Chris Pearce's Blog, page 5

Wayne Swan to retire from politics

Wayne Swan, the member for Lilley in the Australian House of Representatives since 1998 (and from 1993 to 1996), has announced that he will not stand at the next election due in 2019. It was Swan who was treasurer during the global financial crisis (GFC) period, the world’s worst economic downturn since the 1930s Depression. Australia was affected quite severely by the GFC as was nearly every country.

Some on the right still mistakenly believe that the GFC was largely confined to advanced economies in the northern hemisphere and that it only lasted a short time. Australia’s GDP growth fell from about 4% to 1% and revenue fell from 25-26% of GDP pre-GFC to a low of 21.4% in 2010-11 and it still hasn’t recovered. This is why we have had deficits for the last nine years and an increase in government debt.

Swan and the Labor Party government came up with two stimulus packages worth $52 billion, most of it in 2009, to keep us out of recession. They had to be put in place in a hurry due to the collapsing world economy and weren’t perfect but they did the trick and kept us out of recession. Many on the right think that the mining boom and exports to China saved us from recession. But gross value added from mining grew by about $3 billion and exports to China by about $9 billion in 2009. Each 1% of GDP at the time was about $14 billion. So with growth falling to about 1%, the stimulus packages were quite clearly the only thing that kept us out of recession.

Nobel prize winning professor of economics Joseph Stiglitz of New York said: “You were lucky to have, probably, the best designed stimulus package of any of the countries, advanced industrial countries, both in size and in design, timing and how it was spent – and I think it served Australia well.” He also said that such programs are “preferable to the waste of human and capital resources that would have resulted if there was no stimulus”. Most countries had stimulus packages of some sort. Swan won Euromoney magazine’s finance minister of the year.

Stimulus package spending was across the economy and prevented many businesses from going broke. Unemployment was kept under 6% compared with more than 10% during the world and therefore Australian economic downturns of the early 1980s and early 1990s with Malcolm Fraser and Paul Keating as prime ministers.

The Coalition (Liberal and National parties) and some of its supporters still talk nonsense about debt and deficit disaster under Labor. But Australia came out of the GFC period with the third lowest government debt to GDP ratio of the 34 OECD countries in 2013, since pushed out to ninth lowest after more than four years of Coalition government. Expenditure under the Coalition is actually higher as about 25.4% of GDP than it was under Labor which averaged about 24.8% and Labor had the GFC.

We can be thankful that the Coalition wasn’t in government at this time. Given their slowness and conservative nature, I think their response to the GFC would have been too little too late to keep us out of recession. Thank you Wayne Swan and Labor for being there.

Daylight saving time saga: Indiana 1966-1972

Here’s an extract from my book on the history of daylight saving time around the world, The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy. Daylight saving in the US had been chaotic for two decades before the Uniform Time Act of 1966 was finally passed. But that was not the end of the matter in many states. About half the states introduced bills into their state legislature in 1966 and 1967 to exempt themselves from daylight saving time, including Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio and South Dakota in the midwest, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas in the south and Arizona, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming in the west. Here’s what happened in Indiana at that time …

More complex and protracted battles ensued in Indiana and Michigan. Time arrangements in Indiana had been working quite well and it wanted to maintain them rather than for the whole state to shift to daylight time in summer. Officially, the state was split fairly evenly between the Eastern and Central time zones. In practice, 77 of the 92 counties used Eastern Standard Time all year except for a small area in the south-east near Cincinnati that advanced its clocks. The other 15 counties, in the state’s north-west and south-west corners, were on Central time and had daylight saving to be on the same time as adjacent states and nearby cities such as Chicago. In the six warmer months, the whole state had been on the same time. Further, standard time was well ahead of sun time, with Indianapolis forward by 45 minutes, and residents didn’t want to be ahead by nearly two hours with what they called “double daylight time”.

