Can you believe in six impossible things before breakfast?

I've done a lot more Googling and reading up on ozone depletion theory since I stumbled across it a couple of weeks ago. It seems to be a very plausible and mercifully simple explanation why the troposphere (lower atmosphere) has warmed a bit and the upper atmosphere (stratosphere) has cooled a lot over the past forty years. It might be correct, it might be nonsense, but it does appear to be the most likely explanation and the most worthy of investigation and exploration.

Most of the hits you get if you search the terms 'ozone depletion' or 'stratosphere cooling' are Alarmist websites and blogs (for example Skeptical Science and Science of Doom), all of which greatly play down the effects of ozone depletion.

Nonetheless, stratospheric cooling is A Thing, and the Alarmists see themselves obliged to explain it in terms of CO2 and radiation (for no obvious reason).

Do your own reading up and make up your own mind, but IMHO, here are the six impossible, or at least mutually contradictory, things Alarmists have to believe before breakfast:

1. CO2 'traps' some of the infra red radiation (IR) emitted upwards by land, oceans and clouds in the troposphere

As a result, the troposphere warms. To believe this, you have to ignore the fact that radiation does not have a temperature and is not thermal energy. Radiation has to hit something first, cease to be radiation and be converted from radiation to thermal energy ('energy is not created or destroyed' etc). You also have to ignore the fact that the total IR emitted to space is equal to the total IR emitted by land, oceans and clouds (give or take a couple of per cent, depending which assumptions you make - nobody knows and it's impossible to prove or disprove either way).

And as a secondary result, there is less radiation going up into the stratosphere, so the stratosphere cools. To believe this, you have to ignore the fact that the stratosphere is warmed from above by UV-C and UV-B interacting with oxygen (O2) and ozone (O3). Accepted science is that the high energy UV radiation split molecules, so the energy is converted to chemical energy (endothermic reaction), and when O and O2 recombine to form O3, the chemical energy is converted to thermal energy (exothermic reaction). There appears to be little interchange of thermal energy (whether by convection or radiation) between troposphere and stratosphere. That is why the temperature falls to its lowest at the tropopause (the boundary layer between the two).

2. The effect of more CO2 is to push the 'effective emitting altitude' (henceforth abbreviated to EEA to save me typing it out in full every time) upwards

This is a more sophisticated Alarmist theory than simple 'trapping'. It dismisses the 'trapping' idea and says IR at certain frequencies can only escape to space if the CO2 above it is less than a certain threshold in terms of density. CO2 is a fairly constant proportion of the atmosphere all the way up (about 1/25 of one percent) but the density of the atmosphere goes down as you go higher, and so does CO2 density per unit volume. Only IR emitted (by CO2 itself, natch) at or above the EEA at which CO2 density (in terms of CO2 per unit volume) is at that certain threshold can get to space. So more CO2 means the EEA is at a higher altitude.

This theory seems to accept the gravito-thermal effect aka the lapse rate. It also assumes that temperature and hence IR emitted at the EEA is a constant, so mathematically, if the threshold is one-sixth of a km higher (so it goes up from 5km to 5.166r km, for example), the surface is warmer by one-sixth of 6.5 K/km = about 1 degree warmer.

OK, but going back to 1, if the EEA is the same temperature and is allowing the same amount of IR to pass through and up, then the same applies to the tropopause (about 10 - 12 km up on average). If the stratosphere is warmed from below (which isn't true anyway), the lowest layer of the stratosphere would remain the same temperature. Which it clearly isn't doing. And we have a problem with the initial assumption that IR emitted at the EEA or tropopause goes out into space (instead of warming the stratosphere above it).

3. More CO2 in the stratosphere means it can radiate more out into space

According to this theory, nothing except GHGs can emit radiation (well apart from land, oceans and clouds, obvs), and certainly not nitrogen or oxygen/ozone. So you could heat air up as warm as you wished, and an IR thermometer would not be able to read a temperature. So all that thermal energy would be 'trapped' in the stratosphere. Along comes some extra CO2, which absorbs the thermal energy, turns it into radiation and biffs it up and out into space, it being above the EEA.

Or maybe it biffs some down into the troposphere to warm it a bit more. Apart from the fact that the net transfer of energy by radiation only goes from warmer to colder, and how does this radiation battle its way down through the EEA, which is impassable for radiation from below?

Either way, there is a neat double think that CO2 can 'trap' more radiation in the atmosphere and also  emit more out into to space.

4. If 2 and 3 are true, then perhaps there are two EEA's?

Theory 2 is based on the fact the temperature falls as you go up through the tropopause. Push the EEA higher and that leads to surface warming. Perhaps Theory 3 is that there is a separate EEA for the stratosphere. If you push this higher, by reverse logic, everything below the new EEA cools down a bit?

5. The troposphere and stratosphere are in thermal equilibrium. Or not, as the case might be

If the temperature of the two layers tends to even out (by layers emitting radiation at each other), then we wouldn't see one warming and the other one cooling. So that blows a hole in Theory 1. Unless CO2 increases the lapse rate. Even though the main GHG, water vapour, reduces the lapse rate. On the other hand, Theory 2 assumes that there is a 'sort of' thermal equilibrium i.e. the temperature at the tropopause stays constant, but only a weak link, so below and above that altitude, each layer does its own independent thing. But if the stratosphere above does its own thing, is that not a tacit admission that it is warmed from above?

This obsession with radiation as the main form of energy transfer in the atmosphere is baffling anyway. Simple conduction and convection are far more important:
- To feel the temperature of a warm object (poorly child's forehead or hot water bottle), you have to actually touch it = conduction.
- Put your hand one inch to the side of a hot object (hot radiator, candle flame etc) = radiation; then put it one inch above that object = convection, which feels a lot warmer than one inch to the side.
- You have to get really hot, like a bonfire, for radiation to outweigh conduction, and even then, it's a lot hotter directly above it (convection + radiation) than to one side (radiation).
- The atmosphere is on the whole a lot cooler than a poorly child's forehead, so we can safely assume that the majority of thermal energy transfers are by conduction and convection.

6. CO2 has a 'fingerprint' which can be observed from space. Or not, as the case might be.

The Alarmists make great play of the fact that CO2 absorbs (and emits) IR at wavelength 16 microns (sometimes expressed as 667/cm or frequency a bit less than 10^13 Hz) and that if you measure terrestrial radiation with satellites, there is a noticeable gap at that wavelength. Theory 1 says that if there is more CO2, that missing bit will be larger. But if Theories 2 and 3 are correct, then the extra radiation emitted by CO2 in the stratosphere above the EEA (whichever one) ought to fill up that gap again.

As a final thought, let's imagine a counter-factual where CO2 levels are increasing (true) and the stratosphere were warming instead of cooling. Would the Alarmists shout 'slam dunk!' or would they accept it as evidence against their basic assumption that CO2 is to blame for everything? It's poor science to look for evidence to support 'your' theory or even 'a' theory. You have to remain open minded and look for evidence against as well as for, or accept that you were barking up the wrong tree.
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Anyway, happy New Year's Eve to anybody who has read this far. I think I shall celebrate Indian New Year in half an hour (6.30 GMT) and then call it a night.

I think that covid-19 has messed up my sense of smell

As was almost inevitable, one member of our family (Her Indoors) thought she had covid-19 so she applied for one of the postal tests, which came back positive a few days later.

Our little lass was insanely hot and ill for a day or two, so Her Indoors and the lass both went off to be tested locally (before the results of the first had one came back).

The lass is back to normal, our lad has been unaffected, but I also felt pretty crap for two or three days. I tried sniffing various things in the kitchen to see whether I had lost my sense of smell, that being one of the symptoms. I haven't lost my sense of smell* but it's definitely pretty messed up.

Most thing still smell the same to me, but there are a couple of things which I now can't smell at all; a couple of things which smell stronger (garlic) or where the smell seems to linger for longer; some things which smell weaker and a bit metallic (Foster's lager, even after I've poured it into a glass); and a couple of things which I normally like the smell of but which now smell rather unappetising to me (strawberry jelly, which also tastes metallic, the chocolate coating on biscuits, the peanuts in peanut cookies).

It turns out that this is a thing. Oh dear. And on the back of Her Indoors' positive test (the first one), I was sentenced to self-isolation until tomorrow inclusive. At least I can go out again for the New Year's Eve celebrations, lolz, was my initial thought.

