Travel today. So by request, here is a Weekend Open Thread on Thatcher, who did much to kick off the CO2 global warming saga but later on became a sceptic and regretted her actions. My favorite quote (supposedly attributed to her) from Thatcher is about consensus:
“consensus is an absence of leadership”
So true.
Along the same lines, it is such a shame that the left treats her service so poorly by making an artificial push in song popularity, a false consensus if you will, to make “Ding Dong The Witch is Dead” #1 in Britain so that the BBC will have to play it on BBC Radio1. Such cheap shots speak to the integrity of their political convictions. Fortunately, the BBC decided that they had a shred of integrity left and chose not to play the clip in full. Still, it is a cheap shot.
Plus, discuss anything else within the limits of blog policy.
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richardscourtney says:
April 13, 2013 at 3:11 pm
Excellent post.
ric werme;
A rule of thumb in the supercomputing field is “if it’s paging, you need more RAM.” Sure, SSD is faster than rotating memory, but just having the RAM is much faster still.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Agreed. But in this case Jim said that he could not upgrade the ram in his existing pc. That being the case, a $100 SSD might achieve the performance improvement he is looking for versus a whole new PC. The spinning rust he’s got right now is probably capable of 100 IOPS, even a cheap SSD will hit 20,000 on write and 60,000 on read. No, not as fast as ram, but a big step up from what he has now and if it doesn’t have the desired result, it is still useful in a new pc.
Yeah, I remember when ram was $1/byte. 10 Meg RL02 was what? $5K? and 19 inches? the RA80 was only 14 inches and a whole 120 Meg. Only $50K. Yep folks, them’s megabytes we’re talking, now we get 4,000,000 megabytes on a single drive for a few hundred bucks. To put this in perspective, if Boeing had kept that pace, a flight from LA to London would take less than a second and cost less than a penny.
richardscourtney;
Thanks for that excellent post. Perspective on any issue always changes when one has the background in detail from a credible source. Much appreciated.
They do, and they recommend gazoos of RAM* … What I would like to know is: can a Dell C1100 class pizza-box “perform” like a normal PC. That’s really the gist of my question. If so, a platform like one of the first two below will suffice for my purposes (excepting the 2nd item below which is only at 36 GB of RAM):
Without getting too crass and commercial here on this forum, the choices come down to something like this: (1) Dell C1100 64 GB or this: (2) Dell C1100 36 GB ea. under 700 US.
As opposed to this: Dell Precision Workstation 64GB et al at over 2 1/2 grand US.
PS. I have no affiliation with any of the above vendors; items referenced above for discussion purposes only.
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* I have moved beyond the analysis of simple structures, for which 8GB was sufficient, hence the need for *more* RAM now (and a platform that will accommodate gazoos of RAM like a server platform) to accommodate the additional computations required to arrive at ‘solutions’. Additionally the vendor warrants his product to operate under various OS’s, not specific platforms e.g. desktops, server ‘pizza-boxes’ etc … pizza-boxes are not something I have spent time with (to date!)
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Charles Tossy says:
April 13, 2013 at 4:26 pm
“Jim — If you know any linux you can buy ten Raspberry PI’s, a couple of neytwork switches and downlad some PDF files on distrubited computing using Python for about your budget. You will have a home super computer.”
Python is useful for controlling the number crunching processes but entirely unsuitable for doing the number crunching itself; as it is two orders of magnitude slower than C++ (its semantic forces it to do dictionary lookups all the time).
A system of a bunch of Raspberry’s is a loosely coupled system; Jim runs computations on huge matrices I think – so there’s a huge amount of connectivity between a huge number of data elements – you can’t shoehorn that onto a loosely coupled network of nodes without losing orders of magnitude of speed.
David Jones says:
April 13, 2013 at 3:59 pm
“BTW, this thread is looking like a UK political thead. A bit OT i feel!”