Indiana, in 1967, got away with its law to put one clock in each public building an hour ahead and for communities to decide their own time. The legislature wasn’t due to meet in 1968 and many people worried that the state would automatically have to go onto daylight time. Their fears were confirmed when the Transportation Department announced on 14 March 1967 that the state was to have daylight saving that year. But the state Farm Bureau felt that business would be disrupted and took the issue to the federal court. Theatre owners did the same, as drive-in movies would be forced to start very late and would lose a lot of customers.

A month later, the department reversed its decision, which gave Indiana until the following year to fix its time problems. Farmers and theatre operators withdrew their suits. But now it was the turn of the television stations to take the matter to federal court due to “substantial advertising revenue loss” if the state was on standard time and nearly everywhere else was on daylight time. They won their case and Indiana was ordered on 17 July 1968 to switch to daylight saving within 10 days. The US district attorney appealed the decision. Meanwhile, on 26 July, the same judge rejected a plea to delay his order and directed that daylight saving begin on Sunday at 2 a.m. two days later. But on 27 July, the Appeals Court granted a week’s stay.

The time turmoil encouraged The Indianapolis Star to repeat an old daylight saving joke at the top of page 1 of its newspaper on the Monday: “Today’s chuckle: Daylight Saving Time is founded on the old Indian idea of cutting off one end of the blanket and sewing it on the other end to make it longer.” This relates to a comment purportedly made by a native American years earlier when told about daylight saving: “Only the government would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom, and have a longer blanket.”

Television stations asked the Court of Appeals on 30 July to reverse its decision as they were losing revenue. The farmers and theatres reentered the row next day, seeking a delay until the next year. Joining them was the Indiana Association of Cities and Towns. On 2 August, the Appeals Court halted the daylight saving order indefinitely or until a final decision could be made. By then it was midsummer and well over a month after the longest day.

In January 1969, the Department of Transportation ruled that all of Indiana except the north-west and south-west corners would be in the Eastern time zone from April, a decision praised by the governor, Edgar Whitcomb, although the new directive reflected precisely what had been happening in practice for a number of years. The department would also seek to change the Uniform Time Act to allow states in two time zones to use daylight saving in one and keep standard time in the other. A bill to exempt the state from daylight saving was passed by both houses of the Indiana General Assembly in March but it was vetoed by the governor on the last day of the session despite close to four to one support for the bill in the House and almost three to one in the Senate. He was concerned that the state would be on a different hour to nearby states. There was no time to override the veto and the legislature wasn’t due to meet again until 1971 unless the governor called it back early, which he didn’t.

All of Indiana officially had daylight saving in 1969 although a few areas went their own way. One was the city of Huntingburg in the south-west. The council altered the city hall clock by an hour but, in an act of defiance, set out a resolution asking people to remain on Eastern Standard Time or simply pick their own time over the summer months.

…

Many residents and organisations complained about “double daylight time”, which they would now have to put up with for two years: 1969 and 1970. When the legislature reconvened in January 1971, the House voted 61 to 36 to override the governor’s 1969 veto of the bill to exempt Indiana from daylight saving. Ironically, the chamber clock was exactly three hours slow. The Senate voted 24-24 before another vote a few days later resulted in two senators swapping sides in a 26 to 22 count to override the veto, which was met with cheers and applause. To the relief of residents, Indiana would keep to standard time in 1971. The new law included provision for the north-west and south-west corners to use Central Daylight Time, pending an amendment to the Uniform Time Act.

That came in 1972 when the president, Richard Nixon, signed a bill on 30 March allowing states in two time zones to use different times in summer. The Senate had passed a bill nearly a year earlier but it sat in a House commerce subcommittee due to a reluctance to reopen the standard time–daylight time debate. North-west and south-west counties in Indiana could now legally have daylight saving. Seven counties in the south-east using Eastern Daylight Time weren’t covered by the amended Act but kept using this time in the warmer months regardless.

(end of excerpt)

The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy is available at Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y2R5KQ7), Kobo and Apple.

