A rant

Richard Murphy grits his teeth at the Daily Mail, which is fighting a rearguard action on its criticisms of Miliband père and has started a counterattack on the Guardian's Snowden releases.

Richard has done sterling work on tracking offshore capital and tax avoidance, but has fallen into the trap of political and newspaper tribalism. What Dacre and Rusbridger say about themselves, each other and their respective publications will just be talking their brief. But the DM is something of a bullyrag to people of certain convictions, and it seems (I hope to be proved wrong) that they can't help but respond entirely predictably.

For example, a comment from "Philip" says, among other things, "The DM may not represent the ‘centre ground’ of establishment ideology but they do represent its worst excesses, its dregs, its most toxic sludge. They are its gutter. Gutter press in the truest sense."

So I say:

"Not sure the left vs right dichotomy is clear or helpful. On key issues both sides of Parliament appear to agree, e.g. on economic migration, though one suspects for different reasons (the Conservatives because importing cheap labour undercuts the working class' attempts to maintain and improve wage rates, New Labour because it "rubs the Right's nose in diversity" and - they hope - brings in fresh supporters for the Big State).

"The hegemony is that of coldly calculating careerist politicians and hangers-on who now know how to make the psephological machine work. Bear in mind that only one-third of MPs get 50%+ of the votes cast in a General Election (true in 2007 and 2010, for example), and look how they cooperated across the floor of the House to rubbish the Alternative Vote. Dum and Dee. I shall never forget seeing Cameron lead the applause for Blair as the latter parachuted out of Parliament and into the arms of JPM, and how only 4 MPs sat on their hands.

"I read the Daily Mail, just as Philip appears to read Karl Marx - critically (BTW - reference for the quotation, please?). This is something Radio 4 comedians and their obediently sniggering audiences don't seem to understand. When they slag off the DM, perhaps for the sake of balance they can remind their sycophantic listeners how the journalists in the Guardian newsroom watched the Twin Towers burn live on TV and said the Americans had it coming to them. As far as I'm concerned no paper and no TV station represents "pravda" or "izvestiya"."

And, by the way, as with Assange, I'm glad Snowden has made certain documents public. It's not the Russians that our lot want to hide it from, it's us. In recent years we've begun to understand what our own governments are like - they are, as Charles Lamb said, "as bad as they dare to be" (10 March 1798).

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Max Hastings' devastating revelation of right-wing American sexual practices!

"They want to reset the clock to around 1955, when... sex was kept in its proper place under the carpet." (In the Daily Mail today)

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Reporting Heath's Treason (2)

(Pic source)

The adjective "superb" is often awarded too easily, but in this case it is fully justified. Last week, Albert Burgess recounted how he was shown classified documents that proved Edward Heath and others committed treason when they took us into the Common Market in the 1970s, and how he went straight to a police station in Oxford to report the crime. In today's instalment, he discomfits successive levels of police hierarchy by reminding them of their sworn duty to uphold the law.

Whether Albert will ever succeed in his primary aim is uncertain to say the least, but he feels morally bound, and the police are professionally required, to try. The greater issue revealed in this process is, on what does power in this country stand? If it is our constitution, laws, truth and logic, it seems Albert must prevail; if not, we have the dreadful prospect - some would say, a present reality - of arbitrary rule by tyrants.

A few days later I received a letter from one Superintendent Trotman saying he was not going to investigate, his reasons being it would be difficult to obtain evidence as all the witnesses were dead (not true), R vs. Commissioner of the Metropolis exparte Blackburn 1968 gave the police the right to decide which crimes they investigate and which they don't, and he was not prepared to allocate his resources.

I wrote him and told him that treason required him to investigate as a priority, that Blackburn was nonsense and that a lot of the people who worked with Heath were not only not dead but readily available.

A couple of days later a woman police officer who was Superintendent Trotman’s assistant phoned me and said, "What exactly do you want?"

I said, "I want to turn on the six o'clock news and see Douglas Hurd in handcuffs being helped into the back of a police car, and 10 months later I want to see him and others on trial for his life at the old Bailey."

She said, "I will put this through to Special Branch."

I said, "Give me their number so I can talk to them."

She said, “Hold on, he's just walked past my door, I’ll get him."

After a few seconds a Detective Inspector from Special Branch came on the phone. He said, "I know about this, and have allocated a woman detective constable to it, but she is very busy and will not get to you for three weeks."

I said. "Give her my number and tell her if I have not heard from her in five days I will submit a formal allegation of neglect of duty against her."

The following morning she phoned to tell me she had a two hour window and could come and see me. We arranged for her to come about noon and I phoned David Barnby to see if he wanted to be there; he did and he arrived about half an hour before two detectives. I explained what Heath had done and what the crimes were and handed over another set of documents, and then they left.

After a number of letters Superintendent Trotman wrote to say he was not going to conduct the investigation. So I submitted a formal allegation against him for neglect of duty under the police discipline codes and for Misprision of Treason at Common Law.

Two weeks later I had a knock on my door and a Chief Inspector Howard from the complaints department and his Sergeant were there. I invited them in and DCI Howard told me they had cleared the Superintendent.

