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Comments: 452 +- News: Modeling the Economy As a Physics Problem on Saturday November 28, @05:33PM
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kdawson
on Saturday November 28, @05:33PM
from the gazintas-and-comezoutas dept.
from the gazintas-and-comezoutas dept.
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University of Utah physicist Tim Garrett has published a study that approaches the economy and its relation to global warming as a physics problem — and comes to some controversial conclusions: that rising carbon dioxide emissions cannot be stabilized unless the world's economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day. The study was panned by economists and was rejected by several journals before its acceptance in the journal Climatic Change. "[Garrett discovered that] Throughout history, a simple physical constant... links global energy use to the world's accumulated economic productivity, adjusted for inflation. So it isn't necessary to consider population growth and standard of living in predicting society's future energy consumption and resulting carbon dioxide emissions. ... 'I'm not an economist, and I am approaching the economy as a physics problem,' Garrett says. 'I end up with a global economic growth model different than they have.' Garrett treats civilization like a 'heat engine' that 'consumes energy and does "work" in the form of economic production, which then spurs it to consume more energy,' he says. That constant is 9.7 (plus or minus 0.3) milliwatts per inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar. So if you look at economic and energy production at any specific time in history, 'each inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar would be supported by 9.7 milliwatts of primary energy consumption,' Garrett says. ... Perhaps the most provocative implication of Garrett's theory is that conserving energy doesn't reduce energy use, but spurs economic growth and more energy use."
Executive ability is prominent in your make-up.
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Its a population crunch (Score:5, Insightful)
We have to stop somewhere. At six billion or six trillion. It has to happen. The Heinlein fan in me says this will happen with war and starvation. Its not that hard to imagine, it happens all the time.
Or we can learn to regulate our population, as the Chinese are trying to do. Even in the last 30 years there has been a recognition that high standards of living reduce fertility. But have China and India gone too far for this to work? I am sure the US nearly did, because you have to wear high birth rates and high energy consumption at the same time for a while (the 1950s) for it to work. The same peak would put the energy consumption of 10 billion USA or AU people in China alone.
Don't ask me for help. I'll be starting a farm on Ganymede.
Re:Its a population crunch (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Its a population crunch (Score:5, Insightful)
All of which is completely obvious and has been pointed out before (I know, because I'm one of those who has pointed it out). Usual response is some blather about alternative energy (easily shown to be inadequate, especially given other environmental constraints), conservation (law of diminishing returns), or lifestyle changes (kills economy, and besides, won't happen without major force). Usually, at some point the environmentalist will give up and claim the realist is just being too much of a pessimist.
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Re:Its a population crunch (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Its a population crunch (Score:5, Interesting)
"Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist." -Kenneth Boulding
On a related note, the U.S. Census Bureau World Population Clock [census.gov] just ticked over to 6.8 billion a few minutes ago.
Parent
Society Expands Up to Constraints of the System (Score:5, Insightful)
When we conserve energy, we can and do use the saved energy for other activities. "conservation" is not really conservation if we promptly use the saved energy for another activity.
Consider the food supply. The population has now reached a size at which the current amount of food is not sufficient for everyone to eat well. So, scientists at ADM and other companies are trying to invent new ways to increase food production. Suppose that the scientists succeed and that we increase food production by 20%. The population, enjoying this additional food, now grows by an additonal 20%: we return to the original problem.
In the long run, the 4 horsemen will eventually impose their own solution on humankind. Many people will die in the process.
Inevitably, some Slashdotter will claim that yet-to-be discovered technology will always provide a fix for the problem. Believing that yet-to-be discovered technology will be discovered (and will be the salvation) is exactly equivalent to believing the numerous claims of religion. Often, the same Slashdotter who is atheist does not hestitate to believe in yet-to-be discovered technology. A hypocrite, a fool, or both?
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Re:Society Expands Up to Constraints of the System (Score:5, Informative)
Starvation is a geopolitical problem, not a resource problem. Grain production has consistently outpaced population growth for the past 30 years. Even during last year's food crisis, resource shortfalls were not an issue.
more here: http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm [worldhunger.org]
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Re:Society Expands Up to Constraints of the System (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to answer for dintlu, and I'm really going to talk about famine rather than starvation per se, but:
"They're being prevented from feeding themselves" is not a bad answer. In Somalia in 1992, the people most affected by the famine, perversely, were the farmers, who were also part of the lowest social class.
