German election: a question

Should Greek, Italian etc citizens not also have a vote in deciding who will be Germany's Chancellor?

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Doomster report: be prepared

Graph: Karl Denninger (2013)

Karl Denninger graphs the S&P share index against total public and private debt in the US and concludes that, volatility aside, they match.

If, for some reason, the ratio between debt and GDP reverted to that of 1980, the implication is that the S&P would approximately halve (which would be the third time since 2000, as I've said before). The consequences for pension funds etc would be dire, and this is the point at which, perhaps, the printing presses start to roll in earnest. Houses have inflated and popped, so have the banks, all that's left is the governments themselves - and the value of your savings.

As reported by Zero Hedge, Marc Faber predicts "a total collapse, but from a higher diving board", so he sees gold as an safeguard, not an investment in the usual profit-making sense: "I always buy gold and I own gold. I don't even value it. I regard it as an insurance policy. I think responsible citizens should own gold, period." Back in May, James Dines took much the same view: cash plus gold as a backstop.

But as I said last year, if "total collapse" means what it says, gold won't help either - otherwise we wouldn't have found the Lichfield Hoard buried in a Midlands field hundreds of years later. Which is why Investment Watch now reminds us of the need to prepare for truly serious emergencies.

I know some "preppers", but part of the preparation is not telling people who they are. It is going on.

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Great news for dieters

 

From the UK's Daily Mail of Thursday, 19th September 2013 (print edition).

 

"The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language" - G.B. Shaw (allegedly).

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Education: where does the money really go?

"Paddington", a maths professor, writes to a local newspaper in Ohio:

Public higher education is under attack from all sides. Conservatives criticize the concept of spending money on it, and appear not to recognize that it is an investment in our future. Liberals decry the rising costs to the students. The reforms which are proposed all focus on ‘increasing efficiency’ by trying to cut the expense of teaching, apparently under the impression that this is the largest part of the budget.

How does this belief compare with the facts?

Locally, we have a recent news item which states that the full-time faculty at The University of Akron will be awarded a 2% raise pool, amounting to $1.3 million. This means that the salaries of full-time faculty total about $65 million per year, with perhaps another $15 million for fringe benefits, and $10 million for part-time faculty. That sounds like a lot, until one considers that the total University budget is $360 to $450 million.

In short, the people who do the teaching and research (which are the reasons for the existence of the institution) have direct costs which are at most 25% of the budget. Compare this to a typical local school district, where teaching salaries and benefits are at least 60% of the total.

It sounds quite efficient, doesn’t it?

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Temperature trickery

During the late seventies and early eighties our lab looked after a small weather station on behalf of the Met Office. We logged rainfall, snow, temperature, sunshine hours and every now and then a chap from the Met Office would collect the data.

All data was hand written of course and ever since climate change came to be such a hot topic I’ve often wondered how reliable it was. In my view those far off days have something to tell us about historical data and the fact that it was collected and transcribed by people, not automated instruments. Historical protocols and historical behaviour – a minefield of unknowns.

To record daily maximum and minimum temperatures, we used a simple max/min thermometer housed in a wooden Stevenson screen. Every day someone from the lab would read the two temperatures, write them down and reset the thermometer.

If we missed a day, which happened occasionally for a variety of reasons, then the Met Office chap would nag us about it when he collected the data, look up a temperature record of the nearest station to ours and insert the readings into our record. He once told me that this was standard procedure – they didn’t accept incomplete data.

Yet at the time the data was fit for purpose, although that doesn’t mean it was fit for a far more tightly specified purpose dreamed up decades later.

In those days nobody knew that such temperature records would one day be used to justify global political decisions on energy policy. Nobody knew that long term temperature changes of less than one degree centigrade would acquire such dramatic significance.

Not that our station was ever likely to figure in these games I hasten to add. It closed some time ago. I’m merely dredging up some memories to highlight the tricky nature of historical temperature data. Stripping off some of the gloss you might say. There is a lot of that in climate science.

