The fun never stops ...

Here's page 89 from the Department of Work & Pensions' departmental report (click to enlarge):
As you can see, their total budget for next year is £163 billion, a bit more than a tenth of GDP, which is fair enough in the grander scheme of things, you can't just let a third of the population starve (11 million pensioners, 5 million dole claimants plus offspring). The fun part is the DEL figure of £9.698 billion, which is their administration costs.

Yup, even ignoring the fraud and error that adds at least five per cent to the cash cost of benefits paid out, their running costs are six per cent of what they pay out, and this does not include the administration costs for Housing & Council Tax Benefit, which are paid out locally (and which are almost certainly higher in percentage terms, as the amounts paid out are usually lower) or the costs of paying out Tax Credits, which HM Revenue & Customs quote as 3%.

This is yet another argument for flat-rate, non-means tested benefits, of course.

More carbon dioxide fun (2)

Skeptic: "Ah, good. MW has posted that chart from the IPCC's report*. Now look closely. Do you see that it shows 390 W/m2 being radiated from the surface, a tenth of which goes straight back into space (it's not at a frequency that clouds or other greenhouse gases can stop), and out of the remaining 350 W/m2, 324 is back radiation?"


Warmenist: "Yes, I can see it. What's your point?"

Skeptic [triumphantly]: "We've agreed that carbon dioxide concentrations have gone up (by a third, in your terms; by 0.01% in my terms); and I've conceded that this may well be due to man-made emissions. But look, you keep talking about 'runaway global warming' and 'tipping points', but according to that chart, increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can't make the slightest bit of difference.

We are already getting 93% of infra-red radiation from the earth's surface reflected back to us (324 W/m2 out of 350 W/m2)**. Notwithstanding the fact that water vapour is a far more important factor, even if we doubled or trebled the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the most that could be reflected is 350 W/m2.

We're getting a total of 522 W/m2 energy anyway (198 W/m2 from the sun and 324 W/m2 in back-radiation); in the highly unlikely scenario that all 350 W/m2 infra-red radiation from the surface were reflected back down to us, the total energy hitting the surface would only go up to 548 W/m2, that's an increase of 5%, absolute worst case, even before taking into account that a warmer surface means more cloud cover which cools us down again, and so on"

Warmenist: "Ah yes, but what about methane? Have you ever thought about going vegetarian?"

* The global radiation budget as published in IPCC TAR Chapter 1.2.1, from here.

** Logic says that this 93% figure is wildly exaggerated. Gases cannot 'reflect' infra-red, individual molecules or atoms can merely absorb and immediately re-emit it. Assuming the direction in which infra-red is re-emitted is entirely random, and at a molecular or atomic level it almost certainly is, then 50% will be re-emitted downwards and 50% will be re-emitted upwards into space. In the interests of getting an answer to this, I have posted the same question over at Devil's Kitchen.

More carbon dioxide fun (1)

It's always good to fight numbers with numbers.

The Warmenist will start off the debate by saying "Human activity emits 30 billion tonnes (aka 30 gigatonnes) of carbon dioxide every year."

To which the Skeptic counters "Those 30 gigatonnes only account for five per cent of all emissions, how come nobody's worried about the other 95%?"

Warmenist; "The natural world can cope with and absorb the other 95%, it's human beings who upset the natural balance. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has gone up by a third compared to pre-industrial levels"

Skeptic: "The natural world seems to be coping pretty well so far. Total carbon dioxide emitted each year is in the order of 600 gigatonnes, but the total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has only gone up by 500 gigatonnes since pre-industrial times. If nature couldn't cope, surely it would go up by 600 gigatonnes every year, and not by 500 gigatonnes over a century or two?"

Warmenist: "That's because nature can cope with the natural emissions. It's the extra industrial and human emissions that are leading to the increase"

Skeptic: "OK, maybe that's partly true. Since 1960, carbon dioxide levels have gone up from 320 to 390 parts per million, so that's an increase of 1.4 ppm every year. If we times that by the total weight of the atmosphere of 5 million gigatonnes, that's an increase of only about 7 gigatonnes a year, so nature is clearly dealing with three-quarters of human emissions."

Warmenist: "Exactly! And it's those extra 7 gigatonnes that will drive runaway global warming!"

