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A new sandpit for long side discussions, idees fixes and so on.
John Quiggin 
So J-D can’t object to my choice if venue although he might I suppose object that repetition here shows that my idée is not fixed enough I again seek to engage your mathematics to attempt an answer to my question about the net effect of demographic changes on the Gini index (including lower birthrates after the baby boom and then lower again, more late years of saving, later start to the working life…..
And while I’m at it let me pass on someone else’s idée fixé (? second acute accent) to a climate person who must have looked at the models. This person says the many models which all include greenhouse gas forcings with varying potency show that vast natural forces (more from the oceans and the forests and the clouds are suggested) are not adequately accounted for. The supposed killer argument is that they can’t retropredict (I think that’s the jargon) the Holocene’s huge climate changes which wiped out civilisations – and created the conditions for them, e.g. in Egypt, – and produced Warm Periods and Little Ice Ages. This person in case you wondered is I think no religious nut but someone who wishes that Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome hadn’t been made fools of so we might have hoped for Ayatollahs and Popes to get together on population control. (Do you send your spare pence to keep that single mother in Ethiopia with 6 children going for another pregnancy or to support the rangers preventing the killing off of the African elephant….? Sorry: what a horrible way to give another round of applause for opportunity cost (but Saint Francis might have said that, collectively, we could choose human fertility checked only by restraint and the preservation of all God’s creatures so long as we don’t expect a modern lifestyle, though he might have had more trouble when confronted with the blessings of modern medicine…..Sorry, just warming up for today’s anti-humbug rant…)
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-013-1922-6#
In a nutshell, our current models can accurately hindcast global scale temperatures and patterns for both the last glacial maximum and the holocene, but are not so good at hindcasting regional and seasonal variations in the climate of the planet for the period 25,000-5,000 years ago, as established by years of dedicated work by paleoclimatologists on past proxies (e.g. tree rings). Therefore, climate change is a hoax.
http://www.samesame.com.au/news/11136/Senator-announces-Private-Members-Bill-for-marriage-equality
Liberal Democratic Party Senator for NSW David Leyonhjelm has announced today he’ll soon be introducing legislation allowing same-sex couples to marry.
He says he’ll urge for a vote on his same-sex marriage bill when Prime Minister Tony Abbott grants his MPs a conscience vote on the issue, and he hopes the “closet libertarians” in Parliament to support him in this.
As people will know, despite being a Green, i’m not in principle opposed to the inclusion of nuclear power in energy systems. It’s not my intent to recapitulate here or to discuss my rationale with anyone here. I mention it mainly because I have somewhat mixed crowd of followers on Twitter. Almost all of them see themselves as in some way connected with left-of-centre politics and of course public policies to mitigate emissions. Most would see themselves as opposed to nuclear power in principle. A handful are very pro-nuclear — arguing that low carbon economies entail resort to nuclear power in practice. Personally, I rather doubt this contention though there probably are jurisdictions where this might be so.
In the course of a discussion with one such person — an occasional contributor here using the name, Chrispy_dog — I put it that given the fairly long delay before any nuclear capacity could come online in Australia — probably 15 years even allowing a sea change in attitudes here — that a focus on renewable development made more sense. I suggested that it would be possible to decommission the coal fired capacity on the Eastern Grid (EG) and have at least 60% renewables by 2030. I felt very confident that this was technically possible and set about reviewing the data.
As it turns out, a review of the salient data suggests that this was an unambitious claim.
Referring to the NEFR (2013) (google it) it seems that demand in 2020 (not 2030).
Some preliminary findings which may be of interest:
Total demand on the Eastern Grid in 2012-13 was 191.833 GWhe. This implies about 21GW of capacity at any given moment on the grid, but obviously, time of day, weather season, etc … are highly salient to demand. The major gowth state for demand is Queensland, which is projected to demand an extra 3.2% year on year over the next decade. SA and Tasmania are projected to ease.
Looking at the figures, if the total state by state demand variance is aggregated, then by 2020 we are going to need 23.65GW of installed capacity, by 2025 25.02GW and by 2030 (assuming the trend continues) 27.33GW.
