India's Climate Change Action Plan Summary

The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has just unveiled the long-awaited National Action Plan on Climate Change. I've split the first 5 sections from the long document that summarise the policy and put it up on my server. You can downloaded it here [10 pages, 2 MB].

The five sections contain: Overview, Principles, Approach, Way Forward: Eight National Missions and Implementation of Missions: Institutional Arrangements.

The complete policy including section #6: Technical Document, which is over 40 page long, is available on PMO website (a large 16 MB PDF with 52 pages).

I haven't studied it yet but my first impression is that although the initiatives listed are welcome, but...

• without any firm commitment towards a target of emission reductions,
  
• without setting up any time-frame to achieve those reductions and
  
• without a commitment to phase out new energy generation from fossil fuels and their subsidies...

it is unlikely to make a significant short term or long-term impact into India's fast growing carbon emissions.

A longer, more detailed analysis including an official response from my organisation (CSM) will follow in coming days.

It's called *Revenue Neutral Carbon Tax* and It's a Good Thing!

Not "Tax and Dividend." And certainly not "Cap and Dividend."

This is getting ridiculous. On an popular blog ('It's Getting Hot in Here') someone named Alisha Fowler, who, by her own admission, doesn't understand one bit of economics, is lashing out at James Hansen for supposedly suggesting a "Cap and Dividend" scheme to reign in CO2 emissions.

Only problem is, Hansen made no such proposal.

Hansen did not propose "Cap and Dividend", the term he used was "Tax and Dividend" something entirely different. I suggest Fowler looks up Hansen's testimony again. What Hansen has proposed is actually more commonly known as a revenue neutral carbon tax. This what it should be called. I don't know who re-invented this term but calling it "tax and dividend" is evidently a very bad idea as people confuse it with "cap and dividend".

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To understand Carbon Tax visit Carbon Tax Center (CTC), an excellent resource on the topic.

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Carbon Tax refers to a stipulated amount (such as a starter tax of $37 / ton) of tax applied to carbon content in fuels. Applied at the top most level of fossil fuel chain, i.e., - at the point they are extracted from earth. At the retail level, the starter tax would translate into about 10 cents/gallon of gasoline.

Revenue neutral because the collected amount is returned to the public. This is how it'll work, according to Carbon Tax Center:

Each individual’s receipt of dividends or tax-shifts would be independent of the taxes he or she pays. That is, no person’s benefits would be tied to his or her energy consumption and carbon tax “bill.” This separation of benefits from payments preserves the incentives created by a carbon tax to reduce use of fossil fuels and emit less CO₂ into the atmosphere.

How would Carbon Tax reduce emissions? The same way high gasoline prices are doing that - by reducing consumption and generating investment into alternatives. That said, it would be foolish to depend upon oil prices because they tend to fluctuate depending on a number of factors. Carbon tax on the other hand will grow by a predictable amount year after year, as CTC proposes. The $37/ton tax would become $74/ton the second year, $111 the third and so on until it reaches $370 by the tenth year.

It is simple economics that a high and constantly increasing price of energy would create incentives for conservation and efficiency. Industries would go all out to reduce their consumption and pursue alternatives. Money would begin pouring in to find cheaper sources of energy. It's a market driven mechanism and not one that relies on the governments or politics.

A carbon tax has nothing to do with a cap and trade. A large number of people have shown that cap and trade doesn't work. But don't confuse it with carbon tax. There is no cap applied anywhere and no emission credits traded with anyone. Cap and trade schemes such as the Clean Development Mechanism, are very complex, highly susceptible to corruption, take years to implement and have failed miserably in the past as a BBC investigation recently exposed.

Carbon tax on the other hand is a transparent way of putting a price on carbon. It has been applied very successfully in Sweden and elsewhere as well. It's no surprise therefore that so many economists and other eminent people support a carbon tax. In his book, Plan B 3.0, renowned environmentalist Lester Brown calls it an exciting new option.

I briefly met Mr. Brown couple of weeks ago when he visited India to launch his book and deliver a talk. I've been a big believer in Carbon Taxation for a long time so it was great to see him endorse it. I asked him about the support that Cap and Trade traditionally gets versus Carbon Tax which is much less understood by the general public. He responded that almost all economists of the world agree beyond doubt that carbon tax can be a very effective solution in reducing emissions.

When I pointed out that Nick Stern isn't a proponent, his response was that Nick was a supporter earlier but more recently he's changed his position perhaps in view of the political opposition that any taxation scheme receives.

Some of the prominent economists that support carbon tax include Paul Volcker, former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve; Lawrence Summers, former president, Harvard University; Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute.

