Should I have said that? I mean, it was a difficult piece to pull together to begin with. Any sane editor would have told me to tighten it up. That the best writing in the thing was so off topic didn't help. (Of course, pessimism is where written language most readily shines! Oop! Forget I said that!) And sure enough, Keith jumped on me for it.The evidence is piling up that our circumstances are beyond our cognitive or managerial abilities. I'm more scared of that than of hundred degree oceans right now. I think at the present rate we will not manage to maintain what we are pleased to call civilization long enough to get to 5xCO2. I suppose you could say that may be more good news than bad news; at least a few vertebrates will straggle through.
So I followed up thus:
As Grypo pointed out, that wasn’t really the main point of the article. I have a bad habit of distracting from my main point with excessive but tangential rhetorical flourishes. I’ll have to watch that.And who should rise to the challenge but Tom Fuller, who wrote a remarkable quantity of stuff between 4:15 and 5:29 yesterday in response. I make it out to be about 1900 words in barely an hour. Even those of you unimpressed with his writing have to give the fellow credit for one thing. He sure can type!
Still it’s true, I did say it. So let’s discuss it.
Keith, do you really think the world is handling its challenges well? Do you see any immediate prospect of improvement?
First of all, food production is practiced as an extractive industry, dependent on depleting aquifers, petroleum and natural gas. That’s unsustainable by definition. Secondly, resource allocation is inequitable, we are running out resources, and the implicit promise of universal development is looking to the less developed world like a sham about now. Thirdly, despite the fact that our economies are grossly overheated, the idiot bankers have gotten us in a situation where if we don’t resume growth our whole organizational pattern will collapse. Fourthly, after some decades of improvement, the momentum has resumed toward xenophobia, isolationism, and ethnic blame. In particular, Christianity and Islam are about as friendly now as they were during the crusades. Fifth, the cheap petroleum is running out and the next cheapest replacements double the carbon burden of the atmosphere and oceans, which leads us to sixth, the atmosphere and oceans are already about as full of carbon as we can reasonably risk. Seventh, in the middle of all this nobody gives a rat’s behind about nuclear proliferation which we all used to lose a lot of sleep about. Eighth, the world’s major power is controlled by obstructionist elements and is redeveloping a fascist streak that had been in remission. The fact that Africa is dying of AIDS and hunger, and that species extinction is accelerating, now seem to disturb nobody’s sleep anymore amid all this. Did I miss any?
The good news? Well, Twitter is pretty cool. So is my iPhone; so are movies on demand which after decades of promises have finally arrived. But somehow I don’t think that sort of thing is enough.
I mean, please. It’s one thing to mock my worry; it’s another to explain what’s wrong with it. By all means, cheer me up. What did I miss?
Anyway, an effort like that deserves some sort of answer. My original claims will be in blue. Tom Fuller, for purposes of this article, will be responding in red. And I'll redouble in black.
First of all, food production is practiced as an extractive industry, dependent on depleting aquifers, petroleum and natural gas. That’s unsustainable by definition.
Tobis, could you please be more specific? The UK government, not known for its skeptical bent, talks about a number of environmental successes here: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Environmentandgreenerliving/Thewiderenvironment/Lookingafternature/DG_064406
Let’s address your comment #5 one item at a time.
“First of all, food production is practiced as an extractive industry, dependent on depleting aquifers, petroleum and natural gas. That’s unsustainable by definition.”
I refer you to this site: http://wsu.academia.edu/JudeCapper/Papers/116659/Demystifying_the_Environmental_Sustainability_of_Food_Production
Actual beef yield per animal has increased from 266 kg per animal in 1975 to 351 kg in 2007. Milk production per cow has increased 443% since 1945. “The environmental mitigation effect from increased productivity is a function of either output per animal or the time taken to produce the product.” Both have increased dramatically in modern times, reducing the ‘industrial’ drain on resources ranging from land and water to sewage treatment.
The intensive agricultural practices you bemoan actually reduce emissions (primarily, but not solely, because they require less land/less deforestation).