On this basis, 60% by 2020 would imply just 14 GW on the EG BY 2020. A look at the current figures from the Clean Energy Council and the Australian Energy Resource Assessment for renewables available now on the EG suggests there’s already 7GW of hydro, 3GW of wind (with 2GW more to come online by 2016 (with the exception of 92 MW at Crookwell 2 which is to be advised) and just under 3GW of solar PV. That’s 13GW by 2016. I presume that solar PV will continue to be added, and presumably more wind as well. At about $2.20 per watt, we could get there with one more GW of wind somewhere on the EG between 2016 and 2020.
Of course, I’m still relying on gas to do most of the load balancing and redundancy heavy lifting. An interesting story over at The Conversation suggested that even from a purely commercial perspective, given the risks associated with gas price volatility and carbon pricing outside Australia, the ideal mix would be about 66-75% renewables (mostly wind followed by solar and then hydro) with coal (16%) and OCGT (8-10%) and CCGT rounding out the rest.
Obviously, I’d like to get to 100% clean energy, ASAP.
I did some number-crunching on wind payback times. Assuming an installed cost of $2.20 per watt, a longterm borrowing rate of 5% and a value on sent out power of just $0.10 per KWh the pay back time on 1 GW OF ‘firm’ wind based on a CF of 33% (i.e 3GW) is under 8 years. Recurrent costs are very low and that leaves an 18 years of revenue in the commercial life of the farms.
As much of the new demand is arising in Queensland it might make more sense of course to build those CST molten salt towers that the folk from BZE are so excited about, perhaps pairing them with those aluminium smelters governments seem so keen to subsidise. That could be used to take much of their demand out of the EG and maybe even allow them to sell surpluses. Given the higher CF’s for the molten salt option, the $4.16 per watt cost makes it cheaper than the cost of firm wind or PV.
Why do these nuki-maniacs keep popping-up all the time.
One word – Fukushima
Second word – Chernobyl
Third word – waste
Fourth word – plutonium
Fifth word – monopolisation
Result – social disruption, economic insanity, environmental catastophe.
@Midrash
You’re trying too hard to prove that being a rightwinger in Australia forces you to be stupid. We all understand this, thanks.
If you really need to emphasize the point, write something about how wind turbines cause brain damage.
@Fran Barlow
Fran: you can’t use raw nameplate capacities to estimate a generating park. Different sources have very different availabilities: solar about 15% (varying with latitude), wind around 35%, fossil and nuclear around 90%. Geothermal is close to the ideal at 95%. Hydro’s availability depends on the river. Brazil’s old Itaipu on the Parana has a capacity factor over 90%; its latest megadam, Belo Monte on the seasonal Xingu, will be only 39%, no better than coastal wind. So for back-of-the-envelope calculations, to get comparability between sources you need to multiply nameplate solar by five or six, and wind by two-and-a-half.
It’s complicated by intermittency, diurnal and seasonal load profiles, and the need for backup. At low penetrations, solar’s noon peakiness is probably a plus, as it matches a/c loads. For your 60% renewables, you probably need not bother estimating extra backup; the existing gas and hydro capacity could see you through, with the predicted boom in home storage and evs. It gets more serious as you move towards 100% renewables, see the AEMO simulation. They pencilled in massive amounts of thermal CSP + storage, and/or EGS geothermal, all in the outback at the end of expensive new transmission lines.
BTW, I’m a strong supporter of renewable energy and the transition. I’m not one of those clowns who seem to think that the people who calculate LCOEs have forgotten about capacity factors and grid integration costs.
@James Wimberley
I quite take your point of course. The CF and CC questions are front and centre in these discussions, and as you say, if we were pushing towards 100% (rather than the 60% I was playing around with) then yes, the effective output of wind and solar would be a key constraint. The gradient does become steeper quite quickly.
Storage and demand management become a lot more relevant in that last 40%. That’s why many are keen on CST with molten salt or V2G or reticulation or pumped storage and why the effective installed cost per unit of capacity rises sharply as the 100% is approached.
Perversely though, as that 100% is approached, some quite limited solutions — such as waste biomass — can step into the now small gaps to ‘knit’ the system together.
Terje ; In connection with that Leyonhjelm said 2 worrying things about the Coalition mindset , 1) They automatically say no to anything proposed by the Greens ,and 2) They will be more receptive to the idea if it is proposed by a middle aged heterosexual male (white too ?).
Fran ; It is sometimes claimed that nuclear waste will be able to be re-processed by a new kind of reactor until it is harmless .Failing that I cant accept asking the next 50,000 generations to watch over the waste we make from our power needs for today and tomorrow. Also I worry that nuclear power would be another thing run only by multi national mega companies.
