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On March 09 2009 07:05 fight_or_flight wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2009 03:15 ahrara_ wrote:On March 09 2009 01:20 warding wrote:
Human labour and physical resources may be finite, but what about technology affecting the productivity of the finite resources? Are advances in technology going to stagnate at one point? I think sustainable development is something we really have to consider (though I'm far from an environmentalist). Two problems with technology, and hopefully someone better informed on environmental econ can pick up on this: 1.) Technology does not always take into account environmental externalities. In fact, some technology actually facilitates faster exploitation. So you would be reducing your intake of petroleum while destroying another 100 sq km of rainforest, diminishing carbon reservoirs. 2.) Technology is not always exported to developing countries. The US could transition entirely to sustainable growth, but China can still be leaving a giant ecological footprint. These are good points, but I think you guys are missing the bigger picture. If you watch the video (which i know is really long), he makes the point that in about 750 years, at the current population growth, there will be a human for every 1 square meter of land on the earth's surface. And in something like a few thousand years, the mass of humans will equal the mass of the earth.. I argued vigorously for technology as well. He didn't cover the exponential growth of technology, only the exponential growth in liabilities. Even if we could colonize both mars and the moon, the doubling time of our population is measured in decades, not millennia. So even if we had free energy technology, we would literally need to create matter and live in space to continue our growth. Even then, eventually the volume of space we would need would need to increase to a point where we would need to be moving away from each other at the speed of light to sustain constant growth. On the flip side however, I don't think population growth is such a big problem because as Japan, Russia, Europe, and (non-immigrants) of the US show, eventually populations decline. So we are really concerned with economic growth here in my mind. edit: I personally don't believe there is a limit to technology, and in fact I think technology can't be predicted. So even my comments above are probably not valid (what if there are infinite parallel universes, etc). My sole point is that we should probably not base public policy off of expected technological gains which are currently unknown.
I think I was agreeing with you? I'm still agreeing with you, in fact.
I really don't have time to watch the video, sorry.
Population growth cannot be perpetual. If that is the premise of his argument, then there's nothing more to be said. It simply is not, cannot be.
But population growth does not just level off. In fact, it behaves like a sin wave. The rate of population growth picks up until the actual population reaches the carrying capacity of its environment, at which point the second derivative becomes negative, and population growth begins to slow. Eventually, enough resources are depleted and the population is so great that people begin dying off. This is why environmental economists are concerned, because as commodities grow more scarce and ecological "backlash" becomes more harmful, the rate of economic growth must become negative. Since such a scenario will be characterized by high inflation, no amount of economic stimulus will help. Simply put, we'll have exhausted the earth's resources.
My argument is that technology will not always check back this kind of "ecological doomsday". Besides being unpredictable, technology does not take into account environmental externalities. Instead, it only facilitates the exploitation of a more common resource. If we were to ween ourselves off of fossil fuels, for example, the most cost effective substitutes will eventually be depleted. The only solution is to have government create incentives for sustainable alternatives -- energy sources that extracts the earth's resources no sooner than it can regenerate them. The sooner the world realizes this, the more likely we'll avoid the catastrophe we're headed towards.
There are problems with relying solely on the free market to make the jump to alternative energy. But I don't think you were advocating that (are you?) so I'll ignore it.
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On economic growth:
The main model for economic growth is the Solow-Swan growth model, where economic product is explained as a function of Technology, Labour and Capital:
Y = f(A,K,L)
Where K is capital (eg. infrastructure, production facilities), L is labour and A is technology. Since K and L have diminishing returns, only advancements in A can yield continuous economic growth. Other models have been developed but they mostly been more complex versions of these one, by making endogenous the factors of production.
As far as I know, there is no model or theory that predicts economic growth to reach a plateau. Which is why I'm really curious to know who are these economists predicting the end of growth.
Now on sustainable development.
Limited availability of resources and environmental issues such as global warming are two separate problems.
Environmental issues are usually externality problems, thus being market failures. Burning oil brings costs to society that the individual performing the pollution isn't bearing. This usually requires government intervention to correct the externality. In the case of global warming, either higher taxes or gas or a cap-and-trade system like Obama is going to implement.
Destruction of amazonic rainforest may also fit as an externality issue.
These problems are not that closely related to economic growth tho. It may cause economic inefficiencies and eventually economic costs that may slow growth, but it generally isn't thought as an issue belonging to the subject of economic growth.
Now scarcity of resources is related to economic growth.
What I don't get about your post ahrahra_, and forgive me if I'm wrong, is that you seem to be presenting this issue as a market failure. And markets not only fail to handle scarce physical resources, they seem to have some sort of bias against sustainable resources.
I really don't follow your argument. Why is the price mechanism not effective in stimulating the market to find better alternatives? Where's the evidence that it isn't?
