Just Temperature Redux: What about the Cherries and Apples?
Just Temperature Redux: What about the Cherries and Apples?
March and April were very warm in the United States, and especially in March when it was 86 degrees F in Detroit, there was a lot of press attention to the heat (my blog at the time). Following the March heat wave I watched with interest the caster that has weather events and earthquakes on the homepage. There was a period of time when there were record highs and, a couple of hundred miles away, record lows. There were these waves moving (very) warm air north and (very) cool air south (another old Rood blog Warm, Cold, Warm, Cold). This is what weather does, moves heat from the tropics to the poles; it tries to smooth out the distribution of temperature, heat, energy. The climate of the Earth is strongly linked to the Equator to Pole temperature contrast. (I note that, at this writing, a May 20 record high in Holland, MI, of 92 F. In fact, May 20 is pretty much coast-to-coast high.)
So I am watching these highs and lows, expecting someone to write to me and tell me how cold it was in Tennessee, and what do you say to that you alarmist?
The past few months provide us a nice example of climate, and a useful framing for thinking about the future. Scientists are always explaining that just because the globe is, on average, warming, that does not mean that it no longer gets cold. When I have written about this in the past, I always start with the Sun still goes away at the winter pole; it gets cold; the pole is relatively isolated, so there are cold pockets of air up north. (Yes, I am presuming a Northern Hemisphere bias.) So it’s cold up north, and down south it’s hot. If you think about the Earth, the seasons, the distribution of land and ocean, an increase in average global temperature suggests an increase in the average temperature between, say, 30 degrees latitude south and north. Half of the Earth’s area lies in those bounds, and, well, the Sun is always there.
Next if we think about weather and climate, the contrast between the temperature at the equator and the pole is a measure of the amount of mixing that the atmosphere and ocean need to do to work towards a balance. If someplace up north is still getting about as cold as it used to get, because the Sun is down and it is a bit isolated, and there is more and more build up of heat in the tropics, then something has to give. Using climate and weather models as a guide, we see large mixing events in the late winter, perhaps more characteristic of events of, historically, early spring.
Figure 1: From an old, but good, blog: Warm, Cold, Warm, Cold. A schematic picture that represents a wave in temperature. There are hot and cold parts of the wave.
So there are bursts of warm air north in late winter or earlier in the spring. But there are still pockets of cold air and these get pushed south. The variability, hot and cold contrast in this case, actually increases. The bursts of warm air appear as the onset of spring, leaves and flowers come out. And there they sit waiting for the return of the cold air. This year’s warm spring did great damage to the sour cherry crop (Michigan, Wisconsin, New York) and the apple crop all across the upper Midwest. (Iowa, Michigan).
This scenario of a warm period followed by a frost that kills fruit blossoms is not new. I grew up in the South, and just about every year there was some strip of peach-growing land that was damaged by the onset of spring, followed by a frost. What this current case study lets us think about is what does a warming climate bring to table? Earlier warm spells extending farther north. Increased vulnerability as larger areas of land are impacted by the mixing of the increasing temperature contrasts. Increased crop risk as new weather threats encroach on new regions. There are adaptation strategies for these risks, but they come at a cost.
So I want to finish this blog with something of a change of gears. It relies on a paper brought to my attention by Chris Burt. It is a paper in Nature entitled Warming experiments underpredict plant phenological responses to climate change by E. M. Wolkovich (2012) and many others. There are a couple of points I want to make about this paper.
First, the paper is a nice exposition about how biological scientists think about the intersection of their field with climate change. Advancing onset of leafing and flowering is one of the most sensitive indicators of the onset of spring. Though many factors influence when plants start to leaf out and flower, temperature is the predominate factor. The variable that is used as a proxy for climate is mean annual temperature, and variability of the mean annual temperature represents the variability in the onset of spring.
The second point I want to make about the paper is a clarification – perhaps a translation between different scientific fields. As pointed out in Wolkovich et al. (2012), there is substantial observational evidence that spring is coming earlier. This move to earlier times is especially evident in the northern hemisphere and more evident at higher latitudes, say, in Michigan or Canada. When Wolkovich et al. (2012) talk about “warming experiments” they are not talking about experiments with climate models. They are talking about experiments that artificially warm plant communities to investigate their sensitivity to increased temperatures. In this paper, they find that such experiments do not explain the observations of the onset of spring in natural plant communities.
