The Cultural Revolution

[F]actional fires were fueled by the anger of students frustrated over policies that kept them off the paths of political advancement because the students had the ill fortune to be born to parents who had connections with the Guomindang, the landlords, or the capitalist "exploiters" of the old regime and were therefore classifed as "bad" elements by the [Chinese Communist Party].  There were as well millions of disgrunted urban youths who had been relocated to the countryside during the party campaigns of ealier years, or in line with the plans of Chen Yun and others to save the cost to the state of providing subidized grain suppliers for such city residents. There were those, within the largest cities, who were denied access to the tiny number of elite schools that had become, in effect, "prep schools" for the children of influential party cadres. (With the shortage of colleges in China, and the thickets of complex entrance examinations that still stood in the way of them, only education in this handful of schoools could assure access to higher education.) And finally there were those who felt that party positions were monpolized by the uneducated rural cadres of Mao's forment peasant guerilla days, and that these people should now be eased out to make way for newer and more educated recuits.

Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China.

Somehow, familar. 

The EU is a database state

It's getting increasingly difficult for anyone to argue that the EU is a force for good in this country, its shutting down on BBC Jam notwithstanding. The CAP, the CFP, the bureaucracy, the corruption, the destruction of our common law tradition - these are just a few of the evils that have been inflicted on us by Brussels. There's no sign of it stopping either.

Proposals for a centralised database of fingerprints from across the Continent were revealed yesterday, fuelling fears on all sides of a Big Brother Europe.

The scheme for a computerised collection of personal details drawn from all 27 countries in the EU is the latest in a raft of anticrime measures in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

Britain would be expected to contribute all the details held by police. These include fingerprints of suspects and people released without charge, as well as those convicted of crimes. The plan coincides with the Home Office preparing to expand the range of people fingerprinted to include those caught speeding or dropping litter.

I sit and stare at that last sentence, stupified by it.  We actually seem to be sleepwalking into something out of 1984. I grew up thinking that, as an Englishman, I had won the lottery of life.  I was, by and large, free. I had the rule of law, civil traditions, and policemen who would give you directions when you were lost. But what am I to tell my children now? That if they drop litter, they will be arrested and taken to a police station where their mouths will be swabbed and their DNA taken, to be retained indefinitely and passed around Europe? That these policemen are there to protect them? That they should expect to be monitored by CCTV everywhere they go.

What are they doing to my country?  What the bloody hell are they doing to my country?

Post-normal science

Belmont Club has picked up on Mick Hulme's bizarre "post-normal" science piece in the Guardian and finds that it's just politics in disguise.

Quote of the day

Free Born John

There's a really good post up at Free Born John at the moment. It ranges from sumptuary laws and the tragedy of the commons to immigration.

Read the whole thing. 

Jamming

Let it no be said that I won't give credit where it's due. Following complaints to the EU commission by commercial e-learning providers, the BBC has been forced to suspend its e-learning site called BBC Jam. This looks to have been a classic case of a bureaucracy crowding out the competition. Having started with basic e-learning, the BBC was starting to move into virtual reality leaving no space for commercial providers. When these companies complained to Ofcom, they were ignored. Whether this was because Jam was set up at the instigation of the government remains to be seen.

Perhaps now it's time for ITV and Sky to make the same complaints. 

More here and here. 

Is there such a thing as a global temperature?

This is the question asked in a paper by Essex, McKitrick and Andresen in a fascinating paper which can be found here. (Mathematics alert!). This is my understanding of it - I haven't done any maths since university days, so if I'm wrong I'm sure someone will put me right.

Some quantities, like weight, can be added and therefore averaged. If you take an 2oz mass and a 1 oz mass you can say with certainty that their total mass is 3oz. Because the sum of the two masses means something, you can calculate an avarage of 1.5oz and this figure has a useful meaning also. These kinds of measures are called extensive variables. Pressure, on the other hand, can't be treated in this way. If you add a system at 2 atmospheres to one at 1 atmosphere you don't get a system at 3 atmospheres. Because the sum of the two pressures has no meaning, the average likewise is meaningless. These are called intensive variables.

Temperature, as you might suspect, is an intensive measure. This means that when you add two temperatures together, the answer cannot be a temperature. It's meaningless. As the authors point out, dividing this meaningless sum by the number of components cannot give you an answer which has a meaning.

