budget deficit to promote growth and jobs, it is better to spend more than tax less.

But various recent studies suggest that conventional wisdom is backward.

One piece of evidence comes from Christina D. Romer, the chairwoman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers. In work with her husband, David H. Romer, written at the University of California, Berkeley, just months before she took her current job, Ms. Romer found that tax policy has a powerful influence on economic activity.

According to the Romers, each dollar of tax cuts has historically raised G.D.P. by about $3 — three times the figure used in the administration report. That is also far greater than most estimates of the effects of government spending.

3) Economists say:

Other recent work supports the Romers’ findings. In a December 2008 working paper, Andrew Mountford of the University of London and Harald Uhlig of the University of Chicago apply state-of-the-art statistical tools to United States data to compare the effects of deficit-financed spending, deficit-financed tax cuts and tax-financed spending. They report that “deficit-financed tax cuts work best among these three scenarios to improve G.D.P.”

My Harvard colleagues Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna have recently conducted a comprehensive analysis of the issue. In an October study, they looked at large changes in fiscal policy in 21 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. They identified 91 episodes since 1970 in which policy moved to stimulate the economy. They then compared the policy interventions that succeeded — that is, those that were actually followed by robust growth — with those that failed.

The results are striking. Successful stimulus relies almost entirely on cuts in business and income taxes. Failed stimulus relies mostly on increases in government spending.

I just found a post of a foreigner who wishes to travel from Tibet to Kyrgyzstan through Shanghai and Urumqi. Here what he writes:

I choose Kyrgyz because Canadians get visa on arrival. I am also interested in entering Kazakhstan from China, but then I need to pre-arrange a visa, but where in that part of Western China, I don’t know. Tajikistan also borders Xinjiang, but I am not sure if foriegners are allowed to cross here?

It’s of course nice that our laws are more liberal than of any other Central Asian Country. Although, it’s not enough if the Kyrgyz want to become a real tourist area. Here what I advised to that tourist:

I would recommend you to fly from Urumqi to Bishkek so far as you can obtain your visa only at the airport. Custom offices in bordering areas do not issue visas. At least, please get advices from tourist companies, or call Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kyrgyz Republic.

What really does misguide us is the fact that our Custom Office at the airport do not check the person if he is criminal or not. So, do we really need to demand visas from foreigners if we do not check them?

Urumqi, photo by Mirsulzh@n Namazaliev. November, 2009

I really support the initiative for visa-free travelling, free move from one country to another and removal of all visa red-tape, restrictions and bans. It should aim at complete abolition and removal of:

• exit restrictions imposed by state authorities and all forms of requirements of exit permits, political and ideological obstacles,
• duty to apply for a visa or permit before entry,
• restrictions imposed on political grounds or as a form of sanctions,
• bureaucratic obstacles, charges and payments for granting passports, visas and other documents,
• various red-tape bureaucratic requirements as e.g. invitation, funds possession , proof of taking time off employment, preliminary proof of no penal records (for ordinary visits) and others,
• punishments for illegal entry, exit or travelling to an ‘ineligible’ country,
• requirements of inland permits – for travelling to another region

1) There is “no real scientific proof” that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from man’s activity.

2) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.

3) Warmer periods of the Earth’s history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels.

4) After World War II, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions but global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.

5) Throughout the Earth’s history, temperatures have often been warmer than now and CO2 levels have often been higher – more than ten times as high.

6) Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time.

7) The 0.7C increase in the average global temperature over the last hundred years is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate trends.

The IPCC theory is driven by just 60 scientists and favourable reviewers not the 4,000 usually cited.

9) Leaked e-mails from British climate scientists – in a scandal known as “Climate-gate” – suggest that that has been manipulated to exaggerate global warming

10) A large body of scientific research suggests that the sun is responsible for the greater share of climate change during the past hundred years.

11) Politicians and activiists claim rising sea levels are a direct cause of global warming but sea levels rates have been increasing steadily since the last ice age 10,000 ago

12) Philip Stott, Emeritus Professor of Biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London says climate change is too complicated to be caused by just one factor, whether CO2 or clouds

13) Peter Lilley MP said last month that “fewer people in Britain than in any other country believe in the importance of global warming. That is despite the fact that our Government and our political class—predominantly—are more committed to it than their counterparts in any other country in the world”.

14) In pursuit of the global warming rhetoric, wind farms will do very little to nothing to reduce CO2 emissions

15) Professor Plimer, Professor of Geology and Earth Sciences at the University of Adelaide, stated that the idea of taking a single trace gas in the atmosphere, accusing it and finding it guilty of total responsibility for climate change, is an “absurdity”

16) A Harvard University astrophysicist and geophysicist, Willie Soon, said he is “embarrassed and puzzled” by the shallow science in papers that support the proposition that the earth faces a climate crisis caused by global warming.