Returning to climate change - Wolkovich et al. (2012) estimate that for each degree C that mean annual temperature increases the onset of leafing and flowering will move forward by 5-6 days. Given temperature trends for the past forty years, this translates to 1.1 to 3.3 days per decade. And returning to the cherries and apples, these types of trees are especially vulnerable to bloom followed by a frost, especially in high latitudes. So if you are an orchard fruit grower, how do you use this information? Do you treat this year as a simple fluke of weather, or do you look to start a replacement program with different types of fruit or different hybrids as the orchard is refurbished? Or do you look to ways to manage the temperature in the orchard, and perhaps a market advantage with earlier fruit?
r
Figure 2: Larger image Ripe by Jennifer Bruce from Absolute Michigan
Reader Comments
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 — Blog Index
This puts us back to pre-industrial revolution values any time we see fit....
When I said a lie that puts the innocent in harms way is never forgivable and should be be dealt with using the death penalty I was not advocating lynch mobs or a lack of a jury trial. I believe in the due process of law. What I should have stated is that those found guilty of using lies to put others at risk should have the death penalty as an accepted punishment.
I am not an advocate of anything that Pentti Linkola says. First off, I would never deny a person the right to try to save themself when all cannot be saved. I would, however, chop off the hand of any that tried to stop others from saving themself. When it come to climate change, we are all in the same boat. We are not trying to leave a sinking ship when it comes to climate change for there are no life boats to man. We either sink together or work to save as many that try to save themself. People that use lies to put others at risk I will leave to fend for themselves and would not look back at them with any feeling of sympathy.
Please don't respond to him. He doesn't want respect or honest debate, he just wants attention.
I 've liked both your and Someone..'s contributions. I think you are refering to the faker/troll 'MaoistForAgenda21:'. some symbiote disrupter. Trolls try to get working people into useless fights or false dichotomies. I thought this particular was pretty good at throwing those disrupters out.
'MaoistForAgenda21' is a contradiction in terms; only a pychopath or a 'bot' would call themselves such. The 'enemy' wins if we can not talk together. This isn't our first troll. I've no idea if there is some 'agenda 21' but no Maoist would support that.
Both you, Greentortulini and 'someonesgottibetherookie' have always argued for a planet where humans can live. This stupid troll is just a phase. Lets talk climate.
Would one of you knowledgeable people help me find some good sites for SST's (sea surface temp;s)?
BEst I've found is on the wunderground site here. Scroll down to the bottom. But it has been two years since I've really used sea temp data so maybe something else has grown in the meantime.
SO good news for the ice in that this year is not too special, at least in that regard. Hopefully i am similarly wrong is my pesssimism.
Link .
Um, fluff article from CNN about how a lot has actually gotten better in the world recently. Just a counterpoint to the gloom and doom I bring here. Absolutly not related to anything this blog is about.
Bringing news is a good thing. But how about giving us a brief statement of what you're linking?
If it's worth sharing, it's worth summarizing....
--Climate Armageddon: How the World's Weather Could Quickly Run Amo
The true gloomsters are scientists who look at climate through the lens of "dynamical systems," a mathematics that describes things that tend to change suddenly and are difficult to predict. It is the mathematics of the tipping point—the moment at which a "system" that has been changing slowly and predictably will suddenly "flip." The colloquial example is the straw that breaks that camel's back. Or you can also think of it as a ship that is stable until it tips too far in one direction and then capsizes. In this view, Earth's climate is, or could soon be, ready to capsize, causing sudden, perhaps catastrophic, changes. And once it capsizes, it could be next to impossible to right it again.
The article talks about a number of different large-scale "tipping points" that are scary enough if looked at on their own, but, considered as part of a complex, tightly interwoven system, are considerbaly more "alarming". For instance, the Amazon rainforest is in an ever-tightening downward spiral, and its loss could soon hit a point that could alter global weather patterns over the course of not centuries or decades, but just a few years. Ditto Arctic Sea ice. Ditto the West Antarctic ice sheet. Ditto Canadian and Siberian boreal forests. And so on.
The real nightmare scenario is when all these changes begin to rein- force one another. The Arctic loses its summer sea ice, causing Greenland's ice to melt and encouraging the boreal forests to change as well. The freshwater runoff changes the thermohaline dynamics and affects the jet stream. The El Niño–Southern Oscillation and the Amazon interact in such a way as to reinforce one another, perhaps affecting the monsoon in India and Africa. "It wouldn't be such a silly thing to say that if you meddle with one, you might affect the other," says Lenton. "Which direction the causality would go is not always obvious. We know it's connected, we know it's nonlinear, we know they somehow couple together. When you see one change, you see changes in the other."
