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Modeling the Economy As a Physics Problem
University of Utah physicist Tim Garrett has published a study that approaches the economy and its relation to global warming as a physics problem — and comes to some controversial conclusions: that rising carbon dioxide emissions cannot be stabilized unless the world's economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day. The study was panned by economists and was rejected by several journals before its acceptance in the journal Climatic Change. "[Garrett discovered that] Throughout history, a simple physical constant... links global energy use to the world's accumulated economic productivity, adjusted for inflation. So it isn't necessary to consider population growth and standard of living in predicting society's future energy consumption and resulting carbon dioxide emissions. ... 'I'm not an economist, and I am approaching the economy as a physics problem,' Garrett says. 'I end up with a global economic growth model different than they have.' Garrett treats civilization like a 'heat engine' that 'consumes energy and does "work" in the form of economic production, which then spurs it to consume more energy,' he says. That constant is 9.7 (plus or minus 0.3) milliwatts per inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar. So if you look at economic and energy production at any specific time in history, 'each inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar would be supported by 9.7 milliwatts of primary energy consumption,' Garrett says. ... Perhaps the most provocative implication of Garrett's theory is that conserving energy doesn't reduce energy use, but spurs economic growth and more energy use."
We have to stop somewhere. At six billion or six trillion. It has to happen. The Heinlein fan in me says this will happen with war and starvation. Its not that hard to imagine, it happens all the time.
Or we can learn to regulate our population, as the Chinese are trying to do. Even in the last 30 years there has been a recognition that high standards of living reduce fertility. But have China and India gone too far for this to work? I am sure the US nearly did, because you have to wear high birth rates and high energy consumption at the same time for a while (the 1950s) for it to work. The same peak would put the energy consumption of 10 billion USA or AU people in China alone.
Don't ask me for help. I'll be starting a farm on Ganymede.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
When someone buys a more fuel efficient car, they often end up driving more miles than before since it costs them less per mile, thus negating much of the fuel savings.
The problem is that you can't adjust for inflation too far back, because the "basket of goods and services" that inflation is measured upon changes every now and then, so the cost of everyday items now can't really be measured against the cost of items in 1920. Some things that were necessities in 1920 aren't anymore, and some things that are necessities now weren't even invented. The most you're going to get is a very rough estimation of what the dollar was worth.
While this is probably largely true, human demands do seem to expand to fill available resources, our demands aren't infinite.
The marginal value of your first dollar, or 10 dollars(depending on local cost of living), is enormous. You get to eat. The marginal value of your 1,000,001th dollar is a great deal smaller.
There isn't a fixed "ceiling" above which people demand no more energy; but there are a number of "floors" below which things get really ugly, really fast(like, "Rwandan Genocide" bad, not just "I want a cooler yacht" bad). If you can increase efficiency enough, it should be possible to reduce the amount of damage that needs to be done in order to head off genuinely bad outcomes.
There is also a second factor to consider: When people are desperate(or ignorant, or stupid), they will be willing to consume their capital to survive. Destroying fish stocks by catching juveniles, farming harder and harder until the topsoil erodes, polluting water supplies, eating the seed corn, deforestation to make charcoal(on the subject of deforestation, compare the Dominican Republic with Haiti. Same island, same location, one country has its forests, one doesn't. The Dominican Republic is merely poor. Haiti is deeply fucked.), and so forth. Even in strict economic terms(i.e. setting the intrinsic worth of "the environment", beyond its practical utility, at 0) this is a stupid plan. If the alternative is starving, though, people will do it anyway. If efficiency increases, fewer people will be desperate enough to eat their capital instead of their income.
The climate is headed for a crash, and there's nothing that anybody can do about it.
Sorry, but that's the truth.
And one more thing: humans of the future will curse your bones. That is all, carry on.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Which is why Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are environmental Garden of Edens.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
When we conserve energy, we can and do use the saved energy for other activities. "conservation" is not really conservation if we promptly use the saved energy for another activity.
