It had to Happen: Proposals to Ration Air Conditioning Coming Out
June 30th, 2012
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**Sigh**
I suppose I’m not surprised. First, it was the green groups telling people to use less air conditioning on their own, but since that is unlikely to make a big difference, the next suggestion: resort to draconian measures like “rationing” of air conditioning.
An online “Room for Debate” segment posted on the New York Times website June 21 posed a left-leaning question to a symposium of six left-leaning outside experts: “Should Air-Conditioning Go Global, or Be Rationed Away?” While it may have been acceptable for New Yorkers to beat the heat with air conditioning, when developing countries like India strives for the same comfort, it becomes an environmental concern to privileged liberals. The Times asked from its air-conditioned headquarters in Midtown Manhattan:
Temperatures in New York City have pushed toward 100 degrees this week, and air-conditioners strained the power grid (thanks in part to stores with their doors open). Meanwhile the demand for coolant gases, especially in rapidly developing countries like India, threatens to accelerate global warming.
Is it a good goal for everyone in the world to have access to air-conditioning — like clean water or the Internet? Or is it an unsustainable luxury, which air-conditioned societies should be giving up or rationing?
The debate was keyed to a 2,000-word piece that same day by environmental reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal, “Relief in Every Window, but Global Worry Too.”
In the ramshackle apartment blocks and sooty concrete homes that line the dusty roads of urban India, there is a new status symbol on proud display. An air-conditioner has become a sign of middle-class status in developing nations, a must-have dowry item.
It is cheaper than a car, and arguably more life-changing in steamy regions, where cooling can make it easier for a child to study or a worker to sleep.
But as air-conditioners sprout from windows and storefronts across the world, scientists are becoming increasingly alarmed about the impact of the gases on which they run. All are potent agents of global warming.
….
So the therapy to cure one global environmental disaster is now seeding another. “There is precious little time to do something, to act,” said Stephen O. Andersen, the co-chairman of the treaty’s technical and economic advisory panel.
Rosenthal also contributed a personal dose of liberal guilt to the paper’s Green blog, “My Air-Conditioner Envy,” complaining that she can’t buy a more environmentally correct model and so chooses to forgo repairing her old evil one. (A confession that calls Rosenthal’s journalistic objectivity on the matter into question.)
With scorching heat enveloping New York City this week, I’m suffering from air-conditioner envy. I want a model like the one I saw in April at the Terre Policy Center in Pune, India. But I can’t buy it.
As Andrew W. Lehren and I report in The Times, the warming effects of air-conditioning gases are reaching crisis proportions as more and more people in countries like India and China buy the appliances. (Some readers have rightly pointed out that people in industrialized countries depend far more heavily on air-conditioning.)
At least she’s not a hypocrite; Rosenthal is willing to (metaphorically) don Jimmy Carter’s cardigan sweater, and personally suffer in the heat to save the planet.
Which is why I can’t bear to replace the old air-conditioner in my living room, even though it is on the fritz and not cooling much these days. Having reported on the coolant issue, I am reluctant to invest in a model containing any of the coolant gases commercially available in the United States. I’d prefer to wait until a machine with a climate-friendly coolant is available. And I know there are many options in development.
In August 2011, Rosenthal called on China and India to turn off their air conditioners to save the planet, writing “As more people in more countries come to rely on air-conditioning, the idea of thermal comfort may need to be rethought to curb the growth in greenhouse gas emissions.”
First, I don’t see any point in debating whether air conditioning is a luxury or a necessity. Certainly, for those with health conditions or the elderly, air conditioning is a necessity for life and health. When heat waves occur, people die in unairconditioned homes, and if more had air conditioning, this would not be as great a problem.
It’s certainly true that not all who have air conditioning absolutely need it to survive. Right now, as I write this, it’s in the mid 90’s outside (which is about 35 C for the rest of the world) and I’m sitting in my home in air conditioned comfort. If I did not have air conditioning, I would not die, but I’d be very uncomfortable. I would likely be less productive, and I’d have a great deal of trouble sleeping tonight. Applied to a whole society, it’s easy to see how a public subjected to the discomfort of not having air conditioning would result in lower worker productivity, greater incidents of disease and general degradation in standards of living.
And, of course, air conditioning, like anything else, is an industry that produces jobs and economic growth. Someone had to build my air conditioning system and every so often it needs to be serviced. I’m happy to pay for this and get comfort in return. Indeed, the field of HVAC has turned into a major employer in the United States.
It really seems to say something about the latent agenda here that the thing bothering people is that residents of India can now have air conditioners. Using air conditioning does have an environmental footprint, but nearly everything in the world does. As far as I am concerned, this does not mean that it’s a technology that should be denied to people simply because their skin is brown. In decades past, only the very rich in India may have been able to enjoy air conditioning. Today the upper middle class can afford it. That’s generally how the proliferation of technology goes. In years to come it will become cheaper still and even more Indians and Chinese can have air conditioning.