Skeptic: "Do you go along with the general consensus that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases allow all the visible light from the sun straight through, which warms the surface of the earth, which in turn emits infra-red radiation (i.e. warmth), and that greenhouse gases somehow absorb and reflect this infra-red radiation back to the surface rather than letting it escape into space?"

Warmenist: "Yes. And?"

Skeptic: "I'll respond to that once MW has posted that chart from the IPPC's own report that shows that nearly all infra-red radiation from the surface already being reflected. I mean, how much more than 'nearly all' infra-red can a gas reflect?"

Smoking ban, fox hunting ban etc.

The Great Simpleton said:

Just for the record, foxes are a pest and I have seen the damage they do and they need to be controlled. However I don’t like fox hunting and I don’t see what pleasure people get in chasing the damned things round on horses and then watching them get ripped to pieces by a pack of dogs. I wouldn’t spend any time getting it banned and if repealing it takes more than 30secs of Parliamentary time then the police should just be told to ignore it, there is far too much work to be done.

To expand on the comment I left, I'd concur on fox-hunting - if there were a local referendum on repealing the ban, I'm not sure I'd bother voting, because it's not that important to me either way. But what if there were a separate referendum a month later on repealing the smoking ban - most smokers would vote to repeal but probably the rabidly anti-smoking faction (a third of non-smokers) would vote to retain it. And if there were then a referendum on legalising & taxing cannabis (putting it on par with alcohol or tobacco), the ten per cent of adults who enjoy cannabis would vote to repeal, but it would only require more then ten per cent of adults who don't smoke cannabis to keep it illegal, and so on and so forth.

Single issue referenda would amost certainly not achieve anything - I reckon that the only way to make this stick is to have an all-or-nothing yes-or-no referendum, i.e. to repeal the fox hunting ban, turn off the traffic lights, legalise cannabis and brothels, allow smoking in pubs again, allow shops to use pounds and ounces, allow people to drink alcohol on public transport, bring back patio heaters [plus add your own particular gripes to the list] etc.

That way there'd be something in it for everybody - including the misery guts who don't like other people enjoying themselves, who might be tempted by the idea of turning off the traffic lights and being allowed to use patio heaters again. The cannabis smokers (traditionally left wing) would align themselves with the pro-fox hunters (traditionall right-wing). Motorists and bus-users would form an alliance against the Greenies. Proper feminists and misogynists alike would support the legalisation of brothels, with faux-feminists and religious types in opposition.

Hopefully.

Temperatures on Moon & Earth

In an earlier post I pointed out that there was a correlation between distance from the sun and surface temperature for Venus, Earth & Mars. I ended with this:

What detracts from my argument is that the Moon's average temperature is about -36 C, 50 C colder than Earth, despite it being the same average distance from the Sun, which I'd put down to a mixture of the Moon being paler in colour (so reflects more light) and not having a giant molten iron core, as well as it not having an atmosphere.

I have been reminded that The Moon is nowhere near as pale as it looks, it is in fact quite dark. In the jargon, it has an 'albedo' of 12%, as a against 30% for the Earth, so it must be the atmosphere that's the important bit. DK has referred me to this post of his, which in turn links to this fuller article, the important bits are as follows:

We know how much energy enters the Earth’s system from the sun. The Earth ought to settle at the temperature at which it radiates exactly the same amount to outer space. (Taking the average over time and latitude.) We can calculate this temperature fairly easily, and it turns out to be –24 C. But the average temperature of the Earth’s surface is about 14 C! This temperature difference and its dominant mechanism are what I’m choosing to call the Greenhouse Effect...

What keeps the [atmosphere] at 10 km so cold? –54 C is far below the –24 C we expect on energy-balance grounds, so it can’t be by radiating to space. And the fact that there is a straight line all the way down to the ground suggests that whatever the mechanism is, it’s the same one that keeps the surface at +14 C. Straight lines don’t happen by accident.

I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. The answer is pressure. Because of the weight of air, the pressure at the surface is greater than it is higher up. This means that if air moves up and down, the pressure changes, and the air expands or is compressed. And when air is compressed its temperature increases.

Air is driven to circulate up and down by convection. As it rises, it expands and its temperature drops. As it descends, it is compressed and its temperature rises. This maintains a constant temperature gradient of about 6 C/km. (It would be bigger, but evaporation of water carries heat upwards too, which somewhat counteracts the effect.)

