1. What percent of the atmosphere is water vapour? 2. The lapse rate and latent heat of evaporation

There are many sources that say it's on average 2 percent.

I had long assumed this was correct, it turns it out that it's complete rubbish, and it's actually about one-tenth of that.

Here is a good overview, which says:

... if all of the water in the atmosphere rained down at once, it would only cover the globe to a depth of 2.5 centimeters, about 1 inch.

This number seems to be widely accepted and seems very plausible, although some say as much as 1.5 inches.

The total mass of air pressing down on 1 m2 of Earth's surface is about ten tonnes, a 2.5cm deep x 1 m2 puddle = 25 litres = 25 kg of water. So that means about 0.25 per cent by mass, or about 4,000 ppm by number of molecules, about ten times as much as there is CO2.
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The lapse rate and latent heat of evaporation.

We know that the dry lapse rate should be about 10 degrees/km, that's easy, it's acceleration due to gravity ÷ specific heat capacity = 10 degrees/km. Energy is conserved, it just changes from one form to another; thermal energy is converted to potential energy when air rises and vice versa. But the observed lapse rate is only 6.5 degrees/km. So there are 3.5 degrees/km 'missing'. How does that tie in with the amount of water vapour, which holds 2,257 J/g of latent heat?.

I spent about two hours scribbling calculations to reconcile all this before I noticed that the original estimate is out by a factor of ten; after that it took five minutes. The answer is about 9 grams of water per m3 at sea level, falling by 1.5 grams per m3 per kilometre altitude up to 6 km altitude. The air is pretty dry above that (all water vapour has condensed out as clouds). Add them all up, and you get back to the total mass of about 2.5 kg in the lowest 6 km (average = 4.5g x 6,000m = 2.7 kg).

Entropy says the total amount of energy will spread out evenly. Using rounded figures...
1 m3 at sea level has:
- potential energy = 0 kJ
- 288K x 1,000 J/K/kg thermal energy = 288 kJ
- 9g water vapour x 2,257 J/g latent heat = 20 kJ
Total 308 kJ.
1 m3 at 1 km altitude has:
- 1 kg x 9.81 N/s2 x 1,000m = 10 kJ potential energy
- 281.5K x 1,000 J/K/kg thermal energy = 281 kJ
- 7.5g water vapour x 2,257 J/g latent heat = 17 kJ
Total = 308 kJ = the same as at sea level.

Reality check: 9 grams/m3 = 7g/kg of air = 65% relative humidity at 288K. That seems a bit high, but that is probably largely due to my crass rounding, approximations and the fact that sea level temps are between 'below freezing' and 'very warm' and RH is not linear with temperature. Above the Poles at minus 20C and 50% RH, there's only 0.6g/kg; over the tropical oceans at 30C and 75% RH, there's 20 g/kg. Or something like that.
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Then there's the thorny issue of splitting that 2.5kg into gaseous water vapour and tiny droplets in clouds (which have lost their latent heat). It turns out that the amount actually in clouds is only a few grams out of the 2.5 kg total, so can be ignored for these purposes.
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Which is all rather surprising really; of all the water on Earth, only about 1/10 of 1% of 1% is in the atmosphere, and only a small fraction of that is in clouds. Yet clouds they have a dramatic effect on the weather, and if you overlook them, your in/out radiation calculations will be wildly wrong. For some reason, AGW Theories rely on the wildly wrong calculations, but hey.

Doesn't sound too terrible to me.

From The Guardian:

England's privatised water firms paid £57bn in dividends since 1991

In the past 10 years, the companies have paid out £17bn in dividends and directors’ pay has soared...  According to the analysis by David Hall and Karol Yearwood of the public services international research unit of Greenwich University, the nine privatised companies in England have amassed debts of £48bn over the past three decades – almost as much as the sum paid out to shareholders. The debt cost them £1.3bn in interest last year.

