Radioactive Communist Zombies

Climate Models are Inaccurate

Depending on who you talk to, the earth has been cooling since either circa 1998 or for the past couple of years.  And guess what?  The computer climate models didn't predict it.  As the Wall Street Journal explains (sub probably required):

[T]he cooling wasn't predicted by all the computer models that underlie climate science. That has led to one point of agreement: The models are imperfect.

"There is a lot of room for improvement" in the models, says Mojib Latif, a climate scientist in Germany and co-author of a paper predicting the planet will cool for perhaps a decade before starting to warm again -- a long-term trend he attributes to greenhouse-gas emissions. "You need to know what you can believe and can't believe from the models."

Hmmmmm.  I know what I don't believe from the models.  I believe they are a perfect example of GIGO: Garbage In Garbage Out.

The models are only as good as the information they are fed. One big uncertainty is ocean temperature. Oceans trap huge amounts of heat, and the process by which they release it over time affects the temperature of the planet. But there isn't a lot of actual data, because the vastness of the oceans makes gathering temperature data costly and arduous.

So assumptions are made.  And those assumption drive the models to predict global warming even in the face of a decade of cooling.  But we are basing expensive policies on these computer models that don't work.

And that should scare you more than what a computer predicts about the future.

$234,254.59 per Job

White House officials claimed today that the stimulus as "saved or created" 640,329 jobs.  And that's just "so far." Veep Biden even claimed more:

"So far we've created over a million jobs," Biden said. "We're only about a third of the way through the package."

So, wow, I guess the stimulus is working.

Well, unemployment is at 9.8%.  Oh, and even the White House admits most of the jobs were government jobs:

The majority of the jobs were in education -- 325,000 -- and construction -- 80,000 . . .

But did the money spent, the debt raised, really create or save 640,329 jobs?  As Kelly Evans writes in the Wall Street Journal's Real Time Economics Blog (links original):

It’s easy to ridicule the White House’s estimate that 650,000 jobs have so far been “saved or created” by the $150 billion spent so far from their $787 billion stimulus bill. That’s because while it’s possible to measure jobs created by the stimulus (for example, counting the number of construction workers on an infrastructure project funded by the bill), it’s a lot less clear how you measure jobs saved by it.

But lets look at the numbers.  Saved or created jobs were 640,329.  The cost: $150 billion.  Simple math: that's $234,254.59 per job (or using significant figures, $234,000 per job).

You're telling me that the private sector couldn't create jobs for less money?  That is, more efficiently and without driving up our debt that we have to hand down to our grandchildren and their grandchildren?  If the money had been left in the economy instead of sucked out of the debt market, perhaps the private sector would have saved or created more jobs (and none of them government jobs).  Jobs that would have paid taxes and thus reduced the debt. 

Happy Birthday, Internet

Today is the Internet's 40th birthday.  Yes, as National Geographic reports:

Everyone surfing for last-minute Halloween costumes and pictures of black Lolcats today—what you might call the 40th anniversary of the Internet—can give thanks to the simple network message that started it all: "lo."

On October 29, 1969, that message became the first ever to travel between two computers connected via the ARPANET, the computer network that would become the Internet.

The truncated transmission traveled about 400 miles (643 kilometers) between the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Stanford Research Institute.

That "lo" was not a truncated "lol" but a cut off "login."  It was cut off because the system crashed after just two letters were sent.

What makes that ARPANET network the precursor to today's Internet?

With its truncated missive 40 years ago today, ARPANET became the world's first operational packet-switching network.

"Packet-switching was the original transmission mechanism [for our network] in 1969 and is still the underlying technology of the Internet today," said Leonard Kleinrock, a UCLA computer engineer who was involved in ARPANET's creation.

So how to celebrate the birthday of the Internet?

I know, I think I'll blog.

