The bottom line right now seems to be that we don’t actually have a full explanation for what happened. Though I can’t help but point out that this particular contributing factor has so far not inspired anyone to claim that fossil-fueled thermal generation is ‘unreliable’ and ‘unable to power a modern industrial society’:
Several gas plants that were supposed to provide power failed to operate or tripped off, the CAISO said in a press conference last Wednesday.
Seems a little ironic to me, somehow, but there you are.
patrick027says
Consider a person going through different stages in finance. They take out a loan. No payments – debt grows exponentially. But then they pay off the loan. They put money into savings. Don’t touch savings – exponential growth. But eventually they withdraw money. Using dividends to buy stock – growth. But then they sell. If they leave the same for the next generation as they inherited, no net growth.
patrick027says
Consider a person going through different stages in finance. They take out a loan. No payments – debt grows exponentially. But then they pay off the loan. They put money into savings. Don’t touch savings – exponential growth. But eventually they withdraw money. Using dividends to buy stock – growth. But then they sell. If they leave the same for the next generation as they inherited, no net growth.
In aggregate, everyone is in different stages at any time, so payments on interest on loans amount to a steady stream of income to the banks, which come from a steady stream of income for the loan holders, and which goes into savings accounts, bank employees’ income, and covering defaults.
patrick027says
As for competition driving growth, presumably this depends on expectations, etc. In a world where the economy is shrinking, 0% growth is competitive.
It doesn’t look catastrophic to me (work-age population / total population), although this is for a higher population growth scenario than was in the Lancet article linked to somewhere in the above comments.
nigeljsays
Killian @198
“The neighbours might help people out with their power bills, ”
“WHAT power bills? MICRO-grid.”
There are many types of microgrids as below, and people pay for the power in some of them.
“WHAT economies of scale? How do you still not understand SYSTEM change?”
We loose the economies of scale of the present large centralised system. Instead a whole lot of smaller units are being substituted. But it looks like it wouldn’t be a huge problem
“The government is gonna pay our bills? We’re in the middle of freaking pandemic and the governments around the world, and especially the US, are telling people to stay home and then to basically chew on their furniture if they get hungry, but you think governments are gonna subsidize EVERYONE’S energy costs?”
No I said its a possible solution. I would say its no more or less likely to happen than most of your ideas. Anyway the pandemic wont last forever, so wait for that to finish.
I think a lot of your views are coloured by Americas problems. Other countries are not the same as America.
And governments could just subsidise the power of poor people, whom are the most likely to be cut off. They could pay their power bills directly to ensure the money goes towards the power bills. We already pay the elderly a power subsidy.
“There is nowhere in the world where microgrids are not a better solution. ”
Just an assertion. We have several huge hydro dams with decades of life left in them. You could centre a community around the output of just one dam, but I don’t know if that qualifies as a micro grid. It would be a huge micro grid if it is. It would be a very disruptive and expensive restructuring exercise for some very small gain in freedom from wide area blackouts.
Reading the right news sources will increase the truthfulness of your knowledge.
zebrasays
patrick027 #202-205,
Interesting graphs, patrick. Your comments help to illustrate the problem with conflating “finance” with the physical reality of the human condition, which is at the core of Ray’s obvious cognitive confusion.
In my steady-state scenario, the way we “keep the books” is irrelevant to the question of sustainability.
Al Bundysays
K 166: during the 16th or 17th century even in “developed” economies inflation over the entire century was damned near zero.
BPL: Your history is as good as your economics, which is to say, completely incompetent.
Spain and Portugal suffered terrible inflation in the 16th and 17th centuries due to all the gold they brought back from Latin America
AB: Cool. We get tofind out if Killian has any honor. Will he admit non-perfection?
Al Bundysays
zebra: But you keep making what to me is a bizarre claim, that the act of borrowing money itself necessitates increased consumption of energy and resources under the conditions of the experiment
AB: Well, he was assuming that the borrower is foolish enough to do something productive in order to accumulate the funds necessary to pay back the loan.
Ray: compound interest grows exponentially. Therefore to pay off the loan, your production must rise exponentially as well.
AB: I’ve never noticed. In fact, I’ve found that banks insist that inventors MUST waste gobs of money on irrelevancies, like personal spending.
So their numbers are stupid beyond belief. And loans ALWAYS require no more than a declining income to pay off.
“Compound interest” doesn’t do diddly unless you skip payments. If you pay off this month’s interest (as you agreed to try to do) there’s nothing to compound.
Al Bundysays
John Kelly: Electrical generation is the low-hanging fruit of decarbonization
AB: Perhaps. But I disagree quite strongly. Negawatts are the low-hanging fruit. Compare a shrink-plastic storm window to whichever tech you are promoting.
I guarantee that $5 piece of plastic will out-perform your proposal by at least an order of magnitude.
Extinction 2.0says
Things being framed like the “Denial and Alarmism in the Near-Term Extinction and Collapse Debate:” are far too managed, manipulated and massaged for my liking.
Too much facade. Too much self-imposed ignorance in those kinds of ‘flacid/fake/polite’ discussions. Arguing about arguing while learning nothing, changing nothing in how people thinking and act, imo.
I don’t suppose anyone’s bothered to share Chomsky’s latest book round these parts? I figured not. It’s everywhere else out there. Dozens of interviews he’s given despite his age … kind of a last gasp flurry before he passes on.
Author Caitlin Johnstone from Melbourne does her bit, snapping at people’s heels, not making much of difference, but still nice to hear the truth being addressed occasionally head on in your face like. What’s not to like about that?
“Normal Has Failed. Be As Weird As You Like.”
We find ourselves in a society that has been built from the ground up almost entirely at the direction of sociopaths, for the benefit of sociopaths.
Nations point armageddon weapons at one another as a vast globe-spanning empire works toward total planetary domination.
Mass-scale human behavior is driven predominantly by the pursuit of profit, and all the most profitable behaviors involve inflicting trauma of some sort: war, militarism, monopolism, usury, strip mining, fossil fuels, factory farming, ads convincing us we’re deficient, etc.
And we’re on track to traumatize ourselves right out of existence very soon.
