A Note On Adventures In Flatland — Part II

I am aware that some of the concepts introduced in Part II are difficult. Species extinctions driven by human actions are easy to understand, but thermodynamic models relating energy and the global economy are very hard to understand.

I want to point out that humans, especially orthodox economists, are just as deluded as I said they are, a point which becomes easier to make when we consider Paul Krugman's Could Fighting Global Warming Be Cheap and Free? (hat tip, reader Reed).

This just in: Saving the planet would be cheap; it might even be free.

But will anyone believe the good news?

I’ve just been reading two new reports on the economics of fighting climate change: a big study by a blue-ribbon international group, the New Climate Economy Project, and a working paper from the International Monetary Fund. Both claim that strong measures to limit carbon emissions would have hardly any negative effect on economic growth, and might actually lead to faster growth. This may sound too good to be true, but it isn’t. These are serious, careful analyses.

But you know that such assessments will be met with claims that it’s impossible to break the link between economic growth and ever-rising emissions of greenhouse gases, a position I think of as “climate despair.” The most dangerous proponents of climate despair are on the anti-environmentalist right. But they receive aid and comfort from other groups, including some on the left, who have their own reasons for getting it wrong...

For the record, I am not political. I am neither on the "right" nor the "left," but I am squarely in Krugman's climate "despair" camp. According to Krugman, a person is in the "despair" camp if he believes "the only way to limit carbon emissions is to bring an end to economic growth."

Going back to Tim Garrett's thermodynamic model, think about this next Krugman quote. It's time to pull out the red font.

And you sometimes see hard scientists [like Garrett] making arguments along the same lines [i.e., there are limits to growth], largely (I think) because they don’t understand what economic growth means.

They think of it as a crude, physical thing, a matter simply of producing more stuff, and don’t take into account the many choices — about what to consume, about which technologies to use — that go into producing a dollar’s worth of G.D.P.

It is quite clear that Paul Krugman's feet have left the ground altogether. After all, isn't the ground one stands on, nay, the planet Earth itself, merely "a crude physical thing?"

We might think of Krugman's view this way:

Why should the Laws of Economics—i.e., the Laws of Human Desire—be constrained by mere Physical Reality?

So sayeth Paul, who finishes with a flourish.

So here’s what you need to know: Climate despair is all wrong. The idea that economic growth and climate action are incompatible may sound hardheaded and realistic, but it’s actually a fuzzy-minded misconception. If we ever get past the special interests and ideology that have blocked action to save the planet, we’ll find that [fixing global warming] is cheaper and easier than almost anyone imagines.

There is always safety in numbers. It's a Really Big Club, the one Paul Krugman belongs to. Tragically, it is also an outsized lunatic asylum. Krugman is a master of existential threat filtering (Adventures In Flatland, part I).

I thought this note might clear a few things up for some of you.

Comments

[Brian]

As you have pointed out many times, economists are, taken as a whole, delusional mystics convinced of their own superiority and of the "science" of their mysticism. That these people are allowed anywhere near the leaders of anything is probably as good an indication that Flatland exists as anything else. For what rational beings would place their faith (and it is faith) in a group of people whose theories are largely based on assumptions that are demonstrably false in the real world, whose predictions have been shown to be spectacularly wrong (and consistently so), and who believe that when the theory meets reality, it is reality that must change. Only in Flatland.

[Charles]

"Despair" is an emotion, which is a valid response to the thought, "impossible to break the link between economic growth and ever-rising emissions of greenhouse gases." It's a little weird/manipulative to use an emotional response to label a logical position.

Sounds like another case of, "it makes me feel bad, so I disagree."

It doesn't matter how many wacky concepts you call $ and include in the GDP. If there's energy lying about it will get used. Energy intensity of the GDP changed in the 70s during the oil embargo because there was no other choice.

CoolPlanet technology supposedly can generate high-octane gasoline and biochar directly from wood, corn cobs, etc.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterdetwiler/2013/12/11/cool-planet-a-company-that-makes-biochar-and-gasoline/
If it actually works, it sounds fantastic. Google is investing and other heavy hitters:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=zkYVlZ9v_0o#t=590
It's carbon negative, because you take the biochar (fancy name for charcoal) and put it onto crop fields to improve the soil. Full stop. This is where the fantasy starts. The technology is being promoted as if it will never occur to anyone to make the 'biochar' into pellets and sell it as fuel. This is like assuming a piece of candy of the floor of a kindergarten will not be picked up and eaten.

[Reed]

Thanks Dave for the 'hat tip", and the repair work on my awkward
heads-up.

I stubbornly flail on this mortal coil in the hopes to see
some terrible punishment inflicted on what I once thought was
willful ignorance, but now more and more appears to be willful
idiocy. Maybe I'll yet see the rest of Paul pull his feet six feet under that ground they now hover over. Oh sorry, that wasn't very nice.

[colinc]

As a follow up to Brian's comment...

Don't place faith in human beings
human beings are unreliable things

It's sad, really, seeing Krugman and so many other techno-utopian halfwits splashing around, grasping at straws, not unlike the drowning victims from the Titanic. It would seem Agent K was mostly correct, "...the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they DO NOT [want to] KNOW ABOUT IT!"

[Alexander Ač]

Thanks Dave!

Moments ago I clicked on DOTE I shared this Krugman's masterpiece on facebook, with a really desperate comment. It is hard to describe how someone can be as much ignorant about his own ignorance.

One could call it metaignorance. It is beyond my ability to describe it, but actually it IS described in almost every article here on this blog.

But Flatlanders don't care. They even see that describing the reality is dangerous. And on this particular matter they are right. It IS dangerous for them.

Alex