Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I was reading an interesting article, paywalled sadly, called “Detecting Novel Associations in Large Data Sets“, by David N. Reshef et al. It describes a subtle method for detecting relationships in datasets. Their method is called “MIC” for maximal information coefficient. The MIC coefficient measures the strength of the association of the two datasets. A value of 1 indicates a very close association, while a value of 0 means random noise. Their MIC coefficient outperforms traditional indicators for a range of complex non-linear types of relationships, including sinusoidal, circular, and multiple additive relationships. This is because it makes no assumptions about the shape or form of the association. It’s a fascinating method, one I want to learn more about.
One of their test cases involved looking for a relationship between a range of global indicators. Here is a list of their results, sorted by MIC.
Figure 1. Significant associations as indicated by the maximal information coefficient. Traditionally, the association would be measured by the Pearson coefficient.
The odd one out in this list is MIC rank 3, the association between oil consumption per person and income per person. The Pearson rank of this one was 207, while the MIC rank was 3. So I was motivated to take another look at the question of energy and development.
To do so, I used “Gapminder World”, an amazing online tool for visualizing data. Figure 2 shows an example. This is a comparison of average energy use and income, both on a per capita basis. Each country is represented by a “bubble” in the diagram.
Figure 2. Bubble plot, by country, of per capita energy use (vertical scale) versus income per person (horizontal scale). Note that both scales are logarithmic. Size of the individual bubbles shows total energy production by that country. Color of bubbles shows total oil production by that country. Units of energy use are tonnes of oil equivalent (TOE) per person per year. SOURCE
As you can see, there is a clear and quite tight linear relationship between energy use and income. This leads to an inexorable conclusion. You can’t get out of poverty without having access to affordable energy. Figure 3 below shows the same data, with larger energy producing nations identified.
Figure 3. Bubble plot, by country, of per capita energy use (vertical scale) versus income per person (horizontal scale). Note that both scales are logarithmic. Size of the individual bubbles shows total energy production by that country. Color of bubbles shows total oil production by that country. Units of energy use are tonnes of oil equivalent (TOE) per person per year. SOURCE
The bubble size shows that the US and China are about tied for top country regarding total energy production. Russia is third, the Saudis fourth, and surprising to me, India fifth. The colors show that for Russia and the Saudis most of the energy is produced from oil (red) while for China and the US coal is also a major source. India’s energy is mostly coal.
Figure 4 below shows the same basic energy vs. income chart, but in a different way. In Figure 4 the bubble size is energy production per capita, rather than total energy production. All of the bubbles are in the same location, but are changed in size.
Figure 4. Bubble plot by country of per capita energy use (vertical scale) versus income per person (horizontal scale). Note that both scales are logarithmic. Size of the individual bubbles shows total energy production per capita. Color of bubbles shows total oil production. Units of energy use are tonnes of oil equivalent (TOE) per person per year. SOURCE
We can draw some fresh conclusions from Figures 3 and 4. One is that you don’t have to produce a lot of energy, either per capita or in total, to have a modern industrial developed economy (lots of small bubbles at upper right). The Netherlands and Japan are examples. The second is that if you have high energy production per capita, it is easier to have high per capita income (preponderance of large bubbles at upper right).
The Gapminder website also allows us to look at the history of the various countries. Here is how some countries have evolved over time. Label lines show the start of each record.
Figures 5 and 6. Same as Figure 3, but showing the evolution of some countries 1971-2007. Size of the individual bubbles shows per capita energy production by that country. Color of bubbles shows total oil production by that country. “Trails” show the year by year values. Note that both scales are logarithmic. Fig. 4 SOURCE1 Fig. 5 SOURCE2:
Some comments on the historical figures. First, the direction you’d love for your country to be moving over time would be down and to the right. This would mean using less energy while making more money. Generally, almost nobody is moving in that direction overall.
The bad direction would be up and to the left. That would be using more energy to make less money. Ugly. The Saudis have moved that way in recent years.
Some countries took the worst quadrant, down and to the left. This is where you are using less energy, and you’re also making less money. Zimbabwe and the “Democratic” Republic of Congo did that. Bad sign. It’s de-development, and it generally involves suffering for both humans and the environment.
