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.
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?
Good post Gavin, thanks.
Jim Bullis wrote: “Why not adapt to ways to air condition our houses efficiently.”
It’s called insulation.
400 Jim, the devices don’t turn the AC off for long periods. There’s peak demand, and then there’s PEAK demand. Would you mind if for 10 minutes your AC didn’t run? I lived down south for a number of years with such a device on my AC and I never noticed. There’s lots of smarts that can be built into appliances. What if you “told” your dryer to start when rates go down? Your car to “feed” the grid when rates were high? The idea is to load-level, not reduce consumption overall. It gives the utility company wiggle room to manage the grid.
couger_w (392): Could not possibly have stated it any better. Thank you.
Re Jim’s comment on proper terminology, here’s a taste of “Denial Depot”:
#402 Secular,
That is also a good way, but if you had read the next sentence you would see another that would work very well with good insulation. Absorption chillers have long been used in industrial air conditioning, and they also were a method of household refrigeration. As refrigerators, this method got banned accidentally in California because the California Energy Commission forgot to include the inefficiency of electric power generation at central power plants when it rated the competitive electric driven refrigerators. Thus they thought heat driven refrigerators were not as good as electric ones.
Of course, what I am getting at is that a cogeneration system where both heat and electric power are generated in the same place so as to allow us to use the heat would more than double or even triple the efficiency of power generation compared to our USA system of central power plants. Note however, according to the link by Anne van der Bom, Denmark already does much the same thing through their district heating system. If this is representative of European ways, those countries are nowhere near as effective at wasting energy as we are here in the USA.
#403 RichardC,
I am puzzled why they would do this for only ten minutes. Truly, it would not matter that much to people’s comfort. But then, it would not help the utility loading very much either, since when the air conditioners were allowed to come back on, they would indeed come back on, all of them, as their thermostats called for cooling and all the air conditioners would labor to catch up.
If the air conditioners had adequate capacity to then return the temperature to the desired setting, everything would be fine for the electricity customers. For those air conditioners that were laboring to keep up anyway, turning them off for ten minutes would be a noticeable failure.
Pardon the cynicism, but it sounds like something that utility companies like to tell customers to make it sound like those companies are on the job, but in fact makes no real difference at all.
Tokyo Tom
“thanks for bring us back the tragedy of the unmanaged/government commons”
According to Ostrom, the managed commons include:
– means to limit users
– rules that respect the carrying capacity of the resource (or any other parameter that ensures its sustanability)
– means to enforce these rules
If you want to call that state intervenience, privatization, free market, new ethics paradigm, it´s fine by me. All of these have worked somewhere sometime, as those conditions above can be met under different ideologic frameworks.
The “climate commons” are the biggest ones of all. They cannot be contained, users cannot be easily left out. Even market-based solutions demand an international enforceable regulation to forbid, tax or at least know who´s emmitting how much, and who has to pay to whom for what.
Where the solution comes from is the least important. The important thing is that it works, and fast.
Re: #110 and #111: As Tonto said to the Lone Ranger, “What do you mean ‘we’ White Man?”
Feeny et al. in “The tragedy of the commons: 22 years later,” (Human Ecology 18 (1990), showed the incompleteness of Hardin’s analysis due to his reification of property regimes.
Aren’t our arguments vis-a-vis climate similarly incomplete? For example, why use national emissions as our unit of measure? EDGAR data are given on a country by country basis, but how does such a categorization account for multinational corporations, which have no allegiance to place, only to a disembodied concept of profit? Transnational corporations, in effect, have succeeded in opting out of Earthly concerns for some 400 years by (pace Engels) moving the problem around. Degrade one region, move on to another.
There are, now, no more frontiers (forget it, Terraformers).
Suppose we parsed the categories differently: could we then move forward, enacting different policies for different sectors? Cap-and-trade parses on a global scale. Could it be that we need to implement a multi-scalar approach?
RichardC Says (12 May 2009 at 16:37)
“Everyone loves a bargain, and if that means not running a clothes dryer when it’s 100F outside…”
Strange. My bargain clothes dryer (maybe $10, including clothespins) actually works much better when it’s 100F outside, yet a lot of people seem reluctant to avail themselves of this bargain, preferring to spend several hundred on a mechanical device that runs up their electric bill…
SecularAnimist Says (12 May 2009 at 17:23):
” Jim Bullis wrote: “Why not adapt to ways to air condition our houses efficiently.”
It’s called insulation.”
Omigawd, I think the end of the world is nigh: we agree on something!
But even beyond insulation, letting indoor temperatures vary somewhat with the seasons, so your body adapts.
CTG Says (12 May 2009 at 15:46)
“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.”
172: Doug Bostrom, 8 May 2009 at 20:24
192: Barton Paul Levenson, 9 May 2009 at 6:41
244: Anne van der Bom, 10 May 2009 at 8:58
250: SecularAnimist, 10 May 2009 at 11:43
269: Anne van der Bom, 10 May 2009 at 16:01
297: Barton Paul Levenson, 11 May 2009 at 7:24
367: SecularAnimist, 12 May 2009 at 10:42
For a few examples, and to the same extent that I’ve ever said that wind CAN’T play a role in a diversified portfolio of energy sources.
“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?”