Intensive agriculture (using an ‘industrial’ model that maximizes output and pays attention to inputs) also is better for the climate than dependency on locally grown foods. It often reduces ‘food miles’ outright, but even when it doesn’t, other efficiencies more than compensate.
Tom starts off with an actual reference. Two really.
His first addresses"environmental" progress in the UK, which doesn't map onto my concerns at all. He may have missed my intervening comment in the same Kloor thread:
I think the environmentalist perspective and the sustainability perspective are different. Environmentalism is about ecology, watersheds, preservation of local systems. Sustainability is about a whole earth perspective, deep time, and demographics. Mondo addresses the first set of issues in a well-trodden but not entirely unconvincing way, though one could argue that the connection between prosperity and environmental protection is not entirely cast in stone.His second attempts to prove the sustainability of agriculture with an article supporting feedlot beef over pastured beef because its immense impact is claimed to be smaller insofar as greenhouse gases are concerned. (Even so I was stunned to see that a gallon of milk is the greenhouse equivalent of more than a gallon of gasoline!) I had some other concerns with that paper but it's all perfectly moot. Much of the rest of the thread shows that Fuller is confused about agricultural sustainability. So his first point is a whiff.
I am raising the second category, where my thoughts have always been since I was a young science fiction reader. It turns out that now that they are realistic and increasingly urgent, we simply do not have ways of weighing these problems and addressing them. This is not surprising, because they are new. What is surprising is how badly we are doing at rising to the occasion.
Secondly, resource allocation is inequitable, we are running out resources, and the implicit promise of universal development is looking to the less developed world like a sham about now.
Again, in comment 5 you write, “Secondly, resource allocation is inequitable, we are running out resources, and the implicit promise of universal development is looking to the less developed world like a sham about now.”
Are resources allocated equitably? Some are, some are not. ‘It rains equally on the just and the unjust,’ but the sun shines more in some places than others. I doubt if you are advocating the redistribution of natural resources, however, other than by commerce, which even someone like you must realize is beneficial to the poor and disadvantaged.
How about ‘unnatural’ resources (manmade)? I suppose you would argue that Nike shoe factories in South Asia are exploitative rather than beneficial–overall I would disagree. But certainly the trend of pillaging commodity resources and leaving nothing behind for the inhabitants has reversed, even if that sometimes proves a curse for the country involved. We pay Venezuela and Saudi Arabia for oil, and China pays Indonesia for the hard wood it shouldn’t be buying. But unnatural resources (which could also be called the ‘value added’ portion) flow in great quantity from the developed world to the developing part–from intellectual property bought or stolen to pharmaceuticals, with a lot in between.
Whether these resources are allocated fairly is not always up to us.
In any case, inequality is decreasing, not increasing, worldwide (even as it increases within many countries, including mine). And this is a miracle of the modern age that we should be celebrating with the popping of many a champagne cork.
If you don’t see that, Tobis, you’re literally living in a cave.
To continue about resources, you write that we are running out of them. I’d love to see some evidence of that–which resources are we running out of?
I can’t imagine you’re referring to fossil fuels, which I think you would cheer the disappearance of. Sadly for you, their demise is probably less imminent than you would prefer, and their replacements already exist.
So what resources are disappearing? Not water–we have plenty, even if we will have to learn how to transport it efficiently in future. Not sunlight. Not land–the population density of this world is effectively less than Afghanistan. Not minerals–the rare metals China is hoarding have just called back into production mines the world over to replace that withdrawn from the market. Not food–half of which rots in the distribution system, and large quantities of which are discarded uneaten after purchase.
Precisely what valuable resources are disappearing?
To finish up on resources, you write that ‘universal development is looking to the less developed world like a sham.’ Do you have any evidence that that is true? Has China or India renounced development, or are they in fact committing more time and more energy and more resources to speed it up? How about Indonesia? Turkey? Mexico? Brazil?Can you quote people living in those countries saying it’s a sham? Are politicians being turfed out (where that is possible) in favor of medievalists preaching ‘back to the land?’