To add to the confusion, somebody from the NHS rang Her Indoors yesterday and explained that actually the ten day quarantine starts when she first noticed symptoms, not the date of the test, so her quarantine period is now over and apparently this applies to all four of us. I wish she'd got that in writing, I don't think The Authorities will take kindly to this sort of waffle if they catch me breaking cover.

* For "smell" read "smell and/or taste", I just couldn't be bothered writing that each time.

Daily Mail firing on all cylinders

The Daily Mail sticks the house price straight into the headline to save its readers the bother of reading the article:

Grandfather’s five pet pugs who nipped at postman as he delivered a parcel to his £800,000 home are spared being put down after court hears he had Beware of the Dog sign up

Daily Mail on top form

From The Daily Mail:

Two grandparents known as the 'heart of the community' were killed in a fire at their farmhouse alongside their dog just hours after wishing their family happy Christmas.

Frank, 90 and Madeleine Dougharty, 86, were found alongside their dog Flash on Boxing Day morning at their farmhouse in the Sussex village of West Chiltington.

Emergency services were called to their £760,000 home at 9.10am after reports of a significant fire which has gutted their remote farmhouse.

Shock horror - Excel only stores numbers to fifteen significant figures

This will probably turn out to be one of those things that everybody except me already knew, so I know I am setting myself up for a fall here.

I only noticed today when I was trying to enter a really long number. Excel records the first fifteen digits and replaces everything after than with zeroes. For sure, it was my Tesco Clubcard number, so I could save it as text, but that's not the point. It's an up to date version of Excel, by the way.

Ho hum.

They don't own land, charge them money!

Money Week is weighing in with some advice for the Chancellor, too much debt? Just inflate it away.

However, they don't mention who'd be paying the debt in that case, yes, the poor bloody saver, with the real value of their savings decreasing year on year. Of course, if you own land, like all proper citizens should and are in debt, then it's win win. Your land goes up in value while your debts reduce.

'Twas ever thus, it's even in the Bible, Mark 4:25 "For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath."

Science Deniers!

From climate.gov:

The ozone hole did not cause global warming

Because the ozone layer normally blocks ultraviolet (UV) light, an ozone hole allows more UV light than usual to reach the surface. However, the additional energy added to the Earth system from the ozone hole is so small that it couldn’t be responsible for the warming trend that’s been occurring.

How small? Well, the vast majority of sunlight is the light we can see—visible light with wavelengths of 400-700 nanometers. UV light is only about 8 percent of all sunlight to begin with, and the ozone layer and oxygen (both of which absorb UV) only permit a fraction of that to reach the surface. The additional amount of UV that the Antarctic ozone hole allows to reach the surface for a month or so each year is a small fraction of an already small amount of sunlight—too small to explain global warming.

1. The term "ozone hole" is not supposed to be taken literally! CFC gases have reduced the overall amount of ozone in the stratosphere everywhere, it is just most noticeable over the Antarctic at certain times of the year (and to a lesser extent over the Arctic). These are precisely the areas which are warming fastest, we are told - which supports the ozone depletion theory. So more UV-B gets down to the troposphere.

2. All this chit chat about frequencies is a side show, UV might only be 8% of all frequencies in incoming solar radiation. But energy is proportional to frequency and UV carries fifty times as much energy as much lower frequency/longer wavelength IR. And CO2 only absorbs/re-emits about one-tenth of the IR frequencies which the ground, oceans and clouds emit.

3. Whatever the clever radiation calculations might be (way beyond me), it is easier just to look at outcomes. The combined effect of UV-C, UV-B rays, oxygen and ozone in the stratosphere is enough to keep the average temperature at about 245 K via a series of endothermic reactions (which absorb energy from UV) and endothermic reactions (when O + O2 re-combine to O3 and give off heat). These reactions are tricky but are accepted physics. Without ozone, and assuming the lapse rate in the stratosphere is 9.8K/km (very dry), the average temperature would be 125K (I assume). So the UV/ozone effect warms the stratosphere by average 120K.

4. The mass of the air in the stratosphere is about one-quarter of the mass of the air in the troposphere (estimates vary). There is no hard dividing line - long haul jets fly quite happily in the lower stratosphere (and Joseph Kittinger got to the upper stratosphere by balloon and parachuted down again). It's just that the stratosphere is warmed from above by UV (so it's warmest at the top) and the troposphere is warmed from below by the ground/oceans and there is a gravito-thermal effect (so it's warmest at the bottom). The tropopause (the dividing line between troposphere and stratosphere) is just where temperatures are at a minimum and rise again (if you go up or down from there). This is why most atmospheres don't have a 'stratosphere' - there is no oxygen/ozone there to cause this effect.

5. So if there were no ozone in our stratosphere whatsoever, the UV/ozone effect would warm up the troposphere instead, by up to 30 degrees (one-quarter of the extra 120 K from 3 above). Ozone levels have dropped by (say) 10% since the 1970s, so 10% more UV-B is getting through. 10% x 30 degrees = 3 degrees. If one-third goes into warming the troposphere (and the rest into oceans or is otherwise dissipated), that's your one degree of atmospheric warming since the 1970s. It's clearly not a straight line relationship or anywhere that simple, but it's a good starting assumption.

6. Furthermore, car exhausts indirectly cause more ozone at low levels ("bad ozone" for this and other reasons), so there is plenty of ozone down here to catch the UV-B that now gets through and give off heat (another possible explanation for the urban heat island effect).

7. Further reading from an apparently unbiased source here.

Looks like election fraud (but isn't)

Trump and Trump supporters have claimed that election results like this indicate election fraud:

In-person votes, counted first:
Trump - 39,200
Biden - 30,600
(A solid lead for Trump on 56%).

Postal votes, counted next:
Trump - 9,800
Biden - 20,400
(A massive lead for Biden on 71%)

Add them together and you get:
Trump - 49,000 votes
Biden - 51,000 votes
(A modest overall win for Biden on 51%).

The postal votes look a bit suspicious at first sight, but the actual explanation for this is that Trump advised his voters to vote in person. In his addled mind, he thought that postal votes for him would be deliberately lost in the system somehow, which is nonsense if you think about it for half a second. If corrupt election officials are prepared to shred postal Trump votes, why wouldn't they also be prepared to shred in-person Trump votes?

Biden did the sensible thing and told his voters to vote by post if possible (because of Covid) or in person if they preferred. Thus maximising the likelihood of any potential voter actually voting for him. There must have been some potential Trump voters who couldn't vote in person and didn't get round to voting by post either. Biden hedged his bets; it was a good strategy, regardless of Covid.

I can't find a breakdown of in-person and postal votes. It looks to be about 30% postal and 70% in person. So (let's assume), because of the candidates' exhortations, only 20% of Trump voters voted by post against 40% of Biden voters. Multiple those numbers up, assuming an overall narrow 51%-49% split in this particular area, and you get the results shown above.

It is not at all unusual for the Democrat candidate to win an election - they won four out the previous eight (or six out of eight if you go by popular vote and not by electoral college votes!). It is less usual for a sitting President to be voted out after one term, but it does happen i.e. Jimmy Carter (Dem) in 1980 and George H.W. Bush (Rep) in 1992. Hillary Clinton and Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral college vote and were prepared to take it on the chin, rules are rules, so Trump is being a pathetic bad loser IMHO.
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The only conspiracy theory that I will subscribe to is that Pfizer weren't too happy with Trump's suggestion that drug prices be capped, which is why they delayed the announcement that their vaccine works until a few days after the election. Had they announced it shortly before the election, Trump would have got a real boost, seeing as it was his government which funded the research.

A similar thing happened to Julia Gillard in Australia, go figure. Rent seekers appear to have undue influence in elections; they have a lot of spare cash to spend on lobbying to make sure the rents continue to roll in. It's a Georgist thing, not a left-right thing.

Dark Matter and Dark Energy

Another nail in the coffin of Dark Matter and in favour of MOND and similar explanations here.
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Dark Energy is a different topic, and is a placeholder name for whatever causes galaxies to all be moving away from each other, unless they are fairly close and gravitational attraction over-rides it (by several orders of magnitude).

The clever scientists don't really know why this is happening, and there are different ways of calculating the rate of expansion which give different results (although they all seem to be within +/- 10% of each other).

I have spent a couple of weeks reading and trying to understand the page on Ozone Depletion Theory titled What is Electromagnetic Radiation?. I still only vaguely understand most of it, but this sentence grabbed my attention:

Light illuminates matter, but light itself is not visible, it is dark, until it interacts with matter. Given that Earth receives less than 5 x 10-8 % of Sun’s radiation, there must be a lot of dark energy in space that changes in time...

