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Post by caveman on Jan 29, 2013 5:06:40 GMT -5
I have been off line for a while reading and listening and sniffing around to see what other groups of people are at. I came across a many 'prepper' sites mostly in the US. All seem to be gun slinging and most are bible bashing. I read what they say is happening and I don't think they are too far off the mark. There is at least a consensus on the basics. All of these on line communities share the same problem The Solarco-op has - we are a virtual community. Few, if any of our members live close enough to be able to help each other practically which is what is really going to matter when push comes to shove. I always keep an eye on what Chris Martinson is at. He is a ruthlessly straight line thinker. He also writes for The Post Carbon Institute. There is a short version of his 'Crash Course' on his site. www.peakprosperity.com/crashcourse If you haven't watched it yet it might be time you did. Also if you like your discussions detailed and backed by facts take a listen to some of the podcasts on the site. It was while looking through his site I discovered that he too is a 'prepper' and has a wealth of info on the subject. The one thing Chris Martinson is not is hysterical. If he is talking 'prepper'. It might be worth taking seriously. Any views?
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Post by cye on Jan 30, 2013 15:57:07 GMT -5
funnily enough i was talking to a guy a few week's ago who recommended martenson's youtube videos. well worth a watch he said.
he was right - i have since watched his crash course and he is very reasonable and measured. he is not out to frighten folks, rather to empower them with the background facts on how cheap energy currently supports and subsidizes the global economy, how it can only get more expensive, and the impact this will have. there is no scare-mongering there, only straight talking.
he also covers exponential growth - The average man on the street does not appreciate that continual year-on-year X% growth (in economies and or population size), which may sound minimal to the untrained ear, is actually exponential, and unsustainable.
a really useful way of understanding growth better andd what it really means in the medium term, is to think about the 'doubling time'. I.e., for a given growth rate, this is the time it will take for something to double in size. The rule of 72 is a handy rule used to estimate quickly the number of years it takes to double the size of something given an annual growth rate. The rule states that the interest (or growth) percentage times the number of years it takes to double a principal amount of money is approximately equal to 72. So, e.g., 4% growth will take 72/4 years to double in size, that's only 18 years. china is growing at over 8%, that's a doubling time of 72/8 = 9 years, wow. that is simply not going to happen, something will have to give ground.
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Post by caveman on Jan 31, 2013 5:45:58 GMT -5
Add to that the fact the every 'civilised' nation is smothered with debt and most individuals in those nations are up to their eyes in personal debt. We need growth to service debt. How will all the senior bond holders feel when it becomes clear that growth is either going to be non existent or well below expectations? What is going to happen to their money? What do these sorts of folks do when they get annoyed?
I am sure it was Chris Martinson who said that there are only 2 numbers you need to know to get a feel for the problem. 22 and 10. 22 is the number of years it has taken humanity to burn half of all the oil ever pumped out of the ground. 10 is the number of fossil fuel calories in every calorie of food. I would like to add to that. World population has more than doubled since 1960.
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Post by tomhill on Jan 31, 2013 6:31:48 GMT -5
I am going to put my hand in the air. I was worried before I watched that Chris Martinson link. Now I am really worried. Cye, can you find any holes in what Martinson says is the case? The government here seems to doing a double act with the media. They are like a pair of well funded confidence tricksters. Honey looks like a safer bet than money. Tom
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Post by cye on Jan 31, 2013 15:20:39 GMT -5
I think he makes a very strong case indeed.
i think it is not a matter of if, rather when, we will see significant energy price rises and the impact of this on a very broad swathe of what we currently take for granted. 10 calories of petro-energy goes to produce 1 calorie of food, wow.
but it is nothing to be afraid of provided we reduce our consumption and make alternative provision for our basic energy needs. in the unlikey event that it never happens well at least we will have had fun, education, and will be better off for it!
what is it buddha said, "enough is plenty"..?