@John Quiggin
But John, Mishmash has genetically superior intelligence and we should subsidise his babies. He told us so himself.
Sunshine did you see this article about Leyonhjelm?
http://www.smh.com.au/national/david-leyonhjelm-trouble-shooter-20140623-3an2u.html
His interest in guns and his apparent belief that all gun owners are like him and do not need to be regulated is a worry. The article describes how Leyonhjelm describ(ed) John Howard, as a “dirt-bag” and says he has railed “against the former Liberal leader as a “bastard”, and an “idiot” for turning up in a bullet-proof vest to front a rally of incensed gun owners in Sale, Victoria, in 1996, after Howard slapped a ban on semi-automatic rifles and pump-action shot guns in the wake of Martin Bryant’s bloody rampage through Port Arthur.
David Leyonhjelm said: “All the people at [Sale that day] were the same as me,” Leyonhjelm tells me, his light-blue eyes blazing. “Everyone of those people in that audience hated [Howard’s] guts. Every one of them would have agreed he deserved to be shot. But not one of them would have shot him. Not one.” He found it offensive, he adds, that Howard “genuinely thought he couldn’t tell the difference between people who use guns for criminal purposes, and people like me”. What personally outraged Leyonhjelm was having to surrender much of his private collection, at first rifles and later some pistols, when the bans were extended. “I had lots of semi-automatic rifles,” he says. “I had an M1 Garand, M1 Carbine, the AR-15, the FN FAL, a Rasheed semi-auto and a Norinco … I had to relinquish them all.”
Delusional certainty that he knows stuff that he does not know at all.
The photo that David supplied himself to the publication to accompany the story is another real worry. Check it out. Did he imagine that was being funny and ‘challenging’ to the libruls or does he just love his pussy cats?
It seems to me that the photo is a fail and is actually a dead give-away that the man is going to be more concerned with his own personal agenda (ie his need to show that he is not stupid and is a good person despite being a libertarian with a tax fetish and a need to shoot living things for fun and recreation).
And so much emotion! It is difficult to see that he will be able to mute this emotional nature and listen to other voices.
Since he doesn’t believe in the state as a valuable entity how can he contribute to any policies that will improve the government? One would have to think that he is there to sabotage the government so that we can all be free of the dreadful regulation that must make his life absolute hell.
I don’t see him being able to do anything like cooperating with people who are not like him – and do not want to be like him – so that we can share the country, planet, whatever. He is a winner take all sort of personality, I think.
@Fran Barlow
I remember, some years ago, disputing a statement by you that a 100% renewable-powered electricity grid could be supported by sufficient addition of pumped storage. At the time I believed that it wouldn’t be feasible to build a sufficient amount of pumped storage in Australia to even out the variability of solar and wind generation. However, I’m re-evauluating that view. This article suggests that the potential for affordable expansion of pumped storage in Australia is very significant.
Sunshine
Those reactors could conceivably come online within the next 30 years.
Well that’s not close to being necessary. The hazard from the nuclear hazmat we have now isn’t that significant. The most serious part of the hazard occurs during the first 40 years. By the time the hazmat has been in store for 1000 years the the threat to life from contact is minimal, and we may assume that if there is a residual significant management problem some combination of technologies will be devised on that timeline to render it innocuous. In physical terms, the mass of waste we’re discussing is actually quite modest.
That’s a much more significant objection, IMO. Conceivably, governments might run them but as things stand the track record has been patchy. It’s hard to imagine how any government in Australia we could conceivably predict in the next 15 years could make a good fist of this. Doubtless, there would be all manner of secret squirrel type legislation with some fool like Morrison being unable to comment on ‘on nuclear site matters’ on the basis of not tipping off terrorists or some such thing. Getting the right regulatory environment for nuclear power would not be an easy thing to do.