GDP: Government Domestic Product

Hey, the economy (as measured by GDP) grew 3.5% last quarter.  This is the first growth in the economy for a year.  Isn't that wonderful?  The Great Recession is over (maybe).  Well, not really wonderful, as Liam Denning points out in today's Wall Street Journal (sub probably required), most of that "growth" came because of government action:

Fully 2.2 percentage points of the third quarter's 3.5% growth figure related to vehicle purchases and residential construction, both juiced by government support. Federal spending added 0.6%.

Vehicle purchases like the cash for clunkers program. 

The problem is, what government buideth up, government can leteth slide.  These are unsustainable results, not the growth of jobs, businesses, wages, but growth of government.  And that is unsustainable growth because the government can't afford to prime the pump forever.  If it could, we could simply spend ourselves into prosperity (I think there are those on the left how believe we can).

So look for lower growth in the coming quarters.  Especially since the effects of all the borrowing the government is doing will start to affect GDP.

Bad Drivers are Born That Way?

In the old nature vs. nurture debate, new evidence has come to light that some folks are just bad drivers because they are born that way. Reuters relates:

[Researchers] found that people with a particular gene variant performed more than 20 percent worse on a driving test than people with a different DNA sequence.

The study may explain why there are so many bad drivers out there -- about 30 percent of Americans have the variant, the team at the University of California Irvine found.

So that idiot driving badly in front of you is just a victim of his genes.

We've already discussed how differences in the brain make it so some people (like me, for instance) like to drive fast.  Now it seems that people who don't drive very well also are born that way.  Pretty soon perhaps all driving habits will be explained via genetics.  Is there a left lane hogging gene?  And if so, can we deny those people drivers licenses? 

Damned if We Do, Damned if We Don't

Back on October 5th we talked about how the EPA was threatening to regulate greenhouse gases (ghg) by fiat if Congress doesn't pass something to stop them.  That something would be in the form of cap and trade legislation which is considered by some as the lesser of two evils.

Well, we may get both evils, instead.  EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson says the EPA wants to control ghgs even if cap and trade is passed into law.  Dow Jones Newswires reports (sub required, I think):

Administrator Lisa Jackson told the Environment and Public Works Committee that the agency may still need powers to regulate emissions such as carbon dioxide beyond what is in climate legislation.

"The cap in this bill is actually not entirely economy wide," Jackson told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee at a hearing considering the landmark climate bill. "There are important carbon-emission sources that can be be addressed through Clean Air Act regulations," she said.

So we get the worst of both worlds.

Jackson also pointed to the Clean Air Act's new source review rules, under which the EPA can require that the best available technology is used.

What is the best available technology to reduce CO₂?  There is none.  But the EPA will want billions spent to reduce it.

I wonder how those companies that supported cap and trade as a way to head of the EPA controlling ghgs through the Clean Air Act feel now.

We're going to try to "stop" global warming no matter the cost, even when it may be part of natural climate change.

Near Miss

How desperately do we need a system to find and track asteroids and comets in orbits that intersect Earth's orbit?  Well, we just got blindsided by an asteroid that blew up in the atmosphere and nobody saw it coming (Hat Tip Instapundit).  New Scientist reports (links original):

On 8 October an asteroid detonated high in the atmosphere above South Sulawesi, Indonesia, releasing about as much energy as 50,000 tons of TNT, according to a NASA estimate released on Friday. That's about three times more powerful than the atomic bomb that levelled Hiroshima, making it one of the largest asteroid explosions ever observed.

And it came out of no where:

The amount of energy released suggests the object was about 10 metres across, the researchers say. Such objects are thought to hit Earth about once per decade.

No telescope spotted the asteroid ahead of its impact. That is not surprising, given that only a tiny fraction of asteroids smaller than 100 metres across have been catalogued, says Tim Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Yet objects as small as 20 or 30 metres across may be capable of doing damage on the ground, he says.

This shows we are vulnerable.  A 30 meter diameter object would probably explode in the atmosphere but large pieces could hit the surface (according to this webpage).  The problem is, as always: money.