If the average of temperatures is not a temperature, then perhaps it's an index - a number which tracks whatever it is that drives the climate? If this is the case, then it is presumably necessary to describe how the average of temperatures - a statistic - is driven by the underlying climate driver, or at least to show some correlation between the two. They also need to demonstrate that the statistical measure they have chosen is better than any other measure they could have chosen. These alternative measures might well demonstrate a completely different trend to the average.

A third alternative is that the average is neither a temperature or an index, but a proxy for energy. But unfortunately there appear to be problems with this argument too. For a start, to do so is to use an intensive measure as a proxy for an extensive one. Secondly, the relationship between energy and climate is not understood. How then is it possible to know that the average of temperatures is a valid proxy?

It's not instantly obvious to the lay reader, but there are lots of different kinds of means. We're used to dealing with arithmetical means ("averages") but you can also have geometric means, harmonic means and any number of other means. For some systems, physics suggests which is the correct one to use. But, alas, this is not the case for global temperature.

As if to rub this point in, the paper demonstrates that there are in fact an infinite number of different means for global temperature. Which, they ask, is the correct one? Why has the scientific community alighted on the mean it has? They go on to show that, for the same set of data, different means can show a rising trend or a falling one. In other words, if a different averaging method to the one used in climate science had been chosen, we might now be having a crisis about global cooling... again.

It's a fascinating piece of work, some of which is beyond my understanding. If you are mathematically inclined, do take a look and tell me what you think.

Reading the news backwards

It's said by many expert investors that the best way to read a set of annual accounts is backwards. This is because the bits that management don't want you to notice are tucked away right at the end. They hope that by the time you've read the three pages on pension schemes, you'll be fast asleep and will completely miss the contingent liability that's about to swallow the company.

It might well be advisable to read press reports on global warming in the same way. Here's a classic of the kind from the Associated Press on the subject of land loss on the east coast of England:

Climate change spurs coastal defense retreat yells the headline in the Courier News, reporting from Happisburgh in Norfolk. We're all doomed!! seems to be the subplot. There are lots of stories of houses falling into the sea, land no longer being protected because sea levels are going to rise, concerned villagers feeling cheated. It's all because of global warming you see! Cue interviews with European environment official, quote from Stern review and so on. Cause and effect duly insinuated into readers' heads (but no outright declaration of course)...

...and then right at the end the get out:

Happisburgh, on the East Anglia coast, always has been vulnerable, and accounts of houses, lighthouses or farmland collapsing into the sea date back to the early 19th century.

I call this dishonest, but then I'm just a heretic.

Trot TV

Al Gore has launched a new internet TV channel to rival 18 Doughty Street, or as its opponents like to call it, Tory TV. Its called current.tv, and promises wall to wall hagiography of departed communists and hourly reminiscing for the days of the three day week.

Actually, I made that last bit up.

Personally I look on this as another nail in the coffin of the BBC so I'm quite happy to see the newcomer. 

More details here. 

Light bulbs

There is a marvellous debunking of the EU's proposed ban on incandescent light bulbs over at EU Referendum.

• Something like 50% of light fittings in the UK will have to be thrown on a scrap heap and replaced because they can't be used with the "long-life" CFL lightbulbs that are to replace the incandescents.
• CFLs can't be used with security lights or dimmer switches. These will have to be scrapped too.
• They use much more power to make, in a process which uses toxic materials including mercury vapour.
• If they are switched on and off as required, they don't last as long as claimed.
• If you don't switch them on and off as required but leave them on, the proclaimed energy saving is largely lost.

The similarity between this and the recycling scam is remarkable. A vast and expensive gesture turns out to be a waste. A pattern looks to be establishing itself: environmentalism is bad for the environment.

Can we trust anything the BBC says?

Certainly not on environmental matters, anyway. I've just heard some idiot reporter on the 10 o'clock news declaring that rising sea levels around Norfolk are causing the land to fall into the sea. This completely flies in the face of the well-understood fact that the east of England is sinking.

Incidentally, I posted the following onto the editor's blog on the BBC website:

It is worth remembering Jeremy Paxman's now legendary quote on the BBC's attitude to the climate change debate.