Al Gore is another longtime supporter of carbon taxation and in fact he even tried to introduce a version of it during the Clinton administration.

I think the blogosphere is full of far too many people talking authoritatively on issues related to climate change when in fact they have no clue what they're talking about. This is a classic example. The blog where this was posted - It's getting hot in here - is a popular team blog so it's all the more surprising that Fowler wasn't led to the corner and politely told that she's a little off in her evaluation. A day after the post, it still stands without a correction or an update.

For further evidence, check out comments to Alisha Fowler's post. Commentor after commentor goes on and on about why she's wrong and why "cap and dividend" "as proposed by Hansen" is a great idea! None of them have any idea that what Hansen proposed was quite different from what they're talking about.

More Cluelessness Courtesy The Breakthrough Blog

Fowler has cross posted her entry on The Breakthrough Blog where even more cluelessness prevails. Her colleague, Teryn Norris has another post on similar lines vehemently attacking Hansen titled "Is James Hansen Undermining his Credibility." In which he says: "Dr. Hansen declared he would fight against any agenda other than cap-and-dividend." Really Teryn? Did he say that?

Climate Change Solutions: Delhi Youth Summit Presentation

I just attended the Delhi Youth Summit on Climate organised by the enterprising folks at Indian Youth Climate Network (IYCN) who put this event together in three weeks!

I made a presentation on Countering the Challenge: Youth and the role of media in social and political transformation. I talked about the challenge from climate change (its severity, scale and the speed of changes needed), causes of this challenge and how we should counter it.

What I hoped to achieve through the presentation is instill a sense of urgency about the problem and show a path towards solutions. I proposed that a widespread and comprehensive media campaign targeted both at the society and the leadership can bring about the required changes in our attitudes and policies so that we can begin to tackle this problem.

The underlying argument is that personal lifestyle changes although important will not bring about the change needed and that it can be meaningfully addressed only through policy changes. I also argue that technology is not holding us back, rather it's lack of social awareness (about severity, scale and speed) and lack of political will. I've tried to show how we can change this with the help of media.

The presentation contains some video clips so it's quite large. There are two ways to download.

Download presentation & videos separately and add videos to it later.
Presentation (876 kb zipped)
Videos (32 mb zipped). Also on YouTube.

Get entire presentation including the videos.
Available here (36.4 mb zipped).
This method is not recommended but still provided for those who don't have time and have the bandwidth.

It's a little crude in its present state (I put it together the night before presenting it). But the message is important and I hope it gets through. I will continue to work on it to refine and make it more compelling. Will update this post as and when I do.

You are free to use this in any way you wish (as long as you don't call it your own!). If you use the material without changing the intended message, please attribute the source and provide links (you'll find them on the last page). If you want any help in presenting it, feel free to email

Our Inefficient Cars & The Poulsen Hybrid Solution

You may be surprised to learn how inefficient that shiny new car is that you drive to work everyday. Thankfully, there's a solution in sight.

I think a lot about cars and urban transport. I honestly believe that cars are unsustainable for a large number of reasons and that we must give them up in favor of walking, using the bicycle, two wheelers and public transport. In my personal life, I've taken the first step towards that by placing a moratorium on single and dual passenger car travel - will only take out the car when there are three or more people traveling (more on that later).

One of the reasons cars are unsustainable is their horrible inefficiency. I've mentioned this before but here's what Amory Lovins of Rocky Mountain Institute has to say:

I've been thinking in background for 20 years about the physics of cars and why are they so inefficient that you know, your car's using a 100 times its weight in ancient plants everyday and yet only 0.3% of that energy ends up moving the driver. This didn't seem very good.

Of all the fuel energy you put into the car, 87% (seven eighths of it) never gets to the wheel. It's lost first in the engine, driveline, idling and accessories.

Of the 1/8^th of fuel energy that does reach the wheels, half of that either heats the air that the car pushes aside or heats the tires and roads. Only the last 6% of the fuel energy actually accelerates the car and then heats the brakes when you stop.

- Amory Lovins in Car of the Future

Not everyone is as inspired to give up their cars -- most people actually love theirs -- so we must live with them for some time. The only alternative then is to produce more efficient cars. But the auto industry has refused to budge so far, you say. Soooo... you get the independent auto makers to produce efficient cars. But how do you do that? It's not as simple as producing water bottles, you know. Well, give them an incentive. Announce a $10 million prize for a car that is over 3 times as efficient and sells in large numbers.

This is precisely what Auto X-Prize is all about.

