/sci/ - Science & Math

The big question is, how do we manage this?

I've heard about the concept of a zero-growth economy, but that seems like it would turn the economy into a zero-sum game where one's gain are someone else's loss. Obviously communism is not the solution. So wat do?

Economic growth can continue exponentially. What economic growth actually measures has to change. It can't measure physical products because there are limits on those. Economic growth has to price in ephemeral products. The global economy already seems to be doing this between the boom of algorithmic trading, virtual goods in MMOs and facebook, increasingly massive amounts of entertainment being available etc.

We'll see if this ends up working.

>>3513075

Virtual goods are not free of physical costs. They still require energy, computers, internet connections, etc.

If all further economic growth is virtual, even then I'm not sure it could continue indefinitely. The shift may delay the peak for a while but sooner or later, it must come.

>>3513042
This graph has no labeled y axis. die in a fire.

>do we manage this?

By going to the stars
interplanetary species and all that

There is plenty to grow, there are plenty of poor countries who produce nothing, there are plenty of technologies that will replace the old, there are plenty of new energy resources that will be developed. This is just more Marxist zeitgeist scar tactic shit.

>>3513075

'Economic growth' measures trust.

Captcha: Politics cionsi

>>3513224

Oh come on, that graph is showing 12 different metrics. The y-axis would look like a jumble if it were labelled.

Is this better?

>>3513290

Need a lot moar energy for that

>>3513393

>Marxist

Wat

Pretty sure Marxist economics also believe in infinite growth

There is only one way those graphs can be correct: if there is no innovation anywhere until 2100. The argument of low resources was once used on China and telephones. Many people believed that the Chinese should not be allowed to have a higher standard living since they might buy telephones and they believed that, at the time, there was not enough copper to have most Chinese gain access to telephones. This argument was proven false as we found more efficient ways to make telephones and use copper. Today,the Chinese can use telephones and the price of copper has decreased exponentially.

Also, I believe that pollution graph in the OP is false. Pollution may be growing in 3rd world countries, but it will decrease in time according to the Kuznet's curve just like how the Industrialized nations are developing ways to combat pollution. My point is that the graph would be consistent only if 3rd world countries were going through the same problems as the developed nations are, which they aren't.

>>3515656

It's not innovation that's the problem. We have plenty of innovation. But is it keeping up with human needs?

For example, the 30-year-update edition of LTG brings up the point of food production. Yields having been continuously increasing, true. And it is also true that this is in large part thanks to new technologies and techniques, or the spread of proven old ones to developing countries. GM crops and so forth are also developing. But despite the increase in yields, yield per capita is declining, in almost every crop you could name. This holds true in both developed and developing countries.

The problem isn't our lack of ingenuity, it's that the soil is increasingly eroded and the price of chemical fertilizers has gone up. Weather disasters have been increasing and pummeling the shit out of harvests. And no matter how advanced our agri-tech is, you can't grow a crop on a rocky wasteland economically and sustainably, if you can manage to grow one at all.

>>3515719
With increasing need for solutions, the prices of food will rise. As those prices rise, it will behoove the farmers to use soil erosion prevention and solutions to already eroding land. If Africa gets it shit together, the government could actually try enforcing these methods. The same for other countries facing mass soil erosion. We haven't faced this too much of a problem in the US.

Oh my god. Better get my tin foil

>Implying we wont make a smooth transition to alternative energies over the next 100 years

OP's video is crazy. It just keeps building on questionable statements. No time to really disagree before it throws another one at you.

Regardless of whether the economic growth in the last century is because of oil, you can have economic growth without depleting any resources.

>>3515939
FUCK YEAH! ECONOMICS! Sorry, I don't go to this board often, but have just started getting into it. I always thought this board just focused on Science and Math. Good to see they have economic presence as well. I think I found my new favorite board.

>>3515960

If I had to estimate. Id say 1 in 8 threads are about Econ, and about 1 in 3 of those arent "OMG CAPITALISM/SOCIALISM SUCKS" threads

>>3515969

It works a lot better if you just ignore everything Liberty posts. That cuts down on the shit significantly.

>>3515926

For the record, I'm not blaming HAARP, Rothschilds, Jews, Muslims, Obama, etc.

>>3515939

The video is very short and doesn't explain much, but given that this is 4chan I figured people don't want to watch something extremely long. I guess a better video would be this one, which is an hour long:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

>you can have economic growth without depleting any resources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy

Economic growth that isn't constrained by the laws of thermodynamics is pretty much just magic

>>3515931
> alternative energy
> implying it's anything but a a con the greens use to steal your money

>>3515990

Why is a physics professor trying to explain economics in that video?

This is like a chemist trying to diagnose you.

>>3515994

gb2 /new/

>>3515931
Enjoy your pipe dreams, bro.

>>3515931
we really won't.

There are limits to the primary economy, and that is where we're hitting peak oil, phosphorus, biodiversity loss, etc.

But the current "economic crisis" which isn't a crisis at all is in the secondary or even tertiary economy, made not of physical resources but abstracted currencies and financial instruments. It is essentially a crisis of faith, albeit a completely justified one.

>>3516001

Resident /sci/ economist says that it is possible to grow the economy without spending any resources. This seems to be an absurd statement on its face.

Can someone explain to me how the economy can grow without expending any resources at all?

And the problem isn't growth per se. Obviously we needed to grow to get to the point where we are now, and to enjoy all the benefits of living in an advanced civilization. But the argument in LTG is that the growth cannot continue infinitely into the future.

Here's the part which people will probably find issue with: their World3 model, under business-as-usual inputs, shows a plateau of population and wealth sometime in mid-century, followed by a collapse. This assumes no social factors (wars, revolutions, etc.) don't make the collapse arrive sooner, or revolutionary new technologies delay the collapse a little longer.

What is growth?

>>3516022

I'm not trained in economics, but I've heard that the "real economy" (that is, everything outside of finance) stopped growing since the 1980s, that all the growth since Reagan is an illusion. Does that sound right? Maybe that statement was based on real wages for the middle class or something specific.

>>3516058
Real wages have not kept up with inflation, yeah. Most of the economic growth of the past thirty years has been in credit rather than actual held assets.

>>3516075

Do economists consider this a problem? If so, do they propose any solutions?

>>3516035

Most money that exists now is not tied to any physical resources at all, but is just bits in a computer. Trading resources back and forth can 'grow' the economy in that the money is in a sense 'counted' multiple times.

It's still counted as growth, but no physical things are attached to them. You can't just straight up apply physics to economics anymore, a lot of it is abstract.

>>3513393

we'll get over this crisis, but growth does not last forever

solar power can replace oil, but what's going to replace all those fish in the ocean? and already we've resorted to factory farming

populations don't grow forever, just like humans don't live forever; there is a point where a person reaches his peak and begins to decline

the same can be said for worlds, even universes

>>3516092

Isn't this a problem from a living standards / welfare perspective? It seems to me that this shadow economy exists for the benefit of very few people, if you'll forgive my socialism.

>>3516099

Way deep man

>>3516087
I don't make my living in economics, but from what I've seen they didn't seem to consider it much of a problem until the past few years, and even then they only consider it a problem to be overcome by going back to the way things were previously. The thing about growth based on credit is that so long as some one considers the credit reliable, you'll always have inputs to the economy. It falls apart when people see through the facade, though, which is what started happening in 2008 when the pipe dream that any old person could pay the mortgage on a half million dollar house. But, sad to say, economists mostly seem to consider the result a problem, rather than the crappy foundation. If we could go back to pulling the wool over everyone's eyes, they think, it would all be ok again.

