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Today Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CI–Theory Is Great, In Theory: More On Our ‘Renewable’ Energy Future

April 13, 2024

Today Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CI

February 13, 2023 (original posting date)

Monte Alban, Mexico (1988). Photo by author.

Theory Is Great, In Theory: More On Our ‘Renewable’ Energy Future

Quite often I get involved in online discussions with others about our predicament(s). Most of the time these are quite friendly in nature and a sharing of ideas and questions.

On occasion these turn into disagreements. And sometimes, unfortunately, these turn quite confrontational with me having to disengage from the dialogue due to the vitriol thrown at me — apparently I am not only anti-humanistic but a Big Oil shill, a climate change denier, and a fucking idiot/liberal/conservative/progressive/Malthusian, etc..

Once the ad hominem attacks begin, I usually just state we will have to agree to disagree and discontinue the interaction. I know people don’t want their beliefs challenged, they want them confirmed so if the interaction has gone sideways there’s little point to continue it. Few if any people change their beliefs due to a well-reasoned or evidence-based argument that runs counter to their own thoughts.

This said, most of the disagreements are civil and the issue stems from a divergence in whether we can ‘solve’ the problem/predicament we are focusing upon. I’ve found that the vast majority continue to believe that we can address the topic we’re discussing via some complex technology — usually non-renewable, renewable energy-harvesting technologies such as those that harness wind or sunshine to produce electricity (aka ‘renewables’).

While at one time during my fall into the rabbit’s hole of Peak Oil and all the related issues, I held out ‘hope’ for humanity and our planet. Nowadays, more often than not, I am tending towards there being no way out of the conundrum we walking, talking apes have led ourselves into. Neither time nor resources are on our side it would seem. Salvation, as it were, has been lost to the sands of time.

Here is one recent example with a fellow member of a Degrowth group I am a member of stemming from an article of The Honest Sorcerer’s that I posted to the group.

My original post:

Is There an Off-Ramp for Civilization?
Our high-tech civilization is like an ageing man in full denial of his mortality. It is eating his children just to…thehonestsorcerer.medium.com

LK: “Politics” is just a name for technology of resource allocation on a societal scale.

We’re currently using the 18th century technology based on exponential growth (investments are made to obtain money to make more investments), it’s called “capitalism”.

Degrowth is another technology of resource allocation, and the one we need, because exponential growth on a finite planet is not possible.

(Having said that, we still need to combine degrowth with all kinds of low-emissions energy sources like renewables and nuclear, and we need to work on extending the life of existing low-carbon energy sources for as long as possible)

My response:: While I agree that degrowth (and radical at that) is needed, the alternative energy-harvesting technologies to fossil fuels you suggest we need to pursue require huge carbon inputs for their construction (and in perpetuity), continue to contribute to the destruction of our biosphere via the massive mineral mining and processing necessary, and only serve as an attempt to sustain the unsustainable so end up making our fundament predicament of ecological overshoot even worse. We need to be pursuing a low-/no-tech future with one hell of a lot fewer people. It is increasingly looking like it will have to be Nature that takes us there…

LK: The science is quite clear, low carbon energy sources have much, much lower carbon intensity of energy generation over their lifetimes, and lifetime extension to optimise for energy production instead of returns on investment decreases that carbon intensity even further. And fossil fuels have an enormous mining impact.

This is the third line of defense of fossil fuel companies: first they were straight-out lying about climate change, then they were lying about whether climate change is caused by humans, now they are lying about relative impacts of fossil fuel vs low carbon technologies, and it apparently works.

Low-tech future doesn’t work, it’s just a lie fossil companies are telling us to keep burning fossil fuels. We’re a tool-using social species and we need tools to get out of the shit we got into by using tools.

We will have to agree to disagree.

First, it seems you are assuming a support for fossil fuels in my comment that is not present. One does not have to be in any way supportive of the continuation of our extraction and use of them to see that alternatives are in every way — upstream and downstream — still quite dependent upon them. In fact, if you look at the largest investors in support of ‘alternatives’, you will discover it is the large energy businesses (aka Big Oil). Why would that be? Perhaps because they know that fossil fuels are required in huge quantities for them.

Second, the view that only carbon emissions are important blinds people to all the other complexities concerning our predicament of ecological overshoot. Biodiversity loss, mostly because of land system changes brought on by human expansion, appears to be much more significant. A concerted push to adopt non-renewable, renewable energy-harvesting technologies will ensure continued destruction of our biosphere.

