300 Years of FOSSIL FUELS in 300 Seconds

A nicely put together left handed artists summary of 300 years of fossil fuel (from the inbox).

An award winning youtube video no less



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Krugman on Hotelling and the 40% rule

Paul Krugman has a neat piece in the NY times reminiscing about his time as a research assistant for Nordhaus when the latter formualated the hotelling rule of non-renewable resource extraction.

Having seen Marty Weitzman recently present at the World Congress last year I can perfectly imagine how he came up with his 40% rule.

What is the 40% rule you ask?

What was wrong with those circulars? They were much too optimistic about the costs of alternative energy sources, especially alternatives to oil. Basically, the engineers were understating the difficulties involved. Later Marty Weitzman would formulate a law on this: the cost of alternatives to crude oil is 40% above the current price — whatever the current price is.

This is the sort of rule I like. Simple but also entirely doom-laden.

It is almost poetic. My guess is that our increased knowledge and technical expertise will have reduced the 40% rule to somewhere around 20-30%. Can I make a claim to have invented the "approximately 25% rule"?

The links in the Krugman article are worth following. Here is a taster.

The Answer, My Friend [NY Times]

And shining in the sun, too — or so say two papers cited by Brad Plumer, arguing that we can have a fully renewable-based, nuclear-free economy by 2050. And I’m sure that’s right — but I’m a bit skeptical about the cost estimates, for reasons having to do with personal career history.

The story: I effectively began my career as a professional economist way back in the summer of 1973, working as a research assistant for Bill Nordhaus. Nordhaus was in the early stages of a long and highly successful run of research into resource economics, and was trying to come up with a way to estimate “appropriate” energy prices. And he had come up with a wonderfully elegant approach, building off the classic Hotelling model of exhaustible resource pricing.

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Economist - special report on "Forests"

The always excellent economist has a great "special report" on forests. It is a fact filled and well written report.

The implications are serious and it is about time this was highlighted. The dynamic and feedback loops are crucial and deforestation is one reasons why climate change could speed up far beyond that by which we could do anything to further increases.

Think "tipping points". This is an impressively gloomy report and well timed.

What is interesting is the issue of paying forest owners not to deforest. Is this a good use of money? Should the West be paying developing countries not to deforest?

I have picked out just a few of the more choice quotes to provide a taster.

Seeing the wood [Economist]

This is the latest reason—and it is a big one—why destroying forests is a bad idea. Roughly half the dry weight of a tree is made up of stored carbon, most of which is released when the tree rots or is burned. For at least the past 10,000 years man has been contributing to this process by hacking and burning forests to make way for agriculture. About half the Earth’s original forest area has been cleared. Until the 1960s, by one estimate, changes in land use, which mostly means deforestation, accounted for most historic man-made emissions. And its contribution to emissions is still large: say 15-17% of the total, more than the share of all the world’s ships, cars, trains and planes.

Stopping deforestation would appear easier that weening us off oil and cars.

The outlook for the Amazon is also grave. Recent modelling suggests that the mutually reinforcing effects of increasing temperatures and aridity, forest fires and deforestation could bring the rainforest far closer than previously thought to “tipping points” at which it becomes ecologically unviable. So far 18% of the rainforest has been cleared. The loss of another 2%, according to a World Bank study last year, could start to trigger dieback in the forest’s relatively dry southern and south-eastern parts. A global temperature increase of 3.5%, comfortably within the current range of estimates for the end of this century, would put paid to half the rainforest. This would release much of the 50 gigatonnes of carbon it is estimated to contain—equivalent to ten years of global emissions from burning fossil fuels.

Only 2% to go until we reach the point of no return. We may get there a lot sooner that you think and then it will be too late.

The Earth’s need for forests to soak up carbon emissions is almost limitless. Saving the forest that is left should therefore be considered a modest aim. But even that will require huge improvements in forest management, such as reforming land registries and tightening up law enforcement. Above all, it will require governments to prize forest very much more highly than they do now. Otherwise there will be no chance of the many reforms required outside the forestry sector: in land-use planning and rural development, in agriculture, energy and infrastructure policies, and much else. It will also require politicians to get serious about climate change. All that amounts to a revolution, which is a lot to hope for. But if anything can help bring it about, forests might.

They are crucial in all sorts of ways because of the manifold services they provide. Western taxpayers need the Amazon rainforest to control their climate. Brazil needs it to help feed its rivers and generate hydro-power. Amazonian soya farmers need it to guarantee them decent rainfall. Yet policies at every level conspire to wreak its destruction. Changing them, in Brazil and across the tropical world, is a daunting task. But it is not impossible—and it must be done. The cost of failure would simply be too great.

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