Another thing I think is missing in this discussion is the fact that economic growth doesn't necessarily require the use of additional resources. Services represent more than half of developed countries' economies.
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As you yourself said, warding, these environmental issues are not closely related to economic growth. Ordinary free-market, laissez-faire capitalism cannot go far enough to fix environmental issues. For that, the government must step in.
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On March 09 2009 12:34 warding wrote:
On economic growth:
The main model for economic growth is the Solow-Swan growth model, where economic product is explained as a function of Technology, Labour and Capital:
Y = f(A,K,L)
Where K is capital (eg. infrastructure, production facilities), L is labour and A is technology. Since K and L have diminishing returns, only advancements in A can yield continuous economic growth. Other models have been developed but they mostly been more complex versions of these one, by making endogenous the factors of production.
As far as I know, there is no model or theory that predicts economic growth to reach a plateau. Which is why I'm really curious to know who are these economists predicting the end of growth.
Now on sustainable development.
Limited availability of resources and environmental issues such as global warming are two separate problems.
Environmental issues are usually externality problems, thus being market failures. Burning oil brings costs to society that the individual performing the pollution isn't bearing. This usually requires government intervention to correct the externality. In the case of global warming, either higher taxes or gas or a cap-and-trade system like Obama is going to implement.
Destruction of amazonic rainforest may also fit as an externality issue.
These problems are not that closely related to economic growth tho. It may cause economic inefficiencies and eventually economic costs that may slow growth, but it generally isn't thought as an issue belonging to the subject of economic growth.
This isn't really related with what I'm saying, but it's fairly obvious to me that global warming has serious implications for growth. Flooding, crop failure, etc. Carbon Dioxide emission is depleting a natural resource in the sense that we are using up the planet's capacity to absorb CO2 without causing significant changes in climate.
Now scarcity of resources is related to economic growth.
What I don't get about your post ahrahra_, and forgive me if I'm wrong, is that you seem to be presenting this issue as a market failure. And markets not only fail to handle scarce physical resources, they seem to have some sort of bias against sustainable resources.
I really don't follow your argument. Why is the price mechanism not effective in stimulating the market to find better alternatives? Where's the evidence that it isn't?
1. Sustainable development is typically more expensive. Moreover, the technology requires time to develop. The impacts of global warming could arrive sooner than we may develop that technology. The substitutes favored by the market, even when externalities have been accounted for, could retain unknown externalities. Creating incentives for "sustainability" is a way to ensure that we'll be prepared when the worst strikes. Basically, we need to ensure that the market finds the right substitute.
2. Ok, after reading what i wrote I realized I didn't answer your question. My argument is basically that some resources cannot be substituted easily, and that a sudden crash in supply will cause a severe economic downturn before technology can be adapted. Oil is one example. We are a long way off from cars fueled on any kind of sustainable fuel. Energy prices in particular tend to be really volatile and prone to speculation. This volatility alone can slow economic development -- taxing gasoline to create incentives for more fuel efficient and sustainable cars, for example, would correct for this "resource externality".
Another thing I think is missing in this discussion is the fact that economic growth doesn't necessarily require the use of additional resources. Services represent more than half of developed countries' economies.
Manufacturing as a whole on the planet remains the same. It just gets shifted around to countries with a comparative advantage for it, while more technologically and better educated countries shift to service. The service growth in America is made possible by the "outsourcing" of manufacturing to countries with cheaper labor.
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On March 09 2009 14:36 ahrara_ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2009 12:34 warding wrote:
On economic growth:
The main model for economic growth is the Solow-Swan growth model, where economic product is explained as a function of Technology, Labour and Capital:
Y = f(A,K,L)
Where K is capital (eg. infrastructure, production facilities), L is labour and A is technology. Since K and L have diminishing returns, only advancements in A can yield continuous economic growth. Other models have been developed but they mostly been more complex versions of these one, by making endogenous the factors of production.
As far as I know, there is no model or theory that predicts economic growth to reach a plateau. Which is why I'm really curious to know who are these economists predicting the end of growth.
Now on sustainable development.
Limited availability of resources and environmental issues such as global warming are two separate problems.
Environmental issues are usually externality problems, thus being market failures. Burning oil brings costs to society that the individual performing the pollution isn't bearing. This usually requires government intervention to correct the externality. In the case of global warming, either higher taxes or gas or a cap-and-trade system like Obama is going to implement.
Destruction of amazonic rainforest may also fit as an externality issue.
These problems are not that closely related to economic growth tho. It may cause economic inefficiencies and eventually economic costs that may slow growth, but it generally isn't thought as an issue belonging to the subject of economic growth. This isn't really related with what I'm saying, but it's fairly obvious to me that global warming has serious implications for growth. Flooding, crop failure, etc. Carbon Dioxide emission is depleting a natural resource in the sense that we are using up the planet's capacity to absorb CO2 without causing significant changes in climate. Show nested quote +Now scarcity of resources is related to economic growth.