What this means is that, while on paper we are a successful organism in terms of population and domination of the food chain, we are actually as spectacular a failure as any life form can possibly be. The only species which could arguably rival our failure might be the prehistoric cyanobacteria, which, like homo sapiens, became too populous too quickly for the ecosystem to sustain and caused a mass extinction.
We are not going to consume our way out of this mess. We are not going to compete our way out of this mess. And we are most certainly not going to imperialism our way out of this mess. Those who think we will are delusional. Our old way of doing things has failed.
The path out of this mess can only lie in the exact opposite direction of the path which led us into it. This doesn’t mean ripping apart the earth searching for magical forms of renewable energy and sending rocket ships into space to warehouse all the excess humans so we can keep doing what we’ve been doing.
It means turning around and moving into a collaborative relationship with each other and with our ecosystem. That is the only way.
What this means for you, personally, is that you have no responsibility toward any of the old mechanisms which have led us to the brink of extinction, because those mechanisms have failed. Utterly and indisputably.
As a human being, you may safely flush your loyalties to any system which has been a part of humanity’s march to extinction right down the toilet. The political systems, the mindsets, the religions, the culture.
It has all failed, so you owe none of it any loyalty.
In fact, you may feel free to reject anything that your society regards as “normal”, because your society is as sick and insane as a society can possibly be.
“Normal” has led to a world that is dying and a society that is insane.
The more successful will have a cultural leaning toward scientific method without the leather covered desks and sandstone.
Ray Ladburysays
Zebra:
OK, explain how this premise: “In my sustainable scenario, with a stable population and a relative abundance of resources,”
leads to this conclusion: “there would be no exponential growth in consumption.”
In fact, abundance of resources would be more likely to lead to growth in consumption. All that is required for growth of consumption is a desire for more–which is pretty much an innate human trait! Hell, it’s a trait of life in general.
It is certainly not inevitable that humans will develop a steady-state or even a quasi sustainable economy. In fact the only thing that is inevitable for humans is our eventual extinction. The Ubermensch is a cockroach.
Ray Ladburysays
Zebra,
So let’s impose a “real-world” example on your imaginary static society–Bitcoin. We can argue about whether Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are good. We can even argue about whether they are “real”. And, sure, maybe the initial demand was mainly potheads and other druggies. However, there is no arguing that they haven’t had consequences. Before 2009, they didn’t exist. Now, they consume energy of a mid-sized, middle-income state. They are inherently in finite supply. They are novel. They remain in high demand even now.
So, how does an unforeseen technological development like this fit into your scheme. And it doesn’t even have to be something new. It could be something old–certainly not everyone will have a Van Gogh or a Monet. Or very, very old–not everyone is going to have a 5 carat blue diamond.
Killiansays
Hmmm… Multiple studies find a decent lifestyle at 90% of American consumption?
So… Ten years ahead of the curve… again?
You might want to start listening…
“Not only can a sufficient decoupling of environmental and detrimental social impacts from economic growth not be achieved by technological innovation alone, but also the profit-driven mechanism of prevailing economic systems prevents the necessary reduction of impacts and resource utilisation per se.”
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way.
The paper reviews a range of “bottom-up studies” showing that dramatic reductions in our material footprint are perfectly possible while still maintaining good material living standards.
In India, Brazil and South Africa, “decent living standards” can be supported “with around 90 percent less per-capita energy use than currently consumed in affluent countries.”
Now, once again, I’m no scientist. How did I come up with that 80~90% numberover a decade ago? Why have I been able to say the very principles, patterns and structures of Capitalism are incompatible with continued societal and ecological integrity so long before the science was able to? Or the economists?
We know that capacity shortfalls played a major role in the CAISO’s ability to maintain reliable service on the grid.
To put it bluntly, the “renewables” don’t provide capacity. Their nameplate generation can’t be relied upon. And demand was hardly excessive:
The grid conditions of August 14 and 15, with peak demands of approximately 47,000 MW and 45,000 MW respectively, were high but not above similar hot days in prior years.
The problem is 100% on the supply end, where Commiefornia has been shutting down dispatchable generation under the erroneous impression that energy sometime, somewhere can supply real-time demand, and that they can leech off resources built in other states indefinitely.
The CPUC ordered 3,300 MW of new capacity to come online by 2023 to meet potential shortfalls that were identified when it adjusted assumptions to reflect that peak demand occurs later in the day.
This is roughly equal to the ~4000 MW of generation that is being forced off the grid by the ban on open-loop cooling systems (which was aimed at Diablo Canyon and has the direct effect of increasing NG demand and carbon emissions).
The bottom line right now seems to be that we don’t actually have a full explanation for what happened.
The bottom line is that if the state hadn’t bullied San Onofre out of business, none of this would have happened.
Killiansays
Remarably?! Of courseably! Duhably! No shitably!
Goodness…
I told you all: Tech cannot save us: Diminishing returns, efficiency never outruns consumption, etc.
Remarkably, consumption (and to a lesser extent population) growth have mostly outrun any beneficial effects of changes in technology over the past few decades. These results hold for the entire world22,23 as well as for numerous individual countries.
Ken Fabiansays
A fumble on the keyboard and my comment is lost – or perhaps submitted before ready?
nigelj @200 –
Rather than do it all again I’ll just say I think space based power and resources are far too speculative to be a factor in the choices we face. I think resource markets – even flawed as they are – will signal real resource constraints in enough time and we aren’t locked into anything we cannot shift course on. I think the greatest problems are not technological or resource based but political, that so long as Doubt, Deny, Delay politics is a significant mainstream climate “policy” by major political parties every choice will be harder than it needs to be – and I think that whilst RE can, for the near future, continue to do okay despite it, Nuclear cannot.
zebrasays
Ray Ladbury #215,216,
In fact, abundance of resources would be more likely to lead to growth in consumption. All that is required for growth of consumption is a desire for more–which is pretty much an innate human trait! Hell, it’s a trait of life in general.
No, Ray, a “desire for more” is not all that is required…you must also have the capacity to physically consume. So even the most irrational person would at most achieve logistic growth that terminates, not exponential as you claim. There’s only so much you can eat.
(I used to fish a lot, and on occasion catch a smallmouth bass with a gullet so engorged that prey would come flopping out of its mouth as I reeled it in. My understanding is that fish feeding is triggered by conditions; there is no limit to their “appetite”, but there is to their actual consumption.)
