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.
James writes:
Let’s try a thought experiment here, James. If the big PV arrays could be put up without scraping the land bare, covering it, and using herbicides, would you be for putting them up?
MikeN writes:
I’m sure that explains the tendency of slaveowners to rape their female slaves.
The abuse of slaves was dependent on the fact that human beings are fallen, and cannot be trusted with that kind of power over other human beings. Period.
James writes:
Fallacy of bifurcation. There’s another solution–have other power sources available to kick in when the wind is low. You continue to envision wind power in isolation, as if Gavin or me or somebody wanted 100% of our power to come from wind. Not correct.
rene, there are two ways to own a resource.
1) Kill anyone trying to take it from you
2) Kill the resource if someone tries to take it
How else do you force ownership? An electric fence around your property may keep me out, but if I get some wirecutters and good wellies, I can get in. You use the socially funded police to enact a force on me by arresting me and charging me with trespass and criminal damage. Absent those government forces, you are left trying to take the law into your own hands.
But if I can beat you, I can take your property.
So the protection of your property DEMANDS an overwhelming force and a force that no other power can bring against you.
If you have another way, let me know. If you also put your address here so we can see how effective your ownership of the property is without the overwhelming force of government power protecting it, then we can place your money where your mouth is.
#320 Jim Bouldin
“And what was instrumental in the bison not being driven to extinction? None other than the herd that survived due to their federal protection on public land (in Yellowstone NP). So who “owned” those bison?”
Buy your account, the federal government, eventually.
—
“Who “owns” the trees on state and federal lands?”
Those respective arms of government do.
—
“How are they valued and managed there, in comparison to private lands?”
By political whim.
re Artic Ice concentration:
311 Jim Eager Says: Ah, Nigel (291), you are aware that there is no satellite coverage over that central black disc and are just joking, right?
Nah Jim, I though that was a dollop of PBear dodoos! :)
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/index.new.html
The salient feature in the high contrast images is the light red to yellow stuff either side of that data-hole representing 80 to 90% concentration which would seem to extrapolate very clearly through the data-hole at 90North. When I use the Compare function to check older maps for the same period I believe what we are seeing is pretty unusual for this early stage in the melt season.
Compare images for previous years at:
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh
“In neoclassical and Marxist economic theory, there is no room for climate science, or any kind of science”
That statement is utterly devoid of meaning. Might perhaps emanate from scientists who resent an economic analysis of their activities?
” – they both seem to be primarily concerned with marketing a political ideology, not with rational analysis”
Economists market economic ideology, just as scientists market scientific ideology. And science can be every bit as political as economics, climatology being a good example. He who pays the piper…
[Response: This last point is nonsense. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas regardless of what administration is paying for the spectrometer. -gavin]
#335 James:
11 May 2009 at 7:40 PM
“…the implicit assumption that the only use for a forest is as a source of lumber. If instead one sees it first as an ecosystem that provides many other benefits (besides existing for its own self), and incidentally allows occasional timber harvesting, one reaches different conclusions as to utility.”
And a market takes these into account. Those who own a forest are not compelled to harvest it against their wishes.
#347 Mark:
“However, it can also work if you make up something like your “perfect owner” and then argue from that perfect owner that ownership of nature would solve the problems of damage. If such a creature was commonplace, maybe your theories would work, but all we got are the humans we have and they aren’t going to make your theory work.”
The tragedy of the commons is an observation of how humans actually do and are likely to behave with regards to unowned versus owned property. It is not something that requires humans to be changed in some way in order to fit in with it.
#354 Mark:
“…the protection of your property DEMANDS an overwhelming force and a force that no other power can bring against you.”
Yes. What of it?
233
Ike S. – Consider the Easter Island case – the locals eventually cut down all the trees which they had used to build their deep-sea canoes
Rene – In all likelihood this was also a tragedy of the commons – nobody owned the trees.
===========
But they ended up OWNING the problems they created by cutting down the trees, now didn’t they?
PS on 359, the government power is not a free market. And you accept the need of governmnent but not the consequences.
hi guys,
sorry if off topic. sorry if covered elsewhere. can you give me two or three specific reasons why this is wrong?
http://climatesci.org/2009/05/05/have-changes-in-ocean-heat-falsified-the-global-warming-hypothesis-a-guest-weblog-by-william-dipuccio/
thanks (hopefully)
[Response: Too short trends with unknown degree of natural variability with a brand new measuring system. – gavin]
Re 233:
I’ll give you an example of private ownership leading to environmental degradation: In the arid and semi-arid range lands of inland Australia pastoralists have made their millions over the years by grazing sheep on ecosystems that are dominated by low shrubs known as saltbush and bluebush. After rain (which is intermittent and unpredictable) annual and perennial grasses sprout. The saltbush and blue bush species are long lived species and are highly drought tolerant, reaching peak production one to two years after decent rain events. They tolerate light grazing. But if over grazed are killed off. The range productivity then drops considerably and becomes totally dependant on the grasses and therefore on the unpredictable rains. This has happened through vast areas of the Australian interior, although the situation has improved in recent decades with improved management. Unfortunately, these ecosystems are easy to degrade and take a very long time to recover, and then only if destocked for decades.
