Comments on: Planned Economic Recession

By: PaddikJ

PaddikJ — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 04:01:50 +0000

I’m not sure what to make of this post. Does Roger really find this lunacy creditable? Command and Control economies have been an abysmal failure; the ones which have survived have done so on shirt-tails of the market economies, which have lifted millions out of poverty, and will do so for millions more provided governments resist the temptation to do more than regulate just enough to dampen the feast and famine swings of pure laissez-faire economies. And make no mistake: An induced recession would require a command and control approach.

But this debate is premature. We don’t propose solutions for problems that are ill-defined at best, and possibly non-existent; and there is not a single piece of evidence to support the notion of dangerous, human-abetted climate change. The hypothesis rests on claims that we understand climates of the past & have a firm understanding of natural variability. We don’t. Paleoclimatology is close to a pseudo-science at the moment, and attitudes will have to change quite a bit if it is ever to mature into a true science.

If we were wise, we’d be in a crash program to better understand the wild swings of natural climate variability, and how best to prepare for them.

If it is true, as the architect Le Corbusier once noted, that the well-stated problem finds its own solution, then the converse must be equally true: A poorly stated problem can never be solved. We need to be better problem-seekers.

By: JamesG

JamesG — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 12:31:49 +0000

Mark
You’ll be interested to hear that “France is a hotbed of activity on [Thorium-fueled] Molten Salt reactors”, ie Liquid Fluoride. Straight from the horses mouth here:

http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/2007/08/thanks-for-invite.html

Note also the comments from Dr. Elsa Merle-Lucotte (assistant professor in the LPSC lab in Grenoble, France)

By: stan

stan — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:13:55 +0000

“Obviously, such a recession would result in the collapse of the Free Market Capitalist system of economic management. No-one could possibly want that, could they?”

No one. Except a Watermelon.

By: Paul Biggs

Paul Biggs — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 07:57:34 +0000

Taking this post and ‘The Carbon-Free Energy Gap’ post together, for example,

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/the-carbon-free-energy-gap-4539

it is becoming blindingly obvious that global CO2 reductions are impossible on the timescales demanded, and we don’t have viable alternatives with which to replace fossil fuels. Developing countries will more than make up for any CO2 emission reductions by the developed world. ‘Climate policy’ is therefore a front for the real UN agenda of wealth redistribution, and will have no effect on climate. So, rather than deliberately engineering a recession, we need to keep burning fossil fuels and keep our economies strong in order to facilitate the development of viable alternatives.

Meanwhile, the world is in a cooling trend (since 2002) despite rising CO2 emissions.

By: Jos

Jos — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 07:18:14 +0000

(4) well, a few weeks ago the largest Dutch party quite suddenly announced that maybe nuclear fission is not such a bad idea after all. Before that, fission had been more or less of a taboo for years. Interestingly, even some outspoken political opponents of fission did not reject it immediately.

Interestingly, putting fission back on the agenda appears to motivated by the combination of last years high energy prices, worries about global warming, the recogniztion that wind and solar are no viable alternatives at the moment and the recognition that we will be running out of natural gas reserves in a couple a decades (we, the Dutch, have quite a lot natural gas reserves, Hans Erren knowns a lot more about that) . Probably our (potentially increasing) reliance on Russian oil and gas may also have had something to do with it.

By: MarkR

MarkR — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 05:52:15 +0000

Obviously, such a recession would result in the collapse of the Free Market Capitalist system of economic management. No-one could possibly want that, could they?

By: Mark Bahner

Mark Bahner — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 01:34:10 +0000

I’m not expecting a recession in China anytime soon. But what I don’t understand is why China and India (not to mention Japan, South Korea, Germany, and the rest of the EU) aren’t aggressively pursuing development of thorium fission or (non-tokamak) fusion power.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that building one 1000 MW coal-fired power plant every week for years on end isn’t sustainable (even from the standpoint of trying to supply enough coal to meet the demand).

By: Hans Erren

Hans Erren — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 22:20:41 +0000

I am expecting the chinese recession anytime now, which will restore the downgoing emission growth trend.
http://home.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/co2sres.gif

By: darwin

darwin — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:50:36 +0000

As far as I can tell, this means that if you can plan a recession you can plan an economy. In that situation, government may have to take on the function of overall wealth distribution, which may require some suppression of civil dissent by people opposed to the distribution scheme — after all, you can’t think people will just quietly accept their lot. Now, can democracy survive a prolonged recession of several decades? Is there a good example of one that has? Are there dictatorships that have survived without increased repression in the face of declining living standards?
I can’t think of any. So, the authors would appear to be indicating we face the most widespread repression the world has ever seen or will require transformation of human character of Biblical proportions in order to save the planet. Unless technology comes to the rescue, or these prophets of doom like most others are proven wrong, our choices and prospects appear pretty bleak.

By: stan

stan — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:19:43 +0000

“latest scientific understanding of climate change allied with current emission trends and a commitment to ‘limiting average global temperature increases to below 4 C above pre-industrial levels’ ”

No one has an understanding based on science which will lead to a 4 C increase. Some have an understanding based on models or faith, but none that are based on science.