Woo hoo! That might be it. As a matter of fact, there is such a thing as solar sails, as popularised by Arthur C Clark, which use 'photon pressure' to gently but firmly accelerate a spacecraft. The rate of acceleration is painfully slow, but it is constant and cumulative, so they can get up to fair old speeds after a few years or a few decades.

So the logic is this: only a teeny-tiny amount of light emitted by a star hits solid matter in its own solar system or even its host galaxy; most of the light goes out into intergalactic space. A teeny-tiny amount of starlight leaving each galaxy hits solid matter in its own galaxy cluster, and so on and so forth. And in turn, each galaxy is being hit by light from all other galaxies; so they all act as giant solar sails.

As star light is nearly as old as the universe, those billions and billions of years worth of starlight from each galaxy (or galaxy cluster) is pushing each other galaxy (or galaxy cluster) gently but firmly away from itself and the cumulative effect is (just about) measurable (if you call ≈70 km/second per megaparsec distance measurable). By definition the rate of expansion must also be gently but firmly increasing.

Whether or not the universe has a "centre" (and I am prepared to accept that it doesn't, and it is not expanding into anything larger), this leads to its gradual expansion!
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This might be complete nonsense, but it's an entertaining thought at least. And seeing as its the only explanation I've ever seen, I'm going to stick with it for now until a better one comes along.

They own land! Give them money!

Spotted by TBH in This Is Money:

Second home owners who have registered their properties as businesses are set to land an £85million windfall from the Government's small business grant scheme.

Experts said the loophole allows the owners of second homes – many of which are registered in Devon, Cornwall, the Lake District and in seaside towns such as Scarborough – to register them as businesses as long as they 'make them available' to let for 140 days of the year* and take bookings for at least half of those days.

The practice, known as 'flipping', allows the property owners to pay business rates instead of council tax. It also means they are eligible for the Government's small business rates relief scheme, which means all but the largest properties pay little or no tax.

Owners are now also poised to collect a share – around £1,300 each – of £2.2billion support for small businesses closed due to coronavirus restrictions. According to commercial property adviser Altus Group, there are more than 62,000 properties in England which are classified as holiday homes and have been flipped** to become 'commercial' premises for tax purposes.

It is not the first time that the owners of second homes have benefited from Government handouts during the coronavirus crisis...

* The official name for this is "Furnished Holiday Lets" and is a set of insane (and fiddly) tax reliefs for second home owners.

** No doubt many of them will be flipped back from Business Rates to Council Tax when the Business Rates exemption ends  - Council Tax is usually much lower. I wonder if they will ever publish that statistic.

Australian Xmas song

I'm dreaming of a hot Christmas
Just like the ones I'll always know
Where the trees are burning
And barbies turning
A huge pile of embers all a-glow

I'm dreaming of a hot Christmas
With every Christmas card I write
May your days be sunny and bright
With sun-block to keep skin nice and white.

Another little mystery solved...

The Alarmists tie themselves in knots trying to explain why more CO2 = cooler stratosphere. I've tried understanding the explanation in that post. It's all highly circular and it's impossible to say whether it's correct or incorrect. Here's the chart from that post. Let's take it at face value (those are The Rules):
To cut a long story short, a pressure of 200 hPa is approx. equal to the height of the troposphere, the bit we are interested in. Below that it has warmed a bit (mainly pale green) and above that (the stratosphere) it has cooled a lot (mainly dark blue).

The ever reliable (as in 'reliably wrong') Skeptical Science explains Stratospheric Cooling and Tropospheric Warming by saying that CO2 'traps' low-energy infra red radiation emitted by the Earth's surface/oceans/clouds. The stratosphere is warmed by radiation emitted from below by the troposphere. If more infrared is 'trapped' in the troposphere, it can't warm the stratosphere.
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This of course contradicts the sophisticated 'top of troposphere' theory of Global Warming (from Science of Doom, skip down to sections 5 and 6). The TOT theory says that radiation emitted by and hence temperature at the top of the troposphere (the tropopause) are a constant. More CO2 pushes up the altitude of the tropopause.

This means that surface temperature goes up because surface temperature EQUALS temperature at the tropopause PLUS the gravity-induced lapse rate (it is nice to see an Alarmist accept that this exists and has nothing to do with Greenhouse Gases) MULTIPLIED BY the altitude of the tropopause. If that is true (I like to use their own arguments against them), then the amount of infrared reaching - and warming - the stratosphere from below is unchanged!
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So far, so bad. What is the more likely explanation?

The ozone depletion theory starts on the basis that ozone in the stratosphere converts high-energy solar ultraviolet radiation from above to thermal energy. This effect appears to be undisputed. (Even the hard core Alarmists at Science of Doom accept this, while simultaneously claiming that the stratosphere is warmed from below).

When ozone is depleted in the stratosphere (mainly because of CFC gases, which break down into Cl and Br gas, which in turn act as catalysts to break down O3 into O2; partly because of volcanic eruptions) it soaks up less of the ultraviolet energy and so doesn't warm up so much, and more ultraviolet energy gets down into the troposphere and heats up the ozone (and oxygen) there instead.

Game, set and match to the ozone depletion theory, methinks! A back of the envelope approximation says that a 4% fall in stratospheric ozone levels will increase tropospheric temperatures by about 1 degree, with a larger fall in stratospheric temperatures. This matches real life results since the 1970s and ties in with the above chart.

"Global Warming is Caused by Ozone Depletion, Not Greenhouse Gases"

At last, a theory that stacks up!

See ozonedepletiontheory.info by Peter Ward for detailed explanations (and also very conscientious debunking of CO2-related theories as a bonus).

A lot of it is beyond my understanding, but on the whole it seems internally and externally consistent - temperature increases match CFC emissions much better than they match CO2 levels (that was the only thing that bothered me. Shouldn't you compare temperature increases with ozone levels?) - and very plausible. If we have to make do without spray cans and use different coolants in our fridges etc, I'm sure we can manage.

If reading is not your thing, his summary video (one hour long!) is here:

"The Alternative to Dark Matter May be General Relativity Itself"

From Astrobites. Here are the highlights:

For most astronomers, it is just common sense that dark matter accounts for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe. However, as long as the constituents of dark matter remain a mystery, some astronomers remain skeptical about our conventional understanding of dark matter. Recently, astronomer Alexandre Deur suggested that the theory of relativity itself may explain a phenomenon widely regarded as evidence for dark matter...

Modified Newtonian Dynamics, or MOND, for example, is the most discussed out of all the gravitation corrections to explain the missing mass problem (see this astrobite for further discussion of MOND vs. dark matter). It modifies the Newtonian gravitation law at low accelerations to enhance the effective gravitational attraction. Similarly, most of the other corrections require new descriptions of gravitation. But recently, as Deur proposes in this work, the effect of general relativity may account for the missing mass, without introducing any new corrections.

Yes, MOND is a bit of a fudge and an approximation, but the general approach is correct. It's a lot less of a fudge than inventing Dark Matter.

Generally, the predicted rotation of galaxies, as shown in Figure 1, is modelled by Newtonian dynamics. The rotation velocity is much smaller than the speed of light, especially at the outer part of the galaxy (typically v/c ≈ 0.1 % , where v is the velocity and c is the speed of light). Therefore, it is believed that a non-relativistic treatment is reasonable. However, this assumption could be challenged due to the effect of field self-interaction in general relativity. This effect depends on the mass only, and is independent of the rotation velocity, thus making a difference regardless of how fast the stars move in the galaxy. Deur shows that field self-interaction, which reveals the non-linear nature of general relativity, is in fact not negligible in the missing mass problem.

To demonstrate this, Deur uses the gravitational lensing formalism. While light travels in straight lines in flat space, it can be deflected in the presence of a gravitational field. In exactly the same way, the gravitational field lines connecting two parts of the galaxy are distorted by the background field. That is to say, the gravitational field is deformed by the total galactic mass. With the field lines distorted, the strength of the gravitation consequently changes.

Yup, gravity lenses itself, i.e. it focuses itself on the mass that created the gravity in the first place. You can guess this for yourself. Once they have worked out how and to what degree, they'll hopefully show that there was no need to invent Dark Matter, and the concept will be quietly shelved.

"There are only 10 kinds of people in this world...

