Cell count

3D rendered image of translucent cells dividing

Our bodies contain approximately 10 quadrillion cells (10 x 10^15). In addition, we are host to a further 100 quadrillion bacterial cells.

Each of our cells (well, over 99.99% of them at least) contain a string of DNA almost 2 metres long with 3.2 billion base pairs (where a base is one of adenine (abbreviated A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T)).

Each cell typically contains twenty thousand different types of protein and a minimum of 100 million protein molecules.

From: Bill Bryson: A Short History of Nearly Everything

Oil Sands

 Fort McMurray Oil Sands, Canada

From Wikipedia:

However, the world's largest [oil sands] deposits occur in two countries: Canada and Venezuela, each of which has oil sand reserves approximately equal to the world's total reserves of conventional crude oil.

In numbers:

Conventional crude reserves: 1.75 trillion barrels
Canadian + Venezuelan oil sand reserves: 3.6 trillion barrels

It isn't clear if these reserves are those at a given price, eg today's $90 per barrel, or not.

Nissan Leaf calculations

Wikipedia: Under its five-cycle testing, the United States Environmental Protection Agency found the Leaf's energy consumption to be 765 kJ/km (34 kWh/100 miles)

This is 340Wh/mile. A 1x1m solar panel in Aberystwyth yields about 200  kWh/year at 20% efficiency (200 / 0.34 = 588 miles). So 6,000 miles a year in a Nissan Leaf would require about 10m² of solar panels.

The SAP calculator gives a 2.4kWp system for 2,000 kWh/year.  At Solarbuzz prices of €3.09 per watt this is about €7.4k for modules, say €14.8k installed. This is about £12.5k at today's exchange rate. With a FIT of 41p/kWh this is an approx 15 year payback. Solarbuzz also shows cheapest module price in Germany of €1.56. Again doubling for installation, this would give about a 7.5 year payback.

DECC's 2050 Energy Calculator

DECC have recently published an on line calculator for various energy scenarios up to the year 2050 (thanks Susanna for the link!). A friend of mine said they couldn't get onshore wind to be a significant component of any scenario. I played around with it a bit and by choosing the minimum demand scenario (1000 TWh per year) and the 'Heroic effort' wind numbers, I get onshore wind at 13% and offshore wind at 43%. Not insignificant.

DECC 2050 Pathway

Onshore wind 130 TWh/yr:

Offshore wind 430 TWh/yr:

Aberystwyth at 633 mph?

What's this? A new land speed record? No, it's speed at the circumference of the earth as it rotates once every 24 hours.

The circumference of the earth at the equator is approx 24,000 miles giving a speed of 1000 miles at the equator. Using a cosine equation and putting in Aberystwyth's latitude of 52.4N we get 633 mph.

Equation:

circumference = 2 x Pi x R x Cos(Pi x 52.4/180) where R = radius of the earth = 3963 miles

Source: Ask A Scientist

World's biggest truck?

Liebherr T 282B mining truck

This fine example of German engineering, the world’s largest earth-hauling dump truck, has an empty weight of 203 metric tons, a load capacity of 365 tons, and a wheelbase of 22 feet.  It’s powered by a 90-liter diesel engine that puts out 3,650hp.  The air-conditioned cabin sits eighteen feet above the ground.

And the fuel tank holds 1600 - 2000 gallons.

Source: The Munchkin Wrangler

Good vibrations

Need a word to describe how positive you feel? Maybe a word from this list will help:

AFFECTIONATE compassionate friendly loving open hearted sympathetic tender warm ENGAGED absorbed alert curious engrossed enchanted entranced fascinated interested intrigued involved spellbound stimulated HOPEFUL expectant encouraged optimistic

CONFIDENT empowered open proud safe secure EXCITED amazed animated ardent aroused astonished dazzled eager energetic enthusiastic giddy invigorated lively passionate surprised vibrant

GRATEFUL appreciative moved thankful touched INSPIRED amazed awed wonder JOYFUL amused delighted glad happy jubilant pleased tickled EXHILARATED blissful ecstatic elated enthralled exuberant radiant rapturous thrilled

PEACEFUL calm clear headed comfortable centered content equanimous fulfilled mellow quiet relaxed relieved satisfied serene still tranquil trusting REFRESHED enlivened rejuvenated renewed rested restored revived

Source: Centre for NVC (Non-violent communication).