In fact I have said so, recently in for instance
374: James, 12 May 2009 at 11:50
377: James, 12 May 2009 at 12:16
I’m not at all resistant to the idea of using renewables. What I object to is first, the idea that they ought to be built regardless of their environmental cost (as with CSP destroying great areas of desert), second, the simplistic linear cost for the whole system model that seems to inform the thinking of many renewable advocates; and third, their outright rejection, on quasi-religious grounds, of a proven technology with known costs and minimal environmental impact.
“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?”
Language, mainly. I don’t know an appropriate word to make the distinction, which is not really between renewable and not renewable, but between generation when you want it, and generation depending on nature’s whims. What I’m trying to get at is that if you build a geothermal plant, you get X MWatts of generation pretty much 24/7. With hydro, you get generation when you decide to open the tap. But with wind and solar, you get generation when the wind blows or the sun shines.
“…pumped storage hydro is one of the easiest ways to harvest excess wind production.”
If you have suitable topography for a pumped storage facility, are willing to invest the money needed to build it, and consider the energy losses acceptable. If pumped storage is indeed easiest, that doesn’t say much for the others :-)
“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.”
No? Let me point out a few things you may have missed. New Zealand’s North Island has abundant geothermal resources, unlike much of the US. The South Island has high mountains and considerable rainfall, making it ideal for hydroelectric power, while the mountainous parts of the US are largely arid. Most importantly, New Zealand has about 4.2 million people in roughly the same land area as California, population 37 million. I think if you looked at the amount of hydro & geothermal energy generated within California, you would find that it’s as much or more than New Zealand generates.
Ike Solem Says (12 May 2009 at 11:45):
“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…”
Maybe the problem here is not the idea of ownership per se, but the somewhat artificial restriction of ownership to human beings. Suppose instead that the forest owns itself…
#394 CTG and others
Ontario Canada tries very hard to reduce CO2.
But when wind discussions get blowing hard, I check their actual reports. If anyone wants to know what really happened on May 11 (yesterday) look at:
http://reports.ieso.ca/public/GenOutputCapability/PUB_GenOutputCapability_20090511_v25.xml
It is certainly true that on some days the wind power resources were useful. (I have been checking these for some time.) On May 11 things did not go so well. So clearly in this situation, something else had to come up to the job.
407 Jim, good points. The utility company is dancing on the edge of grid failure. They want to keep production *EXACTLY* equal to consumption + 1 watt. They don’t turn off all the AC units, just enough to keep the grid from crashing. It’s kind of like a rolling brown-out. They need *time* to bring resources online to handle the increased demand. If it takes a couple hours to bring a unit online, by switching off various units for 10 minutes each they can buy enough time to do the job. I’m not an expert on this, merely a customer who got reduced rates for participating, but the theory works in practice.
#382 TokyoTom
George is a Reisman. Reisman’s are known to be stubborn (I’m trying to start a new trend there ;) and he tends to put things into terms of us against them, which I feel is overly simplistic. The many nuances of dynamic interaction (health, unhealth, relative health) are less considered in his work based on what I have observed. I believe that is an error.
I would not characterize that as ownership but rather symbiosis, with the occasional parasitic, or mutually beneficial relationship. nature/economy is a complex web of inter-dynamic systems.
There are natural laws of sort that regulate and manage. The main complication with civilization is human ego. I tend to consider rights v. ownership and include dynamic equilibrium and human system needs as they are or have been created which is intertwined with non utilitarian market aspects which are part of an artificial inflation infrastructure born of greed rather than economic balance or even economic reality in the natural system.
What I see is that the the natural system is subject to both ‘the tragedy of the commons’ and ‘the tragedy of ownership’. It always seems to boil down to good king, bad king. We either manage it well or we don’t, individually or collectively.
I don’t think any economic ideology can prevent the human ego from it’s more spontaneous propensities that occur based on short term rather than long term consideration. But ideology is not what I rely on in my assumptions. I tend toward the reasonability of the nature of nature itself that systems have a seemingly built in desire to survive and I believe that applies even to the human system.
The management paradigm of Epoch A is less considerate of the long term, while I project the management principle of Epoch B is long term.
The world brain should evolve on these lines if it follows the course of nature, which is to survive if able.
I would argue that the development of property rights institutions that were designed to help us with the tragedy of the commons are similar to the property rights institutions designed to protect us from the tragedy of ownership.
Though not a perfect world, the legislation process is a part of the dynamic equilibrium mechanism.
Property is helpful in some circumstance, and bane in other circumstance. It falls to the world brain to determine the objective value method that can be reasonably applied to maintain the quality of said value over the degradation of said value.
I also certainly agree with you that government is no panacea and I believe you know my perspectives on this at least fairly well. It is a system we utilize for better or for worse. Inter-dynamic systems require management mechanisms be they natural or human established. The dangers are evident and it is sad that we are not better guarded against the misuse and abuse of the mechanism. I have always felt that education is the key to better management but that is not a choice we seem yet wiling to make.
I maintain that the long term will become dominant in Epoch B as short term becomes sub-dominant.
I continue to explore the holistic in consideration to find direction as we transition from A to B.
