By Tim Garrett: Thermodynamics of the Economy (interviews and papers)

Tim Garrett

Tim Garrett is the most important and least recognized physicist on the planet because he discovered a theory that explains and quantifies the relationship between wealth and energy consumption.

Here is Garrett’s home page with links to his papers:

http://www.inscc.utah.edu/~tgarrett/Economics/Economics.html

Here is a wikipedia page that explains his theory:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrett_relation

Here is a new interview with Tim Garrett:

http://www.ecoshock.org/2015/05/fires-raise-chernobyl-radiation-again.html

I’ve listened to Garrett’s previous interviews many times and never tire of them because there are so many difficult and important concepts to absorb.

http://www.ecoshock.org/2014/07/the-big-picture-like-it-or-not.html

http://www.ecoshock.org/2010/11/atmosphere-of-crisis.html

https://archive.org/details/IsClimateChangeUnstoppable

Here is a list of Garrett’s work compiled by Frank White:

https://citizenactionmonitor.wordpress.com/civilization-economic-collapse-links-to-all-posts-by-or-about-dr-tim-garretts-research/

Here is an August 2020 paper co-authored with Steve Keen:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0237672

By Dana Meadows: On Sustainable Systems

I recently re-watched this old lecture by Donella (Dana) Meadows. It is really good.

The date of the lecture is uncertain but I suspect about 2000 since she passed away in 2001.

We need more system thinkers like Dana Meadows.

Part 1 of 4

Part 2 of 4

Part 3 of 4

Part 4 of 4

By Steve Ludlum: Fantasy Islanders

“Nobody will admit that Europe is undone by peak oil, nobody will even discuss it or entertain the possibility! This isn’t economists in 2004 missing a prediction about what might happen in 2008. This is an entire army of exceptionally well-paid, over-educated analysts, policy makers, business leaders, economists, university professors, pundits, finance- and energy bloggers, fiction writers, poets and bass fishermen not seeing what is taking place right under their noses!

Welcome to Fantasy Island …”

http://www.economic-undertow.com/2015/04/26/fantasy-islanders/

And later in the comment section, Steve made this insightful comment:

“The current industrial regime is certainly non-remunerative as it is too effectively extractive. We get the excessive output we want now at the expense of the future. What the future arrives, all else being equal, there are massive throughput channels but output is a trickle – plus a lot of head scratching as to why.70% (roughly) of oil use is for personal transport, the rest is largely commercial transport (much of which is redundant or unnecessary) and chemical feedstocks including material required for pesticide production.

Big problem in food production is the asymmetric nature of the enterprise itself: it takes generations to learn how to farm a particular piece of land but two failed crops in a row will do in the farmer. Fast forward to 2015+ there is the climate curveball: how many more generations will it take to learn to farm? Is learning possible, can any farmer produce two crops in a row?

Fossil-fuel farming does work and it allows for a ‘one size fits all’ approach to all kinds of croplands. We can theoretically maintain the current regime for a few generations or so … to allow farmers to learn how to produce without petro-chemical inputs. Sadly, it is more likely that the military and motorists will fight over what remains of our fuel, crashing the current regime, leaving a lot to go hungry.”

By David Spratt: The Best Case is Pretty Bad

Given that most climate change predictions made to date have turned out worse than expected, I think it’s safe to say that the best case is several meters of sea level rise within 40 years.

I live on a beautiful beach.  My children probably won’t.

http://www.climatecodered.org/2015/05/hansen-says-its-crazy-to-think-that-2.html

The Most Fortunate Generations (George Monbiot)

“Fossil fuels helped us to fight wars of a horror never contemplated before, but they also reduced the need for war. For the first time in human history ‐ indeed for the first time in biological history ‐ there was a surplus of available energy. We could survive without having to fight someone for the resources we needed. Our freedoms, our comforts, our prosperity are all the products of fossil carbon, whose combustion creates the gas carbon dioxide, which is primarily responsible for global warming.

Ours are the most fortunate generations that have ever lived. Ours might also be the most fortunate generations that ever will. We inhabit the brief historical interlude between ecological constraint and ecological catastrophe.”

— George Monbiot, 2006

http://global-fever.org/ch6.pdf

Hat tip Gail Zawacki.

As Good and As Bad As It Gets…

There is no magic unknown “dilithium crystal” energy in the universe.  Fission and oil are as good as it gets. Fusion is too hard.

It takes a rare and special planet to make oil. We blew through several hundred million years worth of oil in about 100 years.  And you can’t do fission without oil.

It was a lot of fun but we killed a lot of species and ruined our home in the process.

By Alice Friedemann: Tilting at Windmills: Spain’s Disastrous Attempt to Replace Fossil Fuels with Solar Photovoltaics

This is an amazingly good article.

Thanks to Alice Friedemann for her effort in helping us understand the truth.

It seems that the more inconvenient the truth, the more our species denies it. This, for me, is the most fascinating aspect of our behavior.

http://energyskeptic.com/2015/tilting-at-windmills-spains-solar-pv/