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Energy, population, and economic growth
1to392831weretaken
Member, Swaye's Wigwam Posts: 7,674 
I'd like to link to a few blog posts that are now nearly a decade old but I think are still relevant to the cause of the CCFB. I found this blog in the wake of the 2008 shitstorm, when I was wandering down a path of the often overlooked impact of exponential growth, and it helped summarize a lot of the concerns I had but couldn't quite put into words.
Blog belongs to a physics professor at UCSD, and the posts I'll link were the ones he led with before toning things down and discussing more limited subjects. Basically, they establish the ground rules to his line of thinking on all things energy/economy/growth.
The first post, Galactic-Scale Energy, he establishes that the laws of thermodynamics (forget The Market) prevents endless growth in energy production/consumption. This sector flatlining or contracting is inevitable, or we'll all be living on a planet that closely resembles the center of the sun.
In response to one of the comments under that first post, he further clarified the data trends in a post titled Does the Logistics Shoe Fit?
His second big post is the one that I've seen hotly debated and may be fun to discuss here. In Can Economic Growth Last?, he posits that it is impossible to decouple economic growth from a flatlined or contracting energy sector. It's a very similar argument to that surrounding automation and the contracting of the job market that this will force. On one side of the debate are those who say that if robots are doing everything, more people will be out of work. On the other are those who say that new technology will mean replacement jobs forever just like industrial jobs replacing agricultural. In the case of energy and the economy, the counterargument is that virtual goods replace physical goods, and the economy keeps growing in spite net-zero energy consumption. This dude disagrees.
Anyway, maybe somebody here will find it interesting. Or at least enjoy gazing upon my hotness in my avatar over there.
Blog belongs to a physics professor at UCSD, and the posts I'll link were the ones he led with before toning things down and discussing more limited subjects. Basically, they establish the ground rules to his line of thinking on all things energy/economy/growth.
The first post, Galactic-Scale Energy, he establishes that the laws of thermodynamics (forget The Market) prevents endless growth in energy production/consumption. This sector flatlining or contracting is inevitable, or we'll all be living on a planet that closely resembles the center of the sun.
In response to one of the comments under that first post, he further clarified the data trends in a post titled Does the Logistics Shoe Fit?
His second big post is the one that I've seen hotly debated and may be fun to discuss here. In Can Economic Growth Last?, he posits that it is impossible to decouple economic growth from a flatlined or contracting energy sector. It's a very similar argument to that surrounding automation and the contracting of the job market that this will force. On one side of the debate are those who say that if robots are doing everything, more people will be out of work. On the other are those who say that new technology will mean replacement jobs forever just like industrial jobs replacing agricultural. In the case of energy and the economy, the counterargument is that virtual goods replace physical goods, and the economy keeps growing in spite net-zero energy consumption. This dude disagrees.
Anyway, maybe somebody here will find it interesting. Or at least enjoy gazing upon my hotness in my avatar over there.
Comments
Yes, we continuously use more energy...comparing it to solar anything is dumb because because it is stored energy over millions of years. Efficiency prices itself in...when the costs go up you will see usage going down. And assuming population anything 50 years out is even dumber...fertility rates have dropped from 7 to under 2 from the 1800s until now. Been buffered by extending average lifetimes but we are hitting the limits of that now. Most first-world countries are worried about maintaining population much less growing it.
He should do that analysis on China...he'll conclude the world is ending much sooner than a couple hundred years out.
You're a company that makes ever-faster computers, and sales have to grow in order for your company to grow. But population is flat or shrinking, as you previously agreed is inevitable. You sell a million computers in year X. Let's say the population stabilizes at 10 billion people and your company's investors demand 10% growth. It only takes 97 years before your company would have to sell a computer to everyone on earth to maintain that growth. Not much longer before you have to sell two to everyone per year, and not much longer still before you're selling a computer to everyone on earth ten times every day. Without a growing population and energy production, how do you maintain perpetual growth?
Markets are a wonderful thing...science teachers worried about their fascination with basic thermo usually aren't good arbiters of how they works.
I am probably missing the point here massively, but I wonder ... which do I care about?
Status quo - I invest my money and, through dividends, I am paid a return. That's circular. I'm trading risk and time for more dollars to circulate back into the economy. This can happen without making the pie larger. Think energy and timber investments. As long as what they produce is renewable, I don't care. I do suppose that to the extent population is the key variable, if there are few people consuming their renewable, that could be a problem.
Growth - this only happens when value is being created from a baseline. But it's accomplished with either or both of two things: selling more of something or selling something better to replace the last thing you sold. Even in a declining population, the latter can still generate growth.
IDK. I'm sure there is something there that I missed. It was good, but heavy, reading. I'm glad you shared it. What he seems to ... not so much miss as underestimate, is the ingenuity of our species. In our own lifetimes we've seen this. Even relative to energy. I'm loathe to take on a physicist on the topic of solar energy, but he seemed to dismiss it as limited without trying very hard. Maybe we find away to get more of it through the atmosphere and clouds. Maybe we do, in fact, incorporate the ocean somehow in the collection process.
As Houston said, markets are a terribly effective motivator.
Also, the factors that lead to declining population can be replaced or affected by other factors. It isn't obvious to me that the pressures that lead to having fewer children are permanent and unalterable. It's still in our DNA to produce ... all the smut talk around here will remind you of that.
In your example, the company that makes the more efficient product and sells a ton of them does so at the expense of either their existing product or another company's. Overall, it's a stalemate for the economy. Sales does not equal growth. More sales than last year/quarter/etc. equals growth. Which means more global production every year.
So you have a flat population, flat energy consumption (this is not optional, and there are limits to efficiency), yet growth economy. This--by necessity--increasingly means that value will have to be created out of thin air (like GameStop in your other thread). At some point, everybody's just Ubering each other around or supporting each other's YouTube channel, and the economy flatlines.