In any case, the point is that famines are caused not by a lack of food, but by problems distributing food.
Food distribution is done poorly by governments that don't have their people's best interests in mind, e.g. because the government is a dictatorship or oligarchy and doesn't need to pay attention to what the people want. Conversely, famines don't happen in democratic societies with a free press - democracies have to respect the will of the people, and a free press would let the people know if food distribution is failing.
All of this is according to the work of Amartya Sen, who won a Nobel Prize for it.
TSG
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Re:Society Expands Up to Constraints of the System (Score:4, Interesting)
I love people who say this. It's not a resource problem; it's a people problem. There are too many people and not enough resources.
You misunderstood. From the linked worldhunger site:
Okay, so what is the problem exactly?
The main problem is that some societies are badly organized which results in them either producing too little or makes them vulnerable to exploitation by insiders (invariably) and sometimes outsiders.
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Re:Society Expands Up to Constraints of the System (Score:5, Insightful)
Inevitably, some Slashdotter will claim that yet-to-be discovered technology will always provide a fix for the problem. Believing that yet-to-be discovered technology will be discovered (and will be the salvation) is exactly equivalent to believing the numerous claims of religion. Often, the same Slashdotter who is atheist does not hestitate to believe in yet-to-be discovered technology. A hypocrite, a fool, or both?
The difference is that those people who believe that technology will allow the human race to overcome its limits have been proven right multiple times over the historical record. Those people who believe that $deity will come down and make everything right for us have less of a track record of successes.
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Re:Society Expands Up to Constraints of the System (Score:4, Interesting)
Consider the food supply. The population has now reached a size at which the current amount of food is not sufficient for everyone to eat well. So, scientists at ADM and other companies are trying to invent new ways to increase food production. Suppose that the scientists succeed and that we increase food production by 20%. The population, enjoying this additional food, now grows by an additonal 20%: we return to the original problem.
That is in no way the problem. Where do you see starvation? Various parts of Africa, North Korea, and a few other locations. Many of these starving countries are not nearly as populated as the USA or Europe and have more fertile land. Why do they starve? Why does North Korea have a food shortage when South Korea is fine? In both these cases high population is a ridiculous excuse. In Africa, political instability and warfare results in the destruction of crops. In North Korea the socialist regime will not allow for people to grow crops. Some places like Hong Kong are extremely crowded, but still rarely suffer from starvation due to the ability to buy food from less crowded areas. Even poor countries such as India have managed to largely eliminate starvation through use of modernizing their agricultural system and liberalizing trade. Anywhere in the world you see mass starvation it is nearly always the result of either warfare or government intervention in the economy. A lack of places to grow food is a ridiculous explanation. Even poverty doesn't cause starvation. In the USA, arguably the biggest health risk faced by the poor is not starvation, but obesity. People living below the poverty line have abnormally high rates of obesity. Our only problem is too much food. Then again, someone below poverty line here lives a lifestyle that many in Africa would consider to be extremely luxurious.
We have plenty of space to grow food, and with advancing crop production techniques this will be even less of a problem. Theoretically it would be possible to fit the entire population of the world inside the state of Texas and still have a lower population per square mile than New York City.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's tragedy of the commons.
You see, everyone wants to have a healthy planet, but nobody wants to be stuck holding the bag if they're the only ones restraining their consumption.
Re:Its a population crunch (Score:4, Funny)
The google ad on this page says "This is your last chance to profit from the rising cost of crude oil".
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Re:Its a population crunch (Score:4, Insightful)
"The Heinlein fan in me says this will happen with war and starvation."
The trick is to be the killers instead of the dead, and the fed instead of the starving. Should it come down to that, I suspect we'll find it easy to shitcan idealism and kill our competition.
Given a choice between theirs and ours, I'll choose ours.
Parent
Re:Its a population crunch (Score:4, Funny)
Or we can join the The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. For us geeks it shouldn't be too hard... "May we live long and die out" :)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It has a certain sci-fi appeal, and there isn't anything wrong with trying; but it neither solves the problems in dish one, nor exempts dishes two through N from the same problems.
