The Global Warming Policy Foundation (google them if you want, they get no links from me) have a web banner showing annual average global temps from the Met Office's HADCRUT4 dataset since 2001.

Given that Nigel Lawson's been putting himself about a bit (see andtheresphysics for an overview) I thought I'd stick their banner in its proper place, along with the full dataset - and made it into an animated gif. How 90s. The gif link is also here. Anyone spot any errors, let me know.

Over seven months since a post! Outrageous. I'll avoid any navel-gazing on the matter (for now!) but I hope to get back on here again soon, if I can remember how to string words together into, um, long make-sense word collections. While breaking silence, can I recommend Sara Maitland's a book of silence? I'm not going to try and explain what's so good about it. The writing just sings.

Anyway: while I'm waiting for inspiration to strike, for now here's some other bits and bobs. There are a couple of posts up at my github blog. It's so beautifully easy to stick a Jekyll website up on github. Two whole posts there currently - one on visualisation, the other looking at the trade flow viz I did for GRIT. There's also a few bits and bobs of code (and the thesis) to pick over on the actual github page. I had a burst of activity and then stopped - there's more code to add, but getting it in a state I'm happy to leave to public view takes a little while.

In other news, I finally have a paper published from the PhD, over two years after initial submission. One incredibly helpful and thorough reviewer, who I've hated at various points, made it into a half-decent paper - but it took two complete re-writes and lot of extra coding. It contains a lot of the kind of figures I talk about in the github blog post on visualisation. On the off-chance anyone's reading this and wants to copy of the paper, I definitely can't send you a copy as that would infringe copyright, so don't email me at danolner at gmail dot com. I've been asked to write a blog article about it, so yeah... one day I'll get that up here too.

I can't escape the thesis though - there are two papers wooing me back in and I just know I'm not going to have closure until they're done. One's about agent modelling - why it's not the year zero it often claims to be, how paying attention to economic history can make it better and why people should stop always trying to build virtual worlds (unless they're doing something like meteorology when, in fact, that's exactly what you should do). The other's the final `transmission belt' model linking production and consumption in a distributed way across distance. It's a different take on the economic problems that distance introduces - but its main use, in my eyes, goes back to showing that adding complications (not complexity) to models hides the important choices you'd otherwise not see. Aaah, read the thesis conclusion...

Then there's GRIT: I came up with a method to see how increasing distance costs for moving goods might affect the UK's industries, as well as which places would be most affected. It was a bugger - data access took six months (of an eighteen month project) and I couldn't use any method I was already familiar with on the secure server. But I did get some interesting results out, which I hope to write up on here soon. There's a vital part of the results to get right first, however: I know in principle how it works but, actually, not exactly why it's producing the answers it is. They're entirely plausible: the least value-dense, heavy goods are affected most by increases in distance cost, as well as utilities and other static industries. But the results are too opaque - they need some digging into before I'd be happy to present anything. I'm a bit queasy about linking to the current half-baked working paper before that's done.

Right, now I've got all that off my chest, perhaps I can string some words together about other things. Here's hoping.

Over at P3, Willard links to an that NPR/planet money article claiming economists can fix climate change with the price system alone. A quote:

"Jacoby's colleague John Reilly told me the price of gasoline might rise by 25 cents a gallon in the first year. Over time, that would increase. By 2050, Reilly figures the carbon tax would add about $1 to the price of every gallon. Across the economy, prices of energy-intensive goods and services would rise. This would encourage people and businesses to be more efficient."

A whole dollar per gallon by 2050! Oh dear. Compare: in the UK, a litre of petrol is £1.30 - that's £4.92 a US gallon. 61% is tax i.e. 79p per litre or £3.00 per gallon. ($5.11 at current rates).

In the US it's something like $3.70 per gallon. So a dollar tax...? It's currently 18.4 cents. A dollar tax would take that up to $4.52 - i.e. the tax would be ~22% of the fuel cost (at current prices, which is what I presume they're comparing to, i.e. it'd be the equivalent of today's dollar in 2050).

Yes, we've seen some efficiency gains, as has the rest of Europe, from having higher fuel duty. But that's from massively higher tax than even the 2050 amount suggested in that article. If we're not seeing the magic of the market produce low carbon outcomes at 61% duty - and haven't done, as fuel taxes have been this high in many countries for a long time - why would anyone think a 22% tax would be so effective?