"Then we start talking about domino dynamics," says Lenton. "The worse case would be that kind of scenario in which you tip one thing and that encourages the tipping of another. You get these cascading effects."
It would take a perfect storm of climate flips to get us to this particular worst-case scenario. If it does come to pass, however, at least it will happen quickly.
--IEA: Global CO2 Emissions Hit New Record In 2011, Keeping World On Track For ‘Devastating’ 11°F Warming
First the bad news from the International Energy Agency (IEA). Thanks to a huge jump in Chinese emissions, “global carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil-fuel combustion reached a record high of 31.6 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2011.”
The worse news is that, “The new data provide further evidence that the door to a 2°C trajectory is about to close,” according to IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol. Why does that matter? As Reuters reported:
Scientists say ensuring global average temperatures this century do not rise more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is needed to limit devastating climate effects like crop failure and melting glaciers.
--Apocalypse Soon: Has Civilization Passed the Environmental Point of No Return?
Remember how Wile E. Coyote, in his obsessive pursuit of the Road Runner, would fall off a cliff? The hapless predator ran straight out off the edge, stopped in midair as only an animated character could, looked beneath him in an eye-popping moment of truth, and plummeted straight down into a puff of dust. Splat! Four decades ago, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer model called World3 warned of such a possible course for human civilization in the 21st century. In Limits to Growth, a bitterly disputed 1972 book that explicated these findings, researchers argued that the global industrial system has so much inertia that it cannot readily correct course in response to signals of planetary stress. But unless economic growth skidded to a halt before reaching the edge, they warned, society was headed for overshoot—and a splat that could kill billions.
Don't look now but we are running in midair, a new book asserts. In 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years (Chelsea Green Publishing), Jorgen Randers of the BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo, and one of the original World3 modelers, argues that the second half of the 21st century will bring us near apocalypse in the form of severe global warming. Dennis Meadows, professor emeritus of systems policy at the University of New Hampshire who headed the original M.I.T. team and revisited World3 in 1994 and 2004, has an even darker view. The 1970s program had yielded a variety of scenarios, in some of which humanity manages to control production and population to live within planetary limits (described as Limits to Growth). Meadows contends that the model's sustainable pathways are no longer within reach because humanity has failed to act accordingly.
Instead, the latest global data are tracking one of the most alarming scenarios, in which these variables increase steadily to reach a peak and then suddenly drop in a process called collapse. In fact, "I see collapse happening already," he says. "Food per capita is going down, energy is becoming more scarce, groundwater is being depleted." Most worrisome, Randers notes, greenhouse gases are being emitted twice as fast as oceans and forests can absorb them. Whereas in 1972 humans were using 85 percent of the regenerative capacity of the biosphere to support economic activities such as growing food, producing goods and assimilating pollutants, the figure is now at 150 percent—and growing.
--And so on, and so forth, and so on, and so forth... The point is, even if the most dire predictions don't come to pass, there's little to no reason to suspect--as do some still in denial--that only the smallest and most inconsequential effects are going to be experienced. IOW, we're in trouble, deep trouble. And it's getting worse by the day...
I attempt to not go full-alamist, largely because I don't know what the climate science consensus is. I can't tell who might be pushing far out past the data and who might be vastly under-estimating how bad it is/is likely to get.
The one solid thing that I can settle on is that it makes zero sense to not take preventative action.
Worst case, we spend a little more money converting to renewable energy and end up with cheaper energy bills, a cleaner environment, and sustainable energy sources.
I have mixed feelings bout the future. For most of my life I've been accused of having "contagious enthusiasm." Now I'm slowly moving into the "Doomer" camp. I see no way that governments across the globe are going to take any meaningful actions to curtail or reduce CO2 emissions before 2020. Which means we are slowly sliding towards a worst case scenario. However, nobody can define the timeline for a worst case scenario. There is one thing to keep in mind, while what is transpiring rapidly in geoligical terms is still a relatively slow process in human terms.
The US Navy has declared that a 6-9 foot sea-level rise will destroy every seaport in the entire world. Will this happen during this century....??? Who knows?? Most experts seem to say that it would take hundreds of years for both the Greenland and Antarctic icecaps to disappear. So civilization may have time to move major population centers that will be impacted by rising sea-levels.