"If you want to find the smallest objects you have to build more, larger telescopes," says Spahr. "A survey that finds all of the 20-metre objects will cost probably multiple billions of dollars."

And I doubt the Obama Administration has this high on their priority list. 

Spending Like Drunk Republicans

Remember when you were mad at the Republicans for spending too much?  So now we have Democrats in charge and they are a model of fiscal conservatism, right?

Wrong.  As the Wall Street Journal reports in an unsigned editorial:

The White House disclosed the other day that the fiscal 2009 budget deficit clocked in at $1.4 trillion, amid the usual promises to do something about it. Yet even as budget director Peter Orszag was speaking, House Democrats were moving on a dozen spending bills for fiscal 2010 that total 12.1% in more domestic discretionary increases.

Yes, 12.1%.

And that's just discretionary spending, nothing to do with increases in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.  All this while inflation is near zero and people are hurting out there:

House Republicans on the Budget Committee added up the 2009 appropriations, the stimulus funding and 2010 budgets and found that federal agencies will, on average, receive a 57% increase in appropriated funds from 2008-2010. By contrast, real family incomes fell by 3.6% last year. There's no recession in Washington. 

Where's the money going to come from to pay for all this?  Either debt or taxes, both reaching levels that are detrimental to our already fragile economy.  Oh well, a VAT tax won't harm the economy too much.  Just make our economy's like those perpetual-double-digit-unemployment-workers-havens of Western Europe.

You sure this is the change you voted for?

Real Mileage of the Volt

Back on Augest 12th I reported that GM was claiming an astonishing 230 miles per gallon (mpg) for the Chevrolet Volt plug in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV).  (I also went on to say that even at that mileage the Volt was not worth the price.)

Now GM is hinting at the mileage the Volt may get when the battery has ran out and you have to run on the gasoline engine.  The result: somewhere between 32 mpg and 50 mpg.  Fox News reports (links original):

In an interview on FoxNews.com's Fox Car Report LIVE! webcast, Volt Vehicle Line Director, Tony Posawatz revealed that the fuel economy will be "better than any conventional car, and we're trying to figure out how close, or if it will actually be better than any hybrids."

Currently, the most fuel-efficient non-hybrid or non-alternative-fuel vehicles are the much smaller Toyota Yaris and MINI Cooper, both with an EPA combined rating of 32 mpg. The Toyota Prius is the reigning efficiency king at 50 mpg. Posawatz's statement would put the Volt's extended-range fuel economy squarely between those two figures, and possibly slightly higher than that of the Prius. But he added that the software that controls the car's powertrain is still being tweaked, and a final number is still to come.

So that's a little bit more realistic number.  Which means if you drive a Volt more than the 40 miles range of the battery (and I'll bet you that range will shrink considerably if you have to use the AC or heater) you'll be getting mileage somewhere between a typical gasoline-powered small car or a Prius.

So the Volt is still not worth what you'll pay for it.

Climate Laws Encourage Deforestation

A scientist is claiming in a paper published in Science that laws to control carbon encourage deforestation.  The Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital blog reports:

Global plans to tackle climate change, from the Kyoto Protocol to the recently-passed Waxman-Markey bill, have a fatal flaw: They essentially encourage large-scale deforestation, which pretty much undermines the whole idea of curbing greenhouse-gas emissions in the first place.

That’s the argument from a new paper published in Science today, written by Princeton University’s Tim Searchinger and others.

The mechanism is pretty complicated but it's partially due to environmental laws not covering the countries where deforestation is occurring and treating burning of wood as "carbon neutral."

So along with all the other reasons not to pass cap and trade there's deforestation to add to the mix.

Environmentalists are vowing to fix this in the horse-trading over the cap and trade bills in Congress.  But the question remains: then what unintended consequences will happen because of those geniuses in Congress tinkering so with the economy and environment?