The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Investor Alley => Topic started by: Pooperman on June 08, 2015, 01:00:23 PM
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Important note before you all rage: this may or may not happen in our lifetimes (can't predict when, so it may or may not matter).
First and foremost, there are limits to growth. Seriously. There's only so much economic activity that can happen on Earth, the solar system, and even in the Milky Way. Growing at 4% per year after inflation is not sustainable forever. The Earth is not finite. Its resources are not finite. The main limitations are energy and non-renewable resources in general. Even with substitutions, we will end up using all of the solar energy that hits earth in a much shorter time than one might imagine (about 400 years). That brings with it some not good consequences (like raising surface temperature) but lets ignore that stuff for now.
So if energy is our limit in 400 or so years, why care about that now? Because growth has limits. It is physically impossible to grow at 4% forever. This begs the question, "how can one live off of interest/returns if there is fundamentally no growth?" How can we, as investors, make a living and retire early through a situation where the economy will not grow more?
If resources infinite, then non-material sources of economic activity (services, information, etc) will outpace the material goods until the material goods are cheap enough that anyone can afford them (due to automation, efficiency, etc). Since resources are, in fact, limited, then non-material sources will outpace material goods for a while until that limit is realized. At that point, the prices will rise steadily on the material goods as there is no longer a ready supply of them. This can be seen in some areas already (look at SF Bay real estate for one thing).
So, how do we invest with the end of growth in mind? This doesn't mean there's no growth. Companies will grow and collapse, but it'd be a zero-sum game overall. The only option I can think of is owning the means of production (owning a company, real estate, etc) which pays a significant enough dividend for owning to pay more than inflation.
In this scenario, ye olde index funde will rise in value with inflation and no more as the overall economy is not growing nor shrinking in any real amount.
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Because growth has limits.
What you're saying makes complete sense to me, but is it possible somebody presented the exact same argument in 1915? Or are you talking out of our lifetimes--in 400 years or so? This would presuppose a catastrophe which wipes out a good chunk of the population doesn't happen.
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Because growth has limits.
What you're saying makes complete sense to me, but is it possible somebody presented the exact same argument in 1915? Or are you talking out of our lifetimes--in 400 years or so? This would presuppose a catastrophe which wipes out a good chunk of the population doesn't happen.
It also supposes that humans will stay on Earth and not colonize other worlds during this time. Anything can happen, but it's an interesting question given the bent of this forum.
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A) Thankfully I'm not investing for forever. I just need a small sliver in human time for growth to last. ;)
B) Assuming it would happen in our time frame then I think you've answered your question already. It's not that there isn't opportunity for growth in a small scale just that at a large scale there is no overall growth. So the answer would be to focus on the small scale and find the things which are poised for growth.
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Haha... I'm a bit of an evil uncle. Awhile ago my nephew was in stupid tears because he learned someday the sun would go out. (Really acting like a brat about it.) I said, "Don't worry, kid, statistically a comet or meteor will smash the earth to bits way before the sun goes out." [Disapproving looks from the rest of my family.]
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Dyson sphere, man, Dyson sphere.
I don't think this is much of a concern. If we're using that much energy by that point we will have lived through the end of scarcity. Everyone will be born "retired".
-W
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Anyone who imagines humanity will cease striving to grow is ignorant of history. I'm not worried.
Limited energy hitting earth? Why limit yourself to the tiny fraction of sunlight that reaches earth? There is more than enough mass in the solar system to capture all of the sun's energy, and it should be long lived enough to provide more than enough energy to physically relocate to a new younger star system.
I expect the current economy to be mostly unrecognizable in 200 years. Imagine trying to explain Google's revenue stream to a 1700's peasant farmer. They can't even envision the kind of world that needs a company like that, much less understand how that company generates and spends profits. His world is about livestock and seasonal rains and tithing the church. Without understanding electricity he can't understand computers, without computers he can't understand the internet, without the internet he can't understand the need to organize information, and he certainly wouldn't get why they would provide that service to people for free.
Humanity has been around for about 200,000 years. In the last 0.1% of that time we've moved from farmers to spacefarers. How many of today's corporations were around 200 years ago, and how many of today's corporations do you think will last another 200 years? Will corporations even exist by then, or will social structures by then look as different to us as ours would to them?
The future is scary, but not because humanity is going to stagnate.
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Japan is in year 25 of their stock market going nowhere to down. Part of that is because their market was stupidly overvalued, and part because their population is shrinking. What happens when world population stops increasing? What if it starts shrinking? I could see that happening before the sun gives way. Hard to see the economy increasing when the population isn't.
But whatever, I'm not an economist. And I certainly suck at predictions. Hopefully trend following still works if/when this happens.
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Yep, I second all the responses above. I don't pretend to be able to imagine what the world will look like in the next few hundred years, but it seems to me that the likelihood that "early retirement" will be rendered either (i) a matter of course for everyone (waltworks' end of scarcity scenario) or (ii) a possibility for no one (take your pick of reasons why, the most obvious being extinction of the human species) is exponentially greater than the likelihood that early retirement will be an achievable outcome for some but not all.
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I expect human population growth to slow, but not stop. You can't look at one little island country and say all of humanity will follow that course. Why not use African growth rates instead of Japanese ones? Why look at the worst case on the whole planet as your predictive example?
Barring any global catastrophes, we'll get off this rock eventually. The universe is full of real estate and untapped natural resources. We live in a tiny crevice.
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Barring any global catastrophes, we'll get off this rock eventually. The universe is full of real estate and untapped natural resources. We live in a tiny crevice.
(http://lowres.cartoonstock.com/environmental-issues-humanity-humans-asteroids-side_effects-side_effects-bwhn586_low.jpg)
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Japan is in year 25 of their stock market going nowhere to down. Part of that is because their market was stupidly overvalued, and part because their population is shrinking.
How much of it is due to them destroying and rebuilding their housing stock every 20 - 30 years? Individuals get very little chance to build up a net worth if they're paying for a newly built home every couple decades. I think looking at Japan as an example of a potential future for everyone is that their culture is not the same as everyone else's culture.
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I'm investing in the Startrek replicator now. Suckers!
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Ok if you think Japan is cherry picking look at Europe. They are barely growing
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/11414064/How-Europe-is-slowly-dying-despite-an-increasing-world-population.html
and their stock market is in the same spot it was 9 years ago.
IMO population growth is a huge indicator of economic activity.
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expect human population growth to slow, but not stop.
The world population is expected to top out in the next 50years or so - at something around 10Bn (IIRC)
Basically as people become wealthier they don't need a dozen kids in the hope that 6 make it to adulthood and 3 are boys who will take care of them. If you look at the rate that India/China went from being famine news reports to having a space program you can see how quickly they might reach 'developed country' negative population growth.
What happens when world population stops increasing? ..... Hard to see the economy increasing when the population isn't.
So India, China and Africa develop to Scandanavian levels and start spending on consumer goods like Americans ?
Nope can't see any way to profit from Somalia going yuppie ;-)
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Anyone who imagines humanity will cease striving to grow is ignorant of history. I'm not worried.
Limited energy hitting earth? Why limit yourself to the tiny fraction of sunlight that reaches earth? There is more than enough mass in the solar system to capture all of the sun's energy, and it should be long lived enough to provide more than enough energy to physically relocate to a new younger star system.
I expect the current economy to be mostly unrecognizable in 200 years. Imagine trying to explain Google's revenue stream to a 1700's peasant farmer. They can't even envision the kind of world that needs a company like that, much less understand how that company generates and spends profits. His world is about livestock and seasonal rains and tithing the church. Without understanding electricity he can't understand computers, without computers he can't understand the internet, without the internet he can't understand the need to organize information, and he certainly wouldn't get why they would provide that service to people for free.
Humanity has been around for about 200,000 years. In the last 0.1% of that time we've moved from farmers to spacefarers. How many of today's corporations were around 200 years ago, and how many of today's corporations do you think will last another 200 years? Will corporations even exist by then, or will social structures by then look as different to us as ours would to them?
The future is scary, but not because humanity is going to stagnate.
+1
On the energy play I imagine the energy sources of the future to be things that seem almost impossible now. Imagine pure matter to energy conversion. This makes nuclear look like rubbing two sticks together. It seems impossible, but CERN has created and annihilated anti-matter with matter. The collision creates energy magnitudes greater than what is achievable with fission & fusion reactions. Right now it requires insane amounts of energy to form anti-matter. The estimated cost to make a gram is $62.5 trillion, but scientists think they might be able to get it down into the billions! Progress! However in the future imagine you could form anti-matter using only 199% of the energy obtainable from the the anti-matter. Then when you combine that anti matter with matter you get the energy of both = 200%. You could turn any form of matter into energy. We wouldn't burn oil ever again. Such a practice would be considered insanity because you could get thousands(millions?) of times more energy from the oil through matter to energy conversion. We would take all the toxic waste produced from nuclear reactors and annihilate it into pure energy. Very sci-fi and probably impossible, but you get the idea. We might even find another way of converting matter into pure energy. We might move way beyond solar energy in the next few hundred years.
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Making anti-matter puts in at least the amount of energy you get out. At the moment it takes a billion billion times as much energy in as you get out - power efficiency isn't a major part of the LHC
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I agree with most of what Sol is saying.
My additions:
Nature is a rythym. There is growth between booms and busts.
There is growth in a change of industry.