I've been following Auto X-Prize development for almost two years. I think it's a great initiative though I feel they should have aimed higher -- 300 MPG instead of 100 (today's cars average about 29 MPG in US). We need to make a big leap to make up for the inefficiencies of the past century. Nevertheless, it's an exciting venture and I can't wait to find out who among the 64 contenders wins the X-Prize and what it does to the industry.

Popular Mechanics magazine just announced a list of the top 10 contenders according to them. They're all good but the one that has the greatest likelihood, in my opinion, isn't on anyone's radar. It doesn't feature in the list and it's never been mentioned on AutoBlogGreen or TreeHugger, two popular blogs covering green cars and low-impact living. Both of them have dozens of posts on other X-prize contenders.

The Solution

I'm talking about Poulsen Hybrid. A product of a European US company* called Alpha-Core, it's essentially a couple of rear wheel hub motors which can be installed in any conventional car to convert it into a plug-in hybrid, increasing its mileage significantly. So you get 2 hub motors, two controllers along with batteries and a charger which go in the trunk -- all for $3300. Give it a couple of hours and you car's now a plug-in electric hybrid!

(* Founder, Ulrik Poulsen has an unmistakable Scandinavian accent so I assumed it's a European firm but Alpha-Core website says they're based in Connecticut, US.)



I think it's an absolutely brilliant concept. Totally inexpensive, efficient, simple and it doesn't even mean getting a new car. If it works as promised, it should sell in huge numbers - many times more than any of the fancy cars in Popular Mechanics list. Converting an existing internal combustion engine car into a plug-in electric to get mileage in the range of 100 MPG without any substantial mechanical changes to the car and at such low cost is an unbeatable proposition.

More reasons why I like the Alpha-Core/ Poulsen Hybrid solution:

Retrofitting existing cars to make them more efficient is the most effective and sustainable way of tackling auto emissions. There are well over 600 million cars in the world. Any new new alternative automotive solution will take several decades to become mainstream provided it is cost effective and is available worldwide. While we need new technologies, the greatest impact will come from a technology that can improve the existing one running inside each of those 600 million cars.

Alpha-core has been in the manufacturing business since 1982. So unlike most other X-Prize contenders, it's not a startup - it doesn't need any funding to get going.

The product is ready for launch. There's no long development cycle in between by the end of which most companies discover their technology isn't yet ready or that it has a fatal flaw. In an audio interview, founder Ulrik Poulsen says it's expected to be available by June 2008. That's next month!

Go Poulsen Hybrid!


UPDATE 7-May-08: AutoblogGreen makes amend, writes about Poulsen Hybrid. Links to this post. Most people commenting are overwhelmingly positive about this.

Climate Change in Media: HT Reaches New Low

Two recent articles in Hindustan Times challenging human induced climate change raise questions about credibility of its reporting and integrity of its correspondent. It also raises a question for serious environmentalists on how to respond to such reports. (view updates)

Two days ago (Apr 1, 2008) Hindustan Times carried an article titled Climate change not as big a problem: report. Lest anyone should think it as an April Fool's joke, it was a completely serious piece based on real events. Today (Apr 3, 2008), the same correspondent published a report titled: 'Sun too causes global warming.'

Both articles are highly misleading, contain factual inaccuracies and at the very least deliberately hide widely known facts that counter its argument to paint a biased picture. In the following paragraphs, I will attempt to highlight the key issues raised by each of the stories.

Climate change not as big a problem: report [1]
by Chetan Chauhan | Page 14, HT New Delhi, Apr 1, 2008 | 353 words

Opening excerpt:

An international civil society report has debunked the claims of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, saying there is no evidence available to show loss of human life directly due to climate change.

The report of the Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change [CSCCC], to be released in India on Tuesday, says there is no evidence to suggest climate change has caused an increase in diseases.

Highly Misleading

By pitting CSCCC [2] directly against IPCC [3], the article creates the impression that both organisations are of similar stature. Nothing could be further from the truth. IPCC is a Noble prize winning United Nations body made up of hundreds of scientists and governmental representatives while CSCCC is merely a coalition of so-called global "think tanks" - corporate lobbyists funded by big oil corporations, the likes of ExxonMobil, to further their interests.

The HT article makes no mention of the background of CSCCC - who comprises the coalition and how are they funded. Unlike IPCC, which was formed two decades ago, CSCCC was only organised a little more than an year back [4] by International Policy Network (IPN) which is a well known recipient of Exxon funding. IPN has received $390,000 from Exxon [5]. Several other members of the coalition have also been a beneficiary.

