Aaaaand I was 100% WRONG About China

[Eric the Green]

(08-29-2022, 03:35 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

Quote:The demographic and agricultural conditions you and your author assert are flat-out false.
The 1 child policy is gone

Just because the 1 child policy is gone does not mean the effects on previous birthrates are. After all, it takes 20 years and 9 months to grow a 20yo worker, 40 years and 9 months to grow a 40yo manager, etc. Government programs cannot add more people to a given generation the way they can add to the bank accounts of those impoverished by bad policy.

The 1 child policy has been gone for almost that time, at least regarding the "20-year" part. And it was not a bad policy. Overpopulation is a threat to human life and to all life. China's population is not decreasing; it is stabilizing, as all countries need to do. As countries get more prosperous, they need to breed fewer children. And if what you say is true that they don't have enough arable land, then reducing or stabilizing their population would seem to have been the right move.

Quote:

Quote: and most Chinese are still farming.

farming with less than 1/3 the arable land per capita than the world average, and less than 1/5 the arable land per capita of the United States and insane reliance on imports of fertilizer from foreign nations (namely Russia and India).
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-inf...per-capita

Chinese have been farming their land with a huge population for centuries and millennia. China is a big country. Such figure-playing is nonsense. China is not on the verge of a food shortage.

China seems to be efficient in managing its affair. Its arable land has been going down, but maintained a level beyond state targets.

"SHANGHAI, Aug 27 (Reuters) - China's total arable land amounted to almost 1.28 million sq km (490,000 sq miles) by the end of 2019, down nearly 6% compared with a decade earlier, according to a once-in-a-decade survey of the country's land use published on Thursday.
The number - amounting to 13% of China's total area - is higher than the state target, which aimed to keep 1.865 billion mu (1.24 million sq km) of arable land off limits to urban encroachment by the end of 2020, the Ministry of Natural Resources said in a briefing."
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chin...021-08-27/

Quote:

Quote:China has plenty of minerals, coal and solar power.

Coal they primarily get from Australia and their solar power is not nearly sufficient to meet the needs of their population.

China has its own coal and lots more solar power. Saying solar power cannot supply our needs is just to first delay the transition (by supporting Republicans), and then complaining that there's not enough.

I had not heard that about Australian imports to China, but perhaps if China invades Taiwan, our Australian ally might cut off those imports. Maybe that foolish act could accelerate a crisis and a fall by China. But China is riding so high these days and has such a long and successful history that the sudden collapse you forecast just seems an outrageous prediction.

Still, China can stop using coal anytime it wants to, more or less. Lots more solar energy can be built, including on all their buildings. China is doing a lot already, but it's 2060 target is too slow and needs to be moved up.

A more accurate article tells a different story. China is now the world's largest both exporter and importer of coal, it says. But it is cutting back fast, and it seems Indonesia and Australia are the countries that could be impacted by the decline of this industry, rather than China. "the country is working on building a more independent and self-sufficient energy system. The combination of its decarbonisation commitments and its efforts towards boosting domestic energy security will inevitably lower the country’s coal consumption and imports."
https://energytracker.asia/chinas-coal-i...-exporters

Quote:

Quote:It seems you may be putting too much emphasis on the Breton Woods agreement. The internecene wars came to an end because the Allies put an end to them and because Europe could see what condition they left themselves in. Imperialist rivalries came to an end too as The West was stripped of its colonies in the subsequent years.

A time of peace, cooperation and rebuilding following a time of war is not an historical anomaly for Europe (that's basically what 1Ts are). What is an historical anomaly is the way they have stayed at peace for well over half a century. This has virtually never happened in 2000+ years of European history, and it only came about because America put down her foot and kept old conflicts from reemerging.

In part, yes indeed, and also because Europe has progressed, and realized its mistakes.

Europe was widely considered to be at peace for a century after the Vienna Conference in 1815. Except for the reunification wars in the 1860s, and a few wars in the Balkans, this was true. The same sort of qualification is true for your assertion about the "well over half a century" you mention, since it had more Balkan wars in the 1990s.

Quote:

Quote:It seems someone has to keep shipping lanes open, if we don't want greedy autocratic powers like China interfering with our global economy.

We will likely see shared agreements to secure oceanic shipping routes, but without the hegemonic oversight of the United States, such measures will lack the consistency of the current order.

We will continue to need to do our part, altrhough it seems in your previous post that you didn't want us to do that. And this part will be larger than others because we are larger and more equipped to do it.

Quote:

Quote:But meanwhile the military industrial complex set up after the Pearl Harbor attack continued to function, sending the USA to war in Korea and Vietnam and later to Afghanistan and Iraq. US interests and Keynesian economics were hurt by this. We should pull back from such adventures; on that we agree. It increases our debt, and adds this debt excuse to neoliberal/Republican demands for less social and environmental spending.

The worst part is that we never even needed the oil reserves of the Middle East (the US has always been far more energy independent than the general public realizes). Much of such escapades were done on behalf of our European allies

And we are more energy independent because of the potential of renewable energy. 100 square miles of solar power alone (to say nothing of wind onshore and offshore), spread out over the country and on rooftops, can supply ALL our energy needs. Coal is no longer an option, period! That, my friend, indeed needs to be shut down ASAP! Republicans and their Supreme Court resist this, and thus keep the climate crisis accelerating, which creates feedback loops to make the crisis worse and shut down our hydro power.

[pbrower2a]

(08-30-2022, 10:48 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-29-2022, 03:35 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

Quote:The demographic and agricultural conditions you and your author assert are flat-out false.
The 1 child policy is gone

Just because the 1 child policy is gone does not mean the effects on previous birthrates are. After all, it takes 20 years and 9 months to grow a 20yo worker, 40 years and 9 months to grow a 40yo manager, etc. Government programs cannot add more people to a given generation the way they can add to the bank accounts of those impoverished by bad policy.

