Futher learning points

Every type of learning - even if its not directly job-related - brings economic benefits to society, as well as huge social benefits to both individuals and society. The Report from the Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning concluded that the importance of learning is "wide-ranging, extending well beyond qualifications and economic success". It found that there were measurable benefits in terms of health, behaviour, crime and tolerance.

BBC, 16 Dec., Adults abandon further education


Carbon emission permits should be auctioned – rather than allocated by officials as nearly all are today – as a way of getting a proper market into the system instead of the bureaucracy that defines it today. Fair point: if we are going to have an emissions trading system, there seems no reason for governments to run it at all. All they need to do is set the overall limit, and let the market do it.

The prescription for personal carbon allowances would be a powerful incentive on individuals to economize their carbon use, and they would favour poorer people, who tend to use less-polluting forms of transport, for example. But ... the idea seems like a bureaucratic nightmare. Various interest groups (the elderly who need to keep warm, disabled people who need private transport, you name it) would both demand and probably get exemptions and allowances. Householders who live in listed buildings would no doubt demand exemptions because their houses could not be insulated or converted to greener fuels. Imagine the bureaucracy in all of that.

Likewise, ....... the argument on green taxes. True, we ought to be taxing bad things (like pollution) and not good things (like work). But when it is suggested that, for example, council tax should be assessed on the basis of how environmentally friendly your house is, I know that an army of inspectors and tax collectors will have to be hired. If we are going to tax carbon use, we need to keep it simple. And honest: UK motorists already pay far more tax than their carbon use would justify.

Adam Smith Institute Weblog, 16 Dec



Just when you thought it was safe to rely on the windmills, a new way of tapping wind power emerges. It's kites, the things you fly on a string, and a Kite Wind Generator could, we are told by Wired, match nuclear plants in energy output.
When wind hits the KiteGen, kites spring from funnels at the ends of poles. For each kite, winches release a pair of high-resistance cables to control direction and angle … KiteGen's core is set in motion by the twirl of the kites; the rotation activates large alternators producing current. A control system on autopilot optimizes the flight pattern to maximize the juice produced as it sails on night and day.
Adam Smith Institute Weblog, 16 Dec

Features common to many famines: (i) a famine may occur without a substantial decline in aggregate food availability; (ii) famines often have a very uneven impact on different groups of population; and (iii) expectations about future food markets affect current market behaviour and result in starvation for certain groups of population.
Famine without shortages, Oxford University Press


"the rich are getting richer, the poor poorer, and the gap is widening." It isn't true. Many of the poor are getting richer; last year more were lifted from poverty than ever before in human history. A study of Gini coefficients by Paul Ormerod and others shows that the gap is narrowing. Much of the world now knows how to go about the process of wealth creation that made us rich. It is not true yet, alas, for many countries in Africa.

The wealth-creation process is pretty forgiving, in that you can do a lot wrong, but it still works. It can survive things like tariffs and subsidies and a degree of government interference. There are three things, however, which it cannot survive: civil war, genocide, and socialism. Poor Africa has had more than its share of all three.

Adam Smith Institute Weblog,15 Dec



It takes a shift of only a few degrees in average global temperature to make an enormous difference. The last ice age was only about nine degrees colder on average than today. Even in the past 1000 years, the planet's climate has varied significantly on the basis of shifts in average temperature no more than two degrees colder or warmer than today. From about AD 950 to 1250 Europe and North America were unusually warm, leading the Vikings to attempt to settle them is named Greenland. from approximately 1550 to 1850 Europe suffered a period of unusual cold termed the Little Ice Age, with London's Thames River freezing solid enough to allow a festival to be held atope it.

The Coming Democracy - Environment


If goal is to arrest atmospheric CO2 at 2 times pre-industrial CO2 by 2080, then carbon tax must be at least 1.0 $/kg-C ($1000/tonne-Carbon). 1.0 $/kg-C tax doubles the price of electricity generated from fossil fuel. 1.0 $/kg-C tax does not give natural gas a price advantage over coal if natural gas costs more than $5/1000 ft^3. MHD-Coal may be competitive with natural gas regardless of the carbon tax. European auto-fuel taxes already exceed 1.0 $/kg-C ($2/gallon).
Preindustrial CO2 is 0.028% by volume. Starting at 0.001% CO2 in 1850, industrial CO2 has been compounding 3%/year. 1950 CO2 is 0.0300 % (300 ppmv) and 2000 CO2 is 0.037% (370 ppmv), using Mauna Loa data.
Continuing at 3% CO2 (atmospheric carbon) increase per year adds 0.028% to existing 0.028% preindustrial by 2038, giving 0.056% CO2. 0.056% minus (y 2000) 0.037% is 0.019%. The added 0.019% CO2 increase by volume represents 414 Tkg-C (414 trillion kilograms carbon). We are already 1/3 of the way toward CO2 doubling.
Applying 1.0 $/kg-C carbon tax to 414 Tkg-C, collects 3% World GDP between 2000 and 2080. This assumes 3% annual economic growth and CO2 doubling by 2080. If CO2 doubles by 2038, the 1.0 $/kg-C represents 15% World GDP.
Arresting CO2 at twice preindustrial by 2080 requires approximately 400 TWe y (1 million giga-watt-years electric) atomic generation between 2000 and 2080. After 2080 World annual atomic power requirement is 25 TWe. This assumes world population is constant after 2030. All non-nuclear scenarios double CO2 between 2038 and 2080, with exponential increase continuing thereafter.

The first 60 TWe-y will have to come from 1500 +/- 500 light-water reactors (LWRs). 60 TWe-y LWRs consume 10 MtUnatural, the estimated World uranium resource base. Plutonium from spent LWR fuel, military plutonium and military HEU is used to load 2500 +/- 1000 fast breeder reactors (FBRs) by 2035. By 2080 there will be 25,000 FBRs operating and power-plant CO2 emission will cease. World energy grows 2%/year until 2080, assuming world population stops increasing before 2030. Hydrogen and ammonia will be produced by electrolysis. Aluminum cars will burn ammonia. Propeller aircraft will burn liquid hydrogen. Phosphate fertilizer, detergent and concrete will be produced in arc furnaces.

1.0 $/kg-C carbon tax increases pulverized coal power cost 0.085 $/kWh more than it increases CCGT (Combined-Cycle gas turbine) power cost. This cost differential is the minimum required to make CCGT less expensive than power generated from pulverized coal. Natural gas is 3 to 6 times as expensive as coal on a BTU basis.
Guardian, Comments, 15 Dec