Anyway, the point is that even if you were crazy and wanted to burn as much fossil fuel as possible just for the sake of it, you would have to be able to extract it. How would you do that? What would you use to pay people to mine coal, in a world where there is abundant land to grow food and biofuel, and put up wind and solar panels, and so on?
Maybe you are suggesting that some kind of cult-like mass psychosis would be going on, which may be why you bring up bitcoin, but I’m pretty sure I stipulated in my early comments that I assume people would act with rational self-interest. And the conditions I describe would favor that rationality, if you think about it.
As for art collecting or jewelry, I don’t see where you are going with that, since you are talking about existing artifacts?
People might well make art, which would require consumption, but there’s no “exponential growth” involved. This is true for other activities as well. Populations are what grow exponentially, and that both directly drives net consumption and indirectly drives increases in per-capita consumption.
He’ll quote cherry-pick the bit that says what he wants, but ignore this statement just a few paragraphs later:
…our organizations want to be clear about one factor that did not cause the rotating outage: California’s commitment to clean energy. Renewable energy did not cause the rotating outages. Our organizations understand the impacts wind and solar have on the grid. We have already taken many steps to integrate these resources, but we clearly need to do more. Clean energy and reliable energy are not contradictory goals.
Which cherry-picking is quite consistent with ignoring the contribution of constrained energy imports to the blackouts:
The CAISO has observed that during the current heat wave, energy supporting imports from other Western utilities have been significantly constrained during the late afternoon and evening hours, as those other utilities must plan to meet their own demand and have limited ability to export supplies to California. This hampers the CAISO’s ability to secure net import energy sufficient to meet evening ramping requirements.
I love this E-P statement, I must say:
Because that’s what everyone with a brain has been predicting since this cockamamie policy was enacted.
Not every day do you get such a sterling example of confirmation bias in action.
jgnfldsays
@KIA…”Reading the right news sources will increase the truthfulness of your knowledge.”
Quite true. Unfortunately for you breitbart is a wrong news source.
nigeljsays
Extinction 2.0 @214
“Hunter-gatherer societies are the future….Embrace it….The more successful will have a cultural leaning toward scientific method without the leather covered desks and sandstone.”
Yeah possibly in 1000 years time, just possibly. How is that relevant to me?
Right now we have actual problems to deal with, and have to figure out a solution that isn’t barking mad crazy and very unlikely to be widely adopted. At least renewable energy has a reasonable chance of being adopted given the costs per mwhr.
nigeljsays
Zebra @221 says”No, Ray, a “desire for more” is not all that is required…you must also have the capacity to physically consume. So even the most irrational person would at most achieve logistic growth that terminates, not exponential as you claim. There’s only so much you can eat.”
True in respect of food, but I can imagine a small population world where people go on owning more and more new things, as a status display, especially given there might be ample raw materials, or it could be scavenging existing aftefacts. This growth could be exponential for a limited time period, but obviously not forever and probably more likely to be linear.
Zebra seems to think his small population society inherently solves all problems and somehow be self stabilising. I’ve challenged this before. It could still do “bad stuff” because humans are perverse creatures.
All a smaller population does is shift things in a certain direction, with some benefits like less resource wars, and greater efficiencies. But for every positive trend, there’s a countervailing negative trend that will have some impact and will probably need to be mitigated.
So I think a decent small population civilisation will also need a big change in values, hopefully towards a little bit less materialism, and more kindness. Its a moral issue.
But given it will be decades to centuries getting to that size, a big change in values seems plausible to me. (Optimist hat on.) And to be fair, a declining population size might reinforce a change in values. Haven’t thought much about how that may play out, but I suspect we will still have to fight for what we think are the right values.
Killiansays
Susyainability? Safe climate? I told you: You can’t do that via Capitalism.
To limit global warming to not more than 2 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, at least two of the three large regions need to reorganize their economies to operate with zero or negative growth. Such a reorganization cannot be achieved under a capitalist economic system given the inherent tendency of capitalism towards endless accumulation. Neither is it likely to be achieved under any conceivable economic system dominated by market relations.
“Perhaps. But I disagree quite strongly. Negawatts are the low-hanging fruit. Compare a shrink-plastic storm window to whichever tech you are promoting.”
Are you talking about those cheap stick on plastic double glazing systems? I read a review recently, and apparently they are pretty good. Have this on my to do list. Not worth double glazing my house properly, because its too old to be worth it.
nigeljsays
Killian @217 says “Hmmm… Multiple studies find a decent lifestyle at 90% of American consumption?”….The paper reviews a range of “bottom-up studies” showing that dramatic reductions in our material footprint are perfectly possible while still maintaining good material living standards. The study:”
The study is interesting, and I would like to add that the study goes on to say ….. “In current capitalist economies such reduction pathways would imply widespread economic recession with a cascade of currently socially detrimental effects, such as a collapse of the stock market, unemployment, firm bankruptcies and lack of credit50,58. ”
I’ve said before some sort of systems change will crash the economy badly like this, especially if its rapid, and we would need a slow transition to avoid such problems. The study explores some solutions to these problems, but none of it looks quick or easy.
All these problems with capitalism and its impacts on the environment, resource scarcity and over population are obvious and have been known for decades since Limits to Growth was published in 1972. I remember reading about all this at the time when I was a teenager. The United Nations published a study that suggested western countries could reduce consumption by 80% – 90% about 5 years ago.
The trouble is none of these solutions are easy, problem free fixes. Its hard to see all the implications. However a focus on making big reductions in waste would be a start and looks possible to me without causing a painful economic collapse.
nigeljsays
Extinction 2.0 @213 posts”We find ourselves in a society that has been built from the ground up almost entirely at the direction of sociopaths, for the benefit of sociopaths.”
A somewhat exaggerated claim. From psychopathy ( sociopathy) in the workforce on wikipedia : “Hare reports that about 1 percent of the general population meets the clinical criteria for psychopathy. Hare further claims that the prevalence of psychopaths is higher in the business world than in the general population. Figures of around 3–4% have been cited for more senior positions in business. A 2011 study of Australian white-collar managers found that 5.76 percent could be classed as psychopathic and another 10.42 percent dysfunctional with psychopathic characteristics.[12]”
I like this guy’s channel. Today’s but is about long distance transmission, you know, that thing EP says is useless. https://youtu.be/rThkjp-bp8M
Al Bundysays
Killian: “WHAT economies of scale? How do you still not understand SYSTEM change?”
