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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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An ongoing scandal that suffers more than ordinarily from careful ignoral.
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Trawling for Treasure July 28, 2024
Life in the sea relies quite a lot on the sea bed so how do you feel about these latest proposals from a consortium of Australian mining companies? Should they really be given carte blanche to ‘hoover up’ nickel and cadmium nodules on the sea floor anywhere they want within two hundred miles of the British coastline?
I should warn you it is not disputed the methods they intend using will destroy the sea floor’s productive capacity for approximately fifty years. No other methods are even on the table despite there being less destructive, albeit more expensive, ways of doing it.
You’re fine about it, are you? You buy the argument the world is so desperately short of nickel and cadmium, outside China, it’s a reasonable trade-off, do you? Hell, there’s plenty of British territorial sea bed to go round, right? There’ll always be loads unaffected yet or coming back to life after fifty years. Plus, you’ll be relieved to hear, the British government has designated certain small inshore areas as being ‘off limits’ and no doubt the companies will respect this.
I’ll put your views on file in case such a proposal is ever made. There are no such proposals, I made them up. But for a good reason.
| Some things get our dander up, some don’t. Try this one for size: |
Trawlers, dredgers and scallop boats smash the sea bed to bits every time they run their gear over it to dislodge plaice, turbot, scallops etc. It takes about fifty years before everything gets fully back to the status quo ante. This affects all fish, not just bottom-dwellers, because fry need the haven of a fully-functioning sea bed.
There are other ways to catch fish but they are more expensive than the the ‘sea-floor bashing’ method so if only Britain takes action it will likely mean the end of the British fishing fleet.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Oh no, he's not back on water companies, is he?
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It’s not water under this bridge July 31, 2024
Do you want to drink from the free enterprise tap?
I got into a mild argy-bargy with a fellow Medium contributor over our joint water-supplier, Thames Water. They’re on the verge of going bankrupt and we’ll have to drink Evian.
All the other water companies are hanging on but only by dumping more and more sewage into our rivers rather than building more and more treatment plants. My Medium man (and everyone else) seems to think the water companies are the villains.
| They are, but only kinda. |
In the old days we got our water from our local publicly-owned utility, ‘the water board’. It provided us with cheap if not very tasty water, it took away our bodily effluxions without fuss, and we didn’t even have to pay for it. Well, we did but only as an unnoticed line on our general rates bill for dustbinmen, librarians et al. Everything was sweetness and light except oftentimes
| our rivers were middlingly polluted. |
None of the water boards had enough money to do anything much about it and the government only stepped in if things got so bad it caused a stink. Especially if it was the Thames where the politicians are only yards away and have very long noses.
| We denizens of the Thames Valley didn’t have to pay a sou for the clean-up. |
We now motor on to the 1980’s and Britain is in the throes of Thatcherite privatisation mania. Whither water? It’s a natural monopoly, everyone has to have it, it’s an old technology, it can only be monetised with great difficulty and there’s a limited upside for opportunity profit.
| Not what anyone would call promising territory for free market principles. |
But, even so, there is no reason not to put the water industry in private hands. Leftists are completely daft when it comes to who is better suited to providing a service to customers in exchange for money. Is it civil servants or is it hard-nosed capitalists? I’ll give them a clue, it isn’t civil servants.
* Increased demand meant water ceased to be a matter of distribution but a question of conservation
* Global warming and new weather patterns meant too much water and/or too little water any time of the year but most years
* The amenity industry took off — rivers were being used by everyone from kingfisher fanciers to rough swimmers so they had to be clean
* Agriculture was increasing the use of fertilisers which inevitably reached the rivers in greater quantities
* Intensive animal rearing was dumping swill in the rivers (especially organic and free range animals who couldn’t be kept in proper purpose-built factory units)
| None of these were problems any PLC could not handle in its sleep. |
You just increase the price of your product and do the needful. Except for one thing: the customers were no longer paying for water in their sleep. They weren’t facing increased rates and having hard words with the local council, now it was having to pay a relatively whopping bill from Thames Water or United Utilities or whoever.
| And it wasn’t clear who you swore at. |
The water companies for being grasping capitalists?
