We are overloading the planet: Now What?

[bilby]

WOP meaning without papers or passport

No, it didn't. Wop is just a straightforward racial slur; like Wog, or Pom which also have urban myths regarding an etymology as an initialism or abbreviation.

I suspect that these tall tales are due to people attempting to justify or sidestep their racism.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Capitalism collapses when there is no growth.

That is a quandary that I don't know how to solve, or if there is a solution.
If global population growth levels off or declines, how can a growth-dependent economic system thrive?
Instinctively it would seem that fewer people = more for the rest of us, but in practice that doesn't seem to be the case.
What alternatives exist?

Brian Czech and Herman Daly propose steady state economics.

Basically, we provide for our needs and wants, live well, but nobody gets richer and richer.

Steady state economics shouldn't exlude continual progress in research and development, technology, efficiency and improving how we live, just without the expanding population, consumption, exploitation of resources, ecosystems, etc, as we do business ....

It's an unstable system. Sooner or later someone will come up with an innovation. And just because it's steady doesn't mean it's not consuming resources.

Steady state economics doesn't exclude innovation, development or progress. Nor is it a matter of not consuming resources, just not consuming more and more and more resources, ie, no perpetual growth in consumption.

Innovation, development and progress all change the state and are thus inherently incompatible with steady state.

And so long as we are consuming any non-renewable resources we will eventually run into a problem.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The only path that doesn't lead to catastrophe is technological--develop ways to maintain our standard of living without consuming irreplaceable resources. Is there a path? There's no way to be certain other than trying. If the path exists can we find and follow it before things collapse? Again, no way of being certain.

Yes, the same thing I have said many times. Pursue technological advances.

But also be honest with what it can do. And the fact is that nuclear and renewables do not show any signs of being able to give us what fossil fuels have done. See Live Smarter?

The problem is you want to cut the economy at the same time as you say to pursue science. Science production is basically a fraction of the size of the economy in excess of the minimum needed for survival and is thus is rather sensitive to the per capita productivity and scales basically linearly with population.

 

[DBT]

Capitalism collapses when there is no growth.

That is a quandary that I don't know how to solve, or if there is a solution.
If global population growth levels off or declines, how can a growth-dependent economic system thrive?
Instinctively it would seem that fewer people = more for the rest of us, but in practice that doesn't seem to be the case.
What alternatives exist?

Brian Czech and Herman Daly propose steady state economics.

Basically, we provide for our needs and wants, live well, but nobody gets richer and richer.

Steady state economics shouldn't exlude continual progress in research and development, technology, efficiency and improving how we live, just without the expanding population, consumption, exploitation of resources, ecosystems, etc, as we do business ....

It's an unstable system. Sooner or later someone will come up with an innovation. And just because it's steady doesn't mean it's not consuming resources.

Steady state economics doesn't exclude innovation, development or progress. Nor is it a matter of not consuming resources, just not consuming more and more and more resources, ie, no perpetual growth in consumption.

Innovation, development and progress all change the state and are thus inherently incompatible with steady state.

Not so, steady state economics just means that you are not constantly increasing consumption. Your resources can be proportioned and allocated to whatever is needed or wanted, research, space exploration or whatever, you are just not using more and more resources, clearing land, building new roads, businesses , houses, suburbs, etc.

And so long as we are consuming any non-renewable resources we will eventually run into a problem.

Sure, that's something that needs to be addressed regardless.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And your "source" is not a source--he's simply stating numbers no doubt gathered from elsewhere but I do not see any references.

Can't see it? Did you look? Because Murphy has a footnote on the page I referenced that points to: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-measure-true-cost-fossil-fuels/

And that source lists it's source as:
DATA SOURCES: INTERNATIONAL ENERGY AGENCY; U.S. ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION; U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE; STUDIES BY CHARLES A. S. HALL ET AL. AND BY OTHER RESEARCHES

So no, you cannot simply ignore Murphy's excellent college level textbook with well-documented sources by using scare quotes when you refer to it.

I didn't search the footnotes because there was no note attached to where it was referenced.