Climatologically speaking, I'm more concerned about rapidly changing weather patterns. Extreme heat waves, extreme drought and violent storms with severe flooding may begin to occur more frequently causing catastrophic economic and humanitarian distress.
While Carbon Dioxide is still the "Elephant in the room", accounting for about 80% of the increase in radiative forcing, Methane may be the "Herd of Mastodons" waiting on the horizon. I don't think any of the scientists who are studying this can accurately model the climatological effects of exponentially increasing releases of Methane.
With the world's population exceeding 7 Billion and no sign that it will not reach 9 Billion it is hard to imagine how there will be enough food, water and the energy to support that many people at the same time the world attempts to wean itself off of fossil fuels.
This will be my last post until Wednesday. I'm an election judge in the Texas Primary tomorrow. What fun that will be!! I live in a Red county in a very Red state. Being a Democrat here is akin to being a Jehovah's Witness in Saudi Arabia.
Keep up the good work my friends and I'll be back on Wednesday.
Enjoy your judgeship--and know we feel your pain. ;-)
As Levi32 might say, I see the experts have finally come around to my way of thinking. ;-)
Areas of permafrost are melting and atmospheric methane is on the rise. The past 40 years of warming will seem meager compared to what the next 40 years will bring. Should I live another 20 years, I feel certain that I will witness far more negative effects of a warming climate than I would have ever wanted to witness.
NPR had a piece on this evening's news about farmers in Missouri dealing with very early, very dry conditions brought on as much by heat as lack of rain.
Climatologists call it a "flash drought," a sudden, unexpected burst of high temperatures and low humidity that can wither crops in a matter of days. And with temperatures hovering above 90 degrees, farmers worry the weather could have disastrous consequences on corn and other crops.
One of the farmers talks about how, this time last year, his fields were under water and this year his crop is threatened by too little water.
Link
It has been interesting to hear nothing about flooding in the Midwest after a string of flood years.
Not too surprised. Here in Janesville, we came within four degrees of our record May high of 91 degrees (set only in 1988 after a century of records) in the first few days of this May. A week ago Saturday we hit it. This last Sunday? We blew it away by six degrees. Last year at this time we either tied or came within a degree of tying our record May high. It's getting too easy to shatter these highs anymore. Also Friday and Saturday is where we got three fifths of our rain fall totals for this month, until then when I tilled a garden bed for a local food pantry last week the soil looked like it had turned to dusty sand that just wouldn't be able to hold down much more than a blanket let alone a plant. Straw helped to hold in the water, but only so much.
P.S. Neap do you have a web page where you are keeping those graphs of highs and lows? They're really good at showing just how nutso the temps have been in the last few years without any words.
I mentioned on Masters' blog this morning that there have so far been seven heat/warm waves in the U.S. this year, and zero cold/cool waves. Just six days have seen 100 or more record low temperatures, while 86 have seen 100 or more record highs. Pretty astounding, really...
Elevation
20 ft
Now
Clear
Temperature
91.8 F
Feels Like 97 F
....ooooooooooooooh weeeeeeeeeee, Wattup wit Dat ?
I'm thinking that we'll see extent drop to the bottom spot over the next few days. Forecasts are for a lot of transport though the Fram.
Right now predictions are for at least five days of high transport, including moving out some of the oldest, thickest ice from the Arctic Basin.
If you go to this page and click on the most recently run (top-left) "Valid On" dates you can see what the model is projecting for each date.
On "20120603" you can see the arrows indicating ice movement along the top of the Canadian Archipelago and Greenland. That's the thick stuff. When it exits into the warm Atlantic large volume drops occur.
Link
Or you can go to this page and click on CICE Speed and Drift Last 30 days gif and it will run into the next few days, showing what is likely coming.
Link
Whether we'll end up with a record extent year, can't predict the weather that far in advance. But I do think we'll drop volume once more, setting the ice up for a massive loss when weather gangs up on it.
So far this May, area has decreased by 2.176 million km2, or more than 77K km2 per day. By contrast over the same time period:
-2011: 1.742 million km2 / 62K km2 per day
-2007: 1.242 million km2 / 44K km2 per day
2012 sea ice area is now 268K km2 less than 2007 was on this date. There's 213K km2 more ice than on this date last year. However, from day 150 through Day 154 last year, an average of more than 9K km2 of ice was added each day. Meaning that, barring some unforeseen circumstance, 2012 SIA should be at a historic low point for the date no later than the first few days of June--especially if the forecasts linked to by Bob come to pass.