Or is it possible you are projecting your belief system onto them?
Well, as a champion of Hans Rosling, I'd have to admit that many countries have made material progress. And so I'll grant Tom a fraction of a point here; I might have acknowledged that.
But some poor countries have little to offer; our response seems to be to let them suffer. The sustainability issue here, of course, is that they are breeding grounds for people who hate us and wish us ill.
Thirdly, despite the fact that our economies are grossly overheated, the idiot bankers have gotten us in a situation where if we don’t resume growth our whole organizational pattern will collapse.
Most of this is completely nonresponsive.From Tobis’ comment 5: “Thirdly, despite the fact that our economies are grossly overheated, the idiot bankers have gotten us in a situation where if we don’t resume growth our whole organizational pattern will collapse.”
Economic growth does vary by country, Tobis. The countries growing most quickly (at or about 10% per annum) are precisely the countries where you worry about resources not being fairly allocated, I believe. This growth is welcomed by almost all, and is a solution, not a problem.
Growth in the developed world is not very resource-intensive, and is occurring in the services sector. It also is welcomed by almost all. But far from being overheated, most of the developed world is struggly to recapture trend growth. Many bankers are idiots, true. I would suspect the percentage is much the same in any industry, however.
Tobis, do you think growth should be stopped? Pious thoughts about Gaia aside, economic growth is not a cancer. It can be stopped–and we have seen occasions where this has occurred. The results have been uniformly disastrous for the people involved, and it has not been kind to the environment either.
Do you have any evidence that the world economic growth (estimated at between 4% and 5% this year) is ‘overheated?’ How do you define that and what do you think the consequences are likely to be?
I think growth as conventionally defined is ending in the most advanced economies, whether we want it or not, though in fact I think it is also necessary to slow it down considerably. Reasons have been discussed on this blog several times. Yes, that's always turned out badly in the past. So we'd better think pretty hard how to avoid it turning out badly in the future, because infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible.
Fourthly, after some decades of improvement, the momentum has resumed toward xenophobia, isolationism, and ethnic blame. In particular, Christianity and Islam are about as friendly now as they were during the crusades.
Hmmm; a half a point for Tom. Christianity and Islam are not actually at war. It remains a small and vocal minority in both groups that wants that to start up again. But the trends are terrifying.In the infamous comment 5, Tobis writes again, “Fourthly, after some decades of improvement, the momentum has resumed toward xenophobia, isolationism, and ethnic blame. In particular, Christianity and Islam are about as friendly now as they were during the crusades.”
Political discussion regarding the concept of the ‘Other’ always degenerates in times of economic distress, and this period is no exception. From Jean Marie Le Pen (and now his daughter) to various U.S. Republicans, talk about differences is certainly not improving.
But in terms of actions, what do we see? 3% of the world’s population is immigrant, and 700 million people in their home countries would like to follow suit. Individual acts of violence against the ‘Other’ certainly occur, but they are dwarfed by violence against those of the same ethnicities/religions, etc. The most violent conflicts we see are not Christian vs. Moslem by and large, but Sunni vs. Shiite. And even these are only a pale shadow of past struggles. We just celebrated the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. You would (unintentionally, I’m sure) be insulting his memory and the story of his life if you characterized today’s racial environment as anything but a huge improvement over that which he struggled with–and he proclaimed that he would rather live in his era than any preceding one.
Do you know what happened during the Crusades? How can you even compare then and now? You are redefining hyperbole.