And your Sci Am link talks about the implications, not what they are measuring (and gives multiple ways of measuring!) or any justification for it.

Even if the numbers were right (and I don't think they are) it's realistically the only game in town.

There are few games in town, including nuclear, solar and wind. None come anywhere close to fossil fuels. See Live Smarter?https://mindsetfree.blog/we-are-overloading-the-planet-now-what/#Smarter

Solar and wind are not viable for most purposes due to the storage problem. They're good for running processes that can be easily throttled to the supply but of basically no value otherwise other than reducing fuel use by fast-throttle powerplants. And nuke doesn't throttle well. (Which is part of what lead to Chernobyl--the reactor had been turned down for a while before their idiotic test. This left it sluggish and laggy in responding to the actions of the control rods. Laggy controls used without enough care lead to oversteer. They got oversteer--and tried to handle it rather than doing a scram.)

I haven't read that whole book but the page you pointed me to seems to mean your same logic would apply to all sources of power. Fundamentally, all the "green" answers end up saying the same thing: die.

As I discuss in the opening post, there are options.

You have said there are options but you haven't established that your options actually solve the problem rather than simply postponing it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Economic growth rate, almost by definition, is given by labor productivity growth plus the growth in gross employment.

As we're already nitpicking, actually, the economic growth rate (or more precisely, the growth factor) of anything is given by the growth factor of labour productivity multiplied by the growth factor of gross employment.

Since we're nitpicking, let me point out that you need to add 1 to both numbers before multiplying, and subtract 1 afterwords. It was to avoid those extra words that I simplified for typical rates.

For example, two 2% growth rates will "add up" to 4.04%, not 4%.
But this is NOT the product of the rates (.02 x .02 = .0004), but rather (1+0.2) x (1+.02) - 1 = .0404.

I attempted to avoid these arithmetic details by inserting the word "almost." As it turns out, that was at best, only ALMOST a good idea!

Ok, to pick another nit:

You add them and you add their product.

2% added to 2% = 2% + 2% + (2% of 2%).

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Japan is trying to become more welcoming to immigration.

Too bad there's not a bus route from Texas...

Well, at one time Google Maps would give me a route. Google knows everything, it must be possible!

(Easter eggs. I forget what routes had what means of transport but there were routes from the US mainland to Hawaii, Hawaii to Japan and from the US mainland to IIRC Ireland. Methods were swim, kayak and jetski. I feel like there was a ferry from Japan to China but Google won't cough it up. It does, however, cough up a walking route from Tokyo to Shanghai. I'm sure it's missing road data because it's exceedingly non-optimal and passes through 4 NOPE! countries and a few more nope countries. It also carries a restricted usage road warning.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So you ARE revising the claim. What's the new version? (Remember that poor countries can experience HIGH growth and still be relatively poor.)

Yeah, growth rate is irrelevant. The relevant number is MJ per PPP GDP dollar.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Nuclear reactors are such simple technology that they can occur (and have occurred) naturally.

Disagree. Have occurred, yes. Can occur, no. Too much U-235 has decayed by now, nature can no longer create a critical mass.

1) The Balance of Plant (those parts of the facility such as the turbines, generator sets, cabling, switchyards, transformers, etc., etc., that are identical at a nuclear plant to stuff also required at a coal power plant).

Nitpick: Nuke plants run cooler for safety reasons.

2) Refuelling gear (much simpler at a nuclear plant than a coal plant, because a nuke gets fuelled once or twice a year, while a coal plant needs a constant flow of fuel).

Not much simpler because the reactor has to be refueled by totally robotic means.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Japan is trying to become more welcoming to immigration.

Too bad there's not a bus route from Texas...

When I was kid in the 50s-60s in the NYC area a man could make a living wage without much English or a high school education.

A white man. The 50s-60s were an era where the crappy jobs were held by non-whites and by foreigners. We saw it as good times because we didn't care about the out groups.

Tat economy is gone. Somethng the progressives do not seem to understand.

That economy never actually existed. It was an artifact of racism and the fact that much of the rest of the world's industry got destroyed in WWII.

I grew up with the derogatory term WOP meaning without papers or passport, usually applied to Italians. Mexicans were wet backs.