I said "Did you read the documents?" He said, "I glanced at them." I said, "Did you read them?" He said, "I glanced at them." I said, "Without reading them and studying the treason laws, how can you clear him or convict him?" He said, "Well, we have because we don't want the Chief Constable’s photo on the front page of every newspaper as the Chief Constable investigating the government for treason." I said, "She hasn't got to be Chief Constable without having her picture taken, and I am not asking her to go topless on page 3."

Then he confirmed what I had been hoping they would not notice when he said, "The real reason we are not going to do this, is that if we get a conviction against any of Heath's people, which we probably could on the evidence you have supplied, we would have to go out and arrest every government minister for the last 35 years, and that we are not prepared to do." I said, "You are not allowed to make the decision on those grounds, you have to follow the evidence where it leads you."

He got up to leave and I said, "How do you like knowing I know you are a liar?" He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "You took an oath to uphold the laws of this country without favour, fear, malice or ill will. You have just told me because it means arresting government ministers you are not going to do it. That makes you a liar."

He left in a huff.
 

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Default Risk Zero

So the US government is having a little argument about the debt ceiling again. China and Japan have warned that a US default might be a little nasty and even the President himself has warned of financial Armageddon.

So why are the markets so sanguine? Where's the panic?

Well we all know there will be a last-minute deal, it's like those clichéd  cop dramas where you know the protagonist is in no real danger. If there was any doubt in your mind take a look at the appointment of über dove Janet Yellen to the chair of the Federal Reserve. A sure signal that they plan to print to infinity.

Back to sleep everyone, no story here.

However…

The US government have no option but default, the only question is when, but that my friend is another story.

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A graphic tale

This is a wee story of days gone by, imparted to me in the seventies.

Once upon a time there was a small laboratory on the edge of the great unknown. Not too far from Birmingham to be more precise. This little laboratory carried out basic tests on waste water such as sewage effluent, including a test for ammonia.

A simple chemical test was used where a colour develops in the test cell, the intensity of colour indicating how much ammonia is present in the water sample. Light absorbed by the colour allows an ammonia concentration to be read off from a previously prepared calibration graph.

In this case the calibration graph was kept in a drawer where it had been stored for so long that it had become tatty and disreputable as laboratory paperwork usually did in those days. It had never been checked either, until that fatal day when some keen person decided to recalibrate the test and draw a brand new graph on a fresh sheet of graph paper.

Oh dear.

The old calibration graph turned out to be wrong by a factor of two. For years, ammonia concentrations in the effluent had been reported as twice what they actually were.

What to do?

During the following few months, the scientists concerned made a series of small adjustments to their calibration graph, eventually bringing it into line with reality. Nobody was any the wiser, although a welcome improvement in the ammonia levels of the effluent did not go unnoticed.

Not a typical episode in scientific history I should add. It took place in the sixties too. Not a reliable period, yet by analogy it provokes a question. Do climate modellers intend to do something similar if the climate continues to misbehave? Of course in a sense the Met Office already has.

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Dead Man's Fingers

Xylaria polymorpha or Dead Man's Fingers growing on a dead tree near Cromford in Derbyshire. Good name isn't it? 

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Lentil-knitters of the world, unite!

If you haven't seen it, there is a fascinating finding from the CERN CLOUD experiment about the possible effect of amines on cloud nucleation in the upper atmosphere.

Amines are atmospheric vapours closely related to ammonia, and are emitted both from human activities such as animal husbandry, and from natural sources. Amines are responsible for odours emanating from the decomposition of organic matter that contains proteins. For example, the smell of rotten fish is due to trimethylamine. The CLOUD experiment's unique ultra-clean chamber allowed the collaboration to demonstrate that the extremely low concentrations of amines typically found in the atmosphere - a few parts per trillion by volume - are sufficient to combine with sulphuric acid to form highly stable aerosol particles at high rate

Source : http://www.interactions.org/cms/?pid=1033278

Animal husbandry eh? Maybe that's one small step for climate science, a giant leap for vegans.

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John Cook's Climate Change Mythbusters 17

This is part of a series reposting material from John Cook's Skeptical Science website. Although he is a physicist rather than a specialist in climate science, he is a convinced "global warmist" and tries to rebut frequently-raised objections to the theory. However, it is always possible to question the data (e.g. this valuable note about measuring temperature) and the line of argument. Please help advance the debate - with facts and logic.

What do the 'Climategate' hacked CRU emails tell us?

Link to this page

What the science says...

Select a level...	Intermediate		Advanced
A number of independent investigations from different countries, universities and government bodies have investigated the stolen emails and found no evidence of wrong doing. Focusing on a few suggestive emails, taken out of context, merely serves to distract from the wealth of empirical evidence for man-made global warming.

Climate Myth...

Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy:

“[T]he 1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed evidence of a scandal involving most of the most prominent scientists pushing the man-made warming theory - a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science. […] emails suggesting conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.” (Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun)

In November 2009, the servers at the University of East Anglia in Britain were illegally hacked and emails were stolen. When a selection of emails between climate scientists were published on the internet, a few suggestive quotes were seized upon by many claiming global warming was all just a conspiracy. A number of independent enquiries have investigated the conduct of the scientists involved in the emails. All have cleared the scientists of any wrong doing:

1. In February 2010, the Pennsylvania State University released an Inquiry Report that investigated any 'Climategate' emails involving Dr Michael Mann, a Professor of Penn State's Department of Meteorology. They found that "there exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had or has ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with an intent to suppress or to falsify data". On "Mike's Nature trick", they concluded "The so-called “trick”1 was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field."
2. In March 2010, the UK government's House of Commons Science and Technology Committee published a report finding that the criticisms of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) were misplaced and that CRU’s "Professor Jones’s actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community".
3. In April 2010, the University of East Anglia set up an international Scientific Assessment Panel, in consultation with the Royal Society and chaired by Professor Ron Oxburgh. The Report of the International Panel assessed the integrity of the research published by the CRU and found "no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit".
4. In June 2010, the Pennsylvania State University published their Final Investigation Report, determining "there is no substance to the allegation against Dr. Michael E. Mann".
5. In July 2010, the University of East Anglia published the Independent Climate Change Email Review report. They examined the emails to assess whether manipulation or suppression of data occurred and concluded that "The scientists’ rigor and honesty are not in doubt".
6. In July 2010, the US Environmental Protection Agency investigated the emails and "found this was simply a candid discussion of scientists working through issues that arise in compiling and presenting large complex data sets."
7. In September 2010, the UK Government responded to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report, chaired by Sir Muir Russell. On the issue of releasing data, they found "In the instance of the CRU, the scientists were not legally allowed to give out the data". On the issue of attempting to corrupt the peer-review process, they found "The evidence that we have seen does not suggest that Professor Jones was trying to subvert the peer review process. Academics should not be criticised for making informal comments on academic papers".
8. In February 2011, the Department of Commerce Inspector General conducted an independent review of the emails and found "no evidence in the CRU emails that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data".
9. In August 2011, the National Science Foundation concluded "Finding no research misconduct or other matter raised by the various regulations and laws discussed above, this case is closed".

Just as there are many independent lines of evidence that humans are causing global warming, similarly a number of independent investigations have found no evidence of falsification or conspiracy by climate scientists.

"Mike's Nature trick" and "hide the decline"

The most quoted email is from Phil Jones discussing paleo-data used to reconstruct past temperatures (emphasis mine):

"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) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

"Mike's Nature trick" refers to a technique (aka "trick of the trade") used in a paper published in Nature by lead author Michael Mann (Mann 1998). The "trick" is the technique of plotting recent instrumental data along with the reconstructed data. This places recent global warming trends in the context of temperature changes over longer time scales.

 

The most common misconception regarding this email is the assumption that "decline" refers to declining temperatures. It actually refers to a decline in the reliability of tree rings to reflect temperatures after 1960. This is known as the "divergence problem" where tree ring proxies diverge from modern instrumental temperature records after 1960. The divergence problem is discussed in the peer reviewed literature as early as 1995, suggesting a change in the sensitivity of tree growth to temperature in recent decades (Briffa 1998). It is also examined more recently in Wilmking 2008 which explores techniques in eliminating the divergence problem. So when you look at Phil Jone's email in the context of the science discussed, it is not the schemings of a climate conspiracy but technical discussions of data handling techniques available in the peer reviewed literature. More on the hockey stick divergence problem...

Trenberth's "travesty we can't account for the lack of warming"

The second most cited email is from climate scientist and IPCC lead author Kevin Trenberth. The highlighted quote is this: "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." This has been most commonly interpreted (among skeptics) as climate scientists secretly admitting amongst themselves that global warming really has stopped. Trenberth is actually discussing a paper he'd recently published that discusses the planet's energy budget - how much net energy is flowing into our climate and where it's going (Trenberth 2009).

 

In Trenberth's paper, he discusses how we know the planet is continually heating due to increasing carbon dioxide. Nevertheless, surface temperature sometimes shows short term cooling periods. This is due to internal variability and Trenberth was lamenting that our observation systems can't comprehensively track all the energy flow through the climate system. More on Trenberth's travesty...

The full body of evidence for man-made global warming

An important point to realise is that the emails involve a handful of scientists discussing a few pieces of climate data. Even without this data, there is still an overwhelming and consistent body of evidence, painstakingly compiled by independent scientific teams from institutions across the world.

What do they find? The planet is steadily accumulating heat. When you add up all the heat building in the oceans, land and atmosphere plus the energy required to melt glaciers and ice sheets, the planet has been accumulating heat at a rate of 190,260 Gigawatts over the past 40 years (Murphy 2009). Considering a typical nuclear power plant has an output of 1 Gigawatt, imagine over 190,000 power plants pouring their energy output directly into heating our land and oceans, melting ice and warming the air.

 

This build-up of heat is causing ice loss across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Both Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice at an accelerated rate (Velicogna 2009, ). Even East Antarctica, previously thought to be too cold and stable, is now losing ice mass (Chen 2009). Glacier shrinkage is accelerating. Arctic sea ice has fallen so sharply, observations exceed even the IPCC worst case scenario. The combination of warming oceans and melting ice has resulted in sea level rise tracking the upper limit of IPCC predictions.