AB: Education, training, practice, and continual use of tools.
You go to everyone researching and learning and designing and…..
You paying everyone for that time and effort? For their tools they use a couple times a decade? For their total losses when they screw up?
Dude.
Al Bundysays
Nigel: Other countries are not the same as America.
AB: As a ‘merican I am appalled at how widespread inferiority is. Makes me proud that We leave crumbs for the less Super Duper.
Al Bundysays
Nigel: Not worth double glazing my house properly, because its too old to be worth it.
AB: You planning on declaring bankruptcy? Going without food or meds so you can scrimp enough to walk your talk?
Or are you just another closet Capitalist who will ef the planet if it would lower your net worth to do the right thing?
A Democratic Socialist would think of the families that would cherish your upgraded house. That’s a grand legacy, eh? Like planting a tree.
So, go cheap with shrinkwrap or alter your legacy with renovations (I’m a good architect).
But get your butt in gear.
William B Jacksonsays
#208 Breitbart…a right source for news LOL! Well it is”right” far to the right of reality! KIA amusing but not relevant!
nigeljsays
Al Bundy @234, no my house really is too old to be worth upgrading with double glazing. Its past its use by date, and is getting rather close to needing to be demolished. Upgrades like double glazing would be money down the drain.
The basic distinction comes down to the idea that psychopaths are malfunctioning individuals whereas sociopaths are functioning parasites preying on other humans.
He’ll quote cherry-pick the bit that says what he wants, but ignore this statement just a few paragraphs later:
…our organizations want to be clear about one factor that did not cause the rotating outage: California’s commitment to clean energy. Renewable energy did not cause the rotating outages. Our organizations understand the impacts wind and solar have on the grid. We have already taken many steps to integrate these resources, but we clearly need to do more. Clean energy and reliable energy are not contradictory goals.
Because that conclusion is not supported by the facts; it contradicts them. The electric grid, California’s included, requires dispatchable generation fed by sufficient stockpiles of energy in order to provide reliable delivery. The push for “renewable energy”, which relies on immediate flows and has no stockpiles to tap, has resulted in the closure of dispatchable capacity, leading directly to the present situation.
California had the option to have both clean and reliable energy, but it chose to bully all of it out of existence. Now the state is paying the price for such damnfoolishness.
Which cherry-picking is quite consistent with ignoring the contribution of constrained energy imports to the blackouts
Exporting more and more electric generation to put the associated emissions out of sight and out of mind is part and parcel of that damnfoolishness.
I came across this excerpt of a speech the US Ambassador to the UK, Gil Winant, gave in May 1941, just after the most destructive night of the Blitz. “We have made our tasks infinitely more difficult because we failed to do yesterday what we are glad to do today. To delay longer will make the war more protracted and increase the sacrifices for victory. Let us stop asking ourselves if it is necessary to do more now. Let us ask ourselves what more we can do today, so we have less to sacrifice tomorrow.” [From Citizens of London]
I couldn’t help but think of the decarbonization dithering of the last three decades.
Killiansays
There is nothing that *doesn’t* strongly favor Deep Simplicity and #RegenerativeGovernance.
237 Barton Paul Levenson K 226: Sustainability? Safe climate? I told you: You can’t do that via Capitalism.
BPL: In Killian’s ideal society, supply and demand no longer apply!
Correct. Not financially. We design to needs. When those are met, then you can address wants, but everybody’s not just yours.
I do note you continuing the common practice on these pages of calling concepts and ideas “Killian’s” while responding to posts that make it clear these are not just my ideas. Very adult of you, my boy.
Depressing, and certainly worth bearing in mind. However, there is the fact that over lo, these many decades, the IEA has never once been right about the progress of renewable energy. They have always badly underestimated deployments and growth.
” K 226: Sustainability? Safe climate? I told you: You can’t do that via Capitalism……BPL: In Killian’s ideal society, supply and demand no longer apply!….K: Correct. Not financially. We design to needs. When those are met, then you can address wants, but everybody’s not just yours.”
Now I dont agree with what BPL appears to be saying, because Capitalism is not defined by supply and demand as such. Supply and demand applies in socialist societies as well. Capitalism and socialism are defined primarily by the type of ownership structure (simple dictionary definition).
But supply and demand are not just financial terms. They are terms for real world phenomena and how they interact. Farmers supply goods, people demand goods do they not Killian? This applies in a regenerative society, does it not? However the interplay of supply and demand might be more controlled rather than left to the market.
I would say capitalism addresses needs first then wants, otherwise we would all be dead. The trouble is capitalism encourages or enables a lot of planet killings wants, and so a capitalist society would have to exercise a great deal of self discipline and self restraint to counter the problem.
A regenerative society would take the focus off wants a bit, but once you take away private ownership in modern societies the evidence suggests people just stop caring and things stagnate, in most cases anyway. And getting off the drug of capitalism may be difficult.
So what we have to do is push capitalism to be as environmentally friendly as possible. If people want to try to build another new society fine, but it won’t happen overnight, and so we have to make the capitalism work better environmentally.
Mr. Know It Allsays
nigelj,
I’ve used those shrink wrap storm windows. They help by adding a dead air space which increases the R-value of the window, and they reduce infiltration of cold air into your house. You have to redo them every year, but they aren’t hard to apply if you have the time. I’ve applied them on both the inside and the outside.
You might also make your own storm windows using plexiglass and some hanger bolts and perhaps wing nuts (no, not left-wing nuts).
Be careful though because wind may put large loads on a stiff piece of plexiglass that could pull the hanger bolts out if not strong enough. If that happens the plexiglass may become a flying guillotine. Not good.
BPL: In Killian’s ideal society, supply and demand no longer apply!
K 244: Correct.
BPL: There you have it, folks! Humanity has been replaced by the New Socialist Man!
K: Not financially. We design to needs. When those are met, then you can address wants, but everybody’s not just yours.
BPL: And Killian thinks “supply” and “demand” are individual. Way to critique something you don’t understand, Killian! Like a creationist talking about biology.