That leaves the fourth quadrant, moving up and to the right. Using more energy and making more money. Commonly called “development”, AKA getting out of poverty. Making enough money to be able to afford to protect the environment.
The game is to move to the right as much as you can (increased money) and upwards as little as you can (increased energy). So Bangladesh is not doing as well as India in that regard, since it is moving upwards more steeply. China was doing as well as India in the 70s and 80s, but has sloped upwards in the last decade of the record. Note that India is producing the majority of its energy from coal.
Russia went down and to the left in the early nineties, but has since recovered and nearly doubled its income without much increase in energy. Curiously, the income is now back to the 1990 level, but the energy use is less. The same is true of Uzbekistan and many other former members of the Soviet Empire. To their credit, they have fought back from the breakup of the Empire and returned in a more efficient form. Indeed, the Uzbeks have gone down and to the right in the last decade, and that’s the holy grail of development, doing more with less energy.
The poor Saudis, on the other hand, ended up going almost straight up (more energy used to provide the same income), and even lost a little ground. And Senegal has gone nowhere at all.
Japan, China, Mexico, and Australia have increased their per capita energy production over the period (bubble size), while the US and Russia have stayed about the same. The total oil production for the US has fallen (bubble color) while for China it has increased. Russian oil production fell and then has come back up.
The US and the UK have done a curious thing. Per capita energy use for each country in 2007 was about the same as in 1979. But income went up. Both countries nearly doubled their per capita income, with basically no increase in per capita energy use. Not sure what they are doing right, but we should figure it out and clone it …
Conclusions and final notes:
1. Development is energy, and energy is development. Although efficiency and conservation can help you, in general you must increase energy use in order to increase personal income enough to get out of poverty. If you make energy expensive, it is hugely regressive, as the poor countries and the poor people will simply not be able to afford it. Carbon taxes, “cap-and-trade”, or other energy taxes are a crime against the less favored inhabitants of our planet.
2. Large countries with higher transportation costs will use more energy per dollar of income than do small countries.
3. Within the limits of the “cloud” of countries shown in Figure 3, it is possible to increase energy efficiency, and to make more money using the same amount of energy.
4. Countries that produce lots of energy tend to waste it more than countries that produce little.
5. The preferable place for any given income level to be is on the lower edge of the “cloud” of countries with that income. This is where you get the most bucks for your bang. Many European countries are in this position. The US and Canada are about in the middle of the cloud. However, as noted they are much larger than the European countries.
6. China, India, and Bangladesh had about the same per capita income in 1971, ~ $700 per year. The differences in their current positions are large, with Bangladesh at $1,400, India at $2,600, and China at $6,000 per year.
7. Sadly, the datasets only go up to 2007 … it would be interesting to see the reduction in both energy use and income due to the global financial meltdown.
8. Finally, when someone says the word “technology”, many environmentalists think “bulldozers”. Instead, they should think “energy efficiency”. At the end of the day, technology is about doing more with less. Technology is what allows us to use less gasoline to go a mile. Through some combination of conservation and technological advances, the US and the UK were able to double their income on the same expenditure of energy. This technological advance is to the benefit of everyone including the environment.
Regards to all,
w.
PS—The source links below each chart goes to the corresponding live chart on the Gapminder website, where you can play with the variables or investigate the histories of countries other than the ones at which I looked.
TimTheToolMan says:
December 20, 2011 at 1:42 am
JPeden writes “Those people must be some pretty stable “climate refugees”, eh?”
Other people have pointed out the dangers of interpretation of log-log plots. I’ll simply say that a person who the doubles his standard of living may not be doing well if his previous standard was a cup of rice a day.
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Tim,
You are missing the factor that keeps the third world from improving as the USA and Europe did.
It is very similar to the lady borrowing so she could lower her heating bills – same principle.
In these “Con games” the only real winners are the banks who loan out fairy dust fiat currency in return for labor and real property as collateral.
India was only one of many countries “Talked into ”Green Revolution” loans as a way out of poverty and into the 21st century.
<b<What was the reality???
Another part of the problem is the Ag Cartel and price fixing. That problem is only going to escalate over the next few decades.. http://www.agriculture.purdue.edu/aganswers/story.asp?storyID=2046
So what happens when the promised miracles of the “Green Revolution” do not materialize and the loan payments can not be met?