 

Rising temperatures have impacted animal and plant species worldwide. The distribution of tree lines, plants and many species of animals are moving into cooler regions towards the poles. As the onset of spring is happening earlier each year, animal and plant species are responding to the shift in seasons. Scientists observe that frog breeding, bird nesting, flowering and migration patterns are all occurring earlier in the year (Parmeson 2003). There are many other physical signs of widespread warming. The height of the tropopause, a layer in our atmosphere, is rising (Santer 2003). Arctic permafrost, covering about 25% of Northern Hemisphere land, is warming and degrading (Walsh 2009). The tropical belt is widening (Seidel 2007). These results are all consistent with global warming.

 

What’s causing this heat build-up? Humans are emitting huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - 29 billion tonnes in 2009 (CDIAC). Greenhouse theory predicts that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will trap heat energy as it escapes out to space. What do we observe? Carbon dioxide absorbs heat at certain wavelengths. Satellites over the past 40 years find less heat escaping to space at these wavelengths (Harries 2001, Griggs 2004, Chen 2007). Where does the heat go? Surface measurements find more heat returning back to the Earth's surface (Philipona 2004). Tellingly, the increase occurs at those same carbon dioxide absorption wavelengths (Evans 2006). This is the human fingerprint in global warming.

 

There are multiple lines of empirical evidence that global warming is happening and human activity is the cause. A few suggestive emails may serve as a useful distraction for those wishing to avoid the physical realities of climate change. But they change nothing about our scientific understanding of humanity’s role in global warming.

Last updated on 18 March 2012 by dana1981. View Archives

Printable Version | Offline PDF Version | Link to this page Related Arguments

• Scientists tried to 'hide the decline' in global temperature
• Skeptics were kept out of the IPCC?
• CRU tampered with temperature data
• Peer review process was corrupted
• Freedom of Information (FOI) requests were ignored

 

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

From money to weather to money

Martin Armstrong's latest post advertises Planalytics Inc, a company specialising on business-relevant weather forecasting. According to Armstrong, he was connected with its forerunner, Strategic Weather, and the system employs cyclical models that he claims are far more accurate than traditional forecasting methods.

Armstrong has been interested in cycles for over 40 years, having developed his own "Economic Confidence Model" for investment. It's based on an 8.6-year cycle that when multiplied by the number of days in the solar year (365.25) yields a number approximating to Pi (π), which is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Why this number should be relevant to investment is a mystery to me, but it appears to work for Armstrong.

Anyhow, an approach that started with business is now applied to weather and then back to business - a cycle of its own.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

The bonds of behaviour

It seems to me that one of life’s little problems is conversation, or rather lack of conversation. How many people are there in your particular circle with whom you have meaty conversations. Serious conversations about the existence of God, life on other planets, climate change, political correctness, moral standards or whatever.

Is it related to this dumbing-down we keep hearing about? Maybe not, maybe it’s more fundamental. To my mind it has something to do with the fact, at least I think it’s a fact, that we are not encouraged to be analytical with respect to our own behaviour.

One of the oldest and most enduring social discoveries is the idea that we simply respond to a stimulus in a way that has previously been positive for us and avoid those which have been negative. It goes back at least as far as the pleasure/pain principle of Epicurus, although to my mind the word pleasure has too many physical connotations and peace is often better.

From Wikipedia

For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by ataraxia—peace and freedom from fear—and aponia—the absence of pain—and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends.

However we describe it, our lives are a record of positive and negative impacts and feedbacks and the way they made us what we are. It’s a simple enough philosophy and very powerful but we don’t make much direct use of it. Yet the rich and powerful have always used it as the primary method of social control. It is used today in mind-boggling detail and presumably always will be.

We don’t seem teach the pleasure/pain principle to children in any systematic way though, even though the idea is simple, suited to role playing and the value of it screamingly obvious. I wonder why?

Perhaps the whole idea is just too revealing?

The rich and powerful still need it as much as ever because they don’t have anything else. So they have to use it covertly, obliquely or at least keep it below the mainstream radar most of the time.

David Cameron’s reference to nudge theory is an obvious example of how the idea is still seen as politically unidirectional – from rulers to ruled. After all, anyone might reasonably ask how Cameron responds to nudges from the electorate. Maybe he responds to winks from his cronies instead.

Sip a cup of coffee and put it down because it is too hot. Stimulus and response – we are bound by it throughout our lives but rarely bring it into the open and admit the mechanical nature of much of what we do – much of what we are. Maybe there is anticipated pain which prevents us from knowing too much about ourselves.

A painful shattering of illusions perhaps?

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Energy Policy: Omnibus Post

For most of the time we are all capable of sailing serenely on in ignorance of how fundamentally our world-views differ from those of others; but once in a while the chasm is illuminated by a bolt from the blue.

One such event happened when Miliband launched his 'energy price freeze' policy.  I and many others in the 'sphere and MSM alike immediately clapped our hands to our heads and proclaimed, that's it ! - he's completely lost it, and shot himself in the vitals on prime-time TV to boot.  We clearly thought the lunacy of it would be obvious to all.

But not a bit of it, because the reaction of other commentators was: a price freeze - so what ?  No big deal, even if it's not something we particularly applaud; and anyhow, the energy companies had it coming. 