... those who understand binary and those who don't."

Pinched from here

BBC is doing it again

From the BBC:

Will food be more expensive after 1 January?

Under WTO rules, supermarkets and other importers would have to pay substantial tariffs on many foods they bring in from the EU. Meat and dairy products face particularly high tariffs, but many other areas including fruit and vegetables would be also affected.

The BBC can't even be bothered to read its own summary of what the WTO is about:

The WTO was established in 1995, when it took over essentially the same functions from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Gatt), which came into force in 1948.

One of the motivations for creating the Gatt was a wish to dismantle the barriers to trade that had been erected between the two world wars. Most economists regard the establishment of these interwar trade barriers as misguided and say they probably aggravated the Great Depression of the 1930s...

A series of eight "rounds" of negotiations under the Gatt led to the progressive reduction in trade tariffs - taxes which are imposed only on imported products.

The minimum - and indeed the recommended - tariff imposed under WTO "rules" is precisely zero. Given how useless the UK government is, they might well impose tariffs on imported food, but this will be entirely self-inflicted. This will be the UK government waging economic warfare against its own people, and if the EU imposes tariffs on imports from businesses in the UK, that is them waging economic warfare against citizens of EU Member States.

£77.40 well spent

The garage ironed out the little niggles - which they should have fixed when they had it in last week, but hey - and it now drives cheerful and chirpy again, just like an MX-5 should :-)

I also managed to get rid some of the rattling noises by going through the glove boxes and door pockets and removing all the biros and pencils the previous owner had left in it.

Songs on my Xmas playlist by release date

To summarise: the Golden Age of cheesy Xmas songs was from the 1940s to the 1960s, bang them out and hope for the best. The period 2007-2012 is skewed on my list because that's when Bob Dylan and Michael Bublé released their Xmas albums (both of them timeless classics). Apart from that, it's more evenly spread than you'd expect.

MX5 - rear bumper repairs

Before: After: Some arsehole who was probably on his mobile decided to smash into my MX5 recently, and drove off without stopping. The damage was far worse than it looks in the 'before' picture.

Repair process as follows:

1. I bought all the replacement parts online for £1,500.

2. Luckily they were already assembled and attached to a very good condition* MX5 with the 1.8 engine and only half the mileage of my old one.

3. The local garage shifted across some good bits from the old one to the new one, did a bit of welding, new MOT etc; Suffolk Mazda came to collect the old one, paid me a very fair £350, bringing the net cost of the exercise down to £450, and that was the end of that.

* There are various niggles still to be sorted out. When I drove round for half an hour just now to keep the battery charged, the bloody handbrake light stayed on. I don't think the handbrake was actually on, because it drove OK and the brake disks weren't overly hot when I got back home, but it still doesn't 'feel' right somehow. It's not as lively as the old one with the 1.6 engine, which had 109 bhp ex-factory twenty years ago and was probably down to about 90 bhp when I bought it. Ah well, back to the menders it is, then.

More fun with 'missing radiation'

From Science of Doom, which is like Skeptical Science but hard core:
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Upwards Longwave Radiation

So let’s try and look at it again and see if starts to make sense. Here is the earth’s longwave energy budget – considering first the energy radiated up:
Of course, the earth’s radiation from the surface depends on the actual temperature. This is the average upwards flux. And it also depends slightly on the factor called “emissivity” but that doesn’t have a big effect.

The value at the top of atmosphere (TOA) is what we measure by satellite – again that is the average for a clear sky. Cloudy skies produce a different (lower) number.

These values alone should be enough to tell us that something significant is happening to the longwave radiation. Where is it going? It is being absorbed and re-radiated. Some upwards – so it continues on its journey to the top of the atmosphere and out into space – and some back downwards to the earth’s surface. This downwards component adds to the shortwave radiation from the sun and helps to increase the surface temperature.

As a result the longwave radiation upwards from the earth’s surface is higher than the upwards value at the top of the atmosphere.
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To make this easy for beginners, I have put their sleight of hand in bold.

1. We are agreed that overall average emissions from Earth out to space ≈ 239 W/m2.

2. For sake of argument, I accept their readings of 390 W/m2 and 265 W/m2 for clear skies, which are assumed to be one-third of the surface.

3. Therefore, emissions to space from clouds (two-thirds of the surface) ≈ 226 W/m2 to get the overall 239 W/m2 average (3 x 239 ≈ 265 + 226 + 226).

4. Clouds are high up and cold. Let's say 6 km up, where it's 249 K. If clouds were perfect blackbodies (100% emissivity) they would be emitting 217 W/m2 (248^4/10^8 x 5.67), so more gets to space than they actually emit. Nobody's sure what their overall average emissivity is, let's call it 75% (middle of various estimates of ranges). So actually, they are emitting 163 W/m2, and a lot more gets to space that they actually emit.

OK, this does not make sense any more, but that's what happens when you follow their logic. If the TOA effect is to block one-third of emitted radiation (265 ÷ 390 = 2/3) and net emissions to space from clouds ≈ 226 W/m2, then clouds themselves would have to be emitting 339 W/m2 (339 x 2/3 = 226). Assuming clouds were perfect black bodies (which they aren't), this implies a cloud temperature of 278K (5C), which in turn implies an average altitude of less than 1 km above the surface. So to make their logic and maths stand up, you have to make totally implausible real world assumptions.

5. So sure, there is 125 W/m2 'missing' with clear skies (390 minus 265). But for cloudy areas, there is 63 W/m2 more going to space than clouds actually emit in the first place (226 minus 163), and there is twice as much cloud as clear sky. How do they explain the 'extra' radiation? They don't of course, because that would give the game away*.

6. Now go back and read the bits in bold!

* The actual maths is much simpler. The surface not covered by clouds emits 390 W/m2 and that goes to space. The clouds, temp. approx 250K with 75% emissivity emit 165 W/m2, and that goes to space. Clouds cover two-thirds of the surface and so the weighted average emissions to space ≈ 240 W/m2. There is nothing obviously missing or being blocked.

Alternatively, the reason for the apparent discrepancy can be explained as follows: the atmosphere is warmer at sea level than at the tropopause because of the gravito-thermal effect. All warm atoms and molecules emit radiation, be they N2, O2, land, ocean, water vapour, water droplets, CO2, whatever. So there is more being emitted at sea level than from higher up. If you measure from space, you are (indirectly) just measuring the temperature higher up and not the temperature at ground level/cloud level.

Or maybe you are measuring some mix of the temperature at low and high altitudes - if you light a camp fire in the Arctic at night and measure it from a distance with an IR thermometer, you get a lower reading than if you light a campfire in the Sahara desert by day and measure it from the same distance.

Simples!

This year's Xmas CD cover

We brainstormed over dinner and I ended up using Her Indoors' suggestion.

How much radiation can 1kg of CO2 'trap'?

Further to my previous post, I shall continue my merry trolling of AGW theory.

Here's a graphic to illustrate the point. The AGW theory is that if CO2 is above a certain concentration (about 0.5g/m3) then radiation (at certain frequencies) emitted below that altitude cannot escape to space and warms the atmosphere, oceans and land. If CO2 levels increased by 50% above current levels, the effective emitting altitude (for certain wavelengths) would go up from 5 km to 9.5 km. As a result, everything below that altitude warms by about 1.5 degrees. All figures expressed in terms of a 10km high column of air with a 1m2 cross-section.
In round figures:

1. The amount of energy required to heat such a column of air by 1.5 degrees is about 15 million Joules.

2. The additional CO2 in each such column which has this effect is the amount above the dashed line and between the orange and yellow lines, which looks to be about 1.5 kg.

3. Therefore, each kg of extra CO2 above the line must be able to 'trap' about 10 million Joules, or about 12 hours' worth of all the radiation from each m2 of Earth's effective emitting surface (which is two-thirds clouds).

4. In case you're wondering, that is a huge number. The biggest number in this context is the latent heat of evaporation of water, which is 2.256 million Joules/kg. Remember, the additional energy required to get boiling water to turn to water vapour (i.e. 'dry' steam rather than visible steam, which is a mix of water vapour and water droplets) is five times as much as the energy required to get water from just above freezing point to boiling point. So it is a huge amount of energy.