The current refrain seems to be “Complex technologies and human ingenuity will save us from our predicament of ecological overshoot and its various symptoms (e.g., biodiversity loss) because they’ve worked up to this point in our history”…except inductive reasoning/logic does not always work. Continual observations by the turkey of the farmer have provided nothing but overwhelming evidence and positive reinforcement that the farmer is a beneficent and thoughtful caregiver; right up until the day before Thanksgiving and the trip behind the barn to the killing cone.

You should look at the work of energy researcher Alice Friedemann and geologist Simon Michaux to understand better the limitations of the ‘solution’ referred to as our ‘energy transition’.

But you are correct that a low-tech future doesn’t work. It doesn’t work to support our unsustainable living arrangements but more importantly the power and wealth structures of the status quo…that is why the ruling caste is pushing ‘renewables’: to maintain/expand their share of a quickly-shrinking economic pie. And this is ultimately why we will pursue these complex technologies despite the impossibility of what their cheerleaders promise. The profiteers of our world stand to make one hell of a lot of money before it all goes to hell in a handbasket.

These images/memes perhaps sum my perspective up:

LK: There’s one thing that kills people pretty rapidly and effectively and that is the lack of energy.

You can either support low-carbon energy sources or you can support fossil fuels or you can support widespread energy poverty that kills a fuckton of people, and those will be mainly poor people in the Global South.

Degrowth is not anarcho-primitivism, it’s not about the remnants of humanity huddling in cold and without hospitals and sewage networks, it’s about building sustainable future around equitable use of energy for everyone.

But we need low-carbon energy, because climate change drives biodiversity loss, water crises (because rising oceans make a lot of areas lose their access to potable water) and other nasty third-order effects.

My response: Again, we’ll have to agree to disagree. Pre/history shows us overwhelmingly that the utopian future you imagine is not possible on a finite planet with 8 billion (and growing). It is denial/bargaining in the face of biogeophysical realities and limits. Ecological overshoot for homo sapiens will be, I am almost certain, dealt with by Nature, not us — particularly given all the claims/liens on future energy/resources in the form of quadrillions of dollars of debt/credit that currently exist and have been created to sustain our current arrangements with zero concern for the future from which the resources have been stolen.

LK: There’s a lot of research by degrowth theoreticians that demonstrates that we’re perfectly technologically capable of supporting 8 billion people on a finite planet, leaving 50% of it to wild nature. It just would be a different life than the US “cardboard houses in suburbia with 2,5 cars per family and 2+ hours of commuting daily, eating beef and flying regularly”.

It would require end of capitalism, though, which is why capitalists are promoting narratives of “we’re doomed, there’s nothing we can do, all alternatives are bad, I guess we’ll have to die off in the future, but so far, we’re bringing in record annual profits”.

My response: Theory is great, in theory. Reality is something quite different. Every complex society to date has perished/collapsed/declined — most before ‘capitalism’ ever existed. To believe we will do otherwise is, well, just denial/bargaining built upon a lot of assumptions and hope. We would be better to plan for a future much, much different than the one you paint. But, again, I think Nature is going to take care of this predicament for us.

After mostly finishing this contemplation I came across Gail Tverberg’s latest that provides some great insight into why the complex technologies many are arguing will help solve our energy dilemma will not.

Transitioning to an all electric economy requires too much complexity
Many people believe that wind, solar and electric vehicles are solutions to our energy problems. In this post I talk…ourfiniteworld.com

There are plenty of similar arguments out there if one so chooses to discover them and the overwhelming evidence that ‘renewables’ are not in any way going to do much except: add to the drawdown of finite resources; contribute to the continuous overloading of planetary sinks; provide more profits for the industrialists, financiers, and well-connected elite; and, sustain the misguided belief system that all is well for the most part, and human ingenuity and our technological prowess can solve any problem that stands in the way of some utopian future where we all (billions and billions of us) live in harmony with nature. Transcending the biological and physical constraints of existence upon a finite planet is well within our reach…if only you believe.

See especially:

Peak Everything, Overshoot, & Collapse
Preface. This is a book review of “In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on…energyskeptic.com

Home – Transformation of the Industrial System
I am developing a plan to transform our relationship between energy, minerals, and industrialization, as the existing…www.simonmichaux.com

If you’ve made it to the end of this contemplation and have got something out of my writing, please consider ordering the trilogy of my ‘fictional’ novel series, Olduvai (PDF files; only $9.99 Canadian), via my website — the ‘profits’ of which help me to keep my internet presence alive and first book available in print (and is available via various online retailers). Encouraging others to read my work is also much appreciated.

