Three Blind Mice I : Krugman, Romm and Roberts Run the Wheel Round and Round

Dave Roberts, of Grist fame, recently wrote a piece disputing that we can know whether transitioning to a “clean” economy cheaply and easily is possible, calling out Krugman (economist aka voodoo practitioner) and Romm (stuffed shirt writer dude) for essentially saying how cheap and easy it would be.

Surely one of the three must be right, or closer to the truth, right? Sure. Dave, you win the Glaucoma Prize for being the Not-Quite-Blind Mouse! But I still hear that wheel spinning. Hmmm… what have we here? We have three VIP dudes talking climate. Why am I not ecstatic? You see, it’s kind of like...

three guys with an STD discussing the merits of prostitution and how to improve it so they can keep getting their STDs. (Let’s say Dave is merely “at risk” for fairness’ sake.)

You see, you can’t “fix” prostitution. It will always exist. There will always be at least a small number that actually choose to do it, but most will be some degree of forced, coerced or desperate. And the Johns and Johnettes, well... People really, really, really like sex and really, really, really like money. And economics is the same. Sex sells. When was the last time you saw an ad that told you something truly useful about a product instead of a guy or gal draped all over it half naked? It's the wheel I hear whirring, whirring, whirring. I hope you will, too, in time.

Just as prostitution cannot, will not, be ended because we wish it, and cannot, will not ever be healthy for the vast majority, economics is the same. Economics cannot be fixed because the flaws that it is based on are inherent. Money, power, desperation, force, greed, desire, all feed economic thought and, especially, economic actions. But it gets worse. While prostitution may exist because of the same basic drives, wants and needs, in many healthy communities where needs are met, there often is no prostitution, even if it is more because of social pressure than anything else. That is, I am contradicting myself: We can have communities without prostitution. That’s a step up from economics: It is impossible for neo-classical economics to produce a sustainable society. Besides, prostitution fills a basic drive. Economics creates the illusion of doing so. Better a prostitute than an economist, if you ask me. Far more honest a profession.

Oh, no I di’int! Oh, yes I did! I just went there. You need to, too, ‘cause if you don’t, we’re all pretty well screwed. (It's OK, you can smile. It was unintentional.)

Economics exists to perpetuate a process of wealth creation and accretion, and nothing more. Oh, sure, you have a pure scientist or two, but read the stuff! It's crackpot! Here's the biggest lie: Current economic thinking can define and guide the creation of sustainable systems.

Because elephants beget mices.

No, the principles of current economics cannot create a sustainable system when they have zero principles of sustainable systems within their number. Elephants to do not beget roses. Never will. For example, endless substitution. Economics never even addresses that there absolutely must be a final substitution beyond which all stops. Sustainable design begins with, so, how much shit we got? What can be done with it? How can we help it make more, faster, while recreating itself endlessly?

These two things are not the same. Elephants don't beget mices.

Economics, it turns out, isn’t based on science, but on philosophy. It uses lots of numbers, sure, and we all know *math* is science, so economics must be, too, right? Sure, so long as you accept that because a soap box derby racer has wheels and a steering wheel it’s a viable commuter vehicle. No, putting on the clothes of respectable science doesn’t make economics a science. What matters are the underlying assumptions. Economics is actually based on human behavior. Markets are not machines, they are aggregations of people. Economics is assumptions about what people do and why. What economics doesn’t do is consider the physical world. Economics must be based in resources to be a viable basis for understanding our world or it’s just a variant of psychology/sociology. But economics isn’t. While there are economists espousing this essential position, even there they do not begin and end with ecology, they merely include it. At least these mice aren’t blind! Merely myopic! And hanging out in the Red Light District of economic fallacy and fantasy.

All the while that wheel keeps spinning, spinning, spinning, but going nowhere. In his piece, Sir Grist writes the following graph,

Take, for instance, Paul Krugman, who crows, in a column called “Salvation Gets Cheap,” that “even under the most ambitious goals the [IPCC] assessment considers, the estimated reduction in economic growth would basically amount to a rounding error, around 0.06 percent per year.” Joe Romm touts the same number in “Climate Panel Stunner: Avoiding Climate Catastrophe Is Super Cheap — But Only If We Act Now.

then fires this shot across their respective bows:

…the idea that aggressive climate mitigation is going to shave precisely 0.06 percent off GDP growth is utterly fantastical.

For one thing, as I’ve said before, the economic models from which IPCC and others draw these numbers are just this side of wild guesses, based on assumptions about economic growth, resource prices, and technological development decades in the future.

Dave d’Grist (I tease, but I like Dave’s work… but like popping him upside his head, too, for not understanding the subject fully) is correct when he says models are guesses. Duh. Any forward-looking discussion is. But his real point is that Blinder Mice 1 and 2 put a huge amount of faith in things that are 1. based on abstractions, 2. are guesses, and 3. have zero connection to the true underlying issue: Resources and their consumption. Actually, #3 is my point. Dave is guilty of this, also. Note he doesn't say they should not do this or economics should not be trusted, he says the models are too unreliable to justify the other two mice trusting them so much. And Dave fails on #3 as badly as the other two.

Economics, once it bothers to consider the real world at all, dismisses it with a concept that does not work in your home or mine: Endless substitution. Yup, they just erase the issue of  resources from the ledger. So, the *basis* of every productive and consumptive act we engage in is completely dismissed as even mattering. Let’s try this endless substitution thingy, though.