In this type of Ag revolution who is the winner? The farmer? NO! The only winners in the “Green Revolution” were the transnational Corporations and the World Bank/IMF. In other words the World Bank now controls the country through it’s financial strangle hold.
The “Green Energy Revolution” is following the same pattern as the “Green Agricultural Revolution” A transfer of wealth from people to banks and select corporations
85% of Monsanto stock is controlled by financiers BTW. The “Green Revolution” was David Rockefeller’s Brain Child, at least as far as the way it was twisted in its implementation. Norman Borlaug, the “Father of the Green Revolution” was funded by the Rockefeller foundation.
http://scienceheroes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=68&Itemid=116
WUWT: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/13/borlaug-2-0/
(Marxist POV) http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/food-imperialism-norman-borlaug-and-the-green-revolution/
alcheson says:
December 20, 2011 at 12:24 am
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What’s wrecking the economy is the price of oil which is set by illegal OPEC conspiracy which the US refuses to prosecute through the World Trade Organization probably because of a combination of happy cooperation with politically powerful US-based energy companies and fear of disrupting the supply of foreign oil which would cause another oil crisis in the US similar to that of the 1970’s with rationing and hours of waiting in line to fill up your gas tank.
Practically every US recession since WWII was preceded by a steep rise in the price of oil. This one is no exception. Up until 2004 oil price had held pretty steady for two decades in the $15-$20bbl range. Then it started shooting up like a rocket and by 2007 precipitated the economic crisis. It is still in the range of $100/bbl and as long as that persists so will the recession.
I believe the #1 problem the next POTUS and congress should take on is a swift ending of foreign oil imports. This is what Rick Perry has been advocating. Put a million people back to work in the fossil fuel industries end the reliance on foreign oil. This will force OPEC to go back to $20/bbl price range and everyone comes out a winner except for OPEC. The U.S. is an energy rich nation and there’s no good reason at this point in time to be in the awful position of having to buy oil from countries that hate us and collude to keep prices artificially inflated to the point where the economy teeters on the edge of depression. OPEC doesn’t give a rat’s ass if the US economy remains depressed as long as we keep buying oil from them. It’s a love-hate relationship. They hate us but they love our money.
TimTheToolMan says:
December 19, 2011 at 4:30 pm
Generating electricity isn’t a problem in the US outside of misplaced environmental concerns. There’s really no good reason for solar or wind electrical generation. Our infrastructure is truly massive and is distributed between electricity and liquid fuels. In order to shift away from liquid fuels we need massive infrastructure changes which just aren’t going to happen. Our electrical grid operates on the bleeding edge of maximum capacity today. It cannot possibly take on the additional load of any significant number of electric vehicles replacing liquid fuel vehicles. The cost of expanding the grid is enormous not to mention the great many limitations of electric vehicles not the least of which is lack of copper and niobium to produce massive numbers of efficient wheel-motors. Major transporters like FedEx, USPS, UPS, and innumerable truckers which move cargo from point A to point B can’t go electric at all and neither can air transportation. Concerns about electricity are a huge boondoggle from every angle. It’s nothing more than misplaced political concerns from environmentalist whackos about CO2 emission from generating plants. Once that corrupt quagmire of climate pseudo-science, greedy politicians, and starry-eyed moonbats is vanquished the concern over electricial generation disappears at least in the US where there is enough coal and natural gas to run generators for centuries which is adequate time to perfect other methods.
Liquid fuel is where the problem lies. The economy can’t both grow and support $100/bbl oil at the same time. The only reason oil is $100/bbl is because of illegal price fixing and western democracies getting themselves into the dubious position of becoming dependent on importing cheap oil from countries that hate western democracies. Guess what. The moslems and communists can’t spank us militarily but they can sure administer a beating economically. This is a ridiculous situation and there’s no excuse for it in nations which can be self-supporting in fossil fuel requirements if the idiotic moonbats would get the hell out of the way.
Since Ralph mentions steel, let’s look at steel in particular. The minimum energy, set by the second law of thermodynamics, needed to produce a ton of steel (primary production=smelt from ore) is 6GJ per Kg. Current best practice uses about 20GJ per Kg. While industry has done an amazing job of energy conservation over the past 40 years, there is enormous room for more improvement. It is quite possible to move down and to the right.