I’ll give you an example of how easy it is for greedy capitalists tendencies to wreak havock. Buckleboo station is on the Eyre Peninsular in the State of South Australia, judiciously grazed for a century since settlement and therefore retained high quality shrub and herblands. It’s a big place, perhaps 200 or 400 square miles. It was sold, and the new managers massively overstocked it, bringing in flocks from other stations that they owned, fattening them in preparation for sale. The landscape was gutted within just a few years, grazed to dust. But it made economic sense to the new owners. They made a handsome profit over that period, far more than the land had cost them. The profitability of the property 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.
If strip-mining ecosystems, landscapes or the atmosphere 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.
Oh, one quick PS to 361.
Rene wrote “In all likelihood this was also a tragedy of the commons – nobody owned the trees.” in 233.
Actually, the elites ‘owned’ the trees and directed their decimation, and were likely blind to the consequences.
(There’s a chapter on it in Jared Diamond’s “Collapse” – you might want to check it out.)
Just as the Newfoundland fisherman remained blind to the consequences of their actions. In both cases, what was happening was obvious, yet in spite of the evidence of diminishing resources, they cut/fished as if there were no problem whatsoever.
Interesting how compulsively the human animal is willing to make the same mistakes, over and over.
thanks, gavin. i’ll reread that article. funny how we used to hear, “20 years of warming isn’t a trend”, and now we hear “it’s cooling lately”… i love tamino’s article where he shows the last century’s temperature graph, then below it shows the same graph at the same scale, but only the last few years of data.” he’s a clever debunker – i’m glad he uses his power for good.
James and others repeatedly raise the issue of the variability of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar as though it were (1) an insurmountable problem and/or (2) a problem that has not been considered.
In reality, the variability of renewables has neither been ignored nor is it difficult to solve.
Consider the following example from Germany, Combined Power Plant project:
Studies in the USA have also found that an integrated, diversified regional portfolio of renewable energy sources can provide 24×7 baseload power that is at least as reliable as coal or nuclear generated electricity.
The Jacobson study that I cited above discusses the issue of “intermittency”:
When energy storage is added to an integrated, regional renewables-based system, the problem of intermittency basically goes away.
And like renewable technologies themselves — wind, concentrating solar thermal, solar photovoltaic, geothermal and biomass — technologies for efficiently and cost-effectively storing energy already exist and just need to be commercialized and deployed. These include not only batteries, but thermal storage, compressed air, pumped water and flywheel systems.
It would seem that a free market (meaning “reasonably free,” as “perfectly free” has AFAIK never been observed) must always exist within some reasonably equilibrated power structure, or else the strong will simply appropriate what they want. The favored option for providing same over time has been some form of “legitimate” government which more or less monopolizes, and can thus regulate, the use of force to resolve disputes. This implies that politics and economics will be interdependent, which leads me to suspect that extended discussion of the primacy of one versus the other is probably not the most fruitful way one could spend one’s time.
rene thinks, if I understand him correctly, that the best way to avoid tragedies of the commons would be maximal extension of ownership in order to avoid “externalities.” Others either distrust the efficacy of this indirect approach, or, perhaps, worry that the dispossessed will become human “externalities” themselves.
I worry that pragmatically, economic power can be allowed to dominate political power excessively–the problem of oligarchies. It’s arguable that that is exactly what we see today in the climate “debate”, where concentration of economic power in the energy and media sectors appears to allow, enable or facilitate a dysfunctional cultural epistemology. That is, the Heartland Institute et al., and their petrodollars, are successfully clouding our societal perception of how the world’s systems are actually behaving, and what the consequences will be over time.
Whether you wish to avoid disasters of the commons by fiat–the direct application of governmental power, as in regulations or treaties–or by rationalizing economic structures–as by accounting for externalities, via ownership reform or some other mechanism, such as cap and trade–you still need a clear vision of the reality you wish to affect.
Rene Cheront wrote: “It is not something that requires humans to be changed in some way in order to fit in with it.”
You seem to think that the Earth’s climate, hydrosphere and biosphere will change to accommodate your concept of “human nature”.
The concepts of “property” and “ownership” are human social adaptations. Like other human social adapations — such as, for example, “government” — they have proven utility for organizing human affairs, as well as proven limitations and flaws.
But they are not laws of physics. And the natural world is not going to reshape itself to accord with some Ayn Randian notion of the primacy of “private property” over all else.
But that’s OK, because as Rene says
This is the classic libertarian response.
Of course, this assumes that biodiversity is only of value to those willing to pay to preserve it.
