United Kingdom Electricty to Skyrocket : More Carbon Taxes

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The United Kingdom should have gotten the message by now that man made climate change is a hoax brought on by green nutjob eco-fascists for the soul purpose of forcing people to do their bidding, that is, force people to live the way the 'econutjobs' believe everyone should live.

The fact that the entire man make climate change is a lie, and has had no effect on the British government, tells a scary story about politicians and the need for power to control.

Carbon Tax Will Double U.K. Electricity Bills
Source: Christopher Booker, "George Osborne's CO2 Tax Will Double U.K. Electricity Bills," Telegraph (U.K.), September 29, 2012.

October 9, 2012
A new carbon dioxide (CO2) tax in the United Kingdom will have severe consequences for electricity prices that consumers will have to pay, says the Telegraph (U.K.).

•The tax will impose a £16 (almost $26) floor on every ton of CO2 emitted by British industry, rising to £30 (about $48) a ton in 2020 and £70 (about $112) a ton by 2030.
•The power plants burned 40 million tons of coal in 2011 and emitted 116 million tons of CO2.
•With the £16 floor, this amount of CO2 would cost £3.5 billion ($5.6 billion), or a 20 percent increase on electricity bills, on top of the total current wholesale electricity cost.
•As a result, five of the largest coal-fired plants will shut down by next March.
•These five coal-fired plants were capable of supplying a fifth of power needs.

Despite the okay from an environmentally friendly European Union to continue using the coal-fired plants, the United Kingdom wants to make fossil fuels more expensive. The Treasury estimates that the new tax would increase investment into low carbon sources by £30 billion ($48 billion) to £40 billion ($64 billion).

Proponents of the tax argue that industries already pay for the tax through the EU's Emissions Trading System (ETS), which counts toward the £16 floor price. In 2010, it was argued that the new tax would only impose an additional £2 (about $3) per ton to meet the £16 floor price.

However, the recession has decreased demand and as a result the price of carbon permits have fallen. Now, industries will have to pay £10 (about $16) a ton to get up to the price floor established by the United Kingdom's tax. The new costs will be imposed upon energy consumers who will have soaring energy bills as the new tax takes full effect.

Dodd-Frank Act Oversight Council : Regulation by Committee

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As everyone knows by now the Dodd Frank Act is just another nightmare designed to take control of the financial institutions by politicians. What's really bad here is to believe that a panel of 'men' and not the law it self, will do a better job of regulation is beyond comprehension.

There are so many regulations now that no one can begin to know every aspect of every regulation let alone a 'committee' to press institution to comply. Goodness, where does the madness end.

Oh wait, maybe this November. Romney said he will get rid of the Dodd Frank nightmare.

Dodd-Frank Act versus the Rule of Law
Source: Roger Koppl, "The Dodd-Frank Act versus the Rule of Law," National Center for Policy Analysis, October 9, 2012.

October 9, 2012
In response to the 2008 financial collapse, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Dodd-Frank increased regulation of banks, stockbrokers, insurers and other financial institutions that are "too big -- or interconnected -- to fail" and that could require a government bailout to prevent a banking system collapse, says Roger Koppl, a professor of economics and finance in the Silberman College of Business and director of the Institute for Forensic Science Administration at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis.

The Act created a board -- the Financial Stability Oversight Council -- composed mostly of the heads of various federal financial regulatory agencies, including some newly created agencies. The Council has the responsibility to identify institutions whose failure might create systemic distress -- and the discretion to impose "prudential" regulations on them different from the regulations imposed on other financial institutions.

•Regulation is discretionary when the requirements imposed on privately owned institutions vary from firm to firm in ways that are difficult to explain or anticipate, particularly by the affected firms.
•Discretionary regulation is contrary to the rule of law, but is consistent with the "rule of men" -- in this case, experts in financial regulation.
•However, by their very nature, discretionary regulation cannot reliably produce the results its advocates desire; furthermore, these regulations will increase financial instability, rather than reduce it.

The discretionary regulations called for in Dodd-Frank make it difficult for people to anticipate the legal consequences of their actions. Thus, it violates one of the principal requirements of the rule of law. As Harvard law scholar Richard H. Fallon, Jr., explains, "People must be able to understand the law and comply with it."

By replacing competitive evaluations of risk in the marketplace with centralized risk pricing, Dodd-Frank ensures that financial institutions, investors and depositors will have less information about the risks they face. And by further displacing the rule of law with discretionary regulation, the Act ensures that there will be less certainty about the future. As a result, it increases the instability of financial institutions, rather than reducing it.

