Reading Freakonomics cover to cover

It is so easy to read books in which the world view matches one's own. Nearly finished it in one day.

If water was bananas

Due to the suddenness of the onset of drought, retail prices of water are expected to be up to 10 times greater than normal. Therefore the price for one thousand litres of drinking quality water will go up from an average of $1.20 to an estimated $12.00 per thousand litres. Just think about that for an average family of four who drink a litre of water each (+ dogs) that is nearly .8 of a cent a day just for drinking water! Add in the hygene necessities like washing and cleaning clothes that goes up to 5 cents a day! It is no wonder that people are fretting about the crisis. In a thirld world country droughts like this bring ruin and famine. Thankfully for us it just means spending a little less on our lifestyle this Christmas. Luxuries like watering the lawn for an hour will go up from $2 to about $20. Looks like another miserable summer with brown lawns again, except for the lucky rich. Thankfully, the higher water prices will make it worth while to truck in supplies from areas with plenty of water, or to pay rent on recent new pipelines.

If bananas were water

Shortages of bananas would lead to harsher and harsher restrictions. Level 1 restrictions would mean we are only allowed to eat bananas on our allocated days based on odds and evens. Voluntary reductions would be encouraged and a "banana wise" campaign launched. By level three restrictions we would only be allowed to consume them at certain times on our allocated days. By this time, fines would be imposed on people eating them outside these times. These restrictions are important because although most bananas are eaten when people can do without, sometimes the nutrients obtained can be a matter of life and death.

The Universe insists I Blog

But in the meantime look for my comments at RealClimate:)

RealClimate:)

False economies:(. Having posted several times in the realclimate forum, I sense a culture, one feature of which is economic naivety. When anyone new posts, many forum contributors feel that you are either for them or against them. For a serious answer to a challenge, it seems that you have to structure it such that you take their "climate world view" as gospel for a starting point.
So far, my challenge to the scientists there to the scientific validity of attributing deaths due to weather events (demonstrably a chaotic system) to changes in climate remains unanswered. Causality is on tenuous ground here, unlike geologic temperature records, extreme weather event statistics are available for an infinitesmally small time period. It is impossible to know whether extreme weather events (drought,floods,hurricanes) are more or less prevalent in previous times of higher CO2 and temperatures. If ocean temperatures were deterministically generating them, they should be more easily forecast year by year using ocean thermometers than they are. It is entirely plausible that high enough temperatures may suppress more extreme events than are caused.

Could be as much as (enter own exaggeration)

This is one of the themes from Bjorn Lomborg's infamous book. It is not lying - It isn't even necessarily an exaggeration, but it encourages people to only talk about alarming figures that are at the far edge of expectations. It doesn't help that the media only reports the alarming "Coulds" and ignore the opposite (eg. any economist which states - there could actually be no net cost to the world due to global warming.) Basically, the outside chance of avertable complete global catastrophe should at least be considered against the possibility that global warming could prevent something that would otherwise cause complete global catastrophe. Basically, putting my scientist hat on, 1)we should concentrate the most on the middle of expectations, 2) note that global conflict, trade and other dynamics will greatly influence trend lines and 3) Make sure the myriad other environmental risks are given sufficient priority and scrutiny.

Banana Republic

Dr. Clam said...
Rereading your post reminds me- have you read Jared Diamond's "Collapse: How Societies Chose to Succeed or Fail" yet? Apparently both the Easter Islanders and the Norse colonists on Greenland began their precipitous slides toward disaster when they allowed banana imports from overseas. Amazing but true!

3:12 PM

Hence the term "Banana Republic" resonates true :). I kind of want to read the book, but I fear it is absolutely great on accurate history and makes grand points about the environment, but fails to abstract a technical theory from it. I feel that to apply what we learn from distinct (separate) cases from history, we have to abstract mathematical models (or at least game theory models) that explain what is happening. It is of absolutely no consequence if the author allows the reader to come to whatever conclusion they like such as - "That means we've got to stop killing whales, right?" or some general environmental platitude like: Lets dramatically subsidise renewable energy.

