Panchromatica

Fuel Efficient Cars - Biodiesel - Hybrids

Motorhead Messiah

Johnathan Goodwin can get 100 mpg out of a Lincoln Continental, cut emissions by 80%, and double the horsepower. Does the car business have the guts to follow him?

I used to think the stories of the car industry suppressing innovation were only for the tin foil hat brigade, but this guy seems to be able to achieve amazing things - like a Hummer that can get 60 miles to the gallon and do zero to 60 in five seconds! Of course turning what he does into production engineering will be something else. We will also need to do something about the stupid tax regime that stops us using recycled cooking oil without paying tax as if it was pure fuel oil.

More on fairs and festivals

Some time ago, (2003 in fact!) I posted asking for information about the economic impact of markets fairs and festivals. Some time later, (2006) I made a separate post about so-called Anti-Social Behaviour, that touched in passing on a phenomenon known as Charivari. I was intrigued therefore to discover a research project at City University in London, that focussed on economic outcomes from such events, but in one of the academic papers linked also to some of those other ideas inherent in Charivari.

Throughout the academic literature, carnivals and festivals are associated – by historians and anthropologists alike – with altered social forms, excitement, even danger. Opinion is divided over whether the carnival is a locus for radical transgression, or simply an escape valve for revolutionary energy, which acts to reinforce the status quo (Cohen 1993; Waterman 1998; Webb 2005). Either way, attention is drawn to the tendency for popular festivals and carnivals, in many parts of the world, and in many historical periods, to be characterised by risqué reversals of hierarchy, ludic mimicry, flamboyant and celebratory cultural expression, and a sanctioned overstepping of conventional rules and norms of behaviour. Arguably, carnival is also associated with spontaneity, and with a sense of being carried away by the momentum of the event through improvised action and kinetic excitement. Although many carnival arts involve meticulous attention to form, structure, even ritual, there remains a strong feeling that participation is more than can be conveyed through an account of moves, music and costume. The element of risk, of unpredictability – not, in any sense, of anarchy, but of an altered understanding of authority, whether actual or imagined – is at the heart of the experience of carnival.

There are also links here with the idea of the feast of the  Lord of Misrule

This is misnamed a feast, being full of annoyance; since going out-of-doors is burdensome, and staying within doors is not undisturbed. For the common vagrants and the jugglers of the stage, dividing themselves into squads and hordes, hang about every house. The gates of public officials they besiege with especial persistence, actually shouting and clapping their hands until he that is beleaguered within, exhausted, throws out to them whatever money he has and even what is not his own. And these mendicants going from door to door follow one after another, and, until late in the evening, there is no relief from this nuisance. For crowd succeeds crowd, and shout, shout, and loss, loss.

This fear of the reversal of power, of disturbance of the common good runs deep. After all, we can't have public officials made fun of can we?

Look around you

There is a view of art that places it at the top of human endeavours, represented I suppose by people like Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Rembrandt. However the existence of such elevated work does not invalidate art produced by us lesser mortals.

Oscar Wilde is supposed to have said, in response to a question about why America had such high levels of violence, “because you have such awful wallpaper”. This seemingly flippant response masks an essential truth, enumerated recently on TV by Stephen Fry, that we seem to be the only species able to make the place uglier by our efforts. Not everything we do of course – I think the sublime qualities of the English countryside must surely count as one of the greatest artistic achievements of all time.

Nevertheless, the environment we create for ourselves is often impoverished and at worst downright ugly - even unhealthy. We know as a race we can do better.  The challenge is to create the conditions in which that can happen. Artists surely have a part to play and while a 21st Century Michaelangelo would be nice we can't rely on that so it will depend on all of us to raise our sights - at least occasionally - from the cashbook to the world around us.

Giving environmentalism a bad name...

Sheryl Crow calls for limit on loo paper.

Singer Sheryl Crow has said a ban on using too much toilet paper should be introduced to help the environment. Crow has suggested using "only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required"

I think this is one of the more bizarre suggestions I have come across...

Politicians, economists and the reality of climate change

I’ve finally got round to seeing ‘The Day After Tomorrow’. It is a fairly routine adventure story, topped off with great effects and lots of heroic ‘derring-do’. The nut jobs who complained about it as propaganda for the climate change lobby clearly need to get out more, because in the end the science in the film is there only to serve as a trigger for the action.

Some political points were made of course but they were nothing to do with climate change – I’m sure the irony of millions of illegal immigrants heading south over the Rio Grande into Mexico was not lost on US audiences for example. In the end though, to use the fact that a filmmaker takes liberties with the science of climate change for dramatic effect, as an argument against the reality is to say the least bizarre. I suspect that those who are still trying to deny what is going would be doing so in letters written in green ink if they didn’t have access to e-mail.