As outrageous as the directors' salaries are, they are robbing their shareholders and not the customer. Whether it's dividends or interest doesn't really matter, it's a legal rather than economic distinction in the context of a utility company with a 100% captive customer base, steady income and known costs. And as far as I am aware, most of the interest payments goes to the parent company, they do it to save a bit of tax.

Dividends and interest work out at about £55 per person per year, assuming 2 people per household and an average water bill of £500 a year, the dividends and interest are over 20% of your water bill.

In relative terms, compared to competitive businesses, this is a staggering amount. For example, Tesco has sales of just under £7 per share and paid dividends of 9p per share (from here) i.e. it paid out just over 1% of its sales in dividends.

But in absolute terms, £1 per week per person is not a lot of money. A sensible government would just impose a lower price cap (£450 instead of £500) while imposing the same standards and costs, so that the owners can only collect £5 from each customer in dividends and interest.

The Neo-liberals will argue that the £55 per person "tax" is worth paying, because bills are lower (or quality and reliability better) than they would have been if water was still nationalised. In other words, foreigners (who own a large chunk of English water companies) are better at running our country than we are. This might or might not be true (I suspect it isn't) but it's difficult to make a fair comparison.

Why water can't be a 'greenhouse gas'

Having established the real reason for the Greenhouse Effect (yes, there is one), we now have to address why the Greenhouse Effect is less marked than we'd predict using basic physics alone.

We'd predict a temperature at sea-level of about 300K and a temperature of about 200K at the top of the atmosphere, the precise numbers depending on what altitude you choose as starting point (where actual temperature is equal to effective temperature = 250 - 255K) and whether you assume dry lapse rate of 8K/km or 10K/km.

1. As it happens, the Greenhouse Effect is less than this - average temperature at sea-level 288K and average temperature at the top of the stratosphere 213K - the 'moist lapse rate' is 6.5K/km, not 8K/km or 10K/km.

So water vapour is reducing the Greenhouse Effect by about 12K at sea-level, and so it can't be a 'greenhouse gas' (to the extent there even is such a thing).

2. As a matter of fact, humid places not only have smaller day/night temperature ranges than drier places at the same altitude and latitude, they are also on average slightly cooler overall.

3. The main reasons for this are as follows:

a) When water evaporates from the surface, extra kinetic energy (heat) is converted to latent heat of evaporation/condensation. When water vapour condenses back to water droplets higher up, it converts latent heat of evaporation/condensation back to actual kinetic energy (heat). That's a one-way transfer of energy from surface to troposphere.

b) Clouds have a cooling effect in the day time (reflecting solar radiation so it never reaches the hard surface) and a warming effect at night (when clouds reflect some light and some infra red radiation back to the hard surface). That's a two-way thing, but the balance is a cooling effect (see point 2). To complicate matters, the cooling effect is stronger in summer than it is in winter (when it possibly has a slight warming effect).

4. The Consensus argues that water vapour (i.e. H2O in its gaseous 'dry' state, as distinct from water droplets in clouds or fog) absorbs infra red radiation which would otherwise leave the surface and go out to space. Some of this infra red is reflected back to the hard surface and warms the hard surface up a bit more. This is quite possibly true, but it is nigh impossible to split the overall 12K cooling effect into the stronger cooling effects (latent heat and day time clouds) and the weaker warming effects (night time clouds and reflected radiation) and any attempt to do so would be subject to so many estimates and intelligent guesses as to be meaningless.

5. The Consensus also argues that more water vapour will lead to a self-reinforcing cycle - higher hard surface temperature leads to more water vapour; more water vapour reflects more radiation to hard surface; this warms hard surface even more; etc etc. Logic tells us that this can't happen, or else it would have done long ago.

There is no need to speculate about what would happen if sea-level temperatures rise by one or two degrees - the tropics are tens of degrees warmer than the Poles, and most of the tropics are oceans with plenty of water available, and there hasn't been a self-reinforcing cycle there; the overall picture is that water vapour and actual water are a self-regulating, moderating influence.