My purpose in being here [in Arizona] is to have a further look into whether the president of the United States is the president of the United States. Now you might say, what has this got to do with someone from Britain… I am here because I am curious. As a peer of the realm I am allowed to stick my long aristocratic nose into anything I want to stick it in.
So now may we all agree to laugh derisively at this sniveling, lying halfwit? and can we all agree to never again be subject to his inane blathering?
Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo...
I am fairly certain that Monckton's pistol is not loaded, but that did not stop the interviewer from keeping his hand on his pistol. LOL What a couple of maroons, as Bugs Bunny would say.
BTW, I wonder if Monckton is going to wear that shirt back to England? What a maroon! Time to dress the clowns!
Can you show the 2000 - 2011 information also?
What I would expect to see is the number of record highs bunched toward the current year and record lows spread more to the left/earlier years, with fewer in recent years.
Of course, the data would have to be limited to sites with continuous records from the beginning date.
Up for that one, Neo?
Actually I think the appropriate terms are "embezzle" and "ultra maroon".
In the small-scale tests I've done based on random samplings, it looks like the US overall does indeed reflect the global temp. That is, during years when the globe is cooler--such as after the Mt. Pintatubo eruption--there are more low records than high ones across the U.S. And vice versa, of course. Anyway, if/when I get the thing done, I'll share some of my artwork... ;-)If/when I get the graphs done, I'll make sure the 2001-2011 data are included.
Less volume can mean much thinner ice that melts quicker.
Something that bugs me from time to time is how much attention is paid to US temps/extreme weather when the real issue is global.
I'm sure that's because it's where we live (at least most of us) and because US information systems are so available.
That said, I'd love to see global temperature records, etc. more available and discussed. I'm not sure that we're capturing the big picture by looking only at our part of one continent.
Too, as you hinted at, there are huge swaths of the global lacking in either spatial coverage, period of record, or quality of data. For such areas, it's difficult if not impossible to get a precise and accurate climate picture of sufficient granularity to be worth discussing, so, absent that, some of compensate for that data shortfall by over-discussing the U.S.
Having said all that, I agree that anyone who looks at just the U.S. (or any other relatively small region) is definitely not seeing everything. That's why I personally look at--and frequently discuss--weather and climate from other areas. There's Arctic Sea ice, of course, and related information about polar temperatures, anomalies, winds, and the like. There are the excellent NOAA global monthly temperature and precipitation global charts, all based on publicly available data. There are excellent resources for gathering climate data from Australia, Japan, the UK, Canada, and most of Europe. There's Ryan Maue's pretty good CoolWX site. There's Maxiliano Herrera's excellent global weather extreme's site. There's the Weather Extremes blog run by WU's Chris Burt. And so on. So, while I certainly have studied U.S. weather a lot more than I have the weather in any other part of the globe, I don't think I've by any means neglected the non-American places.
Link
We've had a lot of discussions recently about what the future holds. We've also had discussions about why the 'denialists' won't listen to reason or accept scientific facts. The above article is a fascinating piece about how we think and accept information. While not offering any solutions it helps to explain the difficulties we are facing when it comes to educating the public and getting political support to mitigate AGW.
I did, however, get distracted by the choice he set up early in his piece...
The first is this: You were born into an exceptional culture of enormous wealth. If you work hard and take advantage of the inherent genius and innovativeness of that culture, you can become wealthy, secure, happy, and comfortable. And if they work hard, your children can have even more wealth than you did.
Here’s the second: Right now, you are living at the absolute historical peak of human wealth. In terms of the energy you consume, the variety of foods and beverages available to you, and the amount of physical labor you don’t have to do every day, you are vastly more wealthy than any generation before you. Your children will be much poorer than you, will have far fewer options about what they can eat and drink and do with their free time, and will have to do a lot more physical labor. Their children will have even harder lives, and so on into the future, as wealth per capita declines for the next several hundred years.
Now: Which story do you think is more true?
I've got to go with the first choice. With caveats.
I think we're heading into a difficult time in which we either quickly transition off of fossil fuels or we risk forcing the second outcome. And even that, I suspect, in not a permanent condition but basically a much longer period of transition/recovery.