Then there is the sad truth of zero sum. Everyone on the planet isn't winning. Some of the hardest working people get squat from their sweat shop that the world profits from in cheap goods.
Some people will continue to make bad financial choices even after being shown the truth.
I can't convince everyone to invest. Some will always see it as gambling and then go give Vegas 500 in 2 hours. I have a friend who is a manager at a casino and have seen some horror stories play out.
While I will never aim to exploit people, we all will profit from some others bad choices.
In the long term interest needs to go away. We will see restrictive credit and zero interest marry each other someday because there isn't an infinite snowball. We will become very efficient in everything we do. Cities will collapse the suburbs and we will have no profit 24 hr caffiterias that will eliminate the need for transportation Personal refrigerators and the like. Imagine moving walkway conveyer belts that zip around a metro area at 15 mph by increasing in speed in stages. We will cure cancer by activating our own genes through therapy and reprogramming our own body. This will develop into modifications for space flight. Then 1000 years from now we will come revisit the birth of our civilization as a new species now know as the greys.
That or we will overpopulate and have world war 3. Personally I pick the greys.
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Throughout much of history, economic growth was so slow it was effectively zero, but thrifty people saved and invested,and slowly accumulated property which paid an income. If corporations of the future grow slowly, if at all, but they will still pay dividends. Dividend yields are rather low now because investors expect to see asset growth, but if there is little asset growth, then asset prices will adjust downwards to increase dividend yield.
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virtual reality man....already now there are people farming and selling virtual currency of videogames for real cash, just imagine a god-like system connected to our sensorial experience....unlimited access and experience and content will be the motor of growth.
Heck, we will probably be capable of downloading our brain on servers and live forever in virtual worlds using robots to as physical user interface.
Do not fear the lack of growth, cause population will not stop growing, they'll just be virtual.
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id assume in the next 100 years or so we'd have interstellar company's. like mining corps on asteroids and mars and the likes. so growth can continue on a galactic human empire scale! :D
there's still a lot of unused resources and land on earth so i say we won't have to worry about stagnated growth in our lifetime. plus like you said, real estate is always good for providing income. diversify and you shouldn't have to worry
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Invest in finite resources such as land, real estate, etc.
Create a hands off passive income business, or be a silent partner in one.
You have many years to figure things out and find out which "hat" fits best.
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Then there is the sad truth of zero sum.
Life is not a zero sum game. Giving a hand up to someone doesn't pull you down in the process. As long as we're spending money and energy on growing industries and not on blowing each other up, the lot for everyone can improve. It's when we're literally exploding billions of dollars on battle fields that things get to zero (and negative) sum.
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All I want is a real life light saber and I'll be happy chopping trees and "mowing" lawns and killing insects.
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Then there is the sad truth of zero sum.
Life is not a zero sum game. Giving a hand up to someone doesn't pull you down in the process. As long as we're spending money and energy on growing industries and not on blowing each other up, the lot for everyone can improve. It's when we're literally exploding billions of dollars on battle fields that things get to zero (and negative) sum.
I hope this is true. I just don't think the entire world can live like the United States. Something has to give somewhere. if we go much higher than 9 billion we are zero sum. We are in a mass extinction right now. Diverse living species are disappearing at an alarming rate. Rationing water in California? That is leaving nothing for wildlife. We are drinking and showering and water lawns until rivers and lakes run dry. Anyways, investments will be equities with dividends. Bonds will not live in the zero interest and restrictive credit we need. The good news is inflation will die and you will be once again able to just save money for retirement because it will retain its value. That's how it should be anyway
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The world is a lot bigger than you think, and most of it still remains un/under-developed. Even in the US...try driving across TX sometime. We have barely tapped the greatest, most-concentrated source of energy of all--the energy stored in all the matter around us (E = MC2).
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The world is a lot bigger than you think, and most of it still remains un/under-developed. Even in the US...try driving across TX sometime. We have barely tapped the greatest, most-concentrated source of energy of all--the energy stored in all the matter around us (E = MC2).
I have driven from California to Maine down to Georgia and back to Arizona. I have been to Canada, Mexico, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and The Middle East. I do very sincerely hope you are right. I just don't think the world can live the way we live now. Acidification of the ocean is killing our biggest O2 source, along with the reefs, and the fish are disappearing. We wiped out herds of 5,000,000 buffalo in less than 200 years. There are now 50,000 and 100 times the people. If we do not respect the Earth we will Easter Isle ourselves.
Saying all that Im still hopeful for the future and raising two kids. I know saying that seems gloomy, but Im not a dooms sayer. However I do want to acknowledge the challenges we face. With every challenge comes opportunity. I believe we will overcome somehow-- but not the way we have been doing it. We will find a new way
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You talk of "acidification of the ocean", but are you aware that the ocean is highly alkaline with a pH of around 8? Pure water has a pH of 7, and the pH scale is logarithmic, so sea water is 10 times more alkaline. A better way to say it is that the oceans are becoming "less alkaline", or even "more neutral!" In any event, coral reefs have been around for 600 million years and evolved under much higher CO2 concentrations. If anything, an excellent case could be made that oceans are now too alkaline, but why anyone would wish to make such a silly claim is ludicrous. The threat of “acidification” to corals is complete, total & utter garbage purveyed by professional liars.
Overfishing is a self-governing phenomenon. As we overfish, it makes fishing less profitable, and the production of fish will naturally shift to farm-based. It is indeed sad the way that most of the buffalo were wiped out. But if you really want to expand the number of buffalo, shift your diet to eating more of them. Farmers will raise increasing quantities of them to satisfy the demand that you created.
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The world is a lot bigger than you think, and most of it still remains un/under-developed. Even in the US...try driving across TX sometime. We have barely tapped the greatest, most-concentrated source of energy of all--the energy stored in all the matter around us (E = MC2).
Yeah, anybody that says the US is overdeveloped has never driven across it.
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You talk of "acidification of the ocean", but are you aware that the ocean is highly alkaline with a pH of around 8? Pure water has a pH of 7, and the pH scale is logarithmic, so sea water is 10 times more alkaline. A better way to say it is that the oceans are becoming "less alkaline", or even "more neutral!" In any event, coral reefs have been around for 600 million years and evolved under much higher CO2 concentrations. If anything, an excellent case could be made that oceans are now too alkaline, but why anyone would wish to make such a silly claim is ludicrous. The threat of “acidification” to corals is complete, total & utter garbage purveyed by professional liars.
Overfishing is a self-governing phenomenon. As we overfish, it makes fishing less profitable, and the production of fish will naturally shift to farm-based. It is indeed sad the way that most of the buffalo were wiped out. But if you really want to expand the number of buffalo, shift your diet to eating more of them. Farmers will raise increasing quantities of them to satisfy the demand that you created.
I disagree with your fishing argument. This line of thinking led to the extinction of two of the three types of United States buffalo. Ah there are five million of them in one herd so who cares if we kill them just for the hide. Now two types are extinct and there is only 50,000 left. Who cares about the bee right they only pollinate the whole damn wilderness. There are plenty of tuna-- not. Fish don't have any mercury in them from dumping in the ocean that was always there and has nothing to do with mining or coal.
You are highly underestimating how fast mechanized man can rape nature. We survive entirely by the support of machines and pull all of our bounty and life support from species that support themselves. That needs to be fiercely regulated and I will vote that way with both election and my personal purchases.
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We don't need the world to continue to grow--we just need whatever we are particularly invested in to grow. I am invested in the US economy and I have faith that it will continue to grow while places like Africa, Russia, and the Middle East will continue to flounder.
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Ok if you think Japan is cherry picking look at Europe. They are barely growing
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/11414064/How-Europe-is-slowly-dying-despite-an-increasing-world-population.html
and their stock market is in the same spot it was 9 years ago.
IMO population growth is a huge indicator of economic activity.
Economic growth is a function of population growth and productivity growth. While global population growth might stagnate at some point in our lifetimes, I think it is very likely that productivity will go through the roof as we start to get under the surface of the information age and the advances made possible by machine learning. So I guess I'm bullish, particularly on the US economy, but since technology will be ever easier to transfer to other economies, I'm also bullish globally. This also applies to the OP's concern about resources. The machines will innovate and adapt on our behalf.
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I am trying to picture someone 400 years ago coming up with the idea of a handheld device that can pinpoint their exact location on earth, communicate to almost anywhere on earth in seconds, contain all knowledge ever put to pen by man in a tiny portion of it's memory, translate languages instantly, and play candy crush.
Sorry can't do it. I don't think you can see 400 years into the future either. The guy 400 years into the future might use a device to obtain energy from the 15th universe, transport himself anywhere on earth in seconds, replicate any object, and play candy crush.
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I am trying to picture someone 400 years ago coming up with the idea of a handheld device that can pinpoint their exact location on earth, communicate to almost anywhere on earth in seconds, contain all knowledge ever put to pen by man in a tiny portion of it's memory, translate languages instantly, and play candy crush.
Sorry can't do it. I don't think you can see 400 years into the future either. The guy 400 years into the future might use a device to obtain energy from the 15th universe, transport himself anywhere on earth in seconds, replicate any object, and play candy crush.
It'll be a virtual reality 3 dimensional candy crush where you can physically push the candy around. Imagine how weird that will be doing it on the train Jetson's type flying public transport people mover.
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If the level of aggregate growth is reduced or even zero, then that will be reflected in the pricing of assets.
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Man I like this thread. Should we apply the limits of infinite growth to all things?