5. Or to put it another way, if 1 kg CO2 could absorb 10 million Joules and convert it all to thermal energy without being able to cool down, it would be about 10,000 degrees (difficult to estimate, as specific heat capacity is higher the hotter you go). "That's hot", as Paris Hilton would say. To put it another way, if you did CO2 capture from the air, collected one-third of it, heated it to 10,000 degrees, released it back into the atmosphere and let it mix again, the average temperature of the whole atmosphere would go up by about 1.5 degrees. Clearly, that is a silly analogy, but would lead to the same result.

This just does not seem plausible, does it? Especially as this extra energy seems to be both radiation (electro-magnetic energy, which has no particular temperature) and warmth (thermal energy, which is not electro-magnetic energy on the large scale) at the same time. That's never made clear is it? Is it one or t'other? Or would we need double that amount of Joules, which flip constantly back and forth between the two forms?

CO2 and the effective emitting altitude

From The Motherlode:

This is how the Greenhouse Effect works. The Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and water vapour absorb most [yes, they say 'most', so let's run with it] of the heat radiation leaving the Earth's surface. Then their concentration determines how much heat escapes from the top of the atmosphere to space. It is the change in what happens at the top of the atmosphere that matters, not what happens down here near the surface.

So how does changing the concentration of a Greenhouse gas change how much heat escapes from the upper atmosphere? As we climb higher in the atmosphere the air gets thinner. There is less of all gases, including the greenhouse gases. Eventually the air becomes thin enough that any heat radiated by the air can escape all the way to Space. How much heat escapes to space from this altitude then depends on how cold the air is at that height. The colder the air, the less heat it radiates.

So if we add more greenhouse gases the air needs to be thinner before heat radiation is able to escape to space. So this can only happen higher in the atmosphere. Where it is colder. So the amount of heat escaping is reduced. By adding greenhouse gases, we force the radiation to space to come from higher, colder air, reducing the flow of radiation to space. And there is still a lot of scope for more greenhouse gases to push 'the action' higher and higher, into colder and colder air, restricting the rate of radiation to space even further.

Let's follow their logic and see where it takes us...

Here's a chart showing approx. current CO2 levels at altitudes up to 12 km (vertical axis) in orange, and what they would be if they went up by 50% in yellow. The current effective emitting altitude is at about 5km, where the average temperature is about 255K and CO2 is about 0.5 grams/m3. So we assume that if there is less than 0.5 grams/m3, the atmosphere is no longer opaque to infra red radiation and radiation emitted at that altitude can escape to space.
According to them, the new effective emitting altitude would be wherever CO2/m3 is 0.5 grams/m3, i.e. at about 9.5 km. The average temperature at that altitude is 226 K. If you calculate the amount of W/m2 radiated, it would go down from 239 W/m2 to 148 W/m2, a complete imbalance and not plausible.

The more sophisticated Alarmists say that the temperature of the new, higher effective emitting layer - and everything beneath it - will increase to whatever it needs to be to emit 239 W/m2 and reinstate the equilibrium between incoming solar and outgoing infra red. Sounds plausible until you realise that would require a temperature increase of nearly 30 degrees all the way up, which is also completely implausible* and ten times as much as the most pessimistic predictions, before we treble it for the 'positive feedback of water vapour' (to the extent it exists, which it doesn't). As a matter of fact, CO2 levels have gone up by about 50% since the end of the Little Ice Age pre-industrial levels and temperatures have gone up by 1.5 degrees at most.

If you get nonsense answers, you can safely assume that the logic is nonsense!

* To make it make sense, you could assume that CO2 only absorbs/re-emits about 5% (one-twentieth) of infra red, very much at the low end of most estimates. In which case, we can divide the 30 degree potential warming by twenty to get 1.5 degrees observed warming (the other 95% is unaffected). If they explained it like that, then I'd have to accept the explanation as plausible and at least internally consistent. There's no such thing as "warm" or "cold" radiation of course, it doesn't have a temperature, it is just a form of energy (like potential energy or electrical energy which don't have a temperature either), so that part of the explanation is still flimsy.

For a more nuanced version of all this, see Clive Best, who thinks there would be a very small increase in temperature of about 0.3 degrees.

What missing radiation?

From The Motherlode:


The red area shows radiation emitted from Earth's surface, assuming average temperature 288K (total 390 W/m2). The green area shows actual outgoing radiation measured from space (total 240 W/m2). Their argument is that the red area that is not overlapped by green shows the missing radiation that is 'trapped' by CO2. Game, set and match to the Alarmists!

Here's a simplified version to illustrate the point they are trying to make: the surface emits 390 W/m2 but only 240 W/m2 gets to space. How do we explain the missing radiation? The usual suspect, CO2?

Having given this some thought, it strikes me that this way of looking at things is a massive fudge and ignores the full picture.

Let's go back to the beginning and look at incoming solar radiation. On average it's 685 W/m2 during the day. One-third reaches the land or ocean surface, which reflects 10%. Two-thirds hits clouds, which reflect 40%. Overall, 30% is reflected (i.e. Earth's albedo is 0.3), so 480 W/m2 is absorbed during 12 hours of daylight. Temperatures (and outgoing radiation) don't change much by day and night, so let's assume that a steady 240 W/m2 is radiated back to space by day and by night. So it's all in equilibrium. 480 W/m2 x 12 hours incoming = 240 W/m2 x 24 hours outgoing. (Clouds and the surface beneath them have their own separate equilibrium, which need not concern us further).


Outgoing radiation is the reverse process. We treat clouds as part of the surface when calculating albedo, net incoming radiation and effective temperature, so we also have to treat them as part of the surface when looking at outgoing radiation (or else we get nonsensical answers).

One-third of the surface, land/oceans is 288K (effective temperature as adjusted for gravito-thermal effect and latent heat of evaporation/condensation aka "the lapse rate") and they emit 390 W/m2 (they are close to behaving like a 'black body'). Two-thirds of the effective surface, clouds, emit 165 W/m2*, so the overall average is 240 W/m2. (390 + 165 + 165) ÷ 3 = 240. So there is no missing radiation to explain away in the first place!**


* The calculation for clouds is as follows. Average altitude of clouds/emitting layer = 6 km. At 6 km, the temperature is about 250K, i.e. surface temperature 288K minus 6 x 6.5K for the lapse rate. If they behaved like 'black bodies' with emissivity of 100%, they would be emitting (250^4) ÷ 10^8 x 5.67 = 220 W/m2. But clouds' emissivity is only 75%, so they actually only emit three-quarters of that = 165 W/m2. Emissivity is a bit like 'albedo' but in reverse, look it up.

Clearly, "two-thirds", "6 km", "250K" and "75% emissivity" are arbitrarily chosen reasonable mid-estimates to illustrate the point - you get the same effect if clouds are lower (hence warmer) and with a lower emissivity; or they are higher and emissivity is higher. Nobody really knows what these variables (cloud cover, height etc) are as they change constantly and they largely cancel each other out.

** OK, I accept that the 'missing' radiation appears to be in the wavelengths absorbed and emitted by CO2. They are saying that CO2 absorbs but doesn't re-emit? Or are they saing that CO2 does emit radiation to space, but if there is more CO2, it emits less radiation? You can never pin them down.

Another Official Property Scam

Recently there was a piece on Radio 4 about "shared ownership", which is buying a house on the never never, but with the added joy of paying a mortgage on the part that you "own".

As far as I can see this is yet another "initiative" to try to blow some air into the housing bubble and get round the rules on lenders designed to stop borrowers reducing themselves to penury whist they desperately try to get access to the magic money tree that is housing in the UK. It combines the worst aspects of renting - it's not your house to do what you want with - with the worst aspects of buying - the properties are leasehold and, so long as you only own a small percentage, your share is almost unsaleable, so you are stuck with it.

It has all the makings of a mis-selling scandal of the future, I expect the ambulance chasers are already gearing up.

Car hits house

Article and photo at the BBC.

How on earth did he manage to get the front door of the house lodged in his windscreen at that angle, all without totally wrecking the front of the car? The angle suggests that the door flew in from above and behind.

The photo appears to have been taken from here.

"Rishi Sunak to reform anti-Northern spending bias"

From the BBC:

Part of what will change is the Treasury's Green Book - a set of rules it uses to determine the value generated by government schemes. It will mean - as the first portions of £600bn in planned public investment are delivered - the process of ranking transport, energy, schools or hospital investment will be widened beyond a narrow definition of benefit compared to cost.

Those calculations, the Treasury now acknowledges, have inherently favoured the government investing continuously in the South East of England and London. That's because the values of economic return are influenced by existing high property prices in those regions. For example, a transport link between London and Reading would always have ranked as better value for money for the taxpayer than linking two northern cities.