By definition nothing can be off topic in an Open Thread – and our host mentioned Maggie Thatcher himself…
Presently, no support for aux number-crunching cards. But then there is the requirement to have direct access to a HUGE amount of data (representing various E and H field values, parameters, conditions, etc. associated with each tetrahedron in the simulated 3-space environment.)
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Snow flurries this a.m. in Chicago (high temp of 44 F).
The prediction for Sunday is 68 F, then back into the 40’s mid-week.
No warnings issued, despite the temperature swings ?
Get ready!
richardscourtney:
Thank You for the education. Please allow me to defer to your superior knowledge of the coal industry in Britian and probably in other areas as well. I do know the general history of the strike which broke the NUM’s power and the details of how this was achieved. By disposition and living I am a cynic, skeptic, individualist, and knee-jerk opponent of all things coming down from the top. If the coal industry of that time was producing a surplus for it’s owners and the country it should have been kept. If it was a breeding ground for a self-interested subculture known as “miners” who were suckling the national tet it should have been crushed.
If English coal is a going proposition it should be mined rather than importing coal as you are. If the import is cheaper buy it and use the savings for something else. I have personally been crushed a time or two, suffered the blow, and rebounded nicely. Thatcher was never my Prime Minister but as others have noted she was and is greatly lionized on this side of the pond. I own a signed copy of her two volume autbiography which I consider a valuable guide in leadership.
I am very glad that someone of your intimate knowledge of all this is posting on this site. Don’t know if you drink but would buy you a pint anytime.
davidmhoffer says:
…
What a doubling of CO2 does is rearrange where the energy is at any given time with some altitudes increasing (close to surface for example) and other altitudes decreasing, but the “average” remains the same. So you can’t compare the two. The 3.7 w/m2 from CO2 doubling doesn’t occur at any given altitude, it is actually “smeared” across the atmospheric column and so doesn’t behave anything like an increase in insolation at TOA. (emphasis added to point in question)
——
Are you sure about this? From Roy Spencer’s book ‘The Great Global Warming Blunder, How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists’, page 48, paragraphs two and three:
and
It seems to me from this that the 3.7 watts can be compared to TOA insolation changes.
I did however forget albedo (factor of 1 – 0.3 or 0.7), which changes my numbers a bit:
Or am I still smoking the crack rock on this? It wouldn’t surprise me.
Mark
There is rank speculation and price manipulation in commodities, or the basic necessities of human life, by Goldman Sachs and others, and it was and is responsible for food prices rising to 2008 levels, according to experts. This is pushing people all over the world from poverty to extreme poverty. It is fundamentally wrong on principle to allow speculative maneuvers by huge players in the simple necessities of life such as wheat, oil, cattle, and rice.
Michael Greenberger: Commodities traders should be brought down to 30% of the market, but are now at 80%.
richardscourtney-
Thank you for the detailed response and I defer to your superior knowledge of the situation. I would however like to point out that the statement “This was because the Thatcher government decided to switch the UK economy from production industries to “service industries” (i.e. banking and financial services).” begs the question of why did they decided to do this? Because many of those industries were unprofitable and uncompetitive is the answer. I still recall that at around this time the British standard of living was considered as on par with that of East Germany.
Something had to be done and she did it. For all that the Lady has passed away and the proper immediate response is RIP. History will judge the rest.
Ya think? Where does all that QE money go from the primary dealers?
The One-Chart Summary Of All That Is Wrong With The US Financial System: JPM Deposits Over Loans (ZH article)
“Primary dealers serve as trading counterparties of the New York Fed in its implementation of monetary policy.”
Primary Dealers List – http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/pridealers_current.html
Note: JPM 13th down in the list.
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M Courtney says:
April 13, 2013 at 4:03 pm
“It was the divisiveness of “the enemy within” and the weakness of Argentina that lead to the mockery of Maggie.”