If we do then technology will cap off at some point and plateau just like everything else. Mechanics have been taken about as far as they can go. Have been since the blackbird. No real big new records because we have have found some of the limits of our current understanding of physics. Computers might start to slow at some point. The potential for better energy sources is huge we just have been taking the easy way. We need to go to Mars. We need to send them and have them come back home. That will push some limits and drive our innovation.
I have high jacked this enough but if you want to blow your mind this has haunted me since I watched it as a teen ager. So this thread strikes a cord with me.
On population.
https://youtu.be/4BbkQiQyaYc?t=1m1s
On energy... but this was before fracking
https://youtu.be/JeufX6S-Q_s
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I don't see why tyat's a problem. Stocks would be priced under the assumption that there will be no growth.
A share of stable profits is enough to live on.
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Important note before you all rage: this may or may not happen in our lifetimes (can't predict when, so it may or may not matter).
First and foremost, there are limits to growth. Seriously. There's only so much economic activity that can happen on Earth, the solar system, and even in the Milky Way. Growing at 4% per year after inflation is not sustainable forever. The Earth is not finite. Its resources are not finite. The main limitations are energy and non-renewable resources in general. Even with substitutions, we will end up using all of the solar energy that hits earth in a much shorter time than one might imagine (about 400 years). That brings with it some not good consequences (like raising surface temperature) but lets ignore that stuff for now.
I dispute your 400 year energy limit. We have been profligate with energy use and are only recently starting to get serious improvements - efficiency is being improved every year.... and actually the incandescent bulb was an improvement.
Okay, measure light in lumens (more lumens = more light output) and measure power in watts (watts = energy you put in to get that light.
Candle: 0.3 lumens per watt, the standard from the dawn of using fire until sometime in the 1800s.
Gas mantle: 1-2 lumens per watt. MUCH more efficient.
Incandescent bulb: 15 lumens per watt. MUCH more efficient
Fluorescent bulb: 50 lumens per watt
Commercial LED: 100 lumens per watt
So today, you get 300x as much light per watt compared to 150 years ago. With a device that replaces 10,000 candles over its lifetime.
NOTES: Within each of these, there is a huge spread of efficiency - getting better over time, and generally getting better efficiency with bigger bulbs.
Presume a fairly well developed bulb, in a home-convenient size. For modern bulbs, somewhere around 800 lumens (60watt incandescent) Research-grade LEDs have shown efficiencies above 300 lumens per watt. It takes time to commercialize....
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Energy use doubled in 40 years. If that rate continues, humans will use all energy on earth (I.e Suns energy that reaches us) in about 400 years when starting from current use levels.
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Energy use doubled in 40 years. If that rate continues, humans will use all energy on earth (I.e Suns energy that reaches us) in about 400 years when starting from current use levels.
That's using the assumption that the only energy being used in that time is energy from the sun. We're using stored energy from the sun though. Also it's a large assumption that energy use will continue at that rate, as more countries reach our level of technology and infrastructure that growth should slow.
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Energy use doubled in 40 years. If that rate continues, humans will use all energy on earth (I.e Suns energy that reaches us) in about 400 years when starting from current use levels.
That's using the assumption that the only energy being used in that time is energy from the sun. We're using stored energy from the sun though. Also it's a large assumption that energy use will continue at that rate, as more countries reach our level of technology and infrastructure that growth should slow.
It's also miniscule compared to the energy available in stuff like Uranium and Thorium. Natural breakdown of those elements is what keeps the Earth's core molten(!)
...and it presumes energy usage will keep doubling forever based on those 2 data points. Malthus had a similar view on population in 1798. Now we're more worried about the slowing of population growth in developed countries. The USA only has growth due to immigration.
BTW, the Gates Foundation basically solved the exponential population growth problem for Africa. Widespread immunization. Once you get childhood deaths low, the parents stop having so many children. If you expect your children to grow up, you typically only want a few instead of a dozen.
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Mr. Percentage, you mention mercury pollution. It sure seems to make a scary boogeyman for the media, environmental wackos, and political agencies. But did you know that 70% of the world's mercury emissions come from natural sources, the ocean being the largest? Even if we shut down EVERY SINGLE US power plant, the world's mercury emissions would decrease by a staggering.......get ready for it!......1%.
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/5951/2010/acp-10-5951-2010.pdf (http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/5951/2010/acp-10-5951-2010.pdf)
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Great thread Pooper!! thanks for bringing it up. I've been thinking along these lines as well.
A few musings using my own crystal ball for the health of the global economy:
-mostly based on global demographics: Global population is aging quickly; birth rate way down, etc. Demographics are working against, not for, growth.
-Assuming there's gonna be a New Big Thing in crowd-sourced finance (eventually supplanting commercial bank model)
-Assuming there's gonna be a huge push, long term, to get the hell off this rock and start colonizing the rest of the universe
Short Term 0-10yrs: Little or no growth from 1st world countries. Europe, Japan have flatlined despite aggressive number torture. Muted US growth as the debt bubble gets blown as large as possible. Turmoil in Bric countries as some of their own bubbles are popped or deflated (ongoing in Br now). Strong growth in a few Mint countries.
Medium Term 10-25yrs: Slow decline in 1st world countries (demographics). Slow or flat-lined growth also in Bric as demographics catch up with them. Mint countries mature and slow down.
Long Term 25yr+: revolutions in finance and push for space travel (this may be 100+yrs away) finally start a new period of growth.
Doomsayers complain of resource scarcity (nothing new; the Bad News Boys have been yelling about this for hundreds of years). The facts say otherwise.
Energy: essentially no limit, even just using current tech (modern nukes)
Water: no limit (given cheap energy; the Earth is 70%+ water, and all water is eventually recycled)
Food: extremely high limit given current ag tech, and the unexploited potential of ocean farming.
The next couple hundred years will be interesting!!
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I seriously hope we get off this rock in my lifetime. How cool would it be to die on Mars at age 90?
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Mars is pretty much a barren wasteland with an unbreathable atmosphere. Why would we go there again? Just because? Sightseeing? To do some hiking? This planet is paradise compared to that one.
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Mars is pretty much a barren wasteland with an unbreathable atmosphere. Why would we go there again? Just because? Sightseeing? To do some hiking? This planet is paradise compared to that one.
Because there is an end to growth if we don't.
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Mars is pretty much a barren wasteland with an unbreathable atmosphere. Why would we go there again? Just because? Sightseeing? To do some hiking? This planet is paradise compared to that one.
The same reason we went to the moon-- because it is hard. We haven't stepped up to the plate and pushed our limits for space exploration for a long time. Because compared to what we spend on our military making everyone mad by policing the world-- NASA is cheap. The space program is directly responsible for many innovations we utilize today. When you grab our brightest engineers and put them all in one room and give them a really difficult goal-- magic happens. When we step on Mars, it will be for all mankind. Not the United States-- not for a political agenda-- for all mankind. I say take it one step further and get Russia, and China involved. God forbid we do something together. But if we can't do that we should do it ourselves anyway.
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Another reason to expand into space is because some day Earth will get hit by something big...maybe really big. Shoemaker-Levy hit Jupiter with the energy of 600 times the entire world nuclear arsenal. A little bigger than that and everyone on earth would be toast.
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I completely don't understand how you would assume there would be an end to growth. I do agree that stagnant populations are a bit of a concern but for the next 100 years or so there should be plenty of growth still in India, Africa etc.
Even without population growth there would still be growth from increased productivity. If anything, as time goes on, I see productivity gains increasing at a faster and faster rate as the robot/automation revolution kicks into high gear.
Furthermore, I agree with those who say that in 100+ years the world will be so unrecognizable that none of this even matters. Technological gains might be so vast that generating sizable returns won't even matter - will humans even be working in 100 years? Who knows.
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End of growth? Or the start of growth? Here's some stats from an article I just read:
1. Today, 6 in every 7 humans live in undeveloped nations.
2. Rich nations have a GDP per capita of $45,000 with an average life expectancy of more than 81 years…in stark contrast to the $4,600 and 63 years experienced in the developing world.
3. 3 billion humans use traditional biomass for cooking/heating, meaning open fires and deadly indoor air pollution. I think they would love to have a steady supply of electricity/natural gas, instead.
4. More than 50% of global population growth through 2050 will occur in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 66% of the people today have no electricity.
5. The UN projects that the population of Africa – easily the most underdeveloped region on Earth, with 35 of 52 countries having “low human development” – could more than double to 2.4 billion by 2050, and potentially reach 4.2 billion by 2100.
6. 2.5 billion humans live without basic sanitation, 1.3 billion have no electricity, 1.2 billion have no access to clean water, 805 million are chronically undernourished, and more than 780 million are illiterate (re-read these numbers, bearing in mind that the U.S., Canada, and Mexico have a combined 475 million people).
7. While the number of passenger cars in developed countries is expected to level off, the number of passenger cars in developing countries is expected to triple by 2040 to about 2x the total in developed countries.
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Great post, stashdaddy. The more I think about it, the more confident I am that the 21st century will produce better return on capital than the 20th century did. What that says about the next decade or so is anyone's guess.
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How do you price climatic changes into that equation? The little ice age was bad enough, but ~1200BCE collapse of middle east civilizations is something to keep in mind. Much of the extra productivity and energy production is unnecessary, but they both contribute to things that can screw us all over.