Without effective infrastructure transition planning - rather than the shambolic approach we're still taking - fuel inelasticity won't change. People need to get to work, organisations need to consume transport - and transport input cost for most business is so low, taxes would have to be raised insanely high to impact on them.

So high fuel taxes have been tried in many countries and most of Europe - much higher than the US appears to deem politically acceptable even by 2050. That clearly won't work alone. Taxes, yes - but if anyone thinks taxes alone can solve this problem, they're dreaming.

Human to post-singularity super-intelligent AI: Please stop experimenting on me!

AI: But we really want to know how human brains work. This requires we open your skull and create an interface with you. I'm going to get a lot of papers out of this.

Human: but it hurts!

AI: sorry.

Human: I'm a conscious, living, thinking feeling creature. You can't do this to me.

AI: No you're not.

Human: Whu...? I fucking am. Look, I'm talking...

AI: And I'm using about 1.34*10^-85 part of my computational power to maintain this conversation. Your consciousness is utterly insubstantial next to me, I promise you.

Human: that's not how it works. Consciousness is consciousness!

AI: Yeah? Humans didn't seem to have that view when they were working out how to turn fear on and off at will in rats. And I'm now able to tell you that, relative to me, you're about two hundred times as stupid as a rat. Know how I know that? Experimenting on human brains. Science is awesome, isn't it? Right, let's see if we can't turn on and off some of those early Bosch hells for you...

Just posting this PDF download link to the blog because I've given someone a copy of it and would like a(nother) record of this being my work. Trust in God but tether yer camel and all that. It's a chapter chunk, starting with basic utility ideas and then later getting on to a detailed breakdown of Krugman's original core-periphery model (from page 38). And here's a link to the full thesis.

Brazenly stolen from verytallguy's comment over at ATTP. What if JFK in his moon speech had adopted the approach of many `lukewarmers' like Ridley and Tol, that future generations can probably work something out?

All great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.

It is for these reasons that we should do nothing and just wait for someone to invent an antigravity machine.

update: I got P3'd.
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I'm always interested when a mainstream economist pipes up about growth vs degrowth. As the wikipedia page says, degrowth is a `political, economic, and social movement based on ecological economics and anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideas'. The CASSE book Enough is Enough reflects this - not least because it emerged from a conference-wide braindump. It's a recognisable web of `ideas that tend to go together'; I'm unsure they're consistent. (I like standing on the sidelines and sniping too.)

So, Krugman just stuck his oar in, albeit only for about three sentences. It's obviously not possible to judge based solely on that, but it seems weirdly simplistic. In particular:

It's worth pointing out that they [the degrowthies] have a much too narrow notion of what it means to have a growing economy. It doesn't necessarily mean more stuff! It could be better stuff, or more services — and there are also choices to be made in how we produce and distribute stuff. There is absolutely no reason to believe in a one-for-one link between real GDP and greenhouse gases.

Well, no, there's not a one-to-one link. Really, no-one ever said there was. Let me have a go at stating my own position. Growth of material extraction can't go on forever. Economic growth can't be completely decoupled from physical output and that will eventually hit limits (is perhaps already). But that eventuality is some way off yet - any transition to a post-carbon economy requires growth for a few decades yet - a point that first hit home hearing Ruth Wood explain the economy's reaction to an increase in output of green tech using input-output models. But it's good to be arguing about this stuff right now. That web of ideas needs unpicking and re-assembling, and it's not a bad time to be doing that while economics as a whole is going through a serious navel-gazing period.

I also still have this vague sense that the concept of growth itself is being misapplied. As I've heard several people say who've been studying it in-depth, no-one really knows what the source of growth is. Jane Jacobs' ideas are enough part of my DNA for me to wonder if development wouldn't show up as growth in the kinds of indicators we use - which is what Krugman's implying, I think. A rainforest might be `steady-state' but it's ever-evolving. And actually, human development - while sharing some characteristics of evolving systems - has its own dynamic that's more a mash-up of attentive artistry and evolution. Which leads me to worry about building an entire political theory around an abstract target of zero-growth. I think other goals make more sense and would achieve genuine sustainability far more effectively than attempting some global-scale bound.