What I don't get about your post ahrahra_, and forgive me if I'm wrong, is that you seem to be presenting this issue as a market failure. And markets not only fail to handle scarce physical resources, they seem to have some sort of bias against sustainable resources.
I really don't follow your argument. Why is the price mechanism not effective in stimulating the market to find better alternatives? Where's the evidence that it isn't?
1. Sustainable development is typically more expensive. Moreover, the technology requires time to develop. The impacts of global warming could arrive sooner than we may develop that technology. The substitutes favored by the market, even when externalities have been accounted for, could retain unknown externalities. Creating incentives for "sustainability" is a way to ensure that we'll be prepared when the worst strikes. Basically, we need to ensure that the market finds the right substitute. 2. Ok, after reading what i wrote I realized I didn't answer your question. My argument is basically that some resources cannot be substituted easily, and that a sudden crash in supply will cause a severe economic downturn before technology can be adapted. Oil is one example. We are a long way off from cars fueled on any kind of sustainable fuel. Energy prices in particular tend to be really volatile and prone to speculation. This volatility alone can slow economic development -- taxing gasoline to create incentives for more fuel efficient and sustainable cars, for example, would correct for this "resource externality". Show nested quote +
Another thing I think is missing in this discussion is the fact that economic growth doesn't necessarily require the use of additional resources. Services represent more than half of developed countries' economies.
Manufacturing as a whole on the planet remains the same. It just gets shifted around to countries with a comparative advantage for it, while more technologically and better educated countries shift to service. The service growth in America is made possible by the "outsourcing" of manufacturing to countries with cheaper labor.
Actaully Ahrara, the effect of global warming on economic growth can't even be predicted well enough to know the sign of the net effect. Attempts to predict it only measure the bad things they can imagine (like flooding and other things you mentioned), but fail to imagine the possible benefits such as unfarmable land that has become much more suitable to growing crops and literally limitless other possibilities (more rain, more CO2 for plants to grow, and who knows what else).
Also regarding global warming, I don't think anyone can say that high CO2 is bad for the planet as a whole. CO2 levels have been WAY higher than they are now and the earth was a much greener place (perhaps as a consequence?) I'm not a biologist but my simple understanding suggests that more CO2 means plants have more carbon available to fuel growth and proliferation.
I guess the main point is that in general, when people talk about global warming, they almost always only talk about what MIGHT go wrong. This is pretty natural since people are afraid of change and the unknown.
Also:
Manufacturing as a whole on the planet remains the same. It just gets shifted around to countries with a comparative advantage for it, while more technologically and better educated countries shift to service. The service growth in America is made possible by the "outsourcing" of manufacturing to countries with cheaper labor.
I hope a misread that or missed something earlier that changes the meaning. There is no way that total global manufacturing amounts is stable over time. As the world get richer (which is has enormously), what that really means is that the world over all produces more. Even if you kick out services from the calculations, there is no way that the world now manufactures that same as it did in the 1700's (even if you discount the effect of a growing population).
The poor of the world consume WAY more physical resources than the poor of a few hundred years ago.
In real economic growth (as happens with free trade), even though both countries specialize in their respective comp advantage, BOTH countries are richer (richer always means increased production and consumption).
Finally, the market actually fixes things faster than we genernally give it credit for. Take your example of oil. The government taxes oil and gasoline but the benefits that we have seen from this (meaning like fuel efficiency, etc) has been pretty small to the changes we observed during the oil embargo of the '70s. During that period prices literally quadrupled overnight (way faster than we have seen since then). But it was during this time that everybody started using double paned glass for their windows, the gas guzzlers of the 50s and 60s were pretty quickly replaced by smaller, less powerful cars and large increases in the efficiency of furnaces, etc.
And this wasn't because the government MADE window manufacturers change their methods. It was just a natural response.
We have not seen renewable energy cars that are trully viable yet mainly because there is not reason for them. Shoot, we are still getting most of our electricity from fossil fuels even though with relatively small effort we could get ALL of our electricity from nuclear power and it would be cleaner and safer (like France and Japan already do for the most part). But we haven't done it because there has been no reason to. But we could sure do it pretty fast just like they did in the '70s if we needed to (I haven't looked it up but I know that most of our nuclear plants are about 30 years old...there has been no new ones since then. Its not surprising that we have a bunch of nuclear power plants that date back to to 70s since that is when we were trying to adjust to oil shocks).