E-P, of course, blames the California blackouts recently on RE, because, well, that’s what he does.
But it’s probably not true:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/08/why-renewables-arent-reason-california-blackouts/
The bottom line right now seems to be that we don’t actually have a full explanation for what happened. Though I can’t help but point out that this particular contributing factor has so far not inspired anyone to claim that fossil-fueled thermal generation is ‘unreliable’ and ‘unable to power a modern industrial society’:
Seems a little ironic to me, somehow, but there you are.
Consider a person going through different stages in finance. They take out a loan. No payments – debt grows exponentially. But then they pay off the loan. They put money into savings. Don’t touch savings – exponential growth. But eventually they withdraw money. Using dividends to buy stock – growth. But then they sell. If they leave the same for the next generation as they inherited, no net growth.
Consider a person going through different stages in finance. They take out a loan. No payments – debt grows exponentially. But then they pay off the loan. They put money into savings. Don’t touch savings – exponential growth. But eventually they withdraw money. Using dividends to buy stock – growth. But then they sell. If they leave the same for the next generation as they inherited, no net growth.
In aggregate, everyone is in different stages at any time, so payments on interest on loans amount to a steady stream of income to the banks, which come from a steady stream of income for the loan holders, and which goes into savings accounts, bank employees’ income, and covering defaults.
As for competition driving growth, presumably this depends on expectations, etc. In a world where the economy is shrinking, 0% growth is competitive.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/age-dependency-ratio-projected-to-2100
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-by-age-group-to-2100?stackMode=relative
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-by-age-group-to-2100?stackMode=relative&country=~USA
It doesn’t look catastrophic to me (work-age population / total population), although this is for a higher population growth scenario than was in the Lancet article linked to somewhere in the above comments.
Killian @198
“The neighbours might help people out with their power bills, ”
“WHAT power bills? MICRO-grid.”
There are many types of microgrids as below, and people pay for the power in some of them.
https://www.energy.gov/articles/how-microgrids-work
“but you loose the economies of scale”
“WHAT economies of scale? How do you still not understand SYSTEM change?”
We loose the economies of scale of the present large centralised system. Instead a whole lot of smaller units are being substituted. But it looks like it wouldn’t be a huge problem
“The government is gonna pay our bills? We’re in the middle of freaking pandemic and the governments around the world, and especially the US, are telling people to stay home and then to basically chew on their furniture if they get hungry, but you think governments are gonna subsidize EVERYONE’S energy costs?”
No I said its a possible solution. I would say its no more or less likely to happen than most of your ideas. Anyway the pandemic wont last forever, so wait for that to finish.
I think a lot of your views are coloured by Americas problems. Other countries are not the same as America.
And governments could just subsidise the power of poor people, whom are the most likely to be cut off. They could pay their power bills directly to ensure the money goes towards the power bills. We already pay the elderly a power subsidy.
“There is nowhere in the world where microgrids are not a better solution. ”
Just an assertion. We have several huge hydro dams with decades of life left in them. You could centre a community around the output of just one dam, but I don’t know if that qualifies as a micro grid. It would be a huge micro grid if it is. It would be a very disruptive and expensive restructuring exercise for some very small gain in freedom from wide area blackouts.
An impressive summary of how little is required for optimal recovery from nuclear incidents such as Chernobyl and especially Fukushima:
https://redirect.viglink.com/?format=go&jsonp=vglnk_159859582712110&key=71fe2139a887ad501313cd8cce3053c5&libId=keduocyf0102ylrr000MA3z9nbzqu&loc=https%3A%2F%2Fbravenewclimate.proboards.com%2Fposts%2Frecent&v=1&out=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.generationatomic.org%2Fskim%2Ftruth-about-nuclear-risk&ref=https%3A%2F%2Fbravenewclimate.proboards.com%2F&title=Recently%20Updated%20Posts%20%7C%20BNC%20Discussion%20Forum&txt=www.generationatomic.org%2Fskim%2Ftruth-about-nuclear-risk
201 – Kevin M
“….The bottom line right now seems to be that we don’t actually have a full explanation for what happened…”
Actually, even California Guvnuh Newsom admits that RE failed to do the job:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/08/17/nolte-blackouts-force-newsom-to-admit-green-energy-falls-short/
Reading the right news sources will increase the truthfulness of your knowledge.
patrick027 #202-205,
Interesting graphs, patrick. Your comments help to illustrate the problem with conflating “finance” with the physical reality of the human condition, which is at the core of Ray’s obvious cognitive confusion.
In my steady-state scenario, the way we “keep the books” is irrelevant to the question of sustainability.
K 166: during the 16th or 17th century even in “developed” economies inflation over the entire century was damned near zero.
BPL: Your history is as good as your economics, which is to say, completely incompetent.
Spain and Portugal suffered terrible inflation in the 16th and 17th centuries due to all the gold they brought back from Latin America
AB: Cool. We get tofind out if Killian has any honor. Will he admit non-perfection?
zebra: But you keep making what to me is a bizarre claim, that the act of borrowing money itself necessitates increased consumption of energy and resources under the conditions of the experiment
AB: Well, he was assuming that the borrower is foolish enough to do something productive in order to accumulate the funds necessary to pay back the loan.
Ray: compound interest grows exponentially. Therefore to pay off the loan, your production must rise exponentially as well.
AB: I’ve never noticed. In fact, I’ve found that banks insist that inventors MUST waste gobs of money on irrelevancies, like personal spending.
So their numbers are stupid beyond belief. And loans ALWAYS require no more than a declining income to pay off.
“Compound interest” doesn’t do diddly unless you skip payments. If you pay off this month’s interest (as you agreed to try to do) there’s nothing to compound.
John Kelly: Electrical generation is the low-hanging fruit of decarbonization
AB: Perhaps. But I disagree quite strongly. Negawatts are the low-hanging fruit. Compare a shrink-plastic storm window to whichever tech you are promoting.
I guarantee that $5 piece of plastic will out-perform your proposal by at least an order of magnitude.
Things being framed like the “Denial and Alarmism in the Near-Term Extinction and Collapse Debate:” are far too managed, manipulated and massaged for my liking.