Paul Reiter, the expert cited in the article, for example, sits on the "Scientific and Economic Advisory Council" [6] of an organization called the "Annapolis Centre." What is Annapolis Centre? It's a US based "think tank" [7] that has pocketed $793,575 from ExxonMobil and has been very active in playing down the human contribution to global warming.

Reiter doesn't have anything too substantiative in his research papers [8] published in scientific peer reviewed journals to back his claims of lack of relationship between disease and climate change. It's unclear how many other claims of CSCCC report are backed by research in peer reviewed journals.

Yet, here's a newspaper that reaches out to a country of one billion, publishing unsubstantiated "research" of corporate lobbyists that have a direct financial interest in sensationalising their so-called findings; and pits them against a neutral, highly conservative group of scientists and government representatives whose work is completely based on pure scientific research published in peer-reviewed journals.

'Sun too causes global warming' [9]
by Chetan Chauhan | Page 17, HT New Delhi, Apr 3, 2008 | 327 words

Opening excerpt:

FRESH RESEARCH by Danish Space Research Centre can possibly give a new twist to the controversy whether Green House Gas emissions is the major contributor for global warming. The Center's research based on climate date [sic] of 150 years shows that varying activity of the Sun is the most systematic contributor to natural climate variations.

Completely Inaccurate

The article falsely states that new research claiming sun as the cause of global warming has now emerged and that it may alter the widely held belief in man-made global warming. Global warming skeptics have been arguing sun as the cause for several decades. In fact Danish Space Research Centre's (DNSC) Galactic Cosmic Ray theory itself is over 11 years old. [10] So it's absolutely false to imply that this is a new discovery that somehow challenges man made global warming.

Not only is it old research, it has also been debunked several times (see here, here, here, here and here). In July last year the prestigious Royal Society of UK published a study concluding that the Sun's output cannot be causing modern-day climate change. [11] To quote BBC News on it: Mike Lockwood's analysis appears to have put a large, probably fatal nail in this intriguing and elegant [Galactic Cosmic Ray] hypothesis. He said: "It might even have had a significant effect on pre-industrial climate; but you cannot apply it to what we're seeing now, because we're in a completely different ball game."

Mysteriously, the HT article quotes Deepak Lal, former Indian Foreign Service officer in support of the Galactic Cosmic Ray theory. How is Lal related with the Danish Space Research Centre is not mentioned in the article. I looked up his background. Among other things, Lal is the author of a little known book on globalisation called "In Praise of Empires." [12] More interestingly however, he is a Senior Fellow at the CATO institute. [13] What is CATO institute? You guessed it -- a US "think tank" funded by ExxonMobil. It has received $110,000 from Exxon. [14]

Questions about journalistic ethics and accountability

The two articles raise serious questions. Why did the Hindustan Times publish misleading, inaccurate, unsubstantiated and biased reports on climate change. Did the correspondent receive an incentive for publishing these from outside or is there an organisation wide effort to discredit opinion against climate change?

Those of us who understand the severity of this planetary emergency have watched every mention of this issue in mainstream Indian media with interest over the last year. Most of us can also recall a time prior to the release of the IPCC report when climate change was conspicuously absent from Indian media. The Stern report for example, which was hailed as a landmark event in UK (released at the end of Oct 2006), never found a mention in India's two main newspaper for months. This conspiracy of silence was broken only when the crescendo of international reporting on the issue reached mile-high by the time the IPCC report came out (Feb 2007).

Poor reporting is worse than no reporting. In this particular instance, it's hard to accept that this came out simply as a result of ignorance. Chetan Chauhan has been covering environmental issues for HT for some time and it's hard to imagine someone at that position being incapable of making a distinction between CSCCC and IPCC or being unable to conduct simple background checks through web searches prior to writing.

A bigger question for those of us who see through such reporting is: how do we address this problem. How do we respond to such reports to bring the truth to public attention. And how do we make the media accountable for what it writes or does not write.

On my part I plan to follow this post with a formal complaint to the Press Council of India unless HT issues a well-placed corrective article in the following days.


Notes and Links

This entry is also posted on Green-India mailing list and copied to the following:

Chetan Chauhan, HT correspondent and writer of said articles
Vir Sanghvi, Editorial Director Hindustan Times
Dr Rajendra K Pachauri, Director-General TERI
Sunita Narain, Director Centre for Science and Environment
Malini Mehra, Founder & Director Centre for Social Markets

References:

1 HT April 1, 2008: Climate change not as big a problem: report

2 Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change [2] (CSCCC) website