So I think that your idea of having government force the market to adapt before it needs to:
1. Hasn't seemed to be very effective...it would have to be a HUGE tax to have an effect and that is political suicide
2. Isn't necessary.
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On March 11 2009 15:57 Savio wrote:
Also regarding global warming, I don't think anyone can say that high CO2 is bad for the planet as a whole. CO2 levels have been WAY higher than they are now and the earth was a much greener place (perhaps as a consequence?) I'm not a biologist but my simple understanding suggests that more CO2 means plants have more carbon available to fuel growth and proliferation.
Actually, I think it has moreso do do with the pace of CO2 rising. CO2 changes the nature of the environment on many levels and if it is at a pace that exceeds the pace natural selection can select for it, hordes of species are going to die out. Traditionally, even the more episodic periods of evolution took millions of years for natural selection to pan out and for the best fit to survive. If people force the same change in a mere thousand years, there just won't be enough generations and/or genetic diversity to survive.
Personally, my qualm with the whole global warming paranoia and the movement towards self sustainability is that scarcity itself creates competition. Competition creates creativity and solutions. Hell, economics is founded on the principle of scarcity of resources. But the thought of having our most basic needs self sustainable (food, power, shelter) will make people overly complacent. Being ignorant and oblivious of our most basic needs, from an economics standpoint, is a scary thought. Then again, the green movement may be a natural free market reaction to excess pollution and who am I to question the free market.
So I think that your idea of having government force the market to adapt before it needs to:
1. Hasn't seemed to be very effective...it would have to be a HUGE tax to have an effect and that is political suicide
2. Isn't necessary.
In principle, I'd agree with you that the government handles almost everything more inefficiently than the free market. But I think this is also because the government lacks the computing power and data inputs necessary to accurately forecast future needs. The one thing that government spending benefits from is having a lot deeper pockets to use for investment, and if combined with better data input/computing power than firms, this could make for a very lethal and effective corporate type government. But theory and practice are of course never the same and democracy will probably never be ruled by a competent board of directors.
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On March 06 2009 18:05 fight_or_flight wrote:Show nested quote +On March 06 2009 17:48 Jibba wrote:On March 06 2009 17:09 Savio wrote:On March 04 2009 08:00 Jibba wrote:
I just don't see why we're having an economics discussion instead of a policy discussion. Its because Econ >>> Public Policy Macro is garbage. Even if it were reliable (which it's not), it has little relevance on what's actually going to happen. Here's one for ya. The F22 raptor costs 350 million dollars per plane, and Obama wants to remove it from the budget, but Congress is not going to let it happen. Now, you can talk about government spending, intervention, driving the economy, etc. but the only thing that's important is that manufacturing has been set up through over 1,000 companies in 40 states to ensure that interest group pressure keeps it in production. Here is another reason why macro economics is garbage. Most macro economists just assume constant growth (exponential growth), an assumption which is guaranteed to be wrong at some point or another. Their theories may work beautifully when things are growing constantly, but they fail to realize this is not a quiescent state. This video made a lot of good points which I can't refute. It is about exponential growth and it's dramatic consequences (its some physics guy giving a lecture). He seems to focus on population growth, but I think the real application we need to look at here is economic growth (which may or may not involve population growth). Population growth is limited by economic growth, and economic growth is currently assumed to be constant by our banking system. When viewed in the context of economics, this video seems to explain our current economic troubles and why they may be fundamental as opposed to some simple policy decision. http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=80710¤tpage=4#65
Didn't watch your video but I did want to point out that in fact economic growth and population growth seem to inversely related.
Think of the US, Canada, Europe, or ANY other developed country. What is the average family size? How many kids. Here in the US, it is over 2 (the replacement number and 0 growth number), but in some places in EU...I think Italy is one...it is less than 2. Then look at the underdeveloped countries and see what their family size is.
It seems that if you really want a country to stop having so many babies, get it rich...let it grow until that happens on its own.
The first temptation is to attribute this to lack of birth control but we bomb these countries with so many condoms and other forms of birth control that they have had to find alternate uses for them.
Here is the current theory to explain this phenomenon: Generally speaking, with Economic growth you see an increase in education and with that an increase in political freedom. In more developed counties (even the recent ones), women have much more access to jobs that earn real money rather than no jobs or poor jobs. The effect is that the opportunity cost (what she gives up in order to have more kids) of a woman having children in a rich country is a LOT of potential money while in a poor country she gives up much less.
To put it bluntly, women in poor counties have very little else to do with their time other than raise children while those in rich countries give up a lot to have a large family. That plays a very important role when a couple is deciding whether or not to have another kid.
Also, as side note, macro economists do NOT assume constant growth. They study recessions and depressions which are periods of negative economic growth and they do just fine with them.
Now it is true that free countries have experiences virtually constant positive growth for the last couple centuries and there is no evidence that this will ever change, but everyone has recessions and depressions.