Too much facade. Too much self-imposed ignorance in those kinds of ‘flacid/fake/polite’ discussions. Arguing about arguing while learning nothing, changing nothing in how people thinking and act, imo.
I don’t suppose anyone’s bothered to share Chomsky’s latest book round these parts? I figured not. It’s everywhere else out there. Dozens of interviews he’s given despite his age … kind of a last gasp flurry before he passes on.
Internationalism Or Extinction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwN5BV8vZUg
Author Caitlin Johnstone from Melbourne does her bit, snapping at people’s heels, not making much of difference, but still nice to hear the truth being addressed occasionally head on in your face like. What’s not to like about that?
“Normal Has Failed. Be As Weird As You Like.”
We find ourselves in a society that has been built from the ground up almost entirely at the direction of sociopaths, for the benefit of sociopaths.
Nations point armageddon weapons at one another as a vast globe-spanning empire works toward total planetary domination.
Mass-scale human behavior is driven predominantly by the pursuit of profit, and all the most profitable behaviors involve inflicting trauma of some sort: war, militarism, monopolism, usury, strip mining, fossil fuels, factory farming, ads convincing us we’re deficient, etc.
And we’re on track to traumatize ourselves right out of existence very soon.
What this means is that, while on paper we are a successful organism in terms of population and domination of the food chain, we are actually as spectacular a failure as any life form can possibly be. The only species which could arguably rival our failure might be the prehistoric cyanobacteria, which, like homo sapiens, became too populous too quickly for the ecosystem to sustain and caused a mass extinction.
We are not going to consume our way out of this mess. We are not going to compete our way out of this mess. And we are most certainly not going to imperialism our way out of this mess. Those who think we will are delusional. Our old way of doing things has failed.
The path out of this mess can only lie in the exact opposite direction of the path which led us into it. This doesn’t mean ripping apart the earth searching for magical forms of renewable energy and sending rocket ships into space to warehouse all the excess humans so we can keep doing what we’ve been doing.
It means turning around and moving into a collaborative relationship with each other and with our ecosystem. That is the only way.
What this means for you, personally, is that you have no responsibility toward any of the old mechanisms which have led us to the brink of extinction, because those mechanisms have failed. Utterly and indisputably.
As a human being, you may safely flush your loyalties to any system which has been a part of humanity’s march to extinction right down the toilet. The political systems, the mindsets, the religions, the culture.
It has all failed, so you owe none of it any loyalty.
In fact, you may feel free to reject anything that your society regards as “normal”, because your society is as sick and insane as a society can possibly be.
“Normal” has led to a world that is dying and a society that is insane.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/08/28/normal-has-failed-be-as-weird-as-you-like/
Have a lovely day now ya hear.
@Ray Ladbury etc
Hunter-gatherer societies are the future.
Embrace it.
The more successful will have a cultural leaning toward scientific method without the leather covered desks and sandstone.
Zebra:
OK, explain how this premise: “In my sustainable scenario, with a stable population and a relative abundance of resources,”
leads to this conclusion: “there would be no exponential growth in consumption.”
In fact, abundance of resources would be more likely to lead to growth in consumption. All that is required for growth of consumption is a desire for more–which is pretty much an innate human trait! Hell, it’s a trait of life in general.
It is certainly not inevitable that humans will develop a steady-state or even a quasi sustainable economy. In fact the only thing that is inevitable for humans is our eventual extinction. The Ubermensch is a cockroach.
Zebra,
So let’s impose a “real-world” example on your imaginary static society–Bitcoin. We can argue about whether Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are good. We can even argue about whether they are “real”. And, sure, maybe the initial demand was mainly potheads and other druggies. However, there is no arguing that they haven’t had consequences. Before 2009, they didn’t exist. Now, they consume energy of a mid-sized, middle-income state. They are inherently in finite supply. They are novel. They remain in high demand even now.
So, how does an unforeseen technological development like this fit into your scheme. And it doesn’t even have to be something new. It could be something old–certainly not everyone will have a Van Gogh or a Monet. Or very, very old–not everyone is going to have a 5 carat blue diamond.
Hmmm… Multiple studies find a decent lifestyle at 90% of American consumption?
So… Ten years ahead of the curve… again?
You might want to start listening…
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/capitalism-is-eroding-safe-operating-space-for-humanity-warn-scientists-6e469132dbba
The study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16941-y
Now, once again, I’m no scientist. How did I come up with that 80~90% numberover a decade ago? Why have I been able to say the very principles, patterns and structures of Capitalism are incompatible with continued societal and ecological integrity so long before the science was able to? Or the economists?
Listen or don’t. Up to you.
Wrote Kevin McKinney @201:
Because that’s what everyone with a brain has been predicting since this cockamamie policy was enacted.
From the report to Gov. Newsom referenced therein:
To put it bluntly, the “renewables” don’t provide capacity. Their nameplate generation can’t be relied upon. And demand was hardly excessive:
The problem is 100% on the supply end, where Commiefornia has been shutting down dispatchable generation under the erroneous impression that energy sometime, somewhere can supply real-time demand, and that they can leech off resources built in other states indefinitely.
This is roughly equal to the ~4000 MW of generation that is being forced off the grid by the ban on open-loop cooling systems (which was aimed at Diablo Canyon and has the direct effect of increasing NG demand and carbon emissions).
The bottom line is that if the state hadn’t bullied San Onofre out of business, none of this would have happened.
Remarably?! Of courseably! Duhably! No shitably!
Goodness…
I told you all: Tech cannot save us: Diminishing returns, efficiency never outruns consumption, etc.
A fumble on the keyboard and my comment is lost – or perhaps submitted before ready?
nigelj @200 –
Rather than do it all again I’ll just say I think space based power and resources are far too speculative to be a factor in the choices we face. I think resource markets – even flawed as they are – will signal real resource constraints in enough time and we aren’t locked into anything we cannot shift course on. I think the greatest problems are not technological or resource based but political, that so long as Doubt, Deny, Delay politics is a significant mainstream climate “policy” by major political parties every choice will be harder than it needs to be – and I think that whilst RE can, for the near future, continue to do okay despite it, Nuclear cannot.