Fifth, the cheap petroleum is running out and the next cheapest replacements double the carbon burden of the atmosphere and oceans,
Tom makes some damn thing up about coal which I am pretty sure is not just wrong but clueless, failing to pacify me. Coal to liquids and gas to liquids are worse than liquids by a long shot, and they are coming online. Our infrastructure commitment to liquid fuels is going to be voracious and is already causing immense international tension. And even with all that there seems to be noting in the way of planning to replace the self-powered liquid fuel vehicle as the basic tool of our lives. So yes, I worry about it, and yes, in some ways it helps the greenhouse problem but on balance it might well make matters worse.Again from comment #5, “Fifth, the cheap petroleum is running out and the next cheapest replacements double the carbon burden of the atmosphere and oceans…”
I’m surprised you complain about this, as I would think you want petroleum to be priced at least high enough to reflect negative externalities. As for the next cheapest replacements, for natural gas that is not even close to true, as it is less emissive intensive than petroleum, and as for coal, it is not twice as emissive, even when burnt inefficiently, and when burnt with today’s technology it performs much better. Nuclear and hydropower are not at all emissive. And I still have hope for the non-emissive solar industry.
Did you think before writing this? Do you really worry about this?
sixth, the atmosphere and oceans are already about as full of carbon as we can reasonably risk.
If we dawdle long enough, if things break the wrong way, it could well be enough to bring down civilization by itself. Waterworld is silly, of course, but Mad Max? Maybe not so much.Which brings us to “…which leads us to sixth, the atmosphere and oceans are already about as full of carbon as we can reasonably risk.”
Which, as you might have noticed, is a subject currently being discussed, both here and elsewhere. And which, I hope I can infer, is the reason you subjected all of us to the rest of your lament.
As it happens, I am close to agreement with you on this, depending on what ‘about’ means. As we will not know the answer for at least another 30 years, I think we should take vigorous actions to accelerate measures to reduce that measure, including a tax on carbon and transfer of technology to the developing world. But then, I’m just denialist s__m, so my opinion doesn’t matter.
But failure to accomplish this will not destroy civilization, the environment nor the human race. It will be like Bladerunner, not Waterworld. Pretending othewise is scare tactics–and the first victim is apparently yourself.
But all of this seems to miss the point of how these problems, when they get big enough, start to interact.
Seventh, in the middle of all this nobody gives a rat’s behind about nuclear proliferation which we all used to lose a lot of sleep about.
Well, thousands of people are working on the other problems, too. People don't work on solved problems. All this work is the opposite of reassuring.Gee, who invented the term ‘Gish Gallop?’ In comment #5, Tobis writes, “Seventh, in the middle of all this nobody gives a rat’s behind about nuclear proliferation which we all used to lose a lot of sleep about.” Umm, did you just notice that we just got a treaty with Russia? That there is a nuclear summit this year and a non-proliferation conference in Tehran this year, of all places? That in 2005, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei introduced a fatwa against the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons? That we have the same cast of characters with nuclear weapons that we did a decade ago?
Tens of thousands of people are working to stop nuclear proliferation, Tobis. They just don’t always make the news.
Eighth, the world’s major power is controlled by obstructionist elements and is redeveloping a fascist streak that had been in remission.
And finally, “Eighth, the world’s major power is controlled by obstructionist elements and is redeveloping a fascist streak that had been in remission.
I hope I addressed your concern about China and Africa above.China? China??? That is funny.
The fact that Africa is dying of AIDS and hunger, and that species extinction is accelerating, now seem to disturb nobody’s sleep anymore amid all this. Did I miss any?
As to your question about missing any, my answer is yes.We should be concerned about a widespread movement whose aim seems to be to stop the material progress of the human race in the name of environmental concerns. Without the material progress needed to lift billions out of poverty, there will be no peace, no justice, no chance to either care for or appreciate the environment. There will be no equitable balancing of resource use or allocation, no end to religious or ethnic strife, no chance for non-proliferation to take hold–it’s no coincidence that the most recent entrants to the nuclear club are incredibly poor.
We should be further concerned that this movement, which hides behind the skirts of the much-loved environmental movement which did so much good for this planet, is so willing to use scare tactics, hyperbole and the occasional outright lie to advance its cause. Much as Tacitus lamented that the generals created a desert and called it peace, you would create a desert and call it Gaia. You are the problem, Tobis. You and those like you who think that escaping poverty is a crime against nature.