As a side note, for the last couple centuries world food supply has grown faster than world population and has had to be restrained. ALL of the predictions that we would multiply till the Earth could not sustain us have failed. For a long time we have had to restrain our awesome food production abilities because if we let if loose, food prices would fall so low that farmers couldn't make money. The only problems we have are distribution problems.
EDIT: But let it be known that I have no special connection to macro as I do to microeconomics. I love the micro and endure the macro. But I did have to clear this up.
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On March 11 2009 16:20 gchan wrote:
Actually, I think it has moreso do do with the pace of CO2 rising. CO2 changes the nature of the environment on many levels and if it is at a pace that exceeds the pace natural selection can select for it, hordes of species are going to die out. Traditionally, even the more episodic periods of evolution took millions of years for natural selection to pan out and for the best fit to survive. If people force the same change in a mere thousand years, there just won't be enough generations and/or genetic diversity to survive.
The Earth's diversity has handled WAY worse than humans. Shoot, the earth can even handle cows (who even today produce more greenhouse gases than human machinery/fossil fuel burning all combined--google it).
+ Show Spoiler +
Meet the world's top destroyer of the environment. It is not the car, or the plane,or even George Bush: it is the cow.
A United Nations report has identified the world's rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife. And they are blamed for a host of other environmental crimes, from acid rain to the introduction of alien species, from producing deserts to creating dead zones in the oceans, from poisoning rivers and drinking water to destroying coral reefs.
The 400-page report by the Food and Agricultural Organisation, entitled Livestock's Long Shadow, also surveys the damage done by sheep, chickens, pigs and goats. But in almost every case, the world's 1.5 billion cattle are most to blame. Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.
Livestock also produces more than 100 other polluting gases, including more than two-thirds of the world's emissions of ammonia, one of the main causes of acid rain.
--http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/cow-emissions-more-damaging-to-planet-than-cosub2sub-from-cars-427843.html
Also, the Earth's climate has changed quite abruptly several times in the past as far as we can tell and it is still doing great.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/rapid.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrupt_climate_change
But maybe there should be a thread for global warming where we can really talk about the science of it (and the economics driving the science of it....HELLoooooOOOOo grant money).
For now, I will try to redirect myself back to the economy.
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Savio, yeah, the climate has changed rapidly in the past...but rapidly in the geological sense. Meaning even the major extinction events lasted tens of thousands of years, if not longer. Recorded civilization has only been around a couple thousand years and the industrial revolution time period only a couple centuries. Relatively, I think we put out a lot more crap a lot faster than other species did in the past.
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On March 09 2009 07:05 fight_or_flight wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2009 03:15 ahrara_ wrote:On March 09 2009 01:20 warding wrote:
Human labour and physical resources may be finite, but what about technology affecting the productivity of the finite resources? Are advances in technology going to stagnate at one point? I think sustainable development is something we really have to consider (though I'm far from an environmentalist). Two problems with technology, and hopefully someone better informed on environmental econ can pick up on this: 1.) Technology does not always take into account environmental externalities. In fact, some technology actually facilitates faster exploitation. So you would be reducing your intake of petroleum while destroying another 100 sq km of rainforest, diminishing carbon reservoirs. 2.) Technology is not always exported to developing countries. The US could transition entirely to sustainable growth, but China can still be leaving a giant ecological footprint. These are good points, but I think you guys are missing the bigger picture. If you watch the video (which i know is really long), he makes the point that in about 750 years, at the current population growth, there will be a human for every 1 square meter of land on the earth's surface. And in something like a few thousand years, the mass of humans will equal the mass of the earth.. I argued vigorously for technology as well. He didn't cover the exponential growth of technology, only the exponential growth in liabilities. Even if we could colonize both mars and the moon, the doubling time of our population is measured in decades, not millennia. So even if we had free energy technology, we would literally need to create matter and live in space to continue our growth. Even then, eventually the volume of space we would need would need to increase to a point where we would need to be moving away from each other at the speed of light to sustain constant growth. On the flip side however, I don't think population growth is such a big problem because as Japan, Russia, Europe, and (non-immigrants) of the US show, eventually populations decline. So we are really concerned with economic growth here in my mind. edit: I personally don't believe there is a limit to technology, and in fact I think technology can't be predicted. So even my comments above are probably not valid (what if there are infinite parallel universes, etc). My sole point is that we should probably not base public policy off of expected technological gains which are currently unknown.
Since the movie is so long, maybe you can answer my question. Did his predictions take into account that as time goes by and developing countries develop, their birth rates will change? If he ignores the changes in birthrate that come with changes in development then I don't think his predictions are worth anybody's time to listen to.
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On March 09 2009 09:34 Shiftster wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2009 09:20 cUrsOr wrote:
at some point the population growth has to stop, and will probably decline.