For example, our thermometer was never recalibrated. I’m sure it was checked before being installed, but even simple thermometers change over time and today it would be regularly calibrated against a certified standard. Ours wasn’t - ever.

Apart from the unknown condition of the thermometer, how many errors were made by people who took the readings and wrote them onto sheets of paper come wind, rain or snow?

In my experience, scientists are reluctant to take cognisance of human error even for highly uncertain factors such as historical and somewhat loosely defined protocols. Yet the historical global temperature record and our evidence of recent warming relies on such data.

Were the protocols and equipment used my lab capable of detecting a small temperature rise over a century?

One degree? No.

Two degrees? Doubtful.

Three degrees? Maybe.

Of course this is merely my opinion. I don’t actually know and neither does anyone else. Nobody can go back and calibrate our thermometer, review the protocol we followed and audit the way we followed it. There are some things we could do such as comparing our record to the record of nearby thermometers, but is that sufficient to detect small long term changes?

Taking the wider view, are we able to estimate such changes from long historical records based on protocols not designed for that purpose? Always assuming written protocols were used of course - and what about calibration facilities? How many were calibrated against the equivalent of NPL standards? Some? A few? None?

Yet in terms of time span, manual surface temperature records derived from a range of old and possibly dubious measurement protocols account for at least two thirds of our surface temperature record for the past century.

Note – this post gives an excellent insight into the pitfalls of temperature measurement.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Albert Burgess: Loyalty vs. Treason 2

Winston Churchill said in 1938, "This country breeds a type of man who is very well educated and highly intelligent, who think they know best. They can't help themselves: they always commit treason."

Such a man was Edward Heath. He thought he knew what was best for this ancient Kingdom. He was wrong, of course. Traitors are never right. Heath as an Englishman and as Privy Councillor had an absolute duty of loyalty to this Kingdom.

So what did he do?

Edward Heath was tasked by McMillan to carry out negotiations for the United Kingdom to join the European Economic Community, for entirely the wrong reason De Gaulle said "non".

When he became Prime Minister Heath was determined to take us into the EEC at any cost. Sir Con O'Neil, our chief negotiator, was told not to negotiate but to accept whatever the French offered. Sir Con O'Neil coined the phrase "Swallow it whole, swallow it now".

The laws which prevented our membership of the EEC had already been removed: the Act of Provisors was repealed in the Criminal Law Revision Act 1948, and the Act of Praemunire was repealed in the Criminal Law Act 1967. The way was now clear for Heath to commit high treason.

But how did he go about it? The first thing he did was to contact a man named Norman Redaway who worked at the Foreign Office in a department called the Information Research Department, which during the Second World War was known as the Office of Strategic Services. Redaway was a spook. Heath asked him if he could change the mind of the British people and Redaway said he could do that. He needed help and he got it from a man named Anthony Royle.

Did Heath know what he was doing? The answer is yes, he sought advice from Lord Kilmuir the Lord Chancellor. His advice is in this letter*:

 

http://www.parliament.uk/briefingpapers/commons/lib/research/rp2010/RP10-079.pdf

 (N.B. This document is no longer on the Parliamentary website at that address!)

They set up a conspiracy designed to subvert the English Constitution, which is the major crime of sedition, and at this level of sedition an act of high treason. And to hand this Kingdom lock, stock and barrel to a foreign power the EEC was the major crime of high treason.

But how to do it? First, organized breakfast meetings at the Connaught Hotel in London; these meetings were attended by Government Ministers, MPs, the British Council for the European Movement and top people from ITV, the BBC and the national newspapers. At these meetings the media people were persuaded to remove all their front line anti-EEC reporters and to replace them with pro-EEC reporters.

They set up a department in a back room of Chatham House where five people wrote thousands of letters all purporting to come from people like you and me, every letter saying what a great idea this EEC was; but the IRD did not have a facility to distribute them, so they were distributed to the central offices of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal parties and the British Council for the European Movement. They got them signed and sent to the letters pages of the news outlets. By this method they completely skewed the public’s perception of what was best for the Kingdom and themselves and their families.

