Category Archives: Mail

Mail 683 Sunday, July 17, 2011

= = = = = = =

MIleage — a derivative wolf in sheep’s clothing

As we argue about choices government will make in the management of energy and the generation of CO2, the question of US policy towards vehicle fuel mileage is instructive of the gap between social and hard science. We always focus on “improvements” in the mileage of the vehicle fleet as a way to measure our progress and to direct the R&D and capital investments that car buyers will eventually pay for.

But car mileage is itself a derivative measurement. And we have the same dangers here about derivatives that we have had over and over again with financial derivatives. Do policymakers understand that improving the SUV fleet’s mileage by 5 miles per gallon, or even 2, is FAR MORE IMPORTANT TO REDUCE ENERGY CONSUMPTION than improving the mileage of our small car fleet by 10 miles per gallon?

We are misled into thinking that every mile per gallon saved is the same. And that getting the highest mileage numbers to rise from one one ridiculous level to the next is better than small mileage gains at the lower levels.

When the exact opposite is true.

Driving 14,400 miles per year:

Current mileage Increased mileage Fuel Saved annually

Large SUV 15 20 240 gallons

Medium SUV 20 25 144

Subcompact 35 45 91

Hybrid Car 45 55 58

What is important about this is that we have many ways to resize and re-equip SUV’s to achieve 5 mpg gains — today, right now and in affordable ways. But achieving 10 mpg gains in our most fuel-efficient cars is going to be much tougher.

Yet we are considering passing laws to improve the fuel economy of our fleet based on linear changes in a derivative measure; one that delivers ever-diminishing underlying value as it increases.

John MacGregor

It is also an exceedingly unpopular move. The only way to make people buy these cars is to use government force; the market hasn’t been successful in selling them. Now of course if the future of the human race is at stake it’s one thing: but this pretty well affects only the United States, and doesn’t have that much impact here. It will have even less effect on China and India and the developing world. If eliminating CO2 is vital for the future, then it is probably imperative not to destroy the US economy, because the US is the most likely place to develop CO2 extraction technologies: probably biological. Big lakes of Green Slime. Bubble machines. Seeding the desert parts of the oceans. Something large and probably expensive. We can’t do that if we’re broke – which the greens may achieve. See Fallen Angels.

WHAT IS THE "CORRECT" AVERAGE TEMPERATURE? Don’t we need to know this first before we can determine what deviance is detrimental?

This is a question that used to have been answered. There is a period known as the "Climate Optimum" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum around 9,000 – 5,000 years ago. The temperature was up to 4 C warmer than now and the Sahara was fertile, supporting, if cave paintings in the central Sahara are to be believed, all sorts of animals including hippopotamus.

This answer is no longer acceptable but no other has been substituted.

Neil C

An interesting observation. When did the Holocene Optimum lose its favor?

Tax Burdens on Individuals

Some time back my son, who has degrees in accounting and finance and works in the field at FedEx, calculated his total tax burden – including the "company" share of FICA/Medicare. About 46% – and there is no individual tax in Tennessee on earned income. I feel confident that his family income at that time was well below the Obama-defined "rich" level of $250,000 per year.

I am widowed, and also well below the $250,000 level. Since I am over 65, I have Medicare. Because my income is "too high", my monthly withholding from Social Security for Part B Medicare is about twice the "official" price for this coverage – yet one more example of a federal income tax under another name.

As you have experienced, for two (or three?) years Social Security payments have not been increased to partially offset inflation; yet the tax base has been increased due to inflation. Moreover, federal workers have received cost of living adjustments. For Social Security recipients, this is a blatant example of inflation as a tax.

Charles Brumbelow

Death Taxes

Jerry,

While on the subject of taxes, I would like to cite an example of how the Estate Tax has negative effects on the Consumer and the Economy.

Once upon a time there were many Supermarket chains in Southern California and Competition was intense. Consumers benefitted from this competition and the many choices that they had. But this short message is not abount the evils of unrestricted mergers.

There once was an Independent Privately owned Supermarket chain in Southern California named Hughes Markets after its Founder Joe Hughes. There were about 40 Stores, less than half the size of the major competitors. This smaller size had advantages. It was possible to get higher quality meats and produce.

In 1997 Hughes Markets sold themselves to QFC a Pacific Northwest publically traded Supermarket chain. This sale was made for Estate Planning purposes only. With the Joe Hughes Estate holding publically traded stock there would be no litigation with the IRS over mythical evaluations of a privately held corporation and any Estate Tax Liabilities could be paid by selling QFC stock. (The agreement in the sale to QFC was for the Current Management of Hughes Markets to continue without interference from QFC.)