] Yeah, Japan and Western Europe are both getting shitkicked as the average fertility goes down. At the point where a small entrepreneurial class has to support masses of the retiring elderly, there are going to be serious economic consequences. But I digress. Let's talk about the Buy-American clause. The truth is, just like in 1929, when Hoover instantiated the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, this will bring eventual disaster to our economy. A trade war will begin, and our exports will suffer. Populism fails because it does not regard the long-term consequence. Obama is appeasing the blue-collared workers in the short term, but the future is at stake here.
Sorry for so many posts, I am just getting caught up.
I would add to this that populism not only ignores the long term, it seeks to appease the well organized producers while ALWAYS hurting the consumer (aka every single American since we are all consumers. I can't think of any example of how populism would benefit consumers. But consumers are not organized while steel, car, and produce industries are extremely well organized and can push government to do what will help them. Interest groups getting some help to their members while hurting the rest of country....populism for the fail.
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On March 11 2009 16:48 gchan wrote:
Savio, yeah, the climate has changed rapidly in the past...but rapidly in the geological sense. Meaning even the major extinction events lasted tens of thousands of years, if not longer. Recorded civilization has only been around a couple thousand years and the industrial revolution time period only a couple centuries. Relatively, I think we put out a lot more crap a lot faster than other species did in the past.
In an effort to not steer this too far from the economy let me just say that humans do not have as big an impact as we tend to think.
And let me throw in an image:
See the green, thats humans.
Its all summed up by this:
"Just how much of the "Greenhouse Effect" is caused by human activity?
It is about 0.28%, if water vapor is taken into account-- about 5.53%, if not."
--http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
+ Show Spoiler +
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On March 11 2009 16:50 Savio wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2009 07:05 fight_or_flight wrote:On March 09 2009 03:15 ahrara_ wrote:On March 09 2009 01:20 warding wrote:
Human labour and physical resources may be finite, but what about technology affecting the productivity of the finite resources? Are advances in technology going to stagnate at one point? I think sustainable development is something we really have to consider (though I'm far from an environmentalist). Two problems with technology, and hopefully someone better informed on environmental econ can pick up on this: 1.) Technology does not always take into account environmental externalities. In fact, some technology actually facilitates faster exploitation. So you would be reducing your intake of petroleum while destroying another 100 sq km of rainforest, diminishing carbon reservoirs. 2.) Technology is not always exported to developing countries. The US could transition entirely to sustainable growth, but China can still be leaving a giant ecological footprint. These are good points, but I think you guys are missing the bigger picture. If you watch the video (which i know is really long), he makes the point that in about 750 years, at the current population growth, there will be a human for every 1 square meter of land on the earth's surface. And in something like a few thousand years, the mass of humans will equal the mass of the earth.. I argued vigorously for technology as well. He didn't cover the exponential growth of technology, only the exponential growth in liabilities. Even if we could colonize both mars and the moon, the doubling time of our population is measured in decades, not millennia. So even if we had free energy technology, we would literally need to create matter and live in space to continue our growth. Even then, eventually the volume of space we would need would need to increase to a point where we would need to be moving away from each other at the speed of light to sustain constant growth. On the flip side however, I don't think population growth is such a big problem because as Japan, Russia, Europe, and (non-immigrants) of the US show, eventually populations decline. So we are really concerned with economic growth here in my mind. edit: I personally don't believe there is a limit to technology, and in fact I think technology can't be predicted. So even my comments above are probably not valid (what if there are infinite parallel universes, etc). My sole point is that we should probably not base public policy off of expected technological gains which are currently unknown. Since the movie is so long, maybe you can answer my question. Did his predictions take into account that as time goes by and developing countries develop, their birth rates will change? If he ignores the changes in birthrate that come with changes in development then I don't think his predictions are worth anybody's time to listen to.
No he ignores that for the most part. However, its still worth watching imo because he doesn't really make predictions, rather, he simply shows what the outcome is if historical trends continue. For example, when they say coal will last for another 500 years at its current rate of consumption, he shows that if we actually take into account the historical growth it will only be like 50 years (if I remember correctly).
He also discusses oil consumption, which shows the exponential increase in consumption and how that has leveled off and beginning to form a bell curve. As far as population growth I think he mentions a peak population somewhere.
Its interesting to watch because its not so much about predictions as understanding exponential growth. I mean we all know what it is, but we don't know what it is if you understand what I'm saying.
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On March 11 2009 15:57 Savio wrote:
Actaully Ahrara, the effect of global warming on economic growth can't even be predicted well enough to know the sign of the net effect. Attempts to predict it only measure the bad things they can imagine (like flooding and other things you mentioned), but fail to imagine the possible benefits such as unfarmable land that has become much more suitable to growing crops and literally limitless other possibilities (more rain, more CO2 for plants to grow, and who knows what else).