P. Solar has some fun with correlation/causation confusion. However, he might also recognize that one does not become wealthy by paying too much for resources. Solar is too expensive to use widely in an economy, and especially in place of abundant cheap resources.
Willis points to Uzbekistan as going the right way, but knowing what I do about Uzbekistan, I suspect that its income is rising for reasons completely unrelated to its declining use of energy. A small, poor nation, with a low baseline, undergoing de-development (i.e. energy use reduction) can increase its income if it is strategically important and can seek rent from greater nations. I wonder if Uzbekistan is not a case in point.
Fascinating, Willis. This post immediately reminded me of this:
I found one mention of Rosling in the comments but not in your post – have you seen this before? Increased life expectancy seems a logical result of what you’ve shown here. It would also be very interesting to look at countries by type of government (democracies vs socialist, etc.) and economic model (capitalist vs communist, etc.) to try and discover other relationships.
@TimTheToolMan
You certainly have some valid points on affordable energy not being enough. For instance North and South Korea had equal access to affordable energy yet while both started off on an equal footing one prospered greatly in the latter half of the 20th century while the other is starving.
Scores of nations around the world had access to affordable energy. Some managed to capitalize on the opportunity and others squandered it. Now it would appear the U.N. wants to blame the nations that did the right things for the trevails of those that did not and force the successful to pay for the mistakes of the unsuccessful. No way, Jose. I’m for letting natural selection take care of it.
Ralph says:
December 19, 2011 at 4:57 am
“Thus one of the reasons the USA’s trend-line has flatlined, is a huge loss in production capacity, and that is not good for a nation. And the fact that the US’s per capita income has kept rising, in the face of reducing production, is due to Western politicians rediscovering the joys of slavery.”
Nonsense. The U.S. got more into the business of research and development and less into the business of using overpaid unskilled labor to manufacture things that can be manufactured with far cheaper unskilled labor overseas. For every uneducated auto-worker no longer earning a PhD’s salary at a Chrysler union assembly line in Detroit there is a non-union technician, engineer, or product manager at Intel earning just as much. The US traded the manufacture of steel quarter-panels for silicon wafers. The latter sell for more and require less energy but more intellect to produce.
TimTheToolMan says:
December 20, 2011 at 4:40 am
Gail writes “So what does a retro-fit for a mini-duct heat pump system cost?”
Oh please. You go and find a $19k rolls royce ducted system to try to make your point? As if a financially struggling person will opt for that.
From here
http://www.splitsystemairconditioners.com.au/SplitsystemairconditionersBrandsInstallationPrices.html
…they range in price from AU$1630 to AU$3955 installed.
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THAT price is for A heating/AC unit. It is just a fancy in the window AC unit except they put the heat exchanger on the ground/mounted on the side of the house and pipe to the indoor half of the unit. This product also allow more than one indoor unit to work off an outdoor heat exchanger EXCEPT“Multi Split systems consist of one outdoor unit running multiple indoor units…. if you just don’t like the look of too many air conditioners outside…Generally speaking, multi split systems will cost at least $600 dollars more for a 2 head system. “ So a basic 7 room house is still $1630 X 7 = $11410 and you have the darn heat exchangers dotting the landscape (I have two HE + ducted air)
BTW I had never even seen that system before.
Chris D. says:
December 20, 2011 at 8:27 am
“I found one mention of Rosling in the comments but not in your post – have you seen this before?”
The gapminder site is by Rosling.
TimTheToolMan says:
December 20, 2011 at 1:42 am
Other people have pointed out the dangers of interpretation of log-log plots. I’ll simply say that a person who the doubles his standard of living may not be doing well if his previous standard was a cup of rice a day.
Please give it up, Tim, for your own good! The Bangladesh comparison is normalized to the rates of increase of the other Countries on the same graph. And the person who doubles his cup of rice has that much more nutrition and functional capacity to improve and enjoy life.
But the question of why you instead want everyone to go backwards towards below Bangladesh’s origin on the graph, is a personal problem involving your own brain’s functioning which only you can deal with!
It might even be something as simple as your own diet!
Alan Statham says:
December 20, 2011 at 5:09 am
As I said before, Alan:
I said it because you had made a blanket statement with no backup.