I’m out of steak, but there’s hamburger. So far, so good. Except in economics your $5 steak is equal to your $1 hamburger. Home, not restaurant! Try that with your check book! Still, I guess since we ate, it’s OK. Ah, but eventually the hamburger goes, too. Ah, tofu! Tofu steakburger! Dang! Now we ran out of tofu! Err… OK, we can make a heavy biscuit shaped like a steak and smother it in meatless gravy! Yay!

See where this is going? Such people believe this crap!

And even The Grister accepts this insanity. But we need to clarify the insanity. So far all we know is economics ignore resources because they think steak is tofu. Corollary might be oil equals bio-fuels. Same problem. Oil has far more energy than bio-fuels and is far more fungible. Currently, takes around 1 barrel of oil to get ten out of the ground. Tar sands? Maybe 1 barrel to get 3, which is below the estimated rate to maintain our current economic model. Oops.

Oil is used in some form or degree in 95% of everything we produce. Go ahead. Look around. Now imagine either not having 95% of everything, or finding substitutes for some portion of 95% of everything. Now go get a broom and dustpan and pick your brain up off the floor. Five second rule if you want to apply endless substitution and recycle it.

Endless substitution is bull. Thus, the fact the planet is *finite* can no longer be ignored. Ipso facto, that every *economic* decision, and every decision, period, is an ecological decision also can no longer be ignored. Pause with me as we watch that wheel come to a stop and our Three Blind Mice sweep up what’s left of their brains.

Poor mices.

We are now ready to understand what has just happened. Rather than sitting on our brains and pretending that the crap we make up in those ego-inflated brains is more important than the real world from which literally everything around us comes, we must now accept that every discussion of Climate Change starts not with economics, but Ecology. (Our mice may never recover.) Logically, economics exists only as a subset of Ecology, not as a (voodoo) science above and beyond the ecology.

There are people who understand this. In the ‘70’s Mollison and Holmgren suggested designing our human systems based on ecological systems made some degree of sense. More prosaically, the Limits to Growth study, and its update a few years back, set out a set of possible scenarios, the worst of which we are tracking perfectly thus far. They looked at pollution, population, resource consumption, etc., and concluded we’d have used too much of many things and begin destabilizing. That scenario leads to collapse of our current system around mid-century. I don’t mean an economic slowdown, I mean society falling apart. And there are more. Many more. BTW, the Limits to Growth study didn't include Climate Change, so things are that much worse than seemed then.

But let’s back up a bit. Why the frack is Climate Change being discussed separately from resources if every decision is ultimately an ecological decision? Good galdarned question. Part of it we’ve already discussed: Economics can fix every shortage, which we know to be hubris, at best. The extension of understanding this is false is that it must also mean we *will* run out of things. Worse, we can use even truly, naturally renewable things up so fast that we either destroy the source or they cannot possibly meet our collective needs.

Water, anyone? Planet’s 70% water, yet water shortages all over the globe because we either are using it too fast (declining aquifers, river flows, lakes, reservoirs) or have poisoned it with things like fossil fuels-derived pollutants, er, fertilizers. Water is endlessly recyclable, and it's all over the planet! But we have used the *available* potable water so quickly we are drying aquifers and poisoning systems far faster than nature can replenish them. So we have built purification plants of various kinds. And the situation continues to rapidly worsen.

If we can't keep endless water flowing at rates we can survive on... ummm...

But none of that is THE point. THE point is this: Climate Change is the result of over-consumption of resources. Sure, you understand there’s too much CO2. Sure you understand efficiency can reduce this. Sure you think you can conserve energy. But I didn’t say misuse of fossil fuels, I said misuse of resources. Plural. Peak Oil is perhaps one you’ve heard of, but there is a long list of non-renewable resources also at, near, or past peak. Phosphorus, the P in every farmer’s and gardener’s NPK, is expected to run out around the end of this century. Not peak, but be *all used up.* When we are expected to have 2 – 5 billion more people on the planet. 12 billion people with no phosphorus? We could crash back to prehistoric numbers. 

All because economists think steaks are tofu.

Don't despair, though! We can farm regeneratively and actually build soil instead of depleting it, and phosphorus. But we aren't. Well, most aren't. This is one of the few areas where everyday peeps are listening and asking for organic foods. What you peeps haven't quite figured out yet is that gardening/farming will need to become a daily part of most people's lives because regenerative farming/gardening mot only can sequester carbon and helps create a localized economy (more on this some other time), keeps chemicals like phosphorous and nitrogen from killing our oceans when they run off into them, but preserves resources, or more accurately keeps them stored for later, better use - and keeps them from being used now..... which is less consumption.... which is less growth.... which is less carbon... which is.... moving toward simplicity.

The times they are a' changin'... Why aren't we changing faster, fast enough? 1. You haven't figured out yet just how much the times are a' gonna change, 2. you love your stuff, and are far too comfortable, 3. ask Monsanto, 4. ask the Big Oil and their congressional call boys and girls, and... and... and...

Mostly, you just don't believe it can all go to hell. But it can, it is, it will.

Oh, and “renewable” energy, all those windmills and stuff we are supposed to transition to according to our Three Blind Mice? Rare Earth metals are also a limited resource. Very limited.

Thought experiment: 9 – 12 billion people at, say, European living standards. This would actually mean massively increased consumption for around 5.5 billion people, plus all the new ones still to come. We are already using resources at a rate sustainable only with 1.5 Earths. We’d need 5 Earths or so to have 9 billion or more live like Europeans, and they use 50% of the energy we Americans use.