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Will we go into another Ice Age? Will the temperatures keep rising to what they were during the Midieval times when the Vikings colonized Greenland and Newfoundland? Who can say what the climate will do? Its always changing. Humans are very adaptable creatures, and our technology has made climate changes almost irrelevant at this point.
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Will we go into another Ice Age? Will the temperatures keep rising to what they were during the Midieval times when the Vikings colonized Greenland and Newfoundland? Who can say what the climate will do? Its always changing. Humans are very adaptable creatures, and our technology has made climate changes almost irrelevant at this point.
/facepalm
Look the climate is not made irrelevant due to technology unless you have the technology to control the climate. Turning on the AC is not controlling the climate.
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My guess is we will innovate our way out of most climate change concerns within about 25 years.
This is an interesting read:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/11/16/hosed (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/11/16/hosed)
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A bit of an illogical strawman there, matchewed. We don't have to control the climate to thrive. Technology allows us to thrive in most/all of the available climates on earth. From the coldest arctic areas to the hottest equatorial areas. From rainforests to the driest deserts.
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A bit of an illogical strawman there, matchewed. We don't have to control the climate to thrive. Technology allows us to thrive in most/all of the available climates on earth. From the coldest arctic areas to the hottest equatorial areas. From rainforests to the driest deserts.
What was the strawman? You specifically said "our technology has made climate changes almost irrelevant at this point." Just because people can build a house on almost all the available climates doesn't mean that the animals and plants which we rely on to live are also there. Climate change affects plants and animals as well; they don't necessarily have the same technological tools to thrive.
The larger point being that raising everyone to a developed nation standard of living sounds awesome for economic growth but it is extremely destructive to our world.
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There is still confusion and uncertainty around Climate Change, it is not an exact science, but society being generally ignorant (or unwilling to try to understand) the problem doesn't help. It is not that temperatures will rise modestly, it is that carbon dioxide levels will continue to rise to levels not seen in 50 million years. The effect that will have is uncertain, and are reflected as probabilities. What is truly scary is that there is a low, but rising probability that temperatures could rise 6°C (10.8°F) across the planet which would disrupt the whole ecosystem.
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/06/martin_weitzman.html#highlights
Just like people here are comfortable with a 90% probability of success on their FIRECalc, we should be really worried if there is only a 90% probability of success of life on Earth over the next century if we continue living exactly how we have been.
(modified to add this quote, sorry in advance for it's length, but this speaks to the difficulty in getting the message across...)
Before the Industrial Revolution, the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere was 280 parts per million. And it had hardly ever been above 280 parts per million in 800,000 years. We know that 800,000 years from arctic ice cores. And it stands to reason--we've been in this period of glacial advances and retreats for about 3 million years, so this is probably at the upper end of what parts per million of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases were for the last 3 million years or so. Now we are up to about 440 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent gases. That's an increase of 50% over what was the highest for the last 3 million years at least. When you ask, 'What is going to happen with 440 parts per million?' you are looking at something called, a famous acronym in climate change, something called Climate Sensitivity. And that is an iconic number that tells us the eventual temperature change that goes along with a greenhouse gas concentration. It's a probability distribution. So this essential thing about what will be the temperature response to 440-560 is an answer that has a distribution. And the climate sensitivity is the temperature change for a doubling of carbon dioxide. So, we're not there yet. But it's almost sure that we'll reach at least that, at least 560 parts per million. For the last 35 years, the uncertainty around this climate sensitivity, this temperature response, has not much changed. Thirty five years ago in some of the first early engineering studies it was stated that it's likely between 1.5 degree centigrade and 4.5 degrees centigrade. That's a pretty wide range, 1.5-4.5 degrees centigrade. And that's in the latest IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report from last year, it gives that same range. So that, what's happened, seemingly, is that although there has been much, much more research into climate change, and many, many more models and observations, we must be--as we are resolving some of the uncertainty about something like climate sensitivity, new forms of uncertainty are emerging. So there's other things that we hadn't counted on. Okay, so this 1 degree centigrade to 4.5 degree centigrade--what we estimated is that if the greenhouse gas concentrations double, the chance of being greater than 4.5 degrees centigrade is around 10%. If greenhouse gas concentrations double, the probability of being greater than 6 degrees centigrade response is around 3%. So this is the bad tail of climate sensitivity, which is symbolic of the bad tail of what the damages could be. And these numbers just seem alarming, with the doubling of CO2, which is almost inevitable, there is a 3% chance of having temperatures greater than, a temperature response greater than 6 degrees. If we go to a concentration of greenhouse gases of 700 parts per million--and that's a number that's thrown around, for example the International Energy Agency, that's their most likely scenario taking account of all the pledges that had been made and so for--their point estimate is that we will reach 700 within a century. If it's at 700, then the probability that the temperature response is greater than 6 degrees centigrade becomes around 10%.
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if we continue living exactly how we have been.
It seems to me that all of the climate disaster scenarios rest on this assumption. This assumption also strikes me as being highly flawed.
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if we continue living exactly how we have been.
It seems to me that all of the climate disaster scenarios rest on this assumption. This assumption also strikes me as being highly flawed.
How so?
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@REfinAnon - I bolded a quote that I added to my statement that clarifies, but you should really spend the time to listen to the podcast in its entirety (or read the transcript). People obviously want to keep living how they are living today, with a low cost, high standard of living, and put off having to recognize that there is a cost (what economists call externality) of putting carbon dioxide in the air.
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Overall I agree but that report has raised a few eyebrows among statisticians.
1. Today, 6 in every 7 humans live in undeveloped nations.
That's a bit of a definition problem. Declare China and India to be underdeveloped and all 2.5Bn people are underdeveloped ? Although the average person is poor there are probably more "rich" people in India+China than in the USA - just depends on how you want to divide the numbers.
(eg. One of my ETFs includes S. Korea as an emerging nation !!!!)
2. Rich nations have a GDP per capita of $45,000 with an average life expectancy of more than 81 years…in stark contrast to the $4,600 and 63 years experienced in the developing world.
A lot of life expectancy is child mortality so this improves quickly with health care. Incidentally this is why you can't always compare the life expectancy figures for developed countries. Since infant deaths skew the figures so much, if the US counts miscarriages as a death at age=0 and Japan counts them as "mother survived" you change the average life expectancy by a large amount.
3. 3 billion humans use traditional biomass for cooking/heating, meaning open fires and deadly indoor air pollution. I think they would love to have a steady supply of electricity/natural gas, instead.
That's going to be one of the most interesting areas. A lot of sub-Saharan Africa skipped the entire "Ma Bell" era and went straight to mobile internet. It's a major question if you can do the same with power and skip the whole GW coal fired stattion + national HV distribution and go straight to local solar/wind/small scale gas.
4. More than 50% of global population growth through 2050 will occur in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 66% of the people today have no electricity.
Largely because the big countries will have very little growth. So a negative growth rate in China+India and a 10% growth rate in Congo still equals a big population drop.
5. The UN projects that the population of Africa – easily the most underdeveloped region on Earth, with 35 of 52 countries having “low human development” – could more than double to 2.4 billion by 2050, and potentially reach 4.2 billion by 2100.
That's the bit of the report they got very wrong. Their entire world figure was based on the only major country in the region (Zimbabwe IIRC) with a big growth rate (mostly due to infant mortality reduction) and extrapolating that rate to the rest of the world gave a population of 50Bn which caused a lot of headlines.
6. 2.5 billion humans live without basic sanitation, 1.3 billion have no electricity, 1.2 billion have no access to clean water, 805 million are chronically undernourished, and more than 780 million are illiterate (re-read these numbers, bearing in mind that the U.S., Canada, and Mexico have a combined 475 million people).
But mostly concentrated in Africa, as far as the economy is concerned they don't matter. But on the assumption that India+China+SE Asia all rise to at least S American income levels there is a going to be a huge demand for consumer goods, telecoms, entertainment etc
7. While the number of passenger cars in developed countries is expected to level off, the number of passenger cars in developing countries is expected to triple by 2040 to about 2x the total in developed countries.
Not clear how many cars China+India will buy. Car ownership in the US for the last 50years was as much a status thing as a means of transport. If Indian culture is to buy gold or real estate rather than a BMW then you can't necessarily extrapolate
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From the physics, the response of climate to CO2 is not linear, but logarithmic, so each additional molecule of CO2 added to the atmosphere will have less of an impact than the ones before it. This is due to the saturated nature of the 15 micron absorption feature. Plus, there are likely to be net-negative feedback effects in the climate system. I expect there is a very low climate sensitivity to CO2--most likely 1 C. No big deal.
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There are really 2 things that drive me nuts about the climate change debate.
1: It's an actuarial problem. You don't need to be *certain* you'll get in a wreck to put on your seatbelt. Likewise even a very small probability of bad things happening due to putting too much CO2 in the atmosphere is well worth spending time and money on. Calling for further study, or for scientific certainty, is idiotic. We have at least a good inkling that there might be a problem. It might be very bad.
If we work on solutions and it turns out there was never a problem in the first place, great - everything's fine. I spend money on insurance I hope I'll never use all the time and I'm happy to not have to have surgery, or a new house built after mine burns down, or whatever.
2: Conservation will not solve anything. It's WAY too late. Sorry, your Prius is still a CO2 disaster. Likewise your organic vegetarian prepared food. The only realistic solutions will involve HUGE efficiency improvements and/or geoengineering of some kind. We should be throwing LOTS of money at both of those things NOW. Best of all, that sort of engineering and science will throw off lots of great useful tech for other purposes.
