Quotulatiousness

December 20, 2010

Boris trims his sails

Filed under: Britain, Environment, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:56

James Delingpole has a bit of fun at London mayor Boris Johnson’s expense:

. . . what sounds like a fervent declaration of faith in the Warmist creed may on closer examination be a perfectly innocuous statement of the bleeding obvious cunningly calculated to appease all Boris’s rentseeking chums in the City who stand to make a fortune from the Great Carbon Scam and would be most displeased if the Mayor of London were to show signs of wobbling.

Yet wobbling is, of course, exactly what Boris is doing. Or rather — remember, this is the man so ambitious he makes Alexander The Great look like Olive from On The Buses — he is slyly repositioning himself to take advantage of the inevitable collapse of public faith in the Great Anthropogenic Global Warming Ponzi Scheme.

All those thousands of people who’ve had their Christmas ruined as a result of Heathrow airport’s pathetic inability to operate in the snow; all those thousands who have been stranded shivering for eight hours at a stretch on our motorways; all those thousands who can’t use their local municipal sports club because the staff — as is the wont of public sector workers — can’t be bothered to allow themselves to be inconvenienced by the inclement conditions; all those people who are going to look at their electricity and gas bills come the end of next quarter and be appalled beyond measure by how increasingly unaffordable they are; all those businesses big and small whose profits are going to be seriously dented by our political class’s ongoing failure to address our transport infrastructure (and no I don’t mean the irrelevant high-speed rail link to Birmingham; I mean the much bigger problem of our shortage of runways at the airports serving London).

All these thousands of people add up to a lot of disgruntled voters ready to ask hard questions about everything from the size of the state (so patently NOT being shrunk to any significant degree by Cameron’s useless Coalition of the Unwilling) to the three main parties’ position on “Global Warming”.

December 7, 2010

Chinese official acknowledged that official data is unreliable

Filed under: Bureaucracy, China, Economics, Railways — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:32

I’ve been saying this for years now: China’s official GDP and associated economic numbers are just not reliable:

A senior Chinese official said in 2007 that much of the country’s local economic data are unreliable, according to a leaked diplomatic cable published by the WikiLeaks website.

The official, Li Keqiang, was at the time Communist Party secretary of the northeastern province of Liaoning, and has since been promoted to vice premier. Since landing that position, he has overseen many of the central government’s efforts to improve the quality of its economic statistics, which continue to face many questions over their accuracy and consistency.

[. . .]

China’s Foreign Ministry has said it will not comment on the content of the diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks. The leaked cable reports comments Mr. Li made in a dinner in Beijing with then-U.S. Ambassador Clark Randt on March 12, 2007. His remarks focused on the challenges of administering the province of Liaoning, which because of its legacy of failed state-owned enterprises was burdened with a large number of unemployed workers.

“When evaluating Liaoning’s economy, he focuses on three figures: 1) electricity consumption, which was up 10% in Liaoning last year; 2) volume of rail cargo, which is fairly accurate because fees are charged for each unit of weight; and 3) amount of loans disbursed, which also tends to be accurate given the interest fees charged,” the cable says.

“By looking at these three figures, Li said he can measure with relative accuracy the speed of economic growth. All other figures, especially GDP statistics, are ‘for reference only,’ he said smiling,” the cable reads. “GDP figures are ‘man-made’ and therefore unreliable,” the cable paraphrases Mr. Li as saying.

As I said back in February, the reason for the made up numbers is inherent in the Chinese system:

In this way, the PLA stopped being just the customer/end user. They cut out the middleman and absorbed the entire supply chain. The PLA became a significant economic player in the Chinese industrial economy . . . and this is still true today. The generals aren’t formally in charge, but they own the companies that do military production.

So what? So let’s look at how a civilian corporation’s incentives differ from one owned directly by the army. In a civilian corporation, the CEO runs the business with an eye to generating the largest profit possible while staying (for the most part) within the law. A CEO who deviates from this to ride a favourite hobby horse will eventually face the wrath of the stockholders who want that maximized profit. There are natural limits on how much freedom to invest in uneconomic activity any CEO will be given. Sensible stockholders don’t try to micromanage the firm, but do raise questions if too much of the company’s efforts are devoted to things clearly not related to the company’s long term benefit. Company accounts can be rigged, for a time, to show misleading results, but eventually (Enron, Worldcom, etc.) the truth will out.

A Chinese firm that’s owned by the army? Profit may be nice, but the “CEO” reports to a different master: the guys with the guns. The company accounts will show exactly what the guys with the guns want them to show . . . and the oversight and auditing committee members carry submachine guns. You’re told that your target is 10% growth? Don’t you think that the reported result will be at least 10%? Because your life may depend on the reported results being acceptable.