"People who know a lot more than I do may be right when they claim that [global warming] is the consequence of our own behaviour. I assume that this is why the BBC's coverage of the issue abandoned the pretence of impartiality long ago"

The BBC is an environmental campaigning organisation. Full stop.

It didn't make it past the moderators, despite the fact that there were only 12 comments (now 18).  This is what a public service broadcaster does, apparently.

What's going on here then?

One of the most important scientific documents in the global warming debate is Jones et al 1990 on the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. This was long claimed by sceptics to be a major factor in the apparent rise in global temperatures - essentially they were saying that as urbanisation took place, many formerly rural weather stations ended up surrounded by buildings. These gave off heat and raised the local temperature. In other words it looked like global warming, but wasn't.

Jones' letter to Nature in 1990 was widely claimed to have killed this argument off by presenting three temperature time series from rural weather stations.  By comparing these to another wider set of data, it was possible to show that the wider series had no significant UHI effect.

The story has suddenly come to the fore again because the UHI effect has attracted the interest of Steve McIntyre, a  prominent sceptic and something of a thorn in the side of the mainstream. He has been asking the author, Phil Jones for his raw data - specifically he wants to identify which weather stations were used his work - presumably he means to test if they were genuinely rural or not.

And thus far, Jones has refused to release the information, despite a formal request under the Environmental Information Regulations.

Now to anyone who knows anything about science, this is pretty exciting stuff. It's pretty much a given that you release your data on request so that others can test it. Nature, which published the orginal letter, makes prompt availability of data a condition of publication. So the refusal is likely to be viewed in a pretty dim light by the scientific community, or at least I hope it is.

There are other lines of enquiry for McIntyre to pursue in order to get the data, but in the meantime let's just notice the startling fact of a "real" scientist refusing to release his data to someone who is alleged to be a fake and the equivalent of a creationist.  

Bowland Dairy Reminder

DK has a reminder up on his site about the Bowland Dairy Case. The case is so horrific, it's worth reminding ourselves of it. If there are any Liberal Democrats passing this way, I would value your comments.

One size fits all

The latest wizard wheeze from the Government is today's announcement: "Seven year olds to take languages".

"I want languages to be at the heart of learning", Mr Johnson said. 

"The earlier you start learning a language the better. Making language study compulsory from 7 to 14 will give pupils seven years to build up their knowledge, confidence and experience."

Now while I'm sure lots of people think this is a good thing, it's surely worth contrasting this lurch towards compulsion with the government's stated wish to personalise the school system to the needs of each child. I don't suppose Mr Johnson has even considered the possibility that some children might not be cut out for learning a foreign language. Their time might be better spent learning, say, literacy or numeracy? Or speaking?  Not according to Mr Johnson.

He was on the radio this morning, telling us that language learning would be for at least one hour a week (!), and rhapsodising at length about all the exciting languages that would be seen in schools in the future. Apparently schoolchildren will become proficient in Mandarin Chinese on the back of their hour of teacher time. Colour me unconvinced. 

The problem with this announcement is that I'm sure it will have plenty of parents squealing with excitement (if they have not been jaded by the last ten years of exciting new initiatives). But if it ever comes to pass it will fail the children - even the bright ones. When will they learn that, no matter how hard you try, one size never fits all.

Volcanoes

Frank O'Dwyer tells me that the claim made in the Great Global Warming Swindle about volcanoes releasing more CO₂ into the atmosphere than humans is wrong. I've not been able to make a lot of progress in getting to the bottom of either Frank's claim, or the GGWS one, but I did come across something quite interesting.

74,000 years ago, the Toba volcano erupted in a VEI 7 explosion that pumped more than 10,000 times as much CO2 into the air as Mt. St. Helens did. At the maximum, Mt. St. Helens was giving off 22,000,000 kg of C02 daily, so Toba was putting out at least 22 billion kg per day. The ash cloud was so thick that it caused cooling that nearly wiped out the human race.

There are indications in the ice core records that show the cooling from Toba, but where is the global warming that should have resulted from all the CO2 put into the atmosphere? According to what I've read, the CO2 should have remained in the air long after the ash settled and that should have caused at least a warming spike, but there's no sign of extraordinary warming in the climate records. Shouldn't there always be a cooling/warming cycle after a volcano erupts? Cooling from the ash cloud, warming from the CO2 that lingers?

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