I have just been reviewing an old pamphlet written by Frederic Bastiat, who gives many examples (pertinent to economics) of things seen and things not seen. Two things just occurred to me: one, humans often draw very small boundaries (small in a space and time sense) around the consequences they will consider of a given action. Don't even get me started on a given inaction, which humans tend not to see any consequences of at all. Then, I remembered the wonderful series you did using playing card outcomes as a metaphor for how often people could expect various weather phenomena to repeat and it struck me that much of what one sees claiming 'extreme weather' reaches that characterization by 'not seeing' any weather outside of a chosen and very short-small space-time boundary. The predominant pattern in any system is a balancing loop, particularly when you are talking about nature. That Earth's weather would not have many, many mechanisms for balancing extreme weather defies reason. But, if one doesn't look for them, one doesn't find them. I think that is true across the board. I was also recently seeing various articles about the US 'de-materializing." Yeah, but how will those calculations look when we get around to replacing a lot of old infrastructure, which requires materials? If we are very smart, we may be able to reduce the materials to some amount less than what is being replaced, but we aren't going to eliminate them entirely and there are now more people, which suggests more infrastructure (although, again of varying ages and thus varying replacement schedules. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I think your metaphor probably works for a lot of issues beyond just carbon dioxide and 'global warming.' Only if we know the space-time of the balancing loop, and reject artificial boundaries, can we draw any conclusions about whether some thing -- good or bad -- is 'increasing' or 'decreasing'. I think people (often experts and reporters of experts) tend to choose those boundaries very arbitrarily. I encourage you to make as much of your work regarding the metaphor accessible to others as you can! I think this is very important.
Thank you for sharing this, sir. I think the essence of his thesis is that as economies become more advanced, the trend towards greater efficiency drives the need for more material. The slope of that trendline should be steeper in developing countries than in advanced. It would then be interesting to examine those the trendlines in materials against trendlines in energy use and an economies aggregate energy density.
For the economists out there, is there such a thing as "aggregate energy density," an index that quantifies a country's weighted energy use in units of TWH per kilometer-squared?
Interesting topic and approach. But for most of us, it is the waste of materials that is the major concern, not the absolute production/mining/manufacturing or even use of them.
Some of Wernick's materials are not raw materials at all, but final products (like chicken).
I have my doubts about the generalization of environmental impact of materials sourcing. Even the world's largest copper mine looked at from a continental viewpoint is tiny. There are some materials sources that have near-disastrous local effects I'm sure. But again,even in the worst of cases, the areas affected are infinitesimal compared to the vastness of the Earth. Shouldn't happen, but in less regulated countries, it does.
Human's are material beings, physically, at least. And 10 billion humans will need more materials - more food, more clothing, more shoes, more furniture, more transportation, more entertainment: more everything. That is inescapable.
Any measure of materiality will tell us something -- maybe we can get the same benefit from less -- but it is different for 'chicken' compared to 'iron'.
Water is a good example. The US Southwest has continuing "water shortages". But there is no shortage of water in the world. The California coast has water problem, while fighting a fight with the unnerving behavior of the water that is the Pacific Ocean and constant worries about too much water, too much rain, as well as not enough rain.
The Southwest US problem with water looks like a material problem but I don't believe it is. It is a misuse and allocation-of-resource problem. And a technological problem. Desalination of salt water is a mature technology and small scale nuclear is ready to go -- combined, they could solve the water problems of the California's megalopolis.
We humans just have to get smarter about materials -- try to calculate the mass of current human materials use compared to the mass of the planet Earth. The result is too small to measure.
"Such measures [of aggregate materials use] would find broad interest and offer governments a more comprehensive quantitative basis for decisions on natural resources policy."
??? More than what? Which decisions about "natural resource policy."
Good question! These results seem to be based on the idea that technocratic policy decisions about natural resources can be made in a vacuum. They can't. Decisions on natural resources impact our economy and, in some cases, our social capital. This type of thinking is a major contributor to the mess we know as Net Zero.
If CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere causes economic and other harm, the higher the concertation, the greater the harm as I think is the case, it makes sense to adopt low-cost policies that will eventually get us to net zero and perhaps net negative. The key is to make sure the policies harm growth less than the CO2 concentration.
