Is Economic Growth Scientifically Impossible?

NATO's verdict: Growth

There is only one way for growth to occur, the introduction of energy into the economy. If you haven't taken a look at the landscape lately and understand that our modernised world grew this way only because of oil energy. Guess what? Oil is at or near the peak (Half gone). Our present design is dependent on oil or an energy replacement that doesn't at this time exist.

Growth is not possible and if we were to attempt to grow out present infrastructure it would increase exponentially the use of energy. For example, if you hand an entitlement out that is based on necessity it will be much cheaper than a job created that sustains a person in this economy. Why? A necessity entitlement will only trim from what we have, lower the overall consumption of everyone. If you create a job, you double the energy we must pull into the economy that that job represents. If that job means making the new product x, then you have to increase the energy that it takes to make this new product. An equal amount of energy will also be needed in return because now this employee will increase the demand in market by this much energy.

Growth demands new energy in the market. According to energy experts, we are at or very near half the consumption of avail oil. The alternatives can not support the carrying capacity of our present infrastructure when fossil fuels no longer are an option. We need to rebuild our societies to have lower energy consumption. Growth is the wrong answer. First world walking nations with limited mass transit might be the place to start.

 

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To remove entitlements we need to take some of the workload and give it to those on entitlements. That means sharing the hours available. We could also pay off debts by demanding part time labour instead of just giving out entitlements.

 

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Thats one of the problems with modern economics...this obsession with quantitative values, as opposed to a balanced approach that includes qualitative values.

Growth means bumping up the numbers...regardless of whether those numbers bring real QUALITY to people's lives.

Also, the price of energy in a private market will always rise on expectations of depletion. And this is made worse by the presence of purely speculative traders who never take delivery of the actual product

This problem can be circumvented by public ownership of energy reserves (if there are any) and strict export restrictions.

 

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James Howard Kunstler gave a talk at the Google headquarters a few years ago and made the same case as Steampunk makes here.

The response? "Dude...we got technology!"

Kunstler thought this was a spectacularly stupid response, but the goggloids were right.

We dont have a lack of energy. What we lack is the technology to capture and store the energy nature provides in great abundance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ZeXnmDZMQ

 

Let me ask you, what is growth in your view? How is it measured? How do you know if the economy is growing or shrinking?

Two, energy supply is an economic constraint. It is not growth. And for the foreseable future, oil is in sufficient supply soas not to constrain economic growth. Baring anything like war in the Middle East, there are no energy restraints on the economy both in the near and longer term.

Three, you are obviousy unaware of the recent advances in drilling technology and recently discovered reserves in the US. By the way, oil is not the only source of fossil fuel. The US has a 100 year supply of natural gas with existing known reserves, more than 2.7 trillion metric cubic feet. And natural gas can be used to fuel everything oil can fuel and it can do it more efficiently, cleaner and cheaper.

So your premise that there is an energy constraint on economy growth just does not hold up in the light of day.

 

You're right, this is exactly what I'm talking about. But, he doesn't really talk about it directly until 15:00 in the video. I'm glad someone else has noticed too.

I understand there is no lack of energy. I mean there is no practical way comparable to capture it and distribute it as oil. Pardon me for overgeneralising things. And thanks for pointing it out. It's relevant, but saying 'Dude...we have technology' is not an argument. What technology did I miss that will be an oil equivalent or better? Did Scientific America miss the the most important practical energy discovery of the decade?

I hope you are not going to say perpetual motion machine.

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Growth means more people employed. Each person employed creates a product that was not being produced before or increases the amount of products already being produced. This can't can't be done unless more energy is used, and therefore growth depends upon an increase in available energy and use of that energy. Growth is the increase of the building of skyscrapers, roads, homes, ipods, etc. Even if you just create a job that is a service job (no product developed) you still increase the demand for energy because this new employee will use their pay check to demand their share of products,which is an increase in production and therefore energy increase.

The economy grows when new things begin to exist, obviously we will need more employees in this situation. It shrinks when there is a drop in production, less consumption. Obviously, we would have job loss in this situation.

Things that grow, increase mass. Mass is energy. In order for something to grow, mass must be added. Without more energy, growth is impossible. Energy cannot be created only because you call it a constraint. Energy is so fundamental physically and principally to growth, I call it growth with little error on my part.

It's not a question of how much we have, the fact is, we will run out and we don't have a replacement. Yet, we build our infrastructure as if we will never run out or we will discover the hen that lays golden eggs.

If the oil ran out today, it would be catastrophic failure and millions of Americans would die. Imagine using your argument and the gas does exist to push for growth in the same way for next 100 years. You car will not go to work and bread truck will not deliver bread. End of story. It would be even more catastrophic than now.