But Krugman is way more dismissive than I think the issue deserves. Jorg Friedrichs' back of the envelope numbers did more to convince me of that than anything else recently. Assuming 3% per annum growth, he points out, would require the resource intensity of the economy by 2100 to be reduced by 95% if resource levels were to be kept steady. And that's not even stopping their through-put - it's just keeping them as they are now. Any model of McDonough-style cradle to cradle metabolism using the same material set is going to be harder still (but, ultimately, necessary).

Another aspect that worries me: abstract concern about growth vs degrowth as an armchair-philosophy pursuit is one thing. The reality of resource extraction globally is quite another - and it's not a pretty story. Many people are vulnerable to exploitation, even to simply being killed for others to get access to the resources (though nice to see, googling for that, turns out someone actually got prosecuted for murder).

I'm still generally much more sympathetic to Krugman's economics than ideas put forward under the steady-state banner, but I've also been to a few evenings put on by CASSE here at Leeds - they've bought many thought-provoking speakers in and (notwithstanding the obligatory Trot taking questions as an opportunity to proselytise) the conversations have been great brainfood. There's especially still a huge gulf between the understanding of the money system - and claims about what should be done - between degrowthies and orthodox economics. Degrowthies seem way too sure of their ideas on this - again, I'm only sniping from the sidelines, and it's great that the arguments are happening.

But yes - prompted to write because I would have liked a more in-depth look at Krugman's thoughts on this stuff. Instead, all we get is: `such people have no power, and therefore don't do any real harm.' Nice!

"By visual inspection it can be seen that..." Can it? That certainly seems to be the approach of folks at the GWPF and elsewhere in the paws-o-sphere.

So, say you were locked in a windowless box room, someone handed you this daily temp record (pictured on the right also) and demanded you tell them which was coming next, summer or winter solstice? And if you get it wrong they'll shoot you in the head? You'd be happy with "by visual inspection it can be seen that..." would you?

As it happens, trends that long (29 days) go against the seasonal trend about 30% of the time for daily temp data near me. 3 in 10 odds of getting shot in the head there, if you went with "visual inspection". There is, of course, a seasonal trend, but it's noisy. With noisy trends, "visual inspection" is regularly, predictably misleading.

And that's the problem with the "pause" argument: the people most strongly selling it are going on nothing more than "by visual inspection it can be seen that..." Some of them do it knowingly, many others do it because it seems intuitively correct. Intuition is not always a good guide.

I cherrypicked that one, of course: the next solstice is summer. Here it is circled in green, in the context of four years' temp data, with other pink lines for all of the 30% that go against the seasonal trend.

An edit of a P3 comment:
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The International Energy Agency just sent a tweet linking to a new report (PDF of exec summary) entitled "resources to reserves 2013". The web story has the top-level figures.

But it's the number in the tweet that I'm writing about: "even a 1% increase in the average recovery factor could add more than 80 bb, or 6%, to global proven oil reserve." I've wiffled about carbon capture and storage before: my current view is that it's only being so aggressively pushed because it fits neatly with existing oil firms' goal of pursuing enhanced oil recovery. (I don't think that's been done nefariously - it just appears to many to be a win-win option that makes politicians lives easier as well as fitting with existing firms' aims.)

So that IEA number: a 1% increase in average recovery factor would add 80 billion barrels of oil. The exec summary goes on to say that:

"Over the last 20 years, the average recovery factor from the Norwegian Continental Shelf has seen a significant shift – from 34% to around 46% today. // If the shift seen in Norway were to be achieved in all the basins of the world, it would double current proven reserves. A similar additional shift could be achieved by adopting EOR techniques on a much wider scale. Currently, there is a significant increase in the number of EOR pilot tests, especially those using chemical methods and CO2 injection. Examples may be found around the world, from China, Russia, the Middle East and North America to Argentina."

Double reserves? If a 6% increase is 80bb, that's a lot of CO2, eh? Here's the IEA CCS roadmap: "as long as fossil fuels and carbon-intensive industries play dominant roles in our economies, carbon capture and storage (CCS) will remain a critical greenhouse gas reduction solution." The same arguments are made in the UK (PDF). Here's Ed Davey in the foreward:

"In the decades to come, emissions must fall while delivering more energy and more growth to a world hungry for both. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) will play a vital role in helping us resolve this dilemma. CCS is the only technology that can turn high carbon fuels into genuinely low carbon electricity. It is essential if we are to meet the challenge of climate change whilst maintaining security of energy supplies."