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Post by campbeji on Feb 3, 2013 19:32:54 GMT -5
I don't really know anything about this, at least not in detail (dosn't stop me having an opinion of course), I havn't watched any of those videos so I can't comment on that specifically, however I have seen a few videos and read a bit about the subject. Maybe it's just me but a lot of these people (especially in the states) seem to be a little hysterical and a bit gun happy, not saying they are all nuts or anything but they are certainly coming from a different place to me.
The growth thing is another subject that I am not 100% confident talking about, but I can't see why economic growth is bad in itself, certainly if it uses irreplacable resources or something, but they are really two different things, although I admit often joined. I hear the term growth being used a lot, but very rarely is it explained exactly what is growing or failing to grow.
We have to remember that the same statistics can often be used to prove and disprove a theory at the same time, it just depends on how you interpret the and present the numbers. One of my favourite charity shop finds from a few years back was a book called 'How to lie with statistics'
As for the energy thing, yes that is a problem, we currentl rely on energy that is expensive to produce and depends on a dwindling natural resource. However there are alternatives in the form or renewables and nuclear, neither of which if done correctly are based on a rare commodity. The difficulty is in switching from one to the other, and if you believe the conspiracy theories that is due in no small part to the oil companies. I believe there will be a period when energy will be expensive and scarce followed by an increase in the availability of cheap renewable energy.
Anyway, big subjects that I don't fully understand
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Post by caveman on Feb 4, 2013 14:17:50 GMT -5
Hello Jim! That first video will answer many of your questions. It is a 45min version of a much longer course. You really have to watch it. The presenter, Chris Martinson is a scientist by training and is utterly objective about the facts. c
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Post by cye on Feb 4, 2013 18:04:09 GMT -5
hi Jim.
All you need to know about growth (or at least all i needed to learn until i reached the conclusion that it does not make great sense using GDP growth as a major govt target). I've never studied economics, but I've read a little here and there and it has opened my eyes:
Growth is the rate of increase of GDP. GDP (gross domestic product) is in turn a very crude measure of 'economic activity'. The formula is simple, and has 3 main elements : value of net exports + total household consumption + govt investment. So far sounds good, even reasonable.
First lets look at net exports. This element of GDP will currently be negative for UK (we run a big trade deficit). E.g. UK sells £100 worth of cars abroad and imports £200 of cheap chinese toys and electronics. Net exports = -£100. If this is all that happened, and things had been good previously, we would have negative GDP growth (i.e., recession). Fair enough you say, we make less than we buy, so it is clearly recession (in this example where we ignore household consumption and govt investment).
However, moving onto the 'household consumption' element of GDP, let's say the cheap chinese stuff had been bought by the importers for £200 and sold by distributors to UK households for £1000. Then all of a sudden the GDP figures, i.e., net exports + household consumption (ignoring govt investment for now) show a very big GDP (+£1000household-£200import + £100export =+£900), If household consumption of these cheap imports had been smaller previously, this would then be classified as growth. Wow, growth, that's great, and we all applaud ourselves and the govt, as we've achieved growth. But few will be aware this has been achieved just by increasing household expenditure on junk.
Where do the households get a good deal of their money for this consumption? Well, for the best part of the last 15 years it hasn't all been the wage packet. Most households have been racking up credit like there's no tomorrow(loans, credit cards, car finance, etc), i.e., borrowing a large part of what they've been spending. Where does borrowing figure in the GDP figure? Where is this borrowing reflected, adjusted out of GDP? Nowhere, it's totally ignored. This omission of household credit, to me anyway, is one enormous gaping hole in the case for using GDP as a measure of anything!
So, e.g., we all go and borrow increasing fortunes from the banks, spend it on cheap imported rubbish, and this can be reported as economic growth. Even if no-one works / earns a wage. Oh dear!
Now look at the 3rd element of GDP : govt investment. E.g. spending on new road building. Where does the govt get the money? It borrows it (more credit). Where is the borrowing reflected in GDP? Nowhere (same as household borrowing), i.e., totally ignored. Gaping hole number two.