Growth is obliviously not the rational answer to the problems we face. Restructuring our society is.

BTW, those gas reserves are propaganda, they have not proven these reserves.
http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...f_natural_gas_beneath_the_united_states_.html

 

If we tried to go green:

http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2009/01/renewistan/

 

Endless growth is not physically possible. You can build virtual worlds.

 

There is plenty of oil and another liquid and gaseous fuels for the next 30 years or so...the problem is the PRICE.

And price as I mentioned is set by the private market which is highly speculative. A 6o minutes article on this subject a few years ago stated that as much as 40% of the price of oil can be attributed to speculators who never take physical delivery.

So what happens after 30 years?

How far into the future can we make predictions? Is there any point in making predictions for 2112...when in just 20 years our technology could change drastically in ways we cant even imagine now?

The technology issue is important because it can be used to convert one form of energy into another. The Germans for example were using the Bergius process to turn coal into liquid fuels back in the 1930s.

 

You don’t get points for repetition. So you are saying that ultimately society will be constrained by a lack of energy. If you believe current scientific theory, billions of years from now, you would be correct assuming a technology solution is not devised before then. But that is billions of years into the future. You seem to have forgotten growth has the dimension of time. For the foresseable future, energy is not a constraint to economic growth.

Well that’s just the point, we have plenty of energy now and for the foreseeable future. Back when I was in high school in the 70’s there were those like you who were telling us that we only had enough oil to last for no more than a decade. Well that was more than 4 decades ago and despite energy use going up, we still have plenty of fossil fuel resources.

There have always been people like you for centuries promulgating some notion of a shortage of this or that. The reality is that the US and the world has huge reserves of fossil fuels, it is a matter of technology and cost to retrieve and use those resources.

Where you and people like you go wrong is that you fail to account for the power of economics to drive technological advances. Recent advances in technology driven by economics that dramatically increased the retrievable supply of oil and natural gas. There are technologies that can produce oil from other materials. In fact there companies out there now commercially producing various types of oils from nontraditional materials.

If you could prove your point, you might have a case. But you cannot because the volume of history is full of people like you making similar failed proclamations of doom based on some theory of shortage. I do think radical social change is needed but for different reasons – an adaptation to our technology.

No those numbers I provided were not propaganda. An opinion piece does not trump real data. For the foreseeable future we have plenty of energy for economic growth with existing technology. Therefore economic growth is possible and in fact occurring in China, US and elsewhere. If we should enter a recession again, it will be the result of failed politics no a supply/energy constraint.

 

I'm going on what I have read in popular articles and best selling books over the last 10 years. I'm using those things. I would not place my bets on some energy technology find that may or may not be discovered or finally become practical. Even if we discover an energy equivalent of oil or better, that doesn't solve the problem of entropy of the our limited natural resources when we use them.

Here are the scenarios I see:

A. No energy replacement and grow in the same manner: Catastrophic failure.

B. No energy replacement and societal redesign (low energy design): Limited or totally avoid catastrophic failure.

C. New energy discovery and grow in the same manner: No catastrophic failure until natural resources reach entropic failure.

D. New energy discovery, grow in same manner and societal redesign: No catastrophic failure and increase the time before the entropic failure point of natural resources.

No matter what, being more energy efficient will help us. But, by not redesigning with a low energy design as a safeguard, we risk a major catastrophic failure.

 

I showed how growth is physically impossible without energy, therefore energy is a physical constraint to growth. I've proven my point with basic conceptual physics. You still have to show how something comes from nothing, how growth occurs without energy, which is implied from your statement that energy is not a constraint to growth.

It not as important about when it will run out, it is about the fact that it will run out and that without a replacement the way we grow our society we will fall apart, it will be catastrophic consequences. So, based on what we do know, we should redesign for lower energy consumption.

This lifestyle is actually quite stupid and unnecessary anyway to ride in auto-mobiles for 2 hours a day wasting our time in traffic. With that car, we waste more energy than any other individual thing in society, when we could redesign and use a fraction of that energy and have all the cool gadgets and toys at home still.

Your rational is not to worry about it because we may have 30 years or 300 years of oil. If that is the only argument considered, future generations will have to face a much more exponentially dangerous situation.

Nope. It is a matter of how much our infrastructure consumes, because it will run out no matter what. They are saying we are at or near the peak, which is half. All experts say this.

Retrieving those energy deposits will take energy. Technology may help, but there is little promise in technology that make the replacement for the present easy to access oil. Still, your talking about fossil fuels. They run out no matter what. How many dead trees do you really think there were? We need a long term replacement for fossil fuels.