Totally ignores the value of biodiversity that traditional economics doesn’t capture, which is the entire point, of course. The fact that many people don’t value biodiversity doesn’t change the fact that biodiversity and the ecosystem services provided by the biosphere are crucial to sustaining human civilization.
Just as the fact that people don’t value the atmosphere doesn’t change the fact that dumping ever-increasing amounts of CO2 into it threatens the well-being of every human on the planet.
As I said above, rene backs his argument with ideology, while I (and several others posting here, apparently) have real-world on-the-ground experience.
I don’t distrust the efficacy of his ideology. I know it doesn’t work because it’s been demonstrated not to work ’round the world.
Otherwise, and by the same logic, you need to start referring to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Robin red-breasted harbinger of spring as the turdus
Good point! However, remember that common names can suffer from imprecision, sometimes greatly. For example, I’ve many times heard humans being referred to as jackasses.
Rene, this is silly:
James said: “…the implicit assumption that the only use for a forest is as a source of lumber. If instead one sees it first as an ecosystem that provides many other benefits (besides existing for its own self), and incidentally allows occasional timber harvesting, one reaches different conclusions as to utility.”
Rene said: “And a market takes these into account. Those who own a forest are not compelled to harvest it against their wishes.”
Consider the case of old-growth forest in Northern California and Oregon, which was bought up by various Wall Street junk bond dealers in the 1980s. From the perspective of a Wall Street trader, unharvested old growth forest is a stranded asset – a full size redwood can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars, but only if cut down and processed into lumber. When faced with large losses in their other deals, those junk bond dealers demanded that the forests be cut down as fast as possible so that they could pay off their debts. This led to years of protests and conflict over the issue.
The increased logging clogged many salmon streams, in many cases permanently degrading them. This has been a large factor in the collapse of West Coast salmon fisheries (along with increasing diversions of water to agriculture and rising river water temps).
Now, if the salmon fishermen owned the redwood forests that surrounded all the salmon streams, they might have had a very different take on what the best thing to do was – a very different view from Wall Street bond traders. Which one is right?
Wall Street will take a short-term profit on the deal and destroy long-term economic health, while the salmon fishermen would likely do the opposite – until Wall Street offered them a few million for the trees, and a few of them would take the money and head for Malibu – so local ownership is not really a solution.
That’s why you need government regulations and laws, Rene. Without that, civilization reverts to tribalism, rule-by-warlords and the like. I would bet that on Easter Island, tribalism and inter-clan conflicte preceded the total destruction of the tree stock.
However, we can’t simply say that this is “greedy capitalism in action” – because what would we then say about the Aral Sea disaster – “greedy communism”?
The Aral Sea in Kazakhstan was once one of the largest inland seas – think Mono Lake, only much larger. After the rivers Amu Darya and Syr Darya that fed it were diverted by Soviet Union agricultural planners, it shrank rapidly, destroying the local fishing communities. From the Soviet Central Committee perspective, it was a good deal – they were getting more grain out of their colony in Kazakhstan, so their economic picture was rosy – the local ecosystem and the local economy were not a concern. As a result, the sea shrank into sections and the salinity rose so high that most of the fish died, thereby wiping out the local communities (and also creating huge toxic dust storms).
If you know about Mono Lake and the Owens Valley, you can see that something similar happened there, with the Los Angeles Water Department being the political force behind water diversions. Unlike in the Soviet Union, political action by citizens opposed to the plan halted it, and Mono Lake was largely restored. The Owens Valley dust storms are still a problem, but one that is being reduced. “Ownership” was not the issue – responsiveness of government to citizen concerns was the issue, i.e. the democratic process.
Has the democratic process failed with respect to the U.S. energy supply? James Hansen says so, and he has a point. 75% of the public supports rapid development of renewable energy and action on climate and pollution issues – but the fossil fuel industry seems to control well over 50% of both House and Senate votes on energy issues.
In the larger picture, what we can see here is that neoclassical and Marxist economic theories both revolve around the notion of ownership as the central issue.
Adam Smith, on the other hand, first stated the ecological and physical limitations (climate, soil, land area, natural abundance) and then went on to discuss how human economic activity could act to improve the quality of life for all citizens of a nation.
From that, it is pretty clear that economics is a rare field of study – one that has actually regressed over the years, rather than progressed… and did you know that J.D. Rockefeller played large roles in the establishment of the UChicago school of economics, and in the establishment of the Nobel Prize in economics? Or that Stalin relied heavily on Marxist economic ideology to justify his grip on power? The comment element? Greed – the basic inability to override the food/hunger stimulus/response pathway when one’s needs have been met. Some people eat a full meal, see more food, and feel hungry, and eat more – and then they get sick. It’s a bit pathological.
In the old days, the kind of authoritarian power that could support greedy habits was often justified by religious arguments and supported by the clergy, who benefited thereby – the prince bishops of Old England were the ones who started the coal monopoly, before the Queen took over with assistance from Newcastle.