As my former virtual landlord says, this is one of my hobbyhorses:

November 27, 2010

Privatize Ontario’s power

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:00

Lawrence Solomon savages the Ontario government’s recently announced $87 billion energy plans:

This week, the Ontario government published its Long-Term Energy Plan. Under it, the province and Ontario Hydro’s successors are committing to more uneconomic nuclear power projects and more uneconomic alternative energy generation contracts, but on a far bigger scale than the old Ontario Hydro ever undertook. The grave the government is digging this time is big enough to bury the province as well as the power sector.

Where the four reactors at Darlington cost $14-billion, the new long-range plan calls for $33-billion, more than double the previous price tag, and that’s to build just two new reactors and refurbish 10 old ones, including those at Darlington. That $33-billion estimate is more a wish than a firm projection. Nuclear reactors, notorious for their cost overruns, typically come in at two to three times their original estimates. Darlington, originally estimated at $3.5-billion, came in at four times its estimate. Refurbishments likewise run up the bills, as seen in the two Bruce reactors at Lake Huron. In 2005, the estimate was $2.75-billion. Today, the refurbishment is already three years behind schedule and $2-billion over budget. No one would be surprised to see the $33-billion estimate balloon to $99-billion or more by the time the plan is complete.

Amazingly, the nuclear boondoggle may not represent the biggest blowout. Where the original alternative energy contracts with private power producers cost $6-billion, the new round of alternate energy projects envisaged in the Long-Term Plan cost more like $27-billion — or more like $45-billion once the supporting infrastructure for these alternative projects is factored in. This $45-billion,like the $33-billion estimate for nuclear power, may itself be a gross underestimate, partly because the supporting infrastructure is subject to cost overruns, partly because the bulk of the new alternative energy projects — unreliable wind and solar — are likely to require expensive backups to avoid blackouts.

His suggested solution? Scrap the huge plan, which on past evidence will be far more expensive, slower, and less effective than they predict. The better solution? Privatize the grid. Allow market forces to set electricity rates.

October 23, 2010

“How Many Australian Politicians Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb?”

Filed under: Australia, Bureaucracy, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

None:

The (tangential) Free-Range issue here is this: Why are we increasingly subject to rules and regs that have nothing to do with REAL safety and everything to do with litigation, worst-case-scenario-fantasizing and good ol’ CYA? It’s a time, money and morale-waster, with the added benefit of turning competent people into incompetent cowards. Just like so many rules and regs are implementing with kids: No, children, you CANNOT ride your bikes to school. No, children, you CANNOT do your own chemistry experiments. No, children, you CANNOT babysit/whittle/get a paper route/smile at a stranger. It is all TOO DANGEROUS.

And someday we will wonder why no one in the world (except, perhaps, electricians) can do anything.

H/T to Walter Olson.

October 21, 2010

I still think they should call it the “milliVolt”

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:06

The much-less-than-promised Chevy Volt goes on sale next month. If it had been a private company delivering so few of their promises, lawsuits or regulatory sanctions would be forthcoming. Because it’s a product of Government Motors, we’re being told that the “Electric Edsel” is not fraud, it’s fantastic:

Government Motors’ all-electric car isn’t all-electric and doesn’t get near the touted hundreds of miles per gallon. Like “shovel-ready” jobs, maybe there’s no such thing as “plug-ready” cars either.

The Chevy Volt, hailed by the Obama administration as the electric savior of the auto industry and the planet, makes its debut in showrooms next month, but it’s already being rolled out for test drives by journalists. It appears we’re all being taken for a ride.

[. . .]

So it’s not an all-electric car, but rather a pricey $41,000 hybrid that requires a taxpayer-funded $7,500 subsidy to get car shoppers to look at it. But gee, even despite the false advertising about the powertrain, isn’t a car that gets 230 miles per gallon of gas worth it?

We heard GM’s then-CEO Fritz Henderson claim the Volt would get 230 miles per gallon in city conditions. Popular Mechanics found the Volt to get about 37.5 mpg in city driving, and Motor Trend reports: “Without any plugging in, (a weeklong trip to Grandma’s house) should return fuel economy in the high 30s to low 40s.”

Car and Driver reported that “getting on the nearest highway and commuting with the 80-mph flow of traffic — basically the worst-case scenario — yielded 26 miles; a fairly spirited backroad loop netted 31; and a carefully modulated cruise below 60 mph pushed the figure into the upper 30s.”