How the Shadow Government works: Privacy vs Secrecy

April 14, 2020

How the Shadow Government works: Privacy vs Secrecy

(Global Intel Hub 4/14/2020 – Charlotte, NC – ) Now that we are all homebound only to rely on ‘official’ sources of information as to what’s going on, a deep dive into the shadow government is called for; what it is, and what role it plays in COVERT-19. As we explain in Splitting Pennies, the world is not as it seems. First we want to mention that the word ‘conspiracy’ was invented by CIA Psychologists to discredit any alternative to the lone gunman theory, which has been proven demonstrably false. Those in the FBI know very well who organized it, as agents were ‘called off’ of one of the most important murder investigations in history by the ‘higher ups’ and this was the moment that the Shadow Government was created. The Shadow Government is not really the government this is a code word, most of those individuals who are its operators are in fact working for (or have previously worked for, or will be working for) private enterprise. This is the most important thing to understand – it’s a business. Everyone always asks the question ‘why’ ? What is the motive of the shadow government? It’s really simple, power, which equals money. We’ll get into their unfair business practices later. First we need to understand the difference between PRIVACY and SECRECY from a legal (systemic) perspective – looking at markets. Public markets are open and transparent, meaning that there are rules in place whereby public companies have a disclosure burden, not only with quarterly financials but with their operations. For example, food companies must disclose what ingredients are in the food. There’s only one exception – patents. Heinz Ketchup has a ‘secret ingredient’ which is probably the genetically modified blood sample of Henry Heinz mass produced in a laboratory – so for this ‘secret’ they are allowed to write ‘other ingredients.’

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Statistical Analyses and Facts of Reality

October 24, 2018

STATISTICAL ANALYSES AND FACTS OF REALITY

According to modern economics, various ideas that we have established about the world of economics emanates from historical data. By inspecting the data, an economist forms a view regarding its behavior. As long as the theory seems to explain the data, it continues to be regarded as valid. Once it fails to adequately explain the data it is replaced by a new theory. Note that on this way of thinking a theory is derived from the data.

According to most experts, the sharp increase in the living standards in the western world in the past few hundred years could be attributed to the accumulation of technical knowledge.

This conclusion was reached by observing that for the thousands of years most people lived in great poverty, but since the 18^th century there was a massive increase in prosperity, which economists attribute to the sharp increase in technical knowledge. (See McCloskey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bmXI_pt9fQ)

Given this way of thinking it is not surprising that Paul Romer, this year’s Nobel Laureate in economics has concluded that the heart of economic growth is the result of an expansion in technical knowledge.

According to Mises,

Experience of economic history is always the experience of complex phenomena. It can never convey knowledge of the kind the experimenter abstracts from a laboratory experiment.^[1]

To make sense of the data an economist must have a theory, which stands on its own feet, and did not originate from the data. By means of a theory, an economist could scrutinise the data and could try to make sense of it.

The key ingredient of such a theory is that it must originate from something real that cannot be refuted. A theory that rests on the foundation that human beings are acting consciously and purposefully fulfils this.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Does it Matter Whether Assumptions in Economics are Arbitrary?

May 21, 2018

DOES IT MATTER WHETHER ASSUMPTIONS IN ECONOMICS ARE ARBITRARY?

Various assumptions employed by mainstream economists appear to be of an arbitrary nature. The assumptions seem to be detached from the real world.

For example, in order to explain the economic crisis in Japan, the famous mainstream economist Paul Krugman employed a model that assumes that people are identical and live forever and that output is given. Whilst admitting that these assumptions are not realistic, Krugman nonetheless argued that somehow his model can be useful in offering solutions to the economic crisis in Japan.^[1]

The employment of assumptions that are detached from the facts of reality originates from the writings of Milton Friedman. According to Friedman, since it is not possible to establish “how things really work,” then it does not really matter what the underlying assumptions of a model are. In fact anything goes, as long as the model can yield good predictions. According to Friedman,

The ultimate goal of a positive science is the development of a theory or hypothesis that yields valid and meaningful (i.e., not truistic) predictions about phenomena not yet observed…. The relevant question to ask about the assumptions of a theory is not whether they are descriptively realistic, for they never are, but whether they are sufficiently good approximation for the purpose in hand. And this question can be answered only by seeing whether the theory works, which means whether it yields sufficiently accurate predictions.^[2]

Observe that on this way of thinking, the formation of the view regarding the real world is arbitrary – in fact, anything goes as long as the model could generate accurate forecasts.