As you can see, GDP is too crude a measure of real economic activity. It may have been more meaningful in the days before credit became freely available. We clearly need a new way of measuring what a country is doing other than some crude figures that mislead folks on the street.
Somehow this GDP growth lark is taken for granted as being something that's a very worthwhile target for a nation, without the public being made aware of the true basis of what the GDP figures mean. Another great illusion which runs alongside the GDP/Growth portrayal is that of 'standard of living', and the reports everywhere that our 'standard of living' is increasing all the time. Joe public understands this term to mean 'quality of life', but in actual fact 'standard of living' is simply defined as 'household consumption', i.e., how much we spend, irrespective of what we spend it on or where the money comes from. It's not really a measure of life quality at all.
(rant over, but i hope you enjoyed it...)
[Where the credit both households and govt has been spending has been coming from is another great illusion that 99% of the population seems to be under.But that's a different story altogether. For the purposes of this growth/GDP story, let's just say that all this credit/borrowing has not been sourced from any kind of economic or productive activity]
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Post by cye again on Feb 6, 2013 3:31:41 GMT -5
oops, sorry folks, i see i have hijacked the preppers thread with a anti-growth diatribe.
jim, dod you get a look at that youtube video of martenson? he's very good
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Post by caveman on Feb 6, 2013 4:02:56 GMT -5
I don't think you hijacked the thread at all. The blind 'growth at all costs' policy pursued by most governments is at the root of the problem. Preppers seem to be folks who simply do not believe the propaganda and can see where we are heading. If you ignore the apocalyptic guff and just look at the facts relating to energy, debt, population and climate change, it is game over.
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Post by campbeji on Feb 6, 2013 21:18:29 GMT -5
I have had a go at watching some of those videos, The Crash Course, they are a series of short 2 - 5 min videos that give a fairly basic explanation of some mathematical and economic subjects.
I havn't watched them all yet, I have got as far as the one about inflation, or thereabouts. So far I'm in two minds about it, I get the distinct impression that he is trying to lead the listener to his conclusion, as he said at the beginning he has beliefs that he was going to demonstrate how the facts lead him to (I know that sentence is badly constructed, but I'm tierd now ). However some of his explanations didn't give a very clear understanding, for example the one about exponential growth and the drowning in the football stadium, I thought that was almost insulting in its simplicity and the fact that it was so negative, he was going for the whole 'exponential growth is bad' thought and didn't offer any alternatives to that conclusion
OK, i'm off to bed now :-)
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Post by cye on Feb 7, 2013 3:47:17 GMT -5
hi jim,
valid questions. and like most things folk say maternson's views are all just expression of opinion.
the financial market dealers/shakers/movers all use trend analysis. comparison against historical trends to predict future behaviour/performance is proven to be generally, but not always, useful and informative.
martenson uses the well proven/known exponential curve to predict problems with population, asset value growth and economic growth. such trends historically have always ended in a bust, rapid decline or crash. it is surely a fact that exponential growth cannot continue for ever, it must tail off, decline, or crash at some point. no scientist, mathematician, or financial analyst would disagree with that bit.
the real question is regarding where we are on the various curves at present & how accurate martenson's reckoning is for this. martenson makes a reasoned case for setting a cap, which in turn fixes us on a point on the trend curve. of course he may not be right, but he has made a sound reasoned argument.
like anything, one weighs one point of view up against the counter arguments presented. However, i don't see too many counter arguments that have focussed on this angle trend analysis. the counter arguments i've seen are are aspirational and/or vague, such as "we'll crack nuclear fusion and then we'll be sorted" or "sure we have shale gas now that will last for years to come". it would be really good to read some reasoned counter arguments to martenson's. i must have a look around and see what i can find.