I think this is great. It means that more of my fellow human beings are getting to enjoy higher standards of living and can now afford to have the comfort we Westerners have taken for granted for years. Doing so will require some expenditure, such as upgrades to the power grid, but all increases in standards of living have requirements. The use of energy is not inherently sinful, though the results can harm the environment. None the less, there’s no reason to say that other people are not entitled to make that decision for themselves. Ultimately, it’s the source of the energy that needs to be changed, not the way it is used.
As for the refrigerants in air conditioners:
Modern air conditioning systems all use refrigerants that are environmentally safe and do not deplete the ozone. Of course, if you have an old one that does not, that does not mean you should chuck it in the trash, since that would only make it worse, but you should consider having it properly disposed of when its useful life is over, thus avoiding the refrigerant being released. Some modern refrigerants do have the potential to be greenhouse gasses, but their total volume is small enough to make this a minor concern.
There are many refrigerants out there, and, depending on the circumstances, some may offer greater efficiency than others. The laws of thermodynamics put hard limits on how little energy you can get away with, and moving large amounts of heat from one place to another is always an energy-intensive undertaking. In most modern residential air conditioners, tetrafluoroethane is the refrigerant of choice. It’s chemically stable, non-toxic and works well at the temperatures and pressures most air conditioners operate at.
Other refrigerants exist and have been used on various scales. Large industrial systems may use ammonia and early systems employed methal formate, chlormethane or even sulfur dioxide. Carbon doixide has also been used in air conditioning applications.
Hydorcarbons like propane or butane can also be used and may offer advantages, but they are far from perfect. They can present a real danger in a fire, where an air conditioner can suddenly become a fuel-air bomb if it’s packed with compressed propane. Care must be taken to avoid venting gas, as may happen if the unit is overpressure or has a blockage, as doing so could be an acute fire hazard. At least one fire in Thailand was attributed to the malfunction of the compressor in an air conditioning system that used flammable refrigerant.
For those who demand hydrocarbon-driven air conditioning NOW, before such systems meet full safety standards, you can buy DIY kits to recharge your existing system with propane, but be aware that they may not work properly or efficiently in a system that is not designed for such refrigerant and also present a fire hazard.
Regardless of your ethnicity of nation of origin, I have no problem with you enjoying the comforts of air conditioning. Of course, newer air conditioners tend to be better than old, but don’t expect a change in the type of coolant to move mountains. If you are concerned about the possibility that the gasses in your air conditioner could exacerbate global warming, just make sure you keep it well serviced, so they don’t have a chance to escape, and when it reaches the end of its life, make sure they are properly removed and contained for re-use.
None the less, with proper precautions, hydrocarbon air conditioners may well become more common, assuming they can meet all fire and building codes. Still, it does not change much. At best, the most efficient air conditioners only use 20% less energy to accomplish the same thing that the more traditional units do. This still makes them major consumers of energy. The direct contribution of refrigerants to greenhouse gas emissions is minimal, regardless of the type of gas used.
This entry was posted on Saturday, June 30th, 2012 at 4:37 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Enviornment, Good Science, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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June 30th, 2012 at 7:57 pm
If humidity levels are low enough evaporative coolers use a lot less energy and don’t use refrigerant gases which contribute to global warming (though they do have their disadvantages).
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June 30th, 2012 at 8:27 pm
Yeah, I’ve seen those out in the western US. They seem to be popular and effective in the dry regions. In my area, they would be utterly useless for most of the summer.
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July 1st, 2012 at 2:21 am
Years ago, I worked in an 5 story modern office building which had no openable windows. The only openings were the doors to the outside and a few to some of the terraces which were mostly locked. One Monday morning during the summer, the building’s AC went kaput over the weekend. It was absolutely stifling inside, far worse than it was outside. Most likely this was due to convection heat where the sun turned this air-trapped building into an oven.
Not being able to open a window was horrible. I don’t really know anything about HVAC and building design, but I did learn this particular building would be uninhabitable without it. That said, I do think there is a lot of merit to the idea of designing buildings and homes where natural processes can do some of the cooling and heating thereby lessening the load of HVAC systems.
From a building maintenance point of view it might be better to not have openable windows. But from a personal comfort point of view to simply let in some fresh air, it’s ridiculous. Maybe AC isn’t the enemy, but rather buildings that leave no other choice but to have AC.
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July 1st, 2012 at 1:43 pm
They actually do use propane and butane refrigerant in some auto air conditioning in the US. I don’t know if it actually is more effecient but it’s cheap and supposed to be “green”
I don’t know that we’ll see it in consumer air conditioners like waht you put in the window in the industrial world any time soon. Those products all need to meet safety standards. it’s not enough that they just are safe, but they need to be proven safe in standard tests and approved for that. Included in that being the fact that an air conditioner could be in a home that catches fire and also they are frequently used in bedrooms, so if they spring a leak and leak all the gas into the inside of the room with a person sleeping, there has to be minmal chance that it will kill them (although any gas could if the room is small enough and it displaces enough oxygen) and also minimal chance it would explode if they have a candle or a smoldering cigarette in an ash tray.