I'm reading between the lines a bit here, but I assume what they mean is that if spending £X billion on better transport links increases economic activity in an area by Y per cent, then it is better to spend it in a densely populated = high wage = high land price area.

On a national level, that makes sense. It would be pointless spending umpteen billion on bridges connecting sparsely populated Scottish islands.

The real issue is not where the money is spent, the issue is who benefits from the spending. Under current rules, it is mainly people who own homes or business premises in the South East, so a double slap in the face for people and businesses in other areas, who have to pay their share of the cost via taxation. Or indeed tenants in the South East who end up paying more tax and higher rents.

If LVT were a major source of revenue, then money would still be spent on whatever things in whatever areas where the extra LVT exceeds the cost, but instead of all the benefits going to landowners there, everybody in every area of the country would benefit because that surplus LVT would be used to reduce taxes on output and earnings for everybody. Like people who pay £100 for a front row seat subsidising people in the back row who only have to pay £10. If the theatre charged a flat £50 on a first-come first-served basis, they'd only fill half their seats and the back rows would be empty.

"Sainsbury’s defends Christmas advert as customers threaten to boycott store for featuring black family"

From The Metro

Since it was first aired, the advert has received controversial feedback online, with some slamming the commercial for ‘not representing them’.

Others went as far as to say they were boycotting Sainsbury’s because of their ad. One shopper tweeted: ‘Isn’t the UK supposed to be all about Diversity and Inclusion? Don’t see any of that here. Virtual signalling if ever I’ve seen it!’

I have some sympathy for Sainsbury's here. They are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Clearly, the UK is a 'white' country and 95% of the population consider themselves 'White British'. So if supermarkets always just featured a median family in their adverts, they would all be all white. Which, while fairly accurate, would be a bit boring. And they'd get grief from the virtue signallers (who are all white, rather ironically).

If all supermarkets just used the median family, then we would only see white families, which might be a fair reflection of many parts of the country, but completely out of kilter with larger cities. So a lot of them cop out by having a mixed race family with one white and one non-white* parent.

But, even though I am half of a mixed race couple with mixed race kids, I find this really irritating. It's the least representative kind of family, that's basic maths. Even if every single non-white person married a white person, that's still only one-in-ten families. Clearly they don't, so in truth is more like one-in-a-hundred.

So Sainsbury's marketing team thought "Fuck it, this is all too complicated. We'll never improve on plugboy. Whatever else we do will offend somebody, so for a change let's have an all-black family."

And good for them, to be honest. If a supermarket did an Xmas advert featuring a family of green CGI Martians, would anybody bat an eyelid?

* You're not allowed to say 'coloured' any more (as Greg Clarke found out to his cost, seriously, you can lose your job for this). Hilariously enough we did a 'racial sensitivity' nonsense course at work a couple of years ago and the lecturer insisted that we say 'people of colour', or 'BIPOC', completely made-up phrases which were deemed to be offensive a few weeks ago. 'Black' is the preferred term again for Afro-Caribbeans (they've always described to themselves as 'black' AFAIAA). You have to keep up to date with these things!

Buy now while stocks last!

From the BBC:

Ban on new petrol and diesel cars in UK from 2030 under PM's green plan

New cars and vans powered wholly by petrol and diesel will not be sold in the UK from 2030, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said. But some hybrids would still be allowed, he confirmed.

It is part of what Mr Johnson calls a "green industrial revolution" to tackle climate change and create jobs in industries such as nuclear energy. Critics say the £4bn allocated to implement the 10-point plan is far too small for the scale of the challenge.

We'll end up like Cuba, where everybody's driving round in lovingly maintained classics.

Mr Rashford's Property Portfolio

 From the Daily Mail

Campaigning football star Marcus Rashford has bought five luxury homes worth at least £2 million, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The striker, 23, has ploughed an estimated £1.5 million into three houses on a new estate in Wilmslow, Cheshire, as well as buying a house and flat in Macclesfield.

I could get into how awful it is that a productive footballer and nice guy, becomes a parasitic landlord, but he probably hasn't thought too much about that. But, I think this is a bad investment.

Our host has explained a few times about the relationship of commuting time and rents, that the closer you are to the office, the more your rent rises, and that particularly applies to Wilmslow.

I know Wilmslow quite well. I spent a few months working in Wythenshawe, which is like Syria on a bad day, so I chose to stay in Wilmslow. It's also not far from Manchester Airport and a 20 minute rail commute from Manchester Piccadilly, the main rail station.

If you compare the prices in Wilmslow and Congleton, it's around £450K for a 3 bed semi vs £300K in Congleton. Congleton is 50 minutes from Manchester by train.

But the value of being 30 minutes closer to the office is going to diminish if you're only doing it 2 days a week rather than 5. Instead of there being a £150K difference over Congleton to someone doing that, it's more like a 60K difference. OK, not everyone is going to be doing this post-Covid, but most of those people are office workers in the centre of Manchester and the effect is going to be big there.

This is why London rents have fallen anything from 3% to 7% on a year ago (depending on who you ask) while other rents have risen. If you aren't going into the office, or not that often, you don't need to be in Hammersmith, you can be in Slough, or Swindon.

I think the whole of this is going to take time to work out. Much of it will come as people move. Home owners near to the centre of cities are going to think this is a short-term blip or gully, and hold out, not selling as the prices continue to fall rather than bailing out.

What I want for Christmas...Pt 1

#1 For the bloody HMRC to stop adressing me as a 'customer'.  

Listen up you language mangling patronising sanctimonious parasites I am, unlike any of you, a real tax payer so that's how you need to address me.

A bit of 'please sir' 'no sir' needs to be introduced into your correspondence.

A 'customer' is engaged in voluntary exchange.  Being a 'tax payer' is to suffer coercion.

E&W - weekly deaths up to Week 44

Data from the ONS:


What "second wave?", you might ask.

Week 46 will be a special week, as that week's deaths will include the bastard who terrorised West Yorkshire for half a decade and ruined countless lives. May he rot in Hell.

Insider trading and deposit-funded corporations

Stories like this or this always leave a bad taste, however much those involved protest their innocence.

That's another advantage of deposit-funded corporations, which wouldn't have shares which can be bought and sold on the stock exchange. They'd be like building societies (or LLPs, partnerships or unit trusts), you make your deposit, you are allocated your share of profits or losses each year (or month or quarter) and you withdraw your deposit plus accumulated profits when you need the money, or you would rather deposit with a different company which you think will give you a better return.

The point about insider trading is that you buy if you expect good news, i.e. the announcement of future profits, and you sell as soon as the news becomes official or public knowledge and the price has jumped. "Buy on a rumour, sell on a fact".

With DFC's, there'd be no point cashing in if future profits are expected to be higher, you'd sit tight and hope for a share of it. OK, you would still have an advantage if you knew the rumours before everyone else because you could add to your deposit before the news become official or public knowledge. But you wouldn't get your share of those profits until they are actually made and it would leave a longer paper trail.

Similarly, if you have insider knowledge of potential bad news (like the insurance company finding a loop hole that means they don't have to pay out on a factory which burned down), you would be tempted to cash in. But the company would have to make a provision for the future losses as soon as it knows and knock a percentage off everybody's deposit. So if senior managers withdrew their deposits before they make the provision and announce the bad news, that would be straightforward false accounting and fraud and much easier to prove than 'insider trading'.

And there would be no incentive to spread false negative rumours (to give you a buying opportunity) and then refute them (to give you a sell opportunity). Or vice versa. The amount of your deposit is entirely unaffected by rumours either way, the amount you can withdraw is only affected by what has actually happened in the past.

The American Green Party's successful electoral strategy

Jill Stein, the Green Party's candidate did well in the 2016 Presidential Election, from Wiki: "Stein finished in 4th with over 1,457,216 votes (more than the previous three Green tickets combined) and 1.07% of the popular vote".

In the 2020 election, the Green Party candidate only got 339,000 votes. An apparent failure, but actually nothing of the sort. The Democrat strategists knew that losing votes to the Green candidate probably cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election, so their 2020 candidate Joe Biden said he was in a favour of a Green New Deal (whatever that is) and clawed most of those votes back. Given how tight the margins were in swing states, that was a very sensible tactic. This is called "shifting the Overton Window", and now the Greens just have to hope he actually implements it.
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A similar thing happened to the Libertarian Party, their vote share went down from a very respectable 4.5 milion to 1.5 million votes (as far as I can make out), presumably because Trump (the very antithesis of actual libertarianism) took back most of the votes from right wing nutters who otherwise might have voted Libertarian.