The 1 child policy has been gone for almost that time, at least regarding the "20-year" part. And it was not a bad policy. Overpopulation is a threat to human life and to all life. China's population is not decreasing; it is stabilizing, as all countries need to do. As countries get more prosperous, they need to breed fewer children. And if what you say is true that they don't have enough arable land, then reducing or stabilizing their population would seem to have been the right move.

I recall seeing a NOVA program a couple decades ago in which the one-child policy and its effects were mentioned. China is a good geographic analogue for the United States, and pressure upon the land will make life miserable at some levels and outright dangerous at others. Admit it: life was probably much more pleasant in America when we had only 200 million people and not the 330 or so million that we now have. Crowding and high rents are not fun.

Whatever the ideology, the Chinese recognized that 1.5 billion people is close to the maximum for food security -- basically everything must go right with the political system and the economic order must be sane. 2 billion people creates a society on the brink of famine. 2.5 billion people means famine. Such would be just as true under 'socialism' as under free-wheeling capitalism. China cannot approach countries like the USA and Japan in living conditions under any circumstances, but it can be on par with countries like Indonesia.   

Unglamorous as agriculture is, it is still the cornerstone of a healthy economy. There is no technological fix for hunger. The countries that have high GDP per capita despite a weak agricultural order are typically selling off energy (typically petroleum) or gems and minerals to support imports of food and whatever luxuries those countries can get away with importing -- Saudi Arabia with oil, Namibia with diamonds. A country whose agricultural system cannot feed its own farmers is in deep trouble, as it will be unable to feed those who do any other work. Although agriculture is low in economic rewards for laborers and peasant farmers, it is necessary for those people who do anything else from commerce to manufacturing to creative activities. 

There is no technological fix to hunger. This is a fair warning  to anyone who trivializes the necessity of a viable agricultural sector in any society. Food crops and forage eat energy, as does the distribution of these in edible forms. I remind people that pressure upon food supplies will be the great first danger of global warming.     

Quote:

Quote:and most Chinese are still farming.

farming with less than 1/3 the arable land per capita than the world average, and less than 1/5 the arable land per capita of the United States and insane reliance on imports of fertilizer from foreign nations (namely Russia and India).
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-inf...per-capita

Chinese have been farming their land with a huge population for centuries and millennia. China is a big country. Such figure-playing is nonsense. China is not on the verge of a food shortage.[/quote]

Inundation of the rich alluvial lowlands in which the great bulk of Chinese agriculture is done  will create extreme distress through the annihilation of the food sources that feed China's industrial sector. I can say the same of many other countries. 

China seems to be efficient in managing its affair. Its arable land has been going down, but maintained a level beyond state targets.

"SHANGHAI, Aug 27 (Reuters) - China's total arable land amounted to almost 1.28 million sq km (490,000 sq miles) by the end of 2019, down nearly 6% compared with a decade earlier, according to a once-in-a-decade survey of the country's land use published on Thursday.
The number - amounting to 13% of China's total area - is higher than the state target, which aimed to keep 1.865 billion mu (1.24 million sq km) of arable land off limits to urban encroachment by the end of 2020, the Ministry of Natural Resources said in a briefing."
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chin...021-08-27/[/quote]


The United States actually has the inefficient agriculture due to policies that foster the waste of water resources and the under-application of labor to farming. Both are political in cause, as they reflect the policies that large-scale corporate farmers promote. 

Quote:

Quote:China has plenty of minerals, coal and solar power.

Coal they primarily get from Australia and their solar power is not nearly sufficient to meet the needs of their population.

China has its own coal and lots more solar power. Saying solar power cannot supply our needs is just to first delay the transition (by supporting Republicans), and then complaining that there's not enough.

China has huge desert areas, including the Takla Makan and its share of the Gobi. With the right technlogy, solar farms could provide plenty of energy to the more populous parts of China -- if, of course, the technology of transportation of energy becomes efficient (and hence cheap) enough to provide it as far away as southeastern China. 


I had not heard that about Australian imports to China, but perhaps if China invades Taiwan, our Australian ally might cut off those imports. Maybe that foolish act could accelerate a crisis and a fall by China. But China is riding so high these days and has such a long and successful history that the sudden collapse you forecast just seems an outrageous prediction.

Quote:Still, China can stop using coal anytime it wants to, more or less. Lots more solar energy can be built, including on all their buildings. China is doing a lot already, but it's 2060 target is too slow and needs to be moved up.

That would be a good reason to not invade Taiwan. 

Quote:

Quote:

Quote:It seems you may be putting too much emphasis on the Breton Woods agreement. The internecene wars came to an end because the Allies put an end to them and because Europe could see what condition they left themselves in. Imperialist rivalries came to an end too as The West was stripped of its colonies in the subsequent years.

A time of peace, cooperation and rebuilding following a time of war is not an historical anomaly for Europe (that's basically what 1Ts are). What is an historical anomaly is the way they have stayed at peace for well over half a century. This has virtually never happened in 2000+ years of European history, and it only came about because America put down her foot and kept old conflicts from reemerging.

In part, yes indeed, and also because Europe has progressed, and realized its mistakes.

Europe was widely considered to be at peace for a century after the Vienna Conference in 1815. Except for the reunification wars in the 1860s, and a few wars in the Balkans, this was true. The same sort of qualification is true for your assertion about the "well over half a century" you mention, since it had more Balkan wars in the 1990s.

Arrangements made in the previous Saeculum typically become irrelevant in or before the Crisis Era and, should they be revived, they appear in new form with different players. 

 

Quote: 

Quote:

Quote:It seems someone has to keep shipping lanes open, if we don't want greedy autocratic powers like China interfering with our global economy.

We will likely see shared agreements to secure oceanic shipping routes, but without the hegemonic oversight of the United States, such measures will lack the consistency of the current order.