The regulator, Ofwat, for allowing them to be grasping capitalists?
The government for allowing the regulator to allow it?
Ourselves for being bellyaching cheapskates?
| The one thing the Great British Public is known for is its sense of fair play. |
There was no question, it was the water companies. They weren’t even British for goodness sakes. They were pension funds in Ontario, Dubai and China who had bought into the industry on the basis that providing water and taking away sewage were nice, dependable little earners that could be left in the hands of professional managers, who had been running it in their sleep since the nineteenth century.
| Except now they couldn’t, it had all become political. |
If no-one was prepared to pay the bucks to bring the water industry kicking and screaming into the 21st century, who was going to?
* the public kicked and screamed at the government
* the government had a quiet word with the regulator
* the regulator leant quietly on the managers of the water companies
* the managers quietly dumped more and more sewage into the rivers
* the owners quietly started dumping their investment.
| But naturally they extracted as much money as they could |
while they still could, by way of bonuses and dividends. Rather than build all the new infrastructure which wasn’t going to benefit them any, they would be long gone. The regulator and the politicians were completely out of their depths and let it happen. (He was from the atomic energy industry, they were from central miscasting.)
| However, no great harm will be done |
because, when it is time to take the water companies ‘back into public ownership’, they won’t be worth what the pension funds paid (but they will still be showing a profit of sorts). Then it will be the job of the British government to spend billions and billions renewing the leaking pipes, upgrading the sewage works and what have you.
| I don’t know whether they will. |
I don’t even know whether they should, I’m a big fan of less than pristine rivers, hosepipe bans and low water charges. But we’ll muddle along somehow.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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A bit heartfelt for me. I drop my pose from time to time.
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Things can only get better August 3, 2024
If only they weren’t getting worse
You have probably noticed — everyone has — that the world is headed for a pretty grim future, climate-wise. Hell, according to the news every day, it’s already arrived.
You have probably noticed — everyone has — that far from getting better, every metric appears to indicate that things are getting worse. The only argument is over how fast.
You have probably noticed — everyone has — that the world keeps holding climate change conferences at which everybody agrees to do stuff and either they don’t or it makes no difference if they do. Or it turns out to have made things worse.
You are probably calling for another conference — everyone is — because things can’t go on like this. The only argument is over where to hold it.
You probably won’t listen to me — nobody ever does — when I say it is essential to stop holding climate change conferences. Right now. Before it is too late.
There is a lot we don’t know about climate change but one thing we have discovered, by statistical iteration over many years, is that holding conferences about climate change not only does not address the problems of climate change but they give the illusion that the problems of climate change are being addressed. This is the worst of all outcomes.
I will turn my mind to what we do instead as soon as the essential pre-condition — no more climate change conferences — is achieved. Hell, I’ll do better than that, I will do so when I observe the first tiny step towards achieving this interim goal. I therefore call on the British government to announce they will not be attending the next one.
So you can see that ain’t never going to happen.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I decided to launch my first ever practical proposal. I intend to waive my ten percent finder's fee.
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Calling All Philanthropic Billionaires August 31, 2024
And no, that’s not a contradiction in terms
If there’s a billionaire out there who really wants to help the Third World and doesn’t mind not doing all those things that get avalanches of fawning publicity like feeding people, battling disease and protecting furry animals, but doesn’t especially help the Third World to develop, they might think about becoming
The one thing that is pretty much guaranteed to lever a developing i.e. a non-developing country into a truly developing one, is a decent transport infrastructure. In the old days, in our day, this meant canals and railways, nowadays it means roads.
This might seem a bit 101 but third world countries can’t do it for themselves. That’s not surprising, we couldn’t do it for ourselves between the Romans leaving and the Industrial Revolution arriving. That’s more than a thousand years. But we didn’t have philanthropic billionaires to kickstart the process.
