[Vo]:Is global warming unstoppable?

[Horace Heffner]

http://www.physorg.com/news178178343.html

http://tinyurl.com/ylcn43s


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Garrett says his study's key finding "is that accumulated economic  
production over the course of history has been tied to the rate of  
energy consumption at a global level through a constant factor."


That "constant" is 9.7 (plus or minus 0.3) milliwatts per inflation- 
adjusted 1990 dollar. So if you look at economic and energy  
production at any specific time in history, "each inflation-adjusted  
1990 dollar would be supported by 9.7 milliwatts of primary energy  
consumption," Garrett says.


Perhaps the most provocative implication of Garrett's theory is that  
conserving energy doesn't reduce energy use, but spurs economic  
growth and more energy use.


"Making civilization more energy efficient simply allows it to grow  
faster and consume more energy," says Garrett.


"If society invests sufficient resources into alternative and new,  
non-carbon energy supplies, then perhaps it can continue growing  
without increasing global warming," Garrett says.



"Ultimately, it's not clear that policy decisions have the capacity  
to change the future course of civilization."


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Best regards,

Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/

Re: [Vo]:Is global warming unstoppable?

[Stephen A. Lawrence]

On 28/11/09 10:55 PM, Horace Heffner wrote:


http://www.physorg.com/news178178343.html

http://tinyurl.com/ylcn43s


Selected quotes:
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"Ultimately, it's not clear that policy decisions have the capacity to
change the future course of civilization."


I am reminded of a discussion we had many years ago with some folks who 
were developing a parallel computer which used many microprocessors on 
cards interconnected across a switch (something new in those days).


We asked how you stopped the whole machine in the event of a single 
process encountering an error.


"You can't do that" we were told.  "It's not possible to stop the whole 
thing at once."


I relayed this information to my boss, who laughed and said, "BS.  Of 
course you can.  Kick the plug out of the wall -- it all stops!  So, we 
*know* you can do it -- now all we need to do is fine a more elegant 
mechanism."


In the case of "policy decisions" -- well, major wars have been fought, 
or avoided, as a result of such decisions.  I'd say major wars pretty 
clearly have the capacity to change the course of civilization.  And so, 
we have an existence proof:  Policy decisions *can* affect the course of 
civilization, and the assertion quoted above is obviously false.  Thus, 
we can set aside the blanket denial and look at the actual question, 
which is at what level, and to what degree, can policy decisions have an 
impact, and how can we maximize the impact in ways we want to see?


Remember, Hari Seldon was fictitious, and in fact his "creation" 
resulted in a contradiction:  His own singular actions changed the 
course of civilization in a way that consideration of human behavior en 
masse could not have predicted.  His existence disproved his hypothesis.