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Ecological Wealth of Nations

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Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations

#121

Post by dredmorbius »

denim_chicken wrote: post #48
devy wrote: post #7

So what are the real options of survival? a) accelerate migration to Mars b) population control? Anything else we can do to prevent "fucked"?

Read Plato's Revenge by William Ophuls

Ophuls is a tremendously underappreciated author.

I'd recommend going back to his 1977 Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity, which is one of the best distillations of the ecological and limits arguments, and one of the very few extensions of that to political space, I've seen.

I'm still planning on writing a proper review (https://reddit.com/r/dredmorbius, eventually), but strongly recommend all his books.

Plato's Revenge updates a few particulars of the argument and extends it toward a solution space. What I appreciate most about him is that he writes not from a prescriptive "here's how to solve this" but an expository "here are the dimensions of the problem and possible frames of resolution".

William R. Catton, Jr.'s Overshoot is also excellent.

Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations

#122

Post by dredmorbius »

jogjayr wrote: post #105

67% of Japan is covered by forest. How come they have an ecological deficit?

127 million people, in an advanced industrialised country.

I was shocked to see that Japan has a net out-migration:

http://metrocosm.com/global-immigration-map/

(Metrocosm -- a/k/a Max Galka -- is an absolutely amazing data resource.)

Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations

#123

Post by dredmorbius »

schallertd wrote: post #20

I'm pretty sick of all that hype around Tesla for example, pretending to be the real solution for independence of oil and gas. That is simply not the case. Tesla hasn't solved any of those issues so far, they only shifted the problem once again. Of course they design very beautiful electronic cars, but this isn't a solution for our energy and resource problem either.

The gain of Tesla is that:

1. It decouples transport from fossil fuel use.

2. It achieves greater efficiency per unit energy input than combustion-based systems, if using non-thermal (nuclear-excepted) fuel. Carnot's Law limits heat engines to ~20 - 45% efficiency, max.

On the negative side:

1. Tesla doesn't fundamentally change the dynamics of land-use which lead to massive amounts of personal transit being necessary.

2. Thermal energy (coal, gas, oil, biomass, and even nuclear, though without the CO2 emissions) still has a peak generating efficiency of only about 45%.

3. It's possible that synfuels might prove a better route for portable energy storage. Carbon-neutral synthetic petrol, kerosene (jet fuel), deisel, and methane would be infinitely miscable with current fossil-based liquid and gas fuels, and would require no replacement of extant transport, refining, dispensing, or utilisation capital. (The cost would be higher, though there's an accounting argument to be made there as well.) Energy densities (by volume and weight), handling properties, safety, and very, very long-term storage capabilities (tens to hundreds of millions of years, proven) make this attractive.

4. The entire system is predicated on economical sources of lithium (or other battery substrate). Lithium is not an abundant mineral, and present recycling rates are low. Even with 90% recovery, the stock of material would fall by 80% in 15 generations. Most metals see recycling rates of closer to 30%, if that.

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/recycle/rec...

Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations

#124

Post by dredmorbius »

miloshadzic wrote: post #34

"Ideal" growth of an economy is 3%. Growth takes resources(fossil fuels, ore, etc). Compound growth takes more and more resources over the whole planet. Free market fundamentalism means we're not investing so heavily into alternative sources but burning what we've got. Compound that 3% and it's just a metter when we'll be fucked unless things change a lot.

For most of human prehistory and history, the rate was closer to 0.01%. It had progressed mightily between 1500 and 1750 to 0.17%. Rates of growth over 1% per year weren't known until after the advent of the Industrial Revolution (1800). There's no compelling reason to believe they're sustainable, and multiple compelling reasons to believe they're not.

http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/Book_Reviews/...

Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations

#125

Post by dredmorbius »

hackeraccount wrote: post #51
badminton1 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Venus might be more survivable than Mars, just not on the surface. It is also closer.

Oddly while it's closer I think it takes more energy to get to Venus then Mars. Something to do with orbital dynamics revolving around the relative speeds of Earth and the place you're trying to get to. That said the Venus exploration concepts I've seen look really interesting.

I'm not a fan of either Venus or Mars as alternatives to Earth. But Venus's far thicker atmosphere allows for aerobraking, which tremendously reduces the fuel requirements (tyranny of the rocket equation) for stopping once you get there.

Unless all you plan to do is enjoy the view on the way down.

Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations

#126

Post by dredmorbius »

exratione wrote: post #8

The fundamental problem with Malthusianism is that it is static thinking. It projects on the basis of no change in technology, as if the present moment continues eternally. This is why all statements to date on running out of X or Y at time T in the future have proven false. What actually happens is that people look ahead, forecast increased prices for X, and then the more adventurous go and build a better way of get…

How, exactly, does technology improve productive capabilities?

Would it be possible to identify specific mechanisms?

What, if any, limits to those mechanisms might exist?

Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations

#127

Post by dredmorbius »

Bartweiss wrote: post #68
eudox wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Agricultural output is still growing, but there are physical limits. And people frequently confuse engineering limits with physical limits.

This is the problem with real-world Malthusian predictions. There are (obviously) hard limits on growth and carrying capacity for Earth, but extrapolating from some existing metric like food growth per human is an atrocious way to find them. A convincing Malthusian argument needs to take one of two forms: either concede that it represents doom without engineering progress , or convincingly argue that it represents a…

Engineering limits frequently fall below physical limits.

Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations

#128

Post by eudox »

dredmorbius wrote: post #127
Bartweiss wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the problem with real-world Malthusian predictions. There are (obviously) hard limits on growth and carrying capacity for Earth, but extrapolating from some existing metric like food growth per human is an atrocious way to find them. A convincing Malthusian argument needs to take one of two forms: either concede that it represents doom without engineering progress , or convincingly argue that it represents a…

Engineering limits frequently fall below physical limits.

Yes, that's the point. But it's very hard to point to the effective engineering limit.

For example: the ultimate limit to computing power is Bremermann's limit, but that's only reached in the surface of a black hole. The effective limit of computation – how much you can compute in Baryonic matter – is going to be far lower. How low is a hard question to answer.

Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations

#129

Post by Bartweiss »

eudox wrote: post #128
dredmorbius wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineering limits frequently fall below physical limits.

Yes, that's the point. But it's very hard to point to the effective engineering limit. For example: the ultimate limit to computing power is Bremermann's limit, but that's only reached in the surface of a black hole. The effective limit of computation – how much you can compute in Baryonic matter – is going to be far lower. How low is a hard question to answer.

Precisely, thanks. I can get an upper bound on Earth's carrying capacity with (volume of earth / volume of a human), but it's going to be way harder to calculate the number that will actually matter.

Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations

#130

Post by anubisresources »

pjc50 wrote: post #36
devy wrote: post #7

So what are the real options of survival? a) accelerate migration to Mars b) population control? Anything else we can do to prevent "fucked"?

Migration to Mars would require such an enourmous amount of energy that it would make the problem worse - each person moved to Mars would use far more than an average Western lifetime's worth of energy in the move.

Significantly lower energy expenditures with non-rocket launches though
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