In 1997 Fred Meyer merged with Ralphs, another Southern California Chain.

In 1998 QFC merged with Fred Meyer.

Later in 1998 Fred Meyer merged with Kroger and the Hughes Market chain disappeared under red Ralphs signs.

This is but one example of how the Estate Tax Screws the Citizens of the USA. Both the Consumers of Southern California and the Former Owners and Employees of Hughes Markets are the poorer for it.

Parenthetically, most mergers and acquisitions above a certain size threshold should probably be banned. Let the larger businesses that are in trouble fall into Bankruptcy and then be purchased if a reorganization cannot be accomplished.

Bob Holmes

I have long been in opposition to large mergers. Competition is important. David McCord Wright held that anti-trust activity was necessary to prevent the great concentrations of wealth predicted by Marx. I have always believed that. Any enterprise that is too big to fail should be too big to be allowed to exist. Death taxes should be written with that in mind.

Random Thoughts

Your psychology degree. My daughter just graduated with a BA in Psychology from our state university. It took her a long time to decide and declare a major and that turned out to be the easiest path to graduation with what she’d already taken. She wanted to get a BS because she’d worked in a several neuroscience and behavior labs and was taking organic chemistry in preparation for medical school applications, but the "science" folks in the department required that she sit through "science and society" BS courses . So she asked about a BA. Their only additional requirement was a foreign language. It took some effort, but she finally convinced them that two years of classwork and then a practicum in Albania (courtesy, we believe, of funding from State or military or ..) should qualify. Bottom line? Yes, the stereotypic Bachelor in Psychology is blond and ignorant but you are proof that the otherwise worthless piece of paper is a visa to chances to prove one’s ability.

Mathematics. You describe calculus as "low cunning." As with algebra, a grasp of the basic rules allows one to do much practical work without any need to understand the theoretical underpinnings of the rules. Statistics, on the other hand, has rules founded on so many assumptions and approximations that trying to apply them without understanding their limitations can lead to absurd conclusions. Meanwhile our educational system goes to great effort to teach the mathematics of calculus (thus alienating many who could profitably use the more practical skills) while generally teaching statistics as a bunch of unproven formulae. The result is a large number of folks who think they know statistics and can’t do calculus. I’m not clear about the best solution..

Maybe you or your readers would find this interesting material for rumination.

Tim Herbst

I can think of very little I learned in undergraduate psychology that has been all that useful to me in later life. Some was necessary for graduate work in the psychology department and fortunately I was sent by Paul Horst to the mathematics department to learn the real thing, not the cookbook statistical math taught in the psychology department. That led me to operations research, albeit my first aerospace job was as an aviation psychologist. I can think of nothing taught in undergraduate sociology that is of much use in later life. There are many voodoo sciences adding greatly to the costs of modern universities.

Teacher firings!

Jerry,

Well Satan is surely playing ice hockey since Hell HAS to have frozen over! http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/206-low-performing-dc-teachers-fired/2011/07/15/gIQANEj5GI_story.html

Who would have thunk it could happen in DC? Mebbe in a year or so, after new student test results, this could be the wedge to actually begin making use of the wonderful teacher performance data that has been collected in LA!

Unrelated, I recently purchased a smart phone…one of the strongest incentives was to be able to listen to books from Audible.com. This is very addictive. But….a suggestion to your readers who have not yet tried audio books: LISTEN FIRST, then read. I have found that when I have first read a title, I have developed a voice/accent for each of the characters. Since that never matches the narrator’s voice, I find it a bit distracting when I listen to an audio book. So read, THEN listen!

Warm regards,

Larry Cunningham

The Los Angeles School District, second largest in the nation with tens of thousands of teachers, has in the last ten years fired seven for incompetence. The Gates Foundation has found that you can double the efficiency of most school districts by firing the worst 10% of teachers. We know how to bring back decent education, but that means putting the students’ needs ahead of teacher interests. That does not appear to be happening. The districts would rather keep all the incompetent teachers than fire 10% and double education efficiency. I don’t really foresee changes, but Godspeed to places that can do it.

How the Internet has changed what we remember

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/07/15/google-on-the-brain-how-the-internet-has-changed-what-we-remember/

http://m.sciencemag.org/content/early/2011/07/13/science.1207745

Charles Brumbelow

That has been in our local papers as well. Sherlock Holmes had the theory that after a while memory became a zero sum game: in order to remember something you had to forget something else. He told Watson that he tried to forget extraneous facts as quickly as possible in order to leave room for learning the essential. One doubts that Holmes really believed that, but he said it, I believe in A Study in Scarlet.