>>3516099
The biological foundation of the human economies are in the worst shape of them all.

>>3516108
Every politicized economy exists for the benefit of a very few people, those being the ones who most influence the socioeconomic laws,.

>>3516099
>solar power can replace oil
LOL, no. Human civilization will decline faster than you think.

>>3516120

i prefer white cats

>>3516137

i don't think so

i've studied solar power, as a consequence of investing, and the gains they make year over year in terms of efficiency/cost are substantial

with oil hovering around 100$/barrel and likely higher in the future it hastens the viability of solar

wind, tidal, biowhatever, all that is relatively bullshit - solar is obvious and eventually the tech will catch up

the world will suffer soon, and war is likely but there will be survivors and a future; that's what we're betting on anyway

it's the only way we'll get there; and if we're wrong, we won't have lost anything that we wouldn't have otherwise

There aren't any Malthusian retards ITT, are there? I hope not.

Anyway, bumping with data about past data and trends to the future.
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth.html

>>3516194

I love that Ted talk, Rosling is one of my heroes.

He's got an awesome youtube video too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo

Just so you all know, total fertility rate is naturally in decline worldwide as a strong function of modernization, and some countries like Russia and Japan are already in population decline. We're slated to keep growing, mainly because of countries that have yet to modernize, to grow to a peak of 9-10 billion shortly after 2050, and then go into decline.
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf

>>3516183

Google has faith in solar for some reason, as well as most other renewables

>>3516194

Key phrase, "... we can stop at 9 billion, if we do the right things."

I don't believe I'm a Malthusian retard, but sometimes I feel pessimistic about us doing the right thing.

Wow, this is some serious-ass neo-Malthusian claptrap. Not at all surprised its from the early 1970s.

What does surprise me is that it wasn't left there.

>>3516224
I agree that fucking up modernization will prevent the median scenario from occurring, but only in places where it fails. Current first-world countries will just have to keep peak oil from completely fucking up the basic environmental conditions and institutions that have resulted in such low total fertility rates.

>>3516228

At first I thought that it was bullshit too, but the data suggests that the original Meadows report has been pretty accurate to real life trends:

http://www.csiro.au/files/files/plje.pdf

One huge thing that was unforeseen by Meadows et al. is global warming, something which scientists in the 1970s weren't too sure about. So arguably real life has turned out worse than predicted.

>>3516246
> Current first-world countries will just have to keep peak oil from completely fucking up the basic environmental conditions

What? Abundant fossil fuels are what is fucking up the environmental conditions!

>>3516246

The problem is that the US is the lynchpin of the global economic system and the international states system, and all efforts to manage transnational, global problems ultimately rests on the American capacity to engage these issues.

Given recent developments (obstruction of science, especially cuts to science and energy R&D), it doesn't seem like the US is up to the task yet.

>>3516224
We;ve been doing the wrong things for so long, why would we change now?

>>3516258
Wrong conditions. I'm not talking about global warming. I'm talking about the things that lower the total fertility rate: standard of living, education, women's rights, access to healthcare that limits infant mortality, etc.

>>3516258

Not the guy you're responding to, but fixing both environmental problems and the peak oil problem ultimately has the same solution. The solution to peak oil is not to redouble efforts to extract more oil, but to find alternatives to oil and make the systemic changes necessary to thrive without oil.

>industrial output
>going down
>more capable of ever before to produce lots of stuff if not for being out of money (an invented resource)

>>3516270
Don't worry, the world won't be up to America.
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_asia_s_rise_how_and_when.html

The world is modernizing and total fertility is falling in spite of America.

>>3516200
Just to clarify, in Russia, the population decline is not due so much to modernization as it is to men's deaths from alcoholism and mass immigration of those able to get out of Russia.

so...i should assume were fucked

alright

>>3516284
I am referring to total fertility rate, not just current decline in living people. The number of children born to a woman. Russia is currently below replacement rate.

>>3516282
No, in the OP graph it's got nothing to do with money, it's got to do with declining net energy and the depletion of capital stock that it entails.

Say's law still holds.

>>3515990
>>3516035

>how can an economy grow without using any resources

Technology. Increased efficiency or productivity.

>>3516274
Oh, well, in that case, it's likely that peak oil could reduce global society's energy supplies below massive growth anyway.

>>3516277
Agreed. We also need to do without coal.

>>3516283

It's true that Asia (esp. China and India) are the rising stars of the new order, but they're not on top yet. Assuming things go as expected they won't match the US in GDP for at least another 20-30 years. For the time being, American participation is essential.

A good example is global warming. Pretty much all the attempts at having a legally binding global treaty (Kyoto, Copenhagen, and the talks in between) have failed because either the Senate or Congress (or both) absolutely refuse to ratify any such treaty. On the bright side, some people are saying that a treaty is unnecessary and that people will see that it's to their own advantage to limit greenhouse emissions.

In b4 conspiracy theorists

>>3516312
> reduce global society's energy supplies below massive growth anyway.
But it's modernization that has lowered total fertility rate. The wealthiest countries have the lowest fertility rates, generally. Were you suggesting that energy limits would curb population growth? That's the Malthusian starvation scenario, and I don't think it's going to be a problem. Standard of living will probably fall in the US, though.

>>3516313
I agree that America isn't irrelevant, and won't be. But at least it won't be the only player in the room.

Frankly, I think peak oil, phosporus, etc. are a bigger problem than global warming, despite its grave implications.

Resources don't run out, they get more expensive. There is no big bucket of oil somewhere that we are draining, even if there were evil corporations would just hoarde the oil to sell later for astronomical prices.

There will be a "bump" before we hit the equilibrium though.

>>3516297

Increased efficiency does conserve resources, true. In terms of opportunity costs you could say it is a reduction in the use of resources, assuming population grows slower than the rate at which efficiency measures are realized. But even so, energy and resources still must be used to produce goods and services, and even at 99.99% efficiency this still means that growth cannot continue indefinitely.

>>3516318
But it was industrialization (and the green revolution) that boosted the population growth rate to such heights in the first place.

>>3516336
Only because more children actually survived, not because they were not born at all.

I'm not sorry we did this. We're leveling off, and I think we'll make it.

>>3516335
>growth cannot continue indefinitely.
Peak population as total fertility rate falls means it doesn't have it.

>>3516346
>means it doesn't have to.
Fixed.

>>3516336

I'm told that economic growth is not strongly correlated with fertility rates.

Saudi Arabia has relatively high GDP/capita, but also an astonishingly high TFR. Uganda has an extremely high TFR even relative to other low income countries. the US has a high TFR relative to other wealthy countries, while several low-income countries are known to have quite low fertility rates. China is the most obvious example.

>>3516352
You were told wrong. Abundant food sources lead to population growth in every species on the planet. There are no known exceptions.

>>3516312

>Agreed. We also need to do without coal.

Natural gas too while we're at it. Maybe not immediately, but if we must use fossil fuels in the transition, then natural gas or CCS coal should be the only permissible type.