This idea that feeling that growth has reached its limits in America means one wishes to keep the poor countries poor would be laughable if it weren't so commonly wheeled out. As it stands, it's just libelous. The reason growth must stop, and possibly reverse slightly, in the west is precisely to leave a share, or at least a potential share, for everybody else.
Overall, Tom really thinks this was a Gish gallop, and responds sort of in the way Scott and I responded to the awful Forbes article. But a crucial point about sustainability issues is that they can't be taken in isolation. They operate at a global scale, and jostle at each other. Yet they are existential issues. Each of them taken alone seems possible, though not easy, to cope with. Taken together they represent a daunting picture.
The world is smaller than it was, and problems arise on larger time and space scales than our institutions are capable of handling (journalism among them). At least as I see it, the signs are that we are not only failing to cope, but that we are to some extent failing to see the landscape at all.
Trees, meet forest.
Update: This apropos infographic cheered me up a little.
38 comments:
So where exactly is this shmoo that's going to solve all our resource problems while still allowing us to own a car each, a mcmansion, a ski lodge and a boat?
It's certainly not cold fusion because as near as I could tell the result of the mythical Mr. Fusion reactor would be that we would simply turn hydrogen into helium and heat at a rate that would make CO2 pollution moot.
Repost "My Little World." Double check the math.
The only Gish Gallop I see here is Tom's.
STFU and please stop this bicker fest. Actual thermometer records exist that go back several hundred years. Remember the telescope? That was a LONG time ago. So too real thermometers have existed way back in the day. They show no sign whatsoever of any change in trend in the modern era. I plotted them all on one postcard, here: http://oi49.tinypic.com/rc93fa.jpg
End of story. Why don't you just look at these and go home instead of spend all day waving your hands back and forth in the air, trying to make a point about that air? Ha ha you are so witty, blah blah blah forevermore. Now you are older still, talking about air. You care. About air. Not about the lack if great art in our day. Oh no...not that. Just air.
Oh and I am so sorry about not being "polite" in your happy house, where nothing is actually ever wrong and we really are just one big happy family, crazy uncle Arthur included.
There's an awful lot of rubbish in Fuller's writings but I'll focus on just one, which anyone with a calculator can verify.
So what resources are disappearing?... Not land–the population density of this world is effectively less than Afghanistan.
Work it out. The surface area 7 billion people have per capita is a square 145 meters on a side. Some of this square is hostile mountains, desert, permanent ice. On your patch you have about 61 trees. Everything that you use has to be extracted from your patch, all the animals that you eat and the food that they eat have to be grown within your boundaries. All the pollution and waste that your lifestyle creates - not just your dustbin waste but also all the waste from materials extraction and manufacturing. There has to be plenty of space for the wildlife and other vital ecosystems that keep life going.
If Fuller can't see that we're cramped for space, he can't comprehend anything
Michael, usually I don't get excited by these multi-level quote-and-refute fests between you and Tom, but thank you thank you thank you for the biggest *WOOSH* I've seen in a long time. (That's point 8, right?) That was quite amusing.
Given your habit of delaying and deleting comments of mine, I assume it will not surprise you if I follow up at Keith's.
I wasn't trying to cheer you up.
So what resources are disappearing? ... Not land–the population density of this world is effectively less than Afghanistan.
Is this supposed to be a silver bullet? Afghanistan' population density is approximately that of the planet. So what?
Does the author believe Afghanistan could carry a substantially greater population?
Or is it that the author considers the population density of Afghanistan to be very low (it's half again that of the US)?
Tom, I have never delayed any posting of yours. I think I deleted one, but at the time you were trying my patience severely with crude language directed at me.
However, it is fine if you respond at Keith's. I am a regular there and rarely miss anything.
OK, with the caveat that I've only been listening with half an ear -
> "I have a tendency to insert throwaway lines that distract from my point. ... I closed with a grunt of despair which seems to have distracted lots of people...And sure enough, Keith jumped on me for it."