The problem is that to understand the world one needs a basic set of facts. To understand history you need a framework to put new ideas in. I was fortunate to get mine from, first, Hillyer’s Child’s History of the World, later Van Loon’s Story of Mankind, all before third grade. Jacques Barzun has some discussion of the minimum framework needed to have a sense of history in his Teacher in America.

Regarding a gov’t off switch

Having a gov’t department dedicated to turning off parts of the gov’t appeals to my Libertarian side (ok, honestly, I don’t have another side) greatly. I am reminded of the theoretical Vulcan government of the original Star Trek that had an "Expunging" arm whose job was to remove laws. That would be the civilized way.

A slightly less-civilized way, but possibly more probable, would be Heinlein’s Bureau of Sabotage from Whipping Star and the Dosadi Experiment. I think you’d make a great Director for such a Bureau.

Brent Bowmaster

Libertarian, techno-geek and teacher

Actually, that was Frank Herbert’s Bureau of Sabotage. Thank you for the compliment.

Mail 683 Saturday, July 16, 2011

Precise temperature vs trend

Jerry,

Given that the temperature readings at many stations are noisy, can we not learn a lot using trends even with huge error bars?

Oh forgive me. I forgot my place. The 0.1 degree accuracy level is sooo important to deciding how to structure the lives of subjects in accordance to self obvious principles.

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

But of course we can learn from trends with large error bars. I remind you that I often point out that there were dairy farms in Greenland in Viking times, and vineyards in Vinland and also in eastern Scotland, longer growing seasons in Europe and China, in Viking times; and this argues strongly that the Earth has been warmer in historical times than it is now. We also know that in 1776 the Hudson froze hard enough to support the transport of cannon to George Washington in Haarlem Heights; there is other gross evidence that it was much colder in 1776 than it is now. We have many measures with large error bars. We have the water temperatures from the Beagle. We have ice cores and tree rings.

It is very clear that the temperature trend since 1800 has been up. We also know that CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been rising.. Those measures are precise and repeatable: 315 parts per million by volume in 1960 to not quite 390 in 2010. This is a precise and repeatable measure and the averaging models are easily understood. It shows a trend.

Back in the 19^th Century Arrhenius did some back of the envelope calculations on the effects on temperature to be expected from increases in CO2 levels. He said:

On the other hand, any doubling of the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air would raise the temperature of the earth’s surface by 4°; and if the carbon dioxide were increased fourfold, the temperature would rise by 8°

At the time there was no precise way to test this hypothesis because there were not sufficient data to determine the temperature of the Earth’s surface to a degree. Note though that Arrhenius was quite aware that the Earth was warming and had been since 1800 or so.

His law was

if the quantity of carbonic acid increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression.

ΔF = α ln(C/C₀)

Note that this predicts the heating due to CO2. It does not say there is no other source of heating. Which brings us to this question: was there a heating trend not due to Co2 released into the atmosphere as a result of human activities? Arrhenius – a Swedish Nobel laureate – was interested in the causes of Ice Ages and their interruptions. After all, his country was covered by sheets of ice in prehistoric times, and much Nordic folklore is concerned with cold and ice and the coming of Fimbulwinter. Was human activity, specifically CO2, responsible for Scandinavia emerging from the Ice, or was there some other cause? If there be a warming trend independent of man-caused CO2, then the heating caused by CO2 would be “extra”, added on to the heating of the natural trend.

And it is precisely that question that requires accuracy in data and consistency in averaging models. The trend in warming has been up: about one degree since 1880. This is generally reported in tenths of a degree, but often even in hundredths of a degree in quite scientific-sounding reports.

Then there is this sort of thing:

The official NASA temperature graphs make it appear that we are dealing with dramatic trends, but close inspection shows that most of those are actually reporting changes of a tenth of a degree per decade – one degree in a century. How much of that is man made and how much due to something else is not easily ascertained.

All these arguments depend on reliable data at great accuracy.

A great deal of the Republic’s investment capital is determined by government policies which are themselves generated from the Global Warming theories. The Global Warming policies have caused a great deal of unemployment and are responsible for much of our economic distress. How much effect the US has on actual CO2 generation is not clear: China and India are building coal fired power plants.

Low cost energy plus economic freedom is a sure fire formula for economic prosperity. The US has restricted economic freedom and raised the cost of energy as a result of climate change theories. It would seem to me important to base those policies on sound and accurate data.