In the modern secular world, the religious justification for rule and ‘ownership’ comes not from the clergy, but from the Marxist and neoclassical economic theorists, who are given lucrative public perches from which to proclaim their true creeds to a compliant and unquestioning press corps – and yes, Marxist theories (not labeled as such) are often trotted out – to justify the ‘natural monopoly’ of coal-fired electric utilities, for example.
Barton Paul Levenson Says (12 May 2009 at 5:23):
“James, your usual argument is that, due to “intermittency,” renewables don’t provide ENOUGH power… But in the first paragraph above, you’re worried that renewables might provide TOO MUCH power.”
I suppose I must (in charity) attribute your failure to understand my point to my own lack of writing skill. I’ll try once more, just because to me the basic problem seems perfectly obvious. It’s that “renewables” (wind and solar) produce power when and in such amounts as nature allows, which is not usually when you want to use it.
Take for an example a number of wind turbines that over the course of a year will produce 100% of the power used in a year. The simplistic renewable power advocate (got a mirror handy?) will jump up and down, cheering “Our power problems are solved!” But a look at what that system actually produces, as here http://reisi.iset.uni-kassel.de/pls/w3reisiwebdad/www_reisi_page_new.show_page?page_nr=155&lang=ger&owa=&owa_own_header=0 shows that some times we have far too much power, and most of the time not enough,
“The answer to the problem you pose is that excess power can be stored and used for times for insufficient power, or transported to areas where they current have insufficient power, or even used to desalinate water or crack it to provide hydrogen for hydrogen-fuel-cell cars.”
As I have said, repeatedly, this can be done, but it adds considerably to the cost of a system, Your simplistic renewable power advocates never wants to look at this cost (or the technical problems), preferring to think that just building X number of turbines or solar arrays is sufficient. Even when they do admit the need for some storage, they usually invoke some hand-waving “magic” solution such as (got that mirror handy?) cracking hydrogen for fuel cell cars.
I think it’d be good idea to abjure the hand waving, and not plan to bet the farm on a particular technology until you at least have a good working prototype, and a reasonable cost analysis.
“f the big PV arrays could be put up without scraping the land bare, covering it, and using herbicides, would you be for putting them up?”
Haven’t I said so many times? My objections would be in inverse proportion to the impact. I think it would be a great idea to spread PV arrays out so that they’re on existing rooftops, perhaps with each house or business having its own high-speed flywheel storage system. I’d be less enthusiastic about spreading arrays over currently undisturbed land.
“Fallacy of bifurcation. There’s another solution–have other power sources available to kick in when the wind is low. You continue to envision wind power in isolation, as if Gavin or me or somebody wanted 100% of our power to come from wind. Not correct.”
Yes, correct. That is precisely what some people here argue for. (Though not Gavin, as far as I’ve ever seen.) You’re just back-tracking, trying to take over my position, which has always been that wind & solar work fine on a grid up to roughly 20% of total generation, precisely because those other sources ARE available to pick up the slack. Beyond that, you need to build in some sort of storage, which increases cost.
#344 Rene Cheront
We seem to be sold on the idea that making a forest into profit should be applauded. While that may have been impressive in the past we now see the result of such attitudes and the destruction of many forests which were carbon sinks. In other words, one economy being sacrificed for another.
I don’t think anyone is glossing over the problem that likens humans with the same status of farmed trees or cattle. I think that was a problem in and of itself.
You point being that you see no reason to support biodiversity. But that point ignores the fact that humans generally don’t have the wisdom of prescience. Foresight proves to be lacking and that is our bane.
We need new wisdom… a more considerate world brain if you will.
#357 Rene Cheront
I have to agree with Gavin here. Don’t buy into the pre-constructed straw-man just because it is convenient. It is wise to avoid laziness in this forum as best one can. I took the easy way out on an argument recently by talking about oxygen depletion irresponsibly and was properly called on it. The more important point was CO2 benefits or lack thereof when considered in economic case, and I was too tired to address the argument.
#358 Rene Cheront
Not true, I’m not sure you are aware of the sheer size of forest destruction now and over the past few hundred years.
Heck, I lived in Iceland in the early 80’s and they needed wood for heat and homes, so they used all the trees. People do what they feel expedient in the moment, typically, which is not always wise. We need more long term thinking.
You argument would have better context if it were more considerate of the global economy of resources, systems and methods.
#359 Rene Cheront
You are negating the fact that ownership is idealized in certain economic views. Same as social-ism, or what was perceived as communism.
#360 Rene Cheront
Force requires energy, motor and motive. Check your premise, does it have morality, justice, reason? I’m not saying that ownership is not helpful but rather the fact that we are humans in a mixed economy and we have over exploited our mechanisms to achieve a weaker overall economy. Many corporations became owners and over exploited the resources of the planet and our oceans and atmosphere. DOn’t forget that a corporation is a human construct, not an individual. Rockafellers of the world were no Hank Reardon nor John Galt.
