| Friday,
August 13, 2010
thoughts about civil service pay
Hi Jerry
First, a glance at the GS pay scale
http://www.fedjobs.com/pay/pay.html, and don't overlook the geographic
multiplier in the second chart. The typical office worker - above the level
of a clerk but not yet management - is around a GS-11/GS-12, receiving pay
in the range of $70k to $85k. Add in pension and medical benefits, and you
are pretty close to the $109k that the article's author claims.
For the typical type of job being done - applying
complex regulations to complex projects and situations - the salary is not
at all unreasonable.
The problem, as I think you and your readers will
agree, lies in the *need* for so many people to apply so many complex
regulations. Entire federal departments (Education, to name one) could be
simply eliminated and no one would miss them. Others, such as the EPA, could
be reduced to a tiny fraction of their size, if unnecessary regulations were
removed.
Putting so many talented people on the street would
cause a certain amount of short-term pain (especially for the individuals
concerned). But in the long run, having all of these talented people back on
the productive side of the economy would be a huge boon to the country.
Cheers
Brad
=============
“Federal civil service workers are now earning not
more than, but double, what private sector workers earn. Their income has
increased annually for the past nine years. Federal civil service average
paying benefit is $109,000 a year (included benefits and pensions of
course). The average bureaucrat makes about twice what those who produce
goods and service and pay taxes. There are no layoffs, and there will be
raises next year.
Where is Madame Defarge now that we need her?”
Don’t know where you got THAT info, the current base
federal pay tables are here:
http://www.opm.gov/oca/10tables/indexGS.asp
Most of the federal work force is at the GS-5, -7, -9
level, at least outside of the Beltway, mostly clerical staff. There would
have to be a whole lot of GS-14, -15 folks out there to get the average up
to $109K. Throughout the government, those are considered upper-upper
management positions and not a large volume of them.
As far as some elaborate pension scheme for federal
workers, the current crop gets Social Security plus whatever they can put
away in a 401K-type of scheme called the Thrift Savings Plan. Not a lot
different than what most worker bees get when working above the
burger-flipping level. Been that way for 20-some years.
I keep running across this meme that government
workers are making out like bandits, it’s just not true for the vast
majority. A lot of staff are retired ex-military, so they’ve got the
military pension in addition to whatever they get as Civil Service, so
they’re doing well. I don’t know of many that would begrudge them that
pension for service rendered. Raises run between 1-2% per year, during the
wild years of inflation, pay increases didn’t match the rate of inflation.
It’s hard to compare some positions inside the government with positions
outside, how many guys change reactor rods on a nuclear submarine or deal
with military retirement benefit problems in the non-government sector?
Stan Schaefer
I am unfamiliar with the current Civil Service.
Back in space program days, I knew a number of Ph.D. scientists and
engineers who were GS 12, and GS 13 was definitely a management position.
I expect there has been some inflation.
I do know that in the old days at Boeing we
called the BOMARC "the civil service missile. It won't work and you can't
fire it." That was a very long time ago. The "it won't work" part wasn't
necessarily true (although it was essentially so of the BOMARC at the
time), but 'you can't fire it' is the essence of civil service and the
reason that Aerospace Corporation was formed. The point of Civil Service
you don't get laid off.
Incidentally, most nuclear power plants are not
run by civil service.
=
“Incidentally, most nuclear power plants are not run
by civil service.”
I didn’t write that, I wrote: “ It’s hard to compare
some positions inside the government with positions outside, how many guys
change reactor rods on a nuclear submarine or deal with military retirement
benefit problems in the non-government sector?”
^^^^^^^^^^^
Don’t know of many nuclear ship overhaul yards in the
civilian sector, do you? Work forces at the Navy yards is mostly Civil
Service, military-managed. Think we’re down to two Navy-run facilities, used
to be 4 or 5. Base closure, you know. Some sections of government ARE being
reduced in size, just that others are getting bloated more.
Stan Schaefer
My point was that there are nuclear power
operators who aren't civil servants. Didn't mean to be unclear. And the
federal work force is expanding, although not so mush ass California where
it's REALLY growing. The Great Recession can't be allowed to stand in the
way of increasing the size of government, raises for government employees,
and expanding pensions. Or at least it hasn't been.