17) The science of what determines the earth’s temperature is in fact far from settled or understood.

18) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas, unlike water vapour which is tied to climate concerns, and which we can’t even pretend to control

19) A petition by scientists trying to tell the world that the political and media portrayal of global warming is false was put forward in the Heidelberg Appeal in 1992. Today, more than 4,000 signatories, including 72 Nobel Prize winners, from 106 countries have signed it.

20) It is claimed the average global temperature increased at a dangerously fast rate in the 20th century but the recent rate of average global temperature rise has been between 1 and 2 degrees C per century – within natural rates

21) Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski, Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw, Poland says the earth’s temperature has more to do with cloud cover and water vapor than CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

22) There is strong evidence from solar studies which suggests that the Earth’s current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades

23) It is myth that receding glaciers are proof of global warming as glaciers have been receding and growing cyclically for many centuries

24) It is a falsehood that the earth’s poles are warming because that is natural variation and while the western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer we also see that the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder

25) The IPCC claims climate driven “impacts on biodiversity are significant and of key relevance” but those claims are simply not supported by scientific research

26) The IPCC threat of climate change to the world’s species does not make sense as wild species are at least one million years old, which means they have all been through hundreds of climate cycles

27) Research goes strongly against claims that CO2-induced global warming would cause catastrophic disintegration of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets.

28) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, rising CO2 levels are our best hope of raising crop yields to feed an ever-growing population

29) The biggest climate change ever experienced on earth took place around 700 million years ago

30) The slight increase in temperature which has been observed since 1900 is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term natural climate cycles

31) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, rising CO2 levels of some so-called “greenhouse gases” may be contributing to higher oxygen levels and global cooling, not warming

32) Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures

33) Today’s CO2 concentration of around 385 ppm is very low compared to most of the earth’s history – we actually live in a carbon-deficient atmosphere

34) It is a myth that CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas because greenhouse gases form about 3% of the atmosphere by volume, and CO2 constitutes about 0.037% of the atmosphere

35) It is a myth that computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming because computer models can be made to “verify” anything

36) There is no scientific or statistical evidence whatsoever that global warming will cause more storms and other weather extremes

37) One statement deleted from a UN report in 1996 stated that “none of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases”

38) The world “warmed” by 0.07 +/- 0.07 degrees C from 1999 to 2008, not the 0.20 degrees C expected by the IPCC

39) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says “it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense” but there has been no increase in the intensity or frequency of tropical cyclones globally

40) Rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere can be shown not only to have a negligible effect on the Earth’s many ecosystems, but in some cases to be a positive help to many organisms

41) Researchers who compare and contrast climate change impact on civilizations found warm periods are beneficial to mankind and cold periods harmful

42) The Met Office asserts we are in the hottest decade since records began but this is precisely what the world should expect if the climate is cyclical

43) Rising CO2 levels increase plant growth and make plants more resistant to drought and pests

44) The historical increase in the air’s CO2 content has improved human nutrition by raising crop yields during the past 150 years

45) The increase of the air’s CO2 content has probably helped lengthen human lifespans since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution

46) The IPCC alleges that “climate change currently contributes to the global burden of disease and premature deaths” but the evidence shows that higher temperatures and rising CO2 levels has helped global populations

47) In May of 2004, the Russian Academy of Sciences published a report concluding that the Kyoto Protocol has no scientific grounding at all.

48) The “Climate-gate” scandal pointed to a expensive public campaign of disinformation and the denigration of scientists who opposed the belief that CO2 emissions were causing climate change

49) The head of Britain’s climate change watchdog has predicted households will need to spend up to £15,000 on a full energy efficiency makeover if the Government is to meet its ambitious targets for cutting carbon emissions.

50) Wind power is unlikely to be the answer to our energy needs. The wind power industry argues that there are “no direct subsidies” but it involves a total subsidy of as much as £60 per MWh which falls directly on electricity consumers. This burden will grow in line with attempts to achieve Wind power targets, according to a recent OFGEM report.

51) Wind farms are not an efficient way to produce energy. The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) accepts a figure of 75 per cent back-up power is required.

52) Global temperatures are below the low end of IPCC predictions not at “at the top end of IPCC estimates”

53) Climate alarmists have raised the concern over acidification of the oceans but Tom Segalstad from Oslo University in Norway , and others, have noted that the composition of ocean water – including CO2, calcium, and water – can act as a buffering agent in the acidification of the oceans.

54) The UN’s IPCC computer models of human-caused global warming predict the emergence of a “hotspot” in the upper troposphere over the tropics. Former researcher in the Australian Department of Climate Change, David Evans, said there is no evidence of such a hotspot

55) The argument that climate change is a of result of global warming caused by human activity is the argument of flat Earthers.