3 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on Wikipedia

4 The CSCCC is organised by IPN according to this Wikipedia entry.

5 International Policy Network fact sheet on ExxonMobilSecrets.org

6 Paul Reiter on Science and Economic Advisory Council of The Annapolis Center

7 The Annapolis Center fact sheet on ExxonMobilSecrets.org

8 Reiter's research background on DeSmogBlog

9 HT, April 3, 2008: Sun too causes global warming

10 DNSC 1997 research papers on sun-Climate connection [PDF] and cosmic ray flux and global cloud cover [PDF]

11 BBC News on Royal Society study: 'No Sun link' to climate change

12 Deepak Lal's In Praise of Empires

13 Deepak Lal at CATO

14 CATO fact sheet on ExxonSecrets.org


UPDATE 5-Apr 2008: IPCC Chairman, Dr. R. K. Pachauri Writes Back

Words of encouragement and support have poured in from several quarters via various channels. Including one from Noble Laureate and IPCC chairman, Dr R. K. Pachauri himself. Dr Pachauri graciously took out time to reply to my email. My sincere thanks to everyone once again. I've compiled all responses - received via email or on Green-India group - as comments on this page. Read Dr. Pachauri's response. Note: timestamps on these comments may not be valid.


UPDATE 5-Apr 2008 [2]: CSM Issues Press Release

Centre for Social Markets (CSM) headed by Ms Malini Mehra, which last month served as adviser to Al Gore's climate project in India, has issued a press release against the climate change misinformation campaign in the media. It discusses the launch of "Civil Society Report on Climate Change" in India by deputy chairman of planning commission - Montek Singh Ahluwalia.


UPDATE 9-Apr 2008: TreeHugger picks up this story

TreeHugger.com - the US based popular green blog, which has a daily reach of around 200 million (that's as much as Hindustantimes.com), has published a detailed story based on this entry calling it a "complete, excruciatingly well-referenced analysis which elegantly dismantles the erroneous arguments put forth in both [HT] pieces." The TreeHugger post quotes widely from this blog and its author. Thank you TreeHugger!


UPDATE 1-May 2008: Malini Mehra writes in HT

Founder and CEO of Centre for Social Markets, Ms. Malini Mehra wrote an oped piece in Hindustan Times, published on Earth Day, flaying the two HT reports calling threat from climate change exaggerated and unfounded. an excerpt:

Having failed to win the argument in the West, the climate deniers are now moving into India and China. They see our country as a soft-touch for their propaganda and easy to hoodwink through arguments pitting poverty against development. What they do not realise is that there is a domestic movement brewing in India for positive action on climate change.

Complete article can be found here.


UPDATE 11-May 2008: Frontline Magazine writes on this issue

Well known political analyst, journalist and activist Praful Bidwai penned a column in Frontline magazine (Apr 26 - May 09) on this issue. Opening excerpt follows:

Falling back on pseudo-science?
Indian policymakers are clutching at straws to duck their responsibility to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

AS Indian policymakers come under growing pressure from global scientific and political communities on climate change, they are increasingly resorting to disingenuous, devious or downright specious arguments to avoid taking purposive action to cap and reduce the country’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which are rising 3.5 times faster than the world average.

The detailed article calls the CSCCC report flimsy and "an exercise in charlatanry and sophistry." It also references this blog post as containing "some interesting facts" on the issue. Complete article can be read here.


UPDATE 20-May 2008: The Unsuitablog cites this post while parodying CSCCC with a game called "follow the links."


UPDATE 03-June 2008: Filed a formal complaint with the Press Council of India along with related evidence.

Epicenter of Earthquake Was Delhi University: US Geological Survey

According to USGS, the epicentre of Delhi earthquake was just south of Delhi University near GT road, not Delhi-Haryana border as media reports have said. (See UPDATE 26-Nov, 4.15PM)

Delhi experienced what's being called a "moderate" earthquake this morning. It recorded 4.6 on Richter scale. I've felt earthquakes in the past and this was by far the strongest because its epicenter was right in Delhi.

However, there seems to be some confusion over where exactly lies the epicentre in or around Delhi. Media reports mention Delhi-Haryana border but the Delhi Haryana border is not a single location, it stretches for several kilometers. However, the latitude and longitude figures released by India's meteorological department does not match this.

Epicenter According to the Met Department

According to Indiainfo and ZeeNews,

The epicenter of the tremor was at the Delhi-Haryana border at 28.6 N latitude and 77.9 E longitude. Precisely it was centered around 10 kms from Bahadurgarh in Haryana.

This does not make any sense because those figures are for a location in U.P nowhere close to Delhi or Haryana. Enter 28.6°N, 77.9°E in Google Maps and you get this.