I would also note that the tragedy of the commons and ownership have not manifested in all cases. There have been periods of success. I imagine there was some reasonability in certain cultures that recognized the limits of resource and instilled self management. But leadership changes and cultures shift through war and revolution so short lived are the good examples.
We are entering new paradigms, so older rules become less relevant. New rules are needed. The onus of responsibility of the health of such rules lies with us.
‘Some corporations’ is appropriate, more or less but likely more, based on my examinations. But certainly not all, and some unwittingly, while others deliberate.
#391: “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.”
Richard, these are extremely important nuances, to be sure, but it is still helpful for Rene to generalize by saying that “Those who own a forest are not compelled to harvest it against their wishes.”
Rene was talking about what ownership of a forest (or a transferrable fishing permit, first use water rights, etc.) implies – and was surely correct – while what you are talking about what we mean by ownership of a public corporation, which is also an important area of inquiry.
Starting with the first state grant of limited liability to investors/owners for damages that corporations do to third parties, to other extensions of unlimited life, unlimited purposes and the Consitutional right as a “legal person” to lie and to purchase influence, moral hazard and risk-shifting has become rampant in the businesses closest to government:
http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=limited
Back to resources, what we typically mean by “ownership” is the right, vis-a-vis non-owners, is to determine who has access to the resource and the terms under which they can use it. The nature and preference of the individuals, community or government that owns the resource may make all the difference between how well a resource is used and protected, but markets do allow people and groups with differing preferences to make deals regarding ownership and management.
It`s where there is NO ownership, or where ownership is in the hands of a kleptocracy or poorly-run bureaucracy that either the “tragedy of the commons” takes place, or deals cannot be done and everyone is stuck in a struggle for control over the wheel of government: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=wheel
“Private” and “community” property systems that put control in the hands of users are by no means perfect, but they avoid the worst of the tragedy of the commons, which is why mainline environmental groups are now together calling for property rights in fisheries (as linked above).
#373: “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?”
Good questions, but you`ve missed an important one – what would the result be if salmon fishermen actually owned rights in their FISHERY (as opposed to land, as you query), instead of just being allowed to catch fish when the government allows?
Wouldn`t they have an ability to sue landowners for messing up streams, and to make deals with then to enhance and maintain habitat? This (and water rights) in fact underpin river and stream fisheries in various parts of the world and US. It`s mainly the government ownership of the resource – after stealing it from the Indians – and the fact that users have no rights that they can protect or trade that is the reason why the great salmon fisheries are surely dying:
http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/07/23/destroying-the-salmon-the-socialized-commons-and-climate-change-part-ii.aspx
http://www.perc.org/articles/article249.php
http://www.perc.org/articles/article884.php
Rene Cheront writes:
The point is, they shouldn’t have to! How DARE anyone make the world’s biodiversity a commodity to be lessened at the whim of some private owner?! It belongs to us all and no one has a “right” to diminish it!
TokyoTom writes:
Slavery was brought up because of the idiotic contention posted that owning something means you take good care of it. And, BTW, some Libertarian philosophers have touted “voluntary slavery” as a solution to unemployment. You see, you have a property right in yourself, so you also have the right to sell it.
Craig writes:
Caesar. I agree. The bad guys are going to win this one. But let’s go down fighting.
Hi Gavin : your analysis applies to renewable bioresources in general.
As with all of them, everybody agrees, except those concerned. Take whale killing, tree logging, biofuel production etc. Those with an economic self-interest go against the mainstream and so cancel the common effort.
There are plenty of bloggers that deny climatic change, create confusion with false data and say we have global cooling. The tactic comes from the GOP field and it aims at denying our responsibility for a responsible exploitation and sustainable econonomy. It is difficult to find articles that don’t spread disinformation on purpose or that just make empty statements.
To bring about change we need a worldwide consensus regarding the actions to take to preserve natural resources, then go to the UN, because this is the only organisation with power to impose measures. NGO’s are just there to prevent the worst, no power for a system change.
James, I enjoy your posts, as they are generally well-written and thought-provoking; however, I feel compelled to point out that not one of the posts you list as advocating 100% wind power actually does so, and indeed several of them explicitly advocate a mix of renewables. (Secular’s #367 comes closest, where he states that there is enough potential wind capacity to supply 100% of current demand, but he doesn’t say that that would be a practical solution, and he does specifically call for a mix of generation types: “When energy storage is added to an integrated, regional renewables-based system, the problem of intermittency basically goes away.”) (My italics.)
OK, you qualify it with “to the same extent that I’ve ever said that wind CAN’T play a role in a diversified portfolio of energy sources.” But if others misrepresent or misunderstand you, please clarify what you said, or meant. Please don’t spread confusion about what others wrote.
“The bad guys are going to win this one.”
The hell they are. (Pun intentional.)
“where resources are unowned or unmanaged, they tend to get trashed.” – TokyoTom
Can you show me where anyone in this discussion has asserted otherwise?
“thanks for bring us back the tragedy of the unmanaged/government commons” – TokyoTom
The coupling of “unmanaged” and “government” here is unjustified, since governments have sometimes (e.g. the USA’s national park system) done a good job in conservation of resources they own.
“markets do allow people and groups with differing preferences to make deals regarding ownership and management.” – TokyoTom
Markets have their place, but they give individuals and corporations influence in proportion to their wealth – thus in practice, giving only corporations and very rich individuals any influence at all. This is why “libertarians” love them so much. “Propertarians” would be a far more accurate term for their views.
