Imagine a group of 100 fisherman faced with declining stocks and worried about the sustainability of their resource and their livelihoods. One of them works out that the total sustainable catch is about 20% of what everyone is catching now (with some uncertainty of course) but that if current trends of increasing catches (about 2% a year) continue the resource would be depleted in short order. Faced with that prospect, the fishermen gather to decide what to do. The problem is made more complicated because some groups of fishermen are much more efficient than the others. The top 5 catchers, catch 20% of the fish, and the top 20 catch almost 75% of the fish. Meanwhile the least efficient 50 catch only 10% of the fish and barely subsist. Clearly, fairness demands that the top catchers lead the way in moving towards a more sustainable future.
The top 5 do start discussing how to manage the transition. They realise that the continued growth in catches – driven by improved technology and increasing effort – is not sustainable, and make a plan to reduce their catch by 80% over a number of years. But there is opposition – manufacturers of fishing boats, tackle and fish processing plants are worried that this would imply less sales for them in the short term. Strangely, they don’t seem worried that a complete collapse of the fishery would mean no sales at all – preferring to think that the science can’t possibly be correct and that everything will be fine. These manufacturers set up a number of organisations to advocate against any decreases in catch sizes – with catchy names like the Fisherfolk for Sound Science, and Friends of Fish. They then hire people who own an Excel spreadsheet program do “science” for them – and why not? They live after all in a free society.
After spending much energy and money on trying to undermine the science – with claims that the pond is much deeper than it looks, that the fish are just hiding, that the records of fish catches were contaminated by being done near a supermarket – the continued declining stocks and smaller and smaller fish make it harder and harder to sound convincing. So, in a switch of tactics so fast it would impress Najinsky, the manufacturers’ lobby suddenly decides to accept all that science and declares that the ‘fish are hiding’ crowd are just fringe elements. No, they said, we want to help with this transition, but …. we need to be sure that the plans will make sense. So they ask their spreadsheet-wielding “advocacy scientists” to calculate exactly what would happen if the top 5 (and only the top 5) did cut their catches by 80%, but meanwhile everyone else kept increasing their catch at the current (unsustainable rate). Well, the answers were shocking – the total catch would be initially still be 84% of what it is now and would soon catch up with current levels. In fact, the exact same techniques that were used to project the fishery collapse imply that this would only delay the collapse by a few years! and what would be the point of that?
The fact that the other top fishermen are discussing very similar cuts and that the fisherfolk council was trying to coordinate these actions to minimise the problems that might emerge, are of course ignored and the cry goes out that nothing can be done. In reality of course, the correct lesson to draw is that everything must be done.
In case you think that no-one would be so stupid as to think this kind of analysis has any validity, I would ask that you look up the history of the Newfoundland cod fishery. It is indeed a tragedy.
And the connection to climate? Here.
I’ll finish with a quotation attributed to Edmund Burke, one the founders of the original conservative movement:
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
See here for a much better picture of what coordinated action could achieve.
If you really want to see how the “Commons” of public sentiment supporting “green” efforts is getting abused, see:
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/05/better-place/#more-6104
Does anyone think when the false hope of this scheme is exposed, there will be much fertile ground of public patience left.
James wrote: “I’ve pointed out (most recently in post #318) a number of serious flaws in [Jacobson’s] analysis WRT nuclear power, including one – the implication that civilian nuclear power always preceeds nuclear weaponry – that is so blatantly at odds with known history that I can only suppose it to be a deliberate lie.”
I wouldn’t say that you have “pointed out a number of serious flaws”.
I would say that you have simply dismissed and waved away the very real problems with nuclear power that Jacobson’s study discussed.
Nor is Jacobson the only one to discuss these problems — others, including advocates of expanding nuclear power, have recognized that these problems represent real obstacles to any expansion of nuclear.
Specifically regarding the problem of nuclear weapons proliferation, Jacobson wrote:
Just as you have “creatively” interpreted my comments to assert that I claimed the USA could or should have a 100 percent wind-powered grid when I said no such thing, in your comment #318 you say that Jacobson claims that “civilian nuclear power always precedes nuclear weaponry” when he in fact did not say that.
To refute the assertion that you attribute to Jacobson (which is not what he actually said), you cited North Korea & Iran, as well as the USA, USSR and “possibly” Britain, France & China as countries which “developed nuclear weapons prior to a civilian power program.”
First of all, Jacobson is talking about the present day — note the use of present tense in the excerpt above. What the USA, the USSR, China and other countries did at the dawn of the nuclear era some 50-60 years ago is not relevant.
That leaves your examples of North Korea and Iran. In fact, North Korea’s first nuclear reactors in the 1980s were represented as being for civilian energy generation. And as is well known, Iran to this day maintains that its nuclear program is entirely for civilian energy generation.
Indeed, the controversy over Iran’s nuclear program strongly underscores Jacobson’s actual point that the “risk” of nuclear weapons use “has increased due to the dissemination of nuclear energy facilities worldwide”. The problem with Iran’s nuclear program is precisely that the technologies that Iran is developing, which have legitimate application to civilian nuclear power, are essentially indistinguishable from the technologies needed to develop weapons.