If you're not feeling this way now, maybe you could say 'I want to feel amazed; I want to feel fulfilled' etc.

291 mph electric vehicle

Street Legal?

Ohio State University claims another electric speed record with the battery powered Buckeye Bullet. 291 mph. Source: Autoblog Green

What do I need?

Here's a list of possibilities:

CONNECTION acceptance affection appreciation belonging cooperation communication closeness community companionship compassion consideration consistency empathy inclusion intimacy love mutuality nurturing respect/self-respect

CONNECTION safety security stability support to know and be known to see and be seen to understand and be understood trust warmth PHYSICAL WELL-BEING air food movement/exercise rest/sleep sexual expression safety shelter touch water

HONESTY authenticity integrity presence PLAY joy humor PEACE beauty communion ease equality harmony inspiration order AUTONOMY choice freedom independence space spontaneity

MEANING awareness celebration of life challenge clarity competence consciousness contribution creativity discovery efficacy effectiveness growth hope learning mourning participation purpose self-expression stimulation to matter understanding

From the Non-violent communication (NVC) website.

Hmm, I think I might be happier labelling these as 'wants' rather than 'needs'. Maybe they're interchangeable? Or desirable without being necessary? Maybe I don't want to be labelled as a 'needy' person? :)

500-mile EVs by 2020

Tesla Roadster

The Tesla Roadster runs on laptop batteries. Lots of them. Martin Eberhard, co-founder of Tesla, is predicting that EV's will have a 500 mile range by 2020.

Eberhard says that five years ago Tesla were using 1.4 amp-hour cells. Now the same size cell is available in 2.9 amp-hours with 3.4 amp-hours coming soon. This is amazing progress, driven by global sales of 2 billion laptop batteries a year.

Some biomass numbers

Miscanthus harvesting

Energy crops and wood chips/pellets can be burnt for heat or to generate electricity. Miscanthus yields about 15 tonnes per hectare and 4,200 kWh/tonne gross or 1,680 kWh/tonne net (at 40% efficiency). This is 25,000 kWh per hectare per year. According to David MacKay's Hot Air, each person in the UK uses approx 18 kWh (of electricity) per day or 6,570 kWh per year. Therefore each hectare of Miscanthus provides enough electricity for about 4 people.

The area of the UK is approx 24M hectares so we would need about 58% of the UK planted in Miscanthus to provide current electricity use.

Update: primary energy consumption per person in the UK is about 125 kWh/day (MacKay again). This includes all fossil fuels + wind + hydro. But not electricity generated from fossil fuels? NB: this would need 2 hectares of Miscanthus per person or 500% of UK land area!

Update 2:
Google's data browser has the World Bank showing UK electricity consumption at 6,122 kWh per person per year, or 16.8 kWh per day.

We are dreaming the world into being

More from Gill Edwards:

... does this mean that you don't have to do anything? Just sit back and dream, peel a few grapes and wait for your gifts? On the contrary, you are here to revel in being alive! To fill your days with wondrous experiences and stimulating conversations and loving relationships and sensual pleasures. To create the lifestyle of your dreams. To follow any joyful impulses, and throw yourself passionately into projects that feel exciting or visionary. To contribute to the world in whatever way feels delightful or inspiring to you. Open yourself fully to live and love...

Life is a Gift, page 144.

Gill Edwards: the emotional ladder

The emotional ladder, as described in  Gill Edwards'  book, Life is a Gift (page 44):

• Love, joy, passion, trust, gratitude, vision, enthusiasm, clarity, intuitive knowing, freedom, empowerment
• Optimism
• Hope, contentment
• Pessimism, boredom
• Frustration, irritation, impatience
• Overwhelm, worry, disappointment, doubt
• Blame, anger, self-righteousness
• Hatred, rage, envy, jealousy, need to control
• Guilt, insecurity, feeling unworthy, self-sacrifice, feeling trapped or controlled
• Fear, grief, dis-empowerment, depression, despair

Gill says it's unrealistic to go from  the bottom of the ladder to the top in just one step; we may need to go one step at a time...

Powering the world via solar CSP: a map

How much land would it take to produce the world's total electricity? According to this article, using CSP (concentrated solar power = mirrors + steam turbine) then the map would look like this:

What are we waiting for?