“How DARE anyone make the world’s biodiversity a commodity to be lessened at the whim of some private owner?! It belongs to us all and no one has a “right” to diminish it!” – BPL
Well said! Biodiversity, like the atmosphere and oceans, is part of the “global commons”, to be preserved in the interests of all, and of future generations. I get the distinct impression that the likes of Rene would a thousand times rather the whole biosphere collapses than that the sacred rights of private property be infringed.
#422 – an inaccuracy I have fallen into through the influence of “libertarian” rhetoric: governments of course do not own property – states do. If the government owned property, it would in democratic states take the property with it when voted out.
Jim @ 400:
If you looked at a daily load profile and understood what “Peak” versus “Base” is all about, this would be a pretty trivial matter.
Thermal load — giant ball of fire in the sky — does not match peak power demand. This is actually one of the “solar power” problems I did a bit of invention in. The daily high temperature is skewed a few hours from solar noon. Real simple — sun is still high enough that heating continues into the afternoon. The maximum dwelling temperature is then skewed from that, based on the amount of time it takes for the heat outside a dwelling to make it inside. This means that peak A/C demand is skewed quite a bit from solar noon, which tends to be the center of the demand curve for commercial / industrial uses — 8AM to 5PM being such a common set of working hours.
A later post:
As I said in the other thread, your are ignorant of how the grid works. There are reserves that must respond within 15 minutes of being called for. Ten minutes gives the transient time to work itself out, or those other resources to be called into service.
Your ignorance is not nearly as total, however, as RichardC’s is in #414 —
That’s nothing at all like “dancing on the edge of grid failure”. The electric grid MUST, at all times, be operated in complete balance between supply and demand. It’s that balance that, among other things, keeps voltage and frequency where they belong.
The “secret” of renewable energy — especially taking storage into consideration to handle intermittency — is that it isn’t generated like those other forms: using giant machines that have huge gobs of inertia to handle. Solar and wind AC output can be “turned up” or “turned down” on a dime. If I get up right now, walk to the bathroom and turn on the 1,500 watt space heater sitting in there, I don’t have to wait 15 minutes for the generators to get brought on-line. The electricity is there immediately. And that’s a pretty huge advantage over those coal and natural gas plants that can’t do that …
Jim Bullis, your data for May 11 is illustrative, though probably a bit of a statistical outlier.
For locations of these farms, see:
http://www.canwea.ca/farms/wind-farms_e.php
(You can zoom in on Ontario and click on individual sites.)
According to one analysis I found (and subsequently lost, unfortunately), you need greater than 400 km dispersion to avoid the worst effects of intermittency. Ontario probably isn’t there yet; the Prince Wind Farm is more than that distance from almost all the other sites, but most of the wind sites can be circumscribed within a 400-km diameter circle. (And Prince’s output was pretty low on the 11th, regardless of the theory.)
Of course, this gets us back to the problems of the transmission grid, as well as the desirability (indeed, the necessity) of a mix of renewables. Ontario is helped a bit on the second count by possession of good hydro resources.
Jim, at least in Rene’s earlier posts you quoted, I think you’re reading what you want to see rather than what’s necessarily there. I read exactly the same excerpts and see comments generally in line with mainstream management practice. No, I don’t agree 100% with every comment, especially many made after my first post (as I said before, North American forests are not a good example of an unmanaged commons), but I also don’t see a claim that privatization is a panacea, which seems to be the central point of contention for a large part of the criticism against Rene. Numerous posters have presented examples of private ownership destroying resources or cases where it’s simply impractical as evidence that it is not a valid management approach in any case.
As for bison, go back and look at how they were managed. Their collapse came when they were an unowned, shared resource. Anyone with a gun could go out to the plains and shoot as many as they wanted and get paid by the railroads and then sell the hides to tanneries. They had no investment in the resource, so almost no incentive to protect it rather than try to out-hunt their competitors. That’s about the best example of a tragedy of the commons as you’ll find.
The bison didn’t just miraculously recover on their own from the refuge of Yellowstone. They came back because of private ranching. Almost 95% of the bison population today is still privately owned. Ted Turner’s herd alone is about 2 and a half times the size of the entire wild population. Of that wild population, only 5 existing herds aren’t descended from privately held stock. Even a large part of the current Yellowstone population is descended from ranched animals- not the other way around.
Mark (354), what exactly are you trying to argue? Regulations are only as good as their enforcement? Well, yeah that’s obvious.
In the case of bison, fences and brands mark your property rights and the police and government enforce the penalties for violations. In Africa, the tribesmen that own the rhinos and elephants act as armed guards, again with the government providing the penalties to captured poachers if the guards don’t shoot them on site. There are similar situations in many parts of the Pacific with reef fisheries, where poachers are subject to tribal sanctions, government prosecution, or even death- enforceable by the property owners and/or tribal leadership.
Sure, there are also plenty of cases when self-enforcement by owners won’t work (e.g. large, industrial fishing operations working offshore of poor, isolated areas) but those are the same cases where ownership is not an appropriate management strategy to begin with.