Re:Its a population crunch (Score:5, Insightful)
A common sentiment, shared by every generation since civilization began.
Parent
Re:Its a population crunch (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah the first time I saw the "Agent Smith Speech" in the Matrix I thought they had hit that nail a little to close to the head for comfort
"I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure."
Sadly he got one thing wrong, we do find an equilibrium, but only by mass slaughter or by having disease run rampant when we pack ourselves in too closely like rats. Just look at how much we "thinned the herd" with WW I and WW II. i think the only reason we haven't already had WW III is that the bomb makes such worldwide conflict too dangerous even for the truly vicious to seriously contemplate. But I have no doubt when the resources get really tight if we don't find a way to get off this rock and get more things will get REALLY nasty.
Of course if you try to limit population growth you will get screams of racism and classism and the PC police will put an end to that. So you get what we have now, the march of the morons, where the stupid breed like bunnies while the smart have few kids if at all. I wonder if in 500 years Idiocracy will be looked upon as a prophetic documentary?
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Re:Its a population crunch (Score:4, Insightful)
"Thinning the herd" is much more effective and efficient when governments do it to their own people than when they go to war with other countries. Yes, hundreds of thousands died in WWII, but the Ottoman Turks killed a million Armenians during the prior decade. 30 million Chinese were killed by Mao Zedong, and 50 million more died of starvation as he took over the means of production and reorganized the farmlands. 25 million in the Soviet Union were killed by Stalin's government. The Germans lost 5 million soldiers during the war, but slaughtered 12 million within their own country, 6 million just for being Jewish. 2 million were killed in Cambodia when Pol Pot's government took over.
So the best method of reducing population would be to set up a global despotic government. I see that's what they're planning in Copenhagen, so I guess our beneficent leaders have the situation in hand.
Parent
Right, humans are uniquely bad (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a side issue, but this is complete hogwash. Every organism will increase as much as possible - they don't "instinctively" come to equilibrium, equilibrium is forced on them by competition. In the event that an organism becomes so well adapted that it dominates its competition, its numbers will increase until it dies off as a result of increasing beyond the carrying capacity of the environment. A good example: snow geese. For many years, snow goose populations were very low because their natural habitats were limited. But then, beginning about in the 70's, two things happened: 1) snowy owl populations increased in the far north, which had the effect of increasing snow goose nesting success by driving away snow goose predators, and 2) snow geese learned to exploit a new (to them) resource: agricultural waste. As a result of those two factors, the snow goose population exploded. Unfortunately, however, it didn't "come to equilibrium" with its environment - snow geese are now so overpopulated that they're destroying both their spring breeding grounds and their wintering grounds. Unless the population can be gotten under control through hunting (which so far has had pretty limited success), a population crash is inevitable
There are other examples of the same phenomenon in other species, but what's relevant here is that humans are just an extreme example. We are so tremendously adaptable that we've been able to colonize nearly every environment on the surface of the earth, and have so outstripped every other creature that our population has grown too much for the earth to support it. That's a real problem, and I don't mean to pooh-pooh it. But I do get annoyed when I hear more examples of the meme that "animals (and primitive humans) lived in harmony with the earth, but evil (modern) man has forgotten how to do this". It's just not true - all species expand to fill all available space in whatever niche they occupy.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Even in the last 30 years there has been a recognition that high standards of living reduce fertility.
I think I saw an article fairly recently that suggested that as the standard of living increases past some point, this reverses itself and fertility rates start to go back up.
Yes, that was in the news, but when you actually look at the data, the evidence for an upturn in fertility at very high affluence levels is not statistically significant.
Re:Its a population crunch (Score:5, Interesting)
1) as people get wealthier they don't need as many children to "run the farm", so to speak. They in fact become an economic liability.
2) As people get wealthier their access to health care, proper sanitation etc. becomes easier. This increases the survival rate of their children which reduces the number compensatory pregnancies. In other words, when a child dies a woman's friends, neighbors, relatives, coworkers etc. decide to "have just one more, just in case".
Europe, the US and Japan are all examples of this.
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Physics problem? (Score:4, Funny)
So, is the economy or global warming treated as a perfect sphere?