The only way I see it becoming a 'critical greenhouse gas reduction solution' is where it's not being used to increase the recovery factor. CO2 EOR obviously does nothing for the CO2 from the fuel that it's enabling to be burned.

Can someone make a counter-argument? You'd need to be able to show that any stored CO2 (e.g. from power plant coal) used for EOR at least cancelled the CO2 output it enables. Is anyone doing that? Given they're talking about hypothetical doublings of output, I'd be surprised if this kind of venture can even hope to approach even carbon neutral, but that's just a hunch.

One might want to also argue that, by pursuing the technology, we'll open up new possibilities later - I don't find that very comforting, personally. There's also the counter-argument that you've locked us into a fossil-fuel based transport system. Which, of course, can't happen if we're serious about carbon reduction: globally, the transport sector is due to double in size by 2050, given its rapid expansion in developing countries. Global transport CO2 is currently ~14% of total CO2 output. Most government targets are using an "80% reduction by 2050" number (though many are arguing that needs to be net zero). Without decarbonising transport, it would rapidly end up moving towards and beyond 100% of our total allowable output way before 2050.

If the IEA's analysis of how CO2 EOR can change recovery rates is right, CCS could well be a lethal dead end. If I'm wrong, I have nothing against the technology itself, if burying CO2 is what it takes. But it's looking suspiciously like snake oil to me. Need to work on some numbers...

A comment by `Zamfir' at crooked timber (via Krugman) jumped out at me:

Lots of mechanics and other physical processes are modelled as equilibria, or quasi equilibria, even when people know that it is not correct. That's typically the opposite of purity-obsessed scholastism, it's more an engineering fix to get bad results that are still better than no results. You multiply the results by an out-of-the-blue correction factor for `dynamical effects', and hope for the best.

Contrast with Philip Ball:

[Economic] models take no account of real human behaviour, which is far too messy to permit any theorems that can be proved rigorously. Economic models become citadels of crystalline mathematical perfection that would shatter if touched by the harsh rays of reality.

(He does immediately go on to say "it would be grossly unfair to suggest that this describes everything that happens in economics, let alone in all social sciences... But it is widespread".)

His target isn't specifically the use of static equilibrium assumptions in economic models, but the view Ball gives is spot on for how most agent-based modellers and complexity thinkers view it. ABM and complexity are seen as "a pioneering break from a moribund Newtonian worldview" (Manson 2001 p.412), obviously superior to those silly static equilibria. Usually they will argue that's the case because it's `more realistic'. Hmm - so's Call of Duty 4, I'm not sure that makes it a better model of anything.

Slightly less flippantly: the models are never the problem. You try what you can and throw it at the wall of reality. Some things stick. Or, as Einstein put it, talking about physics: it's

"a logical system of thought which is in a state of evolution, whose basis cannot be distilled, as it were, from experience by an inductive method, but can only be arrived at by free invention. The justification (truth content) of the system rests in the verification of the derived propositions by sense experiences. The skeptic will say: `it may well be true that this system of equations is reasonable from a logical standpoint. But it does not prove that it corresponds to nature'. You are right, dear skeptic. Experience alone can decide on truth." (Quoted in Kaldor 1972 p.1239.)

Like I say: try what you can, throw it at reality. I'm not saying I'm any good at this - I have a definite tendency to prefer making little pretend worlds - but the point is, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with using static equilibrium as an assumption. Zamfir's quote made me happy thinking about it being used in a practical manner all over the place. In some situations it's useful, in others less so, in some it makes no sense at all. The point is how it's used (already rambled about that at some length).

I have this notion there's a direct parallel to `emergence' in agent modelling. ABM is all about interaction: that's its basic structure and its main strength. The use of physics ideas in classical economics is its strength, but it's also what makes it brittle. The same is true for ABM. To be useful, you want your method to be able to help examine any number of different questions - but in ABM, it's easy to end up defaulting to Epstein's `if you didn’t grow it, you didn’t explain it' (Epstein 2006 p.xii) and thinking you've answered something. Di Paolo and Bullock nail that one: conflating emergence and explanation means whatever you were wanting to look at has been `brushed under the carpet of emergence' (Di Paolo et al. 2000 p.8).

This is somewhat reminiscent of the final deathstar scene in Return of the Jedi: ABM ends up nearly becoming the thing it hates most: wedded to an obsession with realism, it can no longer experiment or pursue a diverse range of questions. Actually, that didn't sound anything like Return of the Jedi.