We will continue to need to do our part, altrhough it seems in your previous post that you didn't want us to do that. And this part will be larger than others because we are larger and more equipped to do it.

We Americans found that our infrastructure for importing stuff instead of manufacturing stuff has become overstretched. Corporate America sought to abandon most domestic manufacturing so that it could get around environmental regulations and union activity. Now that that capacity has been overstretched, maybe we would rather have investments put into job-creating plant and equipment. 

The service economy once touted as an alternative to manufacturing because it would offer better work than the mind-numbing repetition of industrial work has largely failed in achieving its promises.. Sure, the service industries have created jobs, but many of them are as mind-numbing drudgery as industrial work. They also pay less. The hotels, service stations, retail businesses, and restaurants popping up after the Interstate Highways were built created many well-paying jobs for construction workers. Now that the construction of such places is completed, those places are full of low-paying work that fails to support a tax base for public service such as police and schools. Springfield, Missouri exemplifies what is wrong with the service-economy model: wages are abysmal, and so are the schools and police services. Crime rates are sky-high. Springfield is not a dying core city like St. Louis which once had a powerful sector of manufacturing that has largely vanished. Springfield never had a strong manufacturing sector. It is poor like St. Louis, if for very different reasons. 

Quote:

Quote:   But meanwhile the military industrial complex set up after the Pearl Harbor attack continued to function, sending the USA to war in Korea and Vietnam and later to Afghanistan and Iraq. US interests and Keynesian economics were hurt by this. We should pull back from such adventures; on that we agree. It increases our debt, and adds this debt excuse to neoliberal/Republican demands for less social and environmental spending.

Quote:The worst part is that we never even needed the oil reserves of the Middle East (the US has always been far more energy independent than the general public realizes). Much of such escapades were done on behalf of our European allies

And we are more energy independent because of the potential of renewable energy. 100 square miles of solar power alone (to say nothing of wind onshore and offshore), spread out over the country and on rooftops, can supply ALL our energy needs. Coal is no longer an option, period! That, my friend, indeed needs to be shut down ASAP! Republicans and their Supreme Court resist this, and thus keep the climate crisis accelerating, which creates feedback loops to make the crisis worse and shut down our hydro power.

We long believed the domino theory, and we have operated the same way on autopilot without realizing that the cause is no more. Habits often outlast their appropriateness, which may explain a once-poor and now-rich entrepreneur picking up coins as he did when poor. Maybe when all our transactions are done on cards we will no longer pick up coins. When the vegetable-based foods taste as good as the meats that they substitute for we will become vegans and hardly notice a real difference.

[JasonBlack]

Keep in mind, this is BEFORE covid and the resultant worldwide baby bust. 

[JasonBlack]

Quote:And we are more energy independent because of the potential of renewable energy. 100 square miles of solar power alone (to say nothing of wind onshore and offshore), spread out over the country and on rooftops, can supply ALL our energy needs. Coal is no longer an option, period! That, my friend, indeed needs to be shut down ASAP! Republicans and their Supreme Court resist this, and thus keep the climate crisis accelerating, which creates feedback loops to make the crisis worse and shut down our hydro power.

1) You'll have to forgive me for being skeptical. What are you basing this claim off of?
2) Solar power is only able to provide power during the day time. That's fine for much of the year, but not for electric cars which need to be charged at night or during the Winter months when you're without light or power after 5am
3) The carbon footprint of the creation of solar panels is a lot higher than what most people realize, especially given most have a relatively short lifespan. 
4) China has 3-4x the population of America with a fraction of the open space. Easier said than done. 
None of this is to say we (or, in this case, China) shouldn't use solar panels. The point is we aren't currently at a point where we can rely on them as the dominant fuel source. We can and should expand their usage, but necessary does not equal sufficient.

[pbrower2a]

(08-31-2022, 06:15 AM)JasonBlack Wrote:

Quote:And we are more energy independent because of the potential of renewable energy. 100 square miles of solar power alone (to say nothing of wind onshore and offshore), spread out over the country and on rooftops, can supply ALL our energy needs. Coal is no longer an option, period! That, my friend, indeed needs to be shut down ASAP! Republicans and their Supreme Court resist this, and thus keep the climate crisis accelerating, which creates feedback loops to make the crisis worse and shut down our hydro power.

1) You'll have to forgive me for being skeptical. What are you basing this claim off of?

Transmission costs are a large share of the cost of energy to the ultimate buyer. The electric grid entails a huge outlay in infrastructure with high costs of maintenance. Rooftop generation drops the cost of distribution to near zero for the property owner.

100 square miles seems far too small.  

Quote:2) Solar power is only able to provide power during the day time. That's fine for much of the year, but not for electric cars which need to be charged at night or during the Winter months when you're without light or power after 5am

Storage could be in chemical batteries with reversible reactions. Consider the Calvin cycle between animals and plants: rice photosynthesizes carbohydrates out of carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight through the process of the Calvin cycle; humans eat rice and metabolize it into (ultimately) carbon dioxide, water, and heat through its reverse. Storage batteries would do both, with the power cells transforming an endothermic reaction to store chemical energy  for use by the consumer. I am not sure of what chemicals would best serve the purpose. The Calvin cycle is elaborate chemistry that non-farm industry could never develop on a large scale, but surely we can think of something simpler. Calcium and carbon look good until you add water, in which case you have a dangerously-chaotic version of an acetylene torch.

Quote:3) The carbon footprint of the creation of solar panels is a lot higher than what most people realize, especially given most have a relatively short lifespan. 

Technological progress has typically reduced the cost of inputs and made the devices more efficient and durable as well as more broadly useful. Mainframe computers are obsolete, and much of the prediction of advanced technology at one time held that people would often own such a computer taking up 'only' about as much space as a refrigerator. The current constraints on computer size are now on peripherals: keyboards must be large enough to accommodate human fingers if they type (until voice-command inputs supplant them, which is becoming possible), optical screens to accommodate the desires of viewers, and of course printers having to accommodate at the least the normal sizes of paper in scanning and printing. 