During the Little Ice Age, temperatures were barely affected in the tropics but went down a lot at higher and lower latitudes. Since then, temperatures have bounced back more at very high and very low latitudes (i.e. North and South Pole, where there is very little water vapour) and haven't risen much in the tropics (very humid). Which again points to water vapour being a moderating influence.

Water, water everywhere

From the Arizona Daily Independent:

Water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas, but its net effect in the atmosphere is to lower temperatures party because of convective heat transfer. Proponents of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and most IPCC climate models assume the opposite (and that’s why climate model predictions diverge from reality).

AGW hypothesis: Carbon dioxide, a weak greenhouse gas, begins warming the planet. This warming evaporates water and so puts water vapor into the atmosphere which amplifies the warming effect. This is called a positive feedback.

At first look, this proposition seems logical and reasonable. But other properties of water vapor reduce temperatures and the net effect is a strong negative feedback. A positive feedback tends to destabilize a system, whereas, a negative feedback tends to keep a system in check. Just think for a minute, if water vapor had a net positive feedback effect, this planet would have had run-away global warming long ago. That alone should falsify the positive feedback hypothesis. But let’s look at some observational evidence for a negative feedback.

The graphic below compares four pairs of cities, each at about the same latitude so that each pair receives about the same amount of sunlight, and the cities are inland, away from possible tempering by sea breezes. The data is from the National Weather Service (the temperatures have been corrected for elevation differences). The difference between the pairs is that one city is in an arid climate, the other is in a humid climate. We see that the more humid city in each pair has a lower average annual temperature. The addition of water vapor to the atmosphere has a cooling effect in spite of water vapor being a greenhouse gas much more powerful than carbon dioxide.

Big scary numbers!

From City AM:

Water companies have hit out at Labour after the shadow chancellor John McDonnell described the industry as a "national scandal". Labour attacked the water industry today, saying the private sector was handing out "scandalous" amounts in dividends, which have totalled £13.5bn since 2010...

Divide £13.5 bn by eight years and by 27 million households and (say) 3 million businesses, that's an average of about £50 a year, one-third of the cost of the TV licence. I can't get too upset about that.

But compared to my annual water bill (rates not meter) of about £500, that seems quite a chunky dividend. Most competitive businesses pay about £1 or £2 in dividends for every £100 of turnover, not £10. If Labour were really worried about this, instead of making token gestures, they could simply cap prices at a few per cent below current levels, dividend halved, perceived problem solved.

And in the blue corner:

Michael Roberts, chief executive of industry organisation Water UK, has condemned McDonnell's attack on the sector, saying that private companies have invested heavily in water networks and have brought down costs for consumers.

Roberts said: "It's wrong for Labour to suggest that our water system is broken. Water companies secure capital provided by lenders and shareholders, who need water companies to make a return in order to finance significant improvements to the industry. He said that the water sector was "starved of cash" under public ownership, and that private firms have invested in reducing leakages, and have improved water quality.

Change the record, mate. Water companies were privatised nearly thirty years ago, you've had plenty of time to sort it out. Dividends are paid after deducting interest costs, so that's double counting. Further, borrowing money ("to fund investment") while continuing to pay big dividends is Carillion territory. Re-invest your current profits first, if there's nothing left to pay dividends, then so be it.
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Also from City AM:

Renters in the UK paid out £51.6bn to landlords last year, the highest rent bill on record.

The UK's rental bill rose by £1.8bn in 2017, according to research published today by Countrywide. The estate agency group said the rise was driven by an increase in the number of renters, and rising rents; the average cost of a new let rose 2.4 per cent year-on-year to £958.

Two-thirds of that is location rent and that IS a "national scandal", not so much that tenants are paying it, but the fact that private landlords are collecting it.

Either way, we're not talking about £50 a year from every household, but £6,000 a year being channelled from every "asset poor" househol to a small minority of "asset rich" households.

And what does Labour have to say about this? They dared mention LVT briefly in their manifesto but beat a hasty retreat once the Homeys co-ordinated their strategy and started mis-describing it as The Garden Tax.

It's all shit.