In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand idealized the characters to make a point. I don’t think she was supporting the idea of companies that did not have the qualities of honor, integrity and individualism, but she did not see the wall ahead of resource scarcity either.
#338 Ike, thanks for the interesting link on Polynesia.
But spare me the slave economy argument, not only because slavery is hardly something libertarians would find at all morally justifiable, but because it`s unrelated from my point – and, I think, Gavin`s – which is not that there is an ideal form of ownership/management, but simply that, where resources are unowned or unmanaged, they tend to get trashed.
This is a long, tragic and continuing story. The primary point is that we need to start better managing our commons, including our shared atmosphere. The ancillary point, for the purpose of political jousting, is that it is highly effective to ask skeptics to show you where the property rights (or other management mechanisms) are in the air that ensure there is is no tragedy of the commons. This is a show stopper, because you`re talking a language
is familiar to them, but they are forced to realize that the market system does NOT work for the atmosphere, because it is a commons and without property rights.
Are you with me?
[I responded to this before, but it apparently didn`t post.]
SecularAnimist Says (12 May 2009 at 10:42):
“Consider the following example from Germany, Combined Power Plant project:”
Now really, isn’t this almost exactly what I have often said, that wind/solar can be matched with hydropower to smooth out the variability in the wind & solar? Works just fine, up to the amount of hydro available. And really no more than an extension of the fact that a small fraction of variable generation is easy to integrate into a power grid.
“…technologies for efficiently and cost-effectively storing energy already exist and just need to be commercialized and deployed. These include not only batteries, but thermal storage, compressed air, pumped water and flywheel systems.”
Great. Get some real-world implementations and some reasonable ballpark estimates for cost, and then we can discuss numbers rather than hand-waving.
#331 : “Nah… it’s the same gut reaction I have when folks are asserting that Jesus loves me, or giving me free links to mises.org… not my religion, and I’m beyond redemption thank you very much. I like to live on the reality side of things.”
I can understand your “gut” reaction, but it`s rather obviously getting in the way of your higher faculties. I am barely tolerated by many at Mises (to whom I come off as a commie left enviro Nazi fascist) and offer links only to my own thoughts there, and similarly have been shown the door by RedState, Freepers, NewsBusters and now the place that Chip Knappenberger blogs from. And I`ve spent many a comment thread at Mises battling similar nonsense that people concerned about climate change have drunk the the Koolaid of some religion or another; e.g, http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/07/06/mind-games-bret-stephens-of-the-wall-street-journal-panders-to-quot-skeptics-quot-by-abjuring-science-and-declaring-himself-an-expert-on-quot-mass-neurosis-quot.aspx
Feel free read further or test me.
I find it troubling that simple conversations and discussion cannot be held to addressing the substance of many issues.
For instance it would be beneficial to all if this report were thoroughly responded to by RC loyalists.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/april_09_co2_report.pdf
But for invalid reasons there is little cross over to generate the needed progress.
[Response: How can you make progress by mixing sense and nonsense? – gavin]
#369 SecularAnimist
Well said.
I agree and I would like this perspective to also be considered mine. The corruptibility of a system also does not negate a systems management capacity. There is utility in governance, as is the nature of complex systems (all systems have governors of various types, natural or human).
I merely am suggesting that the new circumstance will yield a new view of our interaction with the natural economy inter-dynamic with the human needs economy that we may work towards needed sustainability and greater system health.
http://www.uscentrist.org/platform/docs/defining-health
#374 James:
Kind of late for me to pipe up now, but the existing grid has a lot of extra cost built-in for generation capacity that is idle for many hours of the day. The economics seem to work just fine. So why is a scenario where the more crude thermal generation capacity is gradually replaced with generation by and buffering of intermittent sources not possible?
Clearly we’ve accepted that it’s not possible to generate electricity with anything approaching 100% utilization of capacity, so how is changing sources is going to break new economic ground?
#349: John, George Reisman is your uncle? I`ve had the nerve to joust with him on the LvMI pages and my own blog over the past few years on environmental matters, where he is simply emotional and not reasonable:
http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=reisman
http://blog.mises.org/archives/005916.asp
Thanks for your various questions and observations. I don`t think that we are actually that far apart, but we are drifting a bit off-thread. Let me make a few specific responses.
“Mankind did not create the resources so by what right has he to own them? People own oil, but oil is being drilled and used to its inevitable extinction of the resource. It might be better to think of the global resources as being lent to us by the mere fact of the existence of such resources, so what right of ownership should exist?”
My own view is that “ownership” is chiefly not so much about our individual relationships to “property” (can we really “own” any other life form? aren`t we just as much owned by the bacteria in our gut, parasites, diseases and predators that use us for food?), but more humbly about our relationships with each other regarding relative priority of claims to make use of particular things we find valuable. What those things depends upon place, time, culture and individual.