Without even reading the various examples in the book, I still think they correlate closely to the "tragedy of the commons". Game theory can be used to simulate those examples - then similarities can be compared to the modern world to see if certain fish stocks are going to become extinct, whether pollution is destined to keep increasing, whether drought in Africa is going to cause mass famine etc. EnviroGeometeorologists can predict future temperature rises all they like, but have they even thought of applying game theory to see how the reactions and/or competitive pressure and fears of disaster change the likely future. In a few short years, the world seems to have gone from a free for all for using resources as economy dictates, to a fractured world where fear in some has completely changed the resource economies, while the relatively resource poor have continued to demand them.

The unemployment rate is too goddam low!

As a business manager, I got used to the times when I would put an ad in the paper and you would interview a few people for a job. You would get one or two that you wondered why they didn't already have a job. Nowadays, just to get *one* applicant, I had to advertise higher than award rates; and the applicants are interviewing me! They have a list of current job offers and dictate their terms if I am interested to have the pleasure of their service. Businesses suffer in this way when the economy is going so well. It is of little comfort that you can more easily downsize when it is so hard to find and keep staff at all.

Schicksalstag 9/11

17th anniversary of Germany's "day of fate". So - How's the new world order going? Some of the wounds of WWII were healed, but the emergent uni-polar world has lost direction. The affluent peaceful lifestyle of the West is much more able to be held hostage by militarily insignificant actions. Threats from known enemies have given way to weasel attacks.

Where has that month gone

I've been so meaning to write things so often in the last few weeks, but I am having trouble keeping sane enough (if that makes any sense). Once, I did a whole post, proofread it and thought *What am I thinking; I can't write that!*. If you are interested, it was somewhat about the benefits of importing bananas to the local banana farmers, the benefits of eliminating tariffs on clothing for local manufacturers, and the necessity to marginal employees of banning unfair dismissal lawsuits.

Basically, in North Queensland, it is taboo to say that banana imports can lead to anything other than unmitigated disaster.

It is taboo also within the clothing industry, to say that there should be no protection from imports.

It is also taboo to think that unfair dismissal lawsuits hurt most the people it is designed to protect.

It is highly foolish of me to think I can make any headway into relaxing these taboos.

Environmental policy - Carbon trading good, reducing food miles bad

If you have doubts about the merits of carbon trading I suggest you read the following link selling hot air. Not only does it seem that greenhouse emissions trading is working to reduce emissions, but that the side benefit is increased energy prices in areas like Europe (which is further enabling further CO2 reductions), and a large transfer of associated money from the first world to the third world (albeit mainly China) on UN approved project of greenhouse emmission reduction. This brings me to the issue of reducing food miles. This always smacked to me of import restrictions by stealth, just like disease quarantine barriers to banana imports. I think that there should be as little restriction as possible on food imports, because these are critical to pull the third world out of poverty. Third world poverty is what will make them so much more susceptible to future natural disasters. Foreign aid is so paternalistic compared to opening of trade and migrant labour barriers.

Signing Kyoto seems also to be fairly meaningless, as it is being used as a reference line for Australia and the US which didn't sign it, and is being ignored if not flagrantly overrun by countries like Canada, which did.

Climate Change Again

Bringing this subject up again has been prompted by this Survey of the environment which seems to contradict its own previous conclusions of just a couple of years ago (especially re Lomborg conclusions). The survey has concluded that the precautionary principle should apply and has implied a lifting of carbon reduction priority in comparison with the Copenhagen Consensus. Part of this reasoning is that some forward predictors seem to be becoming more accurate. Also, some things that will probably reduce CO2 overall are potentially costless (with that I mean global Carbon trading *NOT* voluntary measures). I am a little disturbed that "the Economist" seems to have taken up the paradigm of the environmental scientists and seem to have forgotten that there is more to making the world a better place than stopping global warming.

