Quick Takes and Random Stuff, February 21, 2024
Offshoring emissions, shipping, West Nile virus, higher ed ROI, and more...
Graph of the week
This is from the paper Offshoring emissions through used vehicle exports (2/20/2024), and here is the abstract:
Policies to reduce transport emissions often overlook the international flow of used vehicles. We quantify the rate at which used vehicles generated CO2 and pollution for all used vehicles exported from Great Britain—a globally leading used vehicle exporter—across 2005–2021. Destined for low–middle-income countries, exported vehicles fail roadworthiness standards and, even under extremely optimistic ‘functioning-as-new’ assumptions, generate at least 13–53% more emissions than scrapped or on-road vehicles.
This shouldn’t be a surprise. If something has value somewhere, it will get sold. This is the same reason why I believe we will keep consuming fossil fuels. Fossil fuels have value—in fact, enormous value—and so some countries will make use of them.
Shipping map
The EIA article U.S. energy flows through Panama Canal rose slightly in January (2/21/2024) notes that:
U.S. liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and ethane exports through the Panama Canal rose in January 2024 with a return to vessel traffic through the shipping channel as drought conditions eased. Transit volumes of LPG and ethane had fallen in late 2023 amid a historic drought at the Panama Canal.
There is a graph of monthly exports through the Panama Canal, but I found this map more interesting. Impress your friends by knowing how much longer it takes to ship goods from the Gulf of Mexico to China by the Suez Canal as opposed to going through the Panama Canal.
Is climate action fracturing?
This comes from the NYT article More Wall Street Firms Are Flip-Flopping on Climate. Here’s Why. (2/192024)
On Friday, the day after JPMorgan, BlackRock and State Street pulled out, Pimco, another big asset manager, followed suit. “We have concluded that our Climate Action 100+ participation is no longer aligned with PIMCO’s approach to sustainability,” a firm spokesman said in a statement.
Our systems are focused on returns now, and they don’t worry about the future. Climate change is a problem, but it is still a future problem. Climate activists need to rethink their strategy.
Energy poverty
Another reason to believe that fossil fuels will be sold is that there are lots of people who are energy poor. One way to see this is this graph from the paper Energy vulnerability in Mediterranean countries: A latent class analysis approach (Oct. 2023)
For example, 30% of households in Bulgaria are unable to stay warm. For Greece, Portugal, and Cyprus, it is around 20%. Do you think these people see global warming as a bad thing? Or would they be upset with heating their homes with fossil fuels if that was their only choice?
Some context from the paper:
Energy poverty in Mediterranean countries has been shaped by distinctive features such as low energy efficiency of buildings, high residential energy costs, energy import dependency, high income inequality and similar geographic characteristics. These countries (namely Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Spain and Portugal) can generally be considered late-comers in terms of prosperity in Europe, and some of them are also recent EU members: this delay in achieving high average income levels, together with a mild climate, has meant that the problem of residential heating has been neglected by both public policies and household investment choices. The result is poorly insulated homes with a non-negligible share of dwellings still lacking satisfactory heating systems if any. Moreover, all these countries share high income inequality indexes and high energy prices, linked to an almost complete traditional energy dependency (nearly non-existent domestic fossil fuel resources).
Monthly global temperature update
January did set a new record, but just barely. You’ll see in the next graph that the El Niño event seems to be slowing as the January anomaly has dropped compared to the previous few months.
Higher Ed ROI
Insider Higher Ed reports (2/21/2024) on a study that looked at the college return on investment. They tallied up the number of colleges where the majority of graduates 10 years after graduation did not exceed various pay thresholds. The graph here summarizes the results.
Here are the results by type of college.
Nevertheless, about 71 percent of for-profit colleges failed to pass the high school earnings threshold, compared with 14 percent of public institutions and 9 percent of private nonprofits. The majority of institutions that failed to lift graduates’ earnings to 150 percent of the poverty line were for-profits that offer certificate programs.
Almost 1 in 10 private nonprofit colleges in the study had the majority of graduates 10 years out doing no better than a typical high school graduate. Now, 9% is a small percentage, but it is enough for people to start doubting the value of higher education. Yes, odds are you will do better, but those odds seem to be decreasing. Colleges, some not all, are partly doing this to themselves as they look to attract students. They are accepting students who, for a variety of reasons, are not better off by being in college. This helps pay the bills in the short term, but in the long term, it lowers the status and value of higher education. This, in turn, makes it harder to attract students.
West Nile virus and climate change
The map here is from the paper Contribution of climate change to the spatial expansion of West Nile virus in Europe (2/8/2024) and models the ecological suitability of the West Nile virus. The map on the top right corner suggests that the range for the West Nile virus has expanded considerably. When we think about climate change, we think of snow melting, raising sea levels, and heat waves, but the expanded range of disease is just as important to the impact on human populations.
The spinning CD
Breakout by Amber Wild
Please share and like
Please help me find readers by forwarding this article to your friends (and even those who aren't your friends), sharing this post on social media, and clicking like. If you're on Twitter, you can find me at BriefedByData. If you have any article ideas, feedback, or other views, please email me at briefedbydata@substack.com.
Thank you
In a crowded media market, it's hard to get people to read your work. I have a long way to go, and I want to say thank you to everyone who has helped me find and attract subscribers.
Disagreeing and using comments
I'd rather know the truth and understand the world than always be right. I'm not writing to upset or antagonize anyone on purpose, though I guess that could happen. I welcome dissent and disagreement in the comments. We all should be forced to articulate our viewpoints and change our minds when we need to, but we should also know that we can respectfully disagree and move on. So, if you think something said is wrong or misrepresented, then please share your viewpoint in the comments.