I don’t know, maybe they could be designed safely since after all, we do use gas stoves etc in houses and they meet safety standards. it’s just an issue of confirming this to be the case before any manufacturer would even consider that kind of potential liability.
This is not a bad thing of course. High standards for safety save lives.
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July 2nd, 2012 at 6:16 am
A friend of mine who’s a refrigeration engineer put in a heat pump (as they’re known in New Zealand – not usually much call for cooling here!) for my mother. She was getting too frail to keep the old coal range fed. But now he’s very down on the technology – reckons domestic units are low quality, compared to industrial refrigeration, and will break down in a few years. When they do, there’s no recycling system in place for the gasses, which have a warming index way worse than CO2. If that’s the case in India, all those apartment air conditioning units will be venting to the atmosphere and worsening the heat waves as their current owners hit retirement.
Not too sure about propane or butane either. Last year here a team of firemen were investigating a coolstore fire when the hydrocarbon refrigerant exploded and killed them all. Fire department complained later that they hadn’t been notified of the risk – if they had been, they would have stayed out.
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July 2nd, 2012 at 7:10 am
John ONeill said:
That’s what they call them in the States as well
John ONeill said:
Yes, that’s a concern, but I don’t think it’s a huge one. In the mix of human generated greenhouse gases, refrigerants don’t really contribute significantly. The quantity is nothing compared to the billions of tons of CO2 produced.
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July 2nd, 2012 at 10:46 am
drbuzz0 said:
Actually some HCFCs thousands of times more potent than Co2. You add in the energy it takes to run an A/C and there is a heck of an impact. Of course the real issue is numbers. There are just too damm many people out there and if the population continues to grow even exhaling will have a measurable GHG impact.
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July 2nd, 2012 at 11:42 am
Chris said:
Great, another wannabe mass murderer.
The population will grow whether you want it to or not, the numbers clearly indicate that we can support everyone with a western standard of living without environmental devastation if we are willing to use the best technologies we have (which includes carbon neutral nuclear power).
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July 2nd, 2012 at 11:30 pm
Does anyone have good figures as to how close typical air conditioners are to the ideal Carnot efficiency? There may be quite a lot of room for improvement here.
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July 3rd, 2012 at 10:26 am
“First, I don’t see any point in debating whether air conditioning is a luxury or a necessity. Certainly, for those with health conditions or the elderly, air conditioning is a necessity for life and health. When heat waves occur, people die in unairconditioned homes, and if more had air conditioning, this would not be as great a problem.
It’s certainly true that not all who have air conditioning absolutely need it to survive. Right now, as I write this, it’s in the mid 90’s outside (which is about 35 C for the rest of the world) and I’m sitting in my home in air conditioned comfort. If I did not have air conditioning, I would not die, but I’d be very uncomfortable. “
What’s fascinating here is that if it weren’t for air conditioning, there’s a fair chance you wouldn’t live where you do at all.
I’m not really meaning to be specific about yourself Steve, but there’s a very strong correlation between the growth in the HVAC industry and the growth of population and commerce in the southern states of the USA. Arguably you can look at that the other way around and say that it’s a major industry in the hotter parts of the USA. But I’d stake a nice bit of cash that a few companies have set up offices in places like Houston, Austin or Dallas only because they can cut themselves off from the intense heat outside.
If nothing else, the productivity side is definitely a factor but workplace liability comes into play as well. The aircon to my office has failed, meaning that currently (5:17pm) it’s 28.5 °C in here – I know because I have put a thermometer next to my files. As of 30°C, which it beat throughout last week, it is considered a health risk to do even non-active work – it’s legal, but the health risk is there and my employer is liable.
Interesting graphic on the Heat Wave wiki page here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_wave#Health_effects
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July 3rd, 2012 at 6:27 pm
Paul Studier said:
Not very close at all is the correct answer. Exact figures depend very much on the size of the unit and it’s intended use. Some smaller high-capacity low temperature units might be working on as little as 15% percent efficiency. Large industrial HVAC units, intended for an entire building tend to be quite a bit more efficient at something like 30 or 40%. Small home and or single office units are usually a lot worse in terms of efficiency.
However, due to the nature of the process it’s impossible to get it even anywhere NEAR 100% efficiency. The most important reason is that refrigerant gases simply don’t behave as an ideal gas at the temperatures and pressures of an AC unit.
The reason large office buildings don’t allow windows to open has to do with the design of the HVAC system. Those systems are built with a very finely balanced pressure and volume flow distribution. Opening a window somewhere can destroy that balance, probably somewhere unexpected. Like 6 floors up, in the offices of a different company.
Designing an HVAC system around natural convection is possible, but very very tricky in the “normal” designs we use as humans. It’s never going to work as well as an actively blown and cooled industrial unit.
Final note: all this is written from my knowledge as a recently graduated mechanical engineer. I don’t have any work experience in the field of airconditioning or HVAC systems. Only that which my education has given me.
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July 4th, 2012 at 9:47 am
Anon said:
Really “everyone” for how long can population grow with “everyone” at the western standard of living?