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No link between company tax rate and economic growth

In Australia, our treasurer Scott Morrison still wants to reduce the corporate tax rate from 30% to 25%, mainly it seems because the US has reduced its rate from 35% to 21%. I commented as follows on Morrison’s Facebook page …

This is the greatest load of twaddle since climate change denial. There is no evidence that corporate tax cuts lead to growth and jobs. There are so many other factors influencing growth.

The UK has had seven cuts to its corporate rate in 10 years from 30% to 19% and its GDP growth is down to 1.7%. Its top personal rate came down from 50% to 45% in 2013. Its GST rate is 20%.

France’s corporate tax rate has been 33.3% since 2007. GDP growth has increased to 2.3% over the last year after being around 1% for a number of years. Its top personal rate went up to 50.3% in 2012 from about 46% and its GST rate is 20%.

Germany’s corporate tax rate has been 29-30% since 2008. GDP growth has increased from 1.8% to 2.8% over the last year. Its top personal rate is unchanged at 47.5% and GST is unchanged at 19%.

Canada’s corporate rate has been at 26-27% since 2012 after reducing four times from 31.4% in 2008. Growth fell to 0.3% in 2015. Growth is now up to 3.0% despite the top personal rate increasing from 29% to 33% in 2016. It has a social security rate of 14.4%.

The US corporate rate has been around 35% since the late 1980s and overall the economy doesn’t seem to have suffered. Add another 5% on average for state income tax. GDP growth is currently 2.3%. Top personal rate went from 35% to 39.6% in 2013. Social security rate is 21.3%.

Our corporate tax rate has been 30% since 2002 (average rate is 17% and effective rate 10.4%). But our GST is only 10%. Our GDP growth is up to 2.8% although it would be around 1% if federal government expenditure was reduced to equal revenue. Quite a few countries might have a corporate rate lower than ours but they have a much higher GST while personal rates are similar. GDP growth varies among countries but there doesn’t seem to be any correlation between tax rates and GDP growth rates.

Most countries have a large government debt, and tax cuts at this stage will make this worse. As a few commentators have suggested, tax cuts will be like a sugar hit. There might be some short term gains (including for tax havens, I presume) although these will be small and uncertain, but there will be long term pain, especially if there is another world downturn.

We don’t need to get into a race to the bottom with the US. Our investment from overseas grew 39% in six years under Labor and has continued to increase steadily. Trump met with his bankers in the 1990s when he was busy sending his casino broke. One of them said later that talking to Trump was like talking to someone who had skipped economics and accounting classes at college.

Cosmic rays, solar activity, and temperature change

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to stop posting comments to Australian politician Craig Kelly’s Facebook page. He’s a climate change denier and posts a lot of very selective stuff on climate, coal, socialism, crime, etc and his followers get sucked right in. The other day, I tried to post the following in response to an article he posted by some Russian scientists who had written a paper, ‘Cosmic rays, solar activity, and changes in the earth’s climate’, trying to link cosmic rays and solar activity to global temperatures. By the time I finished writing it, there was a message to say I might not be authorised to post comments here and I noticed my other posts had gone. I guess he’s done me a favour. Here’s what I hadn’t intended to post …

“Cosmic ray fluxes have been monitored since about 1950 and no significant trend is apparent. Similarly, there have been no significant trends in solar activity since at least the 1970s (it has probably gone down a fraction) except of course the 11-12 year cycles.

The authors seem to be forecasting that cosmic ray fluxes will increase, leading to greater cloud formation which will mean cooler temperatures. Their work seems to use the same principle as that of Henrik Svensmark of Denmark who has been going on about the effect of cosmic rays on cloud formation and global temperatures for a couple of decades. He says cosmic rays have decreased over the last 100 years, leading to less cloud formation and therefore higher temperatures, rather than the higher levels of CO2 causing the higher temperatures. Many studies have been done to try and replicate his work but they find little or no correlation between cosmic rays and cloud cover.