Divisiveness. You know, I have heard this word used dozens of times in the last few days in association with MT- it must be the buzz-word in the media- and it perplexes me. Divisiveness in politics is not necessarily a derogation. Politics doesn’t deliver many Kumbayah moments. Divisiveness can win leaderships and elections and Margaret had to deal with some of the toughest eggs there ever were, not just in the opposition either. How she overpowered the Tory home guard and became leader is enough to make her a legend although I suspect that most of her party members didn’t want the job that had to be done. I worked as a lab technician at Bedford College in London in the mid 1960s (for 7 or 8 quid a week and had a wife and baby to look after) and I can assure you peace, harmony and prosperity over the land was not what Margaret Thatcher interrupted.
The labour unions were the “governing entity” at the time and most of the news was on labour unrest and governments pandering to this ruinous sector. I recall an extended strike at Ford over a dispute between the pipe-fitters and machinists over who should be making or installing the newly developed “torque converter” – was it a pipe or a machined part? Labour strife became a cultural identifier. Even the BBC has reported on the decline toward a failed state and I suspect they were putting the best face on it they could:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/thatcherism_01.shtml
“During the 1960s and 1970s, the main parties competed to reverse Britain’s relative economic decline. There was a growing awareness that the economic league tables showed that Britain was at the wrong end for figures regarding strikes, productivity, inflation, economic growth and rising living standards.
Virtually all European countries, except for Britain, had so-called ‘economic miracles’. Britain was often described as the ‘sick man of Europe’.”
Will you tell me that this situation was going to right itself without a powerful intervention and a whole new approach? The edifice had to be torn down to the basement and rebuilt. Britain owes her a massive debt. It was like saving imperiled crocodiles – no thanks expected but it had to be done – it is a shame that after this much time there is no new perspective from such a large part of British society. That Britain has declined again since in the hands of gutless governments may explain it. Man, we loved her from afar. The Argentines owe her a massive debt, too. It was the end of the sadistic military government and may have also been the beginning of the end for the ‘divisive’ social class system in UK.
In the 1970s when INCO (nickel mining) in Canada was hiring foreign workers, they had a large number of tradesmen and miners applying from Britain, Italy, Brazil and elsewhere. Because of blood ties, they were leaning toward hiring British. I privately advised hiring Italians and Brazilians – It was my belief that workers from UK would engender labour strife and sabotage.
richardscourtney-
Thank You for sharing your superior knowledge of the situation in the UK coal industry. There is a very good telling of the Ridley Plan and the Scargill Insurrection in Thatchers autobiography which I had signed by her. Your points do seem to beg the question of why Thatcher’s government made the decisions it did. Knowing the economic history of that time it is hard to argue that the effected industries were profitable ones. If they were they would still exist. I suppose the difference in our views is one of perspective. In my view businesses are not organized into “regions” and successful ones generate enough capital to finance expansion. Council Houses sold to their occupants do not represent lost capital but rather a decrease in the costs of maintaining them.
At the end of it all a Lady has passed away and the appropriate response for me is RIP. History will continue to judge the rest.
Zeke, spare us the usual suspects arguing for more jobs for themselves in ‘overseeing’ markets because for all these speculators there are equal numbers of hedgers at a global level. In any case if they could manage to drive up prices by capturing large quantitities of a commodity in the short term, those prices will naturally call forth greater supply.
Still you can always try being the Bunker Hunt of wheat, corn, pork bellies, etc but I have a feeling it’s like trying to corner the global market for catastrophic climate change and don’t get to the stage where you’re full of it or….
observa says:
April 13, 2013 at 6:09 pm
..”I have a feeling it’s like trying to corner the global market for catastrophic climate change and don’t get to the stage where you’re full of it or….”
========
You can’t grab my attention, then just….
“A picture is worth a thousand words”
http://au.businessinsider.com/thatcher-and-the-winter-of-discontent-2013-4
Yeah, I was smoking crack. 15.8C occurs in July at aphelion. Signs are backwards. This has to be due to seasons and land / water divide over northern & southern hemisphere.
Sorry about that. 🙂
Consensus is totalitarianism.
“There is a consensus, QED”.