Quote:4) China has 3-4x the population of America with a fraction of the open space. Easier said than done. 
None of this is to say we (or, in this case, China) shouldn't use solar panels. The point is we aren't currently at a point where we can rely on them as the dominant fuel source. We can and should expand their usage, but necessary does not equal sufficient.

Automobiles took their time to supplant horse-drawn vehicles. Iron-hulled ships took their time in supplanting wooden clipper ships. One technology often supplants another due to lesser costs of use; motor fuels and a car engine are far less expensive than oats and a horse. Between the replacement of horse-drawn carriages and automobiles (the 1910's, basically) and World War I, the second decade of the 20th century had to be a nightmare for horses. Southwest Airlines holds that its real competition on its heavily-used Dallas-to-Houston flight is people uneconomically driving their cars along the 200+ miles on I-45 between the two cities. It isn't a matter at all times of someone having the funds; the people who bought the early phonographs were the ones who had little access to live music (and were poor), and the early adapters of television were those who could not afford tickets to boxing matches or baseball games (common early fare) or live theater. 

Solar power generation is more likely to appear on very-poor Indian reservations than in the high-income areas of Westchester or Marin County, thank you. Speaking of First peoples, the Potawatomi tribe in Michigan has been adapting solar power in the cloudiest state of the USA, including in the casino that they own in Battle Creek, Michigan:

 https://www.wmuk.org/wmuk-news/2015-04-2...nvestments

Don't be surprised if poor blacks in the South do much the same (although they have no rights to own casinos collectively). It might be good for cottage-industry activity that could revitalize their communities. First Peoples had to organize to survive; Freedmen had to disorganize to avoid trouble with White Power, especially its Triple-K wing. I'd say that cheap power is far preferable to machine politics that is the norm for most communities in the ethnically-polarized South as a source of prosperity, wouldn't you? 

... Something like 95% of the population of China lives in 20% of its territory. The Takla Makan and southern Gobi deserts and the Tibetan Plateau are thinly populated to uninhabitable. Should the transmission of electrical power (whether directly through wires or through satellite transmission) get cheap enough, then those unpopulated areas will be the sites of huge solar farms. Most Chinese territory is no more habitable than Quebec as a whole, the American High Plains, or the Sahara. People live where the farms are. Living anywhere else is fiendishly expensive.    But if you see my pattern of posts, you will recognize that I defy anyone to trivialize the importance of farming in even the most modern of countries. Prosperity of most countries depends upon getting people off the farms to do something else, leaving behind relatively-few, fairly prosperous yeoman farmers (such few Japanese farmers on the whole seem to be doing well).

[Eric the Green]

(08-31-2022, 06:15 AM)JasonBlack Wrote:

Quote:And we are more energy independent because of the potential of renewable energy. 100 square miles of solar power alone (to say nothing of wind onshore and offshore), spread out over the country and on rooftops, can supply ALL our energy needs. Coal is no longer an option, period! That, my friend, indeed needs to be shut down ASAP! Republicans and their Supreme Court resist this, and thus keep the climate crisis accelerating, which creates feedback loops to make the crisis worse and shut down our hydro power.

1) You'll have to forgive me for being skeptical. What are you basing this claim off of?
2) Solar power is only able to provide power during the day time. That's fine for much of the year, but not for electric cars which need to be charged at night or during the Winter months when you're without light or power after 5am
3) The carbon footprint of the creation of solar panels is a lot higher than what most people realize, especially given most have a relatively short lifespan. 
4) China has 3-4x the population of America with a fraction of the open space. Easier said than done. 
None of this is to say we (or, in this case, China) shouldn't use solar panels. The point is we aren't currently at a point where we can rely on them as the dominant fuel source. We can and should expand their usage, but necessary does not equal sufficient.

1. Studies I have read. I keep stating it wrong though, forgive me! A 100 mile by 100 mile area, I meant.
2. Batteries will spread out solar power, and so will wind.
3. There is some carbon footprint for making solar panels, but much less when the energy to make them ALSO comes from solar/renewables. And the life span is increasing. Studies I have seen say there is 13 times less carbon footprint over the lifetime of solar energy than for coal.
4. Of COURSE currently; we can't rely on what we haven't built yet!

Googling #1 now, I see this: PV panels on just 22,000 square miles of the nation’s total land area – about the size of Lake Michigan – could supply enough electricity to power the entire United States.
That's 145 by 145 miles.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-...ted-states
More complicate study! https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56290.pdf

This article says:
21,250 square miles of solar panels to meet the total electricity requirements of the United States for a year.
https://www.freeingenergy.com/how-much-s...r-the-u-s/

Elon Musk said at first only 10,000 square kilometers.
https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/energy/2015/05/2...er-the-us/
This article has the Musk claim as 10000 square miles. That was his later revision according to the next article below.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/elon-musk-run...-of-panels

An estimate that includes a lot more space for space between panels and other space ends up as I figure it about 248 miles by 248 miles.
https://www.inverse.com/innovation/elon-...e-key-flaw
Of course, in reality this space would be spread out in multiple locations and include rooftops, plus wind (on and offshore) and hydro, but still needs grid transportation from sunny areas like Texas, and batteries. We wouldn't be fencing off a 100 or 250 mile by 100 or 250 mile area. The 100 by 100 mile measurement apparently applies to just the panels, wherever they may be placed.
In reality too, some agriculture can still be carried on under the shade of the panels.

For the whole world, I have heard 400x400 miles, which according to the above article would be 1000x1000 miles.
This is the study I had seen earlier:
https://www.businessinsider.com/map-show...rth-2015-9

This site says 340 by 340 miles
https://africaneyereport.com/how-many-so...the-world/

[Eric the Green]

(08-30-2022, 07:37 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: Keep in mind, this is BEFORE covid and the resultant worldwide baby bust. 