I really doubt that wealth per capita will decline over the next several hundred years. Wealth, defined in terms of food/housing/goods is likely to improve. We know how to produce those things at reasonable prices which should decrease over time. We may screw up our coastal cities and traditional farmlands, but we won't lose our knowledge base.
Look at how much we've built/created in the last 100 years. That stuff can be rebuilt in less than 100 years if need be.
The eventual wealth per capita will depend largely on what happens with the world's population. Most experts that I respect claim that the earths carrying capacity for a sustainable post-carbon future is about 1 Billion people. Right now we're at 7 billion and climbing. Without liquid fuels to support agri-business (planting, harvesting and transportation) and petrochemical feedstock for fertilizer (NO2 producing) it will be difficult to feed a growing population.
If we learn to measure wealth by the availability of basic food, water, shelter, security and basic infrastructure as opposed to material acquisition (multiple homes, large vehicles and too many toys, etc.) then maybe we can have a healthier and wealthier future.
I think those people are not looking at what we already know how to do.
We can do a lot of our farming with electricity. We're already doing massive industrial jobs such as mining with electricity, even with swappable battery packs.
It might mean installing some high voltage lines to the fields so that we can quickly recharge battery packs. But it's doable.
Nitrogen, ammonia generated with renewable energy.
Transportation is easily electricity. Battery powered trucks to electrified rail.
If you get your mind past a dependency on fossil fuels then a lot of the concerns drop away.
--
I'm not saying the transition will be easy and painless. Just that we can make it.
Farming is generally not done in those areas with large machines like we tend to use in the US. Asia's rice is largely grown with 'iron buffaloes', over-sized, steel wheeled, garden tillers operated by someone walking/wading along behind.
Harvesting is largely done by hand. Iron buffaloes with rubber tires haul workers to the field and the crop to the thrasher. Thrashing is done by a washing machine sized device powered often by either electricity or the power takeoff of the buffalo.
All of that could be done either with batteries or with grid hookups.
Vegetables are grown in the same fashion, on a human scale, not with enormous machines.
In the US and a few other parts of the world we eat very large amounts of meat. Feeding the animals which provide our meat takes a large portion of our agricultural output.
As populations rise, fuel costs rise, and available agricultural land decreases it's almost certain that people will bid up the cost of the grains we now use for animal food which will, in turn, drive up the cost of meat. We'll eat less meat which will make more grain available for humans.
We will, I suspect, eat more like Asians and less like Argentinians. And we might farm more like Asians. We can still raise as much, if not more, food per acre by adjusting to eating the grain rather than eating the grain eaters.
That is an alarming rate of increase. We were supposed to begin decreasing CO2 emissions by 6.5% in order to achieve climate stability by 2050. We'r going the wrong direction.....that's alarming!!
This blog has rocked the last week or so! Intelligent and informative. Thanks!
Welcome back, glad you are content to:
"Lurk 'n Learn"
Most experts that I respect claim that the earths carrying capacity for a sustainable post-carbon future is about 1 Billion people.
Isn't that 1 billion living a middle class US lifestyle? Seems like that's what I remember one researcher saying.
You make some good observations, Bob. Given this, I am still inclined to believe the second possibility is more along the lines of what our future generations will face.
Let us take climate change and set it aside for the moment. Capitalism is by far the greatest economic plan mankind has ever devised. There simple is no other economic plan that worked better for mankind. Capitalism, however, has several caveats attached to it. The biggest one being Capitalism must continue to expand in order to survive. Stagnant or negative growth hinders Capitalism and restricts wealth. The only way for Capitalism to continue to grow is there must always be a supply of new consumers. We are close to reaching the population density that Earth can support and therefore there will be a decline in new consumers once we have reached the utmost population density that Earth can support. Once our population peaks, so will Capitalism. Once our population begins to decline, so will Capitalism. We simply cannot count on extraterritorial lifeforms to market to. Capitalism will eventual fail simply because not even Capitalism is perpetual or self sustaining. I am rather pessimistic that we will be able to sell traveling extraterrestrials.
Then we must factor in resources. Clean drinking water, as under valued as it is, is in limited supply. Certainly desalination plants will add to this resource, but that is currently costly. We may discover a cheap and effective way to do this, but we are limited until we do. Make note that we are not doing anything now to conserve the potable water available to us now. One must not forget that we are adding a lot of toxins to water now that may never become potable. You can now add radiation to that seawater mix.
