Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here.
John Quiggin 
BHP economist on China’s poor longer-term growth prospects. Surprising that this honesty is on display as China is BHP’s major customer. China faces difficulties because of the longevity of privileged but uneconomic state-owned enterprise, a corrupted research and university sector and the centralist ideology of President Xi.
Many talented Chinese people are leaving China.
https://www.afr.com/world/asia/bhp-executive-criticises-xi-predicts-china-s-decline-20240327-p5ffqf
Harry Clarke
The ballooning expenditures on the NDIS – forecast to hit $100b by 2030 unless Bill Shorten can rein costs in (currently he his hedging on his 8% annual maximum growth target, current growth rates are 16%). These costs of course go somewhere – mainly to “billable hours” in the care sector and mainly to claims for autism disorders. The billable hours effect is underpinning our strong employment outcomes according to the AFR today:
“About 130,000 of the 437,000 people who gained work in the 12 months to February were employed in the NDIS-related sub-industries like allied health and non-childcare social assistance, according to new research from investment bank Jarden”.
In fact this increased NDIS employment masks a decline in private sector employment.
Bill Shorten is desperately trying to hive off the NDIS disaster onto the States but they don’t want a bar of that bottomless pit.
The simple fact is that providing incentives for those with autism will create more autism. Creating the opportunity for more billable hours will lead to more billable hours. A further factor expanding demand is the broadening of diagnosis of autism disorders by health care professionals but this cannot account for the Australian experience where the incidence of autism is much higher than in other comparable countries.
The lesson surely is to be careful about opening such social benefit doors. It is difficult to take benefits away from even a substantial proportion of the 646,000 Australians currently claiming under NDIS an average in 2022-23 of $65,000 per applicant.
The frustrating aspect is that many of those with real disability concerns are currently not gaining support. The benefits paid often seem to accrue to middle class families who know how to play the system rather than to migrant and poorer families who don’t.
Those who do get care are often left with a permanent link to a carer who sees no reason to break a lucrative arrangement. Getting people to learn to live with disabilities means less income from government coffers to families and to NDIS “billable hours” carers. It generally isn’t the prefered option by anyone other than the Treasury.
https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/almost-one-in-three-jobs-created-last-year-was-for-the-ndis-20240401-p5fgi4?utm_content=politics&list_name=5655EA70-F54A-4680-8E43-524D4E016C59&promote_channel=edmail&utm_campaign=before-the-bell&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=2024-04-02&mbnr=MTc0OTg4&instance=2024-04-02-06-00-AEDT&jobid=30360060
Harry Clarke
Harry Clarke makes a good case for reigning in the NDIS spending. But the more disturbing situation is the across the board waste of government expenditure. Simply put the way government spending is managed is inefficient and incompetent. Expenditure should follow a least cost approach in both the short term and long run. Only in this way can the financial burden of government be minimised on productive taxpayers in particular and the economy as a whole.
Australia has no record of highly efficient government expenditure. What was once called the “British disease” has certainly handicapped government expenditure in this country. The humour sketches on the highly acclaimed BBC Comedy TV series YES PRIME MINISTER spelt out this handicap in every episode. But one episode hit the nail on the head when a dog was found to be trapped on Salisbury plain. The comedy sketch had an army helicopter land to rescue the dog. The costs involved was the punchline.
Recently a similar waste of public money was recorded in Australia. The Prime Minister and the Energy Minister had a photo opportunity at the same regional location. Normally transport would be via the PM’s assigned RAAF plane. But instead the two members of cabinet took seperate small jets. No explanation was provided. But no minister moves around alone. The PM would have taken some of his staff and the Energy minister would have taken some of his staff. All this at the expense of the public purse.
That may be just one example or wastage. But there are also daily instances of permanent waste in government expenditure. Each member of parliament gets a salary, fringe benefits and other on costs. This adds to a per member total anverage employment cost of over $ 500 000 per year. But the waste does not stop there as each member of parliament get office staff. Now this can vary greatly but may average out at around $1 million per parliamentary member (this includes salary, benefits, on costs and desk space).