And if you disagree with The Consensus, you are evil or demented or paid by enemies; anyway, you should be incarcerated.
The terrible and disrespectful manner in which the Lefist UK press has treated Margaret Thatcher’s death leads me to believe there is little hope for UK’s economic and societal solvency.
I’m reminded of Shakespeare’s line from Julius Cesar, “The evil that men do lives after them, the good is often interred with their bones.”
When Thatcher took office, the UK was on the brink of economic collapse with: massive unemployment, rolling blackouts (if you can even believe that!), a free falling currency, social unrest, debilitating and violent union strikes, massive budget deficits, high inflation, growing welfare rolls, a tanking stock market, a collapsing healthcare system, oppressive and debilitating corporate and individual taxes,etc., etc., etc.,….
Under her leadership and the implementation of free-market capitalism, unemployment fell, GDP grew at 4%/yr, people got off welfare and started working for a living, taxes were cut, government spending was cut, deregulation was implemented, budget deficits were brought under control, union strikes were reduced, the stock market soared, the Pound Sterling appreciated, the grid hummed along 24/7, wages grew, inflation fell, etc., etc., etc., She saved a nation from the devastating consequences of Socialism.
Rather than learning the bloody obvious fact that Socialism doesn’t work and that free-market capitalism is a far superior economic and social system, the Leftist press went out of their way to denigrate her obvious accomplishments, lest Socialism be thrown in the trash heap of history, as it should have been.
And so it goes…….until it doesn’t…..
Gary Pearse says:
“The labour unions were the “governing entity” at the time…….”
And that’s why a lot of people are turned off by the ‘unions’.
They are, in many (all?) cases, part of the Labour Party.
When the Labour Party and their allies lose the election they fall back on their proxies to stifle and disrupt changes being implemented by the democratically elected government. In many cases this results in the country, in effect, being ruled by unelected minorities using ‘grass roots’ movements and protests, often accompanied by the use economic sabotage, violence and intimidation.
One of the most ‘despised’ unions in New Zealand is the Maritime Union of New Zealand which was formed when the New Zealand Waterfront Workers’ Union and the New Zealand Seafarers’ Union (two of the most militant unions in New Zealand) combined.
http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/culture/cook-strait-rail-ferries/strikes-and-strandings
Gareth Phillips
How did hospitals fare under the three day working work imposed by the Labour government in response to the hardship imposed on the people by the militant unions?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/gallery/2009/apr/16/past-conservatives#/?picture=346055042&index=1
Observa, I appreciate your point; limited speculation is fine in the grain market and is a stabilizing force.
But the distortions we are seeing in food prices and the staples of human life is an abuse that needs to be looked into. Unless people understand the importance of a genuine market based on real supply and signals in commodities, they may not be able to understand the problem of governments and banks getting involved in a huge co2 market. I am conjecturing that Co2 is the ultimate commodities market.
If you are a free market capitalist, you must develop a message about why creating a huge market for co2 and water would be wrong and open to abuse. Why not just use carbon dioxide instead of gold, if that is what banks want? Part of the reason it is wrong on its face is that it is creating the ultimate commodities trading market, open to abuse and fraud; its mini-me can be observed in huge manipulations and distortions in the prices of such essentials as wheat and rice, and oil.A free market can protect food and energy commodities from super speculators like Goldman Sachs and not lose its integrity as a free market.
ref: http://commoditymarketsoversight.org/
ref: Goldman Sachs created 2008 food crisis: ” In the first 55 days of 2008, speculators poured $55 billion into commodity markets, and by July, $318 billion was roiling the markets. Food inflation has remained steady since.”
ref: Goldman Sachs investing 40 bn in green energy
A bit of a brawl is starting to happen between the “whooping crane environmentalists” and the “wind turbine environmentalists.” I wrote something called, “For The Birds” about issues it raised.
(Warning to “oldfossil.” You may find it too “preachy.” In passing I mention the spirituality of bird-watchers, and Saint Francis.)
http://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/for-the-birds/