Labour questions government cuts

From the Guardian today:

Ed Balls, the shadow education secretary, said: "These warnings show why it is so risky for the government to be cutting public sector contracts now when the recovery in Britain is so fragile and people around the world are worried about a double-dip recession. David Cameron is misguided and wrong to say the most urgent priority for Britain is to slash the deficit. The most urgent priority should be to secure Britain's economic recovery by boosting jobs and growth."

I agree with Ed.

State of the Carbon Market

Point Carbon has just produced a report on the state of the carbon market. Here are some points from the first page:

• Point Carbon’s fifth annual survey shows general dissatisfaction with the Copenhagen outcome. Seventy percent of the 4,767 respondents were either “very dissatisfied” or “dissatisfied” with the outcome. This sentiment was evenly shared across major countries.
•  For the first time, an outright majority of respondents say the EU ETS has caused emission reductions in the companies they represent. Forty-three percent of all respondents think the EU ETS is the most cost-effective instrument for reducing emissions in the EU, against 20 percent who disagree with this notion.
•  More EU ETS companies appear long in phase 2, based on the survey results. This year, 28 percent of respondents said their company had an EUA surplus in 2008-12, up from 24 percent in 2009 and 15 percent in 2008. The cement/lime/glass and pulp/paper sectors had the highest reporting of surpluses.
•  EU ETS companies know little about their phase 3 allocation. Twenty-four percent of EU ETS respondents said they were “very uncertain” and 13 percent said they had “no idea” how many free EUAs they would get in phase 3. However, 68 percent thought they would be short EUAs in phase 3. Furthermore, one-quarter will bank at least part of their credit limit into phase 3.
•  Fifteen percent of respondents have seen fraud, embezzlement or corruption in connection with a CDM or JI project. We further see that 28 percent of respondents in China have reported improprieties in connection with CDM projects, whereas respondents based in Brazil reported seeing the least fraud.
•  Expectations for a global deal are down. Among our respondents, 37 percent expect a global deal in Cancun, against 59 percent for Copenhagen in last year’s survey. Only 27 percent of respondents based in the US expect a Mexico deal, while Japan (47 percent) and Brazil (58 percent) have the highest shares of respondents expecting a deal in Cancun.

•  Expectations for US cap-and-trade by 2015 are down to 61 percent of respondents. This is the lowest in three years, and down from 81 percent in last year’s survey. But among respondents in Japan, the share expecting a Japanese ETS is up from 61 to 80 percent.
•  Respondents expect a global carbon price of $35 or €31 in 2020. This is down from $39 and €35 in 2009.

So can we say the EU ETS is working?  I am encouraged that more than twice as many respondents believe the ETS is the most cost-efficient way of reducing CO2 than those who don't. The price of CO2 (EUA) on the ETS market is currently just over 14EUR per tonne.

Mach 5 = 3800 mph

Do you need lithium-ion batteries that can survive Mach 5? I had no idea that we were creating (unmanned) planes capable of flying at 3800 mph...

Link

Solar update

First Solar's factory in Frankfurt. Note the reels of flexible solar material.

Less than 5 weeks ago, I did a post on Solar's Great Leap Forward. In the meantime, the manufacturing cost of Chinese conventional PV has dropped from $1.28 to $0.85/W (source). This is a 77% reduction in 6 years.

And today I saw that First Solar have reduced the manufacturing cost of their thin-film PV from $1.08 to $0.76/W (source: Big Gav). This is an 83% reduction from the price 6 years ago.

These are really significant price drops! Hopefully Lomborg (and ironically George Bush) will be proved right and renewables will cost less than fossil fuels by 2035.

Who are we? What are we?

“The more we delve into genomics the more we become uncertain as to who and what we are,” said Lipkin. “Fragments of retroviruses represent up to 10 percent of the human genome. The number of bacteria on and in our bodies outnumber human cells by 10 to 1. These are not silent passengers.”

 Wired Science

Sea level rises

Update 20 Jul 2011:
Latest figures are back to 3.2mm per year (+/- 0.4mm). 32 cm (12.6 inches) per 100 years.
-----------------------------------

Update 17 Jun 2011:
Latest figures are  still 3.1mm per year (+/- 0.4mm).
-----------------------------------


Update 14 Nov 2010:
Latest figures are  3.1mm per year (+/- 0.4mm). Down from 3.2mm in July
-----------------------------------


The latest figures from Colorado University show a trend in sea level increase of 3.2mm per year (+/- 0.4mm). This is 32cm (or 12.6inches) per 100 years.