@Julie Thomas
Julie, he is a part of the FUIGM(f*ck you I’ve got mine) brigade. He sounds like a scary man with his guns. a ‘responsible gun owner’ until he’s not. Regarding same sex marriage, even a stopped watch is correct twice a day
Julie T ;- Sounds like Leyonhjelm is a fair dinkum Libertarian . He said he plans to trade support for things that mean little to him , ‘ like Temp Protection Visas ‘ ,for action where he does care .BTW – I grew up in a gun toting household in a small country town ,I played with them as a kid and hunted everything. From my extended social group then there are 2 people in wheel chairs from gun shot- 1 attempted suicide and 1 shot by police while armed and misbehaving- both spinal injuries .Also 1 other went to jail for fire arms crime .Also my dads friend killed himself with a shot gun -it was messy . Etc ,etc ,there’s more, etc .Now I’m an (almost) vegetarian who thinks its better to kill and eat your own meat if you are going to do it. Shooting is pretty mean but not nearly as bad as factory farming. I’m all for tough(er) gun laws .My dad had a few to get rid of when those laws came in too.
Fran B ;- I hope you are correct ; a small reactor that uses and reuses waste would be good .
Sunshine
Yes, and a reactor that can use the once-used fuel of an earlier reactor is even better, given that there is a bit of that about. It seems to me that if we could find a place with a suitable regulatory environment that had little scope for renewables or was connected to a grid dominated by renewables then using such a reactor to degrade high level hazmat would tick many boxes. This is the promise of Gen IV reactors. We are yet to see them and if we do, it probably won’t be here.
Mark Diesendorf had a book published this year -Sustainable Energy Solutions for Climate Change which explains quite a bit about energy production and systems. He rules out Nuclear as not sustainable for a few reasons: slow deployment; high-level radioactive waste of varying lengths from 30 years to 300-500 years to 24,000 years to even 1,000,000 years according to some studies; there is not currently even 1 solitary long term repository for high level radioactive waste [Bob Hawke suggested Central Australia earlier this year 😦 ] ; accidents – 99 from 1952-2010; uncontrolled chain reaction due to error at Chernobyl; unprepared for risk causing meltdown at Fukushima; products and knowledge from nuclear energy generation being used in the State proliferation of nuclear weapons or potential use by terrorists; economic reasons – scarce or misleading data and subsidies.
He was asked a question at a talk regarding how quickly could Australia transition to renewable energy (variable solar pv and wind, backed up by flexible CST and bio-gas turbines, plus some hydro and geothermal somewhere I think) – he said he thought it probably would take 25 years due to the need to educate people (particularly electrical engineers) and build industrial and infrastructure capacity.
If we are looking at that sort of timeframe conservative use of carbon emitting energy is important in the meantime.
Sunshine – It cuts both ways. I suspect the modest income tax cuts that Leyonhjelm secured last week were voted for by the Greens simply because the Liberals were opposed.
You ‘suspect’ lots of things Terje but you don’t have any evidence or a rational argument that you can present that support these irrational and ignorant assumptions you make about your fellow human beings. I think the problem is that you assume that all humans are like you and unfortunately your libertarian beliefs are like a prison from which you are unable to free yourself and see that your type of person is not the default human being.
But, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose you know, and there are an increasing number of people now, who are being so impoverished by this economy that you advocate, that they really do have nothing to lose by doing whatever it will take to be free from people like you who force your beliefs and way of life onto everyone else.
And then you justify the lack of principles and ‘stupidity’ of the members of your tribe by saying Oh look over there and see how bad those other people. This way of ‘reasoning’ is a clear indication that you are motivated by base self-interest, not self-interest, properly understood.
I wonder if you know any of the young people – particularly the men – who will be denied any sort of income? Are you intellectually capable of understanding the level of resentment and anger that is brewing in this group who now can communicate with each other via the internet?
I wouldn’t be surprised at what these young people can do if they self-organise; they really are not stupid or lazy you know and it was not the nanny state that created them as unemployed and lacking in motivation to be part of your economy. Only a certain type of personality can or wants to climb the available ladders in this ugly economy that is so *not* a society.
Mark Diesendorf reviews Ian Plimers book Not for Greens
Diesendorf makes the valid point that as a geologist Plimer has no qualifications in the area of renewable energy.
Link
http://www.ies.unsw.edu.au/our-people/associate-professor-mark-diesendorf
@rog
Plimer’s lack of standing to comment on stuff has never restrained him before. I recall an encounter between him and George Monbiot on Lateline some years back in which it became obvious that Monbiot had read Plimer’s book, Heaven and Earth, better than he had.
😉
The kindest thing one might say about Plimer is that he is an embarrassment to post secondary education.