(Scale: 20km)

As you can see, the epicenter according to the met department is not consistent with the statement that it's on Delhi-Haryana border. It's actually about 100km East of the point where Bahadurgarh is. (see UPDATE below)

Epicenter According to U.S. Geological Survey

The National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC), part of U.S Geological Survey maintains a database of earthquakes around the world. According to their data, the epicenter location was actually right in the middle of North Delhi just south of Delhi University.



Enter 28.677°N, 77.204°E in Google Maps and you get this.


(Scale: 2km)


(Scale: 500m)

The figures released by USGS have a location uncertainty of +/- 18km but that still doesn't put it anywhere close to the figures provided by the met department.

I will update this post when I have more info but if you know a more reliable source of the epicenter location, please leave a comment.

UPDATE 4.15PM: Correct Met Dept Location Now Confirmed

It seems the media reports picked up wrong Longitude figure released by the Met department. Met Department's list of earthquakes in November available on its website (scroll down to 25) puts the Longitude at 77.0E instead of 77.9E as reported in news reports mentioned above.

This puts their stated location at Delhi-Haryana border near Najafgarh or about 10km from Bahadurgarh. View location on Google Maps.


(Scale: 10km)

The Amateur Seismic Centre (ASC), an independent centre based in Pune, continues to go with the USGS data source and puts the epicenter at Malka Ganj-Kamla Nagar in Delhi University area, as mentioned above.

Note that both USGS and Met department locations are from their preliminary reports.

UPDATE 8.00PM: I wrote to ASC's Stacey Martin to find out which data is more credible. Stacey kindly wrote back that eventually India Meteorological Department (IMD) figures will be more accurate since its monitoring station is in Delhi itself while USGS/NEIC's closest monitoring station is in Kabul. However, as of right now, the latter has provided figures up to three decimal places so at the moment ASC is going with NEIC's epicenter in North Delhi.

Since this is only preliminary data, it's likely to be corrected and the final IMD location will only be available in the public domain in 18-months due to CTBT constraints.

Past Earthquakes in Delhi Region

Here is some historical information on earthquakes in Delhi, taken from ASC report of today's quake.

This is one of the strongest earthquakes in the Delhi region since 2001 and the biggest since 1960. Prior to this latest earthquake, the strongest local earthquakes to have originated within the Delhi metropolitan area since the 1960 Gurgaon earthquake was a Mb=4.3 earthquake in the Dwarka-Najafgarh area on 28 April 2001 that caused minor damage & widespread panic. The strongest known earthquakes in the Delhi region include the M6.0 Khurja-Bulandshahr earthquake on 10 October 1956, the M6.0 Gurgaon earthquake on 27 August 1960 and the Mb=5.6 Moradabad earthquake on 15 August 1966. Historically, the 15 July 1720 earthquake in the Delhi region caused the greatest damage in the city causing many deaths and widespread damage including knocking down large parts of the Shaharepanah (city wall) in Old Delhi from Kabuli Gate to Lal Darwaza and the battlements of the Fatehpuri Masjid.

Ron Paul On Climate Change

How can a presidential candidate so right about almost every other issue be so mistaken about climate change?

I've just spent the last three hours learning about Ron Paul, a U.S presidential candidate I knew nothing about earlier and one who has recently experienced an unusually strong upsurge of support surprising many. TIME is calling it "The Ron Paul Revolution." CNN went nuts when Ron's online campaign collected a record sum in a day. The Washington Post just did a story trying to make sense of the revolution.

People are excited for good reason. Watch him speak and it wouldn't take you long to say to yourself: "Wow, I love this guy!" His speeches call for an end to "the U.S. empire" - words you'd expect from an activist, not a presidential hopeful. He also frequently mentions the "military industrial complex" - when was the last time you heard a presidential candidate admit its existence since Eisenhower coined the term. He talks of abolishing the IRS and the federal reserve, getting troops back from Iraq immediately, following a dramatically modest foreign policy than any past presidents, he's for freedom of the internet, in favor of same sex marriages and says the biggest threat to our privacy is the government. Ron Paul wants to drastically limit the government's ability to play big brother.

In fact, all his suggested policy measures are radical. And this is the most striking thing about him. As the TIME story notes, Ron is the most anti-establishment of all candidates. He has the courage to admit big policy mistakes of the past and the vision of a radically different future based on a few simple principles he's been known to hold for decades. You can't get a better candidate than this. Or so I thought.

Until I Googled his position on climate change and found that he thinks this issue is overblown. His website doesn't even mention the term and in this clip from a visit to Google in July this year, Ron says "there are two sides of the (global warming) argument." In another video from August when asked whether increasing carbon dioxide in atmosphere is an important issue, he answers that it's debatable.