For his theory to be correct, there has to be a long term increase in the solar magnetic field. But this and other measures of solar activity haven’t increased. There is good satellite data back to the 1970s. When you look at the sun’s energy output as measured by watts per square metre, it has fluctuated between about 1366 and 1367 in short term cycles of about 11 years, and a slight decline if anything in the long term. It’s different if you’re looking at a scale of many thousands or millions of years.

Also, there needs to be a long term negative trend in cosmic ray flux and there isn’t; there’s no significant trend. Also, there needs to be a link between cosmic rays and cloud formation but various studies have found no significant link. And there also has to be a long term negative trend in low level cloud cover, and that hasn’t been the case either.

Good luck to the Russian scientists with their cooling forecast. They might need it.”

Global warming: raw vs homogenised temperature data

One of the things climate change or global warming deniers like to do is to use unadjusted temperature data to try and ‘prove’ that temperatures aren’t increasing and that the 1930s were just as warm as now. I posted the following to a Facebook page (Australian politician Craig Kelly’s) in response to a few denier comments about homogenised data just being part of the climate change ‘fraud’.

No use looking at raw data. It has to be adjusted or homogenised data. This is done by weather bureaus all around the world to take out non-climatic changes such as shifting weather stations and changing measuring methods. Three main things have to be adjusted for.

Over the decades, weather stations have typically moved from post offices in the centre of town, where it is warmer especially at night (urban heat island effect) to airports on the outskirts of town in green open fields where it’s cooler. This is why raw temperatures in the 1930s are often about as high as now (the move to airports was generally from about the 1940s onwards). This non-climatic change to temperatures has to be taken out to get a true picture of how temperatures have changed.

It can go the other way too; for example, town-based weather stations that haven’t moved might now be surrounded by more concrete and steel than decades past.

Also, temperature measuring methods have changed and this can have an effect. In the 19th century, instruments were typically attached to walls of buildings and protected from the sun by metal screens but this had the effect of pushing up temperatures. Instruments were then put in gardens away from buildings but infrared radiation from the ground could push up temps on calm sunny days. High-tech automatic weather stations that counter these sort of problems are now common.

Once all the adjustments are made, we can get a far more accurate picture of how temperatures have actually changed rather than changes influenced by the shifting of weather stations or different measuring methods.

 

The misinformation and selective information of Craig Kelly

I posted the following to Australian Liberal Party politician Craig Kelly’s Facebook page but it seems to have been deleted. He spoke with Peta Credlin on Sky News on 27 Nov 2017 about renewable and nonrenewable energy sources. The interview contained a large amount of misinformation and selective information …

Interview is full of misleading information.  

The RET [Renewable Energy Target] was introduced by the [John] Howard govt in 2001. It adds a negligible amount to power bills; one study says 1-5%; others are similar; one study has it reducing power bills by about 2030, which is one of the ideas of the RET. 

Yes, subsidies to renewables are about $3b a year but those to nonrenewables are about $10b a year.  

The NEG [National Energy Guarantee] is long on rhetoric and short on detail. Unlikely to get state agreement.  

Various savings figures have been given re the NEG ($100-115, $120, $140, $400 a year) but no detail of how it’s calculated is given; you can feed anything into a model and get the answers you want.  

With solar and wind energy, it still works when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow; Google it.  

SA [South Australia] blackouts were caused by severe storms, not renewables. Transmission towers blew over in high winds. Authorities made a decision to shut off all power as a precaution. SA electricity, like the rest of Aust, is expensive due largely to $45b network upgrades in 2009 to 2014; very large country and fairly small population means high per capita costs for poles and wires etc.  

Diesel generators in SA will be used as back-up in peak periods over summer; ditto Victoria which also used them in 2014 (under a Liberal state govt) after forecasts of a long hot summer.  

Electric cars can be bought for under $40k [not $200,000 as indicated on the show]; running costs per km are much less than petrol cars except when coal is the energy source. Electric cars aren’t the problem, coal is. 