So, billionaires, ask yourselves why the Industrial Revolution happened coevally with canals being built. It was not because canals lowered the cost of shifting bulk raw materials thereby raising both demand and supply. Mining companies and central governments do that kind of thing all the time in the third world without noticeable benefit
| except to mining companies and central governments. |
As it happens the first British canal, the Bridgewater, was built by a mining company but it proved so profitable in its own right, non-mining companies started building them. The British government was not involved. As soon as canals beget canals, as soon as there is a nascent canal network, everyone along the way starts to benefit. Everyone benefiting is a.k.a. a developing country.
| But why you? Where do philanthropic billionaires fit in? |
That’s simple. Hardly any British canal actually made a profit. They were built via financial finagles during ‘canal manias’. But they still did the job. They are like roads in that respect. Roads don’t make a profit either.
| They just help everyone along the way. |
If you have a quick butchers at any third world country you’ll know their governments can’t build them. You’ll also know that NGO’s and First World countries have been pouring money in since time immemorial without noticeably affecting development because they can’t build them either.
| But you can. You’re a philanthropist, you’re supposed to be losing money. |
Naturally, I understand your annual charity budget would hardly run to a single decent road, never mind a network. That’s why I said ‘turnpike tycoon’. You’re a bleedin’ tycoon, aren’t you? You understand all about ‘seed money’ and ‘matching investment’ and ‘franchising’ and ‘profit for profit’. You won’t be building a road, you have to come up with a model for building networks of roads.
| And that model doesn’t usually involve turnpiking. |
Getting the user to pay for the roads they use is almost never profitable. That’s why there are so few turnpikes in the world today.
| Except you can make them profitable. |
Your annual charity budget will run to topping them up to ensure they are. People in the third world will be just dying to get onto your gravy train by building now-profitable turnpike roads. They’ll do all the heavy lifting, you just have to be there holding their hands every step of the way because
| It won’t happen unless you are. |
Leastways we’ve got many, many decades experience of watching developing countries not developing for want of a decent transport network that nobody (else) seems capable of providing. You might as well give it a bash, you must be fed up to the back teeth doling out ineffectual philanthropy year after year.
| What have you got to lose? |
Silly question, I suppose, in the circumstances but developing the Third World will go some way to justifying your miserable existence even if (and this I guarantee) you won’t get any thanks for it. But you won’t mind that, there’s only so much fawning publicity one man can bear. And Mrs Gates of course.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Probably the most important thing ever to appear on medium.com. It got twenty-two 'views', eleven 'reads' and earned me sixty-five cents. I shudder to think what it cost the earth.
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There is no such thing as El Niño September 12, 2024
Academics are fond of coming up with imaginary causes to explain things they can’t explain.
‘Experiencing a drought, sir? That’ll be El Niño.’
‘Experiencing a flood, madam? That’ll be El Niño.’
‘Nice out, is it? You wait for El Niño.’
If you ask academics how precisely El Niño, an unusually warm body of water moving west to east in the central Pacific, has caused (a) a drought in Australia and (b) a flood in China, they will (c) show you a map with lots of arrows on it and (d) lapse into 'academese', a language full of words that are sort of familiar, sort of not, and which employs the passive tense more frequently than in normal speech patterns.
There is no point in getting into an argument with them because you can be quite sure their explanation will be impeccable, drawing on well established scientific principles and commonly observed phenomena. Do not ask for a second opinion because every other academic will agree with the first academic.