How damaging is just over one foot increase in a century? What are the odds it will be more than this, ie that the rate of increase will accelerate?

Warmest June since record keeping began

Dr Jeff Masters' weather blog reports:

June 2010 was the warmest June since record keeping began in 1880, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA's) National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), and was the fourth consecutive warmest month on record.

Ouch!

CO2: the rate of increase is increasing

Not only is the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increasing every year, but the amount by which it increases is increasing. It took approx 37 years to increase from 1.0 ppm to 2.0 ppm. At this rate, the trend line will hit 3.0 ppm in 2044.

Biomass (especially wood) for power generation

The Oil Drum today has a post by Luis de Sousa on the three types of electricity generation: base load, intermediate load and peak load. A guy named Hoover offered a considered response on the role of biomass for intermediate load. I particularly liked the fact that a ship-load of wood chips from the USA to the UK uses about 1.2% of the energy of the wood chips (assuming the ship returns empty). Here is Hoover's comment :

Hi Luis, thank you for that post. The role of mid merit plant (what you call intermediate load) is of course central in grid dispatch and is becoming ever more so with the rate of penetration of wind and other intermittent renewables. No grid can possibly hope to be stable without it, bearing in mind that mid-merit plant also provides most of frequency response and spinning reserve which is essential to match loads on a second to second basis - again ever more challenging with greater wind penetration.
In the UK, mid-merit has tended to be provided by mainly pulverised coal plant and older gas CCGT, and it has required most mid merit plant to go much further than simply ramping up and down. With a couple of exceptions all UK coal plants run 2-shift regimes (i.e. turn on and off every day) for 6 - 9 months of the year. In fact this year several coal plants 2-shifted right through winter although that has partly to do with running restrictions under the Large Combustion Plant Directive.

In a post fossil world, large circulating fluidised bed (CFB) boilers running on biomass are very well suited to perform this role. Due to the large inert mass of sand in these boilers they are very well suited to retaining heat during a 6-12 hour shutdown and re-starting quite easily. An appropriate fuel for these boilers is wood chip as it is low in chlorine, ash and heavy metals which make certain types of biomass challenging to combust.

You lightly dismiss "biofuels" as having a low EROI and being subject to land constraints, and these are both genuine worries with regards to certain types of biofuel, especially those that rely on primary agricultural outputs such as cereals or oilseeds. However they simply do not stack up for solid wood biomass, let me take the two points individually:

EROI:
The largest scale biomass boilers being contemplated are about 300MW net capacity, at this level these plants can achieve 40-42% net conversion efficiency, depending on the cooling that's available. There is not a lot of difference between a biomass plant and a hard coal plant, except that no boiler manufacturer today will go supercritical on biomass because it is a step too far to deal with alkali ash melting and corrosion at those temperatures at the moment. However, once they have more experience on with big boilers they will get there, probably by using additives to control the chemistry. A port based 300MW biomass CFB burning imported wood chip from North America (where there is massive surplus potential) has an EROI which is roughly similar to our current coal plants (burning Russian coal at an average net efficiency of 36%) and very slightly lower than an average aged CCGT burning Qatari LNG Siberian piped gas. As a rough rule of thumb the energy required to ship the wood chip (using panamax class wood chip carriers) is about 1.2% of the biomass energy in the hold assuming the ship returns empty. The energy consumed in harvesting, chipping, transport to port, loading and discharge is about the same again.

Land constraints:
The underutilised resource from existing European and Eastern North American working (i.e. not protected) forests that could be sustainably harvested or collected and supplied to a European port is around 250m tonnes (depending on who is doing the estimating, we have seen much larger figures used, but this one is much closer to what is realistically practicable). That would comfortably supply about 100 of the large 300MW boilers that I mentioned earlier or about 30GW if they were running baseload. However if they were 2-shifting with say a 40% loadfactor (typical of mid-merit coal plant in the UK today) that would be about 60 GW of plant. A very respectable % of Europe's mid merit needs.