From The Daily Mail:

Tap water in Syrian city under ISIS control is an undrinkable brown sludge filled with worms after Islamic State engineer in charge of the water plant steals its funds and goes on the run

Somebody pointed out ages ago that all this jihadi stuff is great fun for a while but the novelty wears off, and until and unless ISIS are actually capable of organising the day-to-day stuff like clean tap water, refuse collection, electricity supplies, medical care and all the other trappings of a civilised country which most Syrians or Iraqis (or Westerners) are used to, then they will just fade away again and be yet another bandit/terrorist group holed up in the proverbial mountains.

Say about Assad or Saddam what you like, they were reasonably good at the day-to-day stuff; ISIS clearly are not, so there's hope for us yet.

I boil my water in the Sydney Opera House

Probably over most people's heads, but here's how I see it.

In some ways, you can envisage the economy as something like the fresh water system.

It starts with little puddles and springs up in the mountains and on hillsides, these flow into small streams, then into larger streams, then merge into tributary rivers which ultimately merge into larger rivers which then flow out into the open sea.

By analogy:

Individual transactions = little puddles and mountain springs

Everything starts with individual transactions. Some are profitable for both parties, some for just one party and some for neither, there's a lot of trial an error involved and nobody really knows. But overall there are benefits when people make these millions of little exchanges or transactions each day.

Similarly, puddles dry up quickly and mountain streams only flow if it has been raining further uphill. They are not always there.

Profits and wages = large streams and tributary rivers

Most businesses make profits. Some people like to split this up into the arbitrary categories of "profits" and "wages" but really they are the same thing. Businesses enter into thousands or millions of little transactions, most of which generate a small profit, some generate losses, but overall, they net off to a profit. Sometimes, a business or a business model fails, the loss making transactions start to outweight the profitable ones and *bang* the business is gone and the workers are unemployed.

Similarly, while some small springs and streams can dry up, overall, the rivers they flow into will usually be getting water from somewhere or other, larger rivers are more predictable.

Rents = the largest rivers which flow into the open sea

If, and only if, there are businesses making profits and workers needing housing, then rents arise.

Like large rivers flowing into the sea, these are the most stable thing in the economy. Such rivers are highly unlikely to dry up, there will always be water flowing in from somewhere or other, they are the most predictable of all. If one business or worker isn't prepared to pay the rent or purchase price, then another one will. If one tributary dries up a bit, another one will still be flowing.

And when the water flows into the sea, it is lost. It turns from valuable fresh water into worthless sea water. Nobody can use it to generate hydro-electricity, drive water mills, drink it, or use it to grow food, for cooking and washing, most indutrial processes etc.

(For sure, we need water in the sea for international shipping and fisheries, that's salt water not fresh water and a separate topic.)

The analogy which regular readers probably saw coming...

The open sea fills the same purpose and provides the same benefits to the nation as private collection or enjoyment of rents. None whatsoever. It just scoops up as much as possible of what everybody else contributes or what's left over.

So if collecting taxes is the same as diverting fresh water, from where should the government collect it, in terms of causing the least damage to the economy and re-cycling the rent (fresh water) back into the economy, or in terms of predictability or the lowest collection costs?

From mountain springs, small streams, larger streams or from tidal estuaries? If you collect water just at the point where it would have flowed into the open sea, it has absolutely no effect on the rest of the water system.

So... should the government be taxing transactions, wages, profits or rents? If it taxes rents i.e. land values, then this simply has no effect on the rest of the economy.

Here endeth today's lesson.

... cheaper than water

Ah, I fondly remember the good old days of last year, with shock horror headlines like this...

Channel 4 Dispatches find supermarkets selling beer cheaper than water

Today they were clobbering us with this...

Milk cheaper than water: supermarket price war drives down price of a pint

Supermarket price wars have pushed the price of four-pinter milk below that of some bottled waters...

When bought in a four-pint bottle, the price per litre of milk has dipped to 43p, compared to 44p for bottled still water.

If you do the numbers, the pump price (excluding tax) of a litre of petrol is considerably lower, at 32p per litre.