That’s why, even with international monitoring, there remains uncertainty and ambiguity about what Iran is really up to. Which is exactly the problem that Jacobson is talking about: that the proliferation of nuclear power technology makes it easier for nations that so desire to develop nuclear weapons technology under the guise of a civilian nuclear power program.
And again, Jacobson is certainly not the only analyst to identify the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation as a serious obstacle to expanding nuclear power.
For example, a 2003 MIT study entitled “The Future Of Nuclear Power” — which advocated a large-scale expansion of nuclear power — said this:
Likewise, the MIT study identified some of the same issues that Jacobson’s study noted as obstacles to any expansion of nuclear power, including the safety and cost of nuclear power plants and the unsolved problem of nuclear waste.
Serious advocates of nuclear power, like the authors of the MIT study, recognize the reality of these problems, and make proposals for addressing them. Unserious nuclear “enthusiasts” simply pretend these problems don’t exist or are trivial (compared to the supposed “vast environmental destruction” that renewables will cause).
Finally, as I have said before, my opposition to the expansion of nuclear is neither “religious” nor is it primarily because of these well-known, very real problems and risks of nuclear. It is simply because nuclear power is not, and cannot be, a timely and effective way to reduce GHG emissions from the generation of electricity. Renewables and efficiency can do the job faster, better, cheaper and without the very serious problems of nuclear power.
#449 KevinB: Relax, Gavin. He’s obviously pulling your leg, heh! If KevinB were so ignorant, gullible and stupid as to have made that post in good faith he’d not be able to put words together into sentences, let alone manage to find the Internet.
Anyway, a fun article for JIR would be one explaining how the oceans are expanding even as they’re “cooling”. Perhaps the seafloor is rising? Or Earth is shrinking? KevinB, your sense of humor is needed at JIR!
In re Jim Bullis @ 442:
No, all of the power I’m consuming inside my house is from solar, and that includes handling all transients of both supply and demand. It also includes the ability to respond instantly to significant load transients without voltage or frequency collapse. Or more plainly, I’m producing 2.5KW, consuming 0.3KW and storing the rest.
The difference between non-rotating mass based generation and rotating mass based generation is the ability to respond very, very rapidly. You can see this on a small scale with small emergency standby generators — gasoline models you buy in a hardware store, for example — compared to the inverters used for off-grid generation or large solar farms. The lag time between changes in throttle settings on those rotating mass generators causes both frequency and voltage sags last many dozens to hundreds of cycles. At the grid scale, when demand rapidly outstrips generation, the same thing happens — rotational energy is converted to electrical energy, frequency declines, and voltage may (or may not …) collapses. It’s just the physics of power generation — not a lot you can do about turbine-based power.
For digitally controlled inverters, response is measured in fractions of cycles to a handful or so of cycles. Frequency collapse doesn’t occur, and typically voltage collapse is tied more to inrush current and I*R voltage drop than the inability of the inverter to handle the load as there is no “inertia” to overcome, though for pumped air or water, there is obviously going to be some inertia to deal with, but that can be addressed mechanically in ways that rotating mass generators can’t.
Rotating mass and high thermal inertia generation is SO 19th century.
Re #449: “……… Ocean heat content is declining. Sea ice is at all- time highs. Glaciers are expanding. Sea level rise has stopped………”
Where is all this happening,Neptune, Uranus? What planet is this? It sure isn’t here on Earth!
Gavin,
I have no idea about the state of the fisheries, I was talking about the analogy. I would say it like this. Fishing stocks go up and down over time. They were dropping fast 10 years ago, but since then they have been recovering nicely even though though amount of fish taken continues to rise every year. Is this now the time to take drastic action? Either we do not understand fisheries or the problem does not exist. The last 10 years of data say that the fishing stock is in a growing trend. I am not cherry picking a 1998 start date. Temperatures have been in a down trend for at least 7 years now. Are you denying this? By analogy fishing stocks are up. Now, I already know you are going to point to the GISS ship that makes manual catch measurements with huge errors and leaves out huge portions of the ocean. They even sample in “Ocean Fish Islands” were local measurements are distorted. Let me point you to a technology called satelites where fish are measured everywhere in an automatic way with much smaller errors. They all keep finding more fish every year. If you don’t believe that satelite technology works, I would take that up with NASA.
Jim Bullis writes in 451:
I’m not seeing any “false hope”. I already go hunting for electrical outlets when I take my electric bike out for a long ride. I’d LOVE to see charging stations strewn around Austin. I make it a point to keep a mental list of places I can mooch electricity if the need arrives.
Battery swapping is no more far-fetched than any form of rental. People rent cars, no? Why not “rent” car batteries? And people lease cars, so why not “lease” car batteries?
