Author Topic: Review: There is no tomorrow  (Read 2743 times)

Offline Kbop

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Review: There is no tomorrow
« on: October 05, 2014, 11:21:23 AM »
There's No Tomorrow (peak oil, energy, growth & the future)  by the Post Carbon Inst. 
There's No Tomorrow (peak oil, energy, growth & the future)

This is an animated half hour documentary about resource depletion.  It combines Malthus, Hubbard, Keynes and others in a well integrated explanation of the theories behind the 1972 book "The Limits to Growth".
I recommend this for people trying to understand how shortages can effect our integrated world economy.
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« Last Edit: October 05, 2014, 12:41:01 PM by Kbop »

Offline JohnyMac

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Re: Review: There is no tomorrow
« Reply #1 on: October 05, 2014, 12:12:37 PM »
Thx for posting Kbop.  :thumbsUp:

I will watch it later this week.
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Offline Erick

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Re: Review: There is no tomorrow
« Reply #2 on: October 05, 2014, 05:16:07 PM »
Excellent link!! :cowboy:

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Re: Review: There is no tomorrow
« Reply #3 on: October 05, 2014, 05:34:21 PM »
This documentary literately contained an army of bad arguments, fallacies and inconsistencies... And I have no chance of addressing all of them, but I will have to address some of them because history has tough me that ignoring a sale attempt like this on grounds of "people know better" always ends badly.

Problem presented:
The exponential growth of human energy consumption does not meet the growth of it's production.

Common Fallacy:
Access to certain natural resources caused economic/population growth and so the increased consumption of those resources along with it.

Access and use of economic resources does not cause a nation's economic/population growth.
Example USSR vs. Hong Kong The USSR had vast access to natural resources their economy was a basket case and population growth was highly limited. Hong Kong's largest natural resource is Felspar, yet they have the strongest and most rapidly growing economy in the world.

Common Inconsistency:
Video displays multiple exponential growth graphs one of which is "paper" except the paper economy and the consumption of it's resources has almost collapsed due to the information age e-mails, e-letters, texts, tweets, posts have replaced much of this resource's consumption in the developing world.

This also leads to an untouched notion. resource consumption efficiency as a way of offsetting global natural resource depletion.
Like in the case of paper.
compare a hypothetical grain harvest. in advanced economy A to a undeveloped economy B. The goal of the harvest is to gather the energy of the grain while using the least amount of energy yielding a greater return.
most people know this as ROI "return on investment"
The reason the farmer in economy A uses a combine instead of a workforce of  farm labor with sickles and scythes (which he could) is because he yields a greater monetary* return with the modern method.**

The reason the farmer in economy B has to use farm labor is because of:
1) Lack of trade opportunities, he has no access to the combine commercially.
2) No access to investment capital, he nor anyone else can is able to invest in his enterprise.
3) Economic trade off is to great, his area suffers a external tradeoff not allowing him to own a combine such as angry rhinoceroses, but more likely kleptocratic governments bent on "taxing" his combine.

*because the value of our world/US money and credit system is not consistent and fluxuates frequently due to it's fiat nature, an investment might not yield the same return one year as it did the year prior, while the energy expended and received is the same.
**A farmer can over invest (malinvenst) in the harvest of his crops greatly reducing the actual EROEI of the harvest. while yealding an equal or greater monetary return. This is common in the US due to the plethora of crop/agricultural subsidies and cheap credit loans encouraged my our government.

Also rapid shots of information poor hocky stick graphs in a video aimed a very "broad" (stupid) demographic is a cheap idiological sales (propaganda) trick that deserves a fuck you to the creator.


Common Contradiction: Video rightfully criticizes an unsustainable economic model such as that of the current world financial system then ends up promoting the economic models made by the guy who helped create/supported bringing it about in the first place. J. M. Keynes.

Ask yourself what is the EROEI on human energy/resource consumption? Is it "plastic pumpkins and lazy burger eaters" like the video suggests?

Resource allocation: the reason the video displays "plastic pumpkins and lazy burger eaters" (PP&LBE) is to illustrate a poor use of economic resources. But how is that gauged or measured? Yeah no hockey stick graphs on that issue...
I'm personally of the opinion that effective resource allocation is the world's most in demand service/resource. ebay, alibaba, pintrest, twitter, facebook. primary function is measuring and meeting consumer demand. this prevents malinvestment of resources and increased profits to the capitalist.

Example:
Perhaps Pintrest discovers a popular pumpkin solidarity movement suggesting a reduction in the demand for pumpkins and possible violence towards pumpkins users this Halloween. Sells this information to a Brazilian investor who then buys 10,000 plastic pumpkins from Cambodia where now 20 15 year olds can now feed their parrents, so Mrs. Smith won't have to clean pumpkin guts off her front porch this year or the next twenty because she bought Manuel's Genuine Plastic Pumpkin Lantern. The profits from which Manuel can now go skiing with in Aspen Colorado.

Other then physical resource limitations what causes energy/resource supply to not meet demand of the consumer?
This plays in on my previous point a market always tends to make it's self more efficient, what is holding back ours? In short, any non voluntary exchanges. Kid steels an apple, grocer can't sell it and employ his friend to sweep the floor.
The biggest perpetrator of this is your government.

Solution presented:
The ending, granted did surprise me. I was expecting the: one world happy family :) (total not ruled by a world political elite). But instead got a call for self sufficiency, pleasant surprise. only down side is that resource allocation and investment tends to be lower with it.

Quote
“In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill… The real enemy then is humanity itself.” – Alexander King and Bertrand Schneider, The First Global Revolution: A Report by the Council of The Club of Rome, 1991

Offline Kbop

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Re: Review: There is no tomorrow
« Reply #4 on: October 05, 2014, 07:12:10 PM »
Burt;
I agree with some of your observations - one reason I cited the producer "The Post Carbon Institute".  They do have a specific point of view and this is an advertising vehicle.  Like many Malthusian doom criers many people miss the fact that Malthus' graphs are following not leading indicators.  It does, again in my opinion, weave the ideas together - it certainly isn't a white paper :).  If someone wants accurate modeling, I recommend starting with the book this was based on "The Limits to Growth".  This book can be subjected to actual mathematical analysis (specifically statistical modeling).  But the video goes a long way to describing what holding capacity is. 
Interesting side note - a 1988 Masters thesis at Cal Tech did re-examine the data and methods used and came to the same basic conclusions stated in 1972.
I do think they missed one very important point, when holding capacity is reached the population will oscillate, not crash - this is shown in most studies of animal populations.  (same issue you mentioned with the hockey stick charts - implied POV not stated information).
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I love lively debate and look forward to more.  Thanks Burt!

as an editorialist in Japan stated "a dose of reality is the best cure for propaganda"