Yes, we’re contributing $200m to the UN Green Climate Fund to help developing countries cope with climate change/global warming. Paulo Oquist of Nicaragua is set to be a co-chair of the GCF. The position steers the meetings. The 24-member board of the GCF makes the decisions on a consensus basis. Nicaragua isn’t running the show. 

No wonder the hard right isn’t in charge.

Climate change deniers get it wrong again

I’ve been posting comments to Australian politician Craig Kelly’s Facebook page. Kelly and his followers are climate change deniers, so there’s a lot of misinformation, selective information and non-information there. I posted the following after Kelly put up a graph showing the number of deaths from natural disasters in Australia from 1900 to 2010 normalised for population growth only (although he didn’t say it was only normalised for population growth and nothing else such as huge changes in building quality, early warning systems, emergency services, etc). The graph shows a declining number of deaths. To Kelly, this is proof that fossil fuels have done a great job in providing heating, cooling, etc in homes and elsewhere and therefore the number of deaths from natural disasters has fallen. His followers agreed, without of course checking the rest of the report the graph came from. I made an edit to my post on two occasions and on the second one, Facebook wouldn’t post it; it disappeared. I think they’ve got some algorithm in there to try and prevent spam or something, like I’d posted it three times. Anyway, I thought I’d post it here. The study and report, linked to below, is by the Australian Department of Industry, Innovation and Science …

I would question a number of things about this government study (which includes figure 3 shown above [in Kelly’s post]). Here’s the link: http://www.bnhcrc.com.au/news/2015/century-natural-disasters-what-are-costs.

It looks firstly at annual weather related insurance losses from 1966 to 2013. In nominal dollar terms, the losses go up a lot, which you would expect. These dollar figures are then normalised for such things as increases in the number of houses and their value, building code changes and better construction (which is a broadly similar process that temperature data goes under to get it from raw to adjusted, for factors such as weather stations moving, more concrete and steel around existing stations, and different temperature measuring instruments, although climate deniers prefer raw data as it shows much less of an increase in temperatures over time). The report says there is ‘no statistically significant upward trend’, which is broadly true over the whole period. The correlation coefficient (which can be between -1 and +1), r, for the years 1966 to 2013 is 0.09, or a possible slight increase in normalised losses. Leaving off 2013 (which was a year of many natural disasters and for which claims don’t appear to have been complete at the time of the study), r = 0.12. If we start at 1980, the time when temperatures started to increase rapidly, r = 0.23, and leaving off 2013, r = 0.29. The p-value for this last one is 0.053, so it’s just over the threshold (0.05 or 1 chance in 20 of no actual increase) between ‘reject’ and ‘not reject’; so we can reject, and only just reject, the hypothesis that there is a statistically significant upward trend in insurance losses. However, the graph (figure 1) doesn’t seem to include the 2011 Qld floods of $2.5b normalised (table 1). Adding this in, r = 0.366 for 1980 to 2012, giving a p-value of 0.018 or about a 1 in 55 chance of there being no actual increase in normalised losses over the period 1980 to 2012.

The study then looks at fatalities. The raw data for annual fatalities from 1900 to 2010 is shown in figure 2 and there looks to be no long term increase or decrease. This is then normalised in figure 3 for population growth and now shows a significant decrease in fatalities. But it doesn’t take into account the huge leaps in early warning systems, the vastly larger and better emergency and rescue services, much better knowledge, and all the community safety campaigns, all of which were virtually non-existent in 1900 (some dot points near the bottom of the page suggest that further studies might include some of this). We of course have better buildings, and they do have better heating and cooling from electricity which so far has mainly come from fossil fuels. We probably also spend more time indoors both at work and when not at work these days, therefore staying out of the heat more. I would also question the raw numbers in figure 2. Table 2 has 8256 deaths from natural disasters from 1900 to 2011. This is an average of 74 deaths per year. Yet figure 2 shows an average of perhaps around 25, with only six years where the number exceeds 74, and in four of those years it’s not much above 74. Further, a list of disasters at Wikipedia shows that fatalities from Australia’s worst disasters far exceed what is shown in figure 2, e.g. a heatwave in Victoria claimed 438 lives in 1938-39, one in SE Australia 374 lives in 2009, a heatwave in the southern states 246 lives in 1907-08, bushfires in Victoria 173 in 2009, and many more.