Fun question: Do you know what the brakes on your car do? I mean, in simple terms, they make your car stop. In engineering terms, they convert potential energy from forward motion into heat. Specifically, heat in the brake rotors (and some in the fluid). There is no free lunch. Similarly, it doesn't matter whether the energy source comes from solar, fossil fuels, cold fusion, whatever. He chose solar for his example because it's easy to expand that into space. Using that energy generates heat, and exponential functions are powerful. We're still in the flat part of a lot of those curves, but they get awfully steep awfully quickly.
We can use a fuckton of energy to power the economy with little effect on global surface temperature, just not an infinite amount. Infinite growth requires an infinite ceiling. The whole point is that thermodynamics dictate that energy use cannot increase indefinitely or you boil yourself like the proverbial frog, efficiency gains slow this process but quickly reach a theoretical limit that barely creates a blip in the curve over a relatively short timeline (but longer than any of us will live), thus hitting a ceiling in energy growth while perpetually growing the economy creates an inflection point between those two curves with interesting consequences. 100 years from now? 500 years from now? Fuck if I know, I'm just some fat dude in a sexy thong, but the article suggests it's chinevitable.
Around the time I found these blog posts, I stumbled upon a lecture from a professor at University of Colorado. Very similar principles. I'll attach it below, but skip to 22:00 for an interesting thought experiment when it comes to exponentials. 4:05 is also cool. I enjoyed the whole lecture, even though it's slow and dumbed down a bit for hung over college freshmen.
Whether it's the economy, peak oil, global warming and climate change, or Seattle dying, doom and gloom sells. I've heard it my whole life. I bet Race has, too - and that fucker actually rode dinosaurs.
Still here. Still first world. Still haven't missed a meal.
I'm starting to think Eeyore just likes to be a miserable fuck.
His fundamental assumption is wrong...which makes the rest of his discussion kinda useless.
Ever since the party out of power plays the part
That I recall that is
Meanwhile, Global energy consumption looks like this:
So huge disagreement on the wrongness of his fundamental theory. I see a global energy use graph that's skyrocketing, perfectly explaining the current growth economy.
Dude is wrong...doesn’t seem to understand a lot of things. Not sure why you are defending him so much.
Let me get this straight: You buy an iPhone. X number of Btu of energy are used to produce said iPhone. In mainland China. And yet more Btu to ship said iPhone over the ocean. Pretty sweet deal: A company in Cupertino profits, the economy grows, all without using a single Btu of energy in the good ol' USofA! Like magic! That energy use in China is just them developing, the USA's economy can grow forever without any concern over the energy units consumed overseas.
Since the planet's temperature is a problem for everyone, regardless of 1st or 3rd world status, the graph I posted is awfully important. It cannot continue forever or we bake. That's not debatable. Who gives a fuck who's using energy, only the total is important. That curve will eventually be forced to contract, limits to efficiency will be reached--globally, not shitting on the neighbor's lawn--and then the theory above is this renders a growth economy impossible.
It's just a fun debate, nothing to get upset over.
Once in that situation (first world status), energy usage flattens and even shrinks per capita as the US and other data shows...efficiency is a wonderful thing. Yet magically those economies still grow per capita...the energy-economic link doesn’t hold. Amazing feat that.
Not sure why this is difficult to understand...call me crazy that some low level prof from UCSD may not have all the worlds answers and some mental masturbation exercise he did about projecting life hundreds of years out may be a off because of some pretty wrong/dumb assumptions he made. And have at it if you want to mentally masturbate with him...doesn’t magically fix the large holes in his assumptions.
I prefer to hit up my Scotch stash and find some dumb movie to watch...
And don’t get me started on the “planet’s temperature”...
Question: What are your credentials? Are you a doctorate in physics? What major university department do you supervise? Is your Ameritrade account bigger than Pumpeii's? Does this make you a doctorate in physics? You seem awfully confident.
Long story short, I hoped to spark a fun conversation with this thread, but you've seemed to take it personally. I've read every one of your posts pretty carefully, and in every single point you've made, you've either agreed with the premise without realizing it or projected your own argumentative faults onto the articles/me without realizing it (e.g. "you're moving the goalposts").
Either way, if the planet's temperature isn't a concern to you, I'd rather debate a brick wall. At least they often serve a useful purpose.
My problem with all of these types of analysis is that they don't frame themselves as 'hey look...here is an interesting look at the physical limitation of solar energy we can get'. Instead they delve into fear porn in areas way outside of their expertise, and instead of digging into those they just make broad assumptions that aren't valid in order to validate a point of view.
Case in point...the first chart from the guy:
Looks dramatic, but if you look at it with any detail thought you'd realize all this is another graph for historical population that falls apart after 1900s. Plot this data:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-ushistory2os2xmaster/chapter/united-states-population-chart/
Between 1600s and late 1800s its not like people were growing their energy usage by leaps and bounds...they burned stuff to stay warm and rode horses. Population grew exponentially so the overall "energy production rate" grew exponentially. You take that population curve which is what that chart is based on and project it out it assumes the US population in 2200 is over 500,000,000,000. I've never, ever, in a million years seen any population forecast that comes close to that...if you have I'd love to see it.
The graph falls apart at the tail end when you look at oil being discovered (late 1800s) and population growth slowing down followed by energy use per capita shrinking since the 1970s...you don't notice on the exponential chart but all the driving forces behind energy usage and growth changed dramatically. Add to that energy is no different than any other market...when its cheap it gets used with little efficiency and when it gets expensive it get rationed.
Ignoring all this pretty basic understanding of the overall energy system over time is what bugs me...apologize if you are offended.