Arctic Ice

In October ice levels continue to rise as expected (see graph) and continue to be better than levels recorded in 2007.

However, when you look at the overall trend for the last 60 years there is a long way to go before any improvement can be confirmed. A small bit of good news is that the current 12 month moving average is within 3 and 2 standard deviations from the mean value of 1968 to 1996. In the period 2005 to 2007 the 3 standard deviation control limit was broken so if this happens again over the next few years there will be further cause for major concern.

And here is the percentage reduction over the last 30 years using the September mean for each year (this September was 20% down on the 1979-2000 mean):

Growth Rate of Irish Population 2

The ERSI predicted this week that the Irish Republic's population will grow to between 4.7 million and 5.1 million by 2021. This matches the predicted growth in the charts I published 2 months back (reproduced again). Anyone holding property for the long term should be encouraged as the population would grow by nearly 80,000 in the next 12 years.

 

Country Suicide Rates by Latitudinal distance from the Equator

Recent studies have shown that latitude is one influencing factor of a country's suicide rate. So I took the latest suicide rates per 100,000 males on Wikipedia and plotted them by mean latitudinal distance from the equator. Although there is a lot of variability in the data there does seem to be some influencing factors on suicide rates depending how far north or south of the equator a particular country is. For example, Alaska has the highest suicide rate in the US. The results of these studies also show that suicide rates peak in June and dip in December in the Northern hemisphere and peak in December and dip in June in the Southern hemisphere.

Here is the raw data:

Country	Mean Latitude	Male Suicide Rate
Ecuador	2	10.4
Colombia	4	8.9
Suriname	4	17.8
Guyana	5	33.8
Venezuela	8	8.4
Panama	9	11.1
Peru	10	1.1
Brazil	10	6.8
Costa Rica	10	10.6
Trinidad	11	20.9
Barbados	13	1.4
Philippines	13	2.5
Saint Vincent	13	6.8
El Slvador	13	10.3
Saint Lucia	13	10.4
Nicaragua	13	11.1
Guatemala	15	3.4
Thailand	15	12
Belize	17	13.4
Peurto Rico	18	10.9
Dominican Rep	19	2.9
Zimbabwe	20	10.6
India	20	12.2
Mauritius	20	13.2
Cuba	21	18.6
Singapore	22	12.9
Hong Kong	22	22
Paraguay	23	4.5
Mexico	23	7
Bahamas	24	6
Bahrain	26	4.9
Australia	27	17.1
Kuwait	29	2.5
South Africa	29	25.3
Chile	30	17.8
Israel	31	10.4
Uruguay	33	24.5
Argentina	34	14.1
Malta	35	7
China	35	13
Japan	36	34.8
South Korea	37	29.6
USA	38	17.7
Turkey	39	2.3
Tajikistan	39	2.9
Greece	39	5.9
Portugal	39	17.5
Azerbaijan	40	1.8
Armenia	40	3.2
Spain	40	12
Turkmenistan	40	13.8
Albania	41	4.7
Ukbekistan	41	8.1
Macedonia	41	9.5
Kyrgyzstan	41	15.3
New Zealand	41	20.3
Georgia	42	3.4
Italy	42	11
Bulgaria	43	19.7
Bosnia	44	20.3
Serbia	44	28.4
Croatia	45	30.5
Romania	46	21.5
France	46	26.4
Slovenia	46	42.1
Switzerland	47	24.7
Austria	47	24.7
Moldova	47	31.5
Hungary	47	42.3
Slovakia	48	22.3
Kazakhstan	48	45
Luxembourg	49	17.7
Czech Republic	49	35.5
Ukraine	49	40.9
Belgium	50	31.2
Germany	51	19.7
Netherlands	52	12.7
Poland	52	27.8
Ireland	53	16.3
Belarus	53	63.3
UK	54	10.4
Denmark	56	19.2
Lithuania	56	68.1
Latvia	57	42
Estonia	59	35.5
Canada	60	17.3
Russia	60	58.1
Norway	62	15.7
Sweden	62	19.5
Finland	64	31.1
Iceland	65	16.2

Arctic Ice Levels Showing Signs of Recovery?

A small piece of good news for anyone worried about global warming and the reduction of the ice caps with the resultant raising of sea levels. Here is the latest graph showing Arctic ice levels over the last few years compared with the average from 1970-2000. Hopefully, this is not a blip and is an indicator of some form of receovery from the lows of 2007. The good news is that current 2009 figures seem to be about 3 Standard Deviations from the average of 1970-2000. I will continue to monitor.