Re:Physics problem? (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, but I found the solution to global warming. If we model people as an ideal gas confined to a box, increasing the number of people while keeping volume and pressure constant will decrease the temperature!
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Re:Physics problem? (Score:4, Funny)
No no, he modeled the population as a frictionless surface that perfectly reflects all light.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Dude, do the maths, if you cant be bothered reading EIA reports, 85 million barrels of oil are used DAILY.
Yearly thats a lot of tonnes of oil. all of it gets used.
Alternatives are less than 2%.
Somewhat like safer cars (Score:5, Interesting)
This fits with an observation by insurance companies (or at least mine, USAA) that building safer cars results in people continuing to drive them to their preferred safety margin. We still end up with about as many crashes (but injuries are less).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As a bike rider I find that hilarious.
Adjusting for Inflation (Score:4, Insightful)
Another implication... (Score:5, Interesting)
There's another implication of that theory, and it's one that conservatives have been arguing for some time now: the end result of the current drive to cut back on carbon dioxide emissions is the destruction of the worlkd economy.
Re:Another implication... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Another implication... (Score:4, Informative)
Isn't that exactly the _opposite_ of what this theory states?
The author specifies that efficiency in fact spurs _more_ economic growth. Unsurprising, since our entire society from the dawn of crop cultivation has been based on our ability to get things done more efficiently, thus freeing up time and energy for other work and discoveries. So if you want to grow the economy, work on... economy.
What is somewhat surprising is that the efficiencies gained seem to be immediately taken up by new forms of consumption, so there is never any decrease in resource usage, just a growth in what we accomplish with our endless accelerating depletion of those resources.
An interesting and somewhat troubling thought. In the end we are likely not above nature and a painful equilibrium will be found.
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Not really that surprising... (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps the most provocative implication of Garrett's theory is that conserving energy doesn't reduce energy use, but spurs economic growth and more energy use.
While I can't speak to the validity of the underlying theory as such, a conclusion like this doesn't really come as a shock. The 20th century saw an steady stream of "labor-saving" inventions that are now part of our daily lives, but we don't have more leisure time than our ancestors -- in many cases, we actually have less -- because all of that liberated time was promptly consumed by new forms of work.
Sooner or later, we're going to have to come to terms with our now obsolete species-wide obsession with material acquisition. It made sense before we developed tools and civilization: grab all you can while it's abundant because scarcity is the norm. Now that we have all we actually need and then some, we're just killing ourselves with the byproducts of our superfluous production.
Re:Not really that surprising... (Score:5, Interesting)
How far back are you talking about? If it's the 19th century, then you're definitely wrong. We have huge swaths of leisure time compared with our 19th century ancestors. If it's the first half of the 20th century, then the economies in the West were still fairly unregulated although better than previously, and a lot of people were still more overworked than most of us are now. If you mean by ancestors your parents or grandparents, then you'd probably be right. The post-WWII period was a golden economic age for a large percentage of the population in the West. Unfortunately, with deregulation from the 1980s onwards exploitation has increased again.
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Re:Not really that surprising... (Score:5, Funny)
Thepost-WWII period was a golden economic age for a large percentage of the population in the West. Unfortunately, with deregulation from the 1980s onwards exploitation has increased again.
Yeah, like I too, man, think that, like the whole western world came to its peak, man, at Woodstock, back in '69.
Like far out. Been a huge bummer ride since then.
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Re:Not really that surprising... (Score:4, Funny)
Your dad at least discusses his fucking jigsaw with you -- that makes him much more emotionally available than mine. I mean, my dad just will not open up about his fucking jigsaw, his boning sawhorse, his nipple-pinching vise or even his fisting workbench. Perhaps it's best if one's parents conceal those things from you.
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We already knew that (Score:3, Insightful)
The climate is headed for a crash, and there's nothing that anybody can do about it.
Sorry, but that's the truth.
And one more thing: humans of the future will curse your bones. That is all, carry on.
Jevons Paradox (Score:5, Informative)
This sounds like Jevons Paradox.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Wow, if only they'd mentioned that somewhere in the article...