You know, for someone advancing a radical idea — that a vehicle with a low-slung drive mechanics and aerodynamic passenger cockpit mounted well above the roadway can be energy efficient — to be so completely attacking not-so-radical ideas is really weird for me. How about you put a cork in the complaining about other peoples radical ideas until you get a manufacturer to start producing your radical idea? Wire frame models and unimplemented patents don’t impress me. Go build your car and come back and tell us how it works. And while you’re at it, spend a few years working on smart grid and green power technologies before telling people who’ve done that how it all works. Because I’ve been there, done that, and it does work. Very well, even.
Well, all I can say is I guesst we’ll need to reduce our GHG emissions by 80% by 2025, and even more by 2050. And for heaven’s sake, stop eating fish.
Actually what we need more than the Waxman-Markey bill is the Van Hollen bill (Ways & Means) of “Cap & Dividend” (a very simple & quite sensible bill).
Just take away all subsidies from oil and coal, put a fee (that grows over the years) on fossil fuels, give that fee back equally to everyone with a SSNumber. Maybe a small % to be given to the poorest of the poor in the world who are suffering from climate change-related harms.
Maybe the rich will still live profligate energy/resource lives, but the rest of us will start thinking about turning off lights not in use, or turning off engines in drive-thrus. Or, even getting our electricity from Green Mountain 100% wind — which already IS cheaper than dirty electricity, at least in Texas. And, for sure, moving closer to work/shops on our next move.
Then we’ll be laughing all the way to the bank, while those who haven’t quite figured out how to turn off their lights not in use (or stop the wattage vampires around their homes) pay thru the nose for the harm they are doing — that is, give the money back to us wise folk, who can invest it in electric cars and solar panels, etc.
KevinB wrote: “Fishing stocks go up and down over time. They were dropping fast 10 years ago, but since then they have been recovering nicely …”
That is just plain false.
KevinB wrote: “… The last 10 years of data say that the fishing stock is in a growing trend.”
That is just plain false.
KevinB wrote: “Temperatures have been in a down trend for at least 7 years now.”
That is just plain false.
Do you have anything to contribute except blatant falsehoods?
“Let me point you to a technology called satelites where fish are measured everywhere in an automatic way with much smaller errors.
Positively fascinating…tell more.
#454 Hi Furry,
I clearly was incorrect in assuming you sold your surplus power back to the utility system. You might be getting cheated.
But you do indeed control your source. But there must come a point when you could produce more power than you can store. Ok. And you can live confidently that you are not using coal.
However, most of us are linked and most of our power is still generated in SO 19th century machines, and they have managed to live with physics all that time. Frequency has never declined, at least not where multiple machines are tied together. That would be a significant event since phase lock would have been lost; without intervention the currents would tend to get rather large. Even us 19th century folks worried about that. I might have misled by saying that the generator field strength would be varied to controlled the voltage. A higher priority loop would exist to vary the generator field to maintain rotor phase lock, and therefore, maintain nearly absolute frequency control.
Observing gasoline standby generators could lead to incorrect imaginings about large power generating systems, SO 19th century that they are.
This is a bit OT, but there’s been some discussion of biofuels. Here’s an abstract for a recent article in SCIENCE:
“Greater Transportation Energy and GHG Offsets from Bioelectricity Than Ethanol”
J. E. Campbell, D. B. Lobell, C. B. Field
Published Online May 7, 2009
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1168885
The quantity of land available to grow biofuel crops without impacting food prices or greenhouse gas emissions from land conversion is limited. Therefore, bioenergy should maximize land-use efficiency when addressing transportation and climate change goals. Biomass could power either internal combustion or electric vehicles, but the relative land-use efficiency of these two energy pathways is not well quantified. Here, we show that bioelectricity outperforms ethanol across a range of feedstocks, conversion technologies, and vehicle classes. Bioelectricity produces an average 81% more transportation kilometers and 108% more emissions offsets per unit area cropland than cellulosic ethanol. These results suggest that alternative bioenergy pathways have large differences in how efficiently they use the available land to achieve transportation and climate goals.
#457 Hi Furry,
To understand why the battery rental scheme is a bad idea, go back and read my #442, but pretending your space heater is tied to the grid, as well as your solar system.
At least I got you to look at my car concept!!! Hooray. It doesn’t seem so radical to me. And the airship is indeed SO 19th century; the basic Fuhrman airship shape was described in 1906.
Trouble is, it will be a lot harder to sell than build, as your reaction suggests. And a 19th century guy is a little old to build something without also preparing the way, at least a little. Just the task of getting people to accept the idea of riding in tandem is daunting. Would you agree to that if it really mattered for CO2?
But you are surely right about the need for a cork, here it goes, glug.
re 463, well someone thinks that renting batteries out for cars so instead of topping up electricity by charging a fixed battery, you change the battery for a charged one will be profitable.
Since they’re creating the company, one would think they have done more homework than you on the subject.
I believe I posted a link to it on this page. Maybe another thread.
I bet Doug Bostrom is feeling silly now…
#449 KevinB
Unless you are worried about losing your job or being stalked, or have some important reason to remain anonymous would you share your full name.