I don’t see such concern for scientific rigour in other films. As I've said before - how many buses can leap across 30 foot gaps in the roadway (Speed), how likely is it that a virus could be uploaded to a computer you've never seen, built using technology you have no idea about (Independence Day), how likely is it that you could clone a replica Hitler to take over the world (The Boys from Brazil) how likely is any of the action in any James Bond movie? And as for The Stepford Wives! Its one thing to criticise a move because it is badly written but really people - get a life!

The latest report from the IPCC seems to have finally demonstrated the reality of climate change and what we face over the next 100 years. The projections are frightening:

• Probable temperature rise between 1.8C and 4C
•  Possible temperature rise between 1.1C and 6.4C
•  Sea level most likely to rise by 28-43cm
•  Arctic summer sea ice disappears in second half of century
• Increase in heatwaves very likely
• Increase in tropical storm intensity likely

These predictions exclude areas of really tentative science. For example, there is no consensus about the effect of melting polar ice on currents like the Gulf Stream or about the speed with which it would happen. Because they have been excluded it is possible that the impact on sea levels would be much greater, while the impact on temperature is also uncertain. The scenario in The Day After Tomorrow is still one of the possibilities if rather more remote than once thought.

There are those scientific ignoramuses (ignorami?) who would argue that these uncertain impacts should have been included, thus widening the range of error. There are even more stupid people who decry the fact that scientists revise their views. Take this for example:

On July 24, 1974 Time Magazine published an article entitled "Another Ice Age?" Here's the first paragraph:

"As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age."

Their conclusion then was "The trend shows no indication of reversing"! And, wonders of wonders, the impossible to conceive "reversing" occurred!

Take care with this because there is some fast footwork going on. See how the conclusion ‘The trend shows no indication of reversing’ morphs into ‘impossible to conceive’? If that isn’t scientific stupidity it is intellectual dishonesty – which is even worse because it is deliberate.

However, giving these people the benefit of the doubt, they clearly do not understand the idea of scientific method and its impact on uncertainty or even the concept of statistical uncertainty. I don’t think it is accidental that the most outspoken opponents of the thesis of human driven climate change are politicians and economists. Both groups claim to have the answer to your every ill, neither group shows any sign of understanding science and in general they do not progress by admitting of uncertainty of any kind, let alone on issues such as this. In that respect I thought the exchanges between the politicians and the scientists in The Day After Tomorrow to be quite realistic, as the politicians struggle with the political impact of bad news.

Those who deny the fact of climate change and its human component seem to be resorting to ever more desperate arguments in vain attempts to undermine the basic facts. The latest uses tentative suggestions that Mars is coming out of an ice age as the basis for an argument that this proves climate change on Earth is not man made. They ignore the fact that Mars doesn’t have large bodies of water and that the drivers of its climate will therefore be very different to those on Earth. Consequently the same event – whether it be sunspots or cosmic rays or whatever else is flavour of the month – is likely to lead have different climatic consequences on the two planets. They also seem quite happy to use scientific data gathered over a relatively short timescale – and recognised by its authors as highly tentative - to dispute decades of work by thousands of scientists.

You may have come across Mr Myron Ebell (an economist), who argues that the whole thing is a conspiracy to do down the US. It is Mr Ebell, (not a climatologist) who claimed that the UK Chief Scientist didn’t know what he was talking about because he wasn’t a climatologist. Spot the flaw in that argument? I’ve seen Mr Ebell described as an intellectual terrorist and that isn’t wrong. He is certainly willing to shift his ground and argue black is white so I suppose we have to class him as a politician too. This site documents Ebell’s activities quite comprehensively.

He isn’t alone of course – take this comment on the Guardian Comment is Free site.

Environmentalists just form the rump of the social scientist west-hating morons who are actually willing the environment to collapse so they can say I told you so and blame the US.

Sadly such hysteria is all too common. It probably means a dim future for our children and grandchildren.

Reverse Graffiti

A number of street artists around the world have taken to expressing themselves through an innovative practice known as Reverse Graffiti. Taking a cue from the "Wash Me" messages scrawled on the back of delivery trucks, they seek out soot covered surfaces and inscribe them with images, tags, and even advertising slogans using scrub brushes, scrapers and pressure hoses.

razilian Alexandre Orion, turned one of Sao Paolo's transport tunnels into a stunning mural last summer. The mural, comprised of a series of skulls, very succinctly reminds drivers of the impact their emissions are having on the planet.

Frugality or ...?

This humble piece of paper came from my father in law’s effects. I don’t know the exact date, but I believe it is probably wartime or soon afterwards. It was initially going to be thrown it away but something about it seemed to capture quite brilliantly the prevailing frugality of those times.

If you only ever listened to the virulently anti-environmental Polyannas who infest the Internet, you would soon probably believe that this frugality – or more likely they would describe it as meanness – is the inevitable outcome of concern for environmental issues. Indeed many go further and would have you believe that those who worry about what we are doing to this planet want to impose such behaviour on the world at large. You don’t have to go far to find statements equating ‘green’ with ‘statist’.