Ray Ladbury #215,216,
No, Ray, a “desire for more” is not all that is required…you must also have the capacity to physically consume. So even the most irrational person would at most achieve logistic growth that terminates, not exponential as you claim. There’s only so much you can eat.
(I used to fish a lot, and on occasion catch a smallmouth bass with a gullet so engorged that prey would come flopping out of its mouth as I reeled it in. My understanding is that fish feeding is triggered by conditions; there is no limit to their “appetite”, but there is to their actual consumption.)
Anyway, the point is that even if you were crazy and wanted to burn as much fossil fuel as possible just for the sake of it, you would have to be able to extract it. How would you do that? What would you use to pay people to mine coal, in a world where there is abundant land to grow food and biofuel, and put up wind and solar panels, and so on?
Maybe you are suggesting that some kind of cult-like mass psychosis would be going on, which may be why you bring up bitcoin, but I’m pretty sure I stipulated in my early comments that I assume people would act with rational self-interest. And the conditions I describe would favor that rationality, if you think about it.
As for art collecting or jewelry, I don’t see where you are going with that, since you are talking about existing artifacts?
People might well make art, which would require consumption, but there’s no “exponential growth” involved. This is true for other activities as well. Populations are what grow exponentially, and that both directly drives net consumption and indirectly drives increases in per-capita consumption.
#218, E-P:
He’ll
quotecherry-pick the bit that says what he wants, but ignore this statement just a few paragraphs later:Which cherry-picking is quite consistent with ignoring the contribution of constrained energy imports to the blackouts:
I love this E-P statement, I must say:
Not every day do you get such a sterling example of confirmation bias in action.
@KIA…”Reading the right news sources will increase the truthfulness of your knowledge.”
Quite true. Unfortunately for you breitbart is a wrong news source.
Extinction 2.0 @214
“Hunter-gatherer societies are the future….Embrace it….The more successful will have a cultural leaning toward scientific method without the leather covered desks and sandstone.”
Yeah possibly in 1000 years time, just possibly. How is that relevant to me?
Right now we have actual problems to deal with, and have to figure out a solution that isn’t barking mad crazy and very unlikely to be widely adopted. At least renewable energy has a reasonable chance of being adopted given the costs per mwhr.
Zebra @221 says”No, Ray, a “desire for more” is not all that is required…you must also have the capacity to physically consume. So even the most irrational person would at most achieve logistic growth that terminates, not exponential as you claim. There’s only so much you can eat.”
True in respect of food, but I can imagine a small population world where people go on owning more and more new things, as a status display, especially given there might be ample raw materials, or it could be scavenging existing aftefacts. This growth could be exponential for a limited time period, but obviously not forever and probably more likely to be linear.
Zebra seems to think his small population society inherently solves all problems and somehow be self stabilising. I’ve challenged this before. It could still do “bad stuff” because humans are perverse creatures.
All a smaller population does is shift things in a certain direction, with some benefits like less resource wars, and greater efficiencies. But for every positive trend, there’s a countervailing negative trend that will have some impact and will probably need to be mitigated.
So I think a decent small population civilisation will also need a big change in values, hopefully towards a little bit less materialism, and more kindness. Its a moral issue.
But given it will be decades to centuries getting to that size, a big change in values seems plausible to me. (Optimist hat on.) And to be fair, a declining population size might reinforce a change in values. Haven’t thought much about how that may play out, but I suspect we will still have to fight for what we think are the right values.
Susyainability? Safe climate? I told you: You can’t do that via Capitalism.
http://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/jwsr/article/view/977
Al Bundy @212
“Perhaps. But I disagree quite strongly. Negawatts are the low-hanging fruit. Compare a shrink-plastic storm window to whichever tech you are promoting.”
Are you talking about those cheap stick on plastic double glazing systems? I read a review recently, and apparently they are pretty good. Have this on my to do list. Not worth double glazing my house properly, because its too old to be worth it.
Killian @217 says “Hmmm… Multiple studies find a decent lifestyle at 90% of American consumption?”….The paper reviews a range of “bottom-up studies” showing that dramatic reductions in our material footprint are perfectly possible while still maintaining good material living standards. The study:”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16941-y
The study is interesting, and I would like to add that the study goes on to say ….. “In current capitalist economies such reduction pathways would imply widespread economic recession with a cascade of currently socially detrimental effects, such as a collapse of the stock market, unemployment, firm bankruptcies and lack of credit50,58. ”
I’ve said before some sort of systems change will crash the economy badly like this, especially if its rapid, and we would need a slow transition to avoid such problems. The study explores some solutions to these problems, but none of it looks quick or easy.
All these problems with capitalism and its impacts on the environment, resource scarcity and over population are obvious and have been known for decades since Limits to Growth was published in 1972. I remember reading about all this at the time when I was a teenager. The United Nations published a study that suggested western countries could reduce consumption by 80% – 90% about 5 years ago.
The trouble is none of these solutions are easy, problem free fixes. Its hard to see all the implications. However a focus on making big reductions in waste would be a start and looks possible to me without causing a painful economic collapse.
Extinction 2.0 @213 posts”We find ourselves in a society that has been built from the ground up almost entirely at the direction of sociopaths, for the benefit of sociopaths.”
A somewhat exaggerated claim. From psychopathy ( sociopathy) in the workforce on wikipedia : “Hare reports that about 1 percent of the general population meets the clinical criteria for psychopathy. Hare further claims that the prevalence of psychopaths is higher in the business world than in the general population. Figures of around 3–4% have been cited for more senior positions in business. A 2011 study of Australian white-collar managers found that 5.76 percent could be classed as psychopathic and another 10.42 percent dysfunctional with psychopathic characteristics.[12]”
Sorry. Here’s the link for 219:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16941-y
I like this guy’s channel. Today’s but is about long distance transmission, you know, that thing EP says is useless.
https://youtu.be/rThkjp-bp8M
Killian: “WHAT economies of scale? How do you still not understand SYSTEM change?”
AB: Education, training, practice, and continual use of tools.
You go to everyone researching and learning and designing and…..
You paying everyone for that time and effort? For their tools they use a couple times a decade? For their total losses when they screw up?
Dude.
Nigel: Other countries are not the same as America.
AB: As a ‘merican I am appalled at how widespread inferiority is. Makes me proud that We leave crumbs for the less Super Duper.