However, any marginal CO2 effect will depend on the incremental increase divided by the initial value. I.e., a 10 ppm increase at 400 ppm has less effect than the same at 300.
Possibly. “Marginal” is tricky when what we are trying to affect is a large slow moving variable like CO2 concentration when its effect are spread out over decades.
I'm biased, but I think de-materialization of the American semiconductor industry was a mistake.
I'd love to see a look specifically at the materials of the semiconductor industry. It's not the largest industry in the US, but ranks among the top five.
Some of the materials involved are Si, Boron, Germanium, Indium, Gold, Copper, Aluminum, Gallium and, if you include batteries used to power smalls electronic systems, Lithium.
A few of the materials needed for the semiconductor industry are not available in Canada or the US. But most of them are.
The energy and water costs of running a semiconductor fab are large. But the pollution compared to many other industries is quite low.
Even if this industry has high labor costs, the value add of most electronics products is huge compared to many other industries. And of course, electronics products enable many other industries, so there is an economic scale up effect.
About a decade ago, there was this thinking that electronics products had been reduced to commodities and were no longer worth producing in the US. As a result, many segments of the American semiconductor industry were off-shored. As I've said, I have no doubt that American de-materialization of the semiconductor industry was economically and environmentally stupid.
It would be great if an economic expert had a closer look at this.
Just a note on presentation; for those among us who happen to be color-blind (including me, sadly) those squiggly graphs with the subtle color differences approach unreadability. For maximum clarity, it is nice to have graphs with points marked by exes, ohs, triangles, squares etc.
Interesting analysis by Mr. Wernick, and long overdue. I’m interested in seeing more research around what the full levelized cost of some of these technologies is. Some pious westerners hold their noses up and brag of their “clean energy”, for example, all the while ignoring the distant but “global” environmental impacts and human rights abuses required to produce those products. What is the all in cost of these materials? Lots of target rich research opportunities here.
I have just been reviewing an old pamphlet written by Frederic Bastiat, who gives many examples (pertinent to economics) of things seen and things not seen. Two things just occurred to me: one, humans often draw very small boundaries (small in a space and time sense) around the consequences they will consider of a given action. Don't even get me started on a given inaction, which humans tend not to see any consequences of at all. Then, I remembered the wonderful series you did using playing card outcomes as a metaphor for how often people could expect various weather phenomena to repeat and it struck me that much of what one sees claiming 'extreme weather' reaches that characterization by 'not seeing' any weather outside of a chosen and very short-small space-time boundary. The predominant pattern in any system is a balancing loop, particularly when you are talking about nature. That Earth's weather would not have many, many mechanisms for balancing extreme weather defies reason. But, if one doesn't look for them, one doesn't find them. I think that is true across the board. I was also recently seeing various articles about the US 'de-materializing." Yeah, but how will those calculations look when we get around to replacing a lot of old infrastructure, which requires materials? If we are very smart, we may be able to reduce the materials to some amount less than what is being replaced, but we aren't going to eliminate them entirely and there are now more people, which suggests more infrastructure (although, again of varying ages and thus varying replacement schedules. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I think your metaphor probably works for a lot of issues beyond just carbon dioxide and 'global warming.' Only if we know the space-time of the balancing loop, and reject artificial boundaries, can we draw any conclusions about whether some thing -- good or bad -- is 'increasing' or 'decreasing'. I think people (often experts and reporters of experts) tend to choose those boundaries very arbitrarily. I encourage you to make as much of your work regarding the metaphor accessible to others as you can! I think this is very important.
Thank you for sharing this, sir. I think the essence of his thesis is that as economies become more advanced, the trend towards greater efficiency drives the need for more material. The slope of that trendline should be steeper in developing countries than in advanced. It would then be interesting to examine those the trendlines in materials against trendlines in energy use and an economies aggregate energy density.
For the economists out there, is there such a thing as "aggregate energy density," an index that quantifies a country's weighted energy use in units of TWH per kilometer-squared?
Interesting topic and approach. But for most of us, it is the waste of materials that is the major concern, not the absolute production/mining/manufacturing or even use of them.