... which all reminds me of the 1985 film Water, the key scene is when Michael Caine has to explain to the disappointed islanders that they can actually sell 'table water' for a far higher price than they could sell the crude oil they were hoping to find.

What goes around comes around, eh?

More on "Human Rights"

The previous post about the EHCR reminded me of the recent fuss on the intertubes about the CEO of Nestle saying that human beings do not have a right to water. Predictably, he's been called all sorts of names, of which "sociopath" is probably one of the milder ones.

However, sadly, he's right. Humans don't have God-given rights, they only have the rights that an authority grants them. If you were in anarchist utopia and you started explaining to the man taking away your water supply that he was infringing your human rights, he would simply continue on his job, unless you were bigger and better armed than him. To have rights of any sort, you need some sort of authority to enforce them. That authority in turn will be powerless to either enforce or deny your rights if faced with a more powerful authority which has a different idea of the rights of its citizens.

So all talk of universal human rights will remain nonsense until there is a universal authority, which is unlikely to happen any time soon.

I'm not sure what level of reality they are operating on here...

From the back of a packet of "Colman's Chilli Con Carne" powder*:
* It's good stuff if you follow the instructions to the letter.

Reader's Letter Of The Day

From The Metro:

YOU don't need to go through the bureaucratic hassle and expense of setting up an Orwellian system for finding non-payers of the water rates (Metro, Tue).

Rather than have landlords put tenants' details on a central database so that water companies can chase them up for payments, simply make the property owner/landlord responsible for paying water bills. He or she then collects the money from the tenants.

This method is cheaper and avoids the totalitarian probabilities that are created by any database.

Richard Hewins, London.

Correct.

It would be a good idea to do this with Council Tax anyway, and the same general logic applies to other things closely related to each home, such as the TV licence and utility bills.

The landlord can round up the rent (and deposit) demanded and average it all out, or he can agree to add on the actual bills received each month to the net rent, that's up to him.

"Kenya aquifers discovered in dry Turkana region"

From the BBC:

A huge water source has been discovered in the arid Turkana region of northern Kenya which could supply the country for 70 years, the government says.

The discovery of two aquifers brings hope to the drought-hit region, tweeted Environment Minister Judi Wakhungu. They were found in the Turkana Basin and Lotikipi Basin using satellites and radar.

Excellent news indeed!

Whoever is in charge* will be able to drive the peasants away and sell off that now valuable farmland to Western (or indeed Chinese) farming conglomerates and shuffle a few billion quid into their personal Swiss bank accounts as "rainy day money".

With a bit of luck, some of those peasants might even find gainful employment on said mega-farms.

* Being fair to the Kenyans, their country seems to be considerably less corrupt and rather more democratic than most African countries, but that's not saying much.

Says you!

Grazia editor tells PPA Conference : ‘You can’t read an iPad in the bath’

but we most respectfully would beg to differ

nb : A not very well known IT consumer affairs non-expert suggests that sealable plastic bags which would also allow i-Pad (or Kindle) use to continue during a leisurely soak are available at various well known High Street and other outlets for those who consider the Waterwear iPad case slightly over-priced - although it might prove a possible boon to anyone who prefers showers and wants to be able to use their i Pad or Kindle whilst taking one. Googling Ziplock plastic bags for iPad might be a useful starting point.

nb 2 anyone "experimenting" with either bath or shower use of their i-Pad or Kindle does so at his/her own risk, t'ain't nothing to do with us, and don't be surprised if bringing your device and water into close proximity after having been advised not to invalidates the warranty, ok?

"Peak water"

Spotted by Graeme at Huff Post:

In the keynote speech at London's annual City Food Lecture on Tuesday, Nestle CEO Paul Bulcke warned the world about the possible consequences of the global water shortage many experts believe will strike within the next several decades.

Noting that water scarcity could cut global cereal production by 30% by 2030, and that water needs already exceed supply, Bulcke called water scarcity the greatest threat to food security in the future. He urged global leaders to act soon to devise realistic solutions.