Plimer has no cred at all regarding renewable energy. He is more a miner (inc coal) than anything else.
I see the the PM’s preferred education expert, the eccentric Kevin Donnelly, feels that a return to corporal punishment in schools is not without merit. He considers his physical education teacher’s practise of taking boys behind the bike sheds and challenging them to a fight a character building experience. So let me get this straight, this guys reckons that in Australia in 2014 people would think it OK to have other people hitting their children at will, presumably the PM buys this argument. I hope to see more of this radical thinking reported on the front page of the Australian, that august organ renowned or holding governments to account.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/15/corporal-punishment-schools-kevin-donnelly
Diesendorf is right.
Maybe we should ask Hawke (and other nukephiliacs) – if nuke waste encapsulation is so good why would you need to store it in Central Australia?
If nuke-waste encapsulation/vitrification is not good enough to store in urban areas then nuke energy does not pass the most basic moral and common sense tests.
It is a fools paradise.
@Fran Barlow Fran, you’ve gone from GWhe to GW capacity rather too easily, in that the entire problem of variability and intermittencey just mysteriously disappear.
Some models show a need to build four or five times the nameplate capacity (not just adjusted for capacity factor) to make such sources reliable. Remember, there is no such thing as utility scale storage. (Bill Gates says we need at least one order of magnitude increase in energy density/cost to begin to make it viable). I’m assuming we tap whatever pumped hydro we can already.
Assuming we have a national grid (and lets not go down that rabbit hole!), electricity must be used as its created, so picture the east coast, cloudy and calm for a week or so, and you’ll see that the grid you’ve envisaged fails.
Diesendorf et al also make this problem ‘go away’ with hypotheticals like 24GW (!) of standby gas turbines fueled with…wait for it…BIOFUEL!
It gets sillier in some 100% renewable models, but that one is right up there in the fantasysphere.
What we really need is a way of generating electricity from derp. Now that is a renewable resource that is always available on demand!
@chrispydog Rabbit holes!
@chrispydog
BTW Fran, I originally typed TWhe and then looked up your post and changed it to GWhe (as you had it)
It’s actually TWhe.
And anyone wishing to ‘have a go’ with snide stuff, here’s some basic maths you must first get your head around:
http://www.solarinertia.com/the-future-of-energy-why-power-density-matters/
The long awaited passing of the repeal of the carbon tax is affording the likes of Sinclair Davidson a small nip of schadenfreude while in the US the Republicans are saying that they are the only ones with sufficient chutzpah/conjoles to bring in a carbon tax.
Go figure.
@chrispydog Woof!
@Fran “Total demand on the Eastern Grid in 2012-13 was 191.833 GWhe.” lol, what?
@chrispydog
<blockquote>And anyone wishing to ‘have a go’ with snide stuff, here’s some basic maths you must first get your head around…
You linked to an interesting blog post – with numbers, natch. Well done!
Just a minor quibble – I’m not entirely sure that blog post says exactly what you think it does. Why doncha go try read it again, eh? 😉
Chrispydog’s got a pretty broad comment history. He’s on Twitter, Disqus and a range of article comment threads, and he has precisely two things to say:
a) Renewable energy is pointless and ineffective
b) Nuclear power is awesome and will save the world
To his credit, I don’t think he’s a Young Liberal sitting in a back room of the IPA office, posting copypasta for eight bucks an hour. Those types use sock puppets.
Re pumped hydro as a storage medium for renewable energy I’m calling bullsharks on that one. The redoubtable (and nuclear enthusiast) Bob Hawke pulled the pin on the 180 MW Franklin-below-Gordon dam. Imagine trying to build a dozen like that in hilly areas now infested with parks or nimby tree changers, Sure you could build sea water tanks on the cliffs near Shark Bay WA then there’s the small problem of new billion dollar power lines.
Re power density some are enthusing that rural villagers in India will get solar electric for the first time. That will be for reading lights, small LCD TVs, electric bikes maybe a vaccine fridge. It won’t power four door cars or air conditioners. Even Clive knows that which is why he is saying we’ll give up coal when India does.
@Hermit
You could be right. But why not try reading the paper, instead of just derping?
Re: hydro,
I think hydro as storage depends on the country’s water ways and current usage – Kenya for example derives a high proportion of electricity from hydro – however due to recent severe droughts that affected electricity supply has begun moving away from hydro (at the moment to new coal powered plants, but the government advanced a strong solar goal earlier this year – although that might depend on being able to attain finance) – but the capacity could presumably be used for storage down the track.