“Many owners have exploited a resource wile abusing it and destroying its capacity to survive simply to finish with it and move on to another resource to exploit.”
I don`t disagree. In fact, I think that this is endemic whenever there are open-access commons remaining for such exploiters to move on to. (In this regard, we differ from the rest of nature only in the leverage that technologies give us to wreak devastation.) While we have developed property rights institutions (communal and private, informal and formal) precisely to get a handle over tragedies of the commons (and even evolved possessive and cooperative behaviors) only a blind ideologue would assert that creating property has somehow changed human nature. But it is worth noting that property IS helpful, as it makes it possible for others to acquire and manage more beneficially resources that others mistreat.
“There is also ample room to see that corruption, favoritism and incompetence are inescapably linked to corporate greed through over manipulation of markets. The users and the looters are not always the government and the belief systems, they are also corporations.”
Again, I agree; my point is not that all use of government should be avoided (indeed, it might even be needed), but simply that use of government itself no panacea, but fraught with danger – as corporations and their owners are far more effective in Washington than the citizens who continually have to organize to do battle with them. Some corporations (not all, by any means) are looters, and use government to achieve their ends.
This goes back a long way, with the chief roots in the grant of limited liability to shareholders for bad acts by corporations: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=limited+liability
Sorry, but I need to wind this up.
#354: “So the protection of your property DEMANDS an overwhelming force and a force that no other power can bring against you.”
Mark, this is too simplistic. What is “property” and how it can be defended depends on context. In close communities, people don`t lock their doors, do deals based on handshakes and reputation, and little resort is made to law, police or courts. In other cases, weapons – or thick contracts or physical or technological locks – and constant vigilance are required.
Maine lobstermnen have an easier task defending their resources than do indigenous fishermen or forest-dwellers.
So what will work in the case of climate depends on available technology and the level of trust (and enforcement) that can be established.
James
11 may 2009 at 7:26 PM
Don’t treat that picture as the Truth. It is only the variability in onshore wind in Germany, 1 medium sized country. By coupling grids on a European scale, the variability drops further. Offshore wind (which is where most of the capacity will eventually be installed) is more constant too.
Furthermore, the picture is limited in that doesn’t show the frequency of variations. If you have 3000 hours per year below 10%, it makes quite a difference if that came in 3 1000-hour periods or 300 10-hour periods.
Yes, part of the solution will be to overbuild. But think again. We already do that to deal with incidents and maintenance.
Please stay away from the stereotypes, it spoils a good discussion.
#365: “Just as the Newfoundland fisherman remained blind to the consequences of their actions. In both cases, what was happening was obvious, yet in spite of the evidence of diminishing resources, they cut/fished as if there were no problem whatsoever.”
JSM, thanks for bring us back the tragedy of the unmanaged/government commons. Who owned the fishery, the government or the fishermen? Except in places where fishermen are being given transferable harvesting rights (or being completely locked our – very rare) government-management fisheries are all crashing, which is why mainline environmental groups are calling for more property rights in fisheries.
Ironic captcha: bickers Salmon!
333 Silk ponders, “So contraction and convergence is acceptable to Chip, since it is the only ‘fair’ solution?”
There’s an awful lot of embedded CO2 emissions in the past and on to 2045 (Convergent date in link). The truly fair way would be to equalize TOTAL CO2 emissions. The USA and Europe have already emitted more than their total allotment, though, so some scheme of trading allowances needs to be enacted so those countries can “pay back” their carbon debt to the rest of the world.
Further to my last post (#376) it seems possible that surmounting demand peaks with buffered intermittent sources would be more desirable than continuing to use complex and costly thermal plants for that purpose. The more complex and costly the more true that’s likely to be. Ignoring or slighting intermittent sources because they do not appear to be a panacea will doom us to continuing the maintenance of a fleet of underutilized and thus horribly inefficient thermal plants. Idle nuclear reactors are probably the last choice we’d want to make in terms of wasting money, followed by coal plants, followed by gas turbines; all of these systems are complex and in the case of the former two are inherently unfriendly to intermittent use or underutilization in terms of cost and operational factors.
#375 John P. Reisman
A correction to the last sentence in post #375
I don’t think she was supporting the idea of companies that did not have the qualities of honor, integrity and individualism, but she did not see the wall ahead of resource scarcity either.
should read
I don’t think she was supporting the idea of companies, that did not have the qualities of honor, integrity and individualism, are committed to the purpose of value, sustainability and morality, but she did not see the wall ahead of resource scarcity either.
In other words, there is value in sustainability and over over-exploitation which is now pro forma. Ownership by fictitious business names has proven disastrous. Individual ownership of the profit stream has like problems.
Private ownership (individual v. corporate) has only fared a little better, but still has a terrible record over time.