Question for MT - when this pattern recurs, do you approach the jumper and ask him to weigh in on your main point? At that point you have (& have earned) his attention; if you ask him to address your main point _also_, does he stick fingers in ears saying la la la, or will he honestly weigh in on it? and if he does, does he typically agree, or disagree, or no pattern?
If the "jumpers" refuse to (also) weigh in on your main point, non-evasively, after you've specifically asked them to, IMO that'd be evidence that they aren't operating in good faith - which would be something worth knowing. And if they typically agree, or disagree, on your main point, that would also be worth knowing.
Follow up, please. Don't give them a pass, on distracting from the main argument.
(and maybe you're already doing this followup, but intense negative attention can distract people, so...)
Fair enough in general, Anna. I will keep that in mind.
In this case, though, the distraction has its own importance.
reply to VicDiesel:
Tom has a point, Michael was wrong on point 8. Tom was cleverly pointing out that:
The world’s major power is controlled by obstructionist *and* *obscurantist* elements.
;-)
What you call a throw-away line was the most important part of the whole piece:
"The evidence is piling up that our circumstances are beyond our cognitive or managerial abilities. I'm more scared of that than of hundred degree oceans right now."
This is how I would try to cheer you up:
We cannot sustain because of ecology. The Roman Empire could not sustain because a standing army and entitlements outpaced available rich conquerable territories. We have more advantages than the Romans:
[1] More forward looking financial and scientific tools connected to many levers of resource allocation. The relative rise of long term interest rates compared to short term means somebody is listening to something other than comforting lies.
[2] Printed books. If anything catastrophic happens, a group can secure a selective advantage that will hold for generations with a single shipping container full of the right books. It would take a motivated group under a year to collect the books, even if you limit yourself to volumes kept underground.
[3] In the huge gap between what we are conditioned to want and what we actually need, the minimum for happy society is barely above the bare minimum we actually need.
[4] The economic and physical impossibility of the very richest maintaining their current standard of living through coercion.
[5] The multiple warhead tipped intercontinental ballistic missile brings the pain to the doorstep of the highest decision makers. [A terrible fact: nuclear war is more survivable than climate disruption to the human race. Call this 5A.]
[6] Half of the sweet crude is already gone. Imagine the horror if the amount of sweet crude was a hundredfold. Coal is worse, but there are far, far, far fewer smokestacks than tailpipes, so total emission control at the source of combustion is not a folly.
I say this is sufficient to make one grit their teeth in a pained grimace of a smile. Mission accomplished.
Keith has closed the thread over there because he doesn't like bickering any more than I do. But at least we are bickering over substance.
This one is probably going to get lost in Keith's queue:
On the commodities front there is also this and this.
I didn’t find anything about the other minerals as yet, but mercury did in fact essentially run out around 1985.
Remember, Tom is the one saying there is definitely no issue to anything, ever, it’s all perfect except for maybe a tiny adjustment in CO2 in the distant future.
I did screw up by calling phosphorus “potassium”. Otherwise I haven’t yet seen any evidence where my concern was “misplaced” which Francis appears ready to concede. Some people are ready to deny these sorts of things, for the same reason that real estate agents in Galveston deny that the island is sinking. Tom thinks this sort of boosterism is totally reliable provided it disagrees with me.
Tom seems to allow his dislike of my positions (or what he erroneously thinks my positions are) and/or of me personally to color his opinions to attach absolute confidence into anything that disagrees with anything I say, as if that meant the issue was settled. You could say that Tom values my opinions more than I do!
Anna, in the last two times I've taken Michael to task for something, I've openly stated that I
1) agreed with the substance of his his post at RC
and
2) disagreed with his take on Andy's post.
Here's something for you to keep in mind: there's a theme to my critiques, which usually only come after I see a pattern has been established. That's a criteria I apply to everyone from Michael and Joe Romm to Anthony Watts and Jeff Id.
Keith, you forgot:
3) Failed, as always, to defend my (Keith's) position in detail.
The question of whether you can has become a little moot. Why Michael places any value on participating in your little floating cage match is a mystery to me. He should take Sou's advice. I have.
