Energy, population, and economic growth

HoustonHusky said:

1to392831weretaken said:

HoustonHusky said:

About 70% of our (US) energy usage is for transportation and residential/commercial. Heating and cooling mainly. 3rd world countries developing by buying cars, flying, and adding heaters/air conditioning along with moving to office and retail locations requires lots of energy. Hence your graph.

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”...

To be clear, I posted some articles that helped put into words something that already was causing some cognitive dissonance for me. You've called the guy (who I don't know, have never met, and neither have you) dumb, wrong, first-year, low-level etc., which is basically doing the same to me at this point, but whatever.

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.

Look...the guy is a physicist and glancing through his calculations I don't see anything wrong with those.

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.

So you didn't click the second link I posted and look at it at all. It's an entire article discussing this very criticism (the U.S. energy curve tapering off).

Besides, he flat out says that recent data tapering was ignored specifically to point out the absurdity of continued growth in energy. You keep focusing on limits of solar, which means you keep missing the point: It does not matter what your source of energy is. The USE of energy generates heat. The earth's capacity to radiate this his into space is limited. Exponential energy growth will boil the earth. End of story. There is no debating that. In fact, the author should be applauded for the choice of solar, as it's the most fair choice to critics of this premise: Solar power does not generate more heat than would otherwise hit the surface of the earth, thus the physical limitation of solar is the amount of energy reaching the surface of the earth times the efficiency of the panels. The earth only starts boiling in this scenario when gathering more solar energy than available on the planet's surface.

With the notion of the impossibility of endless energy growth established, the next two links discuss the implications. And I keep pointing out that your refutations keep accidentally agreeing with these premises. For example, nobody in this whole discussion has projected impossibly high U.S. or global population. In fact, the premise is the OPPOSITE: "Now that we've established infinite population growth is impossible, let's explore the implications..." Nobody in this whole discussion has projected infinite energy growth per capita. In fact, the premise is the OPPOSITE: "Now that we've established infinite energy growth (per capita or otherwise) is impossible, let's explore the implications..."

This whole thread, it's come across like you agree with his premises on all counts but disagree with the conclusion. Because you seem to be confused about these premises (you stated right from the top that you merely skimmed, and you clearly didn't even click on one out three links), you've failed so support your disagreement.

Let me summarize the argument very simply, and I'm very interested in your response, as you seem pretty passionate about this:

1.) Population cannot grow forever (you've agreed in this thread).
2.) Energy consumption--per capita or otherwise (which becomes the same thing when population stabilizes)--cannot grow forever because physics. This is true for solar, true for some future cold fusion technology, true for magical unicorn farts.
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3.) If 1 and 2 are true, perpetual economic growth is also impossible.


The basis for the conclusion of this argument is that there are also physical limits to efficiency. Eventually, producing ever more goods will require using ever more energy. The only way to avoid this is for the economy to increasingly value non-physical goods. Driving even deeper...

Population stabilizes at, say 10 billion.
Since energy consumption per capita in the U.S. has stabilized, let's say that can continue forever. The rest of the world, though, will need to catch up. Every one of the 10 billion people on earth consuming what the average U.S. citizen does brings total global energy consumption up to over five times what it currently is, multiple doublings.

Consuming that much energy with anything other than renewables gets awfully hot, so lets do what the physicist did and say all this energy is produced by solar (who cares, but it's easier to illustrate the point this way). At current panel efficiency levels, that's covering all of Mexico. At double the efficiency (getting into sci-fi territory), that's covering all of Egypt. Either way, that's quite the endeavor.

So the economy grows until all 10 billion or whatever people on earth can consume energy like a modern American, and then what? Energy consumption per capita either starts to increase again (and there are--admittedly high--physical limits) or economic growth unmoors itself from energy growth. For economic growth to continue at that point, the proportion of non-energy-requiring economic activity must proportionally grow and grow and grow until energy becomes a vanishingly small component of the economy. The physicist posits that this is impossible.

HoustonHusky said:

Ok...so I guess we can all agree then that the first article is absurd in all aspects? Look...the calcs are interesting I guess but when they are framed the way they were its hard to take anything from it seriously...looking at the 2nd link it looks like it tries to recover for the absurdity of the initial claims.