In practice of course this is malignant nonsense. More to the point, they are not defending us from the need to care for the world's resources, they are making it ever more likely that we will find ourselves plunged into a world of scarcity, a world plagued by violence as those who have try to hold on to it. Think ‘peak oil’, think water wars...

Property is theft

My recent post on road pricing made several references to Simon Jenkins book ‘Landlords to London’. Rereading this book for the post and also as a counterpoint to ‘The Voluntary City’ made me realise the real significance of the great London Estates. Most of these were originally in the ownership of the Church until the Dissolution under Henry VIII. When he seized Church properties he distributed them among members of his Court in return for favours granted and for political benefit.

The estates thus created lasted by and large into the modern era. The development of these estates set the pattern for modern London – the city we see today. It is salutary to realise therefore how much that London is thus built on theft – pure and simple theft. We don’t need to think about how the Church acquired their property, or about esoteric theories of primitive accumulation because of the clear break created by Henry’s theft from them.

Worth remembering next time someone tells you how the private sector is so much better than the state at promoting development. Ask them where that property came from.

Managing the street

This post covers similar ground to the previous one on road privatisation, although it was prepared a while ago. I'm letting it stand separately however since it deals with the issue for a slightly different perspective.

The standard libertarian response to the sorts of issues and problems I described in this post is generally either private property or less government – or both. As you might expect I’m not convinced that the answer is so simple. The main problem on this project was not public ownership or regulation – at least directly - but the large number of organisations with a stake in what was going on. With three different local authorities involved, ownership was relevant but it was a minor issue compared to the problems of securing agreement between all the stakeholders.

If you consider a modern shopping mall like say the MetroCentre in Gateshead or Cribbs Causeway in Bristol these are in single ownership. Shop tenants will have rights and duties set out in tenancy agreements covered by contract law. If the mall needs refurbishment, whether for physical or marketing reasons, services provided within the mall like power and phones will be owned – or at least managed - by the property company.

Making the wider world like a managed shopping mall is however simply not practical. Properties are owned in a complex web of relationships extending in three dimensions. In any one street you are will have water, sewers, telephone, electricity, gas, perhaps cable. There may be ‘trunk’ lines as well as services to individual properties. In addition to the cables or pipes, there will be switch boxes, manholes, inspection covers etc above ground. These will have been altered and changed over the years so that none of them are quite where they are supposed to be. They may be a metre or so to the side of where they are supposed to be and they may be only a few centimetres below ground level instead of the metre or so they are meant to be. All this adds up to a nightmare for anyone doing work. A few weeks ago I was without a landline for about three days because Wessex Water damaged the phone line through the village in the course of replacing some storm drains.

The owners of these utilities have the right to turn up, dig a hole for ‘operational purposes’ and then fill it in and move on. They are supposed to reinstate as it was before but for all sorts of reasons, some of which are even reasonable, this doesn’t always happen. Think of the rows that erupted wherever cable companies were in operation laying cable and you get the idea.

When work in the highway is required there are procedures to follow that allow the organisation involved to check what else might be happening. For example if the highway authority intend to resurface they notify the other companies to make sure that they won’t come along a week after work finishes and dig it up again. That’s important - I recall a job some years ago, where the contractors were still working at one end of a street, when the gas company turned up at the other end and followed them along ripping out what had just been done to replace the gas pipes. If the work is an emergency – water or gas leak for example - then the standard procedures don’t apply.

Libertarians are usually dismissive of the activities of public bodies, arguing that they are attempts to interfere with the smooth operation of the market. In the case I described would transferring the ownership of the streets to private companies reduce complexity? I don’t think so - in fact it seems highly likely that there would be an increase.

Why do so many Libertarians hate environmentalism?

I’ve speculated on this before without up to now coming to a conclusion. I don’t see any intrinsic contradiction between accepting the evidence for climate change and a concern for individual liberty. Of course many who call themselves libertarians are not that, but apologists for state capitalism. Even so there are enough genuine ones around to make me wonder what is going on.

I think I’m beginning to understand why. Accepting the reality of climate change means by and large accepting that somewhere there is a role for the state in addressing it. The scale of the task facing us makes that almost inevitable. This terrifies the average libertarian since here is a potentially massive threat to our lives and to our long term prosperity that isn’t easily amenable to the standard nostrum of private property and less government. They respond to this state of cognitive dissonance, not by looking for ways to reconcile their political-economic theories with the reality of the world around them, but by denial.

I know that ‘deniers’ has been used in deliberate parallel with holocaust deniers to attack those who refuse to accept the evidence for climate change, but that is not my intention in this case. I am talking here of psychological denial, although whether those to whom it applies will be grateful for the distinction I don’t know!

EDIT (3/11/06): On denial see this