Nigel: Not worth double glazing my house properly, because its too old to be worth it.
AB: You planning on declaring bankruptcy? Going without food or meds so you can scrimp enough to walk your talk?
Or are you just another closet Capitalist who will ef the planet if it would lower your net worth to do the right thing?
A Democratic Socialist would think of the families that would cherish your upgraded house. That’s a grand legacy, eh? Like planting a tree.
So, go cheap with shrinkwrap or alter your legacy with renovations (I’m a good architect).
But get your butt in gear.
#208 Breitbart…a right source for news LOL! Well it is”right” far to the right of reality! KIA amusing but not relevant!
Al Bundy @234, no my house really is too old to be worth upgrading with double glazing. Its past its use by date, and is getting rather close to needing to be demolished. Upgrades like double glazing would be money down the drain.
K 226: Susyainability? Safe climate? I told you: You can’t do that via Capitalism.
BPL: In Killian’s ideal society, supply and demand no longer apply!
@229
Psychopathy and sociopathy aren’t really used clinically any more, however they _are_ different in formal language. See WebMD for a quickie intro: https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/features/sociopath-psychopath-difference#1 .
The basic distinction comes down to the idea that psychopaths are malfunctioning individuals whereas sociopaths are functioning parasites preying on other humans.
Wrote Kevin McKinney @222:
Because that conclusion is not supported by the facts; it contradicts them. The electric grid, California’s included, requires dispatchable generation fed by sufficient stockpiles of energy in order to provide reliable delivery. The push for “renewable energy”, which relies on immediate flows and has no stockpiles to tap, has resulted in the closure of dispatchable capacity, leading directly to the present situation.
California had the option to have both clean and reliable energy, but it chose to bully all of it out of existence. Now the state is paying the price for such damnfoolishness.
Exporting more and more electric generation to put the associated emissions out of sight and out of mind is part and parcel of that damnfoolishness.
It’s very expensive, it’s a net consumer of energy, and there’s no point in building it if you can simply put generation close to the load.
Coal remains: IEA statistics of world’s energy sources:
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-Energy/Fossil-Fuels-Are-Here-To-Stay.html
Goodbye to a mere 2 °C.
I came across this excerpt of a speech the US Ambassador to the UK, Gil Winant, gave in May 1941, just after the most destructive night of the Blitz. “We have made our tasks infinitely more difficult because we failed to do yesterday what we are glad to do today. To delay longer will make the war more protracted and increase the sacrifices for victory. Let us stop asking ourselves if it is necessary to do more now. Let us ask ourselves what more we can do today, so we have less to sacrifice tomorrow.” [From Citizens of London]
I couldn’t help but think of the decarbonization dithering of the last three decades.
There is nothing that *doesn’t* strongly favor Deep Simplicity and #RegenerativeGovernance.
https://twitter.com/slothsforme/status/1300579733139120129?s=20
237 Barton Paul Levenson K 226: Sustainability? Safe climate? I told you: You can’t do that via Capitalism.
BPL: In Killian’s ideal society, supply and demand no longer apply!
Correct. Not financially. We design to needs. When those are met, then you can address wants, but everybody’s not just yours.
I do note you continuing the common practice on these pages of calling concepts and ideas “Killian’s” while responding to posts that make it clear these are not just my ideas. Very adult of you, my boy.
#239, E-P–
That is, the facts E-P chooses to focus on. There were multiple factors involved in the blackouts, but only one that matches his hobby horse.
#241, David Benson–
Depressing, and certainly worth bearing in mind. However, there is the fact that over lo, these many decades, the IEA has never once been right about the progress of renewable energy. They have always badly underestimated deployments and growth.
Hopefully, they are wrong yet again.
Coal forever…
https://techxplore.com/news/2020-09-global-analysis-major-electric-greener.html
” K 226: Sustainability? Safe climate? I told you: You can’t do that via Capitalism……BPL: In Killian’s ideal society, supply and demand no longer apply!….K: Correct. Not financially. We design to needs. When those are met, then you can address wants, but everybody’s not just yours.”
Now I dont agree with what BPL appears to be saying, because Capitalism is not defined by supply and demand as such. Supply and demand applies in socialist societies as well. Capitalism and socialism are defined primarily by the type of ownership structure (simple dictionary definition).
But supply and demand are not just financial terms. They are terms for real world phenomena and how they interact. Farmers supply goods, people demand goods do they not Killian? This applies in a regenerative society, does it not? However the interplay of supply and demand might be more controlled rather than left to the market.
I would say capitalism addresses needs first then wants, otherwise we would all be dead. The trouble is capitalism encourages or enables a lot of planet killings wants, and so a capitalist society would have to exercise a great deal of self discipline and self restraint to counter the problem.
A regenerative society would take the focus off wants a bit, but once you take away private ownership in modern societies the evidence suggests people just stop caring and things stagnate, in most cases anyway. And getting off the drug of capitalism may be difficult.
So what we have to do is push capitalism to be as environmentally friendly as possible. If people want to try to build another new society fine, but it won’t happen overnight, and so we have to make the capitalism work better environmentally.
nigelj,
I’ve used those shrink wrap storm windows. They help by adding a dead air space which increases the R-value of the window, and they reduce infiltration of cold air into your house. You have to redo them every year, but they aren’t hard to apply if you have the time. I’ve applied them on both the inside and the outside.
You might also make your own storm windows using plexiglass and some hanger bolts and perhaps wing nuts (no, not left-wing nuts).
Hanger bolts:
https://www.mcmaster.com/hanger-bolts/stainless-steel-wood-screw-threaded-studs-7/
more:
https://www.mcmaster.com/hanger-bolts
Be careful though because wind may put large loads on a stiff piece of plexiglass that could pull the hanger bolts out if not strong enough. If that happens the plexiglass may become a flying guillotine. Not good.
BPL: In Killian’s ideal society, supply and demand no longer apply!
K 244: Correct.
BPL: There you have it, folks! Humanity has been replaced by the New Socialist Man!
K: Not financially. We design to needs. When those are met, then you can address wants, but everybody’s not just yours.
BPL: And Killian thinks “supply” and “demand” are individual. Way to critique something you don’t understand, Killian! Like a creationist talking about biology.