So…. say we transition to renewables at current consumption (read: lifestyle) rates. Then multiply by 3x, minimum, so it’s fair for all. Wonderful. Happy yeast! (More yeast in a moment.) Now, replace all that infrastructure every thirty to fifty years, forever. Yes, forever. What? You think that substitution crap kicks back in for some unknown future generation? Sorry, no. Tech? Same resource problem. Perhaps it extends some stuff a bit, but it's irrelevant given we are already over-consuming.

We have a problem! Mouse brains clean-up, aisle three! Yeast spillage, aisle four!

About those yeast…

Why else? We discount the future. We have a very difficult time, collectively, giving much of a damn about future generations. On top of this there is "Holy Technology, Batman. Tech will save us!" Except it hasn't. We work as hard, for less, as we did in 1970. Actually we work more: Women are far more involved in working outside the home now. Real wages for you and me? Up 4%, total, since 1970. Total. But our productivity is significantly higher. Thanks, bosses!!! We work ever harder, create more for you and you give us Absolutely Nothing.

Why else? We are Beyond History. Growth (substitution, tech) can and will go on forever simply because it has for so long. It's a lie. We have recessions and depressions. But, yes, since the end of the Middle Ages, say 1200 AD, it's been an overall upward trend. 900 years of growth! Gosh, must be permanent!

Not so much. Any number of more isolated civilizations have risen and fallen over that same time, always with resource and/or climate issues. And many rose and fell before that, too. History is littered with fallen civilizations. And they virtually always try to get over their problems with more, more, more. Then they have nothing. Then they die.

But mostly, we just can't conceive of failure. We can't imagine actually being human. We put people on the moon, for goodness' sake. We own Nature, physics be damned. And, give up my lifestyle? It's my RIGHT as an American!!!!

Except, no.

Dr Al Bartlett thinks you and I might be dummer than yeest. So far, he’s right. Imagine a jar. The world is the sugar in the jar. We are the yeast. Assume there is enough sugar for one hour.It's 11:00. At what time have the yeast eaten half the food? 1 minute before 12? Twelve? 12:01? 12:37? Hmmm? Bet you guessed 12:30. Half the time, half the food.

Nope. Organisms grow to fill the food supply. This is why all natural systems see a saw-toothed population chart. A few too many, they eat too much, some die. A smaller population eats less, the food supply recovers, they balance for a while, then there are too many eaters, food supply falls, eaters die. In a closed system, eventually everything dies as the food is completely consumed. (I’m sure you’ve flushed a forgotten goldfish or two.)

It’s a question of exponents. Any constant rate of growth, or average rate of growth, is exponential. Let’s take that old shampoo commercial, tell two friends who tell two friends who tell two friends, etc. 1 x 2 = 4 > 8 > 16 > 32 > 64 > 128 > 256 > 512 > 1,024 >2,048 > 4,096 > 8,192 > 16,384 > 32,768 > 65,356 > 131,072 > 262,144 > 524,288 >  1,048,576... How many of you have even 16 true friends? After 21 days... Food supplies are similarly limited when doubling is occurring.

The yeast double like this. Notice every doubling is GREATER than all that came before, being more than half of all that’s been consumed ever. For simplicity, let’s say it’s exactly double. Working backwards from 12:00 o’clock, what time do we have half the sugar left, my fellow yeast?

Yup, 11:59. 11-flippin-50-fricken-9. But we have an hour to prepare!

DO we? OK, what time do we still have ¾ of the sugar? 11:58. 7/8? 11:57. 15/16? 11:56. Four minutes before The End of All Yeast, it looks like we have food forever. No wonder our Three Blind Mice think it’s all about economics instead of resources. No wonder you, my little yeasties, think resources will go on forever.

The truth is, we humans have been doubling consumption and population very, very quickly.

Make that timeline equal to one hour and you see what I mean. Charts of resource consumption take the same shape.

“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”
― Albert A. Bartlett

(This whole bit was lifted from Dr. Al.)

Sorry for burying the lede. (I’m lying.) This simple little observation explains why we have used half the world’s recoverable oil, have water shortages globally and will be out of phosphorus by the end of this century. And it’s why we have Climate Change.

In case you missed it, we appear to be sitting at less than one minute before 12:00. Enjoy your meal.

If we had understood our resource base from the beginning, or even 30 years ago, collectively, we would have acted very differently. Of course that assumes we aren’t collectively sui-genocidal, of which I am not yet convinced. Instead, we pumped huge amounts of oil, gas and coal into the air as CO2 and methane (natural gas) thinking they were inexhaustible. Had we thought them exhaustible and thought, gee, if we’ve been around 200,000 years or so and want to still be around in 200,000 years or so, maybe, just maybe, we should slow this little mouse wheel down and do some careful planning, things would be different. Of course, we also thought we couldn't alter the atmosphere so much as to threaten our own survival. (Scientists have known this for more than a hundred years.)

Atmospheric CO2 was only around 315 or 320 ppm in 1950. Population was 2.5 billion in 1950. It’s 7.1 billion today. C02 is 400 ppm. This is not coincidental, it is causal. We had 1 billion in 1804. ONE. C02 was around 280 ppm, which was normal for a warm interglacial period. In 3 million years and around 30 or so glacial/interglacial cycles it never went above about 300 ppm.

CH4 (methane/natural gas) is even worse, up nearly 300%!!!

By 1950 we were at 2.5 billion and CO2 was 315. Today we have 7.1 billion and CO2 is 400. You couldn’t make two curves more similar if you tried.

This begs the question, if Climate Change is caused by resource misuse, isn’t the solution resources wisely allocated? How do we keep consuming and expect to stop Climate Change? Efficiency? Nope. We are massively, massively more efficient than in 1800 or 1850, yet resource consumption continues to rise. In fact, we are more efficient year after year, decade after decade, yet consumption keeps rising.