We ought also to be looking at just what effect our Green policies actually have on the world: are we just getting out of the way for China and India? Would it be better to have American prosperity and fund research on technologies that can bring about climate change in directions we want?

And what direction do we want, anyway?

= =

What shall we set the Earth’s thermostat to?

I’ve enjoyed your comments on AGW, etc.

As an engineer, my questions to the "Climate Scientist" convention from Hearth and Earth would be:

1) WHAT IS THE "CORRECT" AVERAGE TEMPERATURE? Don’t we need to know this first before we can determine what deviance is detrimental?

2) Apart from the # temp samples and placement, what would an "accurate average global temperature" mean anyway? If half the planet was 150F and half was 0F would that be just the same to a "climate scientist" as the entire planet being a uniform balmy 75F?? Same average all we care about? Where is the deference to thermal differences which create weather, not to mention the uncertainty of its measurement?

3) If we have established the correct target average global temperature (of course nobody can, even if it made any sense) to set the thermostat at, then wouldn’t we have a moral obligation to construct something to connect that thermostat to? A Global HVAC system that can reign in variations *either way*, not just choke off industrial progress with carbon taxes to keep us cooler, or warmer, or whatever is the latest Marxist scam.

Or maybe our moral obligation is to meet our moral obligations by observing more and learning more and rushing to "end debate" less?

Cheers

Jeff D

We do not seem to have any agreement on where we ought to set the thermostat, nor are we working very hard on industrial or more likely biological processes for extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere. There’s a lot we should be studying; instead we rush to make policies which may not have any great effect on the world C02 levels.

Gates Interview

Dr. Pournelle,

Just a quick note. Trying to pound it out before my netbook battery dies.

Did you see the interview of Bill Gates done by Wired Magazine? It was about energy, and I think you and Mr. gates share an attitude or two. I’m not a big Gates fan, but he seems to be making sense here. Here is the URL:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/06/mf_qagates

Obesa Cantavit,

Douglas Knapp

A good interview. It is worth some close attention. In A Step Farther Out I long ago dealt with using garbage to generate industry: but note that the government mandates on biofuels have resulted in a lot of distortions, and now there is a mandate to use cellulosic ethanol when none is available. I wrote on this long ago, and things haven’t changed much. My solution to this would be prizes: if the Gates Foundation were to put up a $1 billion prize for production of industrial quantities of biodiesel fuel at economic costs – the wording of the prizew would have to be carefully done, but it’s not all that hard – then either it happens or it doesn’t. No government mandates needed, and no costs to anyone but investors until it’s achieved. For that matter, though, a $10 billion prize would get us a private base on the Moon. If I could convince Gates of anything, it would be to put up about $20 billion in Prizes in various areas of his choosing: show that prizes work.

Thanks for the reference, and I agree it’s worth your time.

"Nuclear Blast from the Past"

A nice, thorough history of the use of nuclear power generation in space.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/30/scitech/main20075735.shtml

–Gary Pavek

I will note that after all was said and done, the number of people killed off site by the Japanese nuclear disaster following the earthquake and tsunami is lower than the number killed in mine accidents so far this year.

Nuclear power remains the “greenest” and most reliable energy source we have. It is not “safe” perhaps, but we know the limits of its effect. Chernobyl is about the worst disaster and it was pretty minimal compared to – well, to the worst scenarios of global warming, as an example. I don’t like unlimited dumping of CO2 into the atmosphere. I think there are better ways to deal with that threat than wrecking the economy.

Mail 683 Thursday, July 14, 2011

The Dance continues:

Deficit Dance

Dear Jerry –

Your essay in the view section today was fun to read, but really, the Democrats are being stubborn?

Well, yes, of course they are.

Almost as stubborn as the Republicans who are unwilling to compromise even a teeny weeny bit, unless it is overwhelmingly to their advantage and overwhelmingly harmful to their "enemies."

Obama is not lying, the SS checks will be held up before they stop paying debt services to the banks. It happened before, over a paltry 120m mistake in what, 1979 or thereabouts?

All this is dancing about is not really about the deficit, but about looking better than the other party in the upcoming election. Nothing more or less to it I think. No big moral, ethical, or philosophical stance. Just "don’t do anything that hurts our chances in the next election."

I do predict a surprise, where the people get disgusted with all the beggers not doing their jobs up in D.C. It would not surprise me to see a serious campaign evolve to throw them all out of office. Republican and Democrat alike.