Irish Summer Weather Part 2

The Armagh weather data for the month of August has been posted. I could use other weather stations like the one in Ashford County Wicklow but Armagh has been gathering weather data for over 200 years. Overall, using the Armagh data this summer was well above the trend for number of Mean Sunshine Hours and for Mean Maximum Temperature. See graphs below. The overall trend for Mean Sunshine Hours has decreased by about 30 hours per summer since 1880.

The overall trend for Mean Maximum Summer Temperature has increased slightly from 18.35 to 18.75 degrees Celsius since 1844.

The overall trend therefore is for slightly wetter (see last post), warmer and cloudier summers for the future.

Irish Summer Weather

One useful comparison between countries would be to check the weather over a period of time in a particular region. The Armagh Observatory has being publishing weather data for the last 200 years. The summers (June, July & August) in Ireland have been really bad over the last 3 years. For example, here is the rainfall data since 1838 for the 3 month summer period. You can see a peak rainfall datapoint to the right of the graph that represents the amount of rainfall for Summer 2007 (377mm) which was the worst rainfall since summer of 1958 and before that we did not have as much rain in a summer since 1861.

Despite the heavier than normal rainfall over the last 3 years the trend is down slightly over the period of 170 years (slightly drier summers on average with a reduction from 235mm to just over 200mm). Hopefully we might get a decent summer again like in 1995 when we got just under 80mm of rain during the summer and a decent amount of sunshine (more later when I collate the sunshine data).

Growth Rate of Irish Population

The CSO released the latest population growth statistics this week. If the population continues to grow at the same linear rate as the last 10 years then we would see the population doubling by 2050. Unlikely I know but it would be interesting to track to see how long this trend continues.

The Red line in Graph 1 is the actual population growth increase from 1999 to 2008 and the Blue line is the extrapolated growth line giving the actual total population in Graph 2.

Happiness Index Revisited

I was talking to someone recently about the Subjective Well Being or Happiness Index of a country (saying that Denmark came out with the highest SWB value) and she pointed out that Denmark had a high suicide rate. So after I bit of investigation I found the following suicide rates for countries I have been comparing up to now. In order to compare my selected countries with that of the highest suicide rate in the world I have added Lithuania into the comparison chart below. So Denmark has a relatively high suicide rate but much less than the highest countries in the world.

In general male suicides outnumber female suicides by a multiple of 3, 4 or 5. For example, in the US males successfully complete suicide at a rate of 4 times that of females. However, females attempt suicide more than 3 times more often than males. Men tend to use firearms and are therefore more successful at suicide whereas women tend to go for an overdose option which often leads to recovery. Here are the comparison charts for men and women.

Looking at the countries with higher suicide rates it tends to be those with colder climates (e.g. Lithuania, Russia, Belarus, Slovenia and Alaska has the highest suicide rate in the US) but I could not find any studies that link cold climates with suicide rates. Surprisingly, most suicides happen in the spring time usually peaking in May and June in the northern hemisphere (November and December in the southern hemisphere).

Spending on Health

The Irish Government is planning to significantly cut back on Health spending. Graph 1 is the trend of spending as a percentage of GDP in a selected list of countries over recent years. We know that the UK, France and Cuba have relatively good health systems mostly sponsored by the state. So how do other counties compare? For example, the USA has a very high % expenditure on health compared to GDP but approximately 55% of the expenditure is made up from private health expenditure on insurance or direct payments and hence the USA Governemnt has a low % contribution from the total expenditure on health (as does Greece surprisingly in this small small sample of countries - see Graph 2).

It looks like Ireland will be going the way of the US where anyone who can afford it will have private health insurance (all the rest will have to make do). All data sourced from the WHO site.

Happiness Index

With all this talk of recession and depression it would be interesting to gauge the well being of a country before the recent economic downturn. There are 2 measures that I found that could be used: the first is called The (un)Happy Planet Index or HPI for short which reflects the average years of happy life produced by a given society per unit of planetary resource consumed. Here are some trends since 1961 for a few countries I am interested in comparing (Spain's HPI increased steadily after Franco's death in 1975 but started to decline again after 1985 - so it appears to have been a temporary blip?):

The second index is based on a paper from the University of Leicester in the UK called the Subjective Well Being Index. According to this index Denmark comes out with the best SWB Index in the world; Ireland is 11th; USA 23rd; UK 41st; Spain 46th.