Population trumps efficiency.

What about stabilizing population? Too late. Remember: 1. Already using at the rate of 1.5 Earths, and most of the planet still lives with less than the poorest of American poor. Five Earths for all of us to live like Europeans. Even more to live like Americans. 2. Fossil Fuels are not the only limited resources. Phosphorus and Rare Earth metals, both vital to the “green” revolution won’t survive this century. And there are hundreds of other similar points I could raise.

Still think Climate Change is about economics? It's like saying planetary physics is about astrology. But let's not argue by analogy. Ecology as the basis of all decision-making is not so trivial. It's First Principles thinking, which is where the best problem solving begins. Elon Musk, to engage in an appeal to authority fallacy, recently said,  

I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. We are doing this because it’s like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. Slight iterations on a theme.

“First principles” is a physics way of looking at the world. What that really means is that you boil things down to the most fundamental truths and then reason up from there. That takes a lot more mental energy.

Notice Elon didn't start with economics or how it's always been done? He started with, what the frack is a battery and how the frack can we do it better? So, if our planet is dying by our hand, if everything we have has come from that planet, what *must* be the first consideration in every decision we make, period?

The planet. And not what we *want* from it, but what we *need* from it. And, hold on to your brains, before that we have to ask, what *can* the planet provide? That's a First Principle question. We don't look at historical production and extrapolate, we look at what exists in a space. That is our starting point, whether a balcony flower box or a farm or a bio-region. We need to know what is there first. This includes wind, sun, rain. I's called a resource inventory. (It will include human resources (How many people? What are their skills? Their limitations? etc.?) further steps down the line.)

This is what Mollison and Holmgren realized back in the '70's by merely observing. They teased out of the natural systems they observed underlying principles by which natural systems were organized, then listed them as ways for us to apply the same principles to our human systems. They also proposed a process to apply them that started with what Musk would do decades later: Look. Literally observe, but also look differently. What are the resources in this space? The energy? Let's quantify those first so we know what this space *can* do, *can* provide. Only after they asked what the Earth could do in any given space did they suggest asking what they need from it. Only then did they then say we could seek ways to harmonize the two.

Notice there is no discussion of wants? First things first. First Principles first. Body temp, food, water. Cover those first. Anything else is gravy.

But, by applying natural principles to human/natural systems they found they could speed up Nature's ways. Nature + Big Brained Non-Idiot Humans = More. This is not achieved by appropriating Nature, damaging Nature, but by using Nature's own processes to do what nature does faster, more productively. Nature builds soil very, very slowly as detritous, leaves, bird poop, etc., fall to the ground and are reduced. We can speed this up with mulching, composting, etc. Nature's ways, sped up.

As you hopefully were and/or are now aware, the opposite has been true for the entirety of modern human civilizations. We have sought to feed our wants for 10k years, and the result is we're flirting with extinction.

But, using natural to aid Nature, we can create abundance. Not profit, abundance. Not excess, abundance. And from abundance you can then choose to meet some wants so long as you do not fall back into the wants-first trap and start this craziness all over again.

How do we get from a crisis of over-consumption to meeting global needs and eventually abundance rather than excess? Perhaps you've already guessed. Nature's ways. Start with the resources available. Start with needs.

Simplicity.

Everybody, off that freaking wheel! Economics is a Dead Man Walking. As are we if we don't get off that wheel.

The Perfect Storm World Simulation: Peak Oil, Climate Change, Economic Collapse

Enough economics for awhile. All two of you, besides myself, that read this blog already know what I think on that. Other facets of The Perfect Storm need some attention. I'd like to look at the big picture with an eye toward solutions.

The problem is simple: Anthropogenically-forced Climate Change (ACC), Peak Oil (PO), economic collapse, etc., are in the early stages of potentially remaking our world in ways we really would like to avoid, but there is almost nothing being done about any of it in any real sense when you consider the massive changes that are needed to deal with all these problems. If you think a bit on how long it takes to change the way a few billion people live, it's clear we have nearly run out of time to find solutions and implement them.

Robert Hirsch, et al., determined in a study done in 2005 that mitigating PO with minimal effects would require starting twenty years before the peak. Starting ten years before would lead to serious issues, but could be done. Waiting until peak would result in serious problems. Peak appears to have come in 2008.

Oops.

Then there's ACC. A recent poll of climate scientists shows they are far more worried about ACC than is generally understood. But for James Hansen, they tend to be pretty quiet and conservative in their pronouncements on climate. This is (intellectually) understandable. They are scientists and are expected to state what they can prove, not what they know to be true. But aren't we past the point of this little luxury? Are not the dire consequences of no action or too little action being taken - a world 2 to 6C warmer - too great to risk? Well, finally some are speaking out... anonymously. (Way to put your necks out there, Profs!)

World will not meet 2C warming target, climate change experts agree

Guardian poll reveals almost nine out of 10 climate experts do not
believe current political efforts will keep warming below 2C

The poll of those who follow global warming most closely exposes a widening gulf between political rhetoric and scientific opinions on climate change.

While policymakers and campaigners focus on the 2C target, 86% of the experts told the survey they did not think it would be achieved.

...60% of respondents argued that, in theory, it was still technically and
economically possible to meet

...global warming of 2C

... But 39% said the 2C target was impossible.

...84 of the 182 specialists (46%) who answered the question said it would reach 3-4C by the end of the century; 47 (26%) suggested a rise of 2-3C, while a handful said 6C or more. While 24 experts predicted a catastrophic rise of 4-5C, just 18 thought it would stay at 2C or under.