No heat passes in to or out of the air to effect this change. It is solely an effect of the changing pressure. (If you really want to know, the compression does ‘work’ on the gas, which increases its internal energy. It doesn’t come from any flow of heat or radiation.)

This temperature gradient is called the adiabatic lapse rate, and is an absolutely standard bit of physics.

So now we know.

As it happens, the Warmenist explanation that carbon dioxide is transparent to visible light from the sun but reflects part of the infra-red coming from the surface of the earth and hence causes warming is sort-of-true, however, it is a logarithmic effect.

i.e. there is enough CO2 in the atmosphere to form a 'blanket' 6 yards thick (ten miles x 0.04%). Let's assume this reflects half the infra-red back down to earth and lets half through into space. If there were another layer, it would reflect half of the half of the infra-red that had made it through the first layer, but this quarter in turn would be partly reflected back upwards by the first layer and so on. Having scribbled some workings, each extra 'layer' would reduce the amount of infra-red going into space by a third or so.

Or, to put it crudely, if you feel cold, one blanket will make you feel noticeably warmer (let's say 10 C), adding another makes you warmer still (another 5 C), adding a third might make you another 2 C warmer and a fourth another 1 C, and so on. In other words, there is no particular 'runaway' effect, even if you had a thousand blankets on top of you (provided you were not crushed to death or suffocated), the extra warmth would never be much more than twice as much as with just one blanket.

Friday night gear change

Tony Christie's "Amarillo", a semi-tone up at 2 minutes 45 seconds in a song lasting 3 minutes 13 seconds.

That appears to be straight out of the textbook, i.e. "it was getting a bit boring but it's too early to fade it out just yet". But once you have got used to it, you start to wonder, why not do one at 2 minutes 59 seconds as well? And, while we're at it, there seems to be a gear-change missing at 2 minutes 31 seconds.

History repeating itself ...

Bayard left this comment on my post "If David Cameron had a pledge card...":

'Twas ever thus. Twenty or so years ago my mother was on the County Council and she was always complaining that the Tories "fiddled around the edges", making lots of little cuts to lots of little budgets, but leaving all the big stuff untouched. Maximum perceived action, minimum actual effect.

Which links in nicely to George Osborne's latest bright ideas:

The Conservatives would start to cut public spending straight away if they won the General Election, shadow chancellor George Osborne has said... he said spending on advertising and tax credits for people earning more than £50,000 would be cut. He also identified child trust funds for better-off families as an area where savings could be made.

Sure, we can save maybe a billion quid by scrapping government advertising. A good start. But the 'savings' to be made by cutting tax credits and child trust funds (whether or not you agree in principle) for 'higher earners' (as defined) would amount to £10 million or £100 million (total Tax Credits paid out £15 billion-odd, times random small percentage), and you'd have to net off the extra admin and hassle of clawing it back. So, having had years to think about it, he's come up with plans to reduce the annual public sector deficit by slightly less than one per cent.

Liam Byrne is on top form, managing yet again to contradict himself several times in one short soundbite:

Responding to the speech, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liam Byrne said in his "rush to cut spending, George Osborne would put the recovery in grave danger (1). But until he says how he'll do it (2) and whether he'll match Labour's pledge to halve the deficit in four years (3, 4), his speeches must be taken with a huge pinch of salt (5). This is yet another Tory speech which raises more questions than it answered (6)"

1) Does he seriously suggest that a sixth-of-one-per-cent reduction in government spending going to "put the recovery in grave danger"?

2) George Osborne did say exactly what he was planning to do.

3) Clearly, George isn't planning to "halve the deficit", which would mean reducing government spending by £50 billion to £100 billion (depending on what assumptions you make about future tax receipts).

4) From (1) we get the impression that Liam doesn't want spending to be cut. But then he suggests that his own government is going to cut spending by fifty times as much, see (3), suggesting that he does want spending to be cut. Has Liam made up his mind on this?

5) This government has managed to run out of salt, we're having to buy it back off the Germans.

6) See (2).

"Weight Watchers clinic floor collapses under slimmers' weight"

From The Metro:

In an incident that could have an adverse effect on business, the floor of a Weight Watchers clinic in Sweden has collapsed. About 20 slimmers on the programme had gathered at the clinic in the southern city of Växjö to see how much weight they'd lost, when the floor suddenly gave way beneath them.