As I said in an earlier post:

I’m very much in favour of an economical electric car: the Volt doesn’t meet that definition. It’s been rushed to market for political, not for economic reasons. It’ll be kept in the market regardless of sales figures for the same reason: it allows Barack Obama and senate leaders to point at the Volt as tangible proof that they care about the environment and reducing American dependence on foreign oil.

October 15, 2010

Reduce effectiveness of bird mincers by painting them purple

Filed under: Environment, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:52

Your neighbourhood bird mincers may soon be even more of an eyesore . . . they may need to be painted purple:

A study has revealed that a wind turbine’s colour affects how many insects it attracts, shedding more light on why the turbines occasionally kill bats and birds.

Scientists say that turbines, most commonly painted white or grey, draw in insects. These then lure bats and birds — as they pursue their prey — into the path of the turbine blades.

Support for the idea comes from another study showing that bats are most often killed by turbines at night and in summer, when insects are most abundant.

So, after testing, which colour works best to deter insects? Purple.

October 8, 2010

QotD: Green power play

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Environment, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 14:23

The Swedish retail giant IKEA announced yesterday it will invest $4.6-million to install 3,790 solar panels on three Toronto area stores, giving IKEA the electric-power-producing capacity of 960,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year. According to IKEA, that’s enough electricity to power 100 homes. Amazing development. Even more amazing is the economics of this project. Under the Ontario government’s feed-in-tariff solar power scheme, IKEA will receive 71.3¢ for each kilowatt of power produced, which works out to about $6,800 a year for each of the 100 hypothetical homes. Since the average Toronto home currently pays about $1,200 for the same quantity of electricity, that implies that IKEA is being overpaid by $5,400 per home equivalent.

Welcome to the wonderful world of green economics and the magical business of carbon emission reduction. Each year, IKEA will receive $684,408 under Premier Dalton McGuinty’s green energy monster — for power that today retails for about $115,000. At that rate, IKEA will recoup $4.6-million in less than seven years — not bad for an investment that can be amortized over 20.

No wonder solar power is such a hot industry. No wonder, too, that the province of Ontario is in a headlong rush into a likely economic crisis brought on by skyrocketing electricity prices. To make up the money paid to IKEA to promote itself as a carbon-free zone, Ontario consumers and industries are on their way to experiencing the highest electricity rates in North America, if not most of the world.

Terence Corcoran, “Power Failure”, Financial Post, 2010-10-08

September 29, 2010

Taser shotgun shell

Filed under: Randomness — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:15

In a word, YIKES!

That is something nobody wants to be hit with, especially fired out of a shotgun.

The “X12” Taser shotgun is made by Taser International of Scottsdale, Arizona and fires a battery-packed 12-bore shell with forward-facing barbs that deliver a debilitating electric shock.

In August last year, New Scientist revealed research that showed an early version of the weapon was both difficult to aim accurately, putting victims’ eyes at risk, and sometimes delivered a shock for more than five minutes, rather than 20 seconds.

A five minute jolt rather blurs the line between non-lethal and kinda-sorta-lethal, doesn’t it?

September 2, 2010

Rival electric car manufacturers already positioning for dirty ad campaigns

Filed under: Environment, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:27

Lewis Page rounds up the GM-versus-Tesla ad campaigns of the near future:

As US motor mammoth GM gears up for the launch of its plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt, it has applied to trademark the term “range anxiety” — meaning the fear suffered by battery-car owners regarding their ability to get home again after a given journey. Upstart battery car maker Tesla Motors has issued a panicky and unconvincing statement in response.

[. . .]

GM feels that “range anxiety” is a major reason why its original EV-1 battery car of the 1990s failed.

”We’ve been here before,” says GM marketing honcho Joel Ewanick. “We have first-hand experience with what the issues are.”

In short, the difficulty with an all-electric battery car is that there is little certainty of actually being able to complete any journey even close to the vehicle’s rated range, as battery endurance is highly variable — and manufacturers can’t publicise the worst-case (or even perhaps the likely-case) figures. If they did, nobody would ever buy their products.

[. . .]

Meanwhile, reputable Swiss boffins have lately pointed out that in fact a VW Golf powered by one of the new, super-low-emission injected turbodiesels is responsible for less carbon emissions over its lifespan than one with a li-ion battery running on typical grid power.

So, to wrap up the discussion briefly, nobody will be buying Tesla Roadsters or Government Motors Volts for their economic virtues: they’ll be buying them as expensive status-signalling devices to show off their (real or imaginary) environmental awareness.

August 25, 2010

LED lightbulbs won’t save energy in the long run

Filed under: Economics, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:00

Not because they aren’t more efficient than ordinary lightbulbs, but because of the inevitable side-effects of human nature:

Federal boffins in the States say that the brave new future in which today’s ‘leccy-guzzling lights are replaced by efficient LEDs may not, in fact, usher in massive energy savings.