Can you provide a link that shows how this 'oil from nontraditional materials'? That sounds interesting.

 

BTW, I hope my notion that this trouble is not far off is wrong. I would very much to hear something new. Something maybe I have missed.

 

You didn't prove your point. But anything takes energy. Your problem here is no one is arguing that issue. You are trying to set up a straw man. The only one saying something comes from nothing is you in an attempt to set your straw man fallacy.

Energy is not a current constraint to growth because we have a lot of it. Energy supply is not preventing economic growth. If you had read what I wrote you would know that I said energy can be a constraint but that it is not currently preventing economic growth nor will it anytime in the near future (assuming no man induced disruptions in supply). Because we have an abundance of energy more than enough to fill demand now and in the future.

We can grow our economy, we are growing our economy. Let me repeat myself yet again, energy is not preventing our economic growth.

You are changing your position and setting up another straw man. Yes at somepoint we may run out of fossil fuels. But that time is not now nor in the foreseeable future. So the answer to your question is yes; economic growth is not only possible, it is happening now.

Yes we shoud use our technology to our advantage, making things more energy efficient. And we are and have been doing so for decades. Many people now work from home and don't commute at all because of advances in our technology.

I never said we should not worry about oil or not seek out new energy sources. That is you my friend creating another straw man. I pointed out in my last post that there are other energy sources and oil is not our only source of energy. Traditionally it has been our technology that has driven more energy efficiency and our technology continues to grow expotentially.

Doomsayers predicting the end of our oil supply and resulting economic chaos been around for decades and they have always been wrong. Because they did not understand economics drives further exploration and technologies to fill the energy need. In a word, they have no clue with respect to economics and technology.

Who said it wouldn’t take energy to produce energy? That is another straw man. It takes energy today to produce energy. And it took energy a decade ago to produce energy. There are other more compelling reasons to switch from an oil based energy supply to other energy supplies, but the economy is not one of them. The point is energy is not preventing economic growth now or in the foreseeable future as you posted in your OP. By the way, some of that "easy to access" oil we are producing today was not so "easy to access" a few years ago. That is technology at work. And that is what you and people like you keep overlooking.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-21/shale-glut-means-1-a-gallon-savings-at-the-pump.html

Below is the link you requested:

http://solazyme.com/

 

Joe, we know you're correct on your facts and logical approach in ATTEMPTING to teach this kid something about reality.

The sad thing is, though, I don't believe he has what it takes to absorb the information. I've seen his posts scattered across different categories and am convinced that HE believes he's super-smart. However, just as is the case in this thread, his own words serve to prove he's not anywhere close to being as well-educated as he should be. I can't fully address his ability to learn, of course, but I sure hope he doesn't drop out of school.

In short, what I'm trying to say is that I think he needs to learn how to learn.

 

Thanks, I have to concur.

 

Improvement of technology may increase the fossil fuels we can get at, but there are only so many dead trees. Fossil fuel usage is also dirty and a direct and indirect environmental hazard. Fossil fuels are not a long term solution. No one rational is saying that. We still need a replacement.

Solazyme on their wiki page says that one of their goals is to replace fossil fuels. Impossible.

I'm going to briefly mention the dilemma of ethanol. We can not turn to ethanol, because we don't have the land to dedicate to ethanol to cover our present consumption, little alone, any future growth.

Solazyme is an algae and must grow in containers. What do we put in the containers? Switchgrass, corn stover, and wheat straw. Grass, corn, and wheat must grow on land. We don't have enough land for the corn that we turn into ethanol, so what makes you think we have enough land for Solazyme's switchgrass, corn stover, and wheat straw ?

Sure, we can use municipal green waste, but waste will not make up for you here either. We eat the grass from fields and so do cattle. There is a huge amount of energy loss when we eat meat, so it takes a ridiculous amount of field for a chunk of steak compared to just the grass. There is also a huge amount of entropy between eating, shitting and turning it into Solazyme oil. There would be less energy loss in directly taking the grass from land to Solasyme containers. Your shit, my shit, everybodies shit will not cut it for the Solazyme argument. We are still running into the ethanol dilemna: not enough land.

I'm ready for your next energy-replacement opponent. Put him in the ring. But this time, pick your best contender. Or was Solasyme your assumed champ?

 

If you have something to contribute to the subject matter, besides these elaborate insultive troll thread remarks towards my intelligence, please do add. Otherwise, keep your distance from this thread. Your lack of substance is not welcome.

 

Who is "we"?

Who is going to solve the problem...the government?

How many years ahead do you think the government should plan for???