>>3516357

Western Europe? They have very abundant food resources, obviously, but most of their countries have at- or below-replacement TFRs

Very funny but we all know you're trolling and capitalism is the perfect economic system that all scientists should be supporting, it's ok though, I accept your apology. You're welcome.

It is no accident that capitalism has brought with it progress not merely in production but also in knowledge. Egoism and competition are, alas, stronger forces than public spirit and sense of duty. In Russia, they say, it is impossible to get a decent piece of bread. ..Perhaps I am over-pessimistic concerning state and other forms of communal enterprise, but I expect little good from them. Bureaucracy is the death of any achievement.
- Albert Einstein

"A planned economy is not socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?"
- Albert Einstein

"An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels. For this reason I have always been passionately opposed to systems such as we see in Russia."
- Albert Einstein

"I didn't write that I was an absolute pacifist but that I have always been a convinced pacifist. That means there are circumstances in which in my opinion it is necessary to use force"
- Albert Einstein

>>3516352
It's not just GDP. It's the economic, educational, social, and health conditions for the bulk of the population. Educational attainment, standard of living, status of women, infant mortality and healthcare, etc.

Pick one of the Hans Rosling videos to watch, maybe one of the ones ITT - they've changed by view of the matter pretty strongly.

>>3516357
You need to look at some actual data. The countries that have the best and most stable access to food have very low total fertility rates. I hate to even have to point it out, but humanity is not a virus.
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth.html

>>3516365
I'm not saying it's the only factor, but agriculture, then industry, then the green revolution played big parts in boosting pop. due to food availability. Also, globally speaking, it's still happening.

>>3516375
> Also, globally speaking, it's still happening.
Growth is still happening, sure. But it's decelerating.

Total fertility rates are declining, though, and are already below replacement rate in some countries.

>>3516368

I've kind of see-sawed in my views. First I see some greenfag's stuff like Bill McKibben. Then Han Rosling changed my mind. Then back to pessimism with the LTG. But I don't think Rosling and LTG are that contradictory. Basically the only difference is that Rosling is an optimist. They both recommend smart policy action instead of just letting things run haywire.

>>3516385
Well, Hans Rosling has lots of hard data, and you're more familiar with LTG than I am. What do they see as the main factor which will make or break humanity's future this century?

>>3516385
I'm
>>3516391
I'm looking up LTG, and this quote under the criticism section of the wiki bothered me.
>"The authors load their case by letting some things grow exponentially and others not. Population, capital and pollution grow exponentially in all models
If that's true, I can't really trust it. You can model population growth as an exponential, sure, but it has a declining growth constant, which will top over into population decrease around 2050 if modernization continues. If the LTG model has exponential growth with a static fertility rate, I can't take it seriously. Do you know whether this is the case?

>>3516367

cool quotes

hope they're real

>>3516495
Why should we care what Einstein thought about government? He was a physicist.

>>3516374

replacement rate was like 5 kids per couple in the 1950s

current lack of reproduction is sign of decline, and pressures otherwise

for centuries europeans have reproduced with the best of them. anomoly of one or two generations does not disprove the rule

>>3516516

he was a thinker, clear and honest and morally humble


rare, in physics or elsewhere

sage

>>3516534
>anomoly of one or two generations does not disprove the rule
what

It's a strong, consistent, and universal trend as a function of modernization. It's not an anomaly. And it's continuing now.

>>3516391

For the LTG guys, the key to collapse is the limits of resources and arable land. If you have exponential growth, then even if you slow the rate of growth, you still surpass limits that the physical environment imposes. The most important of these two limits are of physical resources (minerals and ores, oil, coal, etc.) and of food. Peaking resources results in economic decline, while peaking food production kills people through starvation. Under a business-as-usual scenario, the world is wrecked by environmental damage and people's livelihoods are reduced to a level below 19th-century standards.

Their recommendation is to increase, as much as possible, efficiency in the energy, food, and fuel production. Developing countries should be allowed to develop and to pursue their own growth and to raise their people's standard of living. However, developed countries must become more efficient with their own resource/energy consumption, eat less meat, farm sustainably, and so forth.

>>3516547

modernization is a recent phenomenon

because 100 years ago europeans were reproducing like pakistanis are now

>>3516542
Makes his opinion than average, but doesn't really mean he knew what he was talking about.

I didn't even read the quotes, I'm just challenging what I think is a poor appeal to authority.

>>3516550
So.... you're saying that total fertility decrease is NOT because of modernization? Because there is excellent data ITT that you should probably see.

>>3516552
Makes his opinion better than average
fixed

>>3516548
> If you have exponential growth, then even if you slow the rate of growth, you still surpass limits that the physical environment imposes
Not if the growth constant goes negative.

>>3516403

>If the LTG model has exponential growth with a static fertility rate, I can't take it seriously. Do you know whether this is the case?

Oh no, absolutely not. I'm pretty sure LTG uses the same median population projection that the UN forecasted. The growth rate changes over time, realistically.

>>3516565
OK then. Even including the dip into negative growth after 2050 or so in the median estimate?

I'll look at the LTG stuff more closely, and I agree that Hans Rosling is optimistic, but he has serious data about past trends while LTD is a model that I'm not sure has been validated against those trends.

The real key will be whether modernization can be sustained long in the face of peak oil well enough for population to go into decline naturally (2060 or so).

Does anyone actually believe this Stand on Zanzibar crap? Growth rates are declining across the board. If it gets bad enough, pull a china and do 1/2 child per family.

Also, technology gets better. Fast.

>>3516578

Well, kind of. In the model, growth reverses in the 2050s, when the collapse is forecasted to occur in the business-as-usual scenario. Without looking at the code myself I can't be sure at which point the model diverges from the UN forecast, but I'm certain that the LTG team based their model on UN data.

>LTD is a model that I'm not sure has been validated against those trends.

The original 1972 model was validated against 30 years of real-world data and it turned out to be quite accurate. The study is the last link in the OP.

>>3516617
I'll take a look, thanks.

I think the future is going to ride on whether we transition effectively to non-oil energy sources. We might end up leaning on coal to do it, which wouldn't help global warming at all, but it might be the lesser evil.

>>3516632

I'm not so sure about that last part. Global warming has the potential to be tremendously damaging, and much of the effects are irreversible for many human lifetimes. And while coal is cheap as fuck right now, the externalities (especially air pollution, smog, asthma, etc.) it imposes on society would make it more expensive than nuclear or wind with the same kind of cost analysis. This is without factoring in the effect coal has on global warming. To me it seems the sooner we get off coal, the better.

>>3516685
I agree.

But the other side is what happens if the peak oil energy crisis gets so bad that it threatens a societal collapse strong enough to send fertility rate significantly upwards again. Hopefully it won't get that bad, and we can keep coal use low.

Soooo should I just count us a species fucked or what?

>>3516798
Nah, we'll pull through. It's just a question of how much this century is going to suck before it gets better again.

>>3516752

According to LTG, fertility rates won't increase soon after such a collapse. But yeah, I don't think it would likely get that bad.

The funny thing about LTG is that it had three authors with three different opinions about the future. Meadows was the optimist, and thought that given accurate information people would make the right choice. Her brother thought that people would eventually make the right choice, but only after facing into the abyss. Things will turn out okay, but not as good as it could have been. Jorgen Rangers was the pessimist, and believed that humanity would sink itself. I'm also holding the middle opinion.

