Author Archives: rdmyers75@hotmail.com

Washington State’s carbon tax vote

Washington State voters are considering a carbon tax. The proceeds would be used to offset other taxes, making it revenue neutral. This could be a national model, if we weren’t all so allergic to the word tax.

The proposal is strikingly simple and refreshingly bipartisan. According to Yes on I-732.org, I-732 would:

  • Directly address climate change by adding a tax of $25/ton on carbon emissions;
  • Reduce the statewide sales tax by 1%;
  • Add a tax credit of $1500/year for low-income households; and
  • Lower the Business and Occupation (B&O) tax on manufacturers to .001%.

This type of fossil fuel tax would be first of its kind in the United States, though it has been implemented elsewhere. According to the World Bank, 15 countries currently tax carbon. Sweden’s policy is the most aggressive, at rate of $168/ton. Closer to home, a carbon tax has been in place in British Columbia, Canada, since 2008, which has resulted in a 5-15% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. BC’s tax is much lower than Sweden’s, at a rate of $30/ton.

my election prediction

I have a little election prediction spreadsheet. It takes the poll averages for swing states as reported by RealClearPolitics, generates a random number for each with a 4% standard deviation, and runs 1,000 trials in about 10 seconds. Go to Nate Silver or other online sites for a much more professional and sophisticated approach. I do this just for fun and to help me understand how the system works. So without further ado, here is how I think Tuesday night might unfold. The poll closing times are the earliest closing times in a given state according to ballotpedia, so you would expect some numbers to start tricking in at that point. I’m writing Sunday around noon, just in case there is some big development between now and Tuesday.

Based on RealClearPolitics, if both candidates win the states they lead in right now, Hillary would win with 298 electoral votes to 240 for Trump. Nate Silver predicts 290-247, and puts the odds at 65-35. Betfair puts it at 323-215 and the odds at 80-20. My spreadsheet comes up with an electoral college average of 295-243 and odds of 85-15.

Here is one way the evening could unfold to get in the ballpark:

First, I assume Clinton and Trump have both won all the states considered relatively safe by RealClearPolitics. This means Hillary starts off with 218 and Trump with 165. Seems unfair, doesn’t it? But these are the demographics, and why the breathless media coverage of swing states is a bit misleading. If Trump is leading half the swing states on a given day, that doesn’t mean the race is anywhere near tied.

7:00 p.m. EST

  • Results start to trickle in from Florida, Georgia, Virginia and New Hampshire.
  • The night starts off with a bang for Clinton with wins in Florida and Virginia.
  • Trump gets Georgia and New Hampshire.
  • Clinton leads 247-185.

7:30 p.m. EST

  • North Carolina and Ohio
  • I’ll throw both to Trump.
  • 247-218. Getting slightly interesting.

8:00 p.m. EST

  • Pennsylvania and Michigan
  • I don’t think Trump has a realistic shot at either. They go to Clinton.
  • 283-218. It’s over!

9:00 p.m. EST

  • They split Arizona (Trum) and Colorado (Clinton).
  • 292-229

10:00 p.m. EST

  • Iowa and Nevada
  • I’ll throw both to Trump. I’ll also throw him New Mexico to look like slightly less of a loser.
  • 292-246

This is what I expect to happen. Of course, the votes get counted slowly, and we can pretend there is some suspense as they are counting votes in states that are not expected to be close. Still, I think we might all be in bed at 10 p.m. on the east coast knowing who the next President. And this is what I want to happen. Although I would enjoy some suspense on some level, rationally I know it is better not to live in interesting times.

For Trump to win, a lot of unlikely things have to fall into place, but here is a plausible scenario: Trump starts the night with a huge bang, winning Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Ohio. Clinton gets Virginia. Trump would be up 252-218. By the way, I gave Clinton New Mexico to start off this time. Clinton wins Pennsylvania and Michigan, going up 254-252. They split Arizona and Colorado (263-263!). Trump gets Iowa and goes up 269-263. It comes down to Nevada. Right now it looks like Nevada is reasonably solid for Clinton, so it comes down to a 269-269 tie. The House of Representatives casts the deciding vote, picking Trump for President. The National Guard is deployed in some states to ensure order.

So Florida is a big deal, obviously. We knew that.

my final case against Trump

I write this two days before the election. Trump has announced that he intends to cancel all spending to deal with climate change if elected. The evidence that we need to deal with climate change is so clear, and it is so clearly an existential threat to our civilization, that this is completely unethical. If I liked everything else about Trump, it would be enough, by itself, to cause me to reject him. (For the record, I like nothing about him.) Combine it with the completely unacceptable bigotry, racism, and religious intolerance, and it is just completely unacceptable. Finally, the lack of universal health care continues to be an international disgrace for our country. But we are closer thanks to Obama’s efforts to take on a Congress bought and paid for by the finance industry. Trump has vowed to destroy this progress and replace it with…nothing. Completely unacceptable.