I wonder when it gets to the point that the
retirement pay costs are greater than employment and they have to
terminate workers in order to pay pensions?
================
More Bad Data
Jerry,
The bad data just keeps on coming: The report from the
ILO says 81 million out of 630 million 15-24 year olds where unemployed at
the end of 2009, some 7.8 million more than at the end of 2007.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/38674003
Today's disaffected youth is tomorrow's
terrorist--unless we can get them in the army young enough and then they
might get to be mercenaries or cops.
-- BDAB,
Josh
==
Scientific Models
Hello Jerry
30 some years ago when I was working on my PhD in
physics, I had a fairly simple (on the face of it) project: measure the
effective mass of a moving magnetic domain wall in a thin film of magnetic
material (related to magnetic bubble memories – remember them??) My
particular contribution was supposed to be measure this in the presence of
varying amounts of magnetic field applied in-plane with the thin film. We
had a generally accepted model for this, but no one had actually taken the
data.
So, I built the experiment and took the data. Go to
analyze the data and a major problem arose – the data wasn’t even close to
the model, even qualitatively. The effective wall mass went up with in-plane
magnetic field where the model said it should go down. It seemed that my
degree was in jeopardy because the data didn’t fit the model. At the last
minute a visiting professor in our group, a theoretician from Poland, came
up with a new model that matched my data, and I got my degree.
The moral of the story: just because it’s the only
model you’ve got doesn’t mean it’s right. If the data doesn’t match, believe
the data and look for a better model.
I think that this has some relevance to the climate
change discussion you’ve been having. You can use this story however you
like.
Karen
Karen Parker
Ph.D. in Physics, The Ohio State University, 1980
I came from a tradition in which the data trumped
the model, but that's the old OR view, and apparently isn't popular now.
==
Measurement of temperature vis-a-vis global warming
claims
As someone who in the past, was responsible for
precision measurement systems used for research at a large federal aerospace
laboratory, including the maintenance of laboratory standards traceable to
NBS (or NIST, if you prefer; I date myself) I am highly skeptical of
historical measurements that claim sufficient precision to state that
average temperatures changed by a degree or a fraction of a degree over 100
years. The problem with this is: what was their traceability? What standards
were used 100 years ago? What kind of instrument was used? (I suspect the
latter was a mercury thermometer with an attached card, which not only
required good eyesight to read, but required the glass be accurately
attached to the card). Were these instruments regularly calibrated against a
uniform standard (such as a triple point bath)? I strongly doubt it. I have
never seen a description of the measurement techniques used to establish
these claims, which to me makes them highly suspect.
Now common sense tells us that over a long period, the
worldwide climate has changed periodically - we have the Great Lakes as
testimony to that, for one. But to claim a degree or two of "Average" change
over 100 or 200 years defies reason.
Rgds Ed
[not Ed Hume]
=========
: F 430
Jerry,
Fahrenheit 430.
Is it a discounted Bradbury novel?
No, it is an officially recorded surface temperature
for Lake Michigan used in official NOAA warming estimates.
http://www.examiner.com/environmental-
policy-in-boston/us-government-massive-
new-global-warming-scandal-noaa-disgraced
Jim
Good grief!
==
The science behind AGW skepticism
I believe we are in agreement that there are three
distinct supporting characters in the AGW drama: the Ghost of Climate Past,
the Ghost of Climate Present, and the Ghost of Climate Future. The Ghost of
Climate Past is the business of tree rings and ice cores and Viking
colonists, the Ghost of Climate Present is the 20'th century temperature
record, and the Ghost of Climate Future is the collection of computer
models.
With respect to the .1 deg-F accuracy, mainly the
Ghost of Climate Present, I am thinking that "believers" are falling back on
a Law of Large Numbers effect. Yes, "they" can't even predict the weather to
within 10 deg-F one week out, but what we are talking about is taking many
readings from many stations and taking averages, and were everything
Gaussian and statistically independent, accuracy would improve with
square-root-of-N.