I have this thing about people taking responsibility for what they say. Hey, call me a conservative that still believes in honor and integrity.
#456
1. Any increases in particular zones would only be realized by controls but still be far below reasonable levels that would be considered natural or sustainable based on multiple factors.
2. 10 years is too short weather is not climate (30 years+). Natural variability explains… natural variability. But this is natural variability on a different path: http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/natural-variability
3. Sea Ice Mass loss is huge. You unfortunately are basing your assumption on sea ice extent which is a measure of surface ice, not ice thickness.
4. Glaciers are diminishing all around the world. Maybe you are referring to the snowfall increase in Antarctica, which is expected in the climate models due to increased moisture in the atmosphere and regional thermal inertia (it is still quite cold in Antarctica, but slowly warming)?
#456 KevinB:
Twang! The straps holding up your analogy just snapped. How embarrassing for you.
Jim writes:
I’d strongly suggest that if, or when, the urge to comment again on grid management strikes, that you learn what keeps the giant mess working, how “not working” is handled, and what really does happen instant by instant on the grid.
The existing grid is downright dumb compared to what can be done for tiny amounts of money per consumer. I’ve not even looked into the cost of the Carrier ComfortChoice thermostat, but they are CHEAP and very effective at preventing brownouts. One mass-producible device that is itself dumber than dirt.
I think you got my backwards-backwards ;)
What I’m saying is that the lack of inertia in certain renewable forms of power production is an advantage over rotating mass thermal power producers.
Yes, the inertia in the rotating masses is what presently keeps the grid going. No, it isn’t a requirement of a “smart” grid that produces power that’s faster responding than the frequency regulating generators in use today. Frequency linking the throttles on those generators is still going to be slower than digital. That’s where I’d be putting my renewable power dollars — bidding on balancing energy and other high value services.
Here’s a little light reading for the very curious — http://www.ercot.com/content/mktinfo/services/bal/2009/2009-05_BES.xls
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/denialmachine/video.html
The USA needs to be able to combat the lobbying and all that. This is the real issue in the USA.
Come on folks, after reading comment 456 KevinB must be pulling everyone’s leg.
[Response: You are thinking about a pure mathematical construct (cf. Godel) that isn’t quite the same as the models we are talking about in climate. Physical models are consistent, and strive to be complete (though still have some ways to go). There are no complete but inconsistent models in climate. – gavin]
I know this is a bit off topic from climate science (at least in a fashion), but it’s so damn interesting.
The physical models are bound to the rules of mathematical constructs because the physical models are described mathematically. So Godel’s theorem of incompleteness applies to physical models / theories. Unless climate scientists are not describing their models with mathematics (of course you are), the models are either incomplete or inconsistent. I think it’s incomplete; however, the models can never be complete and consistent at the same time.
The idea of completeness in physics is a remaining Newton ideology, which is almost as old as physics itself, and I think there is going to be a lot of broken hearts when people begin to realize it’s not possible. We want all of our profound questions to have answers, but mathematics has completely broken that hope. Before Godel, mathematicians shared the same dream. Honestly, I should say before Georg Cantor who ripped opened that great can of worms. Cantor dicked with infinity until he broke mathematics and his mind with it. He was extremely unpopular during his life amongst other mathematicians for what he did. Godel attempted to fix the problem, but he ended up making it much worse with his incompleteness theorem, and it broke his mind as well. Alan Turing who broke the enigma encryption simplified the problem (Continuum Hypothesis) by inventing the computer. So computer scientist see it often in their work.
Eventually physicists will drop the old classical idea like everyone else, but it will likely be a slow process from what I have seen. Stephen Hawking recently gave up on TOE because he finally accepted the mathematical implications. If you have read any of his books (brief history of time for example), you have to admit that he has come a very long way because he was a “Know the mind of God” man. I have to give him credit because he goes out on a limb in his field. I thought he may actually ignite the big fire because he accepted the math, but scientists of the day must not be ready for it.
I think there is an obvious disconnect between physicists and mathematicians because physicists should have realized how it applies to their theories. Physics may be based upon observation, but it is described in mathematics.
[Response: It’s been a while since I’ve looked at this, but I think you have a major misconception about the relevance of what Godel showed. His incompleteness theorem was based on creating mathematical statements that could be demonstrated to be unprovable using a finite set of axioms. This is fundamentally different from ‘incompleteness’ of a physical model because it doesn’t contain a certain set of aerosol micro-physics. I see no connection to Godel’s notion that is relevant to this. – gavin]
KevinB, consider some examples of areas where fish stocks have clearly collapsed due to human activity –
1) the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan – due to water diversions by Soviet agricultural planners.
2) The rivers in the Sucumbios region in the Ecuadorian Amazon – due to the practices of Texaco drillers in Ecuador, who used unlined open pits to store billions of barrels of oil drilling waste.
In each case, the local resource that sustained the fishery was trashed by bad economic decision making.
In Ecuador, foreign oil companies saw profit in the remote oil fields and maximized that profit by cutting all environmental cleanup costs. They’re now facing estimated cleanup costs of $27 billion, which they would of course like to pass on to someone else.