Dhogaza (371)- I also have real-world, on-the-ground (or under-the-water) experience, so it seems pretty silly to me that you continue to insist that Rene is completely wrong and that ownership cannot work as a management strategy when there are numerous examples (some of which I listed earlier) where it has. The key, as with any management strategy, is that is to apply it only to appropriate cases. I don’t know of any climate or forestry related books on the topic since that’s not what I work on, but Reef Fisheries edited by Polunin and Roberts has several chapters which discuss real-world examples of tragedies of the commons and management solutions on coral reefs. It’s not light reading, but you might learn something from it instead of insisting that ownership of common resources is failed ideology.
Then there are those who turn their backs on the rules:
Thus the need for Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd, and Captain Nemo.
Secular animist [367]
Many of the renewables claims that come out of Germany are not exactly as they seem—the most concrete thing they contribute being the sale of wind turbines to the rest of the world.
Meanwhile, renewables still p;rovide only a very small part of their energy need, and their own energy security without coal and nuclear is very uncertain.
http://ensec.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=153:germanysenergyinsecurity&catid=81:europe&Itemid=324
They import 75% of their energy needs, and most of it is fossil fuel and nuclear.
http://www.tepu.org.tw/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/gu.ppt#4
Most of Europe is planning to increase nuclear generation—and Germany is reconsidering its phase-out plan for nuclear power.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,605957,00.html
The success of the climate change ‘consensus’ movement is pushing the world towards ever-burgeoning nuclear proliferation, with the alarmism convincing governments that it’s the only way to bridge the gap to the distant prospect of energy security via renewables.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/05/sweden-nuclear-power
Dhogaza[87]
The Manhattan Project was in the face of a certain threat.
The impacts and social engineering being asked of us now are against a threat that may or may not be real—we’re not allowed to know, because we’re not allowed to question the ‘consensus’, and dissenting scientists are deprived of data and information on methodologies that might help to clarify matters.
Meanwhile we’re asked to submit to a complete upheaval of our energy industries, with no new system ready to fill the gaps—– causing very large economic impacts and dislocation in the Western democracies, while China, India et al are to be allowed to leap-frog over us simply because they have the lever of huge and unsustainable populations, and massive poverty generated by the heinous [ and in the case of China, murderous] actions of past and present Feudal and Communist regimes.
We can and should have sympathy for their downtrodden populations, but that doesn’t mean we should have to subvert and diminish the countries that honoured human rights, and gave their populations freedom.
#424 “Markets have their place, but they give individuals and corporations influence in proportion to their wealth – thus in practice, giving only corporations and very rich individuals any influence at all. This is why “libertarians” love them so much. “Propertarians” would be a far more accurate term for their views.”
Well said, but with more bark than bite. 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.
See Walmart working with fishermen and a sustainability certification group re: Copper River salmon:
http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/12/09/save-wild-fisheries-buy-your-certified-sustainable-salmon-from-walmart.aspx
What we desperately need right now re: bluefin and other fisheries are consumer boycotts and demands for sustainability labelling.
Asked by commenter CTG to give examples of “anyone saying that wind can or should provide 100% of electricity generation”, James (in comment #411) cites two of my comments as examples:
250: SecularAnimist, 10 May 2009 at 11:43
367: SecularAnimist, 12 May 2009 at 10:42
In comment #250, I said nothing whatsoever about wind providing any particular percentage of electricity generation. Rather, I addressed the question of the variability of renewable energy sources, referring to Stanford University’s press release about the Mark Jacobson study of the impacts of various alternative energy sources:
I added my own comment that “studies in Germany and the USA have found that a diversified regional portfolio of renewable energy sources — wind, solar, geothermal, biomass — can produce 24×7 baseload power that is at least as reliable as coal or nuclear.”
In the second comment that James cites, I gave an example of one such study, the Combined Power Plant project in Germany, and again quoted the Jacobson report addressing the issue of variability of renewables.
In both of those comments, I wrote about the issue of the variability of renewables, and how that problem can be mitigated or entirely overcome by integrating a diverse regional portfolio of renewable energy sources to provide reliable baseload generation.
In neither comment did I say anything whatsoever about wind providing 100 percent — or any percent — of electricity generation.
So, James is very plainly claiming that I said things in those comments that I did not say.
In other comments, on this thread and others, I have indeed mentioned data from the American Wind Energy Association, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, showing that the gross, commercially-exploitable onshore and offshore wind energy resources of the USA exceed the total electricity consumption of the entire country.
I cite this data not to assert or argue that the USA can or should have a 100 percent wind-powered grid, but simply to show the potential of renewable energy to meet our needs, if we harvest even a portion of the available wind, solar and geothermal energy resources at our disposal.
truth wrote: “… against a threat that may or may not be real—we’re not allowed to know, because we’re not allowed to question the ‘consensus’, and dissenting scientists are deprived of data and information on methodologies that might help to clarify matters.”
With all due respect, that is the most blatantly dishonest rubbish I have ever read on any subject, and you should be ashamed of yourself for posting it.
James wrote: “… their outright rejection, on quasi-religious grounds, of a proven technology with known costs and minimal environmental impact.”