But fair play to the 2020 Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgenson, she is realistic about all this and understand how it works. From the BBC:

"The Libertarian Party's baseline votes will continue to grow [sic]," Ms Jorgensen said in a statement. "The only way Democrats and Republicans can keep us down is by adopting our libertarian policies."
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To cut a long story short, the lesson for small parties is - if your policies and principles become widely accepted and politically palatable, the larger parties adopt them (or at least pretend to) and you lose votes.

"Climate Change May Have Driven Ancient Human Species to Extinction"

From Science Alert:

Researchers have also hypothesized that climate change could have played a role in the extinction of Homo species. In a new study, published in the journal One Earth, a multidisciplinary team of scientists from Italy, the United Kingdom, and Brazil make the case that this factor was the major driver in the extinction of other hominins.

The authors believe the findings could serve as a warning as humanity faces human-made climate change today. "Even the brain powerhouse in the animal kingdom, [the Homo genus], cannot survive climate change when it gets too extreme," says paleontologist Pasquale Raia, of the University of Naples Federico II, one of the study's authors. "People should mind that, given the current mayhem we are causing."

Indeed, so have earlier periods of gradual warming led to mass extinctions..?

For three of the five extinct species - H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, and H. neanderthalensis - a sudden, strong change in climate occurred on the planet just before these species died out. Climes became colder for all three, drier for H. heildelbergensis and Neanderthals, and wetter for H. erectus. According to Raia, the change in temperature was roughly 4 to 5 degrees Celsius, on yearly averages.

I'll take that as a 'no'. When they say "change in temperatures" they must mean "fall in temperatures" (Ice Ages are indisputably bad for humanity). If extinctions had coincided with increases, you can be sure they would have mentioned it.

Covid-19 and share prices

From The Daily Mail:

'Stay at home' stocks Zoom, Amazon and Netflix all plunge after Pfizer announces its COVID-19 vaccine is 90% effective
* Zoom shares dropped by 15 percent in pre-market trading on Monday
* The video calling company saw a boost in March when millions of businesses switched to working-from-home
* Amazon and Netflix also saw jumps in their share prices at the start of the second quarter
* They also suffered on Monday while Pfizer's stock went up by 14.5 percent

Those bullet points sum up pretty much all you need to know. I assume that the share price of oil companies will also increase if the vaccine promises to be effective; petrol went down a couple of pence/litre after Lockdown 2.0 kicked in.

And, if you love a right-wing conspiracy theory, you can assume that Pfizer waited until it was fairly certain that Biden would win the election before they announced that their vaccine appears to work. If the vaccine actually works and it all goes live next year, Biden will take all the credit*. It would have really helped Trump if Pfizer had announced this a couple of weeks before the election. I've checked Twitter, and the usual loons are saying that Pfizer was getting revenge on Trump for this suggestion and/or that Bill Gates and George Soros own Pfizer and just wanted Trump out and 'their man' in.

* Like Ken Livingstone, who introduced hire bikes in London shortly before the end of his second term as London Mayor, His successor Boris Johnson expanded the scheme and persuaded people to call them 'Boris Bikes'.

Skeptical Science neatly disproves its own point with a diagonal comparison

From The Motherlode:

Using Modtran [which matches up well to actual measurements, so let's take this all as accurate], I determined the energy output looking downwards from an altitude of 70 kilometers using the US Standard Atmosphere. The result can be seen on the following graph as the green shaded area. I repeated the model run, but this time with the altitude set at 0 km. The result is shown by the outer curve defining the red area in the graph below.

That means that the red area itself, which is the upwards radiation from the surface minus the upward radiation to space, is the reduction in energy radiated to space because of the presence of Infra-Red absorbing molecules in the atmosphere. That is, it is the greenhouse effect.

It's nothing of the sort and the chart does not show it.

1. The effective temperature of Earth is approx. 255K. That means that skilled astronomers elsewhere in the Solar System - armed only with a telescope - who know nothing about our atmosphere and assume that the white clouds are part of the surface would expect the average surface temperature of Earth to be 255K based on incoming solar radiation, albedo etc. If the astronomers also have an IR-meter, they can measure outgoing IR radiation from Earth and work backwards to find out Earth's effective/average temperature.

They would expect Earth's outgoing IR curve to be just below the pink one for 260K. They will be puzzled as to why measured outgoing radiation is above the 255K line at some frequencies and below it at other frequencies, but overall, it looks 'about right' (these things are apparently insanely difficult to calculate properly).

2a. Why do the Alarmists assume here that Earth's surface would be 288K if it had no atmosphere (like the Moon) and use that as their reference line (the top of the red area shows outgoing IR at an altitude of 0km)? If Earth had no atmosphere, its overall average surface temperature would be below 255K (the Moon's actual surface temperature is lower than its effective temperature, partly because it revolves so slowly and partly because it has no atmosphere).

The extra 33K temperature at Earth's surface is due to the gravito-thermal effect of the atmosphere (and its fairly short day/night length), which has nothing to do with 'radiation', it's just warmer than the effective temperature lower down (and at the surface) and cooler than it higher up. So inevitably it emits more IR lower down (and at the surface) than it does higher up. That's a result of the gravito-thermal effect and not a cause of anything. It's like saying that something that has fallen over caused the force which pushed it; or that a balloon inflated itself.

2b. In the alternative, we could ask why do they assume here that if there were the same atmosphere but with no 'greenhouse gases' that Earth's surface temperature would be 288K (33K warmer than the effective temperature)? Yes, it would be... because of the gravito-thermal effect. But don't they keep telling us that this extra 33K is due to the presence of 'greenhouse gases'? You can't have it both ways.

3. The article concludes with this: "The effect of a particular Infra-Red absorbing molecule, Carbon Dioxide, is clearly visible. With the publication of this data in 1970, the greenhouse effect ceased to be theoretical. It was an observed fact." Yes, the effect is measurable and real. This would explain to our skilled astronomers from 1. why the actual emissions are sometimes below and sometimes above the expected line just below the pink one. So they would conclude that Earth and its atmosphere automatically compensate for the 'missing' or 'trapped' IR at some frequencies by emitting more IR than expected at other frequencies to keep it all in balance (which is what effectively happens).

So it's a diagonal comparison in various different ways, which enables our Alarmist chums to draw exactly the conclusion they wanted before they even bothered with 'evidence'.
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The only counter-counter-argument that I can think of is that the 'missing' or 'trapped' radiation is evidence for additional temperatures at the surface. If that is true, then the 'extra' radiation (above the 255K line) must be evidence for lower temperatures. Which is nonsense, the 'extra' radiation is evidence of a higher surface temperature (higher than effective temperature). So that just goes round in circles, unless you want to have it both ways and claim that both 'missing' and 'extra' radiation are evidence of the same thing (and in which case, of what?).

Pointless work emails

One of the bosses sent an email to All Staff saying that (a) some people had had problems with email yesterday evening, and (b) it is now working again.

There are three possibilities:

1. Your email was working fine throughout OR you didn't try to send an email yesterday evening anyway, in which case this email is of no informational value.

2. Your email is still not working, in which case you won't receive it, so the email was less than pointless.

3. Your tried to use email yesterday evening AND yours wasn't working, but is now working again. In which case you are already aware of facts (a) and (b) and so again, the email is of no informational value.

The lesson here is, read your own email from the point of view of the recipient(s) before clicking send!

Estimating square roots made simple

I have sometimes occupied myself (i.e. in boring meetings or at school prize givings where you can't use paper) by calculating square roots in my head by trial and error i.e. guess the root and square it, then if the answer is too high, try again with a slightly smaller guess etc.

D'oh, I am so dumb.

There is a much simpler, quicker and more obvious method. Which most people probably already know, but here it is for the record.

If you have to guess √28, you start with the nearest known square number i.e. 25, imagine a square (illustrated below) with side length 5 = area 25 and overlay it onto a square with area 28. The total surface area of the grey shaded cells = 3 (28 minus 25). There are ten such cells (plus a smaller square in the bottom right, which I'll get to later), so each cell has area of a smidge less 0.3. They are one unit high (or wide) so the width (or height) is a smidge less than 0.3.

So as a first approximation, √28 = 5.3.

