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.