With all due respect, the “quasi-religious grounds” rhetoric is nothing but a boilerplate ad hominem that is routinely deployed by proponents of nuclear power when they are unable or unwilling to substantively address the very real problems of nuclear power. Indeed it barely rises to the level of an ad hominem, being little more than name-calling.
Not likely, it would be impossible to prove that logging one particular plot of land hurt one particular fisherman’s fish. Similar to the problem cigarette smokers have in proving that their individual case of cancer is due to smoking a manufacturer’s cigarettes.
Also, even if you could win the suit, it would not resurrect the destroyed habitat and fishery. This is one huge problem with the libertarian point of view – that suing for damages after destruction is better than preventing it in the first place.
But Rene isn’t talking about incorporating private ownership as part of a management strategy, but rather selling off the resources and getting rid of any collective from-above management strategy altogether, from forbidding government managers from setting goals (for instance, sustainability) at all.
When these schemes work it is typically due to some sort of collective mechanism above and beyond the whim of the individual owner of a fishery or other stock.
We have exceptions where individual owners put long-term sustainabiliity and non-economic values as a priority (I mentioned Gilchrist lumber here in Oregon as an example).
But these are notable precisely because they’re *exceptions*.
#429 Jim, people turn their backs on the rules because the rules create incentives for destruction and no incentives for compliance.
See what Defying Ocean’s End (cofounded by Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Ocean Conservancy, Wildlife Conservation Society, The World Conservation Union, and World Wildlife Fund) says about protecting fish:
http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/01/14/for-crashing-fisheries-coalition-of-mainline-us-enviro-groups-calls-for-property-rights.aspx
These crazy, dedicated cionservation groups are all pushing for poerty rights approaches to end the tragedy of this government-mis-managed commons.
[this is a short repost as it seems my initial post has been lost]
Son of Mulder, sorry, truth thinks:
“we’re not allowed to know, because we’re not allowed to question the ‘consensus’”
Not if you don’t know what the consensus or how to test it arrives.
Do you complain you don’t have the right to question the consensus that engineers use to determine stress loads of their constructions?
No.
Because you let engineers work that out.
Do you complain about geologists consensus that dinosaurs died out ~65million years ago or do you let geologists work that one out?
etc.
You can question with your MP whether the actions they wish to undertake are going to work of have a more seriously deleterious effect. Because you may be able to know what you’re saying there.
You don’t in science.
re 428: “As for bison, go back and look at how they were managed. Their collapse came when they were an unowned, shared resource. ”
Please show that they would have survived if they’d been owned.
E.g. start by saying who would have owned them. Amerindians? Well, they owned the land. Didn’t mean they kept it.
#426
Hi Furry,
Here is old ignernt Jim again, trying to make a pest of himself.
If I am using that ‘paste’ thing right, you say, “Solar and wind AC output can be “turned up” or “turned down” on a dime. If I get up right now, walk to the bathroom and turn on the 1,500 watt space heater sitting in there, I don’t have to wait 15 minutes for the generators to get brought on-line. The electricity is there immediately. And that’s a pretty huge advantage over those coal and natural gas plants that can’t do that …”
Actually there might be something worth talking about here. Thanks for the illustration.
I think you will find that your solar array is putting out all it can whether you turn on the space heater or not. I hope so. Thus, when you are not running the space heater, you are selling the power back to the utility. That is the way they tell me it works around here.
Think of this as a stable state of the system.
Now, you come along and turn on the space heater. Your solar array has no way of changing its output since it is already running full on. So out there something has to happen when you draw the extra 12 amps, assuming a 120 volt heater.
The incremental increase is barely noticed at the generator stations already on line, but ever so slightly the voltage drops due to the system impedance. This is quickly counteracted by a control system that adjusts the field in the generator. Though slowed down by the inertia of the machine, a slight phase error will begin to grow. The control system will sense that, and increase the fuel to whatever heat engine is involved. The slight phase error will then be corrected. No one will notice a frequency shift.
Notice, that the response turned out to be more fuel use.
At first this would probably a natural gas peaking plant, that would be the most sensitive to the added load. But then a lot of other people get cold and gradually the load grows. Fairly soon, this will be noticed since the dollar meter starts to run faster for expensive natural gas flowing into that relatively inefficient peaking generator. Probably a computer will determine where and how much, but somewhere a larger generator will be caused to increase output voltage, ever so slightly, and it will begin contributing more to the current drain. More than likely that computer will have picked from coal fired generator stations, since the power company is supposed to not waste money. I am ignoring how planning would anticipate some of this process.
Wind will be working whether or not you use the space heater. And both your solar panels and the wind turbines will lessen the fossil fuel needed. But like the solar operation, the wind turbines will be fully used in the initial state conditions. That is, before you turn on the heater.
So even though you might think that space heater is running off your solar array, the actual source of energy responding will probably turn out to be coal. Power production from solar and wind systems can not “turn on a dime” since they are already turned hard on.
Sometimes things are not as they seem. Hopefully I haven’t made too much of a pest of myself with the details. I skipped all that stuff about inefficiencies of central power plants.
The story about your space heater applies to plug-in cars, only now the impact could be much more serious.
SecularAnimist Says (13 May 2009 at 10:35)
“So, James is very plainly claiming that I said things in those comments that I did not say.”