In other words, there is no general consensus or shared understanding on some pretty basic energy market concepts.  So here are some responses to the interesting exchanges between 'Timbo', 'BE' and 'BQ' on the comments thread to a recent C@W post.  I'm going to focus on short- / medium-term, (say, out to 15 years hence) because the really long-term stuff is unknowable, thanks to technology shifts we can barely guess at.  (In which latter category I place Timbo's fascinating comments on electricity storage, the Holy Grail of energy policy which would transform the landscape.)

The paramount fundamental is that electricity has staggering high 'utility value', i.e. people (in developed economies) will pay almost any price to get it.  Second only to food, for most people.  (Water comes third because you can generally makes your own arrangements, up to a point.)  By this standard, as Timbo wrote, "...how cheap the grid is.  It's dirt cheap".  And when people will pay almost any price ... things can go horribly wrong.

Notwithstanding various developments in micro- and distributed-generation, and predictions of more to come, the kind of electricity and energy we all want - permanently available, in bulk, almost everywhere we go, and relatively cheap - requires centralised 'organisation' (grids, despatch and balancing systems), if not actually 20th-century style centralised generation.  And this isn't just power for domestic use, schools and hospitals: as BQ said, "you can't run a blast furnace on wood".  The saintly George Moonbat tried very hard to run a self-sufficient smallholding in Wales, and just about managed OK for a couple of years until he had a bad winter - after which he suddenly became a convert to nuclear power.

It used to be thought (and still is, in some dark quarters) that only centralised ownership, or at least centralised control, could deliver the goods: but this was comprehensively disproved in the UK and other regions with the advent of full bilateral (self-despatching) markets at the beginning of this century, which not only confounded the statists dirigistes by working at all, they worked better, and reduced electricity costs as their proponents (incl. yours truly) said they would.  Even the Labour Party still signs up for this, (see Caroline Flint on Brillo's Sunday programme: and the changes that brought it about in in the UK 2001 were put through Parliament by Mandelson) so dissenters are up against it politically.

But there are problems.  Firstly, bilateral market structures, though basically robust, are vulnerable to large-scale interference by the heavy-handed and dull-witted.  This includes many politicians and almost all civil servants.  In particular, there is a limit to how much ill-considered (indeed, sometimes actually infeasible) 'decarbonisation' policy can be loaded onto a market framework without it buckling.   Of course, in this country the rot started under Miliband lui-même when in power - oh the irony - but has been further perpetrated here by t'Coalition (and on an even more manic scale in Germany).  

(As an aside, the chronic state of our Heath-Robinson energy policy makes it very easy for any politician to score a few easy and populist points against it.  That Miliband is the first one to do so on a grand scale, is just hilarious.)

The second point is that those bilateral market structures are relatively new and by no means perfected, even before they started to be messed with.  In particular, (a) liquidity in some parts of the power markets, here and elsewhere, left quite a lot to be desired.  Liquidity, for those who don't have an instinct for it (this includes many politicians and almost all civil servants ...) is absolutely vital for markets to deliver for consumers. Ofgem, which had this forcibly brought to their attention nearly a decade ago, has been farting around ineffectually on the issue ever since.

(b) A related point: the state of competition is unsatisfactory.  There is no reason why the current UK  'supply' set-up - 6 massive players plus a host of lesser ones - shouldn't make for a competitive market.  It is, in fact, more competitive than many people give it credit for.  But there's a damaging, mutually reinforcing effect at work:  unsatisfactory wholesale liquidity makes suppliers migrate towards vertical integration (i.e., becoming generators as well), which further reduces liquidity ... etc etc.  

[To illustrate: Centrica set out in 1996 intending to be a capital-S Specialised Supplier (of gas and power), with no power generation at all and limited gas production of its own (the 'merchant', or 'Enron' model).  But over the years, they found liquidity in the wholesale markets less than satisfactory.  So they have slowly become more and more vertically integrated, to the point where now they have about 75% cover for their supply obligations from their own 'upstream' assets (power plants, gas fields and some large long-term purchases).  This means that, where once they were trading in the wholesale markets for almost all their needs, they are now only trading for 25% (net) of their needs, plus some spec trading etc.]

Two dreadful policy decisions have gravely exacerbated this situation.  The first was to allow large-scale vertical integration by acquisition.  This was of course re-integration, because throughout the whole of the 1990's, Ofgas and Offer (the worthy predecessors of Ofgem) had been preoccupied with breaking up the old verticals (themselves the products of the two big privatisations of the 1980s).  The worst examples of vertical integration by acquisition were (1) Powergen's purchase of Eastern Electricity and other UK assets, followed by E.on's subsequent purchases of both Powergen here and Ruhrgas in Germany; (2) EDF's purchase of British Energy.  These should have been stopped by UK and EC regulators - not because vertical integration is intrinsically wicked, but because the markets weren't sufficiently liquid at the time.  (In fact, truly liquid markets make vertical integration a very dubious commercial proposition - which is the virtuous-circle side of the liquidity picture.  We are stuck with the vicious circle.) 