Anyway, I just wanted to clear up that the reason I, as an individual disagree with voluntary reductions for the benefit of the environment. It is thus: The "net" result of an individual taking the trouble to reduce say fossil fuel usage is not the associated reduction in usage due to market factors. In practice, the non-use of a resource, means that there is more for "someone else" to use. Me using less water during a drought means that there is less pressure for everyone else to use less water. Net result: I needn't have bothered putting myself out. The costs of voluntary reductions are real, substantial, but invisible. 99 times out of a hundred the net result seems positive, but the reduced demand gives an equal and opposite reaction that reduces the price of the resource such that the net usage is the same as it would have been without the measures. If you can understand the crux of the argument - this is why I rail against the promotion of selflessness and voluntary reduction measures. It is a huge exercise in self-congratulation and kidding oneself.

On Carbon trading however, even though I don't see much point in the environmental priority of it but there is one HUGE plus with global carbon trading. People will see that "Globalisation" is a force for good. Trade of EVERYTHING should be global, including carbon emmissions.

Rail against brand snobbery

There has been several experiences within the sales team at Cueldee where local schools or businesses have pretty much disrespected our local, family oriented business, while heaping praise on big-name competing brand(s) such as Kombat, Canterbury, Peerless etc. Now, this is perfectly understandable coming from someone from a metropolitan area far away, but it kind of bites when it comes from a teacher at a school I've been a student at, or where my children attend. I have also seen this kind of brand snobbery coming from other local business owners.

Self-defeating prediction

I am confidently predicting that on this day in 2008, the price of petrol will be under $1.00 Au per litre in Townsville. Much against the alarmists which talk about the end of big oil etc. etc., it seems to me the world will be drowning in the stuff soon enough. From an economic perspective, as is the way with these things, the price has severely overshot its long term natural level. Refining capacity, oil stocks and strategic reserves are building much faster than usage is increasing. Once this process has caught up to the surprise surge in demand, even a slight flattening of this surge will result in big drops in the oil price. My speculation is relying on my theory that the whole thing has been triggered by a demographic "one off" in China. The dependancy rate there has become extremely low and is still dropping. This rate will suddenly turn and increase sharply, never to get anywhere near as low again. This is due to happen within the next couple of years, and the flow-on effects will particularly influence investment markedly. I titled this entry self-defeating because if all oil investors read this and agreed with me, they would cut back investment now and my prediction would never come true.

11th September, five years on

Damn right I remember what I was doing when it happened. I was just snoozing off as was my habit at that time, while Kylie would watch her various shows, channel surfing in the ads. All of a sudden, she woke me up to tell me an aeroplane had hit the world trade centre. My very first reaction was "Terrorists!". Now to explain, I had never thought of the World Trade Centre at that point as those really tall buildings in New York, but that place those islamist terrorists tried to destroy back in the 90's. I also had remembered that one of those arrested had boasted that it would be knocked over the next time. More to the point, I dragged myself to the TV and had the surreal situation of seeing the second plane hitting live. The main relevant knowledge I had of skyscrapers is that once one floor collapses, it starts a chain reaction that brings the whole building down. I was quite relieved that the initial explosions hadn't achieved that, but the flames and smoke were not dying down and were getting worse. Somewhere along the line I started to think about how my life was going to change. I cursed that I probably wouldn't get to sleep much and that those lucky sods who were already asleep would get a good night's sleep before realising that the world had changed forever. I thought about it longer and I realised that my life probably wouldn't change *that* much being in Australia. I pondered the Geopolitical significance, and my spin on it was that Al Queda was wanting to provoke a hugely disproportionate response from the US - ie. one that would make the US look like the *really* bad guys. Extrapolating from this, I figured Al Queda would have pretty much abandoned its operations in Afghanistan and moved to various other places as far as terrorist training went. I hoped in a sense that the response wouldn't be disproportionate and that the moral advantages of being the victim could propel the US to achieve diplomatic goals. I feared that one way or another, Al Queda would get their wish and have the US eventually look like the immoral, violent entity it wanted to portray. It took a lot longer than I anticipated, but it has gone full circle and now even former staunch supporters of the war agains Iraq (such as "The Economist") are demonstrating despair at the current state of affairs due to the war. I feel that what is in reality a medium term stalemate in the middle east, is ever so slowly inching towards the conditions required for progress towards stability.
Back to the date in question, I have since noticed a subtle divide between people that saw the event live and those that woke up to it in the morning. While on the night in question I thought of it as a curse to witness the horror live with confused and chaotic commentary. However in reality, after a few days I realised that seeing a moment in history unfold was a little like seeing man walk on the moon, but without advance knowledge, the witnessing of it came down to pure chance in this case. Having known about it in the morning when I woke up, I didn't tell my brother about it when I saw him at 6:00 am in the morning. He did not find out for more than a couple of hours. I thought I was doing him a favour by keeping him innocent for as long as possible, but he was still mad at me about it a full year later. As was my good friend Sandor who probably unfairly expected me to call him and wake him up so he could have also witnessed it live.