My concern is not about whether "N" is big enough for
.1 deg-F accuracy but whether someone has their "thumb on the scale", if
unintentionally. Even if every climate scientist is beyond reproach, there
is just so much confirmation bias -- there is that classic essay, was it by
Richard Feynman?, of where Millikan made an initial error in measuring the
electric charge and of the ever-so-slow drift of subsequent published
determinations from Millikan's value to the modern value.
The Ghost of Climate Future is plainly based on a
large "CO2 multiplier", which in turn is supported by the .1 deg-F
"accuracy" of the Ghosts of Climate Present and in some cases Climate Past,
which in turn is supported by a "strong prior" based on the assumption
people have regarding physics of CO2, which forgets that the dire changes
predicted by the computer models requires CO2 to be "leveraged" through
water vapor rather than CO2 having that much of a direct effect.
So yes, we are in agreement that the .1 deg F
"accuracy" is in the "critical path" of the AGW Hypothesis. Your claim is
that the measurements lack the required statistical power; my hunch this is
that "N" is large enough but confirmation bias prevents the required care in
eliminating systematic error.
Paul Milenkovic Madison, Wisconsin
Clearly the 'average' is not an average: we don't
average the temperature from the center of the Earth to the edge of the
atmosphere. We choose the measurements to average. My suggestion is that
even with a precise definition of what we will include in the average, the
numbers are not accurate to a single degree, much less to a tenth of a
degree. Yes, I understand that satellites are said to be able to get one
particular atmospheric temperature to .01 accuracy, but then it turns out
that this needs adjustment since satellites don't stand still, and there
needs to be calculation for orbital shifts. How accurately those shifts
are measured is another variable. I simply don't believe in those
accuracies, nor do I think that just because we can get a number accurate
to .01 degree (assuming we can) that this makes that number more relevant
than the temperature I am experiencing.
But yes, Fahrenheit 430 for a part of Lake
Michigan probably indicates a thumb on the scale.
====================
"Cranks, conventionalists and geomorphology" by
Richard Huggett
Subject heading is the title of an article by
geographer Richard Huggett at University of Manchester that was published in
the journal Area in 2002:
<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-4762.00070/pdf>
or
<http://www.jstor.org/pss/20004222>
.
"Hypotheses in geomorphology may be conventional or
unconventional. It is argued that outrageous hypotheses produced by
conventional thinkers with a streak of unconventionality occasionally shift
paradigms and are invaluable alternatives to conventional hypotheses which
tend merely to shore up seemingly safe and secure ruling paradigms."
It's really a quite enjoyable romp surveying in a
thumbnail fashion the range of radical thinkers who challenged the
establishment in geology and geography from the respectable to the inane,
including: Peter Warlow, Donald Patten, Melvin Cook, Immanuel Velikovsky,
Harold Tresman, C. Warren Hunt, Alfred Wegener, J. Harlen Bretz, and Arthur
N. Strahler.
CLE
===========
A short exchange on
temperatures:
I asked a physicist friend about surface
temperatures:
I continue to be puzzled about the internal
heat. Obviously when we say global temperature we don't really mean an
average of the temperatures from the center of the earth out to the edge
of the atmosphere. We mean the biosphere mostly.
Now the interior is hot. I am told that the
amount that reaches the biosphere is about 1/1000 of the 1.3 kw
/meter^2; but since the absorption of insolation is surely less than
100%, and the interior heat that gets to the outer earth is 100%
absorbed, I'm still a bit curious. Most of the models don't seem to have
anything about interior heating.
Also volcanism would change the amount that
goes from interior to the biosphere. I'm curious as to how much; has it
been significant in the past? I would presume the Yellowstone Event
would heat hell out of the Earth. Tambora gave us the year without a
summer but did it add to heat of the ocean? Certainly by some, but was
it trivial? I don't seem to be looking in the right places to find
out...
Jerry Pournelle Chaos Manor
The reply:
Well, I know that the internal heating is
responsible for maintain the air temperature in caves at about 54 F.
The global warming advocates clearly refer to the
terrestrial surface or near-surface air, but I've never seen a concise
definition of the terms they use. The visible surface and the entire
troposphere? Some reference surface with temperature corrections by some
model.