The second disaster for the liquidity/competition downward spiral is the manner in which decarbonisation is being pursued.  In the UK this means the ridiculous 'Electricity Market Reforms', which - take it from me - undermine liquidity still further, even as ministers and Ofgem continue to pay lip-service to the need for better liquidity.  It's hugely perverse, because several critical aspects of EMR are wholly dependent on there being deeply liquid markets in existence.  They will fail miserably, and piecemeal government interventions of the most grotesque kind will result - the civil servants can hardly contain their excitement at the prospect.  And they will probably keep the lights on, because we can and will pay (see above) - almost any price.

Which brings us back to Miliband's 'price freeze'.  I've banged on too long already to dissect this in detail.  Suffice to repeat: it's bonkers, it's a cheap populist shot, and will have negative consequences far outweighing any limited relief it may deliver to consumers.  Interestingly, in answer to Brillo's questions Caroline Flint (who, it must be said, was quite well briefed) quickly mentioned the really significant new Labour policy, which is to re-introduce something akin to the 'Pool market' (i.e. an end to the bilateral / self-despatch system) which was how things were run here in the 1990's.  It wasn't a disaster, but it was definitely very inefficient.  And - oh, how these things go full circle - it was dreamed up by Oliver sh*t-for-brains Letwin ! (Who still hankers after it, I can tell you, as do civil servants and all the old CEGB dinosaurs.)


This post first appeared on the Capitalists@Work blog



 
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Decimalisation and inflation

When the pound went decimal, we exchanged a useful system for one that worked less well.

The decimalisation of British currency in the early 1970s was not in itself treasonable, but it formed part of the preparation for our joining what we now know as the EU, though then it was sold to us as simply an international trading arrangement. This latter deceit and the unauthorised constitutional change it smuggled in have been called - in my view correctly - treason by Albert Burgess and others, assuming that the people of Britain are, by ancient custom and practice, entitled to a say in how they are governed.

Reckoning in units of base 10 is convenient for scientists who need to interrelate mutiple forces and physical measurements, but in the world of everyday human interaction the old monetary units worked better.

The reason is divisibility.

The modern pound of 100 pence can be divided in 7 ways: by 2,4,5,10,20,25 and 50.

The old pound - 20 shillings of 12 pence each, making 240 pence - can be divided in 18 ways: by 2,3,4,5,6,8,10,12,15,16,20,24,30,40,48,60,80 and 120. Using halfpennies, you could also split the pound by 32, 96 and 160; and with farthings (quarter pennies, still used until 1960) you could further divide £1 by 64 and 192.
 
So the old way functioned 3 times better than the new one, technically speaking. In fact, because the new penny was worth 1.2 times the old one, it impacted on low-value items (sweets, for example), so for a few years (1971 - 1984) the new decimal currency included halfpennies. There was even an unrealised plan for a decimal farthing.

The reason why all this may seem trivial to you, is the deadly assassin of money and savings: inflation.

Discounting the effects of wars and poor harvests, overall prices in England were stable for centuries until the sixteenth-century enthusiasm for empire and the importation of New World gold:



http://www.hist.umn.edu/~ruggles/hist5011/phelps-brown%20and%20hopkins.pdf

But the money system stabilised again by the late 17th century. The Bank of England's website has a page that lets you calculate cumulative inflation for any period from 1750 onwards. According to them, a basket of goods and services costing £1 in 1750 would have cost (the equivalent of) £1.80 in 1900 - an average annual inflation rate of 0.3%. That period covers the tremendous increase in productivity introduced by the Industrial Revolution and further late-nineteenth-century scientific and technological developments, so inflation is not needed for business and prosperity.

An 80% increase in prices took 150 years to develop.

Yet the same database shows that a very similar increase (£1 to £1.81) occurred in the space of four years in the 20th century between 1974 and 1978. And since 1900, we have seen an overall increase of 10,408%. That's not a typing mistake: £1 in 1900 was worth the same as £104.08 in 2012.

All caused by a seemingly gentle average inflation rate of 4.2% per year. The Bank of England's "target" for annual inflation is now 2%, which means that is is now official policy for us to suffer an 80% increase in prices over 30 years instead of 150 years - in one generation, instead of five or six.

This is why the old pound will never return. Farthings and halfpennies have gone, and so have the old pennies. Now, Canada has discarded its near-worthless penny and the UK is thinking of doing the same.

By law since the 13th century, a penny (the old one) used to buy you a loaf of bread; in the Middle Ages, five or six of them would buy a day's labour from a thatcher, or a four-pound (1.8 kg) loaf. (The ancient English bread laws were abolished by EU directive this year, and last month Tesco began to take advantage of the changes in weight regulation.)

Why inflation at all? Perhaps the answer is in the Cantillon effect: "the original recipients of new money enjoy higher standards of living at the expense of later recipients."

Who is receiving these fresh supplies of money today? The banks, who borrow from the BoE at incredibly low rates, and lend to the Government and hedge fund managers at rates you will never get. And inflate the currency by introducing vast amounts of credit, rotting the value of your cash savings and boosting some prices (e.g. for houses) hopelessly beyond the reach of many people.

They were hanging and burning people - women as well as men - for debasing and forging money, as late as 1789. Now, through its privateer agents the BoE and banks, the Government is doing it, and intends to continue doing it. Nobody important will stop it, because this systematic sweeping-up of the people's wealth into a few pockets allows an elite to buy the services of former lawmakers and broadcasters - look at JP Morgan and Tony Blair (and the BBC's Stephanie Flanders).