When exactly have resources been shared equally?
Population control is part of properly managing the planet – it’s not about mass murder it’s about keeping it in your pants.
If you want to actually have an intelligent debate let me know.
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July 4th, 2012 at 10:45 am
Chris said:
Well 10 billion people can be supported and that’s the high end of the predictions as to when population will level off (on its own).
Besides, what part of the universe is infinite do you not understand?
Chris said:
You say that like it’s an argument.
Chris said:
So how many people should be on this planet and how do you plan to get to that number?
So far I have not seen any evidence that it won’t involve mass murder.
Chris said:
I’ve had debates on the topic before, no one has managed to refute the fact that everyone who thinks overpopulation exists is a wannabe mass murderer.
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July 4th, 2012 at 1:59 pm
The bottom line on population growth is that it tends to drop off as a function of standard of living. Thus the argument that we all need to reduce our standard of living to better distribute resources is without foundation in reality.
What needs to be done is to work to raise and improve the conditions in the Third World, first by making inexpensive energy available, and then by the sort of commercial development that this will enable such that the existing populations will not need to produce extra children to support them economically (which is really what is going on.)
Calls to scale back in the West has its roots in Protestant ethical imperatives that have lost their utility (if indeed they ever had any) long ago. They still echo through our culture as ideals but few can justify them with logic. Like everything they should be constantly questioned to determine if they are still valid before applying them.
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July 5th, 2012 at 1:11 am
DV82XL said:
Isn’t religion sometimes problematic because it freezes certain values in place, even after the circumstances that created those values no longer apply?
For example, natalism (promoted by many religions, but most famously by Catholicism) made a lot of sense in the pre-industrial era, for the following reasons:
1. The pre-industrial world was poor and to first approximation a zero-sum game. This meant that the only way for a polity to get substantially richer was to rob wealth from its neighbours by aggressive war.
2. In pre-industrial warfare, “victory belongs to the bigger battalions” was usually true, thus creating an incentive for polities to maximize their birth rates.
3. Many children were lost anyway due to high rates of infant mortality.
Today on the other hand, natalism is a bad idea for the following reasons:
1. A modern technological society requires much higher levels of education than a pre-industrial society. If you tried to have a pre-industrial birth rate in such a society, the education costs would be crippling.
2. Industrialization means the economy is no longer a zero-sum game, and robbing neighbouring states for resources is less feasible, as such an attempt would cause an overwhelming coalition to be formed against the aggressor state.
3. War against major powers would be immediately suicidal due to nuclear weapons.
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July 5th, 2012 at 5:41 am
George Carty said:
Somewhat (and this is a good argument that they’re harmful) but economics tends to win (yes, there are a few idiots who’ll insist on pumping out as many kids as their slave-wife can incubate for them, but on the whole most of the religious won’t go to that extreme).
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/ldebate.htm provides an interesting take on that kind of thing from an economist.
George Carty said:
Not just polities but also families (not to mention that such societies could use all the labour they could get and can’t just automate things away like we can).
George Carty said:
I suspect we could probably handle it if we had to (and countries transitioning tend to have to anyway).
George Carty said:
This is where the limits for growth idiots fall down (or at least one of the many places they fall down at), they just don’t seem to understand that it is possible for something to be positive-sum (or that their zero-sum rhetoric is just encouraging selfishness).
George Carty said:
Of course if you’re aim is to take over an existing power then out-breeding everyone else has the possibility of working (assuming of course that your kids are loyal to the same cause as you, not something religious fundamentalists are very good at).
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July 5th, 2012 at 7:52 am
Anon said:
Pascal’s Wager on the other hand makes the desert monotheisms in particular extremely tenacious though.
Anon said:
I thought even the neo-Malthusians accept that positive-sum development is possible in the short term, but that this development is dependent on scarce non-renewable resources (mainly fossil fuels) and that all this progress will collapse when the resources on which it depends run out.
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July 5th, 2012 at 9:12 am
George Carty said:
Not sure if it’s that which gives them such resilience assuming they even are unusually resilient by religious standards (it’s worth noting that it took hundreds of years for paganism to be stamped out of Europe).
George Carty said:
In other words they think that our prosperity is at the expense of future generations, that seems to me to be zero-sum thinking.
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July 5th, 2012 at 1:42 pm
If I squint hard enough I can see where the zero-growth people kinda have a point.
Power plants put out waste heat, so even with very efficient power plants economic growth in the form of energy consumption can only rise for so long before the waste heat from said power plants will start warming the planet unacceptably even if greenhouse gas emissions are absent.
Okay so no exponential curve can continue forever, fair enough.
Except the thing is on one hand I don’t expect us to hit that limit for a great many years by which time we should all be able to live like the f***ing Jetsons anyway, and on the other hand if we want to think REALLY far out then if waste heat from electrical generation and industrial activities is becoming a problem then the bulk of high energy manufacturing could be shifted to space along with it’s required power supply.
In that case, who really gives a crap?
