95 comments on Thoughts after a trip to Botswana
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95 comments on Thoughts after a trip to Botswana
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Well, anyone who has read Jared Diamond's Collapse or studied history in general must come to the conclusion that societies don't do a very good job anticipating problems and correcting them.
I have zero expectations that the crisis that is really upon us today will be resolved without a great deal of significant and real pain.
Todd
Thanks for this HO, I’m afraid you are spotting something here.... And it is puzzling that SA suddenly (seemingly) is standing to its knees in this kind of trouble. Didn’t they see it coming?
Now to Todd’s reply …
Agreed: I see these growing energy challenges as a parallel to the “Neville Chamberlain”-syndrome. The problem is too large and obvious to recognize …. And on top of that, this world is governed by old men - and old men tend to see just a few years ahead.
I tried to Google “Neville Chamberlain statue”, no hits hmmmm ...... I can smell bad years for the Statue-industry for the years to come...
In response to the question as to whether they saw it coming - to a considerable degree I believe that those running the system did. But it has become largely a political decision as to whether to spend money on maintenance and new plants, when there are other demands that have louder voices at the table.
You have only to see how many decisions on new power plants are being influenced by arguments other than need. So that when the need comes . . . . .
I tend to agree with you that those in charge of running the system did see the problems coming... but were relatively powerless to react properly for a number of reasons.
In the case of S.A., one recent press release posted in yesterday's drumbeat suggests the law of receding horizons is also at work. Eskom's previous estimates for fuel costs (coal and diesel) were naively low, and now they have cash flow flow problems (maybe their past projections for fuel costs were based on old Yergin/CERA numbers ???).
So now S.A. is increasing electric rates by 60% to cover the cash flow problems instead of for finaincing the planned buildout of their infrastructure.
Thank you for that "influenced" link HO. Another case of bone-headed GW fantasies interfering with constructive action on the energy crisis front. No wonder Simmons and Deffeyes are frustrated over the climate change distraction.
Right now the politicians think counting CO2 molecules is more important than producing enough electricity for the future. We'll see what they masses think of that idea a few years from now when they become familiar with the terms "load shedding," "brown outs" etc
It is possible that AGW is simply the politial ruse being used to ultimately justify massive forced energy conservation, to paper over the fact that oil, gas and coal has peaked. As long as demand can be lowered to less than available supply then you really don't have an energy shortage per se beyond peak. I expect that we will see increasingly large targets for reduction of GHG which will force reduced consumption to stay just under the supply curve. While this may not be a grand conspiracy, the reality for civilization may be that it is far safer to delude ourselves about damage to the atmosphere, pat ourselves on the back for our effort to stop it and maintain a semblance of civil order rather than risk the chaos, social breakdown, and military exploits that may follow a broad acceptance and understandig of energy depletion.
Another illogical conspiracy theory to justify a thesis that AGW theory is wrong. How far can you stretch reality to justify your position? Your theory just doesn't make sense - do you really think it is easier for governments to persuade people of AGW than it is to simply say "energy is running out - we must take steps to use less"? People don't want to accept AGW theory simply because the answer to it is to use much less energy, and they don't think there is any problem with its supply. But if much more effort was made to demonstrate the reality of energy availability being in decline (this is clearly the case in terms of per capita energy availability), it would be much much easier to get people to conserve what's left than tenuously through the theory of AGW.
And to sendoilplease - take your head out of the sand and look a few years beyond next year. Constructive action on either front leads to the same end result, and just describing something as bone-headed doesn't make it so - it just makes you look like an ill-educated (or ill-researched) fool.
Just last week I was talking to a friend who was an MP in South Africa up until a few years ago and he told me that back in his time Eskom were warning the govt that they'd run into the buffers some time in late-2007/early-2008 unless they started investing in new capacity.
So the issue was given due prominence (in policy circles at least) and it was most definitely the political decision not to authorise new generating plant or work on constraining demand that has led to the rolling blackouts of recent months.
Regards
Luke
Of course do we do an even worse job of highlighting the problems that we never had because we planned for them?
Well, re Diamond at least, no, no one has to come to the conclusion you mention, especially as Diamond gives plenty of examples of societies that 'chose' to succeed and overcome their environmental problems. Tokugawa Japan, Germany, pre-contact New Guinea, Tikopia ... there might be others, can't remember offhand.
People read Diamond the same way they read the Bible, missing out everything that doesn't support their preconceptions. We are talking a guy who rabbits on about what a great job the Indonesian government and the oil companies are doing saving the rainforests hahahahahahahah ... hardly the ultimate doomer poster-boy.
You might want to explain what relevance these have to the current/upcoming crisis.
And, as a matter of accuracy, I had no preconceptions vis-a-vis Collapse. Nor, did I ever see Diamond as a "poster boy" for doomerism or view the book as a "bible". It's history.
Todd
Um … can you actually read what you wrote?
So the subject was Diamond, wasn’t it? That’s what I said: ‘re Diamond’. And then I quoted examples that show that what you say about Collapse is wrong. FFS, as someone has already pointed out, the book is subtitled ‘How societies choose to fail or succeed’. Diamond doesn’t only discuss failure, he discusses success.
That’s why I made the comparison with the Bible … but in your case, selective reading appears to be a general propensity.
As for explaining what relevance (Diamond's) examples have ... jeez, why don't you ask him? It's in the book ... you know, Collapse ...