So basically, between the hard right (either "we don't know enough yet" or "it's not happening, I'm positive") and the left ("everyone has to stop driving SUVs!") we have a perfect storm of stupidity.
The earth is a tool, folks. It's time to treat it like one (ie, maintain it to do what we want, not be stupid and break it). That might mean some cute fuzzy things have to die. It also might mean your taxes need to go up so some egghead in a lab can figure out how to make super Kudzu that never rots. Suck it up.
-W
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I understand this may be a little off-topic, but I doubt we'll be using 8,200,000 quads/year in four centuries. We're currently at ~400 quads, and there's a good chance that will flatten out even with population growing to ~11 billion as we transition off of FF energy sources.
If we end up using that much energy, it will almost certainly be as we expand through the solar system.
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Walt, if you truly feel this way, sell your home, sell your car, and go move to Africa or Central America. Go live without electricity, internet, or running water. Have fun using outhouses, drinking filthy water, lacking access to medical care, cooking your food by burning dung, and eating squirrels and insects. Set the example for the rest of us. Suck it up.
[MOD NOTE: Straw men are not helpful to debate.]
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From the physics, the response of climate to CO2 is not linear, but logarithmic, so each additional molecule of CO2 added to the atmosphere will have less of an impact than the ones before it. This is due to the saturated nature of the 15 micron absorption feature. Plus, there are likely to be net-negative feedback effects in the climate system. I expect there is a very low climate sensitivity to CO2--most likely 1 C. No big deal.
Most estimates for CO2's lower bound are above 1C.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity#Calculations_of_CO2_sensitivity_from_observational_data
In addition, other GHGs, changes in albedo, and so on have higher sensitivities to temperature.
http://www.nature.com/news/mysterious-siberian-crater-attributed-to-methane-1.15649
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Imagine a company that pays all the money it makes to you as a dividend. 0 growth. So as long as the amount of money in the system doesn't grow, you're fine. And if the population of humans doesn't grow and everyone has a comparable standard of living there is no need to grow. End of story :)
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You didn't read any of what I wrote, did you? I said conservation is useless. We have to basically make the earth our bitch now and start outright manipulating the climate (purposefully!), because assuming excess CO2 is a problem, it's WAY too late to conserve our way out of it now. The insect eating solution would have worked if we'd all started around 1900.
Also, that lifestyle sucks but it might be what everyone has to do if we crash the climate (and hence civilization) badly enough. So let's come up with some awesome tech to solve the problem instead. Thing is, nobody on either side wants that because the right wants to pretend there can't possibly be any problem, and the left wants to believe that their eco-friendly laundry detergent is the solution.
-W
Walt, if you truly feel this way, sell your home, sell your car, and go move to Africa or Central America. Go live without electricity, internet, or running water. Have fun using outhouses, drinking filthy water, lacking access to medical care, cooking your food by burning dung, and eating squirrels and insects. Set the example for the rest of us. Suck it up.
[MOD NOTE: Straw men are not helpful to debate.]
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Going to need a source on that "once we use all the available solar energy" claim.
In 400 years? Who knows. But since your talking about investing for the end of growth, let's keep this within our lifetime.
There are billions of people living in poverty today. There are billions of people without internet and electricity today. Just think how many potential Netflix subscribers are out there. If growth stops within our lifetime, it'll be our fault, not some imaginary ceiling.
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You didn't read any of what I wrote, did you? I said conservation is useless. We have to basically make the earth our bitch now and start outright manipulating the climate (purposefully!), because assuming excess CO2 is a problem, it's WAY too late to conserve our way out of it now. The insect eating solution would have worked if we'd all started around 1900.
Also, that lifestyle sucks but it might be what everyone has to do if we crash the climate (and hence civilization) badly enough. So let's come up with some awesome tech to solve the problem instead. Thing is, nobody on either side wants that because the right wants to pretend there can't possibly be any problem, and the left wants to believe that their eco-friendly laundry detergent is the solution.
-W
Conservation alone isn't enough, but it's a critical part of any effective strategy to reduce GHG emissions.
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Go look up the CO2 emissions levels required to just keep concentrations stable. Seriously.
Then get back to me on the conservation. Ain't gonna happen, forget it. This is math. We need to be going all in on geoengineering, pronto.
-W
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Then get back to me on the conservation. Ain't gonna happen, forget it. This is math. We need to be going all in on geoengineering, pronto.
Only if you want the world to look like it used to. The alternative is to just accept that we're going to radically alter the planet's climate, and try to be okay with that. That's probably an easier solution (for us wealthy westerners) than trying to fix it.
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Then get back to me on the conservation. Ain't gonna happen, forget it. This is math. We need to be going all in on geoengineering, pronto.
Only if you want the world to look like it used to. The alternative is to just accept that we're going to radically alter the planet's climate, and try to be okay with that. That's probably an easier solution (for us wealthy westerners) than trying to fix it.
I'd like to at least give the developing world a shot at not falling into chaos.
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Sol, great point. I think accepting that we're going to alter the climate is a given. But as I said before - if we're going to mess with the climate, let's get our shit together and learn how to mess with it intentionally and purposefully, and use the world and it's resources to make people healthy and happy. And maybe go explore the universe.
Just letting the chips fall where they may is probably not the best way to do that.
-W
Then get back to me on the conservation. Ain't gonna happen, forget it. This is math. We need to be going all in on geoengineering, pronto.
Only if you want the world to look like it used to. The alternative is to just accept that we're going to radically alter the planet's climate, and try to be okay with that. That's probably an easier solution (for us wealthy westerners) than trying to fix it.
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Well, the podcast I linked to goes in to 'quick fixes' available in geoengineering and it is scary that we don't really know if it adds to the problem (IMHO, of course it will). It's like giving a mentally unstable patient amphetamines to make them feel better, and then sedatives and hope they go to sleep. With the obvious short term problem that they will have to keep upping the artificial routine to keep it sustainable, kind of knowing that dealing with the root cause would be a lot more effective... and dealing with the root cause, at least with current technology, means being more receptive to nuclear.
Again, a painfully long quote from the podcast (and again, I apologize, it's better to listen to this stuff):
Mount Pinatubo was an explosive volcanic eruption that threw lots of stuff into the sky, and lots of it high up into the stratosphere. And it sent out a massive amount--not massive, but a large amount of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. That acted, combined with other molecules there, acted as a reflector of the sun, and it cut sunlight by 1 or 2%, which was enough to send temperatures down by a half a degree centigrade for the next year or two. We've known about this effect of calderas, of explosive volcanoes, for a long time, and their effects have been observed over centuries-that in their aftermath, temperatures go down significantly. And the idea is okay-this is done by nature, whether we like it or not. Why don't human beings imitate nature? Would that be a good policy to actually seed the stratosphere with sulfur dioxide? One of the things that is amazing about this is how incredibly cheap it is to lower temperatures by geoengineering-solar radiation management forms of geoengineering. To lower earth's average surface temperature by 1 or 2 degrees centigrade would cost less than $10 billion a year. You need a fleet of planes or rockets or something like that to keep pushing this stuff into the stratosphere, but there's not that much that's needed. And it's incredibly cheap. So, you compare what it costs to lower temperatures by a degree from geoengineering, with how much it would cost to lower temperatures by a degree via new technologies or via solar and wind-it's overwhelmingly cheaper to fool with the sulfur dioxide. And that's something we didn't need, we don't need-the economics of climate change is already the economic problem from hell because of all these complexities, because it's an international public good, because of timing (being a problem for those a century away), because of lots of things- (Russ:) It's a wicked problem. (Guest:) And now you've suddenly made it more wicked. (by introducing geoengineering). Because you've got two externalities of public goods out there. The one, the traditional one, is that people free ride because it's so expensive to change from a carbon burning technology and everyone wants to free ride (not pay for carbon dioxide emissions). Here you've the opposite kind of public goods or international problem, where many, many nations, and even individuals could afford this $10 billion a year (to 'solve the problem immediately); and somehow you need governance of both of these things. So, in a sense, it's twice as difficult an international public goods problem as we thought it was before geoengineering emerged as a kind of a conceptional alternative. (Russ:) It seems like a very attractive insurance policy. On the surface. I guess the issue, which you touched on in the book is, well, a lot of people would say, 'That's playing God.' We're already playing God; we're putting the carbon into the atmosphere, so that part's not so alarming. It's really the unintended consequences. So, what do we know, if anything-well, you just sort of said, 'Well, you put a bunch of planes up there; you put up the sulfur into the atmosphere.' What are the worries? (Guest:) Oh. There are many worries. I think this has a place as a kind of Plan B, just in case, but we need to do research to know what this is about just in case some catastrophic outcomes emerge. You've got a series of issues where it would affect the weather patterns; it's probably going to make the ozone hole more of a problem, ocean acidification would proceed apace because you are not changing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. You are changing the amount of sunlight that's hitting the earth, basically. There's an argument that you might become dependent upon this. Suppose that you are thinking of temporary particles like sulfur dioxide which will come out of the stratosphere within a year or so-suppose you got hooked on that, and then you discovered that it's got some very bad side effects, maybe some Black Swan side effects that are really bad, terrible. (Russ:) Feedback loops that you weren't aware of. (Guest:) Right. Now if you go off of that solar radiation management geoengineering, there is an abrupt increase in temperatures. So, this thing is a blessing and a curse. It will immediately cause the temperatures to go down, but if you want to get away from it, it will immediately cause the temperatures to go up throughout the planet, in too rapid a way.