This is fairly similar to the behavior of some power utilities, who would like to pass their old dirty plants onto someone else before having to account for the decommissioning costs (this applies to both old coal and old nuclear power plants). Set up a shell company, sell the plant to the shell company, which then goes bankrupt, leaving the state and the taxpayer holding the bag – or variations on that theme.
As far as Chevron claims that it was the local’s decision to use dirty practices, and they were not involved, see this Bloomberg report:
The same goes for the Aral Sea – no long-term ecological costs were considered during the initial planning, since the Marxist economic experts advising the Soviet Central Committee didn’t believe that such factors mattered, any more than did the neoclassical economic experts who advised the Ecuadorian military dictatorship on the need to bring in Texaco to work their wells. The Soviet approach to colonialism in Kazakhstan was very similar to that of the British before them:
In the early 1960’s, the Soviet central government decided to make the Soviet Union self-sufficient in cotton and increase rice production. Government officials ordered the additional amount of needed water to be taken from the two rivers that feed the Aral Sea.
If you want to argue that the net increase in Ecuadorian oil wealth and Soviet agricultural wealth was ‘worth it’, consider that the wealth also supported military dictatorships, and that most of it was exported from the country in question. It certainly wasn’t worth it to the local inhabitants – and should there livelihoods be sacrificed ‘for the greater good’? That’s one of the arguments that was used to support slavery, by the way… but in both cases, an honest ecological economic analysis would have shown that preserving those ecosystem from water diversion and oil pollution would have been the best thing for the local inhabitants.
Jim Eager
It is a sad situation, but I don’t think he is joking.
Maybe he spent that last few years in denialist web sites and then accidentally stumbled on all the crazy climate science over here that contradicts his indoctrination.
If I read him right, he figures that it’s like shooting ducks in a pond. All he has to do is enlighten us by corrective statements such as in post #449
We will then see the error of the established and well understood science and all will be good in the world again.
The world will not be warming, there will be no more wars, and the earth will be flat again (making it easier to make paper maps) and all the gods will dance while we eat mango’s and watch the hula dancers as the sun sets :)
Re: #471
I’m not so sure of that. Have you seen the zoo that makes up the contrarian blogosphere?
Doug Bostrom Says (13 May 2009 at 12:55):
“Just a small comment. It turns out pumped hydro is remarkably efficient, something like 85% overall for modern systems.”
I guess we look at this differently, because I think 85% is quite inefficent.
“Thinking it through however you’ll realize that efficency does really enter into the equation, or at least not long term.”
No? Seems to me that it means you have to build 15% more generating capacity to supply the same amount of power to the grid.
“Anyway, pumped hydro is alrady used in conjunction with the anchronistic combustion thermal system, so looks as though it already has the Industry Seal of Approval.”
If you read a bit, though, I think you’ll discover that the problem with pumped storage (aside from the cost) is that there are not all that many suitable sites. Just for instance, consider all those wind turbines being built in places like Texas & the midwest. If you’ve ever driven through these places, you may have noticed that they’re rather flat.
Now of course all these problems can be overcome, by spending enough money and being willing to live with the environmental effects. But why resort to this sort of Rube Goldberg solution, when there are better alternatives?
#401 SJ
I would like to own a whale, or several. I would just let them swim free, but they would be my whales and no-one would be allowed to touch them. So how much does a whale cost? I want one of those big blue ones. And more to the point, who do I buy it from?
I problem, I suspect, is that as things stand you cannot buy one, since they are still unowned, ie in the commons.
There have though been (are?) international political treaties limiting their being hunted, which implies political onwership. If so, they would first need to be denationalised.
#401 SJ
I would like to own a whale, or several. I would just let them swim free, but they would be my whales and no-one would be allowed to touch them. So how much does a whale cost? I want one of those big blue ones. And more to the point, who do I buy it from?
I problem, I suspect, is that as things stand you cannot buy one, since they are still unowned, ie in the commons (and thus susceptable to its tragedy).
There have though been (are?) international political treaties limiting their being hunted, which implies political onwership. If so, they would first need to be privatized.
#362 Mark. Re: property
Mark: …the protection of your property DEMANDS an overwhelming force and a force that no other power can bring against you.
Rene: Yes. What of it?
Mark: the government power is not a free market. And you accept the need of governmnent but not the consequences.
Acceptance of the state’s monopoly on legal violence, and its application to the upholding of property rights, does not imply or require acceptance of its application elsewhere. Certainly not anywhere and everywhere, as you appear to imply.
SecularAnimist Says (13 May 2009 at 13:57):
“First of all, Jacobson is talking about the present day — note the use of present tense in the excerpt above. What the USA, the USSR, China and other countries did at the dawn of the nuclear era some 50-60 years ago is not relevant.”
Certainly it is: his clear implication is that nuclear weapons development derives from civilian power programs, which is clearly false historically as well as in the present. It also ignores the fact that some dozens of countries that really do have civilian nuclear power programs have not used them to develop nuclear weapons.