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July 5th, 2012 at 4:48 pm
Nick P. said:
Even if we quadruple the amount of powerplants we have, and then output ALL that energy as heat (Which, in the end, we mostly do anyway) the amount of heat generated is absolutely infinitesimally TINY compared to the total amount of energy already in the atmosphere and put into it daily by the sun. The waste heat from power plants is never going to be a concern.
Also, ALL power generated ultimately ends up as heat somewhere down the line. (Friction losses=heat, conversion losses=heat, braking something=heat, etc)
Just do the math on a single thermal updraft for instance. I fly gliders as a hobby. A good thermal can lift a plane at lets say 2 meters per second. A typical glider weighs something like 300 kgs. Using E=m*g*h, this means an energy of 300*9,81*2=5886 Watt is added to the glider when flying inside the thermal. With a wing surface area of 12 m^2 that’s roughly 490 Watt per m^2. If the thermal is a circle with a radius of 50 meters the total surface of the thermal is Pi*50^2=7853 m^2. Thus the total energy over the thermal would be 490*7853=3848451 Watt. Almost 4 Megawatt for a small, medium power thermal updraft. And that’s when using the power rather inefficiently transfered to a glider moving through this air! These updrafts happen millions of times a day, worldwide. The amount of power blowing around above our heads is astounding! To think we humans could even come close to that in terms of heat output is misguided.
(This is also the reason I would support building solar-updraft power stations in developing countries. Easier to build and especially maintain than PV or moving mirror installations. Solar updraft can provide good amounts of power with a much more constant load factor. And the ground underneath said “power stations” can still be used for agriculture and other uses, instead of being “wasted” to harness sun power)
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July 5th, 2012 at 5:46 pm
This guy said:
We’re going to have to get more than that to bring the developing world up to first world standards (and we’re also likely to need more desalination and to switch a lot of industrial processes to more energy intensive ones to reduce greenhouse gas emissions).
Still, 10 billion at western standard of living without going over that limit is doable.
This guy said:
Oh at some point in time we’re going to come close to it, then exceed it massively (how else could we hope to become a type III civilisation?).
Still, by the time we’re using that much power we’ll be a space based civilisation.
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July 5th, 2012 at 6:28 pm
To become a type III civilization we’d NEED to be a space based civilization in the first place. Thus it would not be a problem, as we’d not be putting that energy into the atmosphere of a planet. Once you start looking into space you’d be competing against the energy output of suns, pulsars and black holes. Once again, good luck on that one
. At some point we MIGHT become a type 4 civ, but I highly doubt we humans would be able to pull that off.
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July 5th, 2012 at 9:02 pm
DV82XL said:
Thank you for not resorting to name calling – I absolutely agree about the standard of living and birth rates. I don’t agree with “banning A/C” but I don’t think doing nothing is a proper solution. Birth control is a topic that needs to be discussed in the public sphere since all of us pay the price for unbridled growth. Much of our environmental issues are really population problems – there is no reason to ban technology if we can keep population numbers within reason.
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July 6th, 2012 at 5:57 am
Chris said:
Birth control is something to be discussed as a human rights issue, not conflated with overpopulation crap (all that adding overpopulation nonsense is likely to do is cause opposition to birth control).
Chris said:
So what should the population be? I asked you that before and you haven’t answered.
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July 6th, 2012 at 7:03 am
Chris said:
Pointing out that the best way of limiting population growth is by raising the global standard of living is addressing birth control as it is the only method that is likely to work. Beyond personal choice, the whole issue of birth control is simply too politically charged to allow for any legislative solution, and attempts to accomplish it via public education have been spectacular failures.
Without a good standard of living, the problem of population growth becomes a classic Tragedy of the Commons and these are, as a class, very difficult to solve outside the application of force and that is sub optimal even when it works. The more likely outcome of taking such a path is civil unrest and worse.
The fact is that nuclear power provides a path to prosperity both by providing cheap energy and cheap desalination. The combination of these two provide the foundation where any region can lift itself out of poverty quite easily and thus eliminate the economic imperative to produce many children. Thus it is the best route to birth-control.
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July 10th, 2012 at 8:03 am
Anon said:
My point is that once a given territory became Christian it almost never reverted (even temporarily) to paganism. Christianity’s only territorial losses (before the rise of modern secularism) were to Islam, an even more strictly monotheistic faith.
Incidentally, what do people here think of other moral values associated with religion (such as “no sex outside marriage” and “dress modestly”, to name two). Are they still good rational ideas (but maligned because they are associated with religion), or have they too been obsoleted by changing economic and/or societal circumstances (and if so, which changes)?
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July 10th, 2012 at 8:51 pm
George Carty said:
Because paganism was violently stamped out and they wiped out any sign of paganism coming back (we’re talking hundreds of years of oppression here with the Christians having the argument by force the whole time).
George Carty said:
Also a faith which expanded with military force.
George Carty said:
Modern contraception and paternity testing technology does significantly reduce the justification for banning sex outside of marriage (which was pretty much a way of a male ensuring that his wife’s children were his and not his neighbour’s).