You Are 20% Addicted to Blogthings

You're either a Blogthings newbie - or you haven't been sucked in... yet! Right now, you're at low risk for addiction. But we'll make sure and change that.

How Addicted To Blogthings Are You?

1987-1988 Itinerary

click to enlarge
While tidying up looking for old stuff came across this itinerary. I still haven't worked out where all the old photos are though.

Mathematics

My eldest daughter recently competed in her first Westpac Mathematics competition late last month. Of course this is very exciting for me, as just recently, she had got 100% in a maths exam, putting her at the top of her class. She has since been put into the group A maths class, such that she is now studying with the other top maths students. The results for the WMC take forever to come back, but I was talking to her and I am not so sure she shares my excitement. She tells me that she actually hates maths classes, and the only reason she entered the maths competition was that she got to miss out on some other lessons she didn't like hmmm.. Anyway, I'm not going to get my hopes up too high. I am proud of her no matter her results. Next year all my kids will enter.

What Australia Can do to progress the middle east situation

I promised I would actually put something down along these lines, but it is quite difficult to get all of my thoughts straight. So I'll try to put something in point form.

* As a small country, and not say the leader of the free world, it is not what we do per se that makes the most difference, but the example we display.

* Our actions around the Pacific are the main thrust of this. We have shown the right way to involve our military. We have made our forces extremely accessible in situations in the Solomons, East Timor, Bougainville, Aceh, Bali, PNG just to name a few, and most importantly, have not placed any conditions and have asked for practically nothing in return.

* In the Middle East, we have punched well above our weight. We were pretty much bound to act alongside the US for the most part, however. For a long time, we have had way less fatalities and accidents than the norm. Partly, this is because our forces tend to attract less attention, and they tend to be more specialised.

* Things like knowing Arabic language, being more disciplined than the Americans, showing compassion for the ordinary citizen rather than complete fear of everyone amongst them. These are attributes which would make a helpful example to others.

Yes, build it up higher! (the Burdekin dam that is)

The one minor consolation that I got from the sad news that no hydro station was being built up in the rainforest mountains up north, was that the environmental groups acceded that the Burdekin Dam stage two should be used for hydro instead. There apparently is less ecologically important land to be flooded. The only thing was that the extra storage capacity entailed was way overkill, and even the storage as it is was a resource waiting for possible extra uses. It has been handy for water security here in Townsville of course. It seems that with the talk of South East Queensland wanting a pipeline for their water security, stage 2 is becoming much more likely. Of course, the Burdekin is a river where siltation is a big long term problem compared to the rainforest areas, but by the time the pipeline is built, hydro will almost certainly be part of the deal anyway (to power the pumps?) together with all its carbon credits and peak loading power supply advantages. The possible problems with this vision? Pipeline cost may be in the billions of dollars.

Cowards?

The Iranian government, after supplying, bankrolling and otherwise funding Hezbollah, isn't exactly bravely entering the conflict in its own right. Instead, it offers safe haven for its leaders (and presumably other Iranians who might be in Lebanon), a steady flow of money and arms when they are required, and trained and ready suicide bombers or access to terrorist training.
Like-wise Israel, knowing full well that the real problem lies over the border in Syria and Iran, is mercilessly targeting Lebanon, even letting its own citizens think that it is hitting at the root cause of their problem. Attacks that might engage enemy states don't even seem to be on the table. Even an accidental foray or an empty threat to those countries would more effectively engage them. Fear (or cowardice) seems to make this a path they won't take.