Just as you & others have claimed I say things I do not say. If you get to apply your selective reading to what I write, why shouldn’t I return the favor? Tit for tat :-)
SecularAnimist Says (13 May 2009 at 10:43):
“With all due respect, the “quasi-religious grounds” rhetoric is nothing but a boilerplate ad hominem…”
No. Of course I can’t read your mind, but the external evidence of your writings leads me to conclude that your position must be based on something other than fact, because you manage to completely ignore anything that conflicts with your beliefs. Consider as an example the Jacobsen paper that you frequently bring up. I’ve pointed out (most recently in post #318) a number of serious flaws in his 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. You completely ignore these flaws, and continue citing Jacobsen as though your copy is graven on stone tablets. What other explanation is there?
FurryCatHerder Says (13 May 2009 at 7:44):
“The electric grid MUST, at all times, be operated in complete balance between supply and demand. It’s that balance that, among other things, keeps voltage and frequency where they belong.”
I’d qualify that a bit, because there is a good bit of “inertia” in the grid, both the mechanical inertia of all those rotating generators, and the electrical equivalent of inductance/capacitance. So what happens is that you get ongoing small variations in the voltage as loads are added to and removed from the grid. If more load is added than can be handled, you get drastic voltage drops – brownouts – and parts of the grid can lose frequency synchronization and fall apart (electrically, of course), and you have blackouts.
“Solar and wind AC output can be “turned up” or “turned down” on a dime. If I get up right now, walk to the bathroom and turn on the 1,500 watt space heater sitting in there, I don’t have to wait 15 minutes for the generators to get brought on-line. The electricity is there immediately.”
I think you’ve got it just backwards. The inertia is critical to allowing the grid to operate. In your example, where’s the power going before you turn on your space heater? After you turn it on, what happens if a cloud passes over, and your solar panels suddenly generate less than 1500 watts?
FurryCatHerder #426 — Great post. You bring up the important consideration of dispatchability and grid reliability. And you also bring a little realism to temper the furious discussion of “renewables” — which is a term that should be abandoned.
Wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, hydro, and biofuels are all classed under the rubric of “renewables” but they have very different important characteristics. Biofuels (such as methane from anaerobic digesters, biochar, and ethanol) should not be lumped in with wind and solar because they produce CO2 on combustion. They are not zero carbon sources, no matter what they pretend. Hydro and geothermal are zero carbon sources and are also steady sources for baseload power, and should not be lumped in with wind and solar, which are intermittent. Wind and solar are very valuable zero carbon sources and should be rapidly deployed while we search for a storage solution.
An example of fruitless quibbling over the use of the term “renewables” can be found above in the discussion of NX power generation. I agree with James #411 that we need to break out separate classes from the vague term “renewables.”
Dealing with wind and solar on their own merits, without invoking the benefits of “renewables” such as biofuels, hydro and geothermal, will be a necessary condition for intelligent and civil discussion. Thanks for clearing up some common confusion.
TomT says: “where resources are unowned or unmanaged, they tend to get trashed.”
What’s the difference between trashing a resource and exploiting a resource?
For example, trees. If you harvest at a rate that allows trees to regrow, and you leave big ones standing (for seeds, biodiversity, etc.), then you are exploiting the resource. If your logging company gets subjected to a hostile takeover on Wall Street and the new management is bent on asset liquidation, clear-cutting ensues and the resource is trashed within ten years – but the owners just walk away with a pile of money. How did ownership protect anything?
On the other hand, if state laws mandate that logging on privately owned lands not exceed a sustainable rate, and that the ‘public interest’ of watershed protection takes precedence over the ‘private interest’ of selling off all the trees on one’s land to a sawmill – well, then you get Wall Street screaming about communism and the betrayal of the free market.
However, if you then go to Wall Street and ask pointed questions about the ‘natural monopolies’ of electricity generation in the U.S., and why it is that only a few giant corporations are allowed access to the electricity market (based on Marxist economic arguments), and also about the cartel-based opposition to competition from renewable energy sources – well, they suddenly don’t want to talk about free-market theory at all, do they? Keep in mind that at least 50% of underwriting on Wall Street has been in diversified deals involving electricity generation & fossil fuels, historically speaking.
Ignoring the free-market and state-run ideologues is a critical first step in trying to understand how Easter Islanders might have been able to maintain the natural biological diversity and abundance which they encountered, while also enjoying a decent quality of life.
Take it from Adam Smith, the Wealth of Nations:
“The produce of land, mines, and fisheries, when their natural fertility is equal, is in proportion to the extent and proper application of the capitals employed about them. When the capitals are equal and equally well applied, it is in proportion to their natural fertility.”
Here Adam Smith states the fundamental point again: given ecological stability, you have the potential for productive and sustainable economic activity. A fishery has a long-term productivity – at the physical level, sunlight is the energy source at the base of the food chain that supports fisheries – as well as agriculture. A mine that follows a rich ore deposit, on the other hand, eventually becomes exhausted. Thus, in Adam Smith’s time, iron was more valuable than fish on an equal weight basis.
Today, gasoline is cheaper than milk. Odd, isn’t it? How did we come up with an economic system that sets the value of exhaustible resources lower than that of resources that are indefinitely sustainable?