On modesty, I would say that people should just dress how they like and cover as much or as little of themselves as possible (rules on such a thing really shouldn’t exist except when necessary for safety (e.g. the rule of not wearing open toed shoes in labs)).
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July 11th, 2012 at 7:23 am
Anon said:
It isn’t as if pagans never persecuted Christians though — why did that persecution fail, while Christian persecution of pagans succeeded?
Anon said:
There’s still an asymmetry between Christianity and Islam though — Christian states were far more likely to ethnically cleanse Muslims who fell under their control (such as in the Spanish Reconquista, or when the Byzantines liberated lands from the Muslims in the 8th thru 10th centuries) than vice versa. This suggests that Christians were pessimistic about their prospects of being able to convert Muslims to Christianity.
Anon said:
It doesn’t eliminate it entirely though by any means, as millions of single mothers on welfare tragically demonstrate. Doesn’t banning sex outside of marriage also provide a powerful incentive for men to be economic providers for women?
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July 11th, 2012 at 8:15 pm
George Carty said:
Because the pagan persecution of Christians was half-hearted and more done for political reasons than religious.
Getting the support of Constantine was also probably necessary for the Christians, had they not lucked into that they probably would have been wiped out eventually (or at least never attained a position of dominance).
George Carty said:
Islam does tend to treat “people of the book” (i.e. Jews and Christians) better than other non-Muslims including having specific rules such as paying extra taxes and being allowed to practice their religion freely if they don’t try to spread it.
George Carty said:
True, but you’ll probably find that the societies which have the most liberal attitudes towards contraception use also have less single mothers on welfare.
George Carty said:
Child support payments are the replacement these days (and forcing two people who may not have been in love to marry just because one of them got the other pregnant isn’t something I like the idea of).
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July 12th, 2012 at 9:20 am
As someone who has lived in hot climates for most of his life, my attitudes toward air conditioning are realist as opposed to the NYT’s idealism. Air conditioners are already global and are not going to be given up by the world, regardless of what some people think. And yet, the issue of refrigeration gases aside, air conditioning is and always has been rationed… through the electric bill. The cost of electricity to run air conditioners will always create some sort of rationing as long as utility bills remain a significant cost of a household’s monthly income.
There are ways in which this might be sidestepped to some degree. In Arizona (where I once lived), the Salt River Project utility offered annual cost averaging to consumers so that they might pay a nearly flat fee year-round; that was a blessing, to pay for the summer months of electricity usage in the otherwise-cheaper winter months. But I suspect that the long-term rationing will more likely follow the method here in Southeast Asia in which we use the air conditioner only in certain rooms and leave the rest of the house warm. Only commercial buildings tend to have central air conditioning here. Residential homes, in particular, have small units installed in specific rooms, which may or may not be used as the owner pleases. For example, in my apartment, we have four rooms that have air conditioners (all of which are attached via piping in conduits to a central compressor, located outside the main bedroom). Of those four, three are almost never used; the fourth, for the main bedroom, is the only one that gets significant usage. Even then, our electric bill is several hundred dollars per month. It’s not cheap to keep cool in the tropics or the desert, but we’re not going to pull the plug on our air conditioning either.
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July 12th, 2012 at 11:23 am
I’m not sure who here has been to India, but I have, and I can tell you that air conditioning is something of a necessity which I hope they get a lot more of. It’s inhumane to ask people in Indian cities to just open their windows for a breaze. For one thing, it can be very hot. For another, the vehicles there are not exactly smog-free. Actually, the streets of India are choked with brown smoke from all the two-stroke engines and cars that have not been properly kept up.
It’s a relief to have areas where you can go indoors and have the air drawn in through a filter and the room seperated from the outside air. Many people don’t have this, of course, but hopefully that will change and more will be able to seek refuge from the unhealthy hot, dirty air
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July 16th, 2012 at 4:11 pm
Anon said:
Anyone who believes in sustained indefinite exponential growth, is deluded. Growth is the enemy of everything, including living standards, human dignity and democracy. Somehow we will have to limit population growth.
We live on a finite planet with finite resources, therefore we have to achieve zero population growth at a level that can be supported indefinitely in light of available resources. It would be a jolly good idea to limit the population to one that could cope with the unexpected, such as a large volcanic eruption such as that of Tambora [VE7] in 1815 that caused ‘the year without a Summer’. Of course human population was a mere 1 billion then, but many other things have changed and it would take a bit of work to establish the likely effect in today’s world. It’s been estimated that similar eruptions might have a return frequency of as little as ~200 years.
BTW, Tambora was almost 200 years ago.
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July 16th, 2012 at 5:08 pm
Amoeba said:
No, it is those of you who do not believe that the universe is infinite who are deluded (and even in the shorter term (limiting ourselves to only one planet) to believe that we can’t support 10 billion people with the best technology we’ve got is to be deluded).
Amoeba said:
Growth also means more scientists and engineers working to develop new technology.
Maybe you just don’t understand where Malthus went wrong.