Two things I forgot the mention, the copy of LTG I have sitting here does in fact use UN data, but it's third edition published in 2004. I'm actually not sure if the original 1972 report used the UN or some other authority for their population figures. Also, a peer-reviewed published version of "A comparison of The Limits to Growth with 30 years of reality":

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378008000435

Will upload to mediafire if you don't have subscription access.

>>3516558

that's not what i'm saying; nor is it not what i'm not saying.

>>3516818

I wish I was more knowledgeable on this subject so I could discuss this and be able to understand what the fuck is going on.

>>3516851
Try starting with understanding past trends this century.
>>3516374

>>3516857
Or rather, in the last 100 years.

>>3516548
Once again, Environmental Kuznet's Curve.

Or, in a more basic way, industrialization reduces the need for population. Industrialization's byproduct, pollution, inihibits longevity while another byproduct (modern medicine) increases longevity and allows the genetically unfit to reproduce. So population grows until the food supply is insufficient, and humans die from the bottom up. Industrialization consumes resources until the lack of resources stops industrialization, which then cuts into longevity, and natural selection returns to the forefront.

Or, in even simpler terms, human intelligence is man's undoing.

>>3516857

That was an interesting watch, and something that was actually quite alleviating on me. The way he explains certainly sounds a lot more optimistic than he presents it. A "it can be done, but it will probably suck" kind of scenario.

>>3516851

An explanation:

1. Life used to suck. It used to suck hard. You became a man at 14, tilled the land, took on a wife, beat her up, knocked her up maybe ten times. Perhaps five of those times the babies lived past their first year. Of those, maybe one or two survived to adulthood. This is how life was for everyone, until the industrial revolution.

2. The industrial revolution unleashed the power of fossil fuels on the world, allowing humanity to grow at an exponential rate in population, industrial production, and resource consumption. After a while, many people began living longer, healthier, and happier lives.

3. The developed countries of the world (Western Europe, the Anglophone colonies, Japan, Israel) now live comfortable and privileged lives compared to their ancestors and to the rest of the world. With women able to work their own careers, and with a much lower infant mortality rate, family sizes got smaller. But now everyone else in the developing world is growing their economies too, and their populations are growing very fast as well.

>>3516923
>Or, in even simpler terms, human intelligence is man's undoing.
You've left out the part where industrialization also reduces human voluntary birth rates, and our total fertility rate is going to drop below replacement this century.

tl;dr you're a Malthusian and Malthus was wrong

>>3516943

4. The industrial revolution wasn't cost-free. We paid for it in extinct species, disrupted ecosystems, pollution, higher commodity prices, and disappearing arable land. Eventually, continuing to grow will cause all these problems to get out of control, and perhaps reverse our good times and cause our population to collapse.

Hans Rosling is an optimist, and he believes that people will make the right choices, limiting their family sizes (naturally as economic growth continues and having lots of kids becomes unnecessary), reducing pollution and increasing energy and resource efficiency.

The Limits to Growth team forecasted a massive collapse in standards of living, population, and industrial production if trends persisted. But with the right choices, it was possible to avoid hitting those limits and for everyone on Earth to have a decent standard of living.

Hope this helps.

>>3516948
>>3516943
I'm one of the main Hans Rosling guys ITT, and I approve. It seems like a good summary.

>>3516948

It does, actually.

>>3516943
Don't forget asia. There are asian countries that have even better child mortality, standard of living, etc. than the US, and the rest are catching up quickly.

>>3516945

>implying trends in developed countries are applicable to developing countries. Sure, the birth rate has stabilized across the US and Europe (not counting immigrants) but the populations of, say, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Nigeria are still skyrocketing. If 15% of the global population stabilizes, but the other 85% still run rampant, then we're still fucked.

>>3516919

The concept of the EKC has been criticized, and it may not even exist. And thanks to the free trade networks we have nowadays, it is much simpler to buy your manufactures from country with lax environmental regulations than to produce them domestically for stringent regulations. A reduction in pollution at home is balanced in an increase elsewhere. In the case of global warming, there is no difference as to where the pollution originated, and no EKC whatsoever.

>>3516948
>4. The cambrian explosion wasn't cost-free. We paid for it in extinct species, disrupted ecosystems, pollution, higher commodity prices, and disappearing algae seas. Eventually, continuing to grow will cause all these problems to get out of control, and perhaps reverse our good times and cause our prokaryote population to collapse due to filter feeders. Derp.

>>3516983
I agree that this modernization is crucial. But it IS happening as we speak.

>>3516999
He wasn't hating on human progress, just like you aren't hating on post-Cambrian life. It's just facts.

Hey Im back. Someone asked me up there how the economy can possibly grow without spending resources. By resources I mean, natural ones. Stuff that we take from the earth. I dont mean to suggest we can feasibly to use NO resources, but neither would it be ideal.

Before I explain what I meant, we also need to describe what it means for the economy to grow. The economy grows when the sum of everything in it increases in value. And there are a number of ways to do that. One way is to cut down a tree take it into your town, and sell it. Your economy has just grown by one tree. Whatever dollar value that has, it has.

Now lets say thats all the country does in one year. One guy goes into the woods and gets a tree. Everyone else chills. Maybe they meditate and put their body into a spiritual state which requires no food or something.

The next year, the economy can still grow by doing something with that tree. As in, someone does something to that tree to make it more valuable. They can do something as simple as painting it, or using the wood and carving entertaining figurines. Anything. And if thats all they did in one year, they didnt use any resources and the economy grew. The economy grew in that, it increased in value.

>>3516999

/new/ is that way ---------------------------------->

>>3517005
The facts were stated presumably because you thought they were relevant, unless you are fact sphere...

youtube.com/watch?v=-iAUwamHTM4
>>3517009
/new/? Don't you mean /a/ or /k/?

>>3517033
He was just trying to give another anon a brief history of the rise of industrial civilization and current trends towards the future.

>>3517007

Alright, I think we properly understand what is meant by economic growth. But when you say this:

>I dont mean to suggest we can feasibly to use NO resources, but neither would it be ideal.

Isn't the whole point? It is impossible to grow the economy without expending some kind of resource. If I carve a figurine, I need a knife. That knife has various materials which are mined or grown elsewhere, which needs to be shipped to some kind of knife factory and then off to the store where I buy it from.

Maybe we would never properly run out of iron, or wood, or any of the other things that are required to produce a figurine and the tools to work it. But to grow the entire economy, using current energy and resource extraction methods, I just don't see a way to do it without significant use of resources. And it will certainly grow as the world population is definitely going to increase, and at the very least there will be a related increase in the demand for food.

>>3517071
If I take your knife and turn the material into something better, possible either because of shifting needs or from tech advances, wealth has increased. You don't necessarily have to increase the number of atoms actively involved in human economy.

>>3517033

Well, guy from /a/ or /k/, do you have some kind of problem with anything I've said? It seems to me you find it ridiculous that physical limits to human activity exist. But you don't find it ridiculous that commodity prices existed in the Cambrian Period. Maybe that makes sense in like a Toppa Tengen Gurren Lagann sort of way, I don't fucking know

>>3517071

>Isn't the whole point? It is impossible to grow the economy without expending some kind of resource

Its kind of like, you could go a whole year without using the letter "E." Would you want to? I am just trying to fight this notion that economy growth equates to taking resources. Okay, you are right, to engage in some operation, like using a knife, or running around costs some amount of resources. But that amount is variable.