This is because, according to the scientists’ research, people are likely to use much more lighting as soon as this becomes practical. The greater scope for cheap illumination offered by LEDs will simply mean that people have more lights and leave them on for longer.

“Presented with the availability of cheaper light, humans may use more of it, as has happened over recent centuries with remarkable consistency following other lighting innovations,” says Jeff Tsao of the Sandia National Laboratory. “That is, rather than functioning as an instrument of decreased energy use, LEDs may be instead the next step in increasing human productivity and quality of life.”

According to Tsao and his colleagues at Sandia, the fraction of gross domestic product spent on lighting has remained constant as candles were replaced by oil lamps, then again in the transition to the gaslight era, then yet again with the arrival of electric lighting. What changed with each of these innovations was that lighting became more and more common.

Hands up, anyone who didn’t see this one coming.

August 3, 2010

The Chevy Volt should be called the milliVolt

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:54

Unlike the fond hopes of politicians, the Chevrolet Volt isn’t quite the revolutionary breakthrough in transportation we’ve been promised:

The electric Chevrolet Volt will roll off the assembly lines next year.

The price is a staggering $41,000 US — a BMW price for a Chevy.

Price isn’t the only clanger here. The car can only travel for about 65 km on an electric charge. After that, it fires up a gas-powered engine like everything else on the road. So much for reduce, reuse, recycle — this is a car with two engines. Hummers only have one.

And Hummers don’t have a massive battery that’s about as easy to dispose of when the car’s finally done as a tub of PCBs.

The Volt is more than twice as expensive as its non-electric counterparts. It can’t drive far enough to get from one city to another. And when your Volt has a low battery, it literally takes hours to recharge. So maybe it will ready to go when you need it. Maybe it won’t.

I checked; the name “Smart Car” is already taken, but “Dumb Car” is available.

GM knows this. Which is why it plans to produce only 10,000 of them next year.

I’m very much in favour of an economical electric car: the Volt doesn’t meet that definition. It’s been rushed to market for political, not for economic reasons. It’ll be kept in the market regardless of sales figures for the same reason: it allows Barack Obama and senate leaders to point at the Volt as tangible proof that they care about the environment and reducing American dependence on foreign oil.

July 10, 2010

More hidden legal changes in Ontario

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Environment, Government, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:33

Kelly McParland finds yet another sneaky change to Ontario law the government tried to slip in un-noticed:

Here’s a great story about the absurdity that ensues when a government tries to force-feed an impractical policy to the population for the sake of environmental posturing.

If you don’t want to read the original, here’s a capsule version:

Ontario sponsors a program to encourage small users of solar power by giving them subsidies. Except it has proved so popular, especially in rural areas, the province quietly slashed the subsidy late last Friday. (You remember Friday, right — quiet sleepy day between Canada Day and the weekend? If you really really wanted to release something at a time no one would notice, you couldn’t pick a better day. Not that the McGuinty government would deliberately try to hide what it was doing, of course. Oh no). The result is that people who bought into the program won’t get nearly the amount they expected. Now they’re upset — having discovered the ruse despite the government’s effort to hide it — and are bombarding MPPs with complaints.

Great eh? That’s good old Dalton McGuinty — absolutely, totally dedicated to energy conservation and environmental improvement, as long as it’s costing someone else money and not him.

This is yet another example of how the McGuinty government loves to sneak in unpopular changes and hope nobody notices for a while. Stealth nanny state tactics? Ladies and gentlemen, I present your Ontario government.

Update, 12 February 2011: The poor folks who took up the McGuinty government’s solar power subsidy are being shafted again:

Added to McGuinty’s problems with wind are similar signs of trouble on the solar front. After strongly encouraging individual solar projects, and offering outrageously generous pricing on solar-generated power, the province unexpectedly announced last summer it was slashing the rate it would pay on some projects. On Friday, hundreds more Ontarians were told that installations they’d erected at the behest of the government can’t be connected to the provincial grid because of technical problems. Rural residents, some of whom have invested large amounts in solar generating operations, will be left high and dry.

[. . .]

Angering rural voters, and battering your credibility with the environmental crowd, aren’t great ideas if you run a government that faces an election in eight months. So it’s no wonder that Ontario’s Liberals sought to hide the bad news by releasing it when (they hoped) no one was watching. But the excitement in Egypt won’t last forever, and eventually people will notice that Ontario’s government, once again, has been forced into a humiliating retreat at considerable trouble and cost to individual Ontarians.