Many other resources will come to short supply. All the natural elements on Earth are all we have. Whatever gold, sliver, copper, lithium and all of the elements we have are preset and non renewable. Certainly there is current talk of mining the moon and asteroids, but that is in the future, costly and presently an unknown factor. When the pantry of elements run dry there may be no way to restock it.
Then let us look at how manual labor is being replaced by computers, robotics and automation. A computer operator that is running CAD can replace a room full of draftsmen and engineers. Redesigns are done with a few mouse clicks instead of a team of draftsmen redrawing the plans. Already we are witnessing the returning "jobs" being performed by robotics and with very few people. Machines are replacing manual labor in the name of profits. The profits will run dry when the labor force is no longer needed and wages will not be earned. All the ways that the labor force is being eliminated are nearly endless. The ability to earn wages that will support a family will become a scarcity in the future.
Now, factor in a warming climate, with all of its unknowns, and things are probably going to get a little rough for our future generations to prosper more than we have. ... Just my thoughts. Perhaps I have not thought it all through thoroughly enough yet.
Is that true? Why can we not have sustainable capitalism in which we produce enough to meet our needs in a sustainable manner and as people work they can accumulate capital so that their capital supports them in their later years?
That might mean putting some limits on the amount of wealth an individual could accumulate and especially on the amount they could leave to their heirs, but that's an adjustment that could be made.
We are close to reaching the population density that Earth can support
Yes and no. Setting aside the potential disruption of climate change a moment, we could probably support 15 to 20 billion if we got very efficient. We waste an enormous amount of food and we will improve our crop yields. Africa, I believe, wastes half of all the food they produce due to inadequate storage and transportation infrastructure. And Africa could easily double or triple their food output with better agricultural practices.
Just because population decreases does not mean that individual wealth will. We will continue to manufacture stuff for less and less cost. If we switch to renewable energy and (mostly) electric-powered transportation we will get our power and transportation for far less than we now pay. As we build more efficient buildings and fill them with more efficient "stuff" the cost of owning will decline.
Clean drinking water, as under valued as it is, is in limited supply. Certainly desalination plants will add to this resource, but that is currently costly.
Much of the drinking water problem is that a lot of people are living where the water isn't. We're almost certainly going to see a lot of climate forced migration. And the cost of desalination is mainly the cost of energy. Energy is almost certain to get cheaper over time.
All the natural elements on Earth are all we have. Whatever gold, sliver, copper, lithium and all of the elements we have are preset and non renewable.
True, but we're doing a pretty decent job of inventing our way around shortages. Take copper for example. We've now learned how to make high conductance wire from nano carbon. Furthermore, we don't "use up" those elements, they aren't destroyed with use. We can recycle, all that gold we used for printed circuit card contacts and dental caps - it's hanging around somewhere.
The profits will run dry when the labor force is no longer needed and wages will not be earned.
We almost certainly will need to invent a new basis for distribution of goods. I don't have an idea what that system might look like, but once we get to the point at which labor has no value then we'll have to do things differently.
Now, factor in a warming climate, with all of its unknowns
This is the joker in the deck.
Wow. Kahneman referenced on the the Wunderground blog. I feel like some small little loop has just closed in my life. Like finding out yesterday that my very Italian neighbor in Italy is a civil war buff and vacations in Savanah and Charleston whenever he can. Thanks for the link.
Briefly, I don't think the future will be like the past. I think we have a lot of technologies that can help us adjust: internet (i.e. let your keyborad do that walking), low carbon transportation (electric bikes are growing at an incredible rate, if I do say so myself), much more local production of crops and so on. A lot of the clean-up/restoration jobs can be done by robots, etc.. I think there is a lot of hope but certainly at the moment we are like the scene in Australia where the cows are headed off the cliff. If the cows aren't turned around soon, none o fhte technology will help us.
People rely on emotional coherence (i.e. common sense - did I get that right?) for judging truth, the less you understand about complex issues, the more you take your emotional coherence from tribal sources that match your emotional coherence sympathetically. Besides, people are tribal. Therefore to change people, it takes tribal leaders to change.
Certainly that is one aspect. I think there are others:
- hatred of others. Sort of like the theory above multplied by negative one instead of tribal competition, e.g. hate the Jews instead of love Aryan. In this case, hate the scientists / whomever. I think that Big Oil has done a wonderful job of misleading people and buying politicians.
- the importance of freedom and frontiers in American culture.
- defending a lifestyle/ rejection of guilt for something done unintentionally.
Viewing: 151 - 201
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 — Blog Index