Geewillickers... You gotta see some quotes from here:

Climate change experts reveal their hopes and fears

• By 2100 I seriously fear there will be civilization collapse and chaos.
• We should also be mindful that temperature sensitivity of the planet... has been grossly underestimated... We are in extremely dangerous territory.
• Nothing short of a major restructuring of the energy generation system will see us limiting climate change to a 2C rise.

Now, don't you feel all warm and fuzzy? No? It gets worse.

To meet climate goal, cut fossil fuels use: study

The paper, published by the British journal Nature, implies only a revolution in energy use can achieve the aim of limiting warming to less than two degrees Celsius (3.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

To achieve the objective -- embraced by the European Union (EU) and many scientists -- means that only 1,000 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) can be emitted between 2000 and 2050, it said.

By comparison, the world has emitted a third of that amount in just nine years.

"If we continue burning fossil fuels as we do, we will have exhausted the carbon budget in merely 20 years, and global warming will go well beyond two degrees," said the study's lead author, Malte Meinshausen of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Berlin.

So, how much carbon have you cut out of your life today? None? Well! We're moving right along, aren't we! Look around you. Other than cuts caused by the recession, do you see people really changing how they use energy?

Paradoxically, PO will both helping us reduce our use of Fossil Fuels and make it harder to do so. To wit:

1. Crude oil production likely peaked in 2008.
   
2. On one hand, the use of oil will fall over the next few decades. On the other, if renewable forms of energy can't replace crude oil, then tar sands and coal will. Both are much greater emitters of CO2 than crude oil is.
3. Having run out of hands, now use your feet to factor in the economic hit of declining oil production. (In both recessions in the '70's, the percentage drop in crude oil production and the drop in GDP were about the same, e.g.)
4. As the "recession" begins to abate, the economic hit from PO will most likely stop it in its tracks.
5. Investments for renewable energies will almost certainly be reduced by the economic crash.

To make matters ever-so-much better, what do Americans think about climate change? Not much.

Only 34% blame humans for global warming

Just one-out-of-three voters (34%) now believe global warming is caused by human activity, the lowest finding yet in Rasmussen Reports national surveying. However, a plurality (48%) of the Political Class believes humans are to blame.

Forty-eight percent (48%) of all likely voters attribute climate change to long-term planetary trends, while seven percent (7%) blame some other reason. Eleven percent (11%) aren’t sure.

These numbers reflect a reversal from a year ago when 47% blamed human activity while 34% said long-term planetary trends.

If you're feeling like kicking the dog or drinking your way through every bar between you and the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, hold on a second. I have a plan. Really.

Below is an e-mail (modified for this post) I sent not long ago to someone I thought, based on previous work, might be interested in modeling global solutions to The Perfect Storm. Sadly, no response. Maybe someone will stumble across it here and find a kernel of a good idea in it.

Dear X,
My wife and I have had an idea in our minds for quite some time for a massively interactive virtual reality world/MMPRPG/global climate model/global energy model/global economic model: The Perfect Storm World Simulation: Peak Oil, Climate Change, Economic Collapse.

The idea started from a simple question we, as teachers, asked ourselves: How could we do outreach on the issues of Climate Change, Peak Oil and the Economic Crash - what I call a Perfect Storm? (E.g. my blog is aperfectstormcometh.blogspot.com.) We needed something that would integrate everything we faced, but do it at the personal level and governmental level. We needed a synthesis of both to help get change going since government moves too slowly and grassroots movements alone are not going to manage the massive changes needed - though I think grassroots movements like Transition Towns, the Post-Carbon Institute and the Relocalization movement will be the primary players in the end since the changes start and end with what we do, what we buy, how we live day-to-day.

The answer was an on-line game. Rather, a live modeling project that would both inform people (nearly half of all Americans still have significant doubts about Climate Change and far less know about Peak Oil) about the issues and help find a collaborative solution.From there we brainstormed and by the time we were done had an idea that was so massively beyond our skill sets we knew we were hopelessly over matched. We envisioned something with the following components or characteristics:

- It would be huge, along the lines of MMPRPGs, but necessarily bigger than any before it. This needs to be international in scope since any solutions must also be, and must offer realistic simulations.

- It would include participation of individuals from all levels of society, i.e., gov't. officials and orgs, non-profits, NGO's and, most importantly, the public.

- It would preferably have an interface like virtual reality game.

- It would have real climate models attached, or at least data from models as part of the data so people can see climate effects of their own actions as they happen in the game.

- It would would include energy decline reality.

- It would include other resource constraints (water, fisheries, farming, etc.)

- It would include real-world economic data.

- It would allow for new models of governance, economic systems and societal structures to be tried and tested, such as Steady State economic models (1, 2, 3), barter economies, etc.

- Perhaps multiple runs/games going simultaneously, much like Global Climate Models. Maybe individuals could start up their own runs and people could jump in if they liked the parameters set by the originator?

- Perhaps dummy nodes/agents coded to model the averages for given regions/cities/countries to get the numbers up as high as possible.

Etc.

I started research on what was already out there. The RPG idea was clear enough. Such things as The Sims, SecondLife, World Without Oil, etc., already exist.

My research found possible components for other elements. Purdue University has SEAS. It has been used for gov't simulations before. The software team codes a scenario and real people are agents in the game. There are other nodes (agents) that are run as part of the model and represent people. It's been used for some disaster planning, etc. The goal, of course, is to have millions of real people actually acting in the simulations. They may already have that, but my impression is that only gov't officials and first responders actually participate. It might be a good foundation for the basic structure - or not. I *believe* they have a virtual presentation like an MMPRPG.