China still has lots and lots of folks; that's the larger point there.

[Tim Randal Walker]

I read the first three of Zeihans books, and have watched a number of his videos. (Many of the videos, however, repeat much of the material in the books).

Zeihan may be dismissive of the theory, but what Zeihan himself describes is a global Crisis period.

[Tim Randal Walker]

I don't know enough about China to make specific predictions. I have noticed a suggestion that, instead of collapsing, China could turn into a bigger version of North Korea.

[pbrower2a]

(08-31-2022, 03:40 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-30-2022, 07:37 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: Keep in mind, this is BEFORE covid and the resultant worldwide baby bust. 

China still has lots and lots of folks; that's the larger point there.

Also:

1. Life expectancy in China used to be much lower at least into the 1960's as a consequence of extreme poverty. That obviously improved.  

2. Almost anyone older than 70 had likely been born in the Republic of China when it controlled most of the mainland, with the People's Republic being established in 1949. Living conditions in China were horrible back then. Practically nobody living in 2018 had lived under the last Chinese dynasty. 

3. China had a huge number of births between 1964 and 1973. There would be an echo effect twenty years later. Because of the population bulge from around 1970 that has since been unmatched, China is beginning to resemble advanced industrial countries in having a rather old population. Because these are heavily industrial workers, their old age is likely to result in mass retirements nearly at once.

[JasonBlack]

(08-31-2022, 03:40 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-30-2022, 07:37 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: Keep in mind, this is BEFORE covid and the resultant worldwide baby bust. 

China still has lots and lots of folks; that's the larger point there.

What China has is lots of people taking care of their parents and an alarming increase in people taking care of their parents AND grandparents.

(09-01-2022, 08:18 AM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: I read the first three of Zeihans books, and have watched a number of his videos. (Many of the videos, however, repeat much of the material in the books).

Zeihan may be dismissive of the theory, but what Zeihan himself describes is a global Crisis period.

Exactly. I read his books thinking "bro, this is straight out of The Fourth Turning, how are you dismissing this?"

[JasonBlack]

(08-31-2022, 03:34 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-31-2022, 06:15 AM)JasonBlack Wrote:

Quote:And we are more energy independent because of the potential of renewable energy. 100 square miles of solar power alone (to say nothing of wind onshore and offshore), spread out over the country and on rooftops, can supply ALL our energy needs. Coal is no longer an option, period! That, my friend, indeed needs to be shut down ASAP! Republicans and their Supreme Court resist this, and thus keep the climate crisis accelerating, which creates feedback loops to make the crisis worse and shut down our hydro power.

1) You'll have to forgive me for being skeptical. What are you basing this claim off of?
2) Solar power is only able to provide power during the day time. That's fine for much of the year, but not for electric cars which need to be charged at night or during the Winter months when you're without light or power after 5am
3) The carbon footprint of the creation of solar panels is a lot higher than what most people realize, especially given most have a relatively short lifespan. 
4) China has 3-4x the population of America with a fraction of the open space. Easier said than done. 
None of this is to say we (or, in this case, China) shouldn't use solar panels. The point is we aren't currently at a point where we can rely on them as the dominant fuel source. We can and should expand their usage, but necessary does not equal sufficient.

1. Studies I have read. I keep stating it wrong though, forgive me! A 100 mile by 100 mile area, I meant.
2. Batteries will spread out solar power, and so will wind.
3. There is some carbon footprint for making solar panels, but much less when the energy to make them ALSO comes from solar/renewables. And the life span is increasing. Studies I have seen say there is 13 times less carbon footprint over the lifetime of solar energy than for coal.
4. Of COURSE currently; we can't rely on what we haven't built yet!

Googling #1 now, I see this: PV panels on just 22,000 square miles of the nation’s total land area – about the size of Lake Michigan – could supply enough electricity to power the entire United States.
That's 145 by 145 miles.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-...ted-states
More complicate study! https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56290.pdf

This article says:
21,250 square miles of solar panels to meet the total electricity requirements of the United States for a year.
https://www.freeingenergy.com/how-much-s...r-the-u-s/

Elon Musk said at first only 10,000 square kilometers.
https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/energy/2015/05/2...er-the-us/
This article has the Musk claim as 10000 square miles. That was his later revision according to the next article below.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/elon-musk-run...-of-panels

An estimate that includes a lot more space for space between panels and other space ends up as I figure it about 248 miles by 248 miles.
https://www.inverse.com/innovation/elon-...e-key-flaw
Of course, in reality this space would be spread out in multiple locations and include rooftops, plus wind (on and offshore) and hydro, but still needs grid transportation from sunny areas like Texas, and batteries. We wouldn't be fencing off a 100 or 250 mile by 100 or 250 mile area. The 100 by 100 mile measurement apparently applies to just the panels, wherever they may be placed.
In reality too, some agriculture can still be carried on under the shade of the panels.

For the whole world, I have heard 400x400 miles, which according to the above article would be 1000x1000 miles.
This is the study I had seen earlier:
https://www.businessinsider.com/map-show...rth-2015-9

This site says 340 by 340 miles
https://africaneyereport.com/how-many-so...the-world/

I will take a look at some of these stats.

[David Horn]

(08-31-2022, 06:15 AM)JasonBlack Wrote:

Quote:And we are more energy independent because of the potential of renewable energy. 100 square miles of solar power alone (to say nothing of wind onshore and offshore), spread out over the country and on rooftops, can supply ALL our energy needs. Coal is no longer an option, period! That, my friend, indeed needs to be shut down ASAP! Republicans and their Supreme Court resist this, and thus keep the climate crisis accelerating, which creates feedback loops to make the crisis worse and shut down our hydro power.