I really believe that we are using too much of our earth's resources, and one day we will have to face that fact. But that doesnt mean the economy will stop growing. So long as we are increasing the value of what we have, as long as we are bettering society, we will economically grow.

I hope you dont think I was making a lame point.

>>3517081

But can the growth in value continue indefinitely, without using any resources ever? Even resident /sci/ economist doesn't think that to be the case.

>>3517105
You need energy, certainly. And we DO need to keep moving towards a closed-loop artificial ecology that only takes energy as input, integrated with the biological ecology of the planet (basically sustainability).

But as long as human population growth levels off like it looks like it will, we don't need infinite growth.

>>3517104

>I hope you dont think I was making a lame point.

Not at all. I'm just skeptical of the economy as it is currently structured, or that it can grow in a meaningful way, forever. I think I've seen pretty good evidence that it is unsustainable in the long run. When we speak of population at least, we will run into hard limits in food production. Maybe the economy can grow continuously for much longer, but not so with population or food production.

>>3517127

Yeah, I agree. I think we are all doomed honestly. Even if we get over this recession, which, I think we will inevitably. People are going to have to face the reality about food and natural resources.

>>3517137
Not that guy, but that doesn't equate to "doom" in my view.

>>3517138

What doesnt? When I say "doomed" I mean, one day we will have millions, if not billions of people who will be left without food because modern agriculture, the only way we've managed to produce food efficiently as we have, will be without oil.

Thats what I mean.

>>3517155
I agree that the problem should not be underestimated, but it's really a question of energy, not oil itself. And I don't argue for a moment that food won't become more expensive to produce, because energy prices WILL go up.

I'm more worried about phosphorus, actually.

>>3517137

Maybe "doomed" is a little strong. I hope.

You know what Winston Churchill said, something like "Americans always do the right thing, when they've exhausted all other options"

>>3517155
Indeed. That's why I hope LFTR works, and that we research it soon, and that we can disseminate it to the world, which will save the standard of living of everyone, which will decrease birth rates, enough that I hope the human race starts shrinking in size to a more manageable level. That's my secret hope.

>>3517173

Yeah, no one ever talks about fucking peak phosphorous

I wonder if you can mine that stuff from asteroids

>>3517173
>>3517184

Whats going on with phosphorus? Not enough of it?

>>3517184
More like we'll have to devise some tricky means of recollecting it, and then not wasting it on open fields (hydroponics FTW, with strict recycling of "waste")

>>3517189
Currently plant fertilizer requires mined phosphorus. When it is used, the phosphorus ends up widely dispersed, especially due to runoff. The phosphorus is still around, but it's a lot fucking harder to collect to use for fertilizer again when it's distributed so diffusely.

>>3517198
Not to mention that the phosphorus that actually gets incorporated into food ends up in human waste (and garbage), and this is not reclaimed either.

>>3517189

Read it and weep:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/7363m6w122520202/

Long story short, phosphate rocks are an ingredient in advanced chemical fertilizers. Like oil, it's nonrenewable on human-relevant timescales.

One solution is organic farming, which can actually boost yields over normal commercial farms without the need for chemical fertilizers or GM crops. But naturally it's also more expensive and less profitable.

>>3517198

Well fuck.

I can imagine that becoming a reality. When copper becomes too scarce to use, and all the copper at hand is in crappy old computers in the dump. Someone is going to have to scrounge around for that copper if you want another computer.

>>3517193

Do you know how expensive hydroponically grown food is compared to normally grown crops?

I remember being all excited about how cool "vertical farms" would be and then having my hopes dashed after seeing the economics.

>>3517212
Rare earths and metals aren't as big of a deal. You can turn a dump into a mine. But the phosphorus?

>>3517210
Organic farming does not increase yield per acre over nonorganic farming. Pretty sure of that.

>>3517224
It's a question of jealously hoarding all the necessary chemicals. It's not efficient NOW, but it may become the only method that is sustainable.

That or just making do without fertilizer.

>>3517227

Hmm, must have heard wrong. I will double check.

Alright, so it turns out that overall yield of organic crops is lower than normal crops in good years. But during hurricanes, droughts, or other extreme weather, organic crops fare much better. They also do better in cooler climates.

>>3517249
Interesting.

>>3517227

I just had a thought. Perhaps it's possible to make a filter in sewage systems that collects phosphorous?

Or maybe it would be better just to produce food without resort to chemical fertilizers. The Green Revolution methods are unsustainable in more ways than one.

Something like this will almost certainly be necessary. Municipal water and waste treatment will have to reclaim useful chemicals. Hopefully we reach the point of full recycling.

>>3517290
Meant to link
>>3517279

>>3517279

Where ever that phosphorus is going, I bet its making a huge pile of great soil for organic farming.

We should all be pooping in our own backyards.

>>3517266

Oh yeah, and apparently organic farming is in fact capable of feeding everyone on the planet without bringing any new land into cultivation.

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=1091304

Hmm, this is actually really surprising. I really thought organic farming was just some misguided green fad.

>>3517296

I believe the Aztecs did in fact fertilize their crops with their own human manure. They also coincidentally developed immune systems that were strong against parasites.

>>3517297
The problem is that is not AS capable as non-organic, and the ideology is cripplingly flawed. You see, they use pesticides and herbicides, but only "natural" ones, some of which are provably more dangerous than modern synthetic alternatives.

We should be focused on what works, considering long-term human welfare. Not whether things are "natural".

>>3517311
The trend of calling GMOs non-organic is also a real problem.

>>3517290

Everyone gets an e-reader

All electronics recycled, no exceptions

All toilets have a bidet and an air dryer like those crazy toilets in Japan

Everyone bring their own thermos bottle everywhere

And presto, everything is recycled

>>3517326
I don't see how the actual type of toilet or carrying a thermos change whether resources are reclaimed.

>>3517323

>You see, they use pesticides and herbicides, but only "natural" ones, some of which are provably more dangerous than modern synthetic alternatives.

Are they more dangerous? I haven't heard anything about that. And if the synthetic fertilizers use phosphorous, or if they're oil-based, we'll have no choice but to switch from them anyway.

I have no compulsion against GMO, save for Monsanto having some questionable business and legal practises. Licensing for GMOs could also be more expensive than organic farming. But AFAIK there is no medical reason why we shouldn't be using GMOs. Gene pollution might be a problem, but I don't believe ill effects have been observed. We should use every tool in the toolbox if it comes down to it.

>>3517352

Ive done organic gardening. My notion of pesticide is "Grow some lavender and garlic, and if bugs come spray them with soapy water"

>>3517340

Thermos = no coffee cups, styrofoam cups, plastic bottles, etc.

Vending machines should just refill instead of popping out a whole bottle.

As for bidet-equipped toilets, that will reduce the need for toilet paper. Perhaps even eliminate it if the water jet is very powerful and accurate.

>>3517352
Only some of them are. I'm mainly raging against the naturalistic fallacy (appeal to nature). Natural =/= good.

>>3517369
>toilet paper
Protip: paper isn't a problem IIRC. Paper recycling is a scam in every way. We are not losing forests due to paper products. We are losing forests from clear cutting to get more farmland.

>>3517369
Ah. Well Reduce *is* one of the three R's. But you can also just have sustainable tree farming. Does toilet paper come from trees anyway?

