The Ease of Doing Business by Country

The World Bank ranks countries for the ease of doing business.  The list below gives the top 60 countries with the 2010 and the 2009 ranks, followed by a final number after the country name indicating the number of reforms in the last year to make it easier to do business:

1 1 Singapore 3
2 2 New Zealand 0
3 3 Hong Kong, China 3
4 4 United States 0
5 6 United Kingdom 2
6 5 Denmark 0
7 7 Ireland 1
8 8 Canada 0
9 9 Australia 0
10 10 Norway 1
11 16 Georgia 2
12 12 Thailand 1
13 15 Saudi Arabia 2
14 11 Iceland 1
15 13 Japan 0
16 14 Finland 1
17 24 Mauritius 6
18 17 Sweden 0
19 23 Korea, Rep. 2
20 18 Bahrain 1
21 19 Switzerland 0
22 20 Belgium 2
23 21 Malaysia 2
24 22 Estonia 2
25 27 Germany 2
26 25 Lithuania 1
27 30 Latvia 2
28 26 Austria 0
29 29 Israel 1
30 28 Netherlands 1
31 31 France 2
32 69 Macedonia, FYR 7
33 47 United Arab Emirates 3
34 32 South Africa 1
35 33 Puerto Rico 0
36 34 St. Lucia 1
37 49 Colombia 8
38 38 Azerbaijan 2
39 37 Qatar 0
40 36 Cyprus 0
41 80 Kyrgyz Republic 7
42 35 Slovak Republic 1
43 50 Armenia 3
44 42 Bulgaria 2
45 39 Botswana 2
46 61 Taiwan, China 2
47 41 Hungary 1
48 48 Portugal 4
49 40 Chile 0
50 44 Antigua and Barbuda 0
51 55 Mexico 2
52 46 Tonga 1
53 58 Slovenia 2
54 43 Fiji 1
55 45 Romania 1
56 65 Peru 6
57 68 Samoa 2
58 82 Belarus 6
59 57 Vanuatu 1
60 56 Mongolia 0

Once again, the U.S., the country most known for Capitalism is only number 4 on the list.  For the 4th year, Singapore leads the list.  Apparently, Singapore and Hong Kong are both interested in being countries with a good business climate, since each made reforms to improve.  Note that the U.S. made no useful reforms.  In fact, under the planned economy approach of Obama, we have been on the verge of doing innumerable bad deeds to businesses.  Fortunately, ObamaCare, Cap and Trade, Union Card Check, Capital Gains and Corporate Tax Increases, and the EPA regulations on CO2 emissions he wants have not yet taken effect.  But, the huge deficits, the proposed new taxes and regulations, and the rhetoric against doing business have all taken quite a toll on the business climate all by themselves.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom is moving up the list and on our heels.  Eight of the top 9 countries are or were once controlled by the United Kingdom.  The only exception is Denmark and the number 10 country is Norway.  Norway and Denmark both have longstanding trading relations with the UK.  Japan lost ground in the rankings, going from 13th to 15th.  Germany gained ground, going from 27th to 25th.  The Netherlands was once a very good country for doing business, but it fell from 28th to 30th.  France is 31st on the list.  Our neighbor Canada is number 8 and our neighbor Mexico is 51, having moved up from 55.  Korea moved up from 23 to 19.  Israel is 29.

We should all applaud those countries who have tried to make it easier to do business in the last year.  We should, however, replace the slacker American government which has tried so hard to make it harder to do business.

Falsified New Zealand Land Surface Temperature Measurements

Recently I have posted on the falsification of the land surface temperature record in the United States (here and here), in Australia, and in Russia.  Now I will discuss the intentional manipulations of the raw temperature data for New Zealand to make it appear that there has been a substantial temperature increase there since 1900!  In posts to follow, I will discuss the manipulations of the land surface temperature data for the Nordic countries and then also return to the US to discuss some further discrepancies.  In short, we are rapidly learning that none of the world's surface land temperature data as reported by the major climate research centers can be trusted.

The UN IPCC 2007 report (AR4) claimed that New Zealand has been warming for 100 years.  New Zealand's National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research (NIWA) keeps the New Zealand National Climate Database.  The record goes back to 1850.  The official NIWA graph of temperatures from 1853 through 2008 after subtracting the average temperature from 1971 to 2000 is:

The dashed line is the linear trend from 1909 to 2008, with a rate of temperature change of 0.92C/100 years.  The New Zealand unadjusted average temperature record is quite different:

Any large temperature increase since 1900 has now disappeared.  One might see a small increase starting from 1932 or from 1947, but considering the entire data set, one is not really justified in picking just those starting times.  And we should remember that New Zealand's population has increased since those times, so the unadjusted temperatures should have some urban heat island effect wrapped up in them, which has increased over the years.

Many requests for the raw data and the adjustments made to the data were made to the head of the NIWA, Dr. Salinger, for years with no response.  But the data for each of the New Zealand stations recently became available from one of Dr. Salinger's colleagues.  Examination of the data revealed that strong adjustments had been made to the data to create a strong warming trend.

The shocking truth is that the oldest readings have been cranked way down and later readings
artificially lifted to give a false impression of warming, as documented below. There is nothing
in the station histories to warrant these adjustments and to date Dr Salinger and NIWA have
not revealed why they did this.

One station, Hokitika, had its early temperatures reduced by a huge 1.3°C, creating strongwarming from a mild cooling, yet there’s no apparent reason for it.

We have discovered that the warming in New Zealand over the past 156 years was indeed
man-made, but it had nothing to do with emissions of CO2—it was created by man-made
adjustments of the temperature. It’s a disgrace.

NIWA claim their official graph reveals a rising trend of 0.92ºC per century, which means (they
claim) we warmed more than the rest of the globe, for according to the IPCC, global warming
over the 20th century was only about 0.6°C.

The purveyors of the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming theory are once again proving to be highly immoral and dishonest.