“That leaves your examples of North Korea and Iran. In fact, North Korea’s first nuclear reactors in the 1980s were represented as being for civilian energy generation. And as is well known, Iran to this day maintains that its nuclear program is entirely for civilian energy generation.”
Oh, dear. You mean dictators and religious fundamentalists have actually been telling fibs? Seems like you just can’t trust anyone these days :-)
In any case, you and Jacobsen still have a pretty basic problem. The US, just for example, has a large stockpile of nuclear weapons, and a hundred civilian power reactors. How does changing that number to two or three hundred, or even more, significantly change the risk of nuclear proliferation?
#364 Craig Allen
…example[s] of private ownership leading to environmental degradation….
If [it] is more profitable to the individual with short term concerns than taking a longer term approach then there will always be people willing to do it…
…profitability…over the long term would have been far higher had it been managed judiciously, but that clearly didn’t fit with the new owners business model.
By and large, investors will go for maximum profit over the longer term. But Yes, clearly it can happen that different people take different approaches to returns, some shorter-term than others. But who is to say which ones are objectively right, which behaviors are judicious and which not? Do we simply wish to define longer term as always better than short-term, no matter what, dispensing with any discussion, and impose this view on everyone, regardless of their acceptance thereof?
Where such differences of opinion DO exist, those with longer-term views can always buy up resources and insist they are operated according to their preferences, and thereby avoid imposing the costs of their own preferences onto others.
Jim, 471, have you forgotten the website that shows T-Rex and Adam and Eve sitting together in perfect harmony in Eden?
What makes you certain he’s pulling our leg?
He may just be trolling, but that isn’t the same thing.
I just wanted to make 2 little recommendations: Ted.com and the
M I T OpenCourseWare site,ocw.mit.edu/ – 23k have excellent video and audio lectures, presentations and transcripts/class notes pertaining to the subject matter of this;many other RC subject matter.The Ted.com has excellent, but brief seminar speakers presenting cutting edge propositions for the environmentr as well as many other science topics. M I T has 1800 different courses and – math–physics–chemistry–climate lectures.
“Consumer preferences on green issues – expressed by individual purchases and by group action – have done a great job of influencing markets and products provided, and there is ample room for more.” – TokyoTom
Tosh, to put it bluntly. The ratio of greenwash to real change is vast. Moreover, only retail businesses are subject to any significant consumer pressure even to undertake greenwashing. It has been legislation and in some cases international agreements that have mitigated damage from food adulteration, lead in fuel and paint, acid rain, and ozone-destroying chemicals.
Further to my last comment, responding to TokyoTom, “group action” is of course not consumer pressure; it is political pressure – which may of course aim at generating consumer pressure, but generally also includes other methods, such as pressing for legislation, and direct action.
I think several people have misunderstood Kevin B – not surprising, he has been unclear as well as absurd in his statements. He’s not actually claiming anything about fish stocks; whenever he says “fish stocks are decreasing/increasing” you are supposed to read “temperatures are rising/falling”.
Rene thinks this is true! “By and large, investors will go for maximum profit over the longer term.”
No.
Investors now demand not reliable returns but an increasing share price so that they can but low sell high on stocks. This is why we have had several housing booms and stock-market boom-and-bust cycles.
It is why MS is in trouble: their share price was based on continuing growth. Well, when you’ve taken 95% of the market, there’s little room for growth. And so, despite having at that time a cash cow that was bringing in a LOT of profit (long term viability), stock prices dropped because they weren’t INCREASING profits.
Try living in the real world, not the utopian dreamland of the free market theorists.
gavin, (and others),
i asked above (#363) about a paper by william dipuccio that appeared on roger pielke’s website. thanks for your concise answer. i was asking because it was posted as a link by one of my comment nemeses over on capitalweather (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/2009/05/climate_scientists_have_begun.html#comments ). this is the very same commenter, “mr.q”, who inspired me to come to you with my request that you start PROJECT JIM. a few month ago we were having a discussion and got totally sidetracked when brought up the senate minority report’s list of “dissenting scientists” and the oregon petition. anyway, someone linked to your response and mr.q responded,
[edit]
do you care to comment on this? or can you point be to a more thorough analysis of the paper?
[Response: Whether I give a long exposition on the trends in heat content or a short summary of the problems in a blog post will make absolutely no difference to “mr q.”. We’ve discussed ocean heat content trends and uncertainties dozens of times and nothing particular has changed – that “mr. q” can’t find those discussions is a commentary on his sincerity or competence, not my understanding. – gavin]
According to Ecological Internet(I haven’t bothered to check their sources) “Relatively rich countries in Asia and the Middle East, short of food and water at home, have leased or purchased more than 20 million hectares of land in Africa and Latin America, equal to 25 percent of Europe’s farmland.”
“China leases land in Cuba, Mexico and has extensive holdings in Africa. The huge Korean company Daewoo Logistics Corporation signed a deal to lease 1.3 million hectares in Madagascar to grow maize and oil palm, which caused political conflicts that led to the overthrow of the government in 2009. A group of Gulf States, including Saudi Arabia, holds the largest foreign ownership or control of African farmland in Sudan.”