>>3517383

I hear conflicting information. One source says that deforestation is still a problem in developed countries (e.g. Canada, USA) but another tells me that it's only tropical deforestation that's the real issue. Now I'm confused.

>>3517380

Don't let the trendsters get you down. The important thing is finding things that work, not shaking your fist at smug Prius drivers.

>>3517405
Which one actually looks at data of recent trends in total forestation?

My current impression was that North America is pretty stable, and logging is done with tree farming. Meanwhile, South America has lots of people using slash-and-burn for farming.

>>3517405
>Don't let the trendsters get you down. The important thing is finding things that work, not shaking your fist at smug Prius drivers.
True. I just hate the drive for sustainability being subverted by bullshit.

>>3517385

I believe tree farms are already a big thing in many places, and that is actually where toilet paper comes from. Problem with tree farms is that they get reamed by pine beetles and tree blight and so forth. But I've never noticed toilet paper becoming super expensive, so my assumption is that they work out for us.

>>3517418

Well, the BC government website tells me that they replant every tree that's chopped down. Canada's total deforestation has only been 0.4% over its entire existence. So it's probably the case that deforestation is primarily a developing country problem.

>>3517383
I've now heard this in a couple of places, and I am gladdened by it.

Recycling is generally bullshit. Aluminium is worth recycling, but paper is not--and plastic belongs in a landfill, full stop.

Overall I do think that the sea change in thinking necessary for environmentalists--from hetch hetchy to frakking, from the clean air act to cap and trade, from small-scale land management to a wholesale reboot of energy--I think that change in thinking is starting to occur.

With any luck the next generation will understand it just in time to be powerless to do anything about it.

(OTOH Germany outlawed nukes and we still can't make wind farms for fear of killing geese)

>>3517469
> for fear of killing geese)
I laughed.

Don't worry too much, though - the effects of peak oil will not be sudden. Oil won't disappear overnight - it will gradually get more and more expensive over several decades until it is not a viable energy source.

>>3517434
In the US, Weyerhauser reforests like crazy. Problem is they only plant 1 kind of tree, and their "forests" therefore have zero biodiversity.

In Brazil, they are cutting down the Amazonian rainforest with government encouragement, for farming on near sterile soil (in a rainforest, the nutrients are recycled through the ground cover), and for biofuels.

The irony here is that while alive the rainforest is a carbon sink, and they are burning it, with nowhere for the carbon to go,now that the oceans are supersaturated..

>>3517469
>(OTOH Germany outlawed nukes and we still can't make wind farms for fear of killing geese)
Lols indeed. The answer is LFTR, or at least that's the most promising answer, but the greenpeace asshats don't even understand the difference between a liquid sodium cooled reactor and a molten salt reactor, so, fuck us. "If it has the word 'nuclear' then it's bad - except for fusion." Fuck us.

>>3517469

>plastic belongs in a landfill

Why's that?

Even if it's unprofitable, I feel like we shouldn't leave around things like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch

>(OTOH Germany outlawed nukes and we still can't make wind farms for fear of killing geese)

I have heard of that. It's a great shame, I thought Angela Merkel would be smarter about that.

>>3517383
to put it another way: trees are a crop. You don't tell someone that they're "killing corn" when they drink a soda. So long as they're replanted it makes zero difference to climate change.

My favorite scam:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8538033.stm
They claim that KILLING WHALES releases carbon.

I don't give a shit if you kill ALL the whales, the carbon you release is the carbon they took in. You only release MORE carbon if you dig up DEAD FOSSILIZED WHALES and BURN THEM.

Similarly, trees DO suck up carbon but they release all of it when they decay. Planting a tree simply does nothing about global warming. (Sustaining a forest does, but for outside reasons about what happens to the land once the trees are gone.)

>>3517492
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch

didn't I say--plastic belongs in a landfill???

>>3517434
Truth, the problem isn't 1st world countries consuming too many resources, we can afford to cut down when resource depletion hits, it's 3rd world countries who are producing too many people that are the problem. When the great resource depression starts they will fear starvation, panic and likely spiral into repressive totalitarian regimes which will inevitably start warring with each other and will have absolutely no interest whatsoever in conservation.

If they do not relinquish their sovereignty and submit to our protection then we will have no choice but to cut ourselves off and watch them starve and war while we focus on our own problems.

>>3517508
i think he meant that plastic should be banned altogether?

>>3517480

I think Brazil made the right call with biofuels. Their country is now the only one on Earth that could fuel their vehicles if oil disappeared. But now that they have reached that point, they should definitely stop. Which is probably more challenging than it sounds.

>>3517487

Hate to break it to you, but nuclear energy is going to be super fucking expensive no matter what.

With the usual kinds of reactors, nuclear waste is essentially an unlimited liability, which means that insurance premiums are sky-high (admittedly much less of a problem for Thorium). They're also plagued by cost overruns and construction delays, and all of these things make investors twitchy. Now the only guy willing to privately fund next-gen plants are the ultra-wealthy philanthropist types like Bill Gates.

Now it's tempting to blame Greenpeace and UCS, and of course they've played a role in demonizing nuclear, but even before Greenpeace existed, before Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and the TTAPS report on nuclear winter, private investment in the nuclear industry trickled down to almost nothing. This was the early 1970s. And the high cost of plant construction isn't just an American problem. France, which blows up Greenpeace ships and kills their crewmen, also has run into ballooning costs of new plant construction.

This is not to say that I hate nuclear or I agree with UCS/Greenpeace, but you should be aware that there are financial reasons for nuclear's lack of success. If I had it my way I'd take some of the 20 billion in subsidies to fossil fuel industries and divert it to nuclear research. Maybe just nationalize the whole thing.

>>3517508

You can only have so many landfills. Anyway, my point is that some of the plastic will end up in the ocean even if none of it was recycled. Actually a lot of it. So I don't know how much harm or benefit recycling plastic actually does. I'm curious as to why people think it's a bad idea.

>>3517564
not to mention that uranium is itself a limited resource.

If you extract it from sea water--which would only happen after easier methods were exhausted--it might get the planet to 2050 before it ran out.

Hoffert et al. take a good long look at what resources will actually exist 100 years and 10 terawatts from now--and conclude that ***beaming microwaves from the moon*** is the most feasible.
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/HoffertEtAl.pdf

Aside from that, lemme just say that I haven't been on /sci for a while--that LTG has really occupied my thinking about the current economic crisis--and that I'm totally stoked to find it on the front page.

>>3517522
Where do you think islamic militants get their suicide bombers?

Shit is already real.

>>3517498

I found the whale study:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0012444

So it's got two citations on Google Scholar, but neither are critical. And it kind of makes sense. The scale of biomass is reversed compared to terrestrial ecosystems: in the oceans, it's huge animals (whales) that are the largest stores of carbon, on land, it's the biggest plants (trees). So like how deforestation can cause carbon accumulation in the atmosphere, I can see how declining whale size and increasing deaths can contribute modestly to global warming. Probably not a huge problem overall, but I like whales and I would prefer that they not be in danger of extinction.

>>3517564
>With the usual kinds of reactors, nuclear waste is essentially an unlimited liability, which means that insurance premiums are sky-high (admittedly much less of a problem for Thorium).
Much less indeed. Hundreds of times less waste, that lasts for only 300 years instead of 10,000+.