However the real resource potential is South America and Africa where huge areas of degraded land (typically used for a short period for agriculture and then abandoned) exist which would be used for sustainable forest plantations. Brazil alone estimates about 110 m Ha of abandoned or unutilised agricultural land that would be suitable for forest plantations (i.e. there would be enough rainfall), energy optimised plantations (as opposed to the pulp fibre optimised variety where thee genetics are pushed to produce as much cellulose as possible) can easily achieve 60 tonnes per net planted Ha today (and likely much more in the future). Assuming 50% net to gross planted area on 110m Ha of land that would equal enough fuel for almost a terrawatt of 40% LF mid-merit biomass plant. That alone would be far more than enough to cover the mid-merit needs of the whole of Europe and South America, and doesn't take into account other vast areas of potential in South America and Africa.

I stress that this is all land that would literally benefit from having trees grown, even though it may be a mono-culture and therefore not environmentally perfect it would still prevent soil erosion and economic depredation on a massive scale (which usually leads to overexploitation of soils and other natural resources such as high biodiversity forests) and preserve the value of the land for the long term. Most of this land is not suitable for arable crops, or at least would take massive energy-intensive inputs to be so. Soil preparations are mainly potassium and phosphorous and other micronutrients, i.e. not heavy nitrogen. They can mainly be recycled from biomass ash. By the way, North America could already produce enough from existing sustainable forestry to meet its mid-merit needs.

Biomass is not "the answer" to future power needs. Rather it has a role to play role along side baseload nuclear, variable wind and solar, and flexible hydro. Although due to subsidy regimes, the first generation of large dedicated biomass plant will be baseload (the grid has all the mid-merit it needs for now with coal and gas and not enough low carbon generation) the future of biomass is to fill the mid-merit niche, while providing traditional “thermal” spinning reserve and frequency response. It is a vital role if we harbour any hope at all that power grids can be kept stable at acceptable prices in the future, and does not deserve to be so lightly dismissed.

Original post: http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/6720
Comment: http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/6720#comment-684137

BP's non-compliance and other stories

The US Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement are holding hearings into the Deep Horizon oil rig explosion. The Times-Picayune reports:

"The Deepwater Horizon's blowout preventer -- the key device for shutting off a wild oil well -- had a leak in the days before it failed to operate and BP did not comply with a federal regulation requiring the rig to suspend operations, a BP company man testified Tuesday."

- source: NOLA.com

And a followup comment from the Oil Drum:

"John Guide, BP's Well Team Leader, appears to be auditioning for criminal charges if anyone is. He not only failed to report the leaking BOP. He is the guy who over-rode BP engineers and Haliburton on the cement job and ordered them to proceed with 6 centralizers instead of the 21 Haliburton said was needed to ensure safe cement job.

BP's Drilling Engineering Team Leader Gregory Waltz was so concerned with what Brial Morel was about to do with his idea that the pipe would hang straight in the hole under gravity that he brought the issue to Guide's attention advising that they go with 21 centralizers. Waltz even went to the trouble of lining up all the needed centralizers and a plane to fly them to the rig the next day. Waltz noted that given their choice of casing design, they needed to listen to Haliburton to honor thier own risk modeling.

Guide did not care. All he cared about was saving a few bucks."

- source: The Oil Drum

I would not like to be in John Guide's shoes!

More on metal prices

I've revisited the graphs I produced for the post on Lomborg and Metal Prices and added trend lines to them. When Lomborg published in 2000, the trend was obviously down:

However, the trend for the ten years since then is definitely in the opposite direction, as the following graph shows:

Combining the two still shows an overall downward trend; Lomborg would argue that this will continue..

Civic involvement via the Internet

Clay Shirky gives a 13 minute talk on cognitive surplus (available spare time for creation) and how it can be used to create entertainment and civic value. His first example is from Kenya...

Lomborg on metal prices

Lomborg has a graph on page 138 of Skeptical Environmentalist showing metal prices since the mid 1950's. I have reproduced the essence of his graph below:

As you can see, prices are trending lower and support Lomborg's thesis that in the long run commodity prices fall. The picture is a little different though if you look at IMF metal prices since 2000:

IMF Commodity Metals Price Index Monthly Price

Combining 2000-2010 data with the original graph gives:

We can see that in the last decade, prices have exceeded and still exceed the highest values of the previous four and a half decades. Which way next?

What do atheists believe?

According to Wikipedia, atheism, in a broad sense, is the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. But logically, isn't this the same as saying atheism is the belief that there are no deities? My experience is that atheists don't like to be said to believe anything, even the non-existence of gods. Why is this?