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I have spent my working life as a technician in an agricultural research institute, so I know the problems of increasing crop yields to keep pace with population growth. These problems are real, and I could discuss them, but I think that insistence on indefinite population growth is part of another problem.
The big modernist push started in the 1950s. Modernity allows – eventually – a world where people stabilise world population and live the good life supported by an automated economy. Modernity is not Business As Usual. Economists are obsessed with the idea of Business As Usual, and think it does not matter what technical advances are made, people will still need to turn up to work every morning.
All through history, Business As Usual has included food insecurity. Modern agriculture allows a large – but not infinite – increase in food supply, and can offer food security. People who insist on driving world population up are rejecting food security, probably without being consciously aware of what they are doing. Such people want food insecurity because that is Business As Usual.
In the sixties and seventies scientists assumed that most people would – eventually – catch up with the modernist push of the fifties. It now looks as though that will not happen. Something similar has happened before. Late nineteenth century, those North American First Nation people (I hope I have used the right term) who could not assimilate into mainstream society were allowed to live on reservations. The same happened in Australia, and today, some – but not all – Australian Aborigines live on reservations.
I see by mid-century the world dividing into Advanced regions, and much larger Business As Usual regions. Scientists and some others will move to the Advanced regions, and the majority of the world, unable to assimilate to a scientific world view, will live in Business As Usual regions, that is reservations, in effect. World prosperity in Business As Usual regions will plateau by mid-century, and then slowly decline, due to population growth and depletion of natural resources.
Nearly all research will take place in Advanced regions, and it is possible that agricultural research will be deliberately limited to force world population to stabilise.
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I'm late to the party. There have been a lot of great responses. There's no reason to think that growth will ever end. We've always figured out better ways of doing things. Even as technology makes our lives better and better, we still want more, and work for more. Progress generally requires a bunch of other people and organizations to have made great leaps in order for it to even be possible for the next innovator to be able imagine their next creation. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. We couldn't figure out how to create ways for the Internet to totally reshape life until we actually had the Internet to build our tools around. And we've also gotten much more efficient in our ability to use natural resources over time as well. Growth could be severely disrupted or fall into decline by wars or huge natural disasters. But, assuming humanity survives, growth should begin to progress again once the inhibiting factor is resolved.
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Go look up the CO2 emissions levels required to just keep concentrations stable. Seriously.
Then get back to me on the conservation. Ain't gonna happen, forget it. This is math. We need to be going all in on geoengineering, pronto.
-W
Please don't be condescending. This is an important topic and it's not appropriate IMO.
In terms of efficiency, most if not all comprehensive plans to tackle climate change include it. It's generally the first thing you do (which is why it's the first of the 3 R's).
http://www.withouthotair.com/c27/page_204.shtml
Another good example is California. The state has the lowest per capita electricity consumption in the country because it's focused on promoting the efficiency of electricity use rather than promoting additional production.
http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/us_per_capita_electricity-2010.html
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In terms of efficiency, most if not all comprehensive plans to tackle climate change include it. It's generally the first thing you do (which is why it's the first of the 3 R's).
Efficiency improvements and conservation efforts are always the first thing you do, not because they are a viable way to arrest global warming, but because they save money for the utility companies. It's much cheaper to convince your user base to use less (and then raise the rates) than it is to build new capacity.
Whether we like it or not, human society functions on capitalism. Political systems like democracy vs communism are purely secondary. Overpopulation is secondary. Climate change is secondary. Everything humanity does is done in the pursuit of profits, of feeding the self-sustaining capitalist machine. In that context conservation programs (energy, water, fossil fuels) are just cost effective ways to continue feeding the machine. We'll continue to rely on those same resources until we find a way to feed the machine with alternatives. Once we figure out how to monetize them as well as or better than the existing system, we'll move on.
Which is part of the reason no one really wants cheap fusion or geoengineering. It's the same reason the FDA won't approve that mouthwash treatment that prevents all cavities forever, and why we have a cure for flaccid penises but not Alzheimers. Capitalism only pursues goals that generate profit. Curing problems doesn't generate profits nearly as effectively as treating them as ongoing problems, and even then only if the problem exists for someone who has the capacity to pay for your treatment.
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You didn't go look it up, did you? It's hard not to be condescending when people are willfully insisting on a solution that mathematically (not to mention politically) won't work.
CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have been rising for about 200 years - when there were far fewer people and only a tiny fraction of them were participating in industrialized economies.
I'm not against efficiency improvements. I'm all for them. I'm against thinking that will save us from having terrible problems because it's probably unrealistic. Better to go for efficiency at the *same time* as hedging your bets and figuring out some geoengineering last resorts.
-W
Please don't be condescending. This is an important topic and it's not appropriate IMO.
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Then there is the sad truth of zero sum.
Life is not a zero sum game. Giving a hand up to someone doesn't pull you down in the process. As long as we're spending money and energy on growing industries and not on blowing each other up, the lot for everyone can improve. It's when we're literally exploding billions of dollars on battle fields that things get to zero (and negative) sum.
I hope this is true. I just don't think the entire world can live like the United States. Something has to give somewhere. if we go much higher than 9 billion we are zero sum. We are in a mass extinction right now. Diverse living species are disappearing at an alarming rate. Rationing water in California? That is leaving nothing for wildlife. We are drinking and showering and water lawns until rivers and lakes run dry. Anyways, investments will be equities with dividends. Bonds will not live in the zero interest and restrictive credit we need. The good news is inflation will die and you will be once again able to just save money for retirement because it will retain its value. That's how it should be anyway
Using the density of a place like Hong Kong or Singapore. 10 billion people can fit comfortably inside a area smaller than Texas that leaves the remaining 99.2%+ or 24,400,000+ square mile of earth for farming, animals, recreation etc. It also leave almost 20,000,000 square miles of deserts for things like solar energy panels and in some place like California irrigation, (with enough energy we can get fresh water from the ocean.) If we can bring the rest of the world's population growth rate down to the US rate, (0.7%) which is high for industrial nation. That leaves us with another 400 year before the Texas size area expands to fill the US which still leaves us with 95% of the earth's habitable land mass to grow into.
The NY Times of all places did a retrospective piece http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/us/the-unrealized-horrors-of-population-explosion.html?_r=0 (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/us/the-unrealized-horrors-of-population-explosion.html?_r=0) and the doomsayers of the 1960s like Paul Elrich who predicted wide spread famine and chaos in the 1970 and the end of England by the year 2000. I read the book in the early 70s and found it not particularly convincing even as teenager.
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Let me be the first to applaud the responses from 'Leisured' on forward. This is what this world desperately needs, people with experience and passion to put their best ideas forward. This is the best side of the internet. Just wanted to highlight that, lest it be missed with all the flotsam and jetsam out there...
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If we can bring the rest of the world's population growth rate down to the US rate, (0.7%) which is high for industrial nation.
The US birth rate is high for developed nations but the growth rate only positive with immigration.
Unless there is something about Roswell that the government isn't telling us - immigration isn't a factor in world population growth.
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Great thread! The obvious investment for MMM readers is land 400 foot above sea level. Mountainous land in the western US is bargain basement priced today. When the rest of the US is baking at 140 degrees F. The mountains may be inhabitable still? This is both sad and true. Global warming will take us out of the game long before 400 years arrives. (my dad used to say -- "don't shit where you eat")
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You didn't go look it up, did you? It's hard not to be condescending when people are willfully insisting on a solution that mathematically (not to mention politically) won't work.
CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have been rising for about 200 years - when there were far fewer people and only a tiny fraction of them were participating in industrialized economies.
I'm not against efficiency improvements. I'm all for them. I'm against thinking that will save us from having terrible problems because it's probably unrealistic. Better to go for efficiency at the *same time* as hedging your bets and figuring out some geoengineering last resorts.
-W
No one said that efficiency alone would mitigate the rise in GHG emissions. However, it is an important part of any plan because it reduces the scale at which we need to implement alternatives to fossil fuels, which is why I said it's a critical part of "any effective strategy to reduce GHG emissions."
Geo-engineering is a possibility, but because we don't have the tools to accurately and precisely predict local trends in weather from global changes in climate, it's likely best to stop messing stuff up (reducing ghg emissions) than to fight one unintentional and unpredictable geo-engineering project (GHG emissions) with another.
Stopping the growth of GHG emissions by ~2030 and reducing thereafter will likely keep warming to ~1.5C and minimize the costs.
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2014/12/two-degrees-will-we-avoid-dangerous-climate-change/
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If we can bring the rest of the world's population growth rate down to the US rate, (0.7%) which is high for industrial nation.
The US birth rate is high for developed nations but the growth rate only positive with immigration.
Unless there is something about Roswell that the government isn't telling us - immigration isn't a factor in world population growth.
Quite true. In most countries the bigger problems is too few babies not too many people.
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In terms of efficiency, most if not all comprehensive plans to tackle climate change include it. It's generally the first thing you do (which is why it's the first of the 3 R's).
Efficiency improvements and conservation efforts are always the first thing you do, not because they are a viable way to arrest global warming, but because they save money for the utility companies. It's much cheaper to convince your user base to use less (and then raise the rates) than it is to build new capacity.