1) You'll have to forgive me for being skeptical. What are you basing this claim off of?
2) Solar power is only able to provide power during the day time. That's fine for much of the year, but not for electric cars which need to be charged at night or during the Winter months when you're without light or power after 5am
3) The carbon footprint of the creation of solar panels is a lot higher than what most people realize, especially given most have a relatively short lifespan. 
4) China has 3-4x the population of America with a fraction of the open space. Easier said than done. 
None of this is to say we (or, in this case, China) shouldn't use solar panels. The point is we aren't currently at a point where we can rely on them as the dominant fuel source. We can and should expand their usage, but necessary does not equal sufficient.

Surprise! I fully agree.

[David Horn]

On renewable power: wind is the more reliable resource -- especially offshore wind. Solar has the advantage that it is easily scalable from residential rooftops to large desert arrays. Assume both will be used extensively IF WE CAN MANAGE TO CREATE A HARDENED SMART GRID!!!!!

Note: not much activity there.

[pbrower2a]

(08-30-2022, 10:06 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: The reason Germany is using more coal, is because of Putin. This is a temporary condition, at least if Germany and the EU and the USA continue to support Ukraine and turn back the monster invader. It has to be done. Russia has cut off the gas supply on which Germany was too dependent. That was the mistake. But Germany is now ramping up renewables development too. It has a huge new wind farm being built in the Baltic. Maybe Germany will delay closing nuclear plants, but it doesn't seem to have uranium supplies right now to do that. France I believe is going back to more nuclear right now. Cutting off Russian gas needed to be done anyway as part of the sanctions regime. This gas shutoff was not a deliberate result of cutting it off in order to move away from fossil fuels. It happened because Germany is stepping up and doing its part to turn back the barbarian invader. It HAS to be done! And by the way, the Russians need to be forced to produce less gas anyway.

There will be events caused by the historical model of the Great Man (or the pretender to such a title, at worst Hitler) who believes that he can force events to go his way. Putin thinks himself a Great Man, believing that he can piece again together the old Soviet Union or the Russian Empire with brute force. His sort tells the rest of the world to obey him and serve his ends or endure great tragedy.

Putin reminds me in some way of Mussolini and of great agitprop banners calling for the Italians to restore the glory of the Roman Empire. Mussolini led something much less than a Great Power, and the reality that allowed the Romans to establish an empire that extended from Lisbon to Kuwait and from Syene (now Aswan) to modern Holland does not exist today. The Romans could hijack Hellenic civilization due to its divisions and disrupt the formation of any great Celtic power, and they were ahead of the time in developing sea power to take over the Mediterranean basin. There was little nostalgia for a restoration of Roman rule in the Levant or Britain, and Mussolini has been mocked as the "Sawdust Caesar". Well, there is little nostalgia for the restoration of any imitation of the Soviet Union or the Romanov dynasty.

That the Russians had trading posts in northern California does not mean that they have any reasonable chance of taking over California.

Quote:This goes along with your point. Transition is not an overnight project, and it takes time to build the alternatives. Catastrophes like the invasion of a democratic country by a rapacious tyrannical neighbor happen, and have to be handled. Droughts, themselves caused by climate change and fossil fuel use, can cut off hydro energy we already had too, like is happening in CA. So CA may delay closing a nuclear plant and restart some gas generators for a while. But if we were as dedicated to this energy transition as we are to complaining about high gas prices and blaming Biden for it, and even blaming inflation on him because of the bipartisan money spent to help people through the pandemic shutdowns, then we could get it done much faster than we are doing it.

The arrow of time leads to the ultimate ruin of all that we cherish. A couple hundred million years from now the Earth will be too hot for mammalian and avian life, and of course the astronomical prospect of the sun expanding into a Red Giant and destroying all life on Earth if not the Earth itself is an inevitable, if unsettling prospect. Not many of us live to age 100, as our bodies are not programmed for that. Indeed cells that lose the program to die on schedule typically become cancers. Even business entities have their life cycles.

Global warming pushes our ultimate ruin as a species. I expect that some other species (pigs? Orwell was apparently no farmer, but he figured out what pigs would do if we were not around -- or at least asked farmers who told them that they fear their pigs more than any other animals on the farm and recognize what savage animals dogs would be except for us -- just recall his fable Animal Farm) will have time to overwhelm the world's environments and wreck what ecology remains or recovers after us.

We need Zero Population Growth, and we need also to replace the materialistic model of conspicuous consumption with experience-based lives (even if only simulations of the delights of travel). With global warming it is but a matter of time before many of us recognize how necessary winter is for our agriculture. (Did you see the graphic that I had on how the climates of Michigan and Illinois would be displaced? Winters get milder, but summers become brutal).

Quote:And The West promised to actually help developing countries deal with the climate crisis, which poor countries suffer the most from and did the least to cause, but have not fulfilled this commitment. We in the West need to be more than just be an example and to preach. We need to fulfill our promises and get a Marshall Plan-like effort going to provide the world with renewable clean energy, and we need to give them aid when floods and heat waves and droughts wipe them out, since The West caused this problem for them in the first place.

https://youtu.be/HvD0TgE34HA?t=1800

Donald Trump betrayed that promise, but remember that he is not without his supporters on that. Countries emerging from extreme poverty need to ensure that the 'car culture' never emerges, probably with heavy taxes, because the car culture is unsustainable. We in the economically-suicidal parts of the advanced industrial world need to wean ourselves away from the car culture, quarter-acre lots, and the idea that luxury is a virtue.