I've Been Banned

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CREDIT: True Dinos

CREDIT: True Dinos

So much for having a conversation.  


I visited the FaceBook page, True Dinos, of a young Earth creationist (YEC) run a fellow named Aaron Tulllock.  You can no longer see my posts, because I've blocked by the administrator for "being a troll." 
What did I do?
I asked about the design of the vas deferens and the recurrent laryngeal nerve. [See Smack Down.] Here's what left of the comments about Intelligent Design.

CREDIT: True Dinos

Then there was my comments on this post. Since True Dinos is also a biblical literalist, I informed him that the bible literally claims that the Sun revolves around the Earth. When pressed by another YEC called The Question Evolution Project, I provided not only the biblical verses, but a link to other biblical literalists who truly believe in geocentrism. [Regular readers might know my earlier blog posts Your Elementary School Teachers Were Right and LA Times Does Story on Geocentrism.] He never responded; in fact, his comments on True Dinos have been wiped.
Since The Question Evolution Project was unwilling to confront his obvious hypocrisy on the bible being literally true, I visited The Question Evolution Project FaceBook page. Because I had the audacity to debate, he promptly blocked me . 
Oh, what am I to do now? 
If any of the administrators from those pages wish to comment on this blog, they are free to do so.  All I ask is that they not do so anonymously. They are free to use whatever language they see fit to use. They will not be banned.
A bit more about these two pages.
Aaron Tullock (True Dinos) claims to have sighted a living pterosaur in 1995 in Marion County, Texas. The fossil and geologic evidence shows quite dramatically that  these reptiles became extinct about 65.5 million years ago. An excellent resource for those interested in pterosaurs is Pterosaur.net.
The paleontologists there say

Unusual winged animals reported from around the world have been suggested by some cryptozoologists and creationists to be modern-day pterosaurs that survived the end-Cretaceous extinction event. From Africa, people have reported a semi-aquatic winged animal called the kongamato while on New Guinea and the surrounding islands sightings are claimed of a gigantic, bioluminescent, crested flying creature (the duah) and a smaller, long-tailed version, the ropen. Fossil evidence demonstrates overwhelmingly that pterosaurs did not survive beyond the end of the Cretaceous, and the sightings of pterosaur-like animals that have been reported appear to be a combination of hoaxes and misidentification of large birds and bats. So-called modern pterosaurs are generally ugly, dark, carnivorous, bat-winged horrors—they sound more like imaginary generic flying monsters than the pterosaurs we know from the fossil record.

Like these other foundational scientific theories, the theory of evolution is supported by so many observations and confirming experiments that scientists are confident that the basic components of the theory will not be overturned by new evidence.

Plus technically speaking, pterosaurs aren't dinosaurs, although they did coexist.
Now for The Question Evolution Project.  In their About section, they write "true science is not afraid to examine contrary evidence and allows alternative theories to the interpretation of the evidence." Agreed. Science does not make progress without questioning.  Consider the Copernican revolution or the quantum revolution. So why was I banned? I presented biblical evidence that didn't fit their preconceived notions about what the bible says. 
On the other hand, "the Admins have other things to do besides engage in lengthy debates." It's strange that for people that being interested in "scientific evidence and its interpretation" and "intellectual honesty and freedom," they refuse to discuss anything.  How does The Question Evolution Project feel about questions? They say "[the site] is for people who can think for themselves and dare to ask questions," but don't ask them if they're geocentrists, because that will get you banned.
One last item, The Question Evolution Project claims that evolution is not a fact."  What do scientists say about that?  
The National Academy of Sciences says 

Like these other foundational scientific theories, the theory of evolution is supported by so many observations and confirming experiments that scientists are confident that the basic components of the theory will not be overturned by new evidence.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science states

But the phenomenon of gravity, like evolution, is an accepted fact.

I imagine The Question Evolution Project will just say we're being bullies.