Above all do not enquire whether El Niño is real because that really upsets them. That’s my job, I’m an applied epistemologist. We are specially trained to encounter the collective ire of academics and live to tell the tale.
| So are there episodes of unusually warm water flowing west to east in the central Pacific? |
Yes, there are. Currents have fluctuating temperatures in all parts of all oceans and the central Pacific is no exception. There will be periods when the water is warmer than average, periods when it is colder than average, interspersed with periods when it is just plain average.
| What is so special then about the central Pacific? |
For one thing it is adjacent to California where an unusually large number of oceanographers are concentrated. Oceanographers on the lookout for subjects they can write papers about, a necessary step for career advancement. Especially subjects which advance the cause of oceanography in the fiercely competitive academic world by showing how useful oceanography is to the world in general.
| Is their local oceanographic warm periods in any way remarkable? |
Nobody really knows the answer to that because the central Pacific is the only large stretch of ocean that has been studied in sufficient detail, with the possible exception of the Gulf Stream, which flows up the eastern coast of the United States and where there is another concentration of oceanographers.
The easterners would likely say, vis à vis Gulf Stream temperature variations, something along the lines of, “Can’t see it particularly but you go ahead, we’ve got our own fish to fry.” However
| It may well be that the central Pacific really is uniquely subject to more than ordinary changes in temperature. |
An applied epistemologist would point out
* the Pacific is the largest ocean in the world
* the central Pacific is the widest part of that ocean
* the closest part to the equator and
* since the world only turns one way there is no reason to suppose eastbound currents in the central Pacific wouldn’t be subject to the largest temperature fluctuations.
We would ask the experts, “Have you run the numbers in any kind of systematic way to isolate the factors responsible,” and without waiting for an answer we would continue, “No, thought not.’
| Is El Niño a regularly occurring event? |
Ah, now we come to the nub. El Niño events would be of no great interest unless they caused events which are of interest — droughts, floods and what have you. So it has to be present some of the time and absent some of the time.
Otherwise it would be just like the boring old Gulf Stream, always warm, always making the west coast of Scotland habitable (no, really). Or the boring old Humboldt Current, always cold, always bringing the anchovy shoals to Chile.
| Which is where ‘El Niño’ started life. |
Occasionally the anchovy shoals did not arrive. Some years, it seems, the Humboldt just wasn’t cold enough. As the shoals did not show up around Christmastime, they named these anchovy-droughts in honour of El Niño, the Christ child. A bit harsh, I thought he was supposed to be one of the good guys.
But anyway some bright spark in California noticed that these events somewhat correlated with the warm water up their way and a hypothesis was launched.
| El Niño was adopted as a memorably colourful name for when these unusually warm bodies of water were moving toward California. |
There is nothing remarkable in the two El Niño’s being connected:
* all oceans have a system of interconnected currents
* all oceans have warm currents, flowing from the equator to the poles
* all oceans have cold currents, flowing from the poles to the equator
* only the Pacific is large enough and positioned fortuitously enough to have currents that flow laterally at tropical latitudes and are therefore neither warm nor cold
* if the Humboldt Current is unusually warm, there will presumably be some kind of connectedness with warm water further north, but
| To be useful, to be other than an observable phenomenon, the whole thing has to be predictable. There has to be an identifiable cycle of some kind. |
Only there isn’t. Like most, if not all, climatic events it is a chaotic situation. This did not slow the oceanographers up one bit. Once they had the bit between their teeth all they had to do was to record the time between El Niño events
| and declare them to be cyclical. |
True, sometimes it was a short cycle, sometimes it was a long one. Sometimes it was necessary to call a mini-El Niño a full blown one, sometimes not an El Niño at all. It was a Goldilocks judgement. Not too many, not too few, just enough to look like a cycle.
It was impossible to refute this conclusion statistically. The study of Californian El Niño’s was in its infancy so the sample was incredibly small. There was no saying whether we are in the middle of an El Niño spike or, indeed, an unusual run of not having El Niño’s. There could even be cycles within cycles of El Niño’s. Who’s to say until they’ve put in the grunt work?
“Look, just get off our backs, will you? We’re doing our best here and we’re working on a shoestring as it is. El Niño research is no walk in the park, I can tell you. Out in all weathers. We’re just doing our bit to help the world, OK? Are you in favour of droughts and floods or something? I bet you are. I know your sort.”
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