New Blasphemy Law for Ireland

The Irish Government in its wisdom has decided to push through a Blasphemy Law. Who in their right mind in Ireland really wants or needs this? I would urge everyone to join the campaign on blasphemy.ie to urge the powers that be to see some sense. So I visited the CSO site again to see the spread of religious beliefs in Ireland and how it has changed over the last 120 years.

The surprising result is that although the % of Catholics is decreasing slightly the actual number of people declaring themselves to be Catholic is increasing and has never been higher (in the period measured).

So there can be no denying that Ireland is predominantly a Roman Catholic country. But there are other religions represented in the county. Here is the % of the rest as of 2006. The next highest category is those of no religion at 4.2% (175,252).

Age Profile of Irish Population

I'm starting to collate a profile of the Irish population to compare with other countries. The obvious place to go to is the Irish Central Statistics Office site. Very interesting detail here.

For example life expectancy in Ireland is 76.8 for males and 81.6 for females. Life expectancy in the UK is slightly higher for males (77.2) and slightly lower for females (81.5). The USA is slightly lower (75.1 for males; 80.2 for females). If you want to live longer then move to Japan (and I presume adopt their lifestyle) and expect to live until 78.8 for males and 85.62 for females.

Overall the population age profile for Ireland looks like this:



I always suspected that there were slightly more males than females in Ireland (except when men start to get into their 60s and 70s and start dropping off). Here is the proof.

Murder rates in Ireland

There was a horrific murder in Ireland over the weekend which got me thinking how Ireland compares to the rest of the world in this respect.

The good news is that as of 2007 Ireland was the least violent country in Europe (according to the WHO) which compared homicide and assault rates across 27 European countries. The Irish rate, 0.32 killings per 100,000 people, contrasted with that of Finland (1.96) and Scotland (1.75) which topped western Europe's violence blacklist. Malta, with a rate of 0.48, was almost as peaceful as Ireland.

In 2007 the USA had a murder rate of nearly 6 per 100,000 people. Other countries: Mexico has a rate of 13; Russia has a rate of 19.9; South Africa has a rate of 47.5; and Colombia has a frightening rate of 62.7. Maybe Ireland isn't such a bad place to live after all?

However, the good news for the USA is that the murder rate has declined to levels close to that of the early 1960s. See graph below (1960 - 2007) to see that murder rates in the USA peaked at 0ver 10 per 100,000 in 1980 but declined significantly during the '90s. Any one know why? Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner have an interesting explanation in their book "Freakonomics" but I know many people are abhorred by the idea.

Prison Incarceration levels in Ireland

This is my first attempt at gathering some comparative data from different countries: relative prison incarceration levels across the world.

I was driving home yesterday listening to Today FM and heard that prisons in the Republic of Ireland are grossly over crowded at the moment and yet some unfortunate people are being incarcerated for non-payment of small fines (as low as €50 according to one contributor). Surely there must be a better way to "punish" people who commit small crimes (e.g. some form of community service)?

So first I looked up what the current prison occupancy rates in Ireland and then started comparing to other counties and this is what I found so far:

• Since 1995 the prison population rate in Ireland has grown from 57 per 100,000 of national population to 78 per 100,000 of national population in 2006. It increased by 11% in 2008 which would roughly bring Ireland up to just under the 86 per 100,000 level.


• In 2005 the average cost of keeping an individual in custody in Ireland for one year was €90,000 and in 2008 this figure had not changed very much at around €92,000.


• In 2008 there was a considerable increase in the numbers committed for non-payment of court fines (88.7% increase growing to 2,520). Based on the €92k figure above the cost to the taxpayer would have been €4.5 million per week.


• Finland has a prison population rate of 75 per 100,000 of national population.


• Germany has a prison population rate of 95 per 100,000 of national population.


• Surprisingly, Canada has a prison population rate of 107 per 100,000 of national population.


• In the UK in 2006 an average of 148 people in every 100,000 were in prison. England and Wales has one of the highest rates of incarceration in Europe.


• But compared to rates in the USA Ireland has a much lower incarceration rate (see graph above)

Taking all this into account Ireland compares well with other countries but we could do a lot better by not sending offenders to prison for petty offences and save some valuable taxpayer money at the same time