Thus there seems to be an increase in normalised losses, certainly since 1980. But we really can’t make much out of the normalised fatalities numbers as they only take into account population increase.

The increase in wild weather worldwide due to climate change between 1980 and 2014 is shown quite vividly in a National Geographic article: ‘Wild weather’, which starts off: ‘Torrential hurricanes, devastating droughts, crippling ice storms, and raging heat waves—all are extreme weather phenomena that can claim lives and cause untold damage. Climate change influences severe weather by causing longer droughts and higher temperatures in some regions and more intense deluges in others, say climate experts.’ The number of extreme events increased steadily from 291 in 1980 to 904 in 2014, nearly all of them weather related. See https://www.nationalgeographic.com/climate-change/how-to-live-with-it/weather.html.

The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy – reviews

Here are a few excerpts from some of the great reviews on my ebook, The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy. See all the reviews at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y2R5KQ7

“… Through the use of extensive research (all backed by source references throughout), tables, illustrations, and some fine journalistic quips Chris walks us through the enigma of this controversial manipulation of mind and time. … Informative and even entertaining, this is the ‘bible’ for the topic of Daylight saving time.” Grady Harp, 1 May 2017

“Abundance of details, yet fun facts also included. Select the country or continent of choice. … information-rich 400 pages book … In every country on every continent, Antarctica included, setting a start and end date to a yearly daylight saving period turned out to be one of the most sensitive topics in politics.” Henk-Jan van der Klis, 1 July 2017

“An encyclopaedia of interesting research … This book is jam packed with research and unless it’s something you really want to study in depth at once, I personally preferred to dip in and out, there’s no way you can take all this information in during one read. Great job though an ideal point of reference.” H.Taylor, 12 May 2017

“… The book is a treasure of information about anyone that wants to learn more and dig deeper in the concept of daylight saving time. I was shocked to learn that something trivial like changing time every few months had to go through a turmoiled procedure.

The author magnificently presents the evolution stages of how it started, evolved and applied over the years. … It is a valuable source of information, and I really enjoyed reading it. Highly Recommended.” KM, 17 September 2017

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Jesus or Lesus?

(reposting this due to problem with title)

(originally published to Bubblews writing site in 2013, now gone)

What was that guy’s name again? It seems that folk at the Vatican weren’t too sure. It minted 6000 coins to commemorate the first anniversary of Francis as pope and somehow misspelled Jesus’ name.

When the mold was being prepared, it seems that someone got J and L mixed up. The letter L is similar to a back-to-front J, and perhaps someone was looking at that part of the mold from upside down or sideways and got it mixed up.

Anyway, the mint kind of blamed the molders, but you’d think it would have checked the mold before minting. On the other hand, it probably thought it didn’t need to check as this seems to be the first mistake in 600 years of making papal medals.

The coins were recalled before many were sold but apparently four of them remain out there. They could soon be worth a lot of money.

(originally published to Bubblews writing site in 2013, n...

(originally published to Bubblews writing site in 2013, now gone)

(Having problems with title again. Seems to disappear. It’s ‘Jesus or Lesus?’)

What was that guy’s name again? It seems that folk at the Vatican weren’t too sure. It minted 6000 coins to commemorate the first anniversary of Francis as pope and somehow misspelled Jesus’ name.

When the mold was being prepared, it seems that someone got J and L mixed up. The letter L is similar to a back-to-front J, and perhaps someone was looking at that part of the mold from upside down or sideways and got it mixed up.

Anyway, the mint kind of blamed the molders, but you’d think it would have checked the mold before minting. On the other hand, it probably thought it didn’t need to check as this seems to be the first mistake in 600 years of making papal medals.

The coins were recalled before many were sold but apparently four of them remain out there. They could soon be worth a lot of money.