Also regarding global warming, I don't think anyone can say that high CO2 is bad for the planet as a whole. CO2 levels have been WAY higher than they are now and the earth was a much greener place (perhaps as a consequence?) I'm not a biologist but my simple understanding suggests that more CO2 means plants have more carbon available to fuel growth and proliferation.
I guess the main point is that in general, when people talk about global warming, they almost always only talk about what MIGHT go wrong. This is pretty natural since people are afraid of change and the unknown.
People who are not qualified to discuss ecology shouldn't make such claims. I don't know enough about it to discuss the impacts of global warming confidently, but I can tell you that the overwhelming scientific consensus is that the greenhouse effect will have a tremendously negative impact. Just like there are economists who think free trade isn't valuable, there are ecologists who don't believe in man made warming, but that doesn't mean we should listen to them.
Couple of things based on what I know (could be veryyy wrong though :\).
1.) Warmer climes adversely impacts crop yields because it engenders greater competition among species, which makes crops more vulnerable to disease. This is one reason why tropical regions of the world have so much trouble producing enough food.
2.) Just a few degrees increase in the average global temperature can melt enough of the polar ice caps to increase sea levels enough that entire coastal regions will be rendered uninhabitable.
3.) Higher CO2 density may help plants grow faster in the long run, but we are cutting down forests sooner than they can be replenished. Plants act as reservoirs of CO2, so with each tree cut down, more CO2 is released into the atmosphere.
Anyway, I think we're just gonna make fools of ourselves debating this. I personally work under the assumption that global warming has negative impacts and is man-made, because that's the scientific consensus. I think bias is probably an issue, but I think since peer review seems to work well enough with other fields of study, it's fair to assume it works under human ecology as well.
Also: Show nested quote + Manufacturing as a whole on the planet remains the same. It just gets shifted around to countries with a comparative advantage for it, while more technologically and better educated countries shift to service. The service growth in America is made possible by the "outsourcing" of manufacturing to countries with cheaper labor. I hope a misread that or missed something earlier that changes the meaning. There is no way that total global manufacturing amounts is stable over time. As the world get richer (which is has enormously), what that really means is that the world over all produces more. Even if you kick out services from the calculations, there is no way that the world now manufactures that same as it did in the 1700's (even if you discount the effect of a growing population). The poor of the world consume WAY more physical resources than the poor of a few hundred years ago. In real economic growth (as happens with free trade), even though both countries specialize in their respective comp advantage, BOTH countries are richer (richer always means increased production and consumption).
Ya, I misspoke. I was just pointing out to warding that global growth must always be accompanied by manufacturing growth. Individual countries can crowd out manufacturing by shifting to service growth, but that only means the demand for tangible goods will be met by developing countries.
Finally, the market actually fixes things faster than we genernally give it credit for. Take your example of oil. The government taxes oil and gasoline but the benefits that we have seen from this (meaning like fuel efficiency, etc) has been pretty small to the changes we observed during the oil embargo of the '70s. During that period prices literally quadrupled overnight (way faster than we have seen since then). But it was during this time that everybody started using double paned glass for their windows, the gas guzzlers of the 50s and 60s were pretty quickly replaced by smaller, less powerful cars and large increases in the efficiency of furnaces, etc.
And this wasn't because the government MADE window manufacturers change their methods. It was just a natural response.
We have not seen renewable energy cars that are trully viable yet mainly because there is not reason for them. Shoot, we are still getting most of our electricity from fossil fuels even though with relatively small effort we could get ALL of our electricity from nuclear power and it would be cleaner and safer (like France and Japan already do for the most part). But we haven't done it because there has been no reason to. But we could sure do it pretty fast just like they did in the '70s if we needed to (I haven't looked it up but I know that most of our nuclear plants are about 30 years old...there has been no new ones since then. Its not surprising that we have a bunch of nuclear power plants that date back to to 70s since that is when we were trying to adjust to oil shocks).
So I think that your idea of having government force the market to adapt before it needs to:
1. Hasn't seemed to be very effective...it would have to be a HUGE tax to have an effect and that is political suicide
2. Isn't necessary.
The idea that free market corrections are sufficiently fast acting is empirically denied. Carbon emissions even in countries with regulations have continued growing, although at a slower rate. The rate of growth of the rate of growth for developed countries, on the other hand, is rising. Moreover, free markets do not account for damage done to publicly owned resources such as the atmosphere. The tragedy of the commons ensures that free-market solutions will never be sufficient.
An important thing to understand about the environmental cost of development is that any correction, free-market or otherwise, will likely be sudden and calamitous. This is how a population behaves when they overshoot the capacity of their environment to sustain them.
