Author Archives: Chris

Weekly Digest – March 8, 2015

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Disgorge the Cash!

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From the Abstract of J.W. Mason’s “Disgorge the Cash:  The Disconnect Between Corporate Borrowing and Investment”:

This paper provides evidence that the strong empirical relationship of corporate cash flow and borrowing to productive corporate investment has disappeared in the last 30 years and has been replaced with corporate funds and shareholder payouts. Whereas firms once borrowed to invest and improve their long-term performance, they now borrow to enrich their investors in the short-run. This is the result of legal, managerial, and structural changes that resulted from the shareholder revolution of the 1980s. Under the older, managerial, model, more money coming into a firm – from sales or from borrowing – typically meant more money spent on fixed investment. In the new rentier-dominated model, more money coming in means more money flowing out to shareholders in the form of dividends and stock buybacks.

First Direct Observation of Carbon Dioxide’s Increasing Greenhouse Effect at the Earth’s Surface

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It’s kind of amazing to me that it took so long for there to be a direct experimental measurement of CO2 forcing in the field.   Spoiler alert:  Their observations were fully consistent with what theory predicts.

The effects of CO2 on radiative transfer are well-understood but apparently there’s never been direct measurement of radiative forcing at the Earth’s surface.   What’s novel (I think, having read just the Abstract of the paper not the full text) is that they directly measured heat transfer rather than inferring it from a network of temperature sensors (or satellite measurements) and independently verified radiative transfer models.  In short, their measurements are an additional test of things we believed to be true based on other measurements.   Had their measurements not been consistent with model predictions that would have been a big surprise and would merit further investigation.  Bottom line:  The CO2 contribution to net radiative forcing is well-understood.  Anthropogenic CO2 emissions have caused the Earth to retain (and it will continue to retain) a significant amount of heat above what it would without them.   The specifics of where that excess heat ends up – atmosphere near the surface?  oceans? – is a subject of ongoing investigation but make no mistake we’re retaining a massive amount of excess heat.   And bear in mind average surface temperature changes, however small they may seem, are really proxies for much more significant climatological effects.

From Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s press release, “First Direct Observation of Carbon Dioxide’s Increasing Greenhouse Effect at the Earth’s Surface”:

Scientists have observed an increase in carbon dioxide’s greenhouse effect at the Earth’s surface for the first time. The researchers, led by scientists from the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), measured atmospheric carbon dioxide’s increasing capacity to absorb thermal radiation emitted from the Earth’s surface over an eleven-year period at two locations in North America. They attributed this upward trend to rising CO2 levels from fossil fuel emissions.

The influence of atmospheric CO2 on the balance between incoming energy from the Sun and outgoing heat from the Earth (also called the planet’s energy balance) is well established. But this effect has not been experimentally confirmed outside the laboratory until now. The research is reported Wednesday, Feb. 25, in the advance online publication of the journal Nature.

The results agree with theoretical predictions of the greenhouse effect due to human activity. The research also provides further confirmation that the calculations used in today’s climate models are on track when it comes to representing the impact of CO2.

Read or download the paper here.  (It’s $5 to rent and $32 (!!) to buy a copy.   At those prices I recommend visiting your local college or university science library and reading the copy of Nature they have on the shelf.)

Mark Zukerberg cements his status as an utterly vile human being

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From Robert Charette, An Engineering Career: Only a Young Person’s Game?:

Mark Zukerberg, CEO of Facebook, who is one of many high tech employers pushing for more H-1B visas, reflects the prevailing attitude when he stated both that, “Our policy is literally to hire as many talented engineers as we can find. The whole limit in the system is that there aren’t enough people who are trained and have these skills today,” and “I want to stress the importance of being young and technical. Young people are just smarter. Young people just have simpler lives. We may not own a car. We may not have family. Simplicity in life allows you to focus on what’s important.”

As Zukerberg indicates, a highly desirable “skill” in young engineers and computer professionals is their perceived willingness to work longer and harder than older workers who usually have families, as well as their perceived willingness to relocate. Obviously, all that extra work leaves little time for disciplined study and thought to stay current beyond today’s belief of “what’s important.”

Shorter Zukerberg:  Younger workers are easier to exploit.

The corollary for H-1B visa holders:  The ones from low wage countries are nice and compliant because they know that if they get all uppity and demand prevailing wage then you can just ship them back to where they came from sack them and leave them stranded with no means of support – maybe even sue them for some trumped up employment contract violation.  Bottom line, they’re extortable.

(BTW, Charette’s articles for IEEE are excellent.  I have yet to read a loser.)

Thought for the Day: 23 February 2015

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Once S Fred Singer debated Sherry Rowland about ozone depletion on NPR. Every atmospheric scientist I talked to was amused that Rowland had obviously crushed Singer. Non-scientists thought that Singer held up fairly well (he has – he is really old). There is the problem. Competent scientists know that Singer, Soon, Baliunas and Seitz were pedaling BS in their opposition to protecting the ozone layer. Reagan and Bush knew it and they were the ones that provided knowing leadership to the world concerning the Montreal Protocol. And the Protocol has worked. the abundance of ozone depleting substances has decreased and the decrease in global stratospheric ozone has been arrested. The ozone hole will go away in the future if the world stays at it.

Competent scientists know that Soon’s rants about climate are garbage….  What to say about the folks who choose to believe that Soon is a scientist and that his objections to climate science are significant? Put these people in a functional MRI and you find that the part of their brain that responds to his BS is the part that responds to cocaine. It is not the part that does algebra.

If you do associate with denialists, go have coffee with them and listen to them. I send them something from my course first. Like the First Law treatment of climate. Respect and renewables may rewire brains – rants won’t.

That’s the way it is.

–  “James Wilson” in the NYTimes comment section