Our system of government has been corrupted and betrayed. I have sympathy for those who protest against it; but little hope that we will get reform before disaster forces it upon us.

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Energy use and the internet

Image by Sackerson: http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/

"Worldwide... digital warehouses use about 30 billion watts of electricity, roughly equivalent to the output of 30 nuclear power plants", says the New York Times.

Wikipedia reckons global electricity consumption in 2008 was 20,279,640 billion watts, so internet servers use around 1.3% of the total (presumably more as more of the world gets connected).

But we have to add to that the power usage by machines that access the data. According to Time Magazine, a report in July ("The Cloud begins with Coal" - pdf) by Mark Mills of the Digital Power Group estimates the total IT system to be around 10% of world electricity production.

The Time writer paraphrases him: "It’s the same amount of electricity that was used to light the entire planet in 1985. We already use 50% more energy to move bytes than we do to move planes in global aviation."

The first Sinclair home computer offered 1 kilobyte (1,024 bytes) and the next (the Spectrum, which I bought) boasted 64 kilobytes. New word (for me): "zettabyte" (used in slide 3 in Mills' presentation). 1 zettabyte = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. Here is Mill's graph showing estimated current (4 - 5 ZB) and forecast data usage: 


(Mills, from slide 5)

Mills points out that coal is the world's most important energy source, and IT is using more and more. Perhaps when the mines are empty, we need no longer worry about the NSA/GCHQ's cybersnooping.

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Albert Burgess: reporting treason

In December 2006 I was given a CD-ROM with over 200 pages of documents retrieved from the Public Records Office by David Barnby, each page headed Secret, Classified, or Restricted. I was told these were of historical interest, so I sat down to read them with my historian’s hat on.

After ten minutes my historian’s hat had been kicked into touch and I was wearing my constable’s hat as I exclaimed to myself, “My God, this is sedition!” I hit the print button and printed off all the pages. I then sat down pencil in hand to make notes. Once I had satisfied myself that crimes of sedition and treason had been disclosed, I took the papers to St Aldate's Police Station in Oxford, a 15-mile drive from my home in Thame.

On arrival I was greeted by a civilian counter clerk. I asked if he could get me a police officer. He said, "Why?" I said, "I want to report a crime." He said, "You don't report crime here, you phone this number," and he chucked an 0845 number at me. I pirouetted around in the police station front office and said "This is a police station, is it"? He said, "Yes." I said, "Then get me a policeman.” He said, "Perhaps if you tell me what it’s about?”

My first thought was to tell him to mind his own business and get me a police officer, but I said, "Yes, well, it’s about the fact that Edward Heath, one-time Prime Minister, set up a conspiracy to subvert the Constitution, the major crime of Sedition at Common Law, and at this level of sedition an act of high treason against the Constitution and people of England. And his conspiracy planned to hand over this Kingdom to a foreign power, the EEC, the major crime of high treason. Are you any the wiser?” He said, "No." I said, "Then get me a policeman!”

He vanished out the back and came back with the tallest police sergeant I have ever seen, who I now know to be Sgt Thomas. Sgt Thomas walked up the counter, placed his hands on it and in a very I've-got-a-lunatic-here tone of voice said, "YES SIR, AND WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU"?

I said, "Well, Sergeant, the first thing you can do for me is open up one of these interview rooms so we can sit at a table and discuss this in relative comfort." The look in his eyes was one of utter confusion: after all, no-one walks into a police station and tells the duty sergeant what to do, but I had done just that. He stood for a moment, not sure what to do, then he walked away and opened the interview room and my journey had begun.

I explained to him how Edward Heath had set up a conspiracy using a Foreign Office civil servant by the name of Norman Redaway (now deceased) who worked in the information research department (IRD), which used to be known as the Special Operations Executive, which trained (SOE) agents to be dropped into occupied Europe to work with the Resistance. Redaway was a spook. The SOE was disbanded in 1946 and IRD was born.

Sergeant Thomas said, "But Heath is dead!” I said, "I know, but some of his people are still alive." After about 45 minutes talking Sgt Thomas said he couldn't deal with this, he would have to take it upstairs. I agreed and giving him a full print out of the documents retrieved from the Public Records Office, I left.   

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Russian carbon sequestration: bigger picture needed?

Writing for the green website Grist, John Upton quotes Russian research released in August that claims abandoned farmland there has taken up large amounts of CO2 since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Reporting on the same, New Scientist says this equates to 10 per cent of Russia's carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels (although the study's abstract says "... ~10% of the annual C sink in all Russian forests", so not having access to the full text I don't know whether the NS has misread).

However it seems to me that there is a limit to how much the wild vegetation will absorb, as it will reach maturity (presumably in the form of reforestation).

Also, even though many Russians have given up farming, they haven't stopped eating. So someone somewhere else is farming for them, and if that's in foreign countries there is an energy and emission implication in getting the food to market. So per capita, I suspect CO2 emissions relating to food have increased.

To some extent there may be some offsetting for demographic change - the Russian population shrank in the post-collapse years - but the population has begun to grow again.

I'd think it's more important to look at Russian industry and the extent to which emission reductions have been achieved because of more efficient plant, as opposed to being caused by the loss of productive capacity to (for example) coal-burning China.