We should not be lulled into the illusion of safe harbor in an ideal, especially when it really is merely an ideal and has proven not to be considerate of economy in/through time.
James
11 mai 2009 at 11:22 PM
By saying that the wind never goes to 0 over a whole country, how am I exactly proposing we should do it by 100% wind? This is what you get from ‘putting people in camps’: you make things up that people actually never said.
Climate science has advanced a lot on the last 50 years. Political institutions may have improved a bit in the last 50 years. Human nature has changed very little in the last 500 years. Based on that last reality, I give short odds to the Tragedy of the Commons, and long odds to the Triumph of the Rational. Unless you plan on suspending democracy, and installing an environmentally friendly Ceasar, I expect the wisdom of the mob, which favors short term self interest, to prevail.
358 Rene claims, “Those who own a forest are not compelled to harvest it against their wishes.”
Wrong. Hostile takeovers are designed specifically for that situation. A corporation which takes other factors than money into account can be taken over with money when their book value gets too high for their stock value. You forget that some resources are too large for a single owner (and single owners eventually die), and so crowd theory takes over. In a sense, corporations are a tragedy of the commons for everything they own.
The solution to the “problem” of unpredictable power output by wind and solar alternatives is… adjust your expectations. The planet having to get you all the power you want when you want it is the problem. You don’t anymore get what you want when you want it once your want threatens to destroy the rest of us. You and your unquenchable want can go live on another planet. Leave this planet for people with a more realistic appraisal of what they need, and a demonstrated willingness to preserve what is left for future generations whose need, need it be said, is at least equal to our own and is perhaps the more sacred of the two.
Problem solved.
Re Edmund Burke,
Ok so doing a little is better than doing nothing.
But maybe it is only a little better than nothing.
Doing a little and basking in self satisfaction is also a mistake. This can be a hindrance to real action.
Maybe it would be better to do some significant things, even if significant adaptations are needed. The little stuff is fine if it does not mislead us into complacency.
#374 James
Are we reading the same website? I’ve looked through all the recent threads where renewables have been discussed, and I can’t find anyone saying that wind can or should provide 100% of electricity generation. Please tell us who said that.
What I can find is lots of discussion about the role wind can play in a diversified portfolio of renewables, although I can’t find any instances where you accept that is a possibility. Why are you so resistant to this idea?
It’s nice that you now at least recognise that solar is a renewable, but why do you continue to exclude hydro and geothermal from this category? It is impossible to have a meaningful discussion about renewables without including those – especially as pumped storage hydro is one of the easiest ways to harvest excess wind production.
You also continue to focus on the grid as it is now in the US, without considering the possibility that there are other ways to construct a grid. A comprehensive renewable strategy also includes more localized generation/consumption, which mitigates the impact of renewables on the traditional grid. For example, fitting solar-powered water heaters to every house could reduce domestic consumption by up to 25%. Some local wind generation schemes put indicators into the houses they supply, to show when the turbines are running, and guess what? People started using washing machines only when the wind was generating, because it was cheaper. Fancy that!
So don’t give me that 20% figure again. As I’ve pointed out before, New Zealand already gets up to 75% of its electricity from renewables. There is absolutely no theoretical reason why the US could not do the same.
You know, it becomes really frustrating to discuss the issue of the variability of renewable electricity generation from wind and solar, when people ignore the facts: the issue has been extensively studied, and solutions have been identified and implemented. The bottom line is that it is not an insurmountable problem, nor are the solutions prohibitively expensive.
As for the suggestion that some proponents of renewable electricity generation “simplistically” suggest that we can have a 100 percent wind powered, or 100 percent solar powered, electric grid, let me be clear:
The commercially exploitable onshore and offshore wind energy resources of the USA are far more than sufficient to provide 100 percent of the USA’s electricity.
The commercially exploitable solar energy resources of a very small part of the USA’s southwestern deserts are more than sufficient to provide 100 percent of the USA’s electricity.
The commercially exploitable geothermal energy resources of the USA are more than sufficient to provide 100 percent of the USA’s electricity.
The commercially exploitable solar energy falling on existing commercial rooftops alone is sufficient to provide as much as 180 gigawatts of electricity using today’s photovoltaic technology.
Co-generation powered by industrial waste heat (note, that’s energy that is currently wasted) is sufficient to provide as much electricity as is now generated by all the nuclear power plants in the USA.
Does this mean I am suggesting a 100 percent wind-powered grid? Or a 100 percent solar thermal powered grid? Or a 100 percent geothermal powered grid? Or a 100 percent photovoltaic grid? Or a 100 percent co-generation grid? No.
What it means is that we have vast amounts of clean renewable energy at our disposal and can get all the electricity we need — more than enough to provide for all current uses and to electrify ground transport — from a diversified portfolio of renewable energy sources including wind, solar thermal, solar PV, geothermal, biomass, hydropower, etc., integrated and managed through regional smart grids.