Whether we like it or not, human society functions on capitalism. Political systems like democracy vs communism are purely secondary. Overpopulation is secondary. Climate change is secondary. Everything humanity does is done in the pursuit of profits, of feeding the self-sustaining capitalist machine. In that context conservation programs (energy, water, fossil fuels) are just cost effective ways to continue feeding the machine. We'll continue to rely on those same resources until we find a way to feed the machine with alternatives. Once we figure out how to monetize them as well as or better than the existing system, we'll move on.
Which is part of the reason no one really wants cheap fusion or geoengineering. It's the same reason the FDA won't approve that mouthwash treatment that prevents all cavities forever, and why we have a cure for flaccid penises but not Alzheimers. Capitalism only pursues goals that generate profit. Curing problems doesn't generate profits nearly as effectively as treating them as ongoing problems, and even then only if the problem exists for someone who has the capacity to pay for your treatment.
I think I agree with your general point. I think differently about some of your examples.
A lot of times "conservation" is promoted by people who don't really want to do anything about the underlying issue. Either because they profit from the status quo or because their funders profit from the status quo (e.g. politicians). Oil companies don't like efficiency improvements to conserve oil. But they do like that it sounds as though people are doing something about the problem, and kicks the can down the road so they can make money for more years. Utilities are a different animal. They are pretty highly regulated or part of the government itself. In the case of electricity, they want you to use more overall, and more during low-load hours, but they also want you to use less at the highest peak hours. Utilities actually lose money on the high-peak times of demand because those plants are just so expensive to keep around. In the case of water, it's frequently part of the government and they can only get so much water without major expense or problems.
Money does drive the status quo and change. This is why it's so important to account for the total costs of our activity, and not just those currently included in the retail price. If the cost of pollution were included in the product, we'd use less of it and use other lesser polluting products instead.
I think people actually do want cheap fusion. Not the coal or gas producers of course. But who else would be against it? You could make a lot of money by producing energy-intensive products if the energy is now very cheap. The issue here is that the technology isn't there yet, and that it's very expensive to fund the research (and governments aren't excited about funding research at this point, especially when the payoff is likely well after the leaders have left office).
Same with your FDA examples. People want those and are working on them. The medical science just isn't there to prevent cavities forever or cure Alzheimers. Both conditions are pretty common (and Alzheimers is increasing in prevalance), so there's a huge demand and they would be hugely profitable if an advance were made. The nature of cavities is that you would have to keep getting treated. And probably the same with Alzheimers. Coincidentally, the FDA actually just approved a device last week to help control symptoms. http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm451152.htm
You might find a better example with antibiotics. There's a large cost to developing new antibiotics. But people would only take them for a week or two, and there are a lot of competing products, so it's not a great market to get into.
I think researchers in general are more interested in their own personal reasons for pursuing a cure for something than profit. The actual people who dedicate their lives to research are doing it because they or their family member has/had the condition, they want personal success and glory, or are just do-gooders who want to improve the world. The researchers rarely get compensated for their efforts in any scale commensurate with their contributions. It's the researchers (usually someone at a university) who do the actual work. A pharmaceutical company or device manufacturer will just swoop in later and acquire or create the rights to profit off of the discovery.
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Which is part of the reason no one really wants cheap fusion or geoengineering. It's the same reason the FDA won't approve that mouthwash treatment that prevents all cavities forever, and why we have a cure for flaccid penises but not Alzheimers. Capitalism only pursues goals that generate profit. Curing problems doesn't generate profits nearly as effectively as treating them as ongoing problems, and even then only if the problem exists for someone who has the capacity to pay for your treatment.
A mouthwash that would prevent cavities would make a corporation billions of dollars. Same for an Alzheimer's cure. I think it's more likely that those problems are just really complicated rather than it's some cabal of supercapitalists preventing the solutions from being released.
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The mouthwash has existed for like ten years. It replaces the bacteria in your mouth with ones that don't generate as much acid. The FDA denied further human testing on fears about altering your natural internal ecology, citing concerns about unforeseen potential complications.
Alzheimers, like HIV, is a huge profit source if you can treat it, manage it, take pills every day to keep it at bay. Not so profitable to take a single pill to ward off ever getting it, like a vaccine, so nobody is doing that kind of research.
I don't mean to sound like a conspiracy nut, but I do believe in the power of the invisible hand. In some cases, Mr. Market pushes us towards suboptimal solutions to problems because the incentives for society as a whole don't align with the incentives of the people making the decisions. E.g. fossil fuel consumption, tasty prepackaged junkfood, disposable consumer electronics, collateralized debt obligations, overfishing, and any Apple software.
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That's true to some degree. Manufactured spending, vendor/business lock-in, etc... have been around for centuries. With that said, their existence doesn't imply there are any easy fixes to Alzheimer's (or even cavities) out there.
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Like I said, I get what you are saying. And people go where the money is. I don't think that's a secret or a conspiracy (unless you look at it as every person in society is conspiring together to do what the each believe will make themselves wealthier).
Without looking into it more, I think there are huge potential consequences to changing the oral flora. We're only beginning to understand what a profound role the intestinal flora plays in our health and wellbeing. I don't even know how we could test that mouthwash for safety at this point, given our limited knowledge. It has the potential to do much greater harm than is caused by cavities. But it's a fascinating idea.
I think there's a huge profit motive to understanding what causes Alzheimers. Only once we figure that out could we say whether anything could prevent it--be it a daily pill or a one-time therapy. But we just don't understand the brain well enough to know at this point.
Mr Market absolutely pushes us to suboptimal outcomes from certain people's perspective. But from another group of people's perspective, it's the optimal one. Of course my perspective is the right one that we should all optimize around.
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I don't mean to sound like a conspiracy nut, but I do believe in the power of the invisible hand.
Vaccine research has almost stopped in industry. And because nobody is interested in hiring vaccine researchers nobody in universities works on them.
Even if you make a successful vaccine it is a lot harder to get it accepted to give to everyone than it is for a drug only given to people already ill.
Then since your customer is likely to be a national health service or government you are in a poor bargaining position about cost.
You are then on the hook for any adverse reactions, or even lawsuits about completely imaginary adverse reactions (like MMR->autism)
We have an safe effective vaccine against Lyme disease but it is only used on animals because of an autism lawsuit which was thrown out but not before bankrupting the company that made the drug.
If you make a vaccine for developed countries. Even an amazing vaccine with 1 in a million risk of side effects. Give it to a million people and pay $10M in damages to the one person it harms, then $10 of the $11/dose you are being paid is going to lawyers.
Make a vaccine against 3rd world diseases and if you charge $1/dose you will be accused of being an evil corporation by NGOs and 3rd world governments.
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I don't mean to sound like a conspiracy nut, but I do believe in the power of the invisible hand.
Vaccine research has almost stopped in industry. And because nobody is interested in hiring vaccine researchers nobody in universities works on them.
Even if you make a successful vaccine it is a lot harder to get it accepted to give to everyone than it is for a drug only given to people already ill.
Then since your customer is likely to be a national health service or government you are in a poor bargaining position about cost.
You are then on the hook for any adverse reactions, or even lawsuits about completely imaginary adverse reactions (like MMR->autism)
We have an safe effective vaccine against Lyme disease but it is only used on animals because of an autism lawsuit which was thrown out but not before bankrupting the company that made the drug.
If you make a vaccine for developed countries. Even an amazing vaccine with 1 in a million risk of side effects. Give it to a million people and pay $10M in damages to the one person it harms, then $10 of the $11/dose you are being paid is going to lawyers.
Make a vaccine against 3rd world diseases and if you charge $1/dose you will be accused of being an evil corporation by NGOs and 3rd world governments.
Yeah, vaccines have a lot more scrutiny. But we've also already developed vaccines for almost all the big diseases affecting developed countries that we know are derived from infectious agents. HIV is an obvious one that people are still working on. Other than that, flu (vaccine) and pneumonia (vaccine), almost no one in the developed world dies from an infection (although misuse of antibiotics is changing that some). I think there's just not as much need for new vaccines at this point.
Now, people in developing countries die from infectious agents all the time. And most of those are entirely preventable (either through existing vaccine or hygiene). Malaria would be the one that jumps to mind that could be vaccine preventable (even though it's a parasite) but still needs a vaccine. Mr Market doesn't get the vaccines and hygiene to people there. If malaria were an issue in the developed countries, I think there would be a vaccine or other highly effective prevention and/or cure by now.
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But we are only in that position because there are vaccines.
Stop giving the MMR (or polio, or TB) vaccines and we go back to a lot of people in the west dying.
Market forces mean that there only needs to be the threat of a lawsuit and it may not be cost effective to sell childrens measles vaccines in the USA.
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But we are only in that position because there are vaccines.
Stop giving the MMR (or polio, or TB) vaccines and we go back to a lot of people in the west dying.
Market forces mean that there only needs to be the threat of a lawsuit and it may not be cost effective to sell childrens measles vaccines in the USA.
Not sure I follow. Since the 80's in the US the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act has limited vaccine manufacturer liability for the core set of childhood vaccines (I think the list is kept current to those recommended by the ACIP). The entire National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program is funded by a 75 cent per dose excise tax. This essentially ensures that manufacturers do not need to go out of business over fears of lawsuits. Some litigants have gotten around the act by suing over thimerosol, but thimerosol is only in some formulations of TDaP and flu.
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Unlike another commenter - my guess is we will NOT innovate our way out of most climate change concerns within about 25 years.