Now you have come back to do the same again. I’m sure everyone is impressed that you claim it’s a “basic logical fallacy” … but you haven’t given us anything to back up your claim.
If you think it’s possible for a country to get out of poverty without having affordable energy, that’s fine. But if you want to convince me and others that it’s possible, you’ll need to show that and not just state it.
w.
PS—If you’d read the thread, you’d know that David L. already answered your objection about correlation and causation as follows, and very neatly:
Chris D. says:
December 20, 2011 at 8:27 am
Go to the GapMinder site and explore it for yourself, Chris. You can look by, for example, the “Polity” score showing a continuum from totalitarian to democratic.
w.
Kevin Kilty says:
December 20, 2011 at 8:09 am
The numbers I find don’t back that up. Let me again ask that people provide citations for their claims. I used Theoretical Minimum Energies To Produce Steel for Selected Conditions, which gives the following figures:
Theoretical minimum: You say 6Gj per Kg. My source says to get “liquid hot metal”, which I take to represent your “smelt from ore”, requires 8.6 GJ per ton (I suspect your figures were meant to be “per ton” rather than “per Kg”).
Next, these are theoretical minimums for theoretical conditions. If you look at theoretical minimums for real conditions (ores with slag, or with slag containing impurities as well) the theoretical minimums go up to 10.4 GJ per ton.
You also say that “Current best practice uses about 20Gj per Kg” (I think again you mean per ton). However, the source I used says only 13-14 Gj per ton are required in best practice (see Table 11, p. 20).
To summarize, you say that if we could produce smelt from ore at theoretical values, the energy saved would be about 66% of current usage [1 – 6.8 / 20]. As you point out that’s a lot.
My citation, on the other hand, says that the relevant numbers are [1 – 10.4 / 14], or only about a 25% possible savings. This is not very much, particularly since we’ll never get to the theoretical limit for a host of practical reasons.
Kevin, what am I missing here?
w.
“Chicken and the Egg argument.”
When you run into that one, it’s the same old problem: there’s almost always something wrong with the way you got to it and with what you are missing. Otherwise, it could just be a currently or permanently unresolved mystery as a feature of our existence and ability to think. But even that doesn’t mean you still can’t take it as a given, deal with it productively, or just get over it!
By complete chance I got to watching “From the Horse’s Mouth” last night with Alec Guiness, circa 1958. After urging a person or two to “think”, the drunken “Horse” later sat down a little ceremoniously amidst what appeared to be the chaos he was creating himself in some rich people’s Apartment House he’d managed to invade and said, “From the horse’s mouth: you’ve got to know when you succeed, when you fail..and why.” At the end, he was suddenly rushing off to motor away down the Thames out to sea in his junky boat imagining what and where to “paint” next, as he was passing a gigantic Ocean Liner with a bunch of painters suspended off its sides painting it.
Dave Springer says:
December 20, 2011 at 8:29 am
Dang … I find myself agreeing with Dave Springer … I must make a note to research the temperature in the place of eternal damnation and see if it’s approaching the triple point of water …
There are a host of factors that need to align for a country to succeed economically. The list is long and includes things as disparate as land ownership, ease of starting businesses, cultural work ethic, educational levels, access to resources, a legal system to protect assets and safety, infrastructure, access to markets, an army to keep your neighbors from taking the fruits of your labors, communications, and a whole lot more.
Some you can get away without, or build up on the fly. For example, no country started with an educated population. And Costa Rica and the Solomon Islands get along without an army.
Other things are harder to work around. There are three ways to create wealth. You can mine it, manufacture it, or grow it. And for all of those, you need energy.
That’s why there is such a strong and linear relationship between the wealth of a country and the energy it consumes. The relationship is strong because the energy is what is creating the wealth. As you say, Dave, and with the great example of the Koreas, access to affordable energy is definitely not enough to ensure wealth creation.
It does mean, however, that creating wealth absolutely requires energy.
Thanks,
w.
DirkH writes “After peak oil we can use coal.”
The infrastructure for that doesn’t exist so we’d be spending considerable effort and resources in building it. AFAIK there are no operational coal->oil conversion facilities operating today.