"We suddenly heard a huge thud; we almost thought it was an earthquake and everything flew up in the air," one of the participants told the Smålandsposten newspaper, "The floor collapsed in one corner of the room and along the walls."

Then, as the rest of the floor began to give way, a stink of sewage filled the room. Fortunately, no one was injured in the incident, which is still under investigation.

"Britain is a crowded island"

As we know, the key elements of the Home-Owner-Ist Manifesto is to oppose a) property taxes and b) liberalising planning laws. One of their favourite mantras is that Britain is a crowded island, which they miraculously use to support both a) and b).

Let's assume, for sake of argument, that Britain really were a crowded island (and let's assume zero net immigration to simplify matters). It's not of course, it's just that urban and sub-urban areas, where most of us live, appear to be crowded because we have restricted the amount of land we can develop down to one-tenth of the surface area of the UK (for purely political reasons without any economic justification), but hey.

Seeing as taxes have to be raised to pay for public expenditure (however high or low, separate topic), wouldn't the use of the "crowded island" mantra to justify restrictive planning laws actually support the argument in favour of more property taxes (and less taxes on income etc).
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To use an analogy: five students have clubbed together and signed up to rent a house with five bedrooms for £200 a week all-in. When they inspect the property, they realise that two of the bedrooms are big and light and three are small and poky.

Which is the best way for them to decide who gets which room and how to divvy up the rent?

a) They could agree (via some sort of auction process) that the two big rooms are worth £55 a week each, and the three small ones are worth £30. Everybody then gets what they pay for, problem solved.

b) First come first served. As soon as the front door is opened, they all burst in and each occupies the best room he or she can find, but they still split the rent equally five ways.

c) As the students parents are too wealthy for them to qualify for grants but not wealthy enough to pay for their upkeep, all the students do part-time jobs at evenings, weekends and holidays. They could allocate the rooms on a first-come-first-served basis and agree that the £200 will be shared proportionally to the amount that each of them earns each week.

If we take the way the rent is shared as a form of taxation, it strikes me that:

a) is the free-market solution and is akin to Land Value Tax;

b) is more like Home-Owner-Ism ("I was here first and it's moi laarnd" funded by a Poll Tax; and

c) is even worse than b) because it's like income tax, which would reduce everybody's net hourly wages by about half, meaning that there is actually little point in working and/or a huge incentive to lie about how much you've earned.
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So, in the analogy, as in real life, there is common expenditure that has to be shared somehow and a limited amount of living space (with some locations being far more attractive than others). If there was an unlimited amount of space, it would have little or no market value, of course, but that house is like our "crowded island".

I fail to see why the tax system of a country, whereby we share common expenditure according to some formula - should be designed any differently.

Just sayin', is all.

"If David Cameron had a pledge card..."

Then Tim Mongomery at ConHome thinks it should look like this:


*sigh*

1. He's confusing 'NHS spending' with 'health spending'. The NHS waste a third of their budget on PC crap, increasing the NHS budget will just see an increase in the amount spent on PC crap, that idea has been tested to destruction.

2. As to immigration, I am right-wing and believe in 'social cohesion'. The actual number of people we let in is irrelevant, what is important is that we let in immigrants who will fit in and make this country a better place (points system etc).

3. and 4. Tim's definitely going for the Home-Owner-Ist vote with 'abolition of Inheritance Tax for ordinary families' (which is code for exempting houses from IHT) and the 'two year freeze in council tax'. While I am against IHT in principle (it's a jealousy surcharge) and do not like the way Council Tax is designed (it's almost like a Poll Tax), let's not forget that the two taxes together only raise about 4% of what the government spends every year. Why not look at the really Big Bad Taxes like Employer's NIC or VAT, that between them raise about 20% of what the government spends?

My view happens to be that we should scrap both and replace them with a flat rate tax on property values (like Domestic Rates), but that doesn't appear to appeal to the Home-Owner-Ists either, of course. What they want is no taxes on land and property whatsoever, they don't care about deadweight costs or economic efficiency or anything.

5. Tinkering with the number of MPs and so on is a token political gesture and of no real relevance to anything.

*/sigh*