Dr. Oz's Diet Advice

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I was really bored yesterday, August 6, 2012.  Flipping through the channels, I came upon the Dr. Oz show, and I wondered what woo he was pushing today.  Sure enough, he begins the show with metabolism boosters.  
I immediately began to wonder whether a person can really boost their metabolism by simply drinking tomato juice spiked with a little Tabasco sauce and lime juice, but then he said this.
"And while wine snobs may not approve, adding ice chips to your red wine forces your body to burn calories, as it has to use its own energy to warm the liquid to body temperature."
Let's see what science has to say about this.
One learns in both physics and chemistry courses that to raise the temperature of any substance it takes an amount of energy equal to Q = mcdT where m is the mass of the substance, dT is the final temperature minus the initial temperature, and c is called the specific heat. The specific heat takes into account all the complicated physics and chemistry of how energy is distributed among the atoms and molecules.
I went to my freezer and looked at a ice cube - technically it's not a cube, it's a rectangular solid, but I'm being pedantic.  I don't have a kitchen scale, so I'll determine its mass by measuring its dimensions.  My cube is 5 cm by 3 cm by 3.5 cm or about 53 cm³.  The density of ice is 0.998 grams per cubic centimeter, so I can calculate its mass by multiplying the density by the volume.  Therefore, my ice cube's mass is 53 grams.
The ice will melt and cool the wine as cold as 0ºC.  After you drink the wine, your body will warm the liquid to body temperature, about 37ºC.
The specific heat of water is 1 calorie per gram per Celsius degree.  So your body will use 

Q = (53 g)(1 cal/(g ºC))(37ºC–0ºC) = 1961 calories.

But I have to correct something here.  A food calorie is different from a calorie.  A food calorie, also called the Calorie (notice the capital C), is equal to 1000 calories.
So your body has to expend almost 2 Calories to warm the cold wine.  I think you can burn 2 Calories by breathing for a whole minute.

UPDATE: Oops! I made a mistake here.  Your body has to warm all the liquid, not just the melted ice.  If you have a standard serving of wine, 6 oz., then your body expends 8.5 Calories.
You can do a little better by eating the ice, since your body has to melt the ice, too.  I''ll spare you the details, but that takes a whopping 4 10 Calories! Assuming you drink the wine, too.

Even if you live a sedentary lifestyle, you will burn at least 1200 Calories every day by just existing. This is your metabolic activity. If you are active, your metabolic activity can be as high as 3000 Calories.  
If you want a little dieting advice, I share with you the only diet proven to work.  
The Thermodynamic Diet
The 1st law of thermodynamics states that one cannot create nor destroy energy.  All that can be done is to convert energy from one form to another.  Your body converts chemical energy in the food to kinetic energy (energy of motion) and thermal energy (you may call that heat, but that's technically incorrect).  Any energy not converted into these two forms may be converted into another form of chemical energy; that is, weight gain.
So the thermodynamic diet is burn more calories than you ingest.

I'm Being Sued?

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Almost a month ago, I wrote about how I had been banned by a couple of Facebook users FaceBookers, The Question Evolution Project and True Dinos.  In the post I invited both of them to respond.  It took them three weeks, but Cowboy Bob Sorensen did on this blog,and Aaron Tullock did on his True Dinos Facebook FB page.I'm a physicist, not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure I didn't post anything illegally.  Both of the Facebook pages are public, as are their web pages.  I believe that the Fair Use Doctrine may apply.

As to the defamation charge, Aaron needs to know the difference between slander and libel.  Notwithstanding the vocabulary, I think libel is " to publish in print (including pictures), writing or broadcast through radio, television or film, an untruth about another which will do harm to that person or his/her reputation, by tending to bring the target into ridicule, hatred, scorn or contempt of others." [dictionary.law.com]  If Aaron can point out the untruth, I will gladly retract.
By the way, Cowboy Bob and Aaron, calling you out for your scientific nonsense is not ridiculing you for spreading your gospel.  I'm ridiculing you for believing in creationist gibberish.
Lastly, I will take this opportunity to once again invite them to address the issue that led them to ban me.

Both Cowboy Bob and Aaron are biblical literalists.  The bible literally says the Sun orbits the Earth.  [A historical point here.  Galileo was tried and convicted by the Catholic Church in 1633 for promoting the heliocentric model for which Pope John Paul II apologized in 1992.]  Do they adhere to the biblical view or is their bible wrong on this matter?  To make matters easy on them I will once again provide a link to true biblical literalists that know what the bible says on this. Galileo Was Wrong; The Church Was Right.

They are invited to comment here using whatever language they deem appropriate.  I ask that they do not do so anonymously.  They will not be banned.

I wonder if they will extend to me the same courtesy?

Visualizing Income Inequality Since 1994

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How is income inequality changing over time?

To find out, we've updated our chart showing the trends we find for U.S. individuals, families and households according to their Gini Coefficient as recorded by the U.S. Census since 1994 in the Annual Social and Economic Supplement it provides for its Current Population Survey, where a value of 0 indicates perfect equality (everyone has the same income) and a value of 1 indicates perfect inequality (one person has all the income, while everyone else has none):

Why only from 1994? That's because the Census only began publishing its data online in an easy to access electronic format after 1993 (note the left hand margin here). The Census has published its older data online, but in the form of scanned documents that require a lot of manual effort to extract the data, which is also not as detailed as the newer versions.