We do have an existing hybrid/electric automobile industry starting to make headway though. So you are right that one way or another we will almost certainly be using coal to provide additional baseload but to minimise the load on the distribution system it makes sense to use naturally distributed PV solar energy to help charge those cars.
Willis, your logic fails you again. Don’t try to put words into my mouth. The examples you demand relate to an argument I’m not making. It’s a simple statement and it’s unavoidably true: you can’t draw the conclusion you want to draw from that graph and that relationship. Correlation does not imply causation, and your whole argument assumes it does.
Gail is determined “So a basic 7 room house is still $1630 X 7 = $11410 ”
A basic 7 room house eh? I dont heat my laundry or toilet. Or bedrooms. The number of units totally depends on the layout of the house but IMO you need a bigger one in the main living area, one in the kitchen and thats generally it. Especially if you’re money conscious.
Dave writes “Liquid fuel is where the problem lies.”
Yes, but as we pass peak oil we need to replace that liquid fuel with something. And if its increasing electric transport then that will put additional load on the grid and requirements for more generating capacity.
I agree with your sentiments about trucks and aeroplanes continuing to use oil. But at the time of peak oil, we’ll still have plenty of oil left for those modes of transport for years to come. Even knowing what we know today there are some options. Ultimately high speed trains might become increasingly useful modes of transport replacing planes and trucks to some extent.
Yes, you are correct that the units should actually be GJ/Mt or MJ/kg. That being so, I went back to the source of my figures (not the source of data, which would require me digging through paper files), which was something I had written for a talk four years ago. I used three examples, primary steel, paper drying, and ammonia. For primary steel I had figures of 6.6MJ/kg and 19MJ/kg. Now here is the discrepancy as far as I can tell, between what I offered and the figures in the paper you quote, which by the way is a reference new to me and quite useful. Your theoretical minimum is at a temperature above 2000K, but all of the heat energy at that temperature is not unavailable, and a reversible process could recover some fraction of it as useful work. So, steel at room temperature versus that at a high temperature, is the explanation of the difference in minimums. Second you’ll notice in the summary and conclusions that the figure of 13-14 MJ/kg representing the best current practice is for process only and does not include preparation of materials. But current practice requires coke and flux and adds quite a bit more actual energy use. The true theoretical minimum from the second law cannot depend on process, but is done on any reversible path between two states (i.e. depends only on the states). State one is hematite and carbon at room temperature, state two is steel and oxygen at room temperature. I’m not saying that the minimum is achievable, because I can’t even describe this process, but it represents the goal one has to measure with respect to.
Kevin Kilty says:
December 20, 2011 at 8:31 pm
Yes, that is true. But you are comparing to theoretical calculations which also don’t figure in the energy of the coke and flux. So if you are going to include it on one side you must include it on the other.
Thanks,
w.
Willis,
There is one more thing that is interesting and which is brought forth in the reference you quote, and that is, scrap steel has a lot of embedded energy in it, and one ought to use the scrap wisely. In fact if used as well as possible, scrap allows steel “making” at a minimum of zero MJ/kg (pure recycling). It represents just one of hundreds of thousands of examples of available energy lying about that we could recover or recover more wisely. One of the examples I presented in a later talk in the series I gave four years ago was the dilution of fresh water with brine in the Columbia Estuary. This currently proceeds in an irreversible manner, although it could be done in a reversible manner that would end-up with the same brackish water in the estuary. I calculated that if only one-half the discharge was made to the estuary through a reversible cell that one could make electric power at a rate three times larger than the State of California was importing from B.C. Hydro at the height of their energy crisis back in 2000. There is really a lot of potential for moving in the desired direction on your chart. Just requires that engineers think about these things.
Willis,
Not actually. If some process could be invented that didn’t require the current use of coke and flux, then one needn’t include those processes. The true minimum calculations from the standpoint of the second law presuppose no particular process, but only beginning and ending states. Coke and flux are not in the beginning and ending states. Only the iron and oxygen in the ore and a little carbon for alloying. The minimum is an abstraction, I admit, but it is the only true limit to what is possible.
Willis,
I’ve enjoyed corresponding on this issue. Your article was darned interesting and thought-provoking. Thanks for the hard work you and others do on this site to inform and entertain. I’m off to bed to read.
Kevin
Thanks, Kevin, much appreciated.
w.