Never mind that population hasn’t continued to grow at what was then the present rate (the growth is slowing down despite the efforts of the over-population cranks to discredit family planning (some of us think procreative liberty is an end in itself)).
Define overpopulation?
The problem is that what is ‘overpopulation’ depends on your technology level.
Amoeba said:
No, we must grow enough to transcend the limits to growth on Earth so that we are no longer limited to one finite planet.
Not continuing to grow means that we will go extinct, not if, just when, OTOH if we continue to grow we may even find a way around the end of the universe.
Amoeba said:
What about a 10 km diameter comet coming from the Oort cloud?
If we limit our population as you propose we won’t have any way to deal with it and will go extinct, but if we continue growing we’ll end up with the robust space capabilities to divert it.
Amoeba said:
Probably less given our superior technology and increased wealth.
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July 17th, 2012 at 3:35 am
Anon clearly is in denial regarding the exponential function and of mathematics and reality in general. Then starts hand-waving and to believe in Star-Trek science. No information cited, just meaningless waffle. This is just hilarious.
Please explain how we might deflect a VEI7 eruption. Because you changed the subject to the Oort cloud, which is rather different and a dishonest tactic.
The Exponential function [8 videos, part 3 is particularly relevant], but all are worth watching, except for people who understand the exponential function.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=list_other&playnext=1&list=SP6A1FD147A45EF50D
When will this wonderful star-trek technology be available? Because the obvious question is, do we have enough time? or Will we run out of energy, environment or food before then?
Have you heard of the size of the universe?
And the speed of light? Physics?
How far is the nearest earth-sized habitable planet? It’s likely to be a loooong way.
BTW, please do remind me, how many people did we put on the Moon? How long did they stay?
How many did we put on Mars?
I need YOUR answers to these questions, and the evidence to support each one.
Assuming science-fiction instantaneous travel
An average galaxy contains between 10e11 and 10e12 stars. In other words, galaxies, on average have between 100 billion and 1 trillion stars.
Now, how many galaxies are there? Astronomers estimate that there are approximately 100 billion to 1 trillion galaxies in the Universe. So if you multiply those two numbers together, you get between 10e22 and 10e24 stars in the Universe.
Let’s assume each of those 10e24 stars has one Earth-like planet.
Assume the sustainable carrying capacity of Earth is 1 billion.
That’s 10e33 humans
Assume the human population is growing at 1.14% per year.
How long before we fill the universe? Hint: It’s a lot sooner than you think.
Answer please!
If you want to be treated with anything other than laughter, derision and ridicule, you need to provide the evidence for your claims.
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July 17th, 2012 at 4:19 am
Amoeba said:
Pushing aside all the inter-steller colonization ideas for now, the human population will reach a topping out point naturally and soon enough. I didn’t come up with that idea but I’m just paraphrasing from Hans Rosling’s lecture on TED:
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies.html
Growth can be self regulated, but not by heavy handed measures IMHO. Raising living standards is definitely a solid method of birth control, but not the only method as Rosling demonstrates. Besides, Rosling is far more entertaining than your video, sorry.
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July 17th, 2012 at 6:05 am
Jason C said:
Hans Rosling is definitely both entertaining and worth listening to.
I wasn’t implying or suggesting that heavy handed measures were necessary, just that science, mathematics, logic and resources has to be the basis of our actions and reality dealt with. The Bartlett video wasn’t intended to be entertaining, it was informative. He is right, exponential positive growth isn’t sustainable in this universe. How we achieve this I don’t know, but we will have to do this, or we are inexorably heading for disaster and it will result from our inability to understand the exponential function.
Perhaps mathematics don’t apply in the Corrollesque wonderland where Anon lives, where science and normal logic doesn’t apply and he apparently talks to the Red Queen, giant caterpillars that smoke hookahs and the disappearing Cheshire cat.
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July 17th, 2012 at 9:38 am
The overpopulation issue is probably the oldest of the “Depleted Cranium” type debates that I have engaged in over the years and during that time I have made a few observations that make me wonder just what is being discussed when this issue is raised.
To start off with Malthusians (or Neo- Malthusians, if you wish) when pressed, always retreat to Reductio ad absurdum to defend their position when pressed. This is of no real value in debate and I suspect this is more to save face than to make a valid point. In practical terms, of course, it is impossible to determine Malthusian limits to human population growth because humans, one, have the capacity to modify the environment to a greater extent than any other organism; two can exploit a wider variety of resources than any species; and three, apply far more complex reproductive strategies than any other animal.
So while talk of interstellar colonization and Dyson Spheres are certainly premature, they do illustrate the fact that finding the limiting factors for human population growth are far more difficult than they might seem. As well, observations that birthrates are sensitive to economic factors are real and cannot be ignored just because they do not fit into Malthusian models.
But that is really not what is at issue in these debates. The real underling motivations of those clamoring for limits to growth are less concerned with the human condition than they are with their own. Scratch anyone taking a hard stand on population control and you usually find someone with a chip on their shoulder over the economic disparity between them and those they consider wealthy as invariably if the debate does not vanish into nonsense over the size of the universe it does veer into the question of resource distribution and how we all have to learn to do with less.