The issues are; proving cost parity (for installed nameplate output) at scale, energy storage, and then, technology implementation at scale.
At this stage, you are never going to get 100% renewables (or even a quarter of this*) without major technology breakthrough.
There are no examples, even on a small scale, of 100% renewable anywhere in the world**.
*NEM peak demand 35 GW, hydro 8 GW max installable, geothermal scaled-up unproven fantasy, no cost effective storage for wind and solar (beyond hydro max), no proven scaled up strategy to incorporate renewables (other than hydro, without storage).
**Aside from; hydro areas, small islands with big battery banks running at negative EROI, small villages eating up nearby forests at unsustainable rates, further small villages with big battery banks running at negative EROI.
@iain
“or even a quarter of this”. I believe 30 per cent is more than a quarter
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/7/11/renewable-energy/sa-verge-30-renewables
http://www.renewablesinternational.net/denmark-gets-more-than-30-percent-of-its-power-from-wind/150/505/60282/
@iain
For about 50,000 years Australia ran on 100% renewables.
There are no examples, anywhere, of the way “we” currently run the world lasting for more than a few hundred years. And no evidence whatsoever that it is even likely.
Makes you think, doesn’t it?
@John Quiggin
Without even opening those links, let me just point out that SA and Denmark are not entirely separate grids, but part of larger systems. Denmark’s population is tiny (5m) and it’s unique geography hardly makes it typical of what we are actually discussing. SA also imports electricity from Vic, produced mainly by brown coal while Denmark is connected to a couple of lovely neighbours with lots of hydropower it can call on when the wind doesn’t blow.
Using these often cited examples is not proving anything except the point ie integration of large amounts of RE has not occurred in any modern economy. (Let’s not mention Iceland, OK, it’s actually a small country town on an energy hotspot! LOL)
You might find this interesting:
http://beyondthisbriefanomaly.org/2014/07/13/eroi-and-the-limits-of-conventional-feasibility-assessment-part-3-intermittency-seasonal-variation/
Cheers
I just did this interview with Dr Ayamana Namus from the university of Faraha Farahawey on the subject of free trade. Any thoughts??
Gilbert: Dr Namus, can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Dr Namus: What are you getting at? Have I been to university? Do I really exist? Yes, yes, yes. I tell you what, they should call me Dr f..king cubed. Get on with the real questions.
Gilbert: You are interested in the economics of community interdependence is that right?
Dr Namus: Yes. To put it simply, a community has certain economic opportunities available to it associated with interdependence. These opportunities lie in both consumption, with the intensive use of local resources, and production, with the local production of stuff. Local economic opportunities allow for an increase in efficiency, and for a community to actively engage with the maintenance of welfare within its borders.
Gilbert: Welfare? Do you mean…the dole?
Dr Namus: No, you idiot! I do not. Welfare is just economics-speak for the general well-being within the society. Availability and quality of food, housing, care for the old, young and sick, education, employment options, etc, etc. I might be an arsehole, but I do believe in at least some minimum standards.
Gilbert: Could you tell us more about these opportunities? Are they related to what you call the dual roots of economics; cooperation and competition?
Dr Namus: You may not be as thick as you look. I see you’ve read some of my work. You’ve got to think about the philosophy. Most of the c..kweeds in mainstream economics are caught in the muddled crap of liberalism. “I think therefore I am”? Descarte was a f..kwit. Confucius was onto something. It’s all about polarity and paradox. Each of us is trying to both commune with and to control one another at the same time. This leads to the paradoxical, dual roots of all interactions between us, including economic. These dual roots are cooperation and competition. Within a community, opportunities are associated with sharing and the pooling of resources, as well as with the operation of locally focused, competitive economic activity.
Gilbert: For example…
Dr Namus: At the small scale, a community has an opportunity to share washing machines, swimming pools or mini-theatres. Eggs, avocados or mandarins could be produced collectively or privately from local (embedded) suppliers. At the broader scale, a city could maintain collectively and/or privately an education and hospital system. The world has an opportunity to explore space and look after the global f..king environment.
Gilbert: Can you talk a bit about how this is different to the mainstream?
