Linker, onsdag 4de agust 2010

Nothing Grows Forever (Mother Jones)

Bra om nullvekst-økonomi, om enn overfladisk.

I samme gata:

kritikk av Daly i siste rwer, "Beyond growth or beyond capitalism" av Richard Smith;

lignende argument i Is De-Growth Compatible with Capitalism? av Alejandro Nadal (triple crisis);

og Ecological Economics and Money: Nadal Responds to Daly. Ingressen fra siste:

The Triple Crisis Blog and The Daly News blog are engaged in an interesting discussion of how the field of Ecological Economics treats money, partly in response to Alejandro Nadal’s piece on Triple Crisis, “Money Matters, Mr. Daly.” Herman Daly posted a comment there and posted a piece on the subject on his own blog, “Money and the Steady State Economy.” Rob Dietz also has a related post there, “Money is a COW.” Here, Nadal, author of the forthcoming volume from Zed Books, on the macroeconomics of sustainability, responds:

Dessverre har verken Daly'erne eller Nadal grok'et MMT, så diskusjonen blir litt på tværs av det som hadde vært mest hensiktsmessig. Men det er mange interessante poenger her likevel.


Only scientist in Commons 'alarmed' at MPs' ignorance (The Independent)

Bombe. Not.

Global Crude Oil Supply Update (Gregor McDonald)

Ikke helt ny, men interessant diskusjon i kommentarene

Følg med på hveteprisen her:
http//futures.tradingcharts.com/chart/ZW/90

Litt Hansen:

Implications of "peak oil" for atmospheric CO2 and climate (Kharecha & Hansen, arXiv)

Options for Near-Term Phaseout of CO2 Emissions from Coal Use in the United States (Kharecha et al / Environmental Science & Technology)

Target atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim? (Hansen & al, arXiv)

ooog...
Experts: Climate change challenges global food security

Linker, onsdag 21te juli 2010

Veldig interessant debatt mellom James K. "Jamie" Galbraith og Paul Krugman. En god oppsummering (iflg ingen ringere enn Scott Fullwiler) er Paul Debates Jamie and MMT (letsgetitdone/Corrente). Det hele ser ut til å ha startet med Galbraith’s statement to the Commission on Deficit Reduction som er... skal vi si hvasst? Skåldende? Han avslutter med:

10. The Best Place in History (for this Commission) Would be No Place At All.

Most people assume that “bipartisan commissions” are designed to fail: they are given thorny (or even impossible) issues and told to make recommendations which Congress is free to ignore or reject. In many cases — yours is no exception — the goal is to defer recognition of the difficulties for as long as possible.

You are plainly not equipped by disposition or resources to take on the true cause of deficits now and in the future: the financial crisis. Recommendations based on CBO’s unrealistic budget and economic outlooks are destined to collapse in failure. Specifically, if cuts are proposed and enacted in Social Security and Medicare, they will hurt millions, weaken the economy, and the deficits will not decline. It’s a lose-lose proposition, with no gainers except a few predatory funds, insurance companies and such who would profit, for some time, from a chaotic private marketplace.

Thus the interesting twist in your situation is that the Republic would be better served by advancing no proposals at all.

Thank you again for the opportunity to present this statement.

Krugman svarer: I Would Do Anything For Stimulus, But I Won’t Do That (Wonkish) og videre More On Deficit Limits.

Flere linker i kommentarene til Full employment apparently equals 12.2 per cent labour wastage (Mitchell).

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Interessant paper om energikilders arealkrav:

Energy Sprawl or Energy Efficiency: Climate Policy Impacts on Natural Habitat for the United States of America (McDonald et al/PLoS ONE; lesbar nettversjon, pdf nedlastbar (anbefales da nettversjonen er lite lesevennlig))

Climate change is now acknowledged as a potential threat to biodiversity and human well-being, and many countries are seeking to reduce their emissions by shifting from fossil fuels to other energy sources. One potential side effect with this switch is the increase in area required by some renewable energy production techniques [1]–[5]. Energy production techniques vary in the spatial extent in which production activities occur, which we refer to as their energy sprawl [2], [3], defined as the product of the total quantity of energy produced annually (e.g., TW hr/yr) and the land-use intensity of production (e.g. km2of habitat per TW hr/yr). While many studies have quantified the likely effect of climate change on the Earth's biodiversity due to climate-driven habitat loss, concluding that a large proportion of species could be driven extinct [6]–[8], relatively few studies have evaluated the habitat impact of future energy sprawl. It is important to understand the potential habitat effects of energy sprawl, especially in reference to the loss of specific habitat types, since habitats vary markedly in the species and ecosystem processes they support.

[...]

The land-use intensity of different energy production techniques (i.e., the inverse of power density [16], [17]), as measured in km2 of impacted land in 2030 per terawatt-hour per year, varies over three orders of magnitude (Fig. 3). Nuclear power (1.9–2.8 km2/TW hr/yr), coal (2.5–17.0 km2/TW hr/yr) and geothermal (1.0–13.9 km2/TW hr/yr) are the most compact by this metric. Conversely, biofuels (e.g., for corn ethanol 320–375 km2/TW hr/yr) and biomass burning of energy crops for electricity (433–654 km2/TW hr/yr) take the most space per unit power. Most renewable energy production techniques, like wind and solar power, have intermediate values of this metric.

Den grafen avstedkommer umiddelbart tre Åj! - bobler over hodet mitt: 1) hvor likt fotavtrykket til vind og sol er fotavtrykket til olje og gass; 2) alle former for biomasse har et horribelt enormt fotavtrykk; og 3) hvor lite fotavtrykket til kjernekraft er.

(PS: også interessant at vannkraft breier seg så mye og kull så lite)
(ED: korrektur)