Atheists believe in a random Big Bang followed by random evolution, with no reason or purpose and with no intrinsic meaning. Reason is deified and becomes the touchstone of credibility. Ken Wilbur describes this as 'flat-land' but Richard Dawkins and others take exception to this, citing their appreciation of nature, art and music.

Personally, I tend towards the belief that we are all one, we are all divine, and maybe that God is in all of us (and in everything). This would be panentheism. But life is a mystery and I am continually amazed at the miracle of our existence and our ability to contemplate and discuss philosophy and the meaning of life. I also tend towards Epicureanism: eat, drink and be merry. Or is that Hedonism? :)

Nice graphs from Google

I have just discovered Google's public data. This is a Google site which takes raw data from a number of sources and plots nice graphs, like the one above.

My personal electricity consumption is about 3000 kWh/year. The UK average of approx 6000 kWh/year includes public infrastructure usage eg pumping water, traffic lights and office/shop lighting.

An interesting graph would be energy consumption versus GNH (gross national happiness index). Google doesn't offer this yet...

Solar's Great Leap Forward

Update 23rd July 2010:
Last year (Chinese manufacturer) Yingli achieved an all-inclusive cost of $0.85 per watt! (source)

MIT's Technology Review has an interesting article on PV (photo-voltaic) solar panels. One Chinese company (Suntech's) production capacity has increased from 10 megawatts a year in 2002 to well over 1,000 megawatts today. The manufacturing cost has come down by a factor of about 3 (from $3.75/watt to $1.28/watt) in only 6 years:

Global installed PV capacity has gone from 1.2GW in 2004 to 8.7GW in 2009, an increase of 725% or approx 50% per year compounded See chart below). This capacity, at 25% production factor, results in approx 19B kWh per year.

Global electricity consumption in 2009 was about 3000 kWh per person (extrapolating from this graph), or about 21,000B kWh per year. So solar is less than a tenth of a percent at the moment. But at a 50% growth rate, it could be at 44% (of today's output) in 15 years, ie by 2025.

And if you believe Amory Lovins' graph, then energy consumption could be down a few percent by 2025 anyway. And we haven't even talked about solar thermal...

PS: Thanks Big Gav!

Zero Carbon, Nuclear free!

I like this RMI graph; it shows fossil fuel and nuclear energy declining to almost zero. I am a big fan of Amory Lovins and his RMI (Rocky Mountain Institute) think tank. I embrace his prediction of a zero-carbon, nuclear free USA (world?) by 2050. (click on image for bigger picture).

See also RMI's Reinventing Fire.

Reinventing Fire, the (6 minute) video is here:

Per capita grain

How much grain (including rice) do we grow each year? According to the UN's FAO's latest report (2010 outlook - PDF), global grain production for this year is estimated at 2.28B tonnes. We have approx 7B people on the planet so that's about 325kg each, just under 1kg per day.

How much grain do we need? Another FAO report says that 167kg of grain per year provides 75% of a person's 2100kCal daily requirement.

There is obviously enough food to go round; just not enough income to pay for it...

Budget: progressive or regressive?

Ed Miliband, for Labour, said: "It takes a long time to establish an honourable political tradition. But it takes a very short time to destroy it. Are [Lib Dems] still the party of Keynes, Beveridge and Lloyd George? We all know these three men would turn in their graves at the idea that the inheritors of the Liberal tradition were supporting this budget." - link

I'm disappointed that the party I voted for (Lib Dems) is backing the recent budget. I'm seeing arguments both ways that it is progressive and regressive. I think it's acknowledged that the attempts at deficit reduction are approx 75% spending cuts and 25% tax increases. I believe this is Tory ideology to shrink government as much as it can. I agree with Caroline Lucas (Green MP) that the public isn't being asked on whether to cut spending or raise taxes; it is being asked how to implement spending cuts...

Green Party on the budget

Alec points out that the party closest to my 'Budget Suggestions' post is the UK's Green Party.

Cuts “destructive and unnecessary” says Green Party leader

Caroline Lucas MP argues for 'fair taxes' to reduce the deficit rather than spending cuts. Some of her points include:

• Why cut 25% of the Inland Revenue when we have £28B in unpaid taxes and a possible extra £15B collected by re-opening local tax offices?
• abolish the cap on NI contributions
• tax capital gains at tax payer's marginal rate (usually 40%)
• The OBR indicates governments spending cuts of £100B over the next 5 years but none of this is necessary
• "the coalition’s cuts aren’t needed and that fairer taxes and the Green New Deal are"

The full (35 page PDF report) is here.