A second is the T21 program out of the Millennium Institute.

T21-North America User Interface Released!
Arlington, VA, October 18, 2007

The T21-North America (T21-NA) model user interface was released today. The user interface allows the model to be open, modified and simulated on any Windows-based computer.

The T21-NA model project is a collaboration with Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas-USA and State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry to examine energy issues in the context of an integrated framework that incorporates the relations of the energy sector to the broader economic, social, and environmental framework. The project is part of ASPO-USA’s Global Energy Modeling project.

Their software is a package run by programmers, so far as I can tell. That is, it is not an MMPRPG-, SEAS- or Alternate Reality-style package that real people are involved in; it's based on a few people inputting what they think is important rather than real people acting as they, hopefully, would in reality. I think.

A third choice might be the World3 program used by for Limits to Growth. Delores Garcia is developing/has developed an updated version of this program:

Abstract: An updated systems model of global climate, resources, and energy extending the original World3 (“Limits to Growth”) model by inclusion of climate change and it's interaction with resources and energy. Outcomes are derived for total energy resources, human population, nutrition, consumption, economic activity and other parameters. Long-term outcomes are derived for a 1900 C.E. to 2100 C.E. time sequence, with human population decline.

The weakness here is, of course, that it is not a live simulation, but a model dependent solely on inputs from the programmer. It does, however, represent a good bit of the breadth we need as it includes energy, food production, climate, etc., as noted above, and may be the closest of the three to what we are thinking of.

It may well be that something this complex and wide-ranging needs to be built from scratch. Having worked in the documentation department of a main frame software company, I can appreciate the difficulties encountered trying to integrate software not designed to work together.

As for implementation, I'd be hoping to have this made available world-wide for free so there are no restrictions. Ideally, we'd capture the imagination of some important people and be able to make a big deal of the launch and subsequent modeling with an eye toward 1. raising awareness of how serious the times are and 2. actually modelling a solution or two that might be viable, or at least move us towards some solutions.

This approach also, and perhaps most importantly, takes the policy, research and data input out from behind the closed doors and gilt halls of TPTB and gets them into the hands of the public at large.

Time is short. People need to wake up to the serious problems we face and we need a workable solution yesterday. I believe The Perfect Storm World Simulation: Peak Oil, Climate Change, Economic Collapse can both raise awareness and model possible solution scenarios.

Cheers

Build out: The Grid vs. The Household - Towards a Community-based Solution to CC and PO

Originally published on theoildrum.com here in response to this on this thread which all started here. The post has been modified for this space.

The Grid vs. The Household

Some believe we have time before a crash, or, that there will be no crash, but a relatively smooth transition from fossil fuels to renewables. They believe this slow decline in fossil fuels will allow the time needed to build hundreds (the U.S.) and thousands (the world) of nuclear power plants/reactors. However, the assumption there is time and/or there will be no crash is a dangerous one. Failure to prepare to mitigate the effects of a swift decline in energy will almost certainly lead to disaster. We must look at risk.

When we can provide a huge amount of power for a fraction of the cost and time needed to build up our nuclear grid to a level that will protect us from oil production decline, why would we not do it? Nuclear plants take years to build and require very skilled workers that must be trained. In Return to Olduvai they estimate a minimum of 20, and an upper end of 90, new reactors and/or power plants per year. At 5 - 12 billion each. That's up to 12 TRILLION dollars for the U.S. alone. But where is it written the backbone of our power grid must be built before the localized, household-based renewable infrastructure? Why shouldn't they be built concurrently, at least?

My proposal is intentionally localized due to the high degree of certainty (my certainty, not a consensus) that neither the government nor the market will be able to handle this in isolation. You have the perfect example in WWII. Victory gardens weren't just a good idea, they were necessary for continued good nutrition. The same went for resources, which led to rationing and recycling.

My position on global warming is the same. The best thing we can do is build nuclear reactors to displace coal power plants.

How can the best we can do be something that is unsustainable? Nuclear plants will need replacing two or three times a century at a current cost of billions per. The localized grid will, too, but, again, you are looking at a very small fraction of the cost for the same degree of replacement. For the same billions per *one* reactor we can supply a good fraction of the total power generation needed and leave the robust solutions for backbone, greatly reducing the number of large plants we need. If we add to this equation lifestyle changes of reducing, recycling, reusing and localization, all the more so.

I would argue, in fact, that meeting the localization goal is more important because it deals with the real issue: consumption. A massive localization drive could achieve partial energy autonomy for every household in the US within a period of a few years, not decades. It would have the added benefit of *requiring* lifestyle changes with concomitant savings of energy by reducing use via the renewables and behavior changes. However, if we assume we have a 5 - 10 year period before the shit really hits the fan, then the current grid supplies the backbone as the new backbone is built out. Under this scenario, deprivation may be eliminated for some or all over that initial time span.

Additional benefits occur from the localization of the household-based energy build out. In order to achieve this, there will be flexibility needed. Economies of scale interfere if we just assign a few companies to build all the windmills, heat pumps, solar panels, retrofitting materials for homes/apartments/businesses, etc, needed. No, the key to the plan is that it be localized solutions built out by local people wherever possible. This means, for example, the scavenging of materials needed everywhere and anywhere possible, rather than the manufacture of new materials. In the cities, we would likely need to commercialize the process a bit, but hopefully only to the level of resources. I imagine a return to the days of barn raising, but with windmills, etc.