Cornucopianism is probably a more applicable term than boosterism. Panglossian might be yet better, but it's a bit obscure.
You fools remind me of a story.
A lonely soldier once asked a comrade how he could find sexual release. His comrade pointed at a flock of sheep. Eventually the soldier succumbed to desire and took a sheep behind the hill. When he got back, the entire company was laughing at him. Shamed and remorseful, the soldier asked why they were laughing--didn't they also use sheep for the same reason?
'You picked the ugliest one in the flock' was the reply.
It's not that we are completely without resource constraints. It's just that you buffoons keep picking the worst possible examples.
To continue about resources, you write that we are running out of them. I’d love to see some evidence of that–which resources are we running out of?
Hi Michael - hope I can cheer you up!
On #5 - there is real work going on in the development of hybrid and fully electric cars, and increased investment in mass transit/rail (not in the US much though). The only transportation option that really requires liquid fuels is flight. Tom was presumably referring to IGCC coal plants rather than liquefaction, ie. coal to electricity, not coal to liquids.
Arthur, actually I think it's possible that personal transportation will convert to electric in time to avoid disruption on that front. So a slight smile on that one.
But I don't see the US committing to a new freight infrastructure.
Indeed, the American railroads seem particularly antediluvian as institutions. Also most rural folks in the US totally lose their minds on any eminent domain issues. This unites left and right. So I suspect this will hurt America badly, as well as any other countries that take their cues from us...
Not conceding so much as trying to get Fuller to focus on just one really hard problem: fresh water. If we're mining water to grow food already (which we are, globally), and developing counties are demanding a more water-intensive diet (which they are, by eating more meat), then even Tom should be able to recognize that the current situation is unsustainable. Now, there may be enough potential farmland near untapped rivers somewhere on the planet to shift food production from where it is now to there, but last I read, no such unused land/water combination exists anywhere on the planet.
Aw shucks, Steve. You really should be more honest. You try to participate over at my blog, but you've been on moderation for ever--and even with that--you can't help but engage in petty flaming--as is evidenced by your comments here regarding me. So invariably I have to send your comments back to you, asking for you to be just a tad bit more congenial. It's almost masochistic of you, the way you keep trying. But it's nice to know I can always come over here for the full Bloom experience.
Keith, my abandoning of your blog as useless was a very recent decision, based mostly on the (lack of) substance, and only a little on your arbitrary censorship. But don't worry, Fuller and Curry will always love you.
Re petty flaming, obviously I would need to add words like fools and buffoons to my commenting vocabulary, and I'm just not willing to do that.
Sheee...
Keith, some golden rule here please.
Steve, not a very clever rejoinder.
So here's the decision. I want these people coming back. Keith crossed the line a little, Steve more so. Do I purge Steve, leaving him miffed? Or do I purge Keith, for petty offenses?
In this case I leave them both so everyone else can see my quandary. This is the usual pattern.
What part of "please err on the side of civility" and "Before you speak, ask yourself if what you have to say will improve on silence." did y'all not understand?
Yellow card. The next response from either gets held in moderation.
I'm often left with the impression the interwebs need refs more than moderators, anyway.
The 'silence' bit.
Well, California's High Speed Rail plan seems to be moving ahead for the moment, and there's a lot of new light rail lines going up around the country, in places you might not expect (Salt Lake City, Colorado, Florida).
I had hopes when Warren Buffett invested in rail that he was envisioning some transformation there, but I now suspect it was anticipating greater volumes of coal shipments. Killing coal will put a big dent in US rail companies; if that ever happens they might be open to some transformation... But not grounds for happiness there yet I agree.
The interesting thing about US rail is that almost the entire volume is grain and coal. If you look at other freight Europe moves more. It is interesting to sit on the Rein and watch how many freight trains move up and down. BTW, the Germans have privatized much of that (the Bahn still owns the tracks)
To expand on Nik's point
So what resources are disappearing?... Not land–the population density of this world is effectively less than Afghanistan.