Rene Cheront – do you think they are going to protect those resources they now control, or do you think they are going to clearcut, burn, and bulldoze the rainforests for oil palm plantations? What do you think will happen when the price of synthetic fertilizer(currently fossil fuel derived) rises to a level that makes oil palm uneconomic – do you think these international megaconglomerates will restore the rain forest ecosystem and its formerly sequestered carbon before abandoning the land?
Lancet and University College London:
“Climate change: The biggest global-health threat of the 21st century”
James writes:
The US has sparse surface-geothermal resources. Hot Dry Rock geothermal can be put in almost anywhere and exists in abundance.
KevinB, to add to the discussion on fisheries, you might want to check out my slide deck, State of the Oceans, 12 MB pptx.
EL #472 — I believe that the uncertainty of non-linear dynamics in modeling turbulence is more relevant to climate science than the Incompleteness Theorem, which deals only with formal logic systems.
There is a mathematical reason why the weather is unpredictable, no matter how much data you have. As you know, the Navier-Stokes equations, a relic from the steam age, govern fluid dynamics. Although Navier-Stokes gives fairly accurate modeling when viscosity is high or speed is low, for most real world situations in three dimensions there are unpredictable anomalies, such as the butterfly effect. Weather is therefore unpredictable, to say nothing of the hoped-for deterministic impact of the Theory of Everything.
The existence and smoothness of the Navier-Stokes equations in three dimensions is one of the seven Millennium Problems in mathematics. There is a prize of a million dollars for anyone who succeeds in proving or disproving it. http://www.claymath.org/millennium/Navier-Stokes_Equations/ Atmospheric dynamics may or may not be fundamentally unpredictable — so there is cause for hope.
Right. He’s trying to work the analogy in the original post … his statements are absurd regardless of whether you take them literally to be about fish or as an analogue for climate, that’s the problem.
Gavin and others,
OT, but still: you probably know the ‘Medieval Warm Period Project’? See:
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
So far I haven’t found a clear commentary on their claim that most studies show the MWP to be warmer than the Current Warm Period, other than that IPCC disagrees with that claim. It seems to be a Idso-family project financed by the oil industry, but I would like the comments of more knowledgable than I about the content and quality of the studies they say support their claim.
[Response: Start by keeping track of when all these “medieval warm periods” are supposed to have occurred. The basic issue that has been known for over a decade is that they don’t occur at the same time in different places. So when you try and put records together in any sensible way to get a hemispheric or global average, the peaks get smeared out and overall don’t stand out particularly. – gavin]
gavin, thanks for that “trends” link. that does address part of mr.q’s criticisms (which you diplomatically edited). i was not even obliquely questioning your understanding, and appreciate any and all comments/responses you have the time to make. no doubt, mr.q is an excellent web surfer/searcher etc… so he could easily have found your “trends” post had he wanted or tried. and he probably would chalk it up to the “global warming alarmist conspiracy”. i know i should turn my back on zealots like mr.q, but, somehow i just can’t…and his kind of views via spencer, pielke, watts et. al. are gaining traction out here in the layman world. anyway, thanks as always.
#476 James:
Not flat enough, though I’ll concede a reliable supply of water is an issue. Evaporation control apparently becomes a problem when topography is not friendly to high head storage, or so my instant Google expertise informs me.
Anyway, you seem to making the error of assuming I’m neurotically monomaniacal about a particular energy generation and/or storage source Nope, I’m just pointing out that all the fallibilities you find in specific “alternative” systems such as wind coupled with pumped hydro are already found in abundance in our existing grid and do not seem to be deal breakers.
The current system is necessarily and inherently inefficient in some significant ways, because of physics and operational considerations. More, it is rationally inefficient in other ways in terms of cost/benefit choices about how it is constructed; we often choose to make our grid less efficient than possible. Clearly efficiency is not a paramount issue or our choices would be different.
We know by experience with the existing system that we can easily afford loads of inefficiency. Knowing this as we do, it’s tempting to begin moving further capital deployment into the system toward technological methods that minimize mutating the planet in undesirable ways, without becoming paralyzed by dread of inefficiency. There are a slew of options to choose from, including crude thermal methods such as nuclear reactors. The exact mix is going to depend on many things, but we know it’s going to be inefficient so let’s get over it already.
I do suspect we’ll become a bit more concerned about efficiency when we fully come to grips with how much we’ve been leaning on poor choices for thermal inputs to the anachronistic part of our electrical generation plant.
Barton Paul Levenson Says (14 May 2009 at 9:31)
“The US has sparse surface-geothermal resources. Hot Dry Rock geothermal can be put in almost anywhere and exists in abundance.”
Maybe, but AFAIK no one has actually build a working power plant, and you generally need to build a least a couple of demo units, if not a whole set of first (and sometimes second or third) generation plants, to work out the bugs and get a handle on the real-world costs. See for instance the experience of the first generation wind turbines at Altamont.