Heath also asked the Foreign office what effect joining the EEC would have on Britain. They told him it would mean surrendering powers to govern to a foreign power, and taking on foreign laws.

So both Lord Kilmuir and the foreign office knew it would mean surrendering powers to govern to a foreign power, Lord Kilmuir saying this had never been done. Of course it had not, because to do that is treason. The Foreign Office went so far as to say, "It is important for our politicians to get positions of authority in the European Parliament, ready for the day it takes over.”

The rest, as they say, is history, Heath is dead; others are not. Our job now must be to reverse this ongoing treason by putting on trial the surviving members of Heath’s machine. In order to do that, check our website: www.acasefortreason.org.uk.

________________________
* Slightly edited copy of the text - from here - is as follows (apologies for the odd line breaks, caused by pasting from pdf):

RESEARCH PAPER 10/79

Appendix 2 Letter to Edward Heath from Lord Kilmuir, December 1960

I have no doubt that if we do sign the Treaty, we shall suffer some loss of sovereignty [...]
Adherence to the Treaty of Rome would, in my opinion, affect our sovereignty in three
ways:-Parliament would be required to surrender some of its functions to the organs of the
Community; The Crown would be called on to transfer part of its treaty-making power to
those organs; Our courts of law would sacrifice some degree of independence by becoming
subordinate in certain respects to the European Court of Justice.

(a) The position of Parliament

It is clear from the memorandum prepared by your Legal Advisers that the Council of
Ministers could eventually (after the system of qualified majority voting had come into force)
make regulations which would be binding on use even against our wishes, and which would
in fact become for us part of the law of the land. There are two ways in which this
requirement of the Treaty could in practice be implemented:-Parliament could legislate ad hoc on each occasion that the Council made regulations requiring action by us. The difficulty would be that, since Parliament can bind neither itself nor its successors, we could only comply with our obligations under the Treaty if Parliament abandoned its right of passing independent judgment on the legislative proposals put before it. A parallel is the constitutional convention whereby Parliament passes British North America Bills without question at the request of the Parliament of Canada; in this respect
Parliament here has in substance, if not in form, abdicated its sovereign position, and it would
have, pro tanto, to do the same for the Community.

It would in theory be possible for Parliament to enact at the outset legislation which would
give automatic force of law to any existing or future regulations made by the appropriate
organs of the Community. For Parliament to do this would go far beyond the most extensive
delegation of powers, even in wartime, that we have experienced and I do not think there is
any likelihood of this being acceptable to the House of Commons.

Whichever course were adopted, Parliament would retain in theory the liberty to repeal the
relevant Act or Acts, but I would agree with you that we must act on the assumption that
entry into the Community would be irrevocable; we should have therefore to accept a
position where Parliament had no more power to repeal its own enactments than it has in
practice to abrogate the Statute of Westminster. In short, Parliament would have to transfer to
the Council, or other appropriate organ of the Community, its substantive powers of
legislating over the whole of a very important field.

(b) Treaty-making Powers

The proposition that every treaty entered into by the United Kingdom does to some extent
fetter our freedom of action is plainly true. Some treaties, such as GATT and O.E.E.C.,
restrict severely our liberty to make agreements with third parties and I should not regard it as
detrimental to our sovereignty that, by signing the Treaty of Rome, we undertook not to make
tariff or trade agreements without the Council’s approval. But to transfer to the Council or the
Commission the power to make such treaties on our behalf, and even against our will, is an
entirely different proposition. There seems to me to be a clear distinction between the
exercise of sovereignty involved in the conscious acceptance by use of obligations under our
treaty-making powers and the total or partial surrender of sovereignty involved in our cession
of these powers to some other body. To confer a sovereign state’s treaty-making powers on
an international organisation is the first step on the road which leads by way of confederation
to the fully federal state. I do not suggest that what is involved would necessarily carry us
very far in this direction, but it would be a most significant step and one for which there is no
precedent in our case. Moreover, a further surrender of Parliamentary supremacy would
necessarily be involved: as you know, although the treaty-making power is vested in the
Crown, Parliamentary sanction is required for any treaty which involves a change in the law
or the imposition of taxation (to take only two examples), and we cannot ratify such a treaty unless Parliament consents. But if binding treaties are to be entered into on our behalf, Parliament must surrender this function and either resign itself to becoming a rubber stamp or give the Community, in effect, the power to amend our domestic laws.