Some of Wernick's materials are not raw materials at all, but final products (like chicken).
I have my doubts about the generalization of environmental impact of materials sourcing. Even the world's largest copper mine looked at from a continental viewpoint is tiny. There are some materials sources that have near-disastrous local effects I'm sure. But again,even in the worst of cases, the areas affected are infinitesimal compared to the vastness of the Earth. Shouldn't happen, but in less regulated countries, it does.
Human's are material beings, physically, at least. And 10 billion humans will need more materials - more food, more clothing, more shoes, more furniture, more transportation, more entertainment: more everything. That is inescapable.
Any measure of materiality will tell us something -- maybe we can get the same benefit from less -- but it is different for 'chicken' compared to 'iron'.
Water is a good example. The US Southwest has continuing "water shortages". But there is no shortage of water in the world. The California coast has water problem, while fighting a fight with the unnerving behavior of the water that is the Pacific Ocean and constant worries about too much water, too much rain, as well as not enough rain.
The Southwest US problem with water looks like a material problem but I don't believe it is. It is a misuse and allocation-of-resource problem. And a technological problem. Desalination of salt water is a mature technology and small scale nuclear is ready to go -- combined, they could solve the water problems of the California's megalopolis.
We humans just have to get smarter about materials -- try to calculate the mass of current human materials use compared to the mass of the planet Earth. The result is too small to measure.
"Such measures [of aggregate materials use] would find broad interest and offer governments a more comprehensive quantitative basis for decisions on natural resources policy."
??? More than what? Which decisions about "natural resource policy."
Good question! These results seem to be based on the idea that technocratic policy decisions about natural resources can be made in a vacuum. They can't. Decisions on natural resources impact our economy and, in some cases, our social capital. This type of thinking is a major contributor to the mess we know as Net Zero.
If CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere causes economic and other harm, the higher the concertation, the greater the harm as I think is the case, it makes sense to adopt low-cost policies that will eventually get us to net zero and perhaps net negative. The key is to make sure the policies harm growth less than the CO2 concentration.
However, any marginal CO2 effect will depend on the incremental increase divided by the initial value. I.e., a 10 ppm increase at 400 ppm has less effect than the same at 300.
Possibly. “Marginal” is tricky when what we are trying to affect is a large slow moving variable like CO2 concentration when its effect are spread out over decades.
I'm biased, but I think de-materialization of the American semiconductor industry was a mistake.
I'd love to see a look specifically at the materials of the semiconductor industry. It's not the largest industry in the US, but ranks among the top five.
Some of the materials involved are Si, Boron, Germanium, Indium, Gold, Copper, Aluminum, Gallium and, if you include batteries used to power smalls electronic systems, Lithium.
A few of the materials needed for the semiconductor industry are not available in Canada or the US. But most of them are.
The energy and water costs of running a semiconductor fab are large. But the pollution compared to many other industries is quite low.
Even if this industry has high labor costs, the value add of most electronics products is huge compared to many other industries. And of course, electronics products enable many other industries, so there is an economic scale up effect.
About a decade ago, there was this thinking that electronics products had been reduced to commodities and were no longer worth producing in the US. As a result, many segments of the American semiconductor industry were off-shored. As I've said, I have no doubt that American de-materialization of the semiconductor industry was economically and environmentally stupid.
It would be great if an economic expert had a closer look at this.
Just a note on presentation; for those among us who happen to be color-blind (including me, sadly) those squiggly graphs with the subtle color differences approach unreadability. For maximum clarity, it is nice to have graphs with points marked by exes, ohs, triangles, squares etc.
Thanks for this
We will definitely try to accommodate!
Iddo just shared with me this paper of his, clearly showing that we are of the same generation!
https://phe.rockefeller.edu/docs/Wernick%20IS&T%20Winter%202014.pdf
Interesting analysis by Mr. Wernick, and long overdue. I’m interested in seeing more research around what the full levelized cost of some of these technologies is. Some pious westerners hold their noses up and brag of their “clean energy”, for example, all the while ignoring the distant but “global” environmental impacts and human rights abuses required to produce those products. What is the all in cost of these materials? Lots of target rich research opportunities here.
Excellent food for thought!