By making this a community-based process where community solutions are customized by the community with assistance from knowledgeable locals or other reference persons/professionals, we instantly integrate the whole system into a localized whole. This might have the added benefit or reducing the need for relocation. A localized solution of this magnitude would save incredible amounts of financial resources. Those resources might be applied to some of the macro level solutions (things other than backbone) that certain communities, such as cities in the southwest dealing with water shortages, might need.

If real net oil production declines of 4% or more a year set in, we will never have the opportunity for [a nuclear and/or BAU grid-type] plan. My plan would have a good chance of succeeding whether those declines come or not. This is simple risk analysis.

I realize a great deal of interest and even fun comes out of the intellectualizing entailed in the intellectual process we are all engaged in at TOD to deal with Peak Oil and Climate Change, but the time for chat and brainy ideas is quickly passing, if it has not already passed us. I hope to encourage people to begin narrowing the conversation to the realities at hand and try to get to some conclusions before the decisions are taken out of our hands by circumstances.

Tom Whipple serves up a similar view of the future. His article doesn't deal with the sequence of events, but does outline a vision of where we may end up, albeit not in a collapse scenario, per se.

The Peak Oil Crisis: Catenaries and Pantographs

As the availability of liquid fuels dwindles, those supplies that remain will be increasingly allocated to uses for which there are no readily available substitutes -- such as powering aircraft and ships. Electric power for land vehicles appears to be the most realistic option for the present...

...For the immediate future only electricity, which can come from conservation of existing power production, nuclear power stations and renewable sources, appears to be the most likely power source for land vehicles.

Powering cars and light trucks with electricity does not seem to be an insurmountable problem provided that one is willing to live with their limitations...

The U.S. currently has some 230 million light vehicles in its fleet... these vehicles are simply going to be abandoned...

...At the rate our natural resources are running out, however, it is doubtful we will be building and selling 100’s of millions of non-fossil fuel cars in the foreseeable future.

...new rail lines would... use diesel-electric power initially... electric-powered railways coupled with short haul electric trucks, busses and cars...

...One idea... was to repower our long-haul trucks with electric engines, some battery capacity, and pantographs to contact overhead wires...

...We already have some 2 million 18-wheelers in America and one would hate to see them scrapped for lack of fuel.

...When affordable liquid fuels dry up, we are going to be left with a lot of vehicles and their infrastructure that will no longer be of use. With a little imagination, time, and money, much of this stranded investment can become useful again. There certainly will be powerful incentives to introduce whatever works.

The abandoned vehicles and infrastructure could instead be intentionally converted, before abandonment in at least some cases, to be used in the build out I outline above.

I agree with Tom:

In its day, the internal combustion engine was a wonderful device that served us well for over a century. That day, however, will soon be over. It is time to start thinking about and planning for alternatives.

Other articles by Tom Whipple can be found here.

TEOTWAWKI

A Doomer view, but realistic over the long run. The question is one of collapse vs. chaos. In 1929, The Great Depression era, only 25% of people were out of work. The underlying structure of society still existed. Resources were plentiful. This was an economic emergency, not a geological one. Peak Oil is the inability to produce oil fast enough. It will become the inability to produce enough at all. Sure, there is half the oil left, but demand has begun to surpass production. Crude oil production is falling. US stocks of crude have been falling since summer, even when they typically should be rising. Why? We need between 2 and 6 million barrels a day in new production every year just to cover natural declines in existing oil fields. We are not finding it and haven't been for 25 years. (See image in side bar.) We are on borrowed time. In the 70's and 80's the oil reductions were paralleled by reductions in GDP. A five percent decline is a big recession. We are looking at 4-8% decline year after year. After year. With the world in Depression, how do we pay for the massive changes and problems caused by Global Warming? How do we pay for a new energy system globally? That goes doubly for the fact that we are entering a massive financial meltdown independent of either Peak Oil or Global Warming. Millions are losing their homes now, and we are just getting started. Where the hell is the money going to come from? If we don't do something about global warming NOW, it will be too late to bother.

We are now faced with resources disappearing across the board. Why? Population and consumption. By some estimates we need 1.2 Earths to satisfy our current living standards into the future. For everyone to live as Americans do, more than 6 Earths. This is obviously impossible. Keep in mind: societies and systems are not limited by the abundance of all resources, but by the lack of just one critical resource. Consider: if water were not available, civilization dies. Period. It doesn't matter what else is there. Or, if you have all else, but no fuel, what happens? Growth? Heat? Cooling? Of course not. Systems are limited by THE resource that is least available, yet necessary.

The following is some sound advice/observation in the worst case scenario. Read it. Please.

The payoff of a much longer speech. It's worth reading in its totality.

The End f Civilization and the Extinction of Humanity

by Guy McPherson

---

Transcript of a talk I delivered 17 August 2007. It was the keynote address for a conference organized by, and for, students in the University of Arizona's Master of Public Health (MPH) program.

The invitation to speak today is quite an honor, and I appreciate the opportunity...

Many experts who write about simply one of these issues -- Peak Oil -- predict complete economic collapse within a decade, followed shortly thereafter by utter chaos and the subsequent death of more than 80% of the world's population. After all, the exponential curve of human population growth matches perfectly the exponential growth of world energy supply, suggesting that the downturn of the energy curve will cause a large-scale die-off of human beings. And if you think chaos can't descend on this country, you weren't paying attention to New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina. Horrible as that event was, nearly everybody involved knew it was a temporary inconvenience; I'm concerned how people might act when they recognize Peak Oil as a long emergency.