(c) Independence of the Courts

There is no precedent for our final appellate tribunal being required to refer questions of law
(even in a limited field) to another court and – as I assume to be the implication of ‘refer’ to
accept that court’s decision. You will remember that when a similar proposal was considered
in connection with the Council of Europe we felt strong objection to it. I have no doubt that
the whole of the legal profession in this country would share my dislike for such a proposal
which must inevitably detract from the independence and authority of our courts.

Of these three objections, the first two are by far the more important. I must emphasise that in
my view the surrenders of sovereignty involved are serious ones and I think that, as a matter
of practical politics, it will not be easy to persuade Parliament or the public to accept them. I
am sure that it would be a great mistake to under-estimate the force of the objections to them.
But those objections ought to be brought out into the open now because, if we attempt to
gloss over them at this stage, those who are opposed to the whole idea of our joining the
Community will certainly seize on them with more damaging effect later on. Having said
this, I would emphasise once again that, although these constitutional consideration must be
given their full weight when we come to balance the arguments on either side, I do not for
one moment wish to convey the impression that they must necessarily tip the scale. In the
long run we shall have to decide whether economic factors require us to make some sacrifice
of sovereignty: my concern is to ensure that we should see exactly what it is that we are being
called on to sacrifice, and how serious our loss would be.

http://www.parliament.uk/briefingpapers/commons/lib/research/rp2010/RP10-079.pdf

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Institutional warmism

Following yesterday's post about serialising some of John Cook's rebuttal pieces, the comments have persuaded me that I should continue putting them up in the shooting gallery.

But before I do, some other points and a request:

1. First, I need to make it clear that the comments I received privately were certainly not aimed at censoring Cook. But the depth of feeling in them clearly signalled that something has gone wrong in the academic debate on climate change.

2. As he himself says, Cook himself is not a climate scientist - his specialism is physics - and his site was set up pro bono by his lights as a convinced global warmist. Further, he says he "has no affiliations with any organisations or political groups." So he is not to be accused of having stymied anyone's career in climate science, or taking some rich man's shilling. When one glances around the internet he does seem to polarise (that wasn't intended as a pun) the participants, because of his (as some see it) excessive assertiveness;  but one has to remember that Skeptical Science is intended for the public and so oversimplification is bound to be a hazard. 

What gave me pause was the obvious - and surprising to me - strength of sentiment provoked by Cook, who appears to stand as a symbol of the triumphalism of the pro-warmist camp generally. And even in the comments to my related post yesterday, there are mutual insults and imputations of improper motive and so on. There is a level of tension that makes liberal suspension of judgement and bilateral respect very hard to sustain, and so I wondered whether it was worthwhile airing the discussion if all it achieved was to see the air thick with brickbats - "hooligan's confetti".

But this has led to another issue: what is causing this level of acrimony? There is smoke drifting over the hedge, and I'd like to see where the fire is.

I don't think it's just to do with disagreements over the truth. It's something to do with vested interests of various kinds, that's clear enough, and I'll be glad if anyone is willing to get down to specifics rather than generally tarring the other side as mercenary scoundrels.

That's my first request: specifics on conscious bias. While keeping an eye on libel laws, can anybody really show that someone has sold their integrity, instead of simply being funded for an opinion they had anyway?

And my second is about bullying and skulduggery. What evidence (if any) is there that people on either side have been leaned on or otherwise unfairly treated for not toeing the line? Is there any case where fervent revolutionaries or cold reactionaries have gone too far, and (in career terms) employed Stalin's maxim "no man, no problem"?

If you feel you can help, please contact me in confidence at wved@ymail.com. It will be very useful in getting the background - or the underlay - to this most contentious subject.

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