And that’s before we even address efficiency. Consider that 40 percent of the USA’s CO2 emissions come from producing energy to heat and cool buildings — and consider that with today’s technology it is possible to have buildings that are net producers of energy, rather than net consumers.
#269 Anne van der Bom
Your link to the Spanish wind site is good, but it only works for today and a few hours yesterday. However, there is great variability even for today. It looks like there would be a good chance for pumped hydro storage to level things out today, as long as there was not a lot of wind power being produced. I can’t read the chart scales so I can not tell if the curve for today is a national average or just one example.
I would like to see some evidence of a reliable plan for wind. Is it really something we can rely on year after year, that weather systems as large as Spain and Germany will not cause general widespread wind failure? If we have to continue to maintain backup generators, that is ok, but please keep the cost of that in mind.
I think #283 James is getting at a similar point. But I emphasize in my question that the magnitude of the energy that we rely on wind to produce determines the storage capacity, obvious as this is.
At least I was not the only one to pursue the link.
In the USA the whole problem of coal comes down to the vast amount of that fuel that we use. We seem a long way from the point that the marginal response to any new load will not be coal.
Thus, when we add a good renewable source it goes into the hopper and is fully use. When we add a new load it is a separate action, and the response is to burn more coal. How could it be otherwise?
We are even a long way from shifting over to natural gas, and if we do that we will very likely find that resource in scarce supply.
So in the USA, the electric plug-in car seems like a very foolish thing to pursue, unless that car is also a very low energy car.
OK, so tying together the two main themes of this discussion – energy production and the tragedy of the commons.
There are many sources of energy on this planet (coal, oil, gas, wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, nuclear etc). All of them require conversion to electricity. All of them have some environmental impact at the point of extraction and/or the point of generation.
The costs of the environmental impact have in the past been assumed to be fairly represented in the end cost of each energy source. But we now know that the environmental impact of fossil fuels is devastating, and yet the costs of that impact are not yet reflected in the cost of fossil fuel energy.
Going back to the original tragedy of the commons, imagine you have several farmers who all graze their cattle on some common land, and each farmer has a different breed. One of the farmers has a breed that matures quicker than the other breeds, and so he gets a better market price for his cattle. More and more people want his cattle, so his herd grows until it is the dominant breed on the land. However, his breed has a genetic flaw that means the dung his cattle produce leaches nitrogen from the soil. Over the years, the quality of the grass declines, until there is a catastrophic failure of the grass, and all the cattle die.
Now, as an alternate scenario, imagine that a soil scientist had discovered the problem with the dung before it was too late to do something about it. What might the outcome be?
Remember, as was pointed out earlier, it is really the tragedy of the unmanaged commons. If there is no management or regulation of the commons, then the polluting farmer does not have to pay for the cost of the damage he is creating, and so the market will keep on buying his cattle because his are the cheapest. Collapse is inevitable.
If the commons was regulated, on the other hand, then the farmer could be made to pay for the damage his cattle have caused, by spreading nitrogen fertilizer (although he would insist that he was well on the way to inventing “Clean Dung”). Now, his costs would go up, and so his market price would also go up. The regulators might think that it really would be best if his breed just disappeared altogether, so they raise the price of nitrogen fertiliser sufficiently that his market price is the highest of all. In the meantime, all of the other farmers benefit, because the grass is now so healthy that their breeds are doing better and better. The Dirty Dung farmer goes out of business, and the last of his breed is removed from the land. The price of nitrogen fertilizer is returned to normal, and everyone is happy. Well, apart from the Dirty Dung farmer.
What we need to do is recognise the true environmental costs of fossil fuel energy, and then reflect that in the price of the fuel. The only way that can happen is through regulation. The market will take care of the rest.
392 Cougar, a device can be placed on your AC unit which disables it for short periods during peak demand. In exchange, you get electricity at a cheaper rate. Charging variable rates for electricity based on supply brings lots of ingenuity to the table. Everyone loves a bargain, and if that means not running a clothes dryer when it’s 100F outside, it will happen. Variable supply is solved via diversity of type and geography for supplies and by market incentives for consumption.
I am barely tolerated by many at Mises (to whom I come off as a commie left enviro Nazi fascist)
Just FYI, the proper term for believers in AGW has been discussed at length elsewhere.
398# RichardC
Isn’t peak demand time the same as peak need for air conditioning?
If you can turn the air conditioner off then, why not just not buy an air conditioner? That action might actually amount to something.
But I would be the last to say that we should sit around in discomfort. The whole thing about energy is to make our lives better, not to find ways to inconvenience ourselves.
Why not adapt to ways to air condition our houses efficiently. One way would be to revert to absorption chillers that actually use heat to cool a room. This fits into the cogeneration scheme based on small engine-generators in efficient automobiles shown at the Miastrada site.