Populations do not settle gently to a sustainable level because the impacts of resource depletion (or in our case, global warming) are delayed. So even if free-markets can self correct for environmental externalities, the price signals will arrive too late to prevent the population overshoot. Both animals and past human civilizations have followed exactly this trend -- why not us?
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The Peleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum or PETM... is when the planet was as warm as its ever been, it was a "drastic" global temperature increase of:
"6 °C over 20,000 years".
There were no ice caps, and there were temperate zones in the polar regions, no ice. I just thought this would be interesting. I don't think I'll weigh in on the debate this time- its just a fascinating event.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene-Eocene_Thermal_Maximum
as is this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event
In the resolution to the PETM, the northern ice-cap became covered in a huge mass of Fern like plant life that covered what was, at the time, the northern ocean. This huge carbon sink for the atmosphere lead to a long period of global cooling in which the ice caps formed. We are currently living in whats called an "icehouse" planet. Ironically enough, the Oil Companies cant wait for the northern cap to melt... so they can get at the huge deposits of fossil fuels speculated to be left by the Azolla Event. So... we can release all that carbon again. 
Interesting facts, before the Azolla Event, the average polar temp was 13°c and after, its -9°c..."It is not until 15 million years ago that evidence for widespread polar freezing is common." Of course, humans (homo-sapeins) have lived in the last 1million years of that period. So... suppose we do see a complete melting of the Northern Icecap, that will be significant... in terms of altering the environment that humans have evolved in.
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6 / 20 000 = 0.0003 / year
i think we are like at least +1°C ( i don't have the exact numbers ) over the last century so it is 0.01/year ( it is a way faster increase ).
The main problem is that there are no adaptations possible for animal species and even for human it will be difficult. Some places in the world will be flooded by the end of the century.
( Think Bangladesh for exemple ).
edit: Btw
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This is one reason why tropical regions of the world have so much trouble producing enough food. The number 1 reason why tropical regions have so much trouble producing enough food is that the soil obtained by clear cutting trees is a very iron rich thin band which dries up and loses water carrying capacity within years, and rapidly depletes itself of nutrients. Read more here:
http://rainforests.mongabay.com/0502.htm
Anyway, I think we're just gonna make fools of ourselves debating this. You most definitely will if you don't get a primer. Lets start that now: The vast majority of surface CO2 is held in the oceans, which then deposit carbonaceous material onto the ocean floor where its subducted into the mantle (the largest carbon reservoir on the planet) and kept; volcanic activity releases it over time. This is the basic carbon cycle. The more rapidly adapting portion is the carbon held in soil, rock and living organisms. Now how can this be dangerous? The earth's corrective measures for increasing albedo and global ice ages (which is decreased solubilization of CO2 from volcanic emissions leading to global heating) and its corrective measures for increased CO2 emissions (global melting of ice, permafrost, etc) both lead to nearly catastrophic consequences for humans; In the first scenario, we're literally buried under kilometers of ice, and in the second the vast majority of continents are submerged. The worst part is that these geologic corrective measures take millions of years to do their work, which simply isn't good for us. Basically, substantial changes of temperature on the planet in both directions are fatal to us.
This is a very entry level version that's hyper simplified, but there are substantial 'oh shit' moments as we hit certain benchmarks, the scariest of which is probably the destabilization of gas methane hydrates if global temperatures continue to rise. The common analogy would be that someone took our can of ocean pepsi, shook it, then opened the lid. The worst part is that this has already started to happen in arctic regions, but at an 'acceptably' low rate. This is a feed-forward mechanism wherein warming is going to cause future warming. If this continues and the gas hydrates start increasing their level of destabilization, we're going to, essentially, need to run a carbon NEGATIVE footprint in order to stop runaway global warming. The longer we wait, the much more expensive this protection will be, because as the rate of out-gassing increases, the level of investment into storing carbon will similarly increase.
The Peleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum or PETM... is when the planet was as warm as its ever been, it was a "drastic" global temperature increase of:
"6 °C over 20,000 years". You should probably mention that the 'drastic' part was that the most likely cause or most significant factor was the release of those hydrated gases and resulted in a mass extinction of marine life. That very same release of gas hydrates is also speculated to have caused the worst mass extinction the planet has ever seen, during which 96% of marine species, and 70% of land dwellin' species went afk from the fossil record. So no, it won't be 'significant', it'll be catastrophic, with the vast majority of our species dying because of both a series of pandemic breakouts, food shortages, and far more violent weather patterns.
Edit: fixed a retarded phrase.
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L just pwned this discussion.
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goodtimes.
edit: \/ nuked \/ watch your asses.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image270f.gif)
![[image loading]](http://carrier.pbwiki.com/f/carrying%20capacity.gif)
![[image loading]](http://www.hiboox.fr/go/images/nature-decouverte/figspm-1,1837ee67fd6ac9020839b181d8356431.gif.html)