>They're also plagued by cost overruns and construction delays, and all of these things make investors twitchy. Now the only guy willing to privately fund next-gen plants are the ultra-wealthy philanthropist types like Bill Gates.
Shit happens. I agree this isn't something the private market can really do due to the insane price tag, which is why I want the government to fund it.

>Now it's tempting to blame Greenpeace and UCS, and of course they've played a role in demonizing nuclear, but even before Greenpeace existed, before Three Mile Island, Chernobyl,
Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are vastly overrated. You perpetuate the myth that these were that bad at all. Ok, Chernobyl was someone bad, but that's because the safety design was non-existent and the operators didn't know what they were doing. Such things simply could not happen at modern plants, as Fukushima demonstrates.

>private investment in the nuclear industry trickled down to almost nothing. This was the early 1970s.
IIRC, that's basically because the gov regulations decreed that no new nuclear power plants would be built.

>And the high cost of plant construction isn't just an American problem. France, which blows up Greenpeace ships and kills their crewmen, also has run into ballooning costs of new plant construction.
Yeah, and compare that cost to the potential savings, and I think I can still make quite a good case why the gov should fund it.

>>3517640
>>3517564
>This is not to say that I hate nuclear or I agree with UCS/Greenpeace, but you should be aware that there are financial reasons for nuclear's lack of success.
Yes. It's a combination of:
- Didn't do thorium because of lack of weaponization potential,
- Didn't do thorium later because of the sunk cost fallacy in the gov research programs,
- Public misunderstanding of the actual risks of nuclear, and general ignorance about the different kinds,
- Huge price tag for future research which puts it out of the realm of anyone but the richest governments,
- Politics killing the US research into it back in the day because one of the guys on the committee was buddy buddy with the existing light water reactor peoples,
- Crazy regulations on current reactors due to above, and crazy regulations which are largely inapplicable to trying to start up a non-standard reactor,
- The public's delusions into so called "green" energy sources such as photovoltaic and wind. (Thermal solar I need to look at ever since Mad Scientist I think said it was possibly economically doable.)

>If I had it my way I'd take some of the 20 billion in subsidies to fossil fuel industries and divert it to nuclear research. Maybe just nationalize the whole thing.
I agree. Nationalization appears to be the only sane way due to the crazy high price tag.

>>3517577
You could bury ALL of the USA's trash for the next 50 years in one corner of the Oklahoma panhandle.

Plastic, in particular, would lie there forever with negligible effect.

Meanwhile, while you feel great about separating your plastics, your city spends tons of money to collect it--drives it to the recycling center--and, because it's worthless, it sits in the warehouse until somebody gives up and buries it anyway.

Recycling of plastics is a horrible idea. when you see a bum digging plastic bags out of the trash to sell, you'll know that it's worth spending city resources on.

>>3517650
When 95% of the population till fields or work in sweatshops, recycling the refuse left over from this era might actually be quite lucrative.

>>3517638
whale grows. Whale accumulates carbon by eating plants.

whale dies. Whale gives up all its carbon.

it does not matter how many whales you have. it's net zero carbon. For the same reason, if we had a fast-growing crop we could plant it and burn it with no problem (from a purely co2 perspective).

It doesn't matter if the smoke looks bad or if you don't like killing living things. that kind of traditional environmentalism ***is not relevant*** to climate change.

Again, excess CO2 comes from diggin up old whales. Think in terms of 100,000 years.

>>3517522

Please ignore the blatant troll

>>3517640

>You perpetuate the myth that these were that bad at all.

That was not my intention at all. What I meant was that TMI, Chernobyl, and TTAPS were huge media events that attracted a lot of attention and turned people against nuclear. It's not just the environmentalists, NIMBY and irrational-fears-of-the-unknown play a role in most people's psychology. I am fully aware that the nuclear industry is the safest energy industry out of all the choices. But the battle of public perception is still one that needs to be won.

>Yeah, and compare that cost to the potential savings, and I think I can still make quite a good case why the gov should fund it.

Potential savings over what?

solar power and salt water algae ponds everywhere

Also completely unfettered technological research, no one will care about bunny huggers when it means the difference between poverty and being able to live your life. By that time we won't have the energy to intensively exploit most of the land surface area anyway.

>>3517674
It's net zero carbon if the number of whales stays the same. Same for forestation.

Not if they decrease.

>>3517675
> >Yeah, and compare that cost to the potential savings, and I think I can still make quite a good case why the gov should fund it.
>Potential savings over what?
Not funding LFTR research.

>>3517674

The deaths of whales would be carbon neutral IF it was balanced by the birth and growth of other whales. But this is clearly not the case for most species except the most numerous ones. That's why it's not strictly analogous to growing corn for corn syrup in Coke. There aren't very many replacement whales to soak up the lost carbon.

>It doesn't matter if the smoke looks bad or if you don't like killing living things. that kind of traditional environmentalism ***is not relevant*** to climate change.

Sure, I know it's not relevant, but I'm just expressing my opinion of them. If whales have some instrumental value to humans as carbon sinks that make them worth protecting, so much the better for whales and whale aficionados.

>>3517646

>- Crazy regulations on current reactors due to above, and crazy regulations which are largely inapplicable to trying to start up a non-standard reactor,

Remember, France, which did pretty much everything right, is still struggling with increasing costs of nuclear plants. I don't think it's merely an issue of overegulation here. Still, in France nuclear is cheaper than the US, and I'm sure nationalization and standardization has a lot to do with it. Could be worth taking the lessons from them.

>- The public's delusions into so called "green" energy sources such as photovoltaic and wind.

Actually, solar PV has very recently overtaken nuclear in the pricing competition. Wind is also shown to be effective in various places. Mad Scientist is correct, in my opinion, that solar thermal has great potential.

I don't think there is anything like a renewable "craze" among most Americans or Canadians. They seem to be heavily infected with the Fox News virus. Anyway, I think it would be foolish to dismiss renewables out-of-hand. Even now, In some parts of the world, windmills and solar PV makes a lot of sense. Arizona, Sub-Saharan Africa and the African Sahel comes to mind.

>>3516183
>wind
>the only competitive green renewable
>bullshit

>>3517677

Algae ponds? For fuel?

Sounds great in theory, way better than first- or second-gen biofuels. But it's got a lot of challenges ahead if algae biofuel is to become economical enough for commercialization.

>>3517773
Until you solve the problem of a long term energy storage, wind is nothing more than a curiousity.

>>3517684
I've thought about this for a bit, and I think you're wrong.

The whale effectively 'traps' carbon over its lifetime, which is negligible on geologic timescales. It's born, it dies, net zero--except for whatever sinks to the bottom and gets buried.

So I'll carry this to its logical extreme: you could kill all living life on earth with (assuming nothing gets buried) zero carbon impact on a geologic timescale.

Why am I wrong? I feel like I'm wrong, but I don't see the flaw.

I think the only way to stop excess co2 is to stop digging up old co2 and releasing it to the air.

>>3516194
The third world's population stabilizing is contingent on raising living standards, which are utterly reliant on cheap energy.

>>3517798
Negligible is not the same as zero. Whalemeat carbon is carbon that's not in the air.