Served up slathered in moral imperative, this argument boils down to demands that upper segments of Western society (membership in which is relative to the caste of the demander) must relinquish their wasteful lifestyle for the common good. Thus large homes, automobiles, pleasure craft and such are framed as evils that are consuming limited resources to the detriment of the planet and need to be suppressed. To those that mount this argument, solutions that see the rest of the world’s population’s standard of living elevated to the point where large families are no longer an economic necessity are an anathema, as this will not reduce the upper classes to the same level, their real objective.
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July 17th, 2012 at 10:02 am
DV82XL – That was well put. I need to bookmark this comment.
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July 17th, 2012 at 11:56 am
Anon said:
Basing policy upon imaginary future technologies is like believing in fairies, it is most unwise.
As anyone can see, Anon was the one to raise the subject of space-travel. In doing-so he asked for his claim to be examined. And doubling or quadrupling the available resource doesn’t make any significant difference to the exhaustion of the resource where exponential growth is concerned. If anyone doesn’t believe me, just do the maths, or see below.
http://www.albartlett.org/articles/art_forgotten_fundamentals_part_4.html
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July 17th, 2012 at 12:59 pm
DV82XL: Very good description of what we’re really discussing.
Amoeba said:
Your assumption that resource growth will not be exponential is not supported by reality.
Amoeba said:
Nuclear power and genetic engineering and not future technologies but are sufficiently proven that we can rely on them and if you are willing to use them then you can indeed support 10 billion people at a western standard of living on one small planet.
Amoeba said:
No, it is dishonest not to admit that you do not have a solution to a far worse potential disaster.
On the subject of how to deal with food production being reduced due to environmental problems I would point out that we have larger surpluses than in the past so we can handle a greater drop off in production than past civilisations could, I would also point out that we aren’t using our agricultural lands as efficiently as we could (i.e. more technology could compensate for environmental conditions getting worse, Africa hasn’t had the green revolution yet), the EU is a particularly bad offender in this regard. We could also increase the amount of land we use for farming (though we’d prefer to keep reducing it as yields improve for environmental reasons).
If we got desperate enough we could even use vertical farming, we probably won’t ever do much with vertical farming but it’s still an option.
Amoeba said:
Nuclear energy is pretty much assured for at least the next thousand years (using just Uranium from the oceans with fast breeders we can give everyone significantly higher per capita energy consumption than any country has for thousands of years).
Current farming is managing to produce enough food to feed 7 billion people and there’s no reason to suspect that we can’t scale up to 10 billion and continue it as long as we have an energy supply.
If we aren’t a space based civilisation within the next thousand years than some pretty serious question would need to be asked (we should also have fusion by then, though I guess it’s possible that it’ll still be 30 years away even then).
But anyway, for you to be able to prove that there are limits to growth you’ve basically got to prove that baby universes can’t exist.
Maybe in the future we will find that there is a limit to growth, the universe will end at some point in time but even then we just don’t know what technologies will be available to those in the future and they may very well be able to do something about even the end of the universe.
Amoeba said:
I’m the one who bought that up in the first place so yes I have heard that the universe is infinite.
Amoeba said:
The speed of light is a bit slow though it is still an open question whether it actually is the speed limit but it wouldn’t really cause too much problem.
Amoeba said:
Completely irrelevant, planets are an inefficient use of mass anyway (you’re better off with a whole heap of O’Neill cylinders (which we could probably build today if we wanted to, though I’d start a bit smaller than that) which make any star system habitable).
Amoeba said:
Of course if we have instantaneous travel we aren’t limited to the size of the observable universe so already you’ve got a massive underestimate.
Amoeba said:
The sustainable carrying capacity of an earth like planet using just the best technology we’ve got is over ten billion, the solar system could hold trillions easily without needing technology much more advanced than what we have now.
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July 17th, 2012 at 5:20 pm
Amoeba said:
Policy is not being discussed here. Population control apologists stay clear of policy suggestions because they know damned well that they are unenforceable, instead they wax on about moral imperative, or like you are doing, descend into sophistry to try and salvage their position.
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July 19th, 2012 at 2:59 am
Amoeba said:
The entire problem most people here will have with that statement is that we provably don’t HAVE exponential growth and with current conditions the population growth on earth will limit itself naturally. The only way we are going to limit the population growth in the short term in for instance afrika and India is not through any sort of rules or policies. It’s through education and allowing individuals to use more energy. Improving living conditions in the western world have inexorably led to a decline in birth rates and has limited growth. (There’s a real problem of a surplus of elderly in many first world countries at the moment.)
Limiting power usage for people means you will at some point deny someone the use of energy in a way that could provably improve his living conditions. And AC is one of those technologies in a lot of countries.
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August 6th, 2012 at 4:32 pm
Amoeba said:
WHAT exponential function? WHERE? Put up or shut up.
Population? Linear for the last half century and on track for a ~10 billion peak.
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