The last article you linked does much the same...the earth absorbs more energy from the sun in an hour than the globe produces in a year. Its tiny...a spec. The idea the market can somehow handle generating the amount of energy the US uses for everybody else in any measurable amount of time in insane. The resources in all aspects don't exist, but more importantly the dynamics for how it happened in the US don't translate. If/when energy prices do go up developing countries won't develop the same way the US did (sprawling suburbs, big cars, big houses...all a function of dirt-cheap energy prices and availability for the US the last 80+ years). As an example the Brits use about 1/3 of the energy per capita the US does. Dynamics there are different.

Most importantly, the energy efficiency in developed countries is improving and will continue to improve...energy usage per capita in first world countries is going down. Which will cap the energy usage of developing countries as the same technologies will cascade down. And as energy gets more expensive that trend will accelerate.

The last part makes no sense either...the argument is now an energy/population/economic one in which somehow if global energy usage isn't growing and global population isn't growing than the leap is that we have to have negative growth? This is the weirdest of all which doesn't follow simple logic...the last 50 years showed economic growth in 1st world countries is not coupled to energy usage (and technically statistics would show them being inversely correlated...). If you dig deeper you will find economic growth is correlated to but not dependent up population growth. You can have a stable or even shrinking population with economic growth...as long as the standard of living is improving, worker productivity is increasing, and new products are being developed in a rate that exceed the population stagnation/shrinkage you will see economic growth generated from it.

And if you screw up policy just print lots of money and call it good...

You call it absurd, I call it a thought experiment that establishes that a boundary does exist, thus removing that from the debate so the more important question of "what next" can happen.

Efficiency is not the magic bullet. There is no such thing as 100% efficiency. Electric motors and electronics are already 90% efficient. Appliances are approaching maximum theoretical efficiency. There is no perpetual motion machine. Improvements in efficiency do not erase the impact of constant growth--an example being demand for gasoline slightly increasing since 2005 alongside a 25% improvement in average fuel economy. Increases in efficiency lead to flat spots or even dips in energy demand trends, but with growth in demand, the curve will always trend up over time.

As for the market not allowing for everyone on a future overpopulated earth not having the same piece of the energy pie that we do now, that's again another agreement with a premise: The resources don't exist, the climate impact would be disastrous, and more efficient societies will have to emerge. There is some limit to the amount of energy we as a species can put to use before physical constraints get in the way. Couple that with hitting limits to efficiency, and you're at a point where we're asking the economy to grow away without the energy budget growing.

Okay, so it's the year 534 ABD (anno-Ballz-Deep, who somehow becomes Global Emperor after the Big Back Revolt of 2056), and you've reached a global energy ceiling of 200 booglieWatts, and the global GEP (Gross Earth Product) sits at 100 Spacebucks, so it takes two booglieWatts to generate 1 Spacebuck. In 535 ABD, scientists have make a major development in crystaldong fission power, doubling the efficiency of the process, so instead of 50% of the booglieWatts being wasted, only 25% are. Holding the same energy consumption, you can now produce 150 Spacebucks worth of goods. In 536, another doubling of efficiency. Now only 12.5% of the boolgieWatts are wasted, and GWP grows to 175 Spacebucks. Another doubling in efficiency for the geeks in 537, but GWP only grows to 187.5 Spacebucks. Then 193.25. Then 196.625. Then 198.3125.

You get the point: Efficiency isn't the magic salve. Producing physical goods requires energy. Eventually, the economy levels out with the amount of physical goods it creates* or we're discussing an increased reliance on non-physical goods having value. If the value of non-physical goods is to maintain perpetual growth while physical goods don't, eventually a song license costs more than a Ferrari. Or other weird things. Not to say it's not possible, but is that where this is going?

*Steady state is different than "negative growth." In my simplified example above, the economy keeps producing shitloads (Spaceshitloads) of goods, it's just that this number doesn't grow every year. It's a steady state economy vs. one of constant growth. Unfortunately, our entire economy as it is depends on perpetual growth, not just activity. A gozillion dollars in economic activity can occur every year, but if it's not a gozillion*1.08 the following year, this is nooooooot good. Multiple factors are allowing for local markets to continue to grow: The world is still on the steep part of the energy consumption curve, the world is still on the steep part of the energy efficiency improvement curve, and--to a lesser extent--the world population is still growing exponentially. All three ingredients to a growth economy still exist. The Petri dish will fill up someday, though. Probably not in any of our lifetims. Except maybe Race.

I like the printing press idea, though.