[sbarrera]

I started to read Peter Zeihan's book "The Accidental Superpower" (which I had in my library, just hadn't gotten around to reading). A major premise of his is that the success of the United States is largely due to its vast geographic advantages. I have seen a similar argument made at this site, which I remember posting on some other thread on this forum somewhere-

https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/g...ble-empire

[beechnut79]

(09-04-2022, 10:04 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(08-30-2022, 10:06 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: The reason Germany is using more coal, is because of Putin. This is a temporary condition, at least if Germany and the EU and the USA continue to support Ukraine and turn back the monster invader. It has to be done. Russia has cut off the gas supply on which Germany was too dependent. That was the mistake. But Germany is now ramping up renewables development too. It has a huge new wind farm being built in the Baltic. Maybe Germany will delay closing nuclear plants, but it doesn't seem to have uranium supplies right now to do that. France I believe is going back to more nuclear right now. Cutting off Russian gas needed to be done anyway as part of the sanctions regime. This gas shutoff was not a deliberate result of cutting it off in order to move away from fossil fuels. It happened because Germany is stepping up and doing its part to turn back the barbarian invader. It HAS to be done! And by the way, the Russians need to be forced to produce less gas anyway.

There will be events caused by the historical model of the Great Man (or the pretender to such a title, at worst Hitler) who believes that he can force events to go his way. Putin thinks himself a Great Man, believing that he can piece again together the old Soviet Union or the Russian Empire with brute force. His sort tells the rest of the world to obey him and serve his ends or endure great tragedy.

Putin reminds me in some way of Mussolini and of great agitprop banners calling for the Italians to restore the glory of the Roman Empire. Mussolini led something much less than a Great Power, and the reality that allowed the Romans to establish an empire that extended from Lisbon to Kuwait and from Syene (now Aswan)  to modern Holland does not exist today. The Romans could hijack Hellenic civilization due to its divisions and disrupt the formation of any great Celtic power, and they were ahead of the time in developing sea power to take over the Mediterranean basin. There was little nostalgia for a restoration of Roman rule in the Levant or Britain, and Mussolini has been mocked as the "Sawdust Caesar".  Well, there is little nostalgia for the restoration of any imitation of the Soviet Union or the Romanov dynasty.

That the Russians had trading posts in northern California does not mean that they have any reasonable chance of taking over California.

Quote:This goes along with your point. Transition is not an overnight project, and it takes time to build the alternatives. Catastrophes like the invasion of a democratic country by a rapacious tyrannical neighbor happen, and have to be handled. Droughts, themselves caused by climate change and fossil fuel use, can cut off hydro energy we already had too, like is happening in CA. So CA may delay closing a nuclear plant and restart some gas generators for a while. But if we were as dedicated to this energy transition as we are to complaining about high gas prices and blaming Biden for it, and even blaming inflation on him because of the bipartisan money spent to help people through the pandemic shutdowns, then we could get it done much faster than we are doing it.

The arrow of time leads to the ultimate ruin of all that we cherish. A couple hundred million years from now the Earth will be too hot for mammalian and avian life, and of course the astronomical prospect of the sun expanding into a Red Giant and destroying all life on Earth if not the Earth itself is an inevitable, if unsettling prospect. Not many of us live to age 100, as our bodies are not programmed for that. Indeed cells that lose the program to die on schedule typically become cancers. Even business entities have their life cycles.

Global warming pushes our ultimate ruin as a species. I expect that some other species (pigs? Orwell was apparently no farmer, but he figured out what pigs would do if we were not around -- or at least asked farmers who told them that they fear their pigs more than any other animals on the farm and recognize what savage animals dogs would be except for us -- just recall his fable Animal Farm) will have time to overwhelm the world's environments and wreck what ecology remains or recovers after us.

We need Zero Population Growth, and we need also to replace the materialistic model of conspicuous consumption with experience-based lives (even if only simulations of the delights of travel). With global warming it is but a matter of time before many of us recognize how necessary winter is for our agriculture. (Did you see the graphic that I had on how the climates of Michigan and Illinois would be displaced? Winters get milder, but summers become brutal).

Quote:And The West promised to actually help developing countries deal with the climate crisis, which poor countries suffer the most from and did the least to cause, but have not fulfilled this commitment. We in the West need to be more than just be an example and to preach. We need to fulfill our promises and get a Marshall Plan-like effort going to provide the world with renewable clean energy, and we need to give them aid when floods and heat waves and droughts wipe them out, since The West caused this problem for them in the first place.

https://youtu.be/HvD0TgE34HA?t=1800

Donald Trump betrayed that promise, but remember that he is not without his supporters on that. Countries emerging from extreme poverty need to ensure that the 'car culture' never emerges, probably with heavy taxes, because the car culture is unsustainable. We in the economically-suicidal parts of the advanced industrial world need to wean ourselves away from the car culture, quarter-acre lots, and the idea that luxury is a virtue.

As far as the car culture goes, why didn't we begin to wean ourselves away from it right after that humongous gasoline shortage which occurred during the winter of 1973-74? Most folks, including my own mother, thought that the shortage was really a hoax, which was more or less proven by the fact that once they got the prices up to a certain level, almost overnight you could once again get all the gas you wanted, any time of day or night. One of the sticking points no doubt is this: I have been a suburbanite for the majority of my lifetime and I do not feel this way, but many if not most suburbanites feel that using public transportation is beneath their dignity.  Not to mention that the spread out nature of suburban areas makes public transit not feasible.

We also will need to deprogram our love affair with single family homes and nothing but, which many zoning laws and homeowners associations have saddled us with, this contribution mightily to the massive housing shortage and unaffordability we are also now saddled with. These are issues that have been deferred for far too long now. The authors of the book proclaimed that a 4T is a time during which social problems are no long deferred and thus dealt with. But so far there has been little if any effort to solve these issues. Some psychics are predicting that it will take a few more years until Millennials are old enough to move into positions of political power.

Right now in only 12 percent of the country can one do reasonably well without having a car. I have often wonder how long it might be when those living in "The Other 88" will have suitable alternatives. Having to have a car is a big financial burden. Not only gasoline, but insurance, which is now required by law almost everywhere, maintenance, licensing, tolls and parking fees in many places, and, since most folks need to buy their cars on time, installment loan interest. 