There is a documentary on Ellis Island that should be online, probably PBS.

So that's where the term came from.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

4) Shielding (it's just a big pile of rocks. We stick those rocks together, to stop them from moving; That's called "concrete". The Romans used it to build loads of stuff, including the Collosseum Colosseum, and they didn't need a single piece of fossil fuel burning equipment to do so).

<nitpick>
The Romans would have used some fossil fuels to build the Colosseum
1. Lime for mortar Roman lime burning
2. Cooking of some food for slaves, free workers, soldiers etc.
3. The metal used in the construction would have been forged using fossil fuel

Granted nowhere near the proportion of fossil fuel used by them compared to what we would use
</nitpick>

Wood. I don't believe they used any fossil fuel.

 

[Merle]

You have said there are options but you haven't established that your options actually solve the problem rather than simply postponing it.

Understood. I haven't solved the problem, and I make it clear that I haven't solved the problem.

There is a growing movement led by people like Jem Bendell that basically say society is going to collapse, and there is nothing we can do but accept it. I sometimes lean toward this, but always want to keep hope that somehow we will work it out.

In my post, I do fervently look at the technology options and the option of limits on affluence, but I keep finding them inadequate. I talk about population only because I see no choice but to consider it. And, as I have emphasized repeatedly, this is not about forcing people to reduce population, but about making it clear to people that they have good reasons to have fewer children. If they have the mean such as birth control and abortions to do so, it will help. There may be tax incentives. We could push for more programs like Social Security so that fewer people feel that they need to have children for their retirement plan. We can have better education opportunities for women. Those are just a few ideas.

Whether alternative energy, economic cutbacks, and population reduction could be done in adequate ways, I really don't know. But I think we need to do what we can, always making sure that whatever we do is ethical.

And if our efforts all fail, we can always play "Nearer My God to Thee" as the ship goes down, I guess.

And if you think I am exaggerating the problem, I give links to multiple scientific papers that show that the problem is very serious. If you don't believe me, at least look at the many links I give to credible scientists that share my concern and document the reasons for their concerns.

I know people think I am here to push one option, and that's not it at all. I say we are in deep trouble, we are grasping at straws, but maybe a combination of those straws will work, or at least not be as bad as doing nothing.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

WOP meaning without papers or passport

No, it didn't. Wop is just a straightforward racial slur; like Wog, or Pom which also have urban myths regarding an etymology as an initialism or abbreviation.

I suspect that these tall tales are due to people attempting to justify or sidestep their racism.

Slurs often have their origins in originally innocent things.

 

[bilby]

Brian Czech and Herman Daly propose steady state economics.

Steady state economics worked "well" for centuries, during the Middle Ages.

Population growth was kept in check by disease, famine, and war; Almost everyone was fated to do the exact same job as their father (if they lived to adulthood).

Personally, I don't think many people would like to return to such a system.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You have said there are options but you haven't established that your options actually solve the problem rather than simply postponing it.

Understood. I haven't solved the problem, and I make it clear that I haven't solved the problem.

There is a growing movement led by people like Jem Bendell that basically say society is going to collapse, and there is nothing we can do but accept it. I sometimes lean toward this, but always want to keep hope that somehow we will work it out.

As it stands collapse is inevitable. No amount of cutbacks can do more than prolong the inevitable. Thus solutions must come from innovation.

In my post, I do fervently look at the technology options and the option of limits on affluence, but I keep finding them inadequate. I talk about population only because I see no choice but to consider it. And, as I have emphasized repeatedly, this is not about forcing people to reduce population, but about making it clear to people that they have good reasons to have fewer children. If they have the mean such as birth control and abortions to do so, it will help. There may be tax incentives. We could push for more programs like Social Security so that fewer people feel that they need to have children for their retirement plan. We can have better education opportunities for women. Those are just a few ideas.

The problem is that limits on affluence also limits innovation even more.

 

[Merle]

We don't even have the high-temperature furnaces and ovens to build the components without using fossil fuels.

Not that I know anything about this either, but ...

An electric arc furnace (EAF) is a furnace that heats material by means of an electric arc.