>So I'll carry this to its logical extreme: you could kill all living life on earth with (assuming nothing gets buried) zero carbon impact on a geologic timescale.
I think you're hiding something under "geologic timescale". You most certainly would release a lot of carbon into the air by killing all life, since it would decay. Basically, the biosphere is one of the carbon sinks. Anything that leaves the amount of biomass the same is not adding or removing carbon (net) from that carbon storage.

>>3517812
I agree. How much of an impact peak oil will have remains to be seen, but we should definitely work on making the transition easier.

>>3517791

Nuclear has an opposite problem, in that it can't control its output the same way that a coal or other fossil fuel plant can. This makes nuclear impractical for providing significantly more capacity than baseload. Although nuclear would be very good for providing baseload power, we will be needing other energy sources in the mix.

As for energy storage options:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_energy_storage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_car

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_grid

Even without any storage, with HVDC lines, plug-in cars, and a smart grid alone, you can transmit power across vast distances with minimal losses. To make up any differences, plug-in cars charge up during the night, when electric demand is minimal, and when parked it can release energy during peak load hours. With HVDC lines you can link up nuclear plants, wind farms, solar arrays, or what have you, from all across the continent.

>>3517839
Do you have sources on the cost those energy storage solutions would require incur if we went all wind? Preferably in cents per kWh. I suspect you'll find them rather high.

>Nuclear has an opposite problem, in that it can't control its output the same way that a coal or other fossil fuel plant can. This makes nuclear impractical for providing significantly more capacity than baseload. Although nuclear would be very good for providing baseload power, we will be needing other energy sources in the mix.

I could be wrong, so explain slowly to me please, or citations, but it's my understanding that that is false. Light water reactors have a big problem starting and stopping, as it can take weeks, months, or longer to restart, but molten salt thorium reactor can easily be shut down and restarted on demand.

>>3516632
>lean on coal
Coal already accounts for ~25% of global energy use, and reserves aren't much/any larger than oil.

>>3517870
>reserves aren't much/any larger than oil.
They'll last longer than oil will. But I agree that peak coal would also occur.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#World_coal_reserves

>>3517865

>Do you have sources on the cost those energy storage solutions would require incur if we went all wind?

100% wind? That's ridiculous. Because you're being ridiculous and because I'm pretty sure no one's done a cost analysis using 100% wind, I won't bother finding that citation.

>but molten salt thorium reactor can easily be shut down and restarted on demand.

I didn't know that. Chalk one up for thorium.

>>3517839
I fucking LOVE the idea of giant superconducting flywheels, and I'm glad it's first on your list.

No big point, just love the idea of huge levitating flywheels.

>>3517925

Errybody loves levitation

When I was a kid I used to love this big picture book from the 1970s, called something like Osborne Book of the Future. They promised me Maglevs by end the first decade of the millenium. I want Maglevs damn it!

>>3517914
>
100% wind? That's ridiculous. Because you're being ridiculous and because I'm pretty sure no one's done a cost analysis using 100% wind, I won't bother finding that citation.

Sorry. I'm just asking for citations on cost estimates for the energy storage to make wind practical as base load. Non-base load, non-reliable, stuff is basically useless.
> >but molten salt thorium reactor can easily be shut down and restarted on demand.
>I didn't know that. Chalk one up for thorium.

When I'm put in charge of thorium, I'll be sure to include in the budget "1 pony" too, just to cover all of the bases.

They did it for years at Oakridge. The people didn't want to take turns spending weekends at the lab monitoring the reactor, so each Friday they shut off the blower fan, which causes the freeze plug to melt, and the salt flowed out of the reactor into the drain tank. Come Monday, they would heat the salt back into a liquid, pump it back into the core, and they were back in business. They did this for like 5 years IIRC.

>>3517364
>Ive done organic gardening. My notion of pesticide is "Grow some lavender and garlic, and if bugs come spray them with soapy water"
yea — not how it works on an industrial scale

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbqyAemRlno
(Organic eggs not crops, but it gives you an idea how the big organic producers operate.)

>>3517944

Here's a particularly optimistic view of 100% renewable energy grid, with a wind-water-solar mix. They found the cost to be similar to energy prices we currently pay.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421510008694

The following study estimated the cost to transformation towards to a 80% carbon reductions by 2050 to be 1.37% of GDP. Renewable energy price for the end-user falls to 0.5 - 0.12 cents/kWh. It presumes the eventual phasing out of nuclear, which is regrettable.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/nu354g4p6576l238/fulltext.pdf

I disagree that non-baseload energy sources are useless. In addition baseload, you must have some kind of system in place to handle peak load. Perhaps thorium could fill in the gap? I looked it up on Google Scholar, but most papers are over 40 years old. It's a shame that there hasn't been more research in this area.

Also, please go easy on all the greenfags. Not all of them are so opposed to nuclear. James Hansen and Mark Lynas are two big supporters of nuclear, and so is George Manbiot. James motherfucking Lovelock thinks we should build thousands of new reactors as a hedge against global warming. The guys at SkepticalScience are somewhat opposed to nuclear, but even those guys sharpy criticized the German government for deciding to phase out nuclear.

>>3519457

One more: 24-hour electricity production has been demonstrated with a solar thermal plant:

http://www.rechargenews.com/energy/solar/article265281.ece

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038092X11001307

>>3519509
Fuck yes solar thermal power. Molten salt storage, huh? Nice.

There's this misconception that "growth" and progress necessarily implies greater resource use, but building more efficient or cheaper alternatives is growth, too.
if one resource runs out, there'll be a next one right around the corner, and so on.
There are some limitless energy source available right now, and with energy, you can regain almost any resource.

>>3519516

Yeah shit's pretty cool. And unlike CAES or pumped-water hydro, you don't need a ton of space for storage.

Another study about renewable costs, demonstrating how they can reduce overall capital costs:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988307000382

>>3519543
Some of them pose legitimate concerns. Like phosphorus.

>>3519543

The big problem we have is with farming. As it is currently done, it requires phosphorous and oil, both resources which are non-renewable to due to peak soon. Current farming practices also drain aquifers at an unsustainable rate, and run-off from pesticides etc. leech into the ocean and create massive oxygen-free "dead zones." Soil is degraded by erosion, climate change-induced drought and desertification, and overuse.

You can have cheap electricity, maybe even own your own car and drive it wherever you want, but you cannot replace aquifers or revive dead soil economically. This is the one limit to growth that is the most concerning. Although, as discussed earlier, there are a number of solutions we could implement.

>>3519581
One pretty easy and awesome solution is that we could harvest algae from the oceans and use them as fertilizers, since all the fertilizers we use on fields usually get drained into the ocean one way or another.
Also, desalination isn't all that energy intensive anymore, and global warming will actually increase rainfall on average, filling up the aquifers again.

>>3519631

>One pretty easy and awesome solution is that we could harvest algae from the oceans and use them as fertilizers

How much would that cost?

>global warming will actually increase rainfall on average, filling up the aquifers again.

lolwat

You need to demonstrate that the rate of aquifer drainage by agriculture is less than the rate at which it is replenished. Because that sounds too overly simplistic to be true. Last time I checked aquifer depletion was still a big problem for farmers, while rainfall has been increasing for a century.

>>3519457
>peak load. Perhaps thorium could fill in the gap?

Nuclear(thorium included) have massive capital costs that preclude their use as peakers, even when using designs that could preform as such.

>>3521161

But can anyone point out an actual cost estimate of the construction of a commercial thorium plant? Can't just take people's word for it.