When first the ride share platform and later food delivery platforms began to take off, it was widely assumed that this would save a lot of cars from needing to be on the road. But it wasn't really even a Band-Aid, as so many people got in on it from a driver standpoint that it proved to be nearly a zero sum game.

[Eric the Green]

(09-02-2022, 12:45 PM)David Horn Wrote: On renewable power: wind is the more reliable resource -- especially offshore wind.  Solar has the advantage that it is easily scalable from residential rooftops to large desert arrays.  Assume both will be used extensively IF WE CAN MANAGE TO CREATE A HARDENED SMART GRID!!!!!

Note: not much activity there.

I think the Inflation Reduction Act has funds for updating the grid.

[Eric the Green]

(09-02-2022, 12:36 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-31-2022, 06:15 AM)JasonBlack Wrote:

Quote:And we are more energy independent because of the potential of renewable energy. 100 square miles of solar power alone (to say nothing of wind onshore and offshore), spread out over the country and on rooftops, can supply ALL our energy needs. Coal is no longer an option, period! That, my friend, indeed needs to be shut down ASAP! Republicans and their Supreme Court resist this, and thus keep the climate crisis accelerating, which creates feedback loops to make the crisis worse and shut down our hydro power.

1) You'll have to forgive me for being skeptical. What are you basing this claim off of?
2) Solar power is only able to provide power during the day time. That's fine for much of the year, but not for electric cars which need to be charged at night or during the Winter months when you're without light or power after 5am
3) The carbon footprint of the creation of solar panels is a lot higher than what most people realize, especially given most have a relatively short lifespan. 
4) China has 3-4x the population of America with a fraction of the open space. Easier said than done. 
None of this is to say we (or, in this case, China) shouldn't use solar panels. The point is we aren't currently at a point where we can rely on them as the dominant fuel source. We can and should expand their usage, but necessary does not equal sufficient.

Surprise! I fully agree.

Remember, my statement that Jason bolded was just a mis-statement; I meant to say an area of 100 by 100 miles.

Batteries are making fine progress to store renewable energy at night. Using other metals besides cobalt and lithium is still in the early development stage, but long-term it will be done. 

Lifespan studies of the carbon footprint of solar panels have been made, showing 1/13th that of coal. It's still something, but it's a large reduction. Remember also that the carbon footprint number should be based on using renewable energy in the process of making, transporting and recycling the panels. It's probably much better than 1/13th.

Studies also show that the world has 100 times more potential for solar power than we need. We can rely on solar panels plus wind as our dominant energy source. But the catch is, we need to actually build it. Virtually nothing has been done yet, even today. How many homes in your neighborhood have solar panels on them? When will all homes and buildings have it?
https://carbontracker.org/solar-and-wind...enewables/

Remember to check my global warming blog for information; it's changing all the time. Also our global warming thread here. 
http://philosopherswheel.com/globalwarming.html

Do we need nuclear power? In the long run, it's too risky. We can see why now in Ukraine. Wars, floods, storms, fires, earthquakes might cause a meltdown, which takes hundreds of square miles out of human habitation. Proponents minimize the waste, and yet there is talk of something hitting the waste storage at the Ukraine plant. It's more substantial than proponents say, and I don't favor the idea of leaving it underground for generations. It should be recycled as fuel. Nuclear power is more expensive and takes longer to build and license than renewables. Solar panels may last 30-50 years, and nuclear plants about 80, but the plants still must be decommissioned, and that is expensive. Uranium is plentiful but not renewable, and it needs to be mined away from population.

Still, nuclear does not emit carbon gases or methane, so that is a foremost need at the present time. It is a powerful source, and takes less land or rooftops or ocean space. It is less flexible than renewables though. It is turned off or comes offline periodically, and adding or subtracting energy from the grid as needed from nuclear power is awkward, since it is a huge amount or chunk of energy to add or subtract at a time. Since we need the emission-less energy and it's a major source, it seems we should keep the plants we have for a certain time, and maybe build more in places where it is safe and the need is great, which probably includes China. PG&E in CA just decided to keep its nuclear plant until 2030.

[David Horn]

(09-08-2022, 12:38 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Do we need nuclear power? In the long run, it's too risky. We can see why now in Ukraine. Wars, floods, storms, fires, earthquakes might cause a meltdown, which takes hundreds of square miles out of human habitation. Proponents minimize the waste, and yet there is talk of something hitting the waste storage at the Ukraine plant. It's more substantial than proponents say, and I don't favor the idea of leaving it underground for generations. It should be recycled as fuel. Nuclear power is more expensive and takes longer to build and license than renewables. Solar panels may last 30-50 years, and nuclear plants about 80, but the plants still must be decommissioned, and that is expensive. Uranium is plentiful but not renewable, and it needs to be mined away from population.

Even Fukishima, as bad as it was, caused less loss of life than coal-fired plants.  In the US, nuclear should be safe as hell, if the PTB would permit long-term storage.  The latest candidate (since Nevada successfully took itself out of the running) is the massive salt pits in southern New Mexico.  the entire structure is salt: miuch lighter than spent fuel.  Insert spent fuel (which should be repurposed but won't be for reason 100% political), and the stuff is subsumed never to be seen again ... ever!

Eric Wrote:Still, nuclear does not emit carbon gases or methane, so that is a foremost need at the present time. It is a powerful source, and takes less land or rooftops or ocean space. It is less flexible than renewables though. It is turned off or comes offline periodically, and adding or subtracting energy from the grid as needed from nuclear power is awkward, since it is a huge amount or chunk of energy to add or subtract at a time. Since we need the emission-less energy and it's a major source, it seems we should keep the plants we have for a certain time, and maybe build more in places where it is safe and the need is great, which probably includes China. PG&E in CA just decided to keep its nuclear plant until 2030.

If we're gong to use nuclear prior to fusion coming on line, we should deactivate the old plants and replace them with modern modular ones.  Would you use a 1955 car as your reliable daily driver?  Same logic.