Industrial arc furnaces range in size from small units of approximately one-tonne capacity (used in foundries for producing cast iron products) up to about 400-tonne units used for secondary steelmaking. Arc furnaces used in research laboratories and by dentists may have a capacity of only a few dozen grams. Industrial electric arc furnace temperatures can reach 1,800 °C (3,300 °F), while laboratory units can exceed 3,000 °C (5,400 °F).

In electric arc furnaces, the charged material (the material entered into the furnace for heating, not to be confused with electric charge) is directly exposed to an electric arc, and the current from the electrode terminals passes through the charged material.Arc furnaces differ from induction furnaces, in which the charge is heated instead by eddy currents.

Isn't that sufficient, or is there some necessary process that uses higher temperatures?
Per bilby's graphic above, all you'd need would be one nuclear power plant, and it could spawn hundreds of little baby power plants... or great big adult ones I suppose, though that imagery lacks emotional appeal.

Arc furnaces are definitely an option. Other options include biofuels and using electricity to create hydrogen. In my post, I link to two papers that discuss the options (Sandalow, 2019, Friedman, 2019).

It takes a huge amount of energy to make the concrete, steel, and all the exotic metals used in a nuclear plant. And then it takes a lot of energy to haul everything to the site and erect everything. This is all done primarily with fossil fuels now. If we need to do this without fossil fuels, it is going to be a lot more expensive to make nuclear plants. If nuclear plants are currently struggling and needing government subsidies to keep them running (Clifford, 2022), how are they ever going to survive when the cost of construction skyrockets? Even France, which is supposedly the Mecca of nuclear, is finding multiple difficulties keeping its aging nuclear plants running. The company that runs their plants has been degraded as an investment risk, specifically because they are struggling with the technical problems of keeping the nukes running.

 

[bilby]

..

 

[bilby]

Nuclear reactors are such simple technology that they can occur (and have occurred) naturally.

Disagree. Have occurred, yes. Can occur, no. Too much U-235 has decayed by now, nature can no longer create a critical mass.

Sure it can. It's less likely, but not impossible. The reason is fairly straightforward, but I best not talk about it, because discussion of moderation is a ToU violation.

1) The Balance of Plant (those parts of the facility such as the turbines, generator sets, cabling, switchyards, transformers, etc., etc., that are identical at a nuclear plant to stuff also required at a coal power plant).

Nitpick: Nuke plants run cooler for safety reasons.

Nuke plants do lots of needless things for "safety" reasons.

2) Refuelling gear (much simpler at a nuclear plant than a coal plant, because a nuke gets fuelled once or twice a year, while a coal plant needs a constant flow of fuel).

Not much simpler because the reactor has to be refueled by totally robotic means.

Nah, just by remote control. The first plants were built before workable robotics; They just had regular cranes for fuelling/defuelling, with the driver sitting a long way away and driving via long wires.

 

[Merle]

As it stands collapse is inevitable. No amount of cutbacks can do more than prolong the inevitable. Thus solutions must come from innovation.

That sounds like a faith statement. Without technical salvation we are doomed. Therefore we can know that our personal savior, technology, will be there. Huh?

When it comes to future energy technology, agnosticism might be a better option.(Floyd, 2020; Nikiforuk, 2023; Trainer, 2011; Tverberg, 2023; Murphy, 2012; Siebert, 2021; Clack, 2017; Ketcham, 2023; Gibbs, 2019) .

The problem is that limits on affluence also limits innovation even more.

Yes, that is a problem. But technology is no where close to keeping up with fossil fuel depletion, global warming, and all the other global boundaries we have overshot. Perhaps closing our eyes and pushing a little harder on the throttle is not a good way out of this mess.

 

[Elixir]

he derogatory term WOP meaning without papers or passport, usually applied to Italians. Mexicans were wet backs

And Irish people were "The Irish".
Japanese, Chinese, Jewish people, Middle Easterners, Hawaiians, Native Americans, Spanish, Mexicans -
Hell, dude, anyone speaking other than the Queen's English had their own unique derogatory designation.

PS: Wetbacks is all one word.