In the case of fossil fuels, it seems that the sheer abundance – ‘oceans of oil’ gave the illusion of an indefinitely sustainable resource. However, the decade-scale writing is on the wall – light crude oils that are cheap to process are at maximum production and will soon become scarce (though a century’s worth of dirty tar sand, shale oil and sour crudes remain to be mined).
Did the early Easter Islanders see their island with its trees and imagine a similar future of abundance? What if they had developed a culture of tree worship, instead of ancestor worship – as did the Druidic sects of ancient Britain? In the case of Easter Island, it might very well be that social mistakes were the real problem.
However, if the climate had drastically changed, such that all the trees died, no amount of economic maneuvering could have altered the eventual outcome. In that respect, Easter Island is a poor analogy for the current warming.
By the way, living organisms have faced the problem of resource limitation for billions of years, and have solved it by recycling and scavenging trace elements using elaborate biochemical strategies that operate at very high specificity – but also by developing alternatives, new proteins, etc. as the global atmosphere gradually shifted towards an oxygen-rich state.
Within 100 years, as current trends continue, most accessible ore deposits will be largely mined out, and you will see human industrial activity looking a lot more like biological activity – heavy reliance on carbon as a building block, with conversion of sunlight to stored chemical/electrical energy being the basis of industrial activity. The sooner we do this, the better.
Barton Paul Levenson #350 — You offer hydrogen as a storage solution for excess wind power, to be used for fuel cells in cars. Cracking water for H2 (and O2 for oxyfuel combustion) would certainly be good, but the H2 storage issue remains unsolved, and fuel cell cars face what appear to be insuperable technical obstacles, detailed by Joe Romm’s book “The Hype About Hydrogen”. Recently DOE decided to cut research in hydrogen cars, another Bush dry hole.
So how else could that H2 be used, if not in fuel cell cars? By combining it with carbon monoxide to make synfuel, diesel which can be vehicle fuel. And where do we get the carbon monoxide (other than by biomass or coal gasification) — by cracking CO2. Se while deploying wind and solar in excess of 20% there can always be a use for their excess power in cracking coal emissions to make synfuel.
#411 James:
Just a small comment. It turns out pumped hydro is remarkably efficient, something like 85% overall for modern systems. Thinking it through however you’ll realize that efficency does really enter into the equation, or at least not long term. Since the energy going into pumped hydro from windo or PV is purely renewable, we largely pay only once for the loss of efficiency, by initial upsizing of the associated generation plant.
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. Note that in the case of combustion thermal plants we have to pay for extraction and cleanup of energy inputs, making that 15% loss of efficiency a significant factor
Parenthetically if we’re going to obsess about efficiency we might better look to improvement by upsizing our grid thus lowering resistance losses which are quite high when the system is running at or near capacity.
The problem with the analogy is that fish stocks are actually increasing. This site is more about global cooling denial than science. The facts are clear. Global surface temps have been falling for years. Ocean heat content is declining. Sea ice is at all- time highs. Glaciers are expanding. Sea level rise has stopped. Will you guys at least acknowledge these scientific facts? Your models predicted none of this, yet you can tell me to reduce my catch when stocks are up for 10+ years?
[Response: Every single statement here is wrong. And if you think that fisheries are in good shape, you are seriously deluded. – gavin]
Often it is the words we use that limit understanding of a problem. We use “ownership” as if it were clearly defined and applicable to the atmosphere. Economic modeling must stumble if “ownership” is misused or misunderstood.
Property is defined as the right to exclude others from use. So we can own airspace above the ground we own, and property rights in that airspace are enforceable by legal action — for example, to prevent adjacent property owners from building into it. But we don’t own the atmosphere that passes through that airspace, and we can’t exclude airplanes from flying above us. So a coal plant does not own any atmosphere at all, and it has no legally enforceable right to pollute — unless Waxman-Markey passes. Cap-and-trade is an attempt to create property rights in the atmosphere, and thereby to moot the jusrisdiction of the EPA to enforce the Clean Air Act to prevent pollution by CO2 emissions.
Nuisance is another legal term, which should be more applicable than property or ownership to the climate change problem. When you create a condition on your property which interferes with the enjoyment of other property owners, there is a remedy at law to interfere with your ownership to abate the nuisance.
Another legal concept to bear in mind is the trust. A trust imposes an obligation on a fiduciary, known as the trustee, to manage the trust property for the benefit of some other, called a beneficiary. When the fiduciary diverts the benefit to himself, that is called embezzlement, or breach of fiduciary duty.
You can see how this applies to corporate governance, CEO compensation, and to the management of the atmosphere. “Free enterprise” as an excuse for self-enrichment by fiduciaries has never been tolerated.
A “free market” in pollution allowances should not be tolerated either. The beneficiaries are the public who will be affected by CO2 emissions. The polluters are the trustees both with respect to their shareholders and to the public which permits the creation of the corporate fiction.
So here’s an idea for discussion: strictly enforced fees for CO2 emissions, with no grandfathering, no indulgences, no offsets for tree planting, etc. — just a straight fine for each ton of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. But isntead of paying that fine in money, pay it in stock of the emitter. The public, i.e. the beneficiaries of the atmosphere trust, thereby gradually takes control of the trustee, i.e. the emitter, unless the emitter can come up with a solution to CO2 emissions.