Budget suggestions:update

Well, the emergency budget has been and gone. Of all my proposals, the only one the Chancellor got anywhere near was the one to increase capital gains tax to 40%. Even here, the Chancellor fell short, raising the CGT to 28% (for higher rate tax payers). The threshold for paying no CGT at all remained the same at £10,100.

Budget suggestions

Tomorrow is UK emergency budget day. I quite like the idea of no spending cuts but instead increase taxes.My suggestions?

• raise capital gains tax (CGT) to 40% from 18%
• eliminate the £10k+ CGT tax-free allowance
• scrap the £40k cap on NI so everybody pays NI all the way to the top
• land tax: say £100 per hectare?
• carbon tax on areas not covered by the ETS, eg transportation fuels
• auction (or sell) the carbon allowances currently given to electricity producers under the ETS

Note: ETS is the EU Emissions Trading Scheme for CO2

Lomborg on grain

In his book, the Skeptical Environmentalist, Lomborg optimistically  believes that we have enough grain to feed people and that this will continue. I decided to see what grain production had done since the publication of his book in 2001. Lomborg has a graph showing grain production (more or less) increasing linearly from 1960 to 2000. He also included a FAO projection of a slight increased rate of growth (page 95). I derived the graph below from Lomborg's graph and the lates FAO figures. The actual rate of growth is even higher than forecast!

The world's net debt is exactly zero

The world's net debt is exactly zero. So if we're talking about particular parts of the world where it is positive then maybe we should be specific. And how do places with negative net debt get on (e.g. China, Germany). Also it hardly seems that some parts of the world will struggle endlessly with net debt: eventually they'll default or inflate the debt away. So how relevant is debt? 

The above comment caught my attention.  Is it true? For every debtor there is a creditor? Sounds plausible.  

So how relevant is debt? - this question reminds me of debates with Alec. I think it hinges around when debt collectors arrive at your door. Or borrowing costs go through the roof...

Reindeer & Malthus

The number of Reindeer on St Matthew Island was 29 in 1944. By the early 1960's the population was 6000. A few years later, and after a hard winter, the population crashed to 42.

Thomas Malthus (1766 – 1834) believed that the human population would grow faster than the food supply: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man". He has been proved wrong so far (for humans), but St Matthew's Island is an example of where he might be right (and the poster child for people inclined to a dieoff/overshoot/collapse viewpoint).

See also:

• THE INTRODUCTION, INCREASE, AND CRASH OF REINDEER ON ST. MATTHEW ISLAND
• Wikipedia: Thomas Robert Malthus

The rich get richer...

If you're earning £60k (marginal tax rate 40%) and get a pay rise to £80k, you will pay an extra £8,000 in tax and only get to keep £12,000 of your £20k increase.

On the other hand, UK Capital Gains Tax (CGT) is 18%, with a tax free exemption of £10,100. So, if you earn £60k and sell shares for a £20k profit, you pay tax of £1,800, ie you get to keep £18.2k of the £20k. (see HMRC)

But maybe this will change in the June 22nd budget?

UK Government Debt/Spending

Just discovered a good source for UK Government Debt/Spending statistics:

• Debt Bombshell public spending summary
• Data Sources for Debt Bombshell (Treasury, ONS etc)
  

Here's a table from the public spending page:

(£ billions)	2009-10	2010-11
Benefits and Pensions	195.5	202.6
Health	99.9	104
Education	66.4	69.2
Debt interest	27.2	42.9
Defence	38.7	36.7
Local government	30.1	30.8
Scotland	25.4	26.1
Law and Order	19.6	19.6
Wales	13.6	14
Northern Ireland	9.6	9.9
EU contributions	5.6	7.9
Transport	6.4	6.4
International aid	5.5	6.2
Other departments	127.9	125.4
Total government spending	671.4	701.7

I suppose you could say, not to worry, £42.9B is only 6% of £702B...

Update: 2009/10 income was £476B (H.M.Treasury) of which £42.9B would be 9%

Day 1

My friend Alec said I should start a blog rather than pester him with email. My interests include Peak Oil, Lomborg, Economics, Environment, Relationships, Self-help, Spirituality to name but a few.