That 0th order warming model that is floating
around (Dr. Spencer had one several months ago on his blog) assumes no
differentiation between ocean and ground surface; that's surely not the
case of the more precise models, but given the well established low
resolution of the warming models (8000 -odd cells) I have to wonder how
much they deal with differences in average altitude of the reference
cells, and how do they manage boundary effects (not to mention rough
surface differentially reflectivity as a function of time of day, and
changes in air absorption as a result of altitude). Do they use a
spherical earth model or do they have an oblate model? The corrections
to angle of incidence from an oblate model result in a significant
change in absorption. When you're trying to construct an energy balance
to 20 parts per billion using 1 % data, any of these effects are
significant. And, frankly, numerical instability should be a major
factor; I'm reminded that the almost infinitely less difficult problem
of orbital mechanics cannot yield accurate models of satellite position
beyond 3 - 6 months, with the position-along-orbit uncertain by about
360 degrees after six months. One reason I don't believe the models is
because they actually DO make predictions that long -- it seems both
physically and numerically impossible.
As I understand it, the "average temperature of
the Earth" as used by the climate scientists is about 56 F. The
temperature in deep caves without air circulation to the outside is about
the same. I do not know know if this is significant because I still can't
figure out how much heat is going from the magma to the seas. I would be
astonished if it turned out to be entirely trivial.
I would be pleased to hear from AGW believers on
this. I really trying to understand.
===========
Cool summer?
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
I note that your correspondent Mr. Mitchell of
Sacramento, had this to say about his weather conditions:
"I live in a suburb of Sacramento, and we’ve been
about 10 degrees below normal since April or so. We normally plant the
garden in late April or early May; "
I live in Vienna, VA just outside of Washington DC.
Temperatures have been unusually hot from about June to about August. We
actually topped 100 F for about two days (that was when the air conditioning
broke, naturally) and we have had a few weeks 10 degrees above normal.
This follows several years which -- from my
observation -- were abnormally cool. Virginia is supposed to be humid hell
on earth from May to September, comfortable until November, Indian Summer in
December, then frigid from January to April. Instead, the summer has been
taking longer to get here. This summer was considerably warmer than usual,
but seems to be a spike compared to the previous years this decade. What
happens next year is anyone's guess.
We also had record-breaking snow last winter -- two
FEET of snow TWICE when normal snowfall is about six inches for the entire
season. I believe it is more snow than has ever occurred in Washington DC in
recorded history.
I have no idea how that squares with Mr. Mitchell's
observations, or what model could, but anecdotal evidence may not be
completely useless.
Respectfully,
Brian P.
PS. Isn't it a strange world when *weather* is a
politically charged topic?
The major points are (1) averages aren't always
terribly useful, and (2) it's very difficult to tell what climate is doing
now; we can only see where it has gone, and before we can be sure of major
trends we need to wait even longer. It is not as if the great averages
were giving us swings of several degrees (or even a full degree) over the
whole earth for a whole year. We can look at trends in glacial ice -- is
there more or less of it -- but once again it not only takes time to be
sure of a trend, but we know that glacier formation is dependent on amount
of snowfall, and that is not caused simply by temperature; in El Nino
years there is both higher temperature and more atmospheric moisture and
thus snowfall.
==========
Antimicrobial resistance in developing countries
Dr Pournelle,
In my previous email with the link to the Guardian
article on antibiotics, I stated that, in effect, antibiotic misuse in the
third world was rampant. Here's a paper in the BMJ (from 12 years ago!)
which confirms that. To quote from it:
In many developing countries the use of antimicrobial
drugs for treating people and animals is unregulated; antibiotics can be
purchased in pharmacies, general stores, and even market stalls. In the
Rajbari district of Bangladesh, a survey of rural medical practitioners
(barefoot doctors) with an average of 11 years’ experience showed that they
each saw on average 380 patients per month and prescribed antibiotics to 60%
of these patients on the basis of symptoms alone.4 In one month 14 950
patients were prescribed antibiotics—a total of 291 500 doses. Only 109 500
doses had been dispensed by pharmacies, and a further 100 000 doses had been
dispensed without a prescription.4
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1113834/
Best regards,
Alun
==
Dr Alun J. Carr
And the terror comes closer. But perhaps we
should worry more about CO2.
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