In his Philosophical Origins of Austrian Economics (Mises Institute Daily Articles June 17 2006), David Gordon wrote that Bohm Bawerk maintained that concepts employed in economics must originate from the facts of reality – they need to be traced to their ultimate source. If one cannot trace it the concept should be rejected as meaningless.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

When Did Global Warming Theory Begin?

March 4, 2018

When Did Global Warming Theory Begin?

Back in 1967, the International Global Atmospheric Research Program was established, mainly to gather data for better short-range weather prediction, but included climate. The following year, this was the beginning of biased studies which suggested that a possibility of a collapse of the Antarctic ice sheets would raise sea levels catastrophically. The put forth the idea that a big enough rise in global temperatures would eventually melt the world’s glaciers. They then pointed to a retreat of mountain glaciers since the 19th century claiming this was very apparent in many regions. This trend, they argued with linear logic, would release enough water to raise the sea level a bit. The argued that starting during the 1960s, several glacier experts warned that part of the Antarctic ice sheet seemed unstable. If the huge mass slid into the ocean, which did not happen, the sea-level rise would wreak great harm, perhaps within the next century or two. They completely failed to point out that there had historically been cycles in climate and even the poles were not at the same location.

We find one of the early articles that predicted the average temperature would be 9 degrees hotter by now. This appears in Popular Mechanics back in January 1970. The analysis was flawed as always because they take whatever trend is in motion and project it out without end. They completely fail to comprehend that there is any cycle within anything.

All of these forecasts are indistinguishable from looking at the Dow Jones Industrials and observing it has risen 5% per year since 2009 and therefore, it will never correct once again. The analysis simply does not qualify as analysis by taking whatever trend is in motion and forecasting it will never end. That analysis was set in motion following 1967. Unfortunately, this crazy analysis will not reach its peak until 2032. Governments will continue to embrace it as an excuse to raise taxes.

What Should Be the Criteria for Model Selection?

October 20, 2017

WHAT SHOULD BE THE CRITERIA FOR MODEL SELECTION?

In order to make the data “talk,” economists utilize a range of statistical methods that vary from highly complex models to a simple display of historical data. It is generally held that by means of statistical correlations one can organize historical data into a useful body of information, which in turn can serve as the basis for assessments of the state of the economy. It is held that through the application of statistical methods on historical data, one can extract the facts of reality regarding the state of the economy.

Unfortunately, things are not as straightforward as they seem to be. For instance, it has been observed that declines in the unemployment rate are associated with a general rise in the prices of goods and services. Should we then conclude that declines in unemployment are a major trigger of price inflation? To confuse the issue further, it has also been observed that price inflation is well correlated with changes in money supply. Also, it has been established that changes in wages display a very high correlation with price inflation.

So what are we to make out of all this? We are confronted here not with one, but with three competing “theories” of inflation. How are we to decide which is the right theory? According to the popular way of thinking, the criterion for the selection of a theory should be its predictive power.

On this Milton Friedman wrote,

The ultimate goal of a positive science is the development of a theory or hypothesis that yields valid and meaningful (i.e., not truistic) predictions about phenomena not yet observed.^[1]

So long as the model (theory) “works,” it is regarded as a valid framework as far as the assessment of an economy is concerned. Once the model (theory) breaks down, we look for a new model (theory).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Rationalizing ‘Rational’

June 18, 2016

RATIONALIZING ‘RATIONAL’

Walter W. Heller was said to have been an “educator of Presidents.” As an economist and Presidential advisor in the inner circles of DC, Heller worked with more candidates and officeholders than perhaps any other man. As he himself described, his influence went all the way back to Adlai Stevenson and kept on through Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Mondale. To his mind, he takes credit for turning Presidents into thorough Keynesians starting with JFK in January 1963 and the tax cut “stimulus” that Heller claims was “born on my desk.”

As an economist and advisor, Heller seems to have spent a lot of time about the 1960’s and almost none describing the 1970’s. Perhaps his greatest contribution to that decade was a quote attributed to him describing economics. “An economist is a man who, when he finds something works in practice, wonders if it works in theory.”