"It is only by working together with policymakers, civil society, agriculture and other stakeholders at local and international levels that we can develop effective, coherent and concrete action," Bulcke told the City Food Lecture attendees. "This is an issue that must be addressed urgently. I am convinced it can be solved. We should give water the right priority, the right value."

Or to translate that into English: I am head of a large farming business which would like governments all over the world to guarantee us cheap water supplies so that we can grow stuff on land which we have grabbed and then sell it back to the grabbees at a profit.

Bonus points for "possible consequences.. within the next several decades" and for missing the point that in most markets, "need" exceeds "supply", that's why very little gets given away for free (even if the people who grabbed a natural resource paid nothing for it in the first place).

It'll all be over by Xmas part 94.

Headline at the BBC:

Drought may last until Christmas

She could make it rain by just casting a spell, man.

That multi-billion Chinese investment in Thames Water was no such thing.

I think The Telegraph had the most accurate summary of what has actually happened. The BBC's version is also reasonably good. To cut a long story:

1. Thames Water was privatised donkeys years ago, and all those little UK popular capitalists did the decent thing and sold all their shares to German utility concern RWE in 2001.

2. Various pension, investment and sovereign wealth funds set up a company called Kemble Water which bought Thames Water for £8 billion [gross] from RWE in 2006.

3. Stakes in Kemble Water change hands occasionally, for example "In December [2011], the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, another sovereign wealth fund, bought 9.9pc of Kemble for an undisclosed price. Macquarie European Infrastructure Fund was the majority seller in that deal."

4. The Chinese sovereign wealth fund (China Investment Corporation, CIC) has now bought 8.68% of Kemble Water "for an undisclosed sum which analysts believe is at least £500m [from] Santander Private Equity, part of Spanish banking group Santander's asset management arm, and Finpro, a Portuguese investment vehicle..."

5. So big deal really, legal ownership* of Thames Water has been in foreign hands since 2001 (and chunks of it before then), it is merely that Juan Foreigner has now sold a bit of it to Johnny Foleigner. Not a single penny has been invested in the UK as a result of this, and it's not even as if we have reduced our net indebtedness to the Chinese. George Osborne is making an idiot of himself by prancing round and pretending otherwise.

* Of course, in practice, the UK government, OFWAT and so on still have reasonable day-to-day control over Thames Water. That's the nice thing about selling off stuff to foreigners, instead of them having you over a barrel, you have them over a barrel.

... and finally they came for the water users!

The BBC wheel out their fakecharity template article.

1. There's a "should" in the headline, repeated in the first sentence, which is a signal that what you are about to read is complete fabricated bollocks.

2. Then there are some rent-a-quotes from the National Trust, RSPB and World Wildlife Fund etc.

3. It rounds off with a government spokesman agreeing that "more must be done".

So far so good.

Now, I can understand Them going for smokers, drinkers, fatties, skinnies, gamblers, pornographers etc, because those are all minorities; They launch occasional skirmishes against car drivers, but they are the majority so it's half-hearted at best; but what makes Them think they can humiliate water users? That's all of us, surely? Even tramps have to visit public toilets or take the occasional communal shower in a drop-in centre or something.

PS, water is indeed "a precious resource" but there is no lack of the physical substance itself; the cost is collecting it, storing it, purifying and pumping it.

Things I learned today at the swimming pool.

1. The little lass invented a wonderful new game: two or more people put their heads underwater and then one of them shouts as loud as they can. It is just about possible to understand what that person is saying if you are only a few inches away from him or her. I wouldn't describe it as 'hours of fun' but it's certainly 'seconds of fun'.

2. There is a solemn black and white notice next to the ticket desk, which says something like: "For your privacy and security, photography is not allowed in the swimming pool area. If you wish to take photographs, please speak to a member of staff to arrange a suitable time. All unauthorised photographic equipment will be confiscated."

Right above that is a big yellow sign which says something like: "For your comfort and security, the swimming pool area is under CCTV surveillance"