But there’s more wastage to come. Parliament house itself has a staff. This must be paid yearly for a sitting period that usually does not exceed 20 weeks per year. What exactly these workers do for the other 30 weeks is anyone’s guess.
The Canberra mentality in parliament house means that all expenditure grows exponentially on any government expenditure program. We need smaller government and more efficient expenditure guidelines.
Professor Eliot Jacobson tweeted on Apr 3:
And Professor Eliot Jacobson tweeted on Apr 4:
The latest 14-page communication, dated 29 Mar 2024, by James Hansen, Makiko Sato and Pushker Kharecha titled Global Warming Acceleration: Hope vs Hopium, includes:
Also on ‘tipping points’:
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 16, 3761–3812, 2016, James Hansen et al., Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2°C global warming could be dangerous, included (on page 3766):
Per the World Meteorological Organization’s Mar 2024 report State of the Global Climate 2023, in Fig 6 (on page 6):
SLR rate is at:
• 2.13 mm/year (averaged from period Jan 1993 through Dec 2002);
• 3.33 mm/year (averaged from period Jan 2003 through Dec 2012);
• 4.77 mm/year (averaged from period Jan 1014 through Dec 2023);
SLR acceleration at 0.12 ± 0.05 mm/y².
The rate of SLR increasing from 2.13 mm/y to the 4.77 mm/y, over the 21-year period, yields an annual acceleration of 3.91%, or about an 18-year doubling rate.
The rate of SLR (60-month rolling average) is now around 5.0 mm/y, based on the latest AVISO data.
With global warming now accelerating (from 0.18 °C/decade in 1970-2010 to 0.30 °C/decade in 2010-2023), I’ve plotted SLR scenarios to include 7-, 10- & 13-year doubling curves for rates of SLR from years-2024 through to 2075, with the starting point at the rate of SLR at 5 mm/year:
• The 7-year doubling scenario curve exceeds 1 m around 2055 and 2 m around 2061;
• The 10-year doubling scenario curve exceeds 1 m around 2063 and 2 m around 2072;
• The 13-year doubling scenario curve exceeds 1 m around 2070.
The 10- & 13-year doubling scenario curves sit within the upper end of the global mean SLR projection range 0.15 to 0.43 m by 2050 in Table 3.2 in NOAA’s Feb 2022 report on SLR.
The 7-year doubling rate curve may well be an outlier, but then who would have believed a few years ago that the rapid rate of warming happening now were possible?
Real-world ice melt will not follow a smooth curve.
The acceleration of the rate of SLR will continue while ever the energy inputs into the Earth System, and more particularly into the cryosphere and oceans, increase.
I’d suggest a global mean of only 1 m of SLR would be catastrophic for many coastal infrastructures and low-lying agricultural lands (e.g. Bangladesh & Mekong River delta) around the world, and I’d suggest that magnitude of SLR is guaranteed to arrive well within this century while we/humanity continue to pump more GHGs into the atmosphere, and not even begin to Reduce, Remove, Repair.
On 22 August 2022, at the Cryosphere 2022 Symposium at the Harpa Conference Centre Reykjavik, Iceland, shown in the YouTube video titled Arctic climate system catastrophe – a wide ranging tour – long version, glaciologist Professor Jason Box said (bold text my emphasis) from time interval 0:15:27:
“And at this level of CO₂, this rough approximation suggests that we’ve committed already to more than 20 metres of sea level rise. So, obviously it would help to remove a hell-of-a-lot of CO₂ from the atmosphere, and I don’t hear that conversation very much, because we’re still adding 35 gigatonnes per year.”
That raises critical questions about whether it would be worthwhile to continue defending coastal infrastructure/property, or instead, abandoning them and retreating. How do you defend against an apparently relentless SLR?