Consider the food supply. The population has now reached a size at which the current amount of food is not sufficient for everyone to eat well. So, scientists at ADM and other companies are trying to invent new ways to increase food production. Suppose that the scientists succeed and that we increase food production by 20%. The population, enjoying this additional food, now grows by an additonal 20%: we return to the original problem.
In the long run, the 4 horsemen will eventually impose their own solution on humankind. Many people will die in the process.
Inevitably, some Slashdotter will claim that yet-to-be discovered technology will always provide a fix for the problem. Believing that yet-to-be discovered technology will be discovered (and will be the salvation) is exactly equivalent to believing the numerous claims of religion. Often, the same Slashdotter who is atheist does not hestitate to believe in yet-to-be discovered technology. A hypocrite, a fool, or both?
Human's are not machines. We make choices, and those choices affect the things around us. We don't yet have the understanding of physics necessary to use it predict human behavior. In fact our current understanding of physics precludes the idea that physics can predict the human brain (assuming the brain operates on a quantum level), so this whole study is bullshit. Physics can't be used to predict the choices humans will make. Politics is complicated game played as part of human behavior. Some people study human behavior in an effort to predict or manipulate it, and economics is one science that studies human behavior. The one thing I know about this life is that you cannot apply the laws of physics to human behavior and expect humans to cooperate. Humans are irrational. Physics is rational. Attempting to apply the rationality of physics to irrational humans leads to nothing but massive, massive, FAIL.
"or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day."
I don't have a problem with this. Let's get building.
Eventually we'll turn towards the sun, and nuclear will only be our failsafe, but I have no problem with it filling in the gaps.
I suspect that most people think that the problem is the rest of the population. The portion of the population that makes up their culture is usually not considered to be part of the problem, but everyone else is.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
As a bike rider I find that hilarious.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Economists routinely use highly complicated mathematical models on stuff like this, and are just as routinely criticised for it because their simplifying assumptions aren't close enough to reality. Then along comes this bloke and uses a model that's not even based on human behaviour: the economy as a heat engine. No wonder he's been panned. Criticise economic models all you like, but at least the modern ones* have a foundation in human behaviour.
So economists are trying to figure things out from first principles, and having a rather difficult time because their necessary simplifying assumptions could possibly be simplifying away things that actually matter. While this guy seems to be looking at the economy as a black box, saying "it looks like this input and this output have always been related in the past, so what happens if they stay related in the future?". He's trying to come up with laws ("this is what happens") rather than theories ("this is why it happens"), and doesn't really need a foundation in human behavior. Much like we can know what gravity does, without actually having found a graviton or whatever current theories say we should find.
This whole thing drives me crazy. Is man screwing up the earth? Absolutely, but the solutions the politicians and algoreans are suggesting is pay to play. You can polute all you want as long as you pay for it.
Imagine for a moment that Microsoft was forced to deal with the fact that their software is responsible for ninety-five percent of virus infections, but instead of, Oh I don't know - MAKING THEM BUILD BETTER SOFTWARE - , we simply require that they pay for the tuition of every High School graduate who wants to get a degree in Computer Science.
Freejack. If this system survives longer than twenty-five years, Al Gore and every other person on the inside will live in secure cities with fresh water, abundant food and toss scraps to the rest of the world to feed the need for compassion.
As for me, I've got my money on the zoo of the future. Imagine being able to see the extinct Blue Jay, Cardinal, and if you are really lucky an Eagle.
Of course, I could be wrong.
Dateline 1488: William Howell purchases a nice manor in Buckinghamshire, England but has a recurring nightmare that he is living 521 years in the future. Sucks to be him.
it's always funny when someone suggests there needs to be a population decrease, if you ask them to off themselfs to start thing off. it exposes them for the selfish bullshitter that they are.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
If we apply serious birth control laws we can actually shrink world population and use less and less energy while maintaining increasing living standards.
Don't forget that part. It's important.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I like how you assume that they will die to save us.
They will die to save us because I refuse to die to save them.