Gee wizz.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I can see why this gets a run here – scientists are cool nerds; economists are not – but in the end it's a guy doing research outside of his field. Sometimes you get tremendous insights [wikipedia.org], but most of the time (as in this case) you don't.
* I'm not talking about the physiocrats here, okay?
Disclaimer: I am an economist.
Re:Gee wizz.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Really? (Score:3, Interesting)
One issue that I have seen in soft 'Sciences', is that they resist the idea of applying real math and other science to their models. As it is, you just got done saying that economics counts on human behavior, i.e. psych, an even weaker science.
Re:Gee wizz.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Economists routinely use highly complicated mathematical models on stuff like this, and are just as routinely criticised for it because their simplifying assumptions aren't close enough to reality. Then along comes this bloke and uses a model that's not even based on human behaviour: the economy as a heat engine. No wonder he's been panned. Criticise economic models all you like, but at least the modern ones* have a foundation in human behaviour.
So economists are trying to figure things out from first principles, and having a rather difficult time because their necessary simplifying assumptions could possibly be simplifying away things that actually matter. While this guy seems to be looking at the economy as a black box, saying "it looks like this input and this output have always been related in the past, so what happens if they stay related in the future?". He's trying to come up with laws ("this is what happens") rather than theories ("this is why it happens"), and doesn't really need a foundation in human behavior. Much like we can know what gravity does, without actually having found a graviton or whatever current theories say we should find.
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One nuclear power plant a day (Score:5, Insightful)
"or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day."
I don't have a problem with this. Let's get building.
Eventually we'll turn towards the sun, and nuclear will only be our failsafe, but I have no problem with it filling in the gaps.
Yes. Energy use is best economic measure (Score:4, Interesting)
Because it is the amount of work we are putting in to things we want to do or want to have happen.
I predict that economic theory in general will move in this direction.
There are other alternatives to the nuke method however. We could do massive wind and solar,
supplemented by ocean wave and geothermal.
Opponents with a vested interest in the status quo claim these are marginal and intermittent (not core)
power sources, but they do not understand or are deliberately ignoring the power balancing you could do
with a continent-wide superconducting smart-switching power grid.
Another, complementary, alternative is that we can back off on our tendency to destroy natural eco-systems and
replace them by our own systems,
and let some of them (natural systems) thrive, and do some of the work for us. This only works if we support them
and harvest them with humility and respect.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
The marginal value of your first dollar, or 10 dollars(depending on local cost of living), is enormous. You get to eat. The marginal value of your 1,000,001th dollar is a great deal smaller.
There isn't a fixed "ceiling" above which people demand no more energy; but there are a number of "floors" below which things get really ugly, really fast(like, "Rwandan Genocide" bad, not just "I want a cooler yacht" bad). If you can increase efficiency enough, it should be possible to reduce the amount of damage that needs to be done in order to head off genuinely bad outcomes.
There is also a second factor to consider: When people are desperate(or ignorant, or stupid), they will be willing to consume their capital to survive. Destroying fish stocks by catching juveniles, farming harder and harder until the topsoil erodes, polluting water supplies, eating the seed corn, deforestation to make charcoal(on the subject of deforestation, compare the Dominican Republic with Haiti. Same island, same location, one country has its forests, one doesn't. The Dominican Republic is merely poor. Haiti is deeply fucked.), and so forth. Even in strict economic terms(i.e. setting the intrinsic worth of "the environment", beyond its practical utility, at 0) this is a stupid plan. If the alternative is starving, though, people will do it anyway. If efficiency increases, fewer people will be desperate enough to eat their capital instead of their income.
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Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are environmental Garden of Edens.
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Re:Simple Solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't forget China [chinahush.com]
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Re:Massive fail (Score:4, Informative)
The fail was on your comprehension.
What humans are and are not is irrelevant, it has nothing to do with choices, nothing to do with rational behavior.
It's simply saying that each unit of economic production results in the consumption of X units of energy. And that reducing energy consumption on something results not in less energy use but in more production.
Which leads to, if you want to reduce carbon dioxide levels, two choices:
1. Economic collapse.
2. Build obscene amounts of "clean" (in terms of carbon dioxide production) energy generators.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I suspect that most people think that the problem is the rest of the population. The portion of the population that makes up their culture is usually not considered to be part of the problem, but everyone else is.