Speaking of the finance industry, if a complex crisis like the 2007-8 financial crisis were to arise, we can’t trust Trump to understand it or to seek out advice from people who understand it. I don’t expect Hillary Clinton to take bold action to support long-term financial stability, which is what we need, but I do trust her to keep a cool head in a crisis, seek out competent advice, and make rational decisions. Similarly, in case of geopolitical crisis, I don’t expect her to be a strong force for peace, but I trust her to keep a cool head, seek out competent advice, and make rational decisions. Trump doesn’t have the ability to understand complex issues, yet he is overconfident and doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and if he seeks out the advice of others at all, I wouldn’t trust him to know whose advice to seek. Finally, he does not appear to be rational at times. I think he could easily make some horrible mistake if and when he is confronted by a crisis.

I don’t think either candidate will take bold action on campaign finance reform. Bernie Sanders was the candidate for that. Prove me wrong, Hillary!

3C

We’re on a path for 3 degrees C over pre-industrial temperatures, much higher than the target of 1.5-2 C, says the United Nations Environment Program.

The emissions gap for 2030 is 12 to 14
GtCO2e compared with 2°C scenarios, for
1.5°C the gap is three GtCO2e larger. Even
if fully implemented, the unconditional
Intended Nationally Determined Contributions
are only consistent with staying
below an increase in temperature of 3.2°C
by 2100 and 3.0°C, if conditional Intended
Nationally Determined Contributions are
included.

Nate Silver and college football

I thought Nate Silver only looked at professional sports. I was wrong – here is a cool interactive web page he has put together for college football. The numbers don’t always give you the answers you want to hear though – even if my beloved Gators somehow win all the rest of their games, which would include beating Alabama in the conference championship game, he gives them only a 13% chance of winning the national championship. Another nice thing about Nate Silver – he always explains his methodology.

We’ll be updating the numbers twice weekly: first, on Sunday morning (or very late Saturday evening) after the week’s games are complete; and second, on Tuesday evening after the new committee rankings come out. In addition to a probabilistic estimate of each team’s chances of winning its conference, making the playoff, and winning the national championship, we’ll also list three inputs to the model: their current committee ranking, FPI, and Elo. Let me explain the role that each of these play…

FPI is ESPN’s Football Power Index. We consider it the best predictor of future college games so that’s the role it plays in the model: if we say Team A has a 72 percent chance of beating Team B, that prediction is derived from FPI. Technically speaking, we’re using a simplified version of FPI that accounts for only each team’s current rating and home field advantage; the FPI-based predictons you see on ESPN.com may differ slightly because they also account for travel distance and days of rest…

Our college football Elo ratings are a little different, however. Instead of being designed to maximize predictive accuracy — we have FPI for that — they’re designed to mimic how humans rank the teams instead.4 Their parameters are set so as to place a lot of emphasis on strength of schedule and especially on recent “big wins,” because that’s what human voters have historically done too. They aren’t very forgiving of losses, conversely, even if they came by a narrow margin under tough circumstances. And they assume that, instead of everyone starting with a truly blank slate, human beings look a little bit at how a team fared in previous seasons. Alabama is more likely to get the benefit of the doubt than Vanderbilt, for example, other factors held equal.

R code to read Nate Silver’s data

Thanks to Nate Silver for posting all his polling data in a convenient text file that anyone can read! It’s a nice thing to do. Even though not many of us can do as interesting things with it as Nate Silver, it is a fun data set to play and practice with. Here is an R-bloggers post with some ideas on how to play with it.

 

October 2016 in Review

3 most frightening stories

  • The U.S. electric grid is being systematically probed by hackers working for foreign governments.
  • According to James Hansen, the world needs “negative” greenhouse gas emissions right away, meaning an end to fossil fuel burning and improvements to agriculture, forestry, and soil conservation practices to absorb carbon. Part of the current problem is unexpected and unexplained increases in methane concentrations in the atmosphere.
  • The epidemics that devastated native Americans after European arrival were truly some of the most horrific events in history, and a cautionary tale for the future.

3 most hopeful stories

  • New technology can read your heartbeat by bouncing a wireless signal off you. Mark Zuckerberg has decided to end disease.
  • While he still has people’s attention, Obama has been talking about Mars and zoning. Elon Musk wants to be the one to take you and your stuff to Mars.
  • Maine is taking a look at ranked choice voting. Ironically, the referendum will require approval by a simple majority of voters. Which makes you wonder if there are multiple voting options that could be considered and, I don’t know, perhaps ranked somehow? What is the fairest system of voting on what is the fairest system of voting?

3 most interesting stories

the smart grid

Stanford has a research project for the smart grid.

Bits & Watts is a major new Stanford/SLAC initiative focused on innovations for the 21st century electric grid—a new grid paradigm that is needed to incorporate large amounts of clean power and a growing number of distributed energy resources, while simultaneously enabling grid reliability, resilience, security, and affordability.

The initiative organizes its research into three thematic areas: grid core, grid edge, and grid data science. The initiative will advance technologies, policies, markets, regulations, and business models that work in concert between each thematic area.

The Bits & Watts Initiative seeks to:

  • Offer and implement new research ideas and de-risk them for the electricity ecosystem
  • Educate faculty, students, post-doctoral fellows, and staff about the holistic systems-focused approach to solving problems for the electricity ecosystem
  • Offer holistic educational experience for current industry executives and other leaders
  • Create open-source hardware and software solutions rapidly adopted by industry and policymakers
  • Maintain flexibility amid uncertainty to exploit emerging technologies
  • Be a trusted and unbiased convener
  • Create platforms and protocols for sharing data with due consideration of privacy, security and confidentiality