This overstates the answer slightly, because of the smaller square (5.3^2 = 28.09). We can do the same process again - divide the area of the smaller square (0.3^2 = 0.09) by ten = 0.009 and deduct that from 5.3 = 5.291.

Checks on calculator: 5.291^2 = 27.995. Close enough.

The same applies if the nearest square number is larger. So first approximation = √80 = 9 - (1/18) = 8.944. When you are this close, there is no point bothering with reapportioning the smaller square (again, you subtract it from the first approximation), because its area is only 0.056^2, and 0.056^2 ÷ 18 = so close to zero as makes no difference (and mighty difficult to calculate in your head, it's 0.00017).

Checks on calculator: 8.944^2 = 80.003. Again, close enough.

Here's the diagram, in case my explanation is not clear:

Landlord affected by cladding scandal has to increase rents or no one will want to rent their flat

From the Torygraph

 Tenants face higher rents as landlords caught in cladding crisis

Mr Coates said he may have to raise the rent if repair costs are passed on to leaseholders. He is also concerned he may be left with an unlettable flat, as tenants may not want to live in a block with major fire safety problems.

Is it one or the other? Increase the rent or is it too high for service being offered and needs to be dropped? While I do feel sympathy for the ridiculous leasehold system whereby no services need be rendered in consideration of huge sums of money, surely this must have looked a bit odd at some point between interview and going to print

To all intents and purposes, the UK already has a UBI system

Here's a list of the main benefits and how many million claim each.

The categories overlap to some extent (some pensioners still do paid work, lower paid employees get WTC etc). The total number of claimants/recipients must be less than the total UK population, not more! And clearly there must be a million or two people who get nothing, but I struggle to think who they might be or why they are singled out.

The cash value of most of the working age benefits to one individual is in the order of £3,000 - £4,000 per year (transferable personal allowance is a lot less, SM/PP is much more, but for a shorter period, disability-related payments are much higher but those would be in addition to UBI, that's a job for the NHS not the DWP). Each has its own rules, rates and allowances, but they all come to the same thing. Seriously, why do they keep up the pretence, apart from creating jobs for civil servants?

Click to enlarge.

Truly a genius header

I'm not that interested in sport, but things like this make you proud to be a human being.

Video at the BBC.

Killer Arguments Against Citizen's Income, Not (33)

I have fallen into this trap far too many times. A lot of the KCNs are arguments against any form of welfare paid out in cash.

So from the right, we get things like "It will just make people lazy" and from the hard left we get things like "A Jobs Guarantee is much better" or even "The government should provide 'universal basic services'" (whatever they are supposed to be, it's never really clear).

Those aren't KCNs and there's no point engaging with people like this, as you are arguing on several fronts and the proponents can constantly change the topic. All you can say is "Those are arguments against any form of cash welfare payments, and if you don't accept that these are a necessary part of a democratic, capitalist system, there is no point me explaining why things like means-testing, the couples penalty and conditionality are ultimately pointless"

These non-KCNs are quite distinct from genuine KCNs, where somebody accepts that there have to be cash welfare payments to certain people in certain circumstances and are merely arguing over who gets them and how they are calculated. So things like "It will be unaffordable", or "why give money to rich people?", or "means-testing helps to reduce the cost of welfare, so means a lower tax burden on everybody else" (the latter two neatly cancel each other out), while completely without foundation are at least proper KCNs and it might be worthwhile addressing them. It usually isn't, because most people have a poor grasp of maths and logic, but hey.

As I've said many a time, if I hadn't taken a few weeks to try and understand our welfare system and how it inter-acts with the tax system, on the level of individuals and on the national level (total cost and revenues) and realised that's it's perfectly affordable (no increase in tax and NIC rates) and do-able (i.e. the UBI would be a £ for £ replacement of Income Support and Working Tax Credits etc), I wouldn't be so keen either.

What is equally annoying is that some UBI supporters see UBI as a matter of principle and are very vague on how it would be paid for or how much each individual could be paid, I spend a lot of time explaining to supporters and opponents alike that if you look at it in totality, the UK has something approaching a UBI or Negative Income Tax. There are just far too many kinks, conditions, complications, loopholes and overlaps, mistakes, non-earners who fall between various stools and get nothing, and to be fair, claimants who completely take the piss. If you ironed all these out and removed the opportunities for fraud and mistakes, you'd end up with a UBI. Few people would be noticeably better or worse off; and total costs and revenues would be much the same.

Nigel Farage makes a good point.

From The Sun:

During his surprise appearance, Farage, 56, claimed close pal Trump, 74, is "bringing Israel together with Arab nations in a way that nobody ever believed was possible" as he addressed the crowd onstage.

I had noticed this. Over the past four years, US troops have been largely (although not entirely) withdrawn from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

The outcome is as you'd expect, there is noticeably less violence going on in those three countries. A few Arab countries have even started normalising relations with Israel, i.e. at least acknowledging its existence (how you can pretend that a whole country doesn't exist was always a mystery to me; but I suppose the many Arab countries who said that Israel had no right to exist were at least admitting that it did exist).

Meanwhile, Trump is engaging in silly gun boat diplomacy vis a vis Iran and forcing other countries to go along with his sanctions. Inevitably, tensions are increasing. IMHO, US warships have no more place in the Persian Gulf than Iranian warships have in the Gulf of Mexico. The Yanks got very prissy when Russian warships tried to get near Cuba, didn't they?

Few in the west will ever give Trump credit for any of this because it doesn't fit with the narrative - they'll just focus on him provoking Iran, but hey. Let's see what happens if Biden wins on Tuesday and goes back to the old Clinton-Bush-Obama way of doing things.

Killer Arguments Against LVT, Not (486)

"Unknown" submitted a couple of KLNs, you can tell his heart wasn't really in it:

1. The landlord owns the property and land it stands on because of homsesteading. Nobody has moral claim to it other than them.

Poor start. A landlord is clearly not "homesteading" and owns more land than he needs. There's no such thing as a moral claim to land, it's a legal and economic concept, so whether or not a landowner (or anyboyd else) has a "moral" claim to land is neither here nor there. But landowners do not have a moral claim on a large chunk of everybody else's output and labour, i.e. the taxes on output and earnings which are used to pay for those government services which give land its value in the first place.

2. Land is just one more scarce resource. There are many, many people who live fulfilling, economically productive lives never owning land.

If we put a 100% tax on chicken consumption, guess what? Everybody would eat turkey McNuggets.

Georgism is stupid because no scarce resource is unique. They're all scarce and thus not special. There's even plenty we're not making more of. The idea of one of them being the one thing we can tax is just ridiculous.

That's kitchen sink stuff.

I don't think that land is scarce at all, 99% of the UK population lives and works on less than 10% of UK surface area, the developed bit. Developed land = geographical areas where society in general and the government in particular make land valuable, that's where people want to live, some trade-off between good jobs, shops and leisure opportunities, good schools, low crime, good transport links, nice views, a bit of open nature - or not as the case may be. Developed land is 'scarce' because providing or organising all these services is very expensive and complicated (simply owning land is the easiest bit); it is the services which are in limited supply.

It is quite true that many people don't own land. Most of them are economically productive, but their lives are all the less fulfilling for having to fund land values out of their taxes AND pay rent for somewhere to live or do business. But if they can manage - and they can - why can't everybody? Is there a special class of people who can only lead "fulfilling, economically productive lives" if they own land? How is a landlord "economically productive" anyway? Any tenant who buys the place he was renting must know that they aren't.

The chicken-McNuggets analogy is fatuous. Land Value Tax is just landowners paying the government for the value of the services they receive, it's a user charge, like paying for the market price for chicken or turkey McNuggets. You wouldn't say that McDonalds charge a 100% tax on turkey McNuggets, they just charge market price. And the government can "tax" land rental value at 100% (for administrative reasons, call it 80-90%) and the land is still there, the same services/benefits are still being provided at that location, and demand for land is unchanged.

As mentioned, whether land is scarce or not is irrelevant. What makes it unique is the fact its "value" is actually the value of services and benefits being provided at that location. My car doesn't change in value if I buy it in Wales and park it in Kensington. If you could buy farmland in Wales and move it to Kensington, it would go up in value a million times over. That's why land is an ideal source of government revenues (there other equally ideal taxes, like fuel duty, but they are minor in comparison), and certainly far better than taking arbitrary percentages of business output (VAT), wages (National Insurance) or income generally (income and corporation tax).