Among the most pernicious of these theories to have been backward applied in exactly that manner is “rational” expectations theory. This was developed in the 1980’s to try to explain the disaster of the 1970’s in terms that would save econometrics. Thus, it is applied in great detail and mathematics to “inflation” and is often discussed only in that context. Among the most influential to have used rational expectations theory was John Taylor as the basis for the Taylor “rule.”

In a 2007 speech, then-Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke described the updated expectations framework as it at that time related to inflation and gradualism in monetary policy (into the onrushing storm).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Sometimes You Just Have to Go With the Flow When Nothing Flows

June 18, 2016

Sometimes You Just Have to Go With the Flow When Nothing Flows

The central banks are clueless and have no control over the economy. This whole thing reminds me of Australia. I loved going into the Outback, driving through rivers, and seeing ant hills that were taller than the Jeep. I was invited to go to the Todd River Regatta in the middle of the desert. I thought it was a joke. They said, “No mate! Come on!”

Armstrong Palm Valley Australia

I was perplexed at first. How can you have a regatta in the middle of a desert? Well, only Australia could figure that one out. They raced in pretend boats down an ancient river bed where no white man has ever seen water flow. They held the pretend boats up around their waist and raced down the riverbed. It was good fun. I actually joined in on the camel races.

We have the same thing going on now in politics and finance — just living the dream. Negative interest rates punish savers, and bankrupt pensions are creating a collapse in socialism that threatens civil unrest on a grand scale beginning next year (2017). Then we have politicians raising taxes and creating mountains of regulations that nobody can figure out without a lawyer and an accountant preventing small businesses from forming. Those who want to always rule the world are brain-dead and it is impossible for them to figure out why small businesses are not expanding to create jobs. Duh! They craft pretend theories and run down dried-up riverbeds where there is no water and proclaim to the world they are “stimulating” the economy when they encourage bankers not to lend paying them for excess reserves and then raise taxes because they want to be “fiscally responsible” to the bond holders. You really cannot reconcile these actions and theories. It is just the Todd River Regatta on a grand scale.

Learning Without Theory

March 30, 2016

Learning Without Theory

CAMBRIDGE – How can we improve the state of the world? How can we make countries more competitive, growth more sustainable and inclusive, and genders more equal?

One way is to have a correct theory of the relationship between actions and outcomes and then to implement actions that achieve our goals. But, in most of the situations we face, we lack such a theory, or if we have one, we are not sure that it is correct. So what can we do? Should we postpone action until we learn about what works? But how will we learn if we do not act? And if we act, how can we learn whether we did the right thing?

New advances in machine learning and biological anthropology are shedding light on how learning happens and what makes a learning process successful. But, while theories are important, most of what we learn does not depend on them.

For example, there may be a theory of what makes a cat a cat, but that is not how toddlers learn to recognize them. As Harvard’s Leslie Valiant argues in his 2013 book, we learn the concept of “catness” in a theory-less way by inferring it from a set of pictures of animals that are appropriately labeled as either cats or non-cats. And the more examples we see, the more we become “probably, approximately correct.”

We learn to recognize the spoken language without knowledge of linguistics, and voice-recognition software uses a theory-less learning algorithm called a “hidden Markov chain” on a set of audios and their texts, rather than by using linguistics, as Ray Kurzweil tells us in his book How to Create a Mind. To the chagrin of many of us academics, theory is often dispensable.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Science of Peak Oil

March 11, 2015

The Science of Peak Oil

One of the many barbs often pointed at peak oil proponents is that they are constantly shifting the goal posts. Peak oilers are accused of changing the definition of what peak oil actually means, therefore the entire concept of oil production peaking is rubbish. Far from a valid criticism however, this is actually a scientific virtue. If any scientist dogmatically stuck with a rigid theory as the data repeatedly proved that theory to be incorrect then that would be cause for great concern. The fact however that peak oil theory has developed markedly since Hubbert Peak Theory in 1956 shows that peak oil proponents are willing to listen to the data and change accordingly. This is the basis for the entire scientific method: form a question, create a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, analyse the results and alter the hypothesis if required and then test again. This is the most successful framework that humanity has developed so far in order to further human scientific knowledge.

The core logic of science is simple: testing ideas with evidence. It is also worth noting that science is not static. It is constantly evolving. As the University of California, Berkley’s Understanding Science website states:

“…scientific conclusions are always revisable if warranted by the evidence. Scientific investigations are often ongoing, raising new questions even as old ones are answered.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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