56) The manner in which US President Barack Obama sidestepped Congress to order emission cuts shows how undemocratic and irrational the entire international decision-making process has become with regards to emission-target setting.

57) William Kininmonth, a former head of the National Climate Centre and a consultant to the World Meteorological Organisation, wrote “the likely extent of global temperature rise from a doubling of CO2 is less than 1C. Such warming is well within the envelope of variation experienced during the past 10,000 years and insignificant in the context of glacial cycles during the past million years, when Earth has been predominantly very cold and covered by extensive ice sheets.”

58) Canada has shown the world targets derived from the existing Kyoto commitments were always unrealistic and did not work for the country.

59) In the lead up to the Copenhagen summit, David Davis MP said of previous climate summits, at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and Kyoto in 1997 that many had promised greater cuts, but “neither happened”, but we are continuing along the same lines.

60) The UK ’s environmental policy has a long-term price tag of about £55 billion, before taking into account the impact on its economic growth.

61) The UN’s panel on climate change warned that Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of current levels by 2035. J. Graham Cogley a professor at Ontario Trent University, claims this inaccurate stating the UN authors got the date from an earlier report wrong by more than 300 years.

62) Under existing Kyoto obligations the EU has attempted to claim success, while actually increasing emissions by 13 per cent, according to Lord Lawson. In addition the EU has pursued this scheme by purchasing “offsets” from countries such as China paying them billions of dollars to destroy atmospheric pollutants, such as CFC-23, which were manufactured purely in order to be destroyed.

63) It is claimed that the average global temperature was relatively unchanging in pre-industrial times but sky-rocketed since 1900, and will increase by several degrees more over the next 100 years according to Penn State University researcher Michael Mann. There is no convincing empirical evidence that past climate was unchanging, nor that 20th century changes in average global temperature were unusual or unnatural.

64) Michael Mann of Penn State University has actually shown that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age did in fact exist, which contrasts with his earlier work which produced the “hockey stick graph” which showed a constant temperature over the past thousand years or so followed by a recent dramatic upturn.

65) The globe’s current approach to climate change in which major industrialised countries agree to nonsensical targets for their CO2 emissions by a given date, as it has been under the Kyoto system, is very expensive.

66) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had emailed one another about using a “trick” for the sake of concealing a “decline” in temperatures when looking at the history of the Earth’s temperature.

67) Global temperatures have not risen in any statistically-significant sense for 15 years and have actually been falling for nine years. The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed a scientific team had expressed dismay at the fact global warming was contrary to their predictions and admitted their inability to explain it was “a travesty”.

68) The IPCC predicts that a warmer planet will lead to more extreme weather, including drought, flooding, storms, snow, and wildfires. But over the last century, during which the IPCC claims the world experienced more rapid warming than any time in the past two millennia, the world did not experience significantly greater trends in any of these extreme weather events.

69) In explaining the average temperature standstill we are currently experiencing, the Met Office Hadley Centre ran a series of computer climate predictions and found in many of the computer runs there were decade-long standstills but none for 15 years – so it expects global warming to resume swiftly.

70) Richard Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote: “The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the Earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. Such hysteria (over global warming) simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth.”

71) Despite the 1997 Kyoto Protocol’s status as the flagship of the fight against climate change it has been a failure.

72) The first phase of the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which ran from 2005 to 2007 was a failure. Huge over-allocation of permits to pollute led to a collapse in the price of carbon from €33 to just €0.20 per tonne meaning the system did not reduce emissions at all.

73) The EU trading scheme, to manage carbon emissions has completely failed and actually allows European businesses to duck out of making their emissions reductions at home by offsetting, which means paying for cuts to be made overseas instead.

74) To date “cap and trade” carbon markets have done almost nothing to reduce emissions.

75) In the United States , the cap-and-trade is an approach designed to control carbon emissions and will impose huge costs upon American citizens via a carbon tax on all goods and services produced in the United States. The average family of four can expect to pay an additional $1700, or £1,043, more each year. It is predicted that the United States will lose more than 2 million jobs as the result of cap-and-trade schemes.

76) Dr Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, has indicated that out of the 21 climate models tracked by the IPCC the differences in warming exhibited by those models is mostly the result of different strengths of positive cloud feedback – and that increasing CO2 is insufficient to explain global-average warming in the last 50 to 100 years.

77) Why should politicians devote our scarce resources in a globally competitive world to a false and ill-defined problem, while ignoring the real problems the entire planet faces, such as: poverty, hunger, disease or terrorism.

78) A proper analysis of ice core records from the past 650,000 years demonstrates that temperature increases have come before, and not resulted from, increases in CO2 by hundreds of years.

79) Since the cause of global warming is mostly natural, then there is in actual fact very little we can do about it. (We are still not able to control the sun).

80) A substantial number of the panel of 2,500 climate scientists on the United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change, which created a statement on scientific unanimity on climate change and man-made global warming, were found to have serious concerns.