Besides, it's not like the data since 1994 doesn't show the key trends for income inequality in the United States! Going to our chart, here is what we find:

• The level of income inequality for individuals is essentially unchanged over time, holding flat within a fairly narrow range.
• Once we begin combining individuals into families, we see a rising trend in income inequality over time.
• Likewise, once we combine individuals into households, we also see a rising trend in income inequality over time.

Since income is predominantly earned by individuals (note that your paycheck is made out to you, not your spouse, roommate, parents or children), the only way these patterns can exist is if high income earning individuals are increasingly combining together over time to form families and households, or as is more likely the case, low income earning individuals are becoming less and less successful in forming families and households.

To see what we mean, here are the median incomes for individuals, households and families:

• Individuals: $26,588
• Households: $50,054
• Families: $60,974

Note that the median income for families is more than twice that for individuals. That indicates that high income earners are indeed combining together to form these social units more often than low income earners.

Now, going back to the apparently unchanging level of income inequality over time for individuals, the only meaningful conclusion from data that can only be driven by economic, rather than social, factors. Russian physicist Ivan Kitov did the heavy lifting in calculating the population distribution functions that apply for the Personal Income Distribution (PID) in the United States. Here's what he found in looking at the same data since 1994:

Figure 4 depicts the population density functions, PDFs, for the years between 1994 and 2010. First, the estimates presented in Figure 1 were normalized to the total population for a given year. Then we reduced the income scale for individual years, i.e. from 1995 to 2010, by the total growth of real GDP. This allows normalizing the curves to the total income, i.e. we reduce all scales to that of 1994. Finally, we normalize the portions of populations in given bins to their widths for individual years and obtain the population density functions. Figure 4 proves that the distribution of personal incomes has not been changing over time in relative terms, i.e. a given portion of population always has a given portion of total income.

Some might say that the Census' data doesn't provide a full picture of the income distribution in the U.S., preferring instead to point to the IRS data for tax collections, which includes the effect of capital gains (much of which may be traced to once-in-a-lifetime events.)

As it happens, Kitov has examined that data too, going back to 1996 (when the IRS began reporting its statistics of income online):

Let’s take a look the data they used to prove the increasing inequality. The IRS measured incomes are usually referred to. Without loss of generality, we have retried “Table 1.1 Selected Income and Tax Items, by Size and Accumulated Size of Adjusted Gross Income, Tax Year 2009”. (Any other year between 1996 and 2009 is good as well.) This Table lists individual incomes in various income bins from $1 to $10,000,000. There are also 8274 reports of income above $10,000,000. We cannot use the latter incomes but definitely can plot the population density function for all incomes below $10,000,000. Figure 2 depicts the whole PID and Figure 3 its high income portion. The higher incomes are well approximated by a power low with an exponent of -3.07. (The difference of ~1.0 from the exponent for the BLS PDF (-4.1) is completely explained by the normalization to the total personal income reported by the BLS. It means that both exponents are identical.) It is likely that the same power law is valid at incomes higher than $10,000,000. Hence, there is no significant deviation (except measurement errors) from the Pareto distribution even at very high incomes and our extrapolation of the BLS incomes along the power law is valid for the calculations of Gini coefficients.

Conclusion: there is no growth in income inequality. Krugman et al. definitely exaggerate. As a Russian physicist, I have no political or any other emotional prejudice to the income distribution in the USA. I just calculate it.

Different data sets measuring the income distribution in the U.S., competent (and solid) analysis, same conclusion: there has been no meaningful change in the income inequality found among individuals for nearly the last two decades. The increase in the income inequality found for families and households over that time is the result of social, rather than economic, factors.

President Obama's Debt Achievement

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How does President Obama's contribution to the national debt compare to those of other modern Presidents?

To answer that question, we're going to express the United States' total public debt outstanding in the more human scale terms of U.S. households, for which the U.S. Census provides data going back to 1967. Our chart below summarizes what we find when we calculate the national debt per U.S. household for each of the U.S. government's fiscal year from 1967 through the just ended fiscal year for 2012, both in nominal and real (inflation-adjusted) terms.

Here's how much each President since 1969 added to the U.S. national debt burden per household on average for each year they were in office, after adjusting for inflation (note: we're omitting the data for 1967 and 1968 since it coincides with only part of Lyndon Johnson's term in office):

After accounting for the effect of inflation, we find that President Obama is racking up national debt at a rate that's nearly three times faster than any other U.S. President in the modern era since 1969.

That's quite an achievement.