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There are good people who are in politics, in both parties, who hold this [issue] at arm's length because if they acknowledge it and recognize it then the moral imperative to make big changes is inescapable.
- Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth

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It's incredible for someone to say this in 2007. Although none of the presidential candidates have been known to completely grasp the severity of climate change problem, yet for a candidate to say that it is an overblown issue is frankly quite outrageous. To hear these statements after IPCC fourth assessment, after Stern report and dozens of independent scientific institutions have raised alarm over climate change, is...well, I've run out of adjectives. I don't know what to call it.

Needless to say, there is no debate, no other side. Global warming and other effects of climate change are a scientifically proven certainty. I can't imagine what ratio of denial, ignorance and bias would have combined to make Ron hold those opinions. It's very disheartening. On the one hand, I'd love to see him in the oval office - his term could really have a revolutionary impact on U.S politics and its relationship with the rest of the world.

But on the other, the world can't afford another five years of inaction on the issue after ten years of the worst environment and energy policy from Washington. It could be very dangerous to have a global warming skeptic as the U.S. president when we're in the midst of what Al Gore rightly calls a planetary emergency. There may be hope though. In the Google interview he also admits that he doesn't know enough about this issue. I hope he finds out soon because he'd putting a lot of votes at stake otherwise.

iPhone's $200 Price Cut = $2 Billion Customer Handout

Steve Jobs just handed out $1.92 billion to past and future iPhone customers. What does it mean for Apple and why did they do it? Orange Hues blog unveils the mystery behind the move.

On September 5, Steve Jobs confirmed the massive margins of iPhone when he announced an unprecedented $200 price cut on the device within 10 weeks of its introduction. It's been justified as a trend in the technology industry but I think the real reason runs deeper than that. Just consider that the reduction is 33% of original price ($599) and a whopping 50% of the new price ($399). Such cuts have *never* been seen in the industry for a mass produced consumer product.

If that wasn't enough, Jobs even announced that Apple will pay back $100 to every iPhone owner so far, after several Apple loyalists revolted saying that they have been duped for being Apple fans. While much is being written about Apple's generous gesture and what it means for Apple as a brand, nobody seems to have done the numbers to calculate the financial cost to the company.


What Does It Mean: Unprecedented Profit Margins

So here's an attempt to see what it means to take $200 off, what is now, a $400 product. Over 800,000 people have purchased an iPhone so far (from Apple's estimate of 1 million sales by end of September) out of its 10 million target by end of next year. That translates to Apple handing out more than $80 million to iPhone customers now ($100 x 800,000) and $1.84 billion over the next 16 months ($200 x 9.2 million).

Irrespective of the reasons, one thing that's abundantly clear from Steve Job's $1.92 billion handout is that Apple's profit margins for the device are way beyond anything ever seen in the industry.

When Jobs first introduced the iPhone on January 10th, I wrote a few hours later that it's poised to become Apple's most profitable product in its entire history. I based that on the simple premise that even with a two year contract, the phone is still not subsidised as is the industry norm. So naturally there's a sum that AT&T is passing to Apple for every sale of the mandatory contract. A few weeks later, details emerged that it's even better than that - Apple also has a share in monthly payments that AT&T receives from iPhone owners.

We don't know if it's a one time cash deal or AT&T shares revenue on some other basis. Lets assume that Apple gets $300 for every iPhone sold (@$399) and $10 from each month's bill. If Apple achieves its target of 10 million phones by end of 2008 (18 months from its release), that's an earning of whopping $8.8 billion. A very small part of which is the actual hardware cost.

Compare iPhone's profit with the puny margins in gaming consoles or the PC industry. It's well known, for example, that both Microsoft and Sony sell their consoles for loss in hope of making it up over sales of games. This is in a market that sold just 26 million units last year. On the other hand, there were 957 million mobile phones sold the same year.

Clearly, Apple hit a jackpot with iPhone. There is no other category of mass produced consumer product that makes that kind of margin on those kind of numbers.


Real Reason Behind Price Cut: Preempt Competition

There's little doubt therefore that iPhone will make a windfall of money to Apple's bank balance. But why did Jobs have to give such a large cash handout? No matter how high the margins, no company likes to part with such a sizable amount. Apple isn't known for increasing value by reducing price. They do it by giving more at the same price with regular product revisions. So what has changed since Jobs announced the price in January?

The stock market which drove Apple's stock down at the news thinks it's poor sales behind the move. Nothing could be further from the truth. A number of analysts have pointed out that there's no way that could be the reason. There is no "fatal flaw" with the phone either. In fact, several customer surveys say iPhone buyers have overwhelming voted in the favor of the device.