Can we get from here to there?... To tackle Peak Oil and runaway greenhouse at the same time might require larger doses of courage, compassion, and creativity than we can find in ourselves.

...And in that hope, we find the agenda ahead, laid out in ten huge steps by James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency. This is a not a 10-step plan in the usual sense; rather, we will have to start all of these steps simultaneously, and now. These steps are ginormous. That's a new word, as of last month when Webster's

Step 1: Expand our horizons beyond the question of how we will run the cars by means other than gasoline.
The TechnoMessiah will not save us from ourselves, nor will she magically create a substitute for crude oil. The mainstream media would have you believe ethanol is the savior, when in fact the most likely outcome of the ethanol craze is that we'll use our gas tanks to burn through the last six inches of topsoil in America's breadbasket. Biodiesel represents the most viable of the alternative fuels, but it requires a choice: We can use our farmland to grow food, or we can use it to grow fuel for our cars.... It's time to abandon the car, time to make other arrangements for nearly all the common activities of daily life.

Step 2: We must produce food differently.
Industrial agriculture is destined for disaster, and will leave in its wake sterile soils and an agricultural model at a grossly inappropriate scale. Within the next decade or so, small-scale farming will return to the center of American life. Think of the Victory Gardens of Oil War II as a small-scale, temporary experiment...

Step 3: We must inhabit the terrain differently.
The American suburbs and the interstate highway system are designed for a culture that has no future: the misguided car culture. The suburbs in particular represent perhaps the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.... Our towns must be re-inhabited and the areas around them must be re-structured to accommodate small farms and the manufacture of goods to serve the towns. This entire process will require gihugic demographic shifts and is likely to be turbulent... when all this is happening and the thermometer reads 105 degrees and the calendar says summer's not here yet; you'd better get along with your neighbors, especially the heavily armed ones who take a strict interpretation of the Second Amendment. If you're looking for a job in the decades ahead, look no further than the brand-new fields of architecture, planning, and political leadership. The old versions of these enterprises are useless and must be abandoned...

Step 4: We must move people and things differently.
You've probably all seen the bumper sticker on about every fourth 18-wheeler on the interstate: "Without trucks, America stops." That's about right, at least with respect to economic growth. And the trucks are going to stop within the next half-decade or so...

We could start with our railroads... they can run on renewable energy. Then we could move to the waterways...

Step 5: We need to transform retail trade.
...Again, there are plenty of career opportunities for energetic individuals interested in small, local businesses. In the locally owned shops of the future, even the much maligned "middle man" will be making a comeback (so, too, will the lesser-known "middle woman").

Step 6: We have to start making things again.
We will have far fewer choices when we go to the store, but we still will need clothes and household goods...

Step 7: We need artists again.
....We're going to need playhouses and live performance halls... And we'll need musicians and actors and playwrights and stagehands and theater managers. We'll need storytellers, too, to keep history alive when the publishers stop printing books...

Step 8: We must reorganize the educational system.
Yellow fleets of school buses are on their way out. We have invested heavily in centralized systems of primary and secondary school -- most recently and disastrously in the form of "No Child Left Behind" -- and we will undoubtedly continue to invest in that centralization at the expense of true education. Such investment will slow the transition to a reasonable system of education that perhaps will grow, in fits and starts, from the home-schooling movement...

Step 9: Our medical system must be completely reorganized
Without power-hungry high-tech tools, we'll need real doctors again: people who understand how the body actually functions...

Step 10: Our entire socio-economic and political system will become much more local.
Every large system will fail. If you can find a way to do something practical and useful on a smaller scale than it is currently being done, you are likely to be well fed and even revered in your local community. Local politics will assume increasing importance as first the federal government, then the state government, simply fade from relevance. Neo-conservatism clings tenuously to life but, much to the dismay of Business Party I and Business Party II, [it?] will soon be dead.

The collapse of American Empire will bring many opportunities for local heroes...
There you have it: a thumbnail sketch of the agenda.

This, then, is the bottom line: This is not the time for wishful thinking. It's the time for doing. The way to feel hopeful about the future is to get off your butt and demonstrate to yourself, and perhaps to others, that you are a capable, competent individual determinedly able to face new circumstances...

During the time of Christ, in the Mediterranean region, the population of humans was viewed through the same lens as other populations. As such, human deaths often occurred in large numbers, as a result of war, conquest, famine, and pestilence...

Until very recently, large-scale die-offs were viewed as "normal"... The description and management of human populations back in the days of the Greek Cynics was oriented along population lines, with relatively little societal regard for individuals...

The years ahead will see a dramatic rise in deaths from starvation... At the population level, starvation is called famine... pestilence -- what we call disease, when it happens one person at a time... Famine and pestilence are two of the Four Horsemen; war and conquest are the other two. Already, resource wars have begun, and they are likely to ratchet up in the near future. The so-called bipartisan Iraqi study group concluded that Operation Iraqi Freedom was conducted in pursuit of black gold... I fear Oil War III is just getting started.

I'll finish where I started, which was the common good as the basis for friendship and hope. And, of course, with the ancients.

Without the common good, and the struggle on its behalf, there can be no Aristotelian friendship. There can be no justice. And there can be no virtue... And I further conclude that: As friends, we reveal our differences, we appreciate our differences, and then we set them aside ... for the common good.

With hope shining like a beacon, we struggle together ... for the common good... We have in our hands the destiny of our planet, including our own species and so many others... Walking a path that honors the planet and ourselves is a responsibility we share, you and I -- a responsibility unlike any other in human history. And it is not just a responsibility, but also something more: It is a joy, and a privilege.