Dr Namus: To begin with, mainstream microeconomics is based on a barrel of sh.t! The idea that a best-case-scenario can be determined by a perfect competition is bizarre and illogical to say the least; No matter how much you might try to fiddle the results with welfare or environmental economics, (often not very much), the underlying crapness of the model remains. You need to include both competition and cooperation from the very beginning. First you need to remember that people live in communities. Second, when you analyze markets, you need to take into account that an internal/external dynamic is taking place, and add weighting for the opportunities that exist internal to the community.
Gilbert: What do you think about free trade?
Dr Namus: Free trade is perhaps the biggest load of horsesh.t that has ever been sold. Sure you can gain efficiencies through each region specializing and trading with one another. For any region or community, however, the possible benefits of free trade need to be weighed against the opportunities that are available locally. If you go to the trouble of asking people whether they value local economic activity, the answer is to some degree yes. People will pay more for local sh.t, and if the benefit of getting that sh.t locally is greater than the additional cost that they pay, they will be better off. Free trade values local economic interdependence at zero, without asking people. This sucks the life out of the local economy and in this way makes people worse off.
Gilbert: So…no trade then?
Dr Namus: Look in my eyes Gilbert, and listen! Of course you trade. You trade where the
benefits of trading exceed the benefits from the realization of local opportunities.
Gilbert: If people benefit so much from sharing swimming pools, why don’t we see more of it now?
Dr Namus: It’s a question of marginal cost. If there is no neighbourhood infrastructure in place, the cost of setting up a shared swimming pool is staggering. Imagine trying to organize something like that with a group of semi-strangers and short-term renters. If you had the swimming pool, however, then setting up a chicken run would be much easier. The avocado farm would be easier again. Then the local handyperson would have lots of local contacts, etc. The more interdependence you have, the lower the marginal cost, and therefore the more viable, each activity becomes. The methods of mainstream economics has failed to weight in favour of local economic activity, so neighbourhoods throughout the developed world have become deeply inefficient economic deserts, resting on the broken crutch of fossil fuel.
Gilbert: When you say, weighting in favour of local economics, you mean economic protectionism?
Dr Namus: Yes, yes, yes. Protect, protect, protect. Protect to the neighbourhood scale. I am talking about moderate protectionism of course. Ideally, using tariffs or whatever, the price of locally produced goods should be made relatively cheaper than externally sourced goods. By moderate, I mean that this should be done up to the point that the realization of local opportunities is encouraged to the extent that any added cost of those opportunities is less than the benefit. You also need governance though, also to the neighbourhood scale. Tariffs by themselves will not be enough.
Gilbert: Thankyou very much Dr Namus.
Dr Namus: Go f..k yourself!
@John Quiggin
It’s interesting that South Australia with 30% renewables and Tasmania with 86% are the two ‘mendicant’ states. SA is also on 52% gas fired generation. Their Cooper Basin gas field near the Qld border will increasingly send gas to the Gladstone LNG plants under construction. I guesstimate SA power prices will go up 15% within a year of Gladstone starting. So much for carbon tax cuts or new industry replacing Holden.
Denmark is able to export peak wind power and import Norwegian hydro during lulls. It parallels SA exporting wind power to Victoria and re-importing brown coal power. SA-Vic transmission is being beefed up to assist this. 30% wind penetration seems to need this export capability.
and speaking of renewables in Oz – the rest of the world’s investment in them is souring whilst our investment in them is declining, but I’m guessing that everyone already knows this [sigh]
The link http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2014/s4047578.htm
Well, you see Troy, it is clearly because Australia is so unsuitable for renewable energy. I mean we don’t have intensely sunny skies over much of our continent for much of the year, we don’t have spare land area and we don’t have long, windy coastlines. Oh, wait a minute, we do have all those things. Hmm, there must be another reason. Let’s see, major political parties heavily funded by coal interests? Tick! Yep. I guess that’s it.
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Troy Prideaux
July 17th, 2014 at 09:32 | #44 Reply | Quote
and speaking of renewables in Oz – the rest of the world’s investment in them is souring whilst our investment in them is declining, but I’m guessing that everyone already knows this [sigh]”
I think this is a good argument that supports my position that we must substantially revise our current economic laws to adequately respond to anthropogenic climate change and other sustainability issues including the 6th extinction.
In other news, the carbon tax has just been repealed.
@ZM
I assume you meant ‘soaring’.