Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Funniest Headline of the Day: "Climate change cost you the McDonald’s dollar menu"

That's from Quartz.

I'm only going to say this once, punk: stay off my turf.

You can sure tell when the pros (cough, Matt Philips, cough) are doing the story and when its a pup.
For example, before stating that global warming has raised the cost of beef  a pro would look at the expiring October live cattle futures chart to see if reality matches the writer's mental picture:


Hmmmm....not really conclusive, so:

Then the pro would maybe think twice before writing:
1. Droughts have driven up the wholesale price of cattle
because, you know, ya snooze ya lose:
Agriculture: The Great Drought is Dead
The pro writer would have done have done a Google search on "Cattle" to see if anything happened around early October to account for the run from $127 to $132:
100,000 cattle feared dead after early South Dakota snowstorm
The pro might even have checked with Hillary Clinton for a quick backrounder before he goes and writes about cattle of all things.
The former Secretary of State famously ran $1000 to $100,000 in ten months of astounding cattle futures action:
"This is like buying ice skates one day and entering the Olympics a day later," 'says Mark Powers, editor of the Journal of Futures Markets. "She took some extraordinary risks." 

And if the pro was still inclined to blame the blizzard on global warming they at least would have the sense to check the historical record.
From the intro to our 2007 post "Cattle, Carbon and Conifers":
Many years ago my father told me about his experience with a cattle operation (the tax deal du jour).
One fine spring day he decided to head out to South Dakota; He had a good excuse for a road trip.

The way he told it, he and some of the ranch staff were standing on a ridge looking out over hundreds, if not thousands, of head of cattle and he asked the assistant foreman "which ones are mine?" "None of them", the cowboy responded,
"Yours all died"
If you can't get the facts right at least try to tell a cow joke:
...Finally a story from John Kenneth Galbraith:
This tale is said to be told by John Kenneth Galbraith on himself. As a boy he lived on a farm in Canada. On the adjoining farm, lived a girl he was fond of. One day as they sat together on the top rail of the cattle pen they watched a bull servicing a cow. Galbraith turned to the girl, with what he hoped was a suggestive look, saying, "That looks like it would be fun." She replied, "Well.... She’s your cow."
Live cattle futures $131.80, last, darn close to a short, $135 would be a nice price to get for your bovines.