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as far as most economists go, the physical economy is pretty much off the radar screen. I consider this study to be about the physical economy. No wonder economists do not like it. And the author observes that collapse or reduction in living standards is not much discussed. I wonder why. But we are getting austerity policies to pay for bailing out the speculators while the physical economy collapses.
So here is something that seems to be true and relevant. Considering humans, from before fire and on, we have made our living by increased energy *density*. We seem, especially from the study, to get population density from increased energy, but new fundamental physical principles come from the density, and thus the really new tech.
What we need to do right now is get rid of monetarist stuff like the 1.5 quadrillion dollars of derivatives. The waste has killed the physical economy. This is no longer enough, but it is obvious and part of a possibly successful approach.
The Earth isn't following the climate models, it missed the memo. Truth is we're at 1930s level of average global temperatures with the recent fall.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,662092,00.html
It's time to start listening to real geophysicists and not "climatologists", whatever the hell those are. I didn't see degree in that field offered when I began my physics degree. The truth is that while the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed, it's 0.5% of the land mass there while the other 99.5% of Antarctica has been *cooling* since the 1960s. That's real science, folks. http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007JD009094.shtml
"The sea levels are rising!". The sea levels have been rising for over 10,000 years, and for most of that at a rate of over a meter per 200 years, thankfully it's slowed down the past 2,000 years!
"Carbon dioxide levels are at record high, it's a dangerous greenhouse gas!". The dominant greenhouse gas on planet earth is water vapor, its effect far outweigh the effects of all other greenhouse gases combined! Carbon dioxide is reactive, it increases after the earth warms. horse. cart. Warm some soda pop the the stove and see what happens. Carbon dioxide levels about the pan increase!
Note how the world leaders are rushing to get climate protocols in place before the real truth gets out, that the earth is cooling in response to Sun output at record low in last three years compared to last 50+ years. Solar output at record high in late 90s. Sun driving climate, what a shocker.
"Inevitably, some Slashdotter will claim that yet-to-be discovered technology will always provide a fix for the problem. Believing that yet-to-be discovered technology will be discovered (and will be the salvation) is exactly equivalent to believing the numerous claims of religion. Often, the same Slashdotter who is atheist does not hestitate to believe in yet-to-be discovered technology. A hypocrite, a fool, or both?"
Scientists and engineers have a long and detailed history of coming up with creative solutions to complex problems. Religion, on the other hand, places the burden of the final proof on the far side of death, and has no real track record of delivering on their promises.
These things are not equivalent at all. Not even close.
Nukes may not be forever, but neither is the sun, nuke are definitely for long enough though.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
It's a side issue, but this is complete hogwash. Every organism will increase as much as possible - they don't "instinctively" come to equilibrium, equilibrium is forced on them by competition. In the event that an organism becomes so well adapted that it dominates its competition, its numbers will increase until it dies off as a result of increasing beyond the carrying capacity of the environment. A good example: snow geese. For many years, snow goose populations were very low because their natural habitats were limited. But then, beginning about in the 70's, two things happened: 1) snowy owl populations increased in the far north, which had the effect of increasing snow goose nesting success by driving away snow goose predators, and 2) snow geese learned to exploit a new (to them) resource: agricultural waste. As a result of those two factors, the snow goose population exploded. Unfortunately, however, it didn't "come to equilibrium" with its environment - snow geese are now so overpopulated that they're destroying both their spring breeding grounds and their wintering grounds. Unless the population can be gotten under control through hunting (which so far has had pretty limited success), a population crash is inevitable
There are other examples of the same phenomenon in other species, but what's relevant here is that humans are just an extreme example. We are so tremendously adaptable that we've been able to colonize nearly every environment on the surface of the earth, and have so outstripped every other creature that our population has grown too much for the earth to support it. That's a real problem, and I don't mean to pooh-pooh it. But I do get annoyed when I hear more examples of the meme that "animals (and primitive humans) lived in harmony with the earth, but evil (modern) man has forgotten how to do this". It's just not true - all species expand to fill all available space in whatever niche they occupy.