81) The UK’s Met Office has been forced this year to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by revelations about the data.

82) Politicians and activists push for renewable energy sources such as wind turbines under the rhetoric of climate change, but it is essentially about money – under the system of Renewable Obligations. Much of the money is paid for by consumers in electricity bills. It amounts to £1 billion a year.

83) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had tampered with their own data so as to conceal inconsistencies and errors.

84) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had campaigned for the removal of a learned journal’s editor, solely because he did not share their willingness to debase science for political purposes.

85) Ice-core data clearly show that temperatures change centuries before concentrations of atmospheric CO2 change. Thus, there appears to be little evidence for insisting that changes in concentrations of CO2 are the cause of past temperature and climate change.

86) There are no experimentally verified processes explaining how CO2 concentrations can fall in a few centuries without falling temperatures – in fact it is changing temperatures which cause changes in CO2 concentrations, which is consistent with experiments that show CO2 is the atmospheric gas most readily absorbed by water.

87) The Government’s Renewable Energy Strategy contains a massive increase in electricity generation by wind power costing around £4 billion a year over the next twenty years. The benefits will be only £4 to £5 billion overall (not per annum). So costs will outnumber benefits by a range of between eleven and seventeen times.

88) Whilst CO2 levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout history, the CO2 content of the atmosphere has increased since the beginning of the industrial revolution, and the growth rate has now been constant for the past 25 years.

89) It is a myth that CO2 is a pollutant, because nitrogen forms 80% of our atmosphere and human beings could not live in 100% nitrogen either: CO2 is no more a pollutant than nitrogen is and CO2 is essential to life.

90) Politicians and climate activists make claims to rising sea levels but certain members in the IPCC chose an area to measure in Hong Kong that is subsiding. They used the record reading of 2.3 mm per year rise of sea level.

91) The accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998.

92) If one factors in non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements show little, if any, global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent).

93) US President Barack Obama pledged to cut emissions by 2050 to equal those of 1910 when there were 92 million Americans. In 2050, there will be 420 million Americans, so Obama’s promise means that emissions per head will be approximately what they were in 1875. It simply will not happen.

94) The European Union has already agreed to cut emissions by 20 percent to 2020, compared with 1990 levels, and is willing to increase the target to 30 percent. However, these are unachievable and the EU has already massively failed with its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), as EU emissions actually rose by 0.8 percent from 2005 to 2006 and are known to be well above the Kyoto goal.

95) Australia has stated it wants to slash greenhouse emissions by up to 25 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, but the pledges were so unpopular that the country’s Senate has voted against the carbon trading Bill, and the Opposition’s Party leader has now been ousted by a climate change sceptic.

96) Canada plans to reduce emissions by 20 percent compared with 2006 levels by 2020, representing approximately a 3 percent cut from 1990 levels but it simultaneously defends its Alberta tar sands emissions and its record as one of the world’s highest per-capita emissions setters.

97) India plans to reduce the ratio of emissions to production by 20-25 percent compared with 2005 levels by 2020, but all Government officials insist that since India has to grow for its development and poverty alleviation, it has to emit, because the economy is driven by carbon.

98) The Leipzig Declaration in 1996, was signed by 110 scientists who said: “We – along with many of our fellow citizens – are apprehensive about the climate treaty conference scheduled for Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997” and “based on all the evidence available to us, we cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes and calls for hasty actions.”

99) A US Oregon Petition Project stated “We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of CO2, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”

100) A report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change concluded “We find no support for the IPCC’s claim that climate observations during the twentieth century are either unprecedented or provide evidence of an anthropogenic effect on climate.”

November 7 is also one of the most terrible dates in Kyrgyz history. On November 7, 1937 138 people were killed in the purges in Ata-Beyit (fathers’ cemetery). Thousands of Kyrgyzstan’s intellectual and political elite were imprisoned and many were killed. They were accused of being “nationalist reactionaries” and “pro-capitalist.” Among those who were executed were progressive members of Kyrgyz society, including the father of Chingiz Aitmatov, who was later to attain fame as a great writer.

Kyrgyzstan’s Communist party and the Party of Communists both celebrate the October Revolution every year. They consider the Soviet Union and its system as good for everyone. According to them, it kept people safe from “predatory capitalists.” Today, the weather made me truly happy. It was heavily raining, and the Communists could not celebrate their bloody holiday outside.

We freedom-fighters from Kyrgyzstan were not just happy about the weather. We decided to commemorate a day that showed the true face of Communism: November 7, 1937. Our friends from the organization Kylym Shamy (the Light of the Century) arranged a trip to Ata-Beyit. The Central Asian Free Market Institute’s team joined the event to pay our respects to those who were murdered or oppressed by the Communists.

I thought I would share some pictures I made from this trip: