CO2 Regulated from Today in the U.S.

From tomorrow, the EPA is regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Climate Progress has some good information on what is happening as does the New York Times. It is hard to say at this what will happen in the long-run. Most states seem to be cooperating with the EPA though Texas refuses. There is a lot of legal action in progress to try to stop the regulation. And there is a high probability

Most Popular Posts of 2010

In case you missed one of my more popular posts from 2010, I'm kicking off 2011 with a list of the top ten hits. Actually, I saw a bunch of other much bigger bloggers doing this and was curious what my most popular posts were:1. iamscientist. People are obviously very interested in learning more about this science social networking site.2. 2009 Journal Citation Report Released. And people want to

iPad Pricing

Apple charges AUD 130 more for the 32GB iPad than for the 16GB iPad. Yet a 16GB flash memory card can be bought for as little as AUD45. The premium in the US is USD 100. Interestingly, the premium for a 64GB iPad relative to a 32GB iPad is also AUD 130/USD 100. The lowest price I found for a 32GB flash drive was AUD 89. It looks like Apple makes much more profit off the higher memory versions

Institutions

Some interesting observations on social structure in China and Europe and Elinor Ostrom's Nobel Prize Lecture.

Flash Drives vs. Memory Cards

Since writing my previous post about memory devices I tested a class 2 (probably) Sandisk SD card from a digital camera vs. my Lexar flashdrive using the free XBench software. I was using my MacBook Pro for the tests and just plugging the Sandisk card into the SD slot on the laptop. Here are the results. First the flash drive:And here is the memory card:Data can be read faster off this flash

SD Memory Cards

In the last couple of years I have used a USB flash drive like this:as my primary computer data storage and I've used the hard drive on my laptop and office computer as data back-up and the location for the operating system and applications. This means that I can easily transport all my data from office to home and back without having to copy heaps of files back and forth and remember which ones

Marginal Cost Curve for Crude Oil

Nice figure of the marginal cost curve for crude oil:It's included in a post on the Oil Drum by David Murphy. Of course, reality is a bit more complicated than that and Murphy's article doesn't say that this is a marginal cost curve, but it does give a rough idea. Krugman is also on board for peak oil.

Getting Around the Great Firewall

As you can see, because Blogger is blocked in China, Stochastic Trend gets no visits from there:I am sure some people visit using a VPN, but I've come up with an alternative solution. Once a month I could post the source code of my blog to my website. I don't know if the images which are still all hosted by Google will be visible or not and all the links on the side that go back to Blogger will

Some Interesting Ideas

Some interesting ideas.

Marginal CO2 Abatement Cost Curves from EMF22

These are my first estimates of the marginal abatement cost curves for the four main regions based on the results of the EMF22 exercise. Here I have flipped the graph back 90 degrees again. This is private marginal cost for abating fossil and industrial emissions of CO2 using market exchange rates. The EU is the most expensive region for small cuts in emissions and India the cheapest. But for

Marginal CO2 Abatement Cost Curve for the US

So, I turned the graph 90 degrees and replaced tonnes of abatement by percent and got this:The percentage is emissions relative to business as usual. i.e. 100% means there is no abatement. 0% means there is 100% abatement. Yes, some models end up with negative emissions. And these are just fossil-fuel/industrial emissions of CO2. They assume that we will be burning biomass and sequestrating the

IEA Data No Longer Available at NLA

I'm reliably told that access to online IEA data at the National Library of Australia is no longer available. Maybe ANU ought to think about subscribing given how much climate research is going on at the university?

Marginal Abatement Cost Curve for China

The chart plots the carbon price in US Dollars (market exchange rate) against Gt of Co2 abated for China using the results from seven of the EMF-22 models. This is not really a cost curve as it includes data for different time periods and model scenarios. I've been struggling to model this data over the last 10 days or so on and off. But this is actually the first time I've plotted the data like

Polar View

Some nice maps from GISS showing temperature anomalies for November in the Arctic and Antarctic: It's clear from these, that though temperatures were low in NW Europe they were much higher than normal across Arctic Canada and Russia. For more information, visit Climate Progress

The Green Paradox

The green paradox is the idea that a policy to reduce global warming could instead accelerate the use of fossil fuels because owners extract more fossil fuels while they are still valuable. Of course, an actual cap on emissions should avoid this green paradox, but some other policies might lead to a green paradox in theory. Quentin Grafton, Tom Kompas, and Ngo Van Long have written a paper titled

Linking Book Chapters to Your Website

With Google Books it's now possible to provide links to your book chapters online without posting your own pdf of the chapter. For example:Stern D. I. (2004) The environmental Kuznets curve, in: P. Safonov and J. Proops (eds.) Modelling in Ecological Economics, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.I already provide links from my publication list to RePEc for all my journal articles in RePEc (one way to

Paul Burke's Graduation

I went along to Paul Burke's graduation as Doctor of Philosophy at ANU on Friday. As you can see I was in "civilian clothing" and sat in the audience. Here the hooding ceremony is performed by the Chancellor of the University (Gareth Evans) rather than by the graduate's PhD adviser,* as is the practice in the US. Actually, I hadn't been to a graduation in Australia before and there were some

OCEAN-OIL

Boston University, Louisiana State University, and the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) have created a resource that will allow you to explore questions regarding the causes, magnitude and consequences of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, as well as to contribute your own expertise.The Online Clearinghouse for Education & Networking: Oil Interdisciplinary Learning (OCEAN-OIL)

"Elasticities of Substitution and Complementarity" to be published in Journal of Productivity Analysis

My paper Elasticities of Substitution and Complementarity has been accepted by the Journal of Productivity Analysis. The paper surveys the various definitions of the "elasticity of substitution" and puts them into a framework that explains their relationships and purposes. It includes the new definition of Hicks Elasticity of Substitution based on the input distance function as well as

Box Plots in Excel

Strangely, Excel does not have a chart type for "box plots". In general, it's graphing capabilities are not that great. You can make an approximation to a boxplot chart using some obscure options which are quite hidden away. I used these instructions to come up with this:Not quite as pretty as the example in Wikipedia, but probably good enough.

Google E-Books

I got an e-mail from Edward Elgar Publishing this morning announcing that they are joining Google's E-Books initiative. It was launched yesterday and is only available in the US so far. Seems it is yet another new format but will be available for many devices (unlike Amazon's Kindle).

Proposal Tips

Actually, the article is titled "How to Fail in Grant-Writing". It's kind of funny. Well, some of it is. I'm re-working my (unsubmitted) ARC proposal from last year right now...

IPCC Position Available

IPCC is looking for Programme Manager, Communications and Media Relations based in Geneva.

CCEP Debuts on RePEc at 17th in Australia

The Centre for Climate Economics and Policy, which was just recently launched, enters the RePEc ranking for Australian economics institutions at 17th (roughly top 14%). CCEP is a network of researchers working on climate issues directed by Frank Jotzo of the Crawford School at ANU>. We have a working paper series also on RePEc (which I am administering) and a conference/workshop is planned for

What is Business as Usual for China and India?

My paper with Frank Jotzo in Energy Policy argued that while India's goal of cutting emissions intensity by 25% between 2005 and 2020 was likely to be similar to the business as usual reduction in emissions, China's goal was much more ambitious. China aims to reduce emissions intensity by 40-45% over this time frame, while we estimated it would decline by 24% under business as usual.By contrast,

CCEP Working Papers Now on RePEc

You can now download CCEP Working Papers from RePEc. Since launching the series with six papers we have added a further paper by Leo Dobes: "Notes on Applying ‘Real Options’ to Climate Change Adaptation Measures, with Examples from Vietnam.