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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
So, is the economy or global warming treated as a perfect sphere?
This fits with an observation by insurance companies (or at least mine, USAA) that building safer cars results in people continuing to drive them to their preferred safety margin. We still end up with about as many crashes (but injuries are less).
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.
There's another implication of that theory, and it's one that conservatives have been arguing for some time now: the end result of the current drive to cut back on carbon dioxide emissions is the destruction of the worlkd economy.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
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.
While I can't speak to the validity of the underlying theory as such, a conclusion like this doesn't really come as a shock. The 20th century saw an steady stream of "labor-saving" inventions that are now part of our daily lives, but we don't have more leisure time than our ancestors -- in many cases, we actually have less -- because all of that liberated time was promptly consumed by new forms of work.
Sooner or later, we're going to have to come to terms with our now obsolete species-wide obsession with material acquisition. It made sense before we developed tools and civilization: grab all you can while it's abundant because scarcity is the norm. Now that we have all we actually need and then some, we're just killing ourselves with the byproducts of our superfluous production.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
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
This sounds like Jevons Paradox.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
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.
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.
I can see why this gets a run here – scientists are cool nerds; economists are not – but in the end it's a guy doing research outside of his field. Sometimes you get tremendous insights, but most of the time (as in this case) you don't.
* I'm not talking about the physiocrats here, okay?
Disclaimer: I am an economist.
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
"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.
Don't forget China
What exactly do you base your statement that this is a bad model? Or do you object to something different and unique? Personally, I would like to see more about what this guy has before nuking it.
One issue that I have seen in soft 'Sciences', is that they resist the idea of applying real math and other science to their models. As it is, you just got done saying that economics counts on human behavior, i.e. psych, an even weaker science.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
I'm too old and stuck with my brain washing to think of anything better myself, but I have faith in the younger folks to take us in a direction that will improve life here.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
This is exactly what Technocracy has been saying for over 80 years. They were the first to "treat the economy like a physics problem", the only difference is that they saw it coming and warned us way back when it was far easier to do something about it. Now, whether we can do something about it without too much pain is in question, but if we can then we have to do something about it now while we still can. Like one commenter said here earlier, "The only way out is a radical reform of the fundemental way our economy is _defined_". Technocracy has provided a logical answer to this too that is worth checking out. It needs a bit of updating since the movement is so small right now, but the underlying basis for it all is still quite sound. If you want a good scientific way of looking at our economy, and how it relates to our environment, then this is the place to start. I'm glad to see more modern research being done that confirms this.
Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know. - M. King Hubbert
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....
Because it is the amount of work we are putting in to things we want to do or want to have happen.
I predict that economic theory in general will move in this direction.
There are other alternatives to the nuke method however. We could do massive wind and solar,
supplemented by ocean wave and geothermal.
Opponents with a vested interest in the status quo claim these are marginal and intermittent (not core)
power sources, but they do not understand or are deliberately ignoring the power balancing you could do
with a continent-wide superconducting smart-switching power grid.
Another, complementary, alternative is that we can back off on our tendency to destroy natural eco-systems and
replace them by our own systems,
and let some of them (natural systems) thrive, and do some of the work for us. This only works if we support them
and harvest them with humility and respect.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
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"
"Starvation is a geopolitical problem, not a resource problem."
That is so completely wrong, it's mind boggling. Fatally so. Currently, for each calorie you eat, 9/10ths of it came from oil.
In short, we've become a planet which is eating oil. When the oil stops, the population shrinks. There is no easy substitute for oil, and no easy answer for our resource problem.
Yes, there are finite limits to our resources. Get used to the idea. Unlimited resources were the hallmark of the 20th century. Finite resources are defining the 21st century.
Oh, and oil production has been constantly dropping each quarter for the past 1.5 years.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
"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.
This works well for a single country, but it is hard to make several countries align their tax systems, because each country has different interests.
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.