-Paul

All of which illustrates the problem nicely. The problem is that there is no off switch. There is no way to turn off Bunny Inspectors, Head Start, Americans with Disabilities Act, extreme environmental regulations, scale Medicare and Medicaid back to pre-2000 levels, and start a spiral back toward more economic freedom and less central command economics. Taxes will increase. It won’t matter what the latest increase is in theory “for”, it will go to make the share of government allocation of resources higher and the degree of economic freedom lower. More taxes is a higher command economy.

We all survived back in the last Century. We have foolishly undertaken a number of debts since that time and they have to be paid, meaning that we ought to be cutting back on entitlements instead of insisting that they are no longer discretionary. But all that requires hard choices, and neither party wants to do that. Easier to dance and continue the Kabuki play, and go on raising spending and raising taxes and street demonstration, until we are indistinguishable from Greece.

At one time it was possible for young people to work their way through college. I did. I had the Korean War GI Bill to help. Roberta simply worked her way through college. No debts at the end. Now that’s possible only for those from fairly wealthy families. All the rest start in bondage to the government – the sole source of student loans – and the rises in tuition continue. The Academy, professors, administrators, janitors, police, secretaries, deans, technicians, gardeners, all must be paid, and there can be no thought of reducing any of that. Those are not discretionary.

The people tried last year to reverse this. The result is kabuki dance. At no point is there any serious discussion of saying stop, enough, the government must become smaller. Even 2% smaller. Just cut back by 2%. Stop growing, Reverse the trend. But I do not see it happening. There is not enough income. We can only cut discretionary expenses, and none of the entitlements are discretionary. And the Dance goes on.

If something cannot go on forever it will stop. But there is still some money left to be confiscated. We hasten to add that to the government maw. Feed the beast. The Dance will continue.

Turning the rascals out is an old American tradition. Perhaps it is not yet dead.

Mail 683 2011 Monday July 11, 2011 – 2

Vegetables On The Lawn

People are looking at this as an example of a government official gone mad (or, maybe, just stupid) and inappropriately using his power.

See, I don’t know about that. From the looks of things this is a man executing the duties of his office in a manner that seems entirely reasonable to him. His community has charged him with maintaining its chosen standards, and that’s exactly what he’s doing.

Maybe what needs to happen here is that instead of asking why this guy can’t find someone else to bother, we should instead ask why there’s an official Department Of Bothering People at all. Don’t cry about how this is a special exception, because *everyone* has a reason why they’re a special exception. Complain that the law exists at all. This isn’t even the voluntary-contract situation of the dread Homeowner’s Association; this is an employee of the elected municipal government. If you don’t like what’s going on, then change it! Find the people in charge; get THEM to handle it. We do not claim that a thief’s hands should be in jail but the rest of him go free.

—

Mike T. Powers

I tend to agree. It’s a local matter, and I firmly believe in local government. I probably should have made that clear but I was wondering if anyone else would notice. I have to say my proclivity is to let local governments do a great many things, including censorship of books and movies. I’d let Boston ban obscenity in Boston; I just wouldn’t let Boston ban Lady Chatterly in Cambridge. Of course Boston isn’t likely to ban anything nowadays, nor are very many other communities. The days are long over when the Binford Commission could forbid me to see Jane Russell in the Outlaw in the city of Memphis and we had to go over the Harahan Bridge to West Memphis in Arkansas. And I completely agree that this is a local affair to be handled by locals.

Now when it comes to Federal employees at a time when we are broke I take an entirely different view…  Thanks.

Closing the Iranian border

Dear Dr Pournelle,

your commenter ‘Ed’ asks, referring to the Iranian border, "So they can afford it and we can’t?", and you respond "It’s a matter of will." May I suggest that you take another look at the quoted text? It does not say that Iran has closed its border, it says that the Iranian government has "*announced* that 90 percent of [its] border has been sealed". Well, anyone can announce anything they like, but if, tomorrow morning, Obama announced that he had closed the Mexican border, would you believe him? And if not, why believe the Iranians? And this is all the more true because the quote goes on to point out that the Iranians have lost several thousand soldiers in their effort to keep that border closed (which seems to indicate something on the level of ongoing guerrilla warfare), and that heroin and opium are *still* getting through.

I suggest, then, that even if closing the Mexican border is indeed a matter of will, the Iranian case does not demonstrate any such thing.

Regards,

Rolf Andreassen.

Actually, haven’t various politicians told us that the US border is under control? Or will be Real Soon Now. The Iranians would do it if they could; the question is whether the current politicians want to at all. I don’t really care about Iranian control of their borders so long as I don’t have to pay for it. I do care about our. Alas I have paid for a fence that was never built, and a bunch of other stuff.