There may be truth to the argument that it's merely because Apple wants to hit economies of scale. Yes, but is it a planned move on the lines that - milk the first few months of crazy iPhone madness and then reduce price to expand the market - I doubt it. Before Jobs announced the price in January, nobody could have predicted the media frenzy that followed at the time and then again at iPhone's launch. Somehow I can't justify that Apple had planned a $200 cut from the start.

What seems much more likely is that this a reaction to Google Phone and other competitors planning to enter the market. The much talked about Google device which was just fiction a few months ago has now become an almost certainty. A number of people have cited inside sources to claim that the Google Phone is real. The latest revelations come from a Boston Globe article from three days before Apple's announcement that cite a number of people having seen the phone.

In his address at Moscone center and later in interviews, Steve Jobs repeatedly said he wants to be "even more aggressive." But hey, aggressive with what? Apple truly doesn't have any competition! Sales figures for the month of July suggest that iPhone is the only smart phone out there selling like that and despite the prohibitive price, it's already equaling sales of much lesser price phones.

So where's the need to be aggressive? Clearly this is not about today but about future competition. Usually Apple has competitors petty much in knots as to how and where to strike at Apple's offerings. But this time things went a little differently. Remember that Apple, which loves to keep their products secret until the very last moment, was forced to announce iPhone six months in advance of the launch because of FCC disclosure. This essentially gave the Nokias and the Googles a generous lead of half a year to plan their offerings.

Things have changed since Apple's announcement in January. Google isn't the only one entering the market. Microsoft, which had previously ruled out a Zune phone, now admits the idea is "not unreasonable." I'm sure RIM, Palm, Nokia and other cell phone makers are prepping up launch of their own "iPhone killers" as the media would call them. Although I've little doubt that Apple will maintain its lead, the company isn't leaving anything on chance. With the price cut, Apple has clearly made a preemptive strike to ensure they have a smooth run.

And this is absolutely the right time to strike. If they had made such a large reduction after the announcement of Google Phone or another competitive product, their stock would have really taken a beating. Besides, it would reflect very poorly on the brand. Apple has never been known to indulge in price wars with a competitor.

I don't know if Steve jobs plays chess, but if he does, he must excel at it. You have to credit this man's vision for anticipating moves of future competitors and disarming them before they even enter the battlefield. It takes courage to give away $2 billion.

Related links

MSNBC reports on the Apple's $200 price cut and $100 rollback
CNBC video on Apple's inexplicable price cut
IT Wire: US iPhone sales go ballistic in July
Boston Globe article: Introducing the Google Phone
Gizmodo: Microsoft Admits Zune Phone Not Unreasonable

Past iPhone posts from Orange Hues blog

Jan 10, 2007: First to identify Apple's large profit margins behind iPhone
Jan 10, 2007: First to identify real reason behind iPhone's future success
Jan 12, 2007: First to identify another cell phone using multi-touch

Quote: On Working Hard

Seth Godin nails it...

It's hard work to make difficult emotional decisions, such as quitting a job and setting out on your own. It's hard work to invent a new system, service, or process that's remarkable. It's hard work to tell your boss that he's being intellectually and emotionally lazy. It's easier to stand by and watch the company fade into oblivion. It's hard work to tell senior management to abandon something that it has been doing for a long time in favor of a new and apparently risky alternative. It's hard work to make good decisions with less than all of the data. [...]

Richard Branson doesn't work more hours than you do. Neither does Steve Ballmer or Carly Fiorina. Robyn Waters, the woman who revolutionized what Target sells -- and helped the company trounce Kmart -- probably worked fewer hours than you do in an average week.

None of the people who are racking up amazing success stories and creating cool stuff are doing it just by working more hours than you are. And I hate to say it, but they're not smarter than you either. They're succeeding by doing hard work. [...]

Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you'd rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, tunnel under that barrier, drive through the other barrier. And, after you've done that, to do it again the next day.

The big insight: The riskier your (smart) coworker's hard work appears to be, the safer it really is. It's the people having difficult conversations, inventing remarkable products, and pushing the envelope (and, perhaps, still going home at 5 PM) who are building a recession-proof future for themselves.

-- Seth Godin in Labor Day

Quote: On Bicycle

I always knew the bicycle was the most energy efficient vehicle but this is just amazing...

Pound for pound, a person on a bicycle expends less energy than any creature or machine covering the same distance. A human walking spends about three times as much energy per pound; even a salmon swimming spends about twice as much.

From the book Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things

(found via TreeHugger)

Update 28 Aug: Excellent post on "How to Ride Your Bike to Work".