Mother Nature has and always will be the dominant force. Don't kid yourself :)
In terms of investing for the end of growth, growth and (business) evolution will always occur as long as humans are on earth. The real question should be what, where and when will the growth come from? Nobody knows....
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Thank you Escape Velocity for your support. I agree with Advisor that Mother Nature will eventually assert herself.
In my previous post, I pointed out that people who insist on driving world population up are rejecting food security, probably without being consciously aware of what they are doing. I see this as a psychological problem, so pointing out scientific or practical objections does not have much effect.
Related psychological problems:
No. 1. People who support indefinite population growth expect agricultural scientists to pull a rabbit out of the hat, and then later another rabbit, into the indefinite future, like a dog chasing its tail. This is self-evidently foolish and irresponsible.
No. 2. Scientists have given us more efficient lights than the old incandescent globes. This benefit is still with us. The difference with agricultural advances is that the benefit of each advance in food production is soon destroyed by population growth. This is self-evidently absurd.
No. 3. Proponents of indefinite population growth are in effect saying; ‘you agricultural scientists are doing a good job, and we will sabotage your efforts by having big families’. It looked bad in the past, and it looks bad now.
When the scientific revolution hit its stride, mid nineteenth century, the increase in knowledge and understanding emerged as a noble pursuit, nobler than many more traditional occupations. There is nothing noble about rejecting food security and packing more people into the world.
Islamic State has shown us that a degenerate society, populated almost entirely by ignorant, irrational degenerates is possible. Islamic State should make us reassess some of our objectives.
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In some cases, Mr. Market pushes us towards suboptimal solutions to problems because the incentives for society as a whole don't align with the incentives of the people making the decisions. E.g. fossil fuel consumption, tasty prepackaged junkfood, disposable consumer electronics, collateralized debt obligations, overfishing, and any Apple software.
I agree that the "ethos" of the market pre-elects many of our decisions for us. It is the "survival of the fittest" in corporate lingo. We have been on that twisted and misused Darwin train for a while.
How did Apple get thrown in there though? With a smaller market share it is an awesome option but its not being forced on anyone.
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Different points not necessarily at you Sol.
@everyone
We don't have to invent our way out of catastrophe. We just have to change ourselves and our behavior. We have deep seated expansionist culture and no where to go. Except maybe Mars but that is not a permanent stop.
The problem is we need to stop conquering nature-- we can't do it without killing ourselves.
"As the apple tree apples, the earth peoples"-- Alan Watts
We are the earth. It is not something we live on and use. We can not live without it. We have to take a canned version into space with us. It is our mother. She feeds us. Poison her and we are dead.
So our culture should not be run by the market; even though, it will have a strong influence for as long as I can see simply because it works. Profits are self sustaining-- meaning they are self motivating. They have a constant agenda fighting for them-- for more profits.
Here is where we have to get involved. Because profits need to be checked when they majorly disrupt future profits. Future profits should be subsidized and short term profits should be heavily penalized. Short term leads to Easter Isle and is generally more insulant to all "stake holders" involved.
Applied to society.
We can't keep expanding into the suburbs because this feeds the dependance on oils and destroys more land in the process. We can't and shouldn't develop all land. Anyone saying we are are underdeveloped needs to realize that asphalt is not a biosphere and Phoenix and L.A. are over 100 miles wide and sucking rivers dry-- literally. Half of the river is probably laying in miles of pipe trying to get to someones yard.
Metro needs to be affordable in a way that makes the suburbs an extravagance-- and a wasteful stupid one.
The future youth should have an argument like this: "Move out of the city, why? I don't want to pay for a car. My rent is 1/5 of what it would be out there. I can walk to or ride the lateral escalator to anywhere I want free. Anything I want is near me. It is cheaper. Why not just spend that money on recreation in the wilderness, and maybe camp near the wild horses and buffalo? I don't want wild wolves at the back door of my home and I don't want to kill them either. Only a mad man irresponsible with his money would live out somewhere that is five times as expensive and has none of our great city services. I mean he can't even visit the 24 hour cafeteria and eat a meal for 30 cents. He pays $5 and has to wash his own dishes. Thats stupid. No, I don't what to do that."
Thats what it should and probably will sound like eventually.
Applied to the Market.
Despite economic doctrine taught to you in school-- Interest is the catalyst to growth. It is the reason you need growth.
You borrow $1 from the money pool and must pay back a $1.10 to the same money pool. You can only do that if someone else borrows $1.10 to pay you and now he needs someone to borrow $1.21 to pay him. Our current debt based money system is a serious problem. It needs population growth to continue so more people can borrow money.
A quick solution would be eliminating all interest and making borrowing really hard to do except in certain cases like housing. A premium could be charged for a house but interest would not. You see the premium would insure you wouldn't be selling anytime soon and the zero interest would insure you saved money. It also wouldn't require growth to pay back. Your money would also retain its value and you could just keep it in a bank. Interest wouldn't be around to drive the need to grow and very restrictive credit would remove inflation.
Why not do this? Because the 1% has been making busloads of money raping you and your ancestors for a long time. They don't want to give that up. They wouldn't be able to buy a 100 meter yacht that way. Nope fuck you and your kids and the environment. They want a boat.
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There are really 2 things that drive me nuts about the climate change debate.
2: Conservation will not solve anything. It's WAY too late. Sorry, your Prius is still a CO2 disaster. Likewise your organic vegetarian prepared food. The only realistic solutions will involve HUGE efficiency improvements and/or geoengineering of some kind. We should be throwing LOTS of money at both of those things NOW. Best of all, that sort of engineering and science will throw off lots of great useful tech for other purposes.
You apparently didn't read my example on lighting. Lighting is roughly 300x as efficient as 200 years ago.
Conservation and efficiency has a LONG way to go and has huge gains still available.
Your "organic vegetarian prepared food" is a red herring. Vegetarian is more efficient, organic is less efficient.
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From the physics, the response of climate to CO2 is not linear, but logarithmic, so each additional molecule of CO2 added to the atmosphere will have less of an impact than the ones before it. This is due to the saturated nature of the 15 micron absorption feature. Plus, there are likely to be net-negative feedback effects in the climate system. I expect there is a very low climate sensitivity to CO2--most likely 1 C. No big deal.
Not a specialist, but I think that the problem comes with the melting of ice caps, which reflect much more sunlight than sea water. A small increase in temperature brings on some melting of the ice caps -> less sunlight is reflected -> rising temperature -> more ice melts -> ...
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There are really 2 things that drive me nuts about the climate change debate.
2: Conservation will not solve anything. It's WAY too late. Sorry, your Prius is still a CO2 disaster. Likewise your organic vegetarian prepared food. The only realistic solutions will involve HUGE efficiency improvements and/or geoengineering of some kind. We should be throwing LOTS of money at both of those things NOW. Best of all, that sort of engineering and science will throw off lots of great useful tech for other purposes.
You apparently didn't read my example on lighting. Lighting is roughly 300x as efficient as 200 years ago.
Conservation and efficiency has a LONG way to go and has huge gains still available.
Are you familiar with Jevon's Paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox)? Basically, this occurs when when technological progress increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the rate of consumption of that resource rises because of lowered prices, which increases demand. You see evidence of this with every gain in energy efficiency devised. Incandescent light bulbs are more efficient than whale oil lamps and candles? Great, let's stay up until midnight instead of going to bed when the sun goes down, then we can install mood lighting, landscape lighting, cabinet lighting! LED lights more efficient than incandescents? Super, leave 'em on all the time! Gas-powered cars are more efficient than grass-fed horses? Great, let's travel across the country for vacation and use our cars to commute to a job that's 50 miles away instead of working on the farm! Better internal combustion engines resulting in better fuel efficiency? More cars, bigger cars, more horsepower!!!
Obviously, I'm not suggesting we would have been better off reading by whale oil lamps and traveling by horse and buggy. Simply pointing out that efficiency gains don't naturally lead to resource conservation. Often, it's just the opposite.
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Are you familiar with Jevon's Paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox)? Basically, this occurs when when technological progress increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the rate of consumption of that resource rises because of lowered prices, which increases demand. You see evidence of this with every gain in energy efficiency devised. Incandescent light bulbs are more efficient than whale oil lamps and candles? Great, let's stay up until midnight instead of going to bed when the sun goes down, then we can install mood lighting, landscape lighting, cabinet lighting! LED lights more efficient than incandescents? Super, leave 'em on all the time! Gas-powered cars are more efficient than grass-fed horses? Great, let's travel across the country for vacation and use our cars to commute to a job that's 50 miles away instead of working on the farm! Better internal combustion engines resulting in better fuel efficiency? More cars, bigger cars, more horsepower!!!
Obviously, I'm not suggesting we would have been better off reading by whale oil lamps and traveling by horse and buggy. Simply pointing out that efficiency gains don't naturally lead to resource conservation. Often, it's just the opposite.
I think you're talking about the rebound effect, which results in less than optimal improvements in efficiency. Jevon's paradox only pops up when efficiency improvements lower the cost of something to the point where the economic benefits from it are larger than the cost from additional use, with the end result being more use than before the efficiency improvement.
While possible, it's fairly rare to see (I think the steam engine and electricity distribution are two good examples). In the majority of cases, the rebound effect is less than 100%.
http://www.policyarchive.org/handle/10207/bitstreams/3492.pdf