(just my view, nothing else)
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Post by campbeji on Feb 7, 2013 20:05:10 GMT -5
I'm not disputing that the maths shows what it shows, my problem is with the parameters used and the interpretation of them. The example I'd use would be the 'hockey stick' graph of population growth. He says it is based on the historical figure of about 1% growth per year, and yes it looks really bad with it suddenly shooting way up like that, but there are a few things to consider that make it not quite as bad as it first looks. The 'hockey stick' curve is actually spread over about 2000 years, so not quite as sudden as it seems at the first glance. The second thing is that the population growth figures since about the start of the industrial revolution was running at about 2 to 2.2%, but back at the start for the first 10,000 years it was running at about 0.05%.
The current rate has fallen back to about 1.15% and is still dropping, estimated to be less than 1% by 2020 and under 0.5% by 2050. By about 2100 the UN estimates that we will have a steady population with even some population contraction, total population will be about 10 billion.
There are some people who think that the population will not grow at anything like this amount and will stop growing quite quickly, they think this because of studies which show the average male now is less fertile than the equivalrnt from the past. I read that the average male these days has a good chance of being effectivle infertile by the time they are in their 30's dur to this modern medical problem
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Post by cye again on Feb 8, 2013 4:19:15 GMT -5
Yes there are a variety of predictions, and population is just one of the concerns. It's good to see some counter arguments to the population piece though.
An extract of the wiki on population growth indicates a variety of respectable opinions :
Current projections show a continued increase in population in the near future (but a steady decline in the population growth rate), with the global population expected to reach between 7.5 and 10.5 billion by 2050.Various longer-term estimates predict further growth, stagnation, or even overall decline in the global population by 2150.
I don't know whether the above reflects the feeling that China is likely to make concessions on it's single child policy, and, at a local level here, it certainly jars with the current baby boom. A US citizen consumes at least 20 times more resources than a third world citizen, so a better understanding of the influence of population on resources demand could perhaps be gained from looking at population forecasts for the first and second world economies. Perhaps these (say, the top 30 economies) are all forecast for reduced growth rates, other than UK (which is clearly not tailing off)?
And we cannot ignore the 'unending economic growth' targets, which are the things that are probably greater drivers of consumption? I am aware of no G7 nation with a policy other than achieving continual (exponential) growth.
It would be good if we could get more stats and views summarised here to help identify the strong and weak points of martenson's analysis.
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Post by campbeji on Feb 8, 2013 12:52:04 GMT -5
I think I should point out that I am kinda playing devils advocate here, I don't necesairaily disagree with Martinson's conclusions (although I havn't got that far in the vids) but so far I do think that his explanation, while very reasond and intelligent, feel like they are manipulating me, to me they seem to brush over some facts and to simplify others too much. I'm not sure wheter this is to mislead us or just to get some big concepts across in 3.5 minutes. Probably the later, but my head rebels to that sort of thing.
You make a very important point, or at least it makes me think of a very important point. This talk of population growth is actually, I think, a moot point in as much as I think the population of the world has already reached and passed the 'danger' mark. It is now more of a 'lifestyle' crisis that we have to watch out for. In my opinion most people on the planet want the 'good life', say a quality of life similar to our own. I don't know the percentages off hand but I think it is in the region of 10% of people are at or above our level of consumption and 90% of the worlds population that wants to increase their consumption. If 90% of the population do in fact increase their lifestyle that will be a huge increase overall. I don't know the numbers but I'd guess that this increase alone would be enough to cause major problems.
The other thing we are talking about here is economic growth and how it is bad, again I don't disagree in general but I think the terms are uncertain enough to cause confussion. Economic growth, of a certain type, could be considered detrimental, consider this silly example,
Everyone in the UK spends 10% of their income on some form of eco project, therefore their is an increase in the uptake of wind power, pv panels, solar panels, wood chip burners, forestry projects etc etc. The result is that many jobs are created, the various eco type industries are infused with orders and money and so will grow. Overall the economy would grow (maybe not by lots) but in this case growth is good (or am I missing something fundamental).
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