If you're a global warmist, can we have a global picture, please?

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The No-Fail Tipster does it again!

Another stunning 16-1 betting coup by Broad Oak's The Punter's Friend left the bookies drowning their sorrows at Ascot this afternoon, as Intibaah romped home in the 3.05.

Right every time, as always!

Too good to be true? Doubt our infallible racing pundit? See the evidence for yourself in this morning's posting (last updated 7 p.m. today).

Read The Punter's Friend every day in your soaraway Broad Oak Magazine!

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

The Daily Mail's memory hole and David Rose's Arctic ice

UPDATE (19:00): My tip for Intibaah to win the 3.05 at Ascot today was, as usual, completely correct.

Those who have read Orwell's "1984" will remember the 'memory hole' down which Winston Smith would lose historical evidence that was inconvenient to the current official narrative.

Spot the differences in this modern example:

Daily Mail online, 8 September 2013

- and 20 days later...

Daily Mail online, 28 September 2013

Perhaps the rewriting of history was in response to this video (htp: Paddington), from which the first image above was taken (at 24 seconds in):



As it happens, I am a Daily Mail reader (or skimmer), and this paper makes many people gibber (see this site); but as I said to someone who posted the latter link to his Facebook page,

"The Mail is hated by groupthinking Lefties, esp. R4 comedians who expect sycophantic laughs for their own prejudices instead of wit. It's successful because it cast its net wide - look at the funnies page (always the soul of a newspaper) to see how disparate and mutually antipathetic its subsets of readers. I read it to get the gist of the national agenda, not to share its point of view - when it has one, instead of blowing hot and cold, which is what it usually does."

Clearly even David Rose has recognised that he had blown too cool on this occasion - though retrospectively rewriting the original piece instead of issuing a correction illustrates the exuberant self-granted journalistic license that made me for a time suspect that he was really Johann Hari come in from the cold.

And now my infallible, solid-gold tip for the winner of the 3.05 pm at Ascot this afternoon: #1 - Intibaah - odds forecast 16/1. Fill yer boots! (Important note: this post updated at 19:00 on 04.10.2013).

Read The Punter's Friend every day in your soaraway Broad Oak Magazine!

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Leather

An old German anecdote:

As he was accompanying a duchess into the dining-hall, a German general remarked on the long leather gloves she wore, as was then the fashion, and asked her why. "They keep my arms and hands soft and supple," she replied.

"That's odd," said the general, "for I wear lederhosen and my arse is as rough as a rasp (so rauh wie ein Reibeisen)."




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The future of climate change

Environmental science tends to be carried out within a regulatory regime which why it attracts funding. Once established, the regulatory regime is in the driving seat, not the science.

This is a fact of life for environmental scientists. The science is mostly about monitoring regulatory compliance and providing evidence for prosecution where such things as discharge licences, emission licences or environmental laws have been broken.

I must have signed many hundreds of witness statements in my role as an expert witness in cases of water pollution, although I hardly ever had to attend court as scientific evidence was challenged only rarely. The witness statement was almost always sufficient.

What we refer to climate change with its associated treaties and laws is merely another regulatory regime but on a global scale. Climate science has a similar support role to other regulatory regimes, but the science is significantly less mature and dependable.

As well as having an enforcement role, the environmental scientist’s job may be to provide a scientific basis for new regulations. For example the quantification and regulation of dioxins and dioxin like substances in the environment.

It requires spending on advanced analytical technology and the development of reliable methods for the sampling and analysis of soil samples. This means reliable enough to go to court and give evidence about scientific results under oath.

Provision of funding and expertise for new environmental investigations is the positive side of regulatory regimes. Another example has been the identification and quantification of endocrine disruptors in the environment.

In this respect, climate change is a fairly typical if wildly controversial and ambitious regulatory regime. It has facilitated funding and expertise for the investigation of an alleged environmental problem due to human emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere supposedly causing a rise in global temperature.

As I see it, the problem with the regulatory regime for the global climate is a clumsy desire by UNEP to regulate combustion processes before the scientific rationale devised by the IPCC was known to be sound.

For me this has been one of the most startling aspects of climate change – the science is horrible and nowhere near reliable enough for regulatory purposes. I suppose one advantage of a carbon market is that m’learned friends are given no opportunity to pick apart the science in an enforcement process based on prosecution.

So what does the future have in store?

To my mind, the most interesting aspect is the future direction of global temperatures. The climate is in charge here, not UNEP or the IPCC. It’s as if Defra had no idea what the Thames might do next.

If a global warming trend sets in, then it will probably be business as usual and the regulatory regime will require climate scientists to carry on as if nothing untoward happened. They won’t spend much time on explaining the warming hiatus either.

If the warming hiatus continues or a global cooling trend sets in, then it may still be business as usual, but how they intend to carry it off I have no idea. There may be contingency plans spoken of in private, but you or I will never hear of them until the press releases pop up.

A much bigger problem is the obvious damage done to national energy policies as they become more and more absurd. Somehow the climate regime may have to compromise on this one.

Don’t bet on it though – regulatory regimes don’t care about a few thousand extra deaths each winter.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.