June 17, 2010

Spain finds its “green” energy unsustainable

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Europe, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:20

Spain can’t afford to subsidize all those “green” jobs anymore:

Dead broke Spain can’t afford to prop up renewables anymore. The Spanish government is cutting the numbers of hours in a day it’s prepared to pay for “clean” energy.

Estimates put the investment in solar energy in Spain at €18bn — but the investment was predicated, as it is with all flakey renewables, on taxpayer subsidies. With the country’s finances in ruins, making sacrifices for the Earth Goddess Gaia is an option Spain can no longer afford. Incredibly, Spain pays more in subsidies for renewables than the total cost of energy production for the country. It leaves industry with bills 17 per cent higher than the EU average.

[. . .]

“Sustainability” has been the magic word that extracted large sums of public subsidy that couldn’t otherwise have been rationally justified using traditional cost/benefit measures. Spain paid 11 times more for “green” energy than it did for fossil fuels. The public makes up the difference. The renewables bandwagon is like a hopeless football team that finishes bottom of the league each year — but claims it’s too special ever to be relegated.

Of course, the lesson won’t be learned by other countries or regions . . . Ontario recently signed on to a similar kind of deal with Samsung. But Ontario taxpayers are getting a bargain: the jobs being created under this scheme will only cost $303,472, compared with the eye-watering $774,000 the Spanish jobs cost.

April 12, 2010

New “green” jobs to pay over $300K

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Environment — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 15:49

Oh, wait. Sorry, that should be will cost over $300K:

The Government of Ontario recently signed a $7 billion no-bid contract with two Korean companies to supply wind and solar power to the province. Officials claim the backroom deal will boost “green” industry and job creation. But it’s hard to fathom how the additional employment can possibly be beneficial when each new manufacturing job will cost taxpayers a whopping $303,472. Nor do dramatic increases in electricity rates constitute much of a bargain.

Having failed on his pledge to shutter all coal-fired plants in the province by 2007, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty evidently has sought a grand green gesture that would appease the global warming alarmists. Executives of Samsung C&T Corp., in concert with the Korean Electric Power Corporation, were understandably eager to cooperate.

The agreement commits the province to buy wind and solar energy from the two companies at artificially high rates. It also extends to Samsung and Korean Power preferential access to the transmission network at the expense of independent wind power producers. As if either provision won’t adequately punish Ontarians, McGuinty also has pledged to override local zoning laws in locating new wind farms and transmission corridors.

Update, 12 February 2011: Even Premier McGuinty can only deny financial reality for so long:

Times of international turmoil are great moments for domestic governments to make important announcements they don’t want to be noticed. Especially if the announcement involves a sudden reversal in policy that could seriously embarrass the government.

So Friday afternoon was an ideal time for Ontario’s Liberal government to take a big chunk of its alternative energy program and chuck it overboard. Attention was riveted on Egypt, where spectacular events were unfolding. The perfect opportunity for Premier Dalton McGuinty to engineer yet another major reversal, while paying a minimal price among voters.

After years of touting wind projects as a critical piece of the alternative energy puzzle, the government let slip — very quietly — that offshore wind projects are no longer part of the game plan. Turns out there just isn’t enough scientific evidence that offshore wind projects do a lick of good, said Brad Duguid, the energy minister.

February 25, 2010

“Ontario will have the highest electricity rates in North America”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:32

Parker Gallant is quite disturbed by the most recent annual report from Hydro One, Ontario’s government-owned electrical transmission corporation:

No major media reported on Hydro One’s annual statement to “investors,” as the company puts it, even though the report is a dog’s breakfast of warning signs and bizarre trends that spell trouble.

[. . .]

As debt rises, Hydro One’s debt-to-equity ratio weakened from 1.71:1 to 1.91:1. It borrows money to pay for capital costs surrounding the province’s Green Energy Act and puts the company at risk of a debt ratings downgrade, which will drive borrowing costs up.

Return on equity is down to 8.7% from 9.7% in 2008, indicating an overall decline in the value of the company. Return on assets fell to 3% from 3.5%. As a result, the dividend payment to the province was $188-million, down 27.4%. But the CEO says the company is “on target.”

Even though revenues and costs are rising, and profit falling, Hydro One handles less electricity — 139.2 terawatts, a decline of 6.4%. The cost of distribution per terawatt was up by 14.9%. Operations and maintenance costs keep rising as power transmitted declines. The number of employees rose 7.7%. Since 2002, when the company had 3,933 employees to distribute 153.2 terawatts, total employment has jumped 38% to 4,400 to distribute 9% less power. Are these additional 1500 staff working in the field or at head office working on rate increase applications?

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