In any case, that wasn’t at issue in the post I was replying to. The question was why the US couldn’t derive a similar percentage of energy from particular sources. The answer is that it’s hard to get energy from sources that you don’t have. California would be a better comparison: with similar land area, geography, and geology, it generates more megawatts from geothermal and from hydroelectricity. It just has 8 or 9 times the population, so the percentages are smaller.
http://www.energy.ca.gov/hydroelectric/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_New_Zealand
Doug Bostrom Says (14 May 2009 at 11:39):
“Not flat enough…”
?!?! Maybe my parochial world view, but it’s hard to see how those places could be significant;y flatter :-) Also I would think elevation change is significant in efficiency: power stored = volume of water * elevation change, losses would be roughly volume of water * pipe length.
“The current system is necessarily and inherently inefficient in some significant ways, because of physics and operational considerations. More, it is rationally inefficient in other ways in terms of cost/benefit choices about how it is constructed…”
I wouldn’t disagree at all. The point I’ve been trying to make all along is that you can’t really make rational decisions about costs & efficiencies unless you have some idea of what those costs are. Saying “Oh, we’ll just store excess energy from our wind turbines in a pumped storage system” is just hand-waving unless you account for the extra cost – both in dollars and in environmental impacts.
I’m not monomaniacal about these things, either. I’d honestly be thrilled to discover that we really could supply all our energy needs from renewables at reasonable cost, and without unacceptable environmental impacts. (Though I do admit that my criteria for acceptabilty seems to be lower than most people’s are.) I just don’t think the numbers add up.
James wrote: “The US, just for example, has a large stockpile of nuclear weapons, and a hundred civilian power reactors. How does changing that number to two or three hundred, or even more, significantly change the risk of nuclear proliferation?”
The MIT “Future of Nuclear Power” study that I cited above envisioned a scenario in which “the present deployment of 360 GWe of nuclear capacity worldwide is expanded to 1000 GWe in mid-century”. In other words, worldwide nuclear capacity would approximately triple by 2050 or so.
The result of this tripling of worldwide nuclear capacity would be “keeping nuclear’s share of the electricity market about constant” (currently about 16 percent of the world’s electricity according to the World Nuclear Association).
For nuclear power to make a significant contribution to reducing GHG emissions from electricity generation would require a massive expansion of nuclear power, not only in the USA but worldwide — including in nations that do not have the sort of control over nuclear technology that the USA does. India and Pakistan come to mind. And in the volatile mid-East, not only is Iran developing nuclear technology that can be used either for electricity generation or weapons, but Saudi Arabia has also talked of beginning a nuclear technology program.
The MIT study, which advocates tripling the world’s nuclear capacity, itself acknowledges that “the current international safeguards regime is inadequate to meet the security challenges of the expanded nuclear deployment contemplated in the global growth scenario.”
And as I understand it, your response to concerns about nuclear weapons proliferation from such an expansion is simply to wave them away, or even to characterize such concerns as “a deliberate lie”.
The bottom line is that (1) there is no need for expanding nuclear power and (2) nuclear power is not a timely or effective way to reduce GHG emissions from electricity generation. Therefore, there is simply no need to accept the risks of nuclear weapons proliferation or any of the other very real problems and dangers that would follow from a massive worldwide expansion of nuclear power.
#477 Rene Cheront
Consider this in your context. Economic philosophy is somewhat, if not always, ideological. Natural economy is more pragmatic. In this I am separating humans from nature in order to identify the difference.
We are and always will be, from a human perspective, in some degree of a mixed economy.
I think it is important to examine the tragedy of the commons and consider the tragedy of ownership.
Ownership can be healthy or unhealthy for the commodity. What is now manifest is the tragedy of consumption.
So the question becomes, by what mechanism will the system re-balance, the nature of a system to survive, as in the human system identifying its long term needs in the commons (owned or unowned), or the parent system deciding the human system is a failed experiment and the environment toxifying to such a degree as to reboot the system?
In other words, ownership may not be as relevant as some might assume. The planet is the commons whether it is owned or unowned. The simple fact remains this is where we all live, and we all breath and eat from this source.
In this case, what is the objective view that is relevant? From the parent systems view? Or, from the human systems view?
We need to parse out the subtlety if to achieve considered capacity/potential of health for the human system.
My main thesis is that a single economic ideology is not a panacea either. We’re going to have to be smarter than that. I realize I am still oversimplifying but I hope to give the considerations better context.
There simply is no best economic ideology here. A true objective economic philosophy must reach beyond the bounds of the ideal itself. Ideals are like religions, and religions institute myopia.
I guess the best way to view that statement is to say that objective value is contextually relevant to the moment based on the system/systems that are inter-dynamically interdependent on the values involved in order to maintain survivability or relative health internally or relationally.
I guess my main point is we (humans) are going to have to become educated to these new realities in our new epoch B, to the degree this does or does not occur, may determine the degree of survivability of our system vs. the parents systems propensity to re-balance.