This is John McCarthy's fallacy (old friend from USENET days), if you drive the cost of energy to zero, we are running out of nothing, failing that everything. Because richer ores get used first, the cost of extraction goes up as they are used up. Think oil sands.
As far as land goes, because the richer soils are exploited first (and sometimes ground to dust) agriculture is under the same sort of pressure. This has been avoided by modern ag turning into a process for converting oil to food.
Of course, the libertarians doesn't believe in recycling either
Tom: 'It's not that we are completely without resource constraints. It's just that you buffoons keep picking the worst possible examples.'
Brilliant. cf. Liebig's law of the minimum, water stress, desertification and the fact that, yes, massive ecological disasters caused by human over-exploitation have happened repeatedly in the past.
"The distribution of scarce resources" is meant to be the starting point of any sensible economics.
Michael, not only are these clowns never going to be your friends, they are always going to be your enemies, or have you forgotten how Tol and Pielke ganged up on you, you old murderous autocrat you.
> "there's a theme to my critiques"
Can someone (ideally Keith) summarize in 25-words-or-less what Keith's theme is?
and MT, some tentative feedback - for posterity's (& current skimming readers') sake, when you're tempted to provide links labeled "'this' and 'this'" ("On the commodities front there is also this and this"), a one-word summary of each link would be real nice.
And a suggestion, re comments w/parts that don't meet the "improve on silence" civility standard - the "swear word tip jar" negative feedback concept might work here.
Charge, say, 5 bucks for each infraction (marking it with standardized text in a following comment), and at the end of the month/year come up with an appropriate charity & ask them to donate the money to it. (If anyone's unwilling to, voila: clear evidence of bad faith)
(This is how I taught myself to stop swearing, so I swear by it)
(p.s. re civility infractions idea - the relative sizes of the sums to be donated by different parties would be useful info for the reader.)
EliRabett said...
"Michael, not only are these clowns never going to be your friends, they are always going to be your enemies"
Just so. They are never going to get it, MT, and they are just playing you as long as you will endure it.
I admire you for your patience, attempting to engage with them in good faith, but I wonder where you hope it will lead. For the perfect example of the perils of accommodation with people who despise you, cf. the Obama Administration.
Some will never be convinced and they are playing a game. But the game is not entirely optional. It is necessary to do some work to prevent the casual reader from being influenced by their approach.
I do not put Keith or even Andy in that class. They will be hard to win over but their skin in the game is in being "reasonable". If they can be persuaded that they are being unreasonable they may change.
Michael Tobis said...
I do not put Keith or even Andy in that class. They will be hard to win over but their skin in the game is in being "reasonable". If they can be persuaded that they are being unreasonable they may change.
By gosh, I hope you are right. Again, you have my admiration for your efforts.
Just to pick apart one point made by Fuller, I'd say that his assertion that "beef yield per animal has increased from 266 kg per animal in 1975 to 351 kg in 2007" is meaningless regarding sustainability. Same thing with "milk production per cow has increased 443% since 1945."
The only sensible metric for sustainability discussions is not production per animal, but production per unit of non-renewable resource consumed (per gallon of oil, or per gallon of aquifier water, etc.).
What are those numbers Mr. Fuller?
Cornucopians have not understood the difference between finding ways to get more money per day from an ATM, and figuring out how to get a higher income. They talk like the idle kid that, after inheriting a fortune, thinks his finances are going swell because he figured out how to convince the estate administrator to let him spend more and more of the fortune every year, to have an increasingly lavish life style, while never looking at the balance of the bank account, and never worrying about finding a job.
I'm surprised in this conservation that the most important resource on the planet hasn't been mentioned.
Genetic diversity.
Without live we're sitting on a wet rock breathing an increasingly toxic stew and going hungry. It's precisely the diversity of life forms that allows humans to survive and prosper while various bacterial, viral, fungal and other tiny bits try and convert US into food.
When something goes extinct that unique set of problem solving information encoded in DNA is gone forever. There's no handy planets around with a spare genetic library.
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