The AFR today state that the price of solar panels has fallen from $1 per watt to 11c. In the Netherlands they are using Chinese panels to make garden fences they are so cheap.
It can reasonably be questioned whether the Albanese Government’s proposed $1b investment in the local solar panels sector represents good value for money given the cheap Chinese supplies.
One argument mentioned is a security concern – supply of panels might be curtailed from China if war broke out with Taiwan. Apart from that, buy the cheapest.
https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/the-pm-has-made-a-silly-billion-dollar-bet-on-solar-panels-20240402-p5fgu7
Author: Harry Clarke
A new website has recently been launched called Paris Agreement Temperature Index.
As of 1 Apr 2024, relative to the 1850-1900 baseline, using Copernicus ERA5 data, the global mean surface air temperature has seen:
In what year did the Earth System cross the long-term global mean temperature thresholds?
https://parisagreementtemperatureindex.com/
Harry
On a normal day I don’t find the AFR compelling reading and after the ghastly revelations in the Lehrmann implosion trial I’m even less convinced.
I’m starting to think that the godawful triumviarite of Murdoch/Stokes/9ent is worse than Disney.
Walt Disney used to sell his product as Frontierland/Adventureland/Fantasyland, this current mob could do with a dose of Disney reality.
Transition data points
One of the more frustrating things about global warming (AGW), is that quite a few of us (like 2007–2010) had some fairly good reasons for thinking that the scientific analysis of the polar regions was, to put it bluntly, based on some faulty assumptions. The big one was the treating it like a block of ice melting like an ice block does, just scaled up, and hence being a relatively slow process for a couple of kilometres height of ice. Problem was, as even was known by many at the time, a small ice block and a massive ice construct are fundamentally different with respect to stresses and the impact of fissures, albedo changes on the surface, etc. In the case of massive ice, a fissure line means that melt water from the surface can penetrate the fissure, going many hundreds of metres down, and as it cools down to around 4.2C degrees, the water actually expands, causing the fissure to widen. Water is like that. Every fissure increases the surface area exposed to ambient temperature, again very unlike what happens for small ice blocks. Furthermore, if a fissure line runs a kilometre down into what is a multi-kilometre thick ice layer, you can imagine what that must do to the applied stresses; they concentrate upon what little is not fissured, and run like a zipper, cracking the ice in two. The combination of pressure and movement of glacier ice can create lubricating layers, where the entire edifice is on top of a layer of water. So many other possibilities present themselves.
What has been both a source of fascination and consternation is that it took the COP so bloody long to accept this, despite it being 19th Century physics, quite frankly. Besides that, the instrumental record, and the paleo records show that massive change happened in very short time periods in the past, and so even with no knowledge of the why, we knew it could happen.
Humans are now well and truly entrenched as a major geological force. If we think we have another century in which to move/adapt our major cities, we have rocks in our heads.
I really hope I am wrong about all of this, but I don’t see it. I can’t do the calculations that scientists can, for want of equipment, but even so, the instrumental evidence and the paleo evidence tell us that once changes are afoot in the polar regions, they can be very rapid in effect.
As far as I am aware, until the more recent attempts by COP groups to determine the sea level rise of polar ice melt, the “best” figures were very much along the lines of it has to melt like an ice block kind of thinking, rather than what the smeg if it fractures, and then fractures, and then fractures, in some picture of a fractalian cascade, until the surface area is so large, melting is off the scale. In terms of the energy necessary to melt all that ice, there is no longer any doubt that the oceans provide such a thermal battery, and the effects of our ever increasing levels of GHG simply adds to that.
Science is a strange amalgam of great flashes of guts and glory, versus a much more deliberative process of weighing evidence and with some luck reaching a conclusion. In the case of evaluation of GHG and the Anthropocene (yeah, they hate us calling it that), there seems to have been a case of going down the slow and deliberative path, while dismissing the more pertinent but shriller sounding alarms. I am not blaming anybody for the dichotomy that science all but guarantees; on the other hand, we have to understand that most politicians will reach for the thing that means they don’t have to act on some contentious issue. Stolid scientific reporting is just what they latch on to, and that’s very unfortunate for the rest of us.
Can the left be happy? If you see more defects in modern society than a conservative would then “the desire to take the givens of the world and make something better out of them is always going to be linked to less relaxed gratitude, than to more of a discontented itch”.
That is not to say that this lack of happiness is not rational – it may be so given greater wealth inequalities and (e.g.) the prospect of catastrophic climate change. But it does seem to be a distinctive approach to viewing the world – not by expressing gratitude but more of a “discontented itch”. Moreover, even if the world is a nasty place, their are stoic injunctions to go with the flow if you cannot change things.
The rise of secularism and the decline of romantic beliefs that the contradictions of capitalism will morph into a socialist utopia mean there is little for the left to fall back for comfort on other than the vague hope therapy (or banning the use of mobile phones among youth, e.g. Haidt (2024), can substitute for past, comforting beliefs.
These themes are taken up in a NYT op-ed:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/06/opinion/leftists-happy-coates-haidt.html
Harry Clarke
I am not sure who said it first but its true that ‘most people find it easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism ‘.
Modern (middle of the road ,everyday) Conservatives are better at focusing on their own Zone of Interest ,not bothering themselves with what is going on on the other side of the wall .Concern for others only leads to unintended consequences ,perverse incentives and the road to hell is paved with good intentions .Focus on yourself and let the market sort it out .It might seem counterintuitive and also unchristian but concern for the less fortunate is a fools errand and helping them directly is the worst thing you can do . Their ideological teachers like to say ‘if you are not a socialist when you are young you have no heart but if you are still one when you are older you have no brain .The best way to help others is to ignore their cries for help .Shut up and shop.
Sunshine
A “Made in Australia” plan to be announced today (Thursday, 11th) by Mr. Albanese. This encompasses, as a specific instance, the pre-Easter announcement of $1b in subsidies for Australia to produce its own solar panels to compete with those from China.
Business experts from the Labor Party and civil servants will support Australian industry with subsidies but please don’t call this protection. This is the “new competition” that responds to subsidies in the US and Europe and Chinese excess capacity with subsidies of our own.
My alternative strategy would be to ensure we send the countries that subsidise our imports a sincere “thank you” and to remember them all at Christmas with a card.
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/protection-is-the-new-competition-20240409-p5figs
Harry Clarke
A traditional sport among left wing economists is to reject the standard wisdom on the evils of protectionism. It is a useful basis for socialist intervention in the economy. The latest outburst from Anthony Albanese regurgitates well-worn myths – manufacturing fetishes, security arguments etc. “Real work” involves producing manufactured goods not mining or agriculture or services.
And it didn’t take long – firms (such as the battery producer below) are already lining up to grab some of the tax-payer funded moolah that will stem from Labor’s latest fanciful proposals. The proposals will generate a rent-seeking bonanza.
Saul Eslake gets it right:
“… the government’s policy was a sure way to make Australia poorer.
He said the “manufacturing fetishism” of governments ignored the long line of failure by Australia, with its small population and long distance from major markets, to develop a manufacturing base.
According to Eslake, the idea of the government throwing money at particular parts of the economy was not far removed from Stalin’s five-year plans under the Soviet Union.
“Maybe it’s not old-fashioned protectionism, but we’re going to see taxes and subsidies to induce resources move from one part of the economy to manufacturing, and that’s going to make us poorer,” he said.
“This country was the richest in the world in 1900, before Victoria forced manufacturing protection on the rest of the country. By the time we woke up to this and the cost it was imposing on the country, we were the 26th. Now we’re back to around the 12th.”
Eslake said both sides of politics sought to justify expenditure by linking it to security and sovereignty.
“That’s a lazy approach to making policy,” he said”.
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/clean-tech-charged-up-by-albanese-s-plan-despite-economists-warning-20240411-p5fj2f.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed
Harry Clarke