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New World Model – EROEI issues
Dolores Garcia, The Oil Drum: Europe
When I published the results on The Oil Drum of my New World Model, based on World3 (the “Limits to Growth” model) – see here, many of the questions and issues that people had were around EROEI. So I’m writing this article to clarify how the model uses EROEI and the results in some alternative scenarios where EROEI is changed in different ways.
Why are the results so different from the original World3 model? Is it because of EROEI?
The results are different because there are many changes from the World3 model. EROEI is only related indirectly to the difference in results.
In the World3 model, industrial output depends on the amount of non-renewable resources available. In the New World Model, there isn’t a “non-renewable resources” variable, but instead there are different energy sources, including renewables, that are also essential to produce industrial output. In the same way that in World3 the amount of industrial output tracks quite closely the usage of non-renewable resources, in the New World Model the industrial output tracks the total energy…
(24 August 2009)
Study demonstrates how we support our false beliefs
escience news
In a study published in the most recent issue of the journal Sociological Inquiry, sociologists from four major research institutions focus on one of the most curious aspects of the 2004 presidential election: the strength and resilience of the belief among many Americans that Saddam Hussein was linked to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Although this belief influenced the 2004 election, they claim it did not result from pro-Bush propaganda, but from an urgent need by many Americans to seek justification for a war already in progress.
The findings may illuminate reasons why some people form false beliefs about the pros and cons of health-care reform or regarding President Obama’s citizenship, for example.
The study, “There Must Be a Reason: Osama, Saddam and Inferred Justification” calls such unsubstantiated beliefs “a serious challenge to democratic theory and practice” and considers how and why it was maintained by so many voters for so long in the absence of supporting evidence.
Co-author Steven Hoffman, Ph.D., visiting assistant professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo, says, “Our data shows substantial support for a cognitive theory known as ‘motivated reasoning,’ which suggests that rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe…
(21 August 2009)
Modern economics is one step away from measuring buttocks
Molly Scott Cato, The Ecologist
Some of you may know that I live an exciting double life. When I am not writing for the Ecologist and playing the role of the radical critic of modern capitalism I am sitting demurely in an ivory tower masquerading as a university teacher. So far I have managed the tension fairly successfully, but my recent forays into curriculum development have unearthed what a trekkie might refer to as ‘an anomaly’.
For those of you who do not know university protocol I should tell you that each degree programme has an external examiner, who keeps the academics on their toes and protects the standard for students. Quite right too, I thought, until our external examiner recently questioned the content of a course I was teaching on Applied Economics, because of the absence of ‘formal models’. This resulted in some discussion with colleagues about exactly what a formal model is: we could not be certain but we shared a suspicion that it meant numbers and statistics.
You cannot teach economics without maths, apparently, although you can teach it without morality. And the converse also applies. Because if you are part of a discipline that cannot function without counting then it cannot properly value what cannot be measured. Moral considerations are, for this reason, excluded wholesale from economics as taught in our universities…
(17 August 2009)
Our Unfolding Destiny: Possibilities and Probabilities
Andy Clarke, Canadian Association for the Club of Rome
In our last column (June 1-30, 2009) we stated that what is required for the achievement of a sustainable society is the replacement of the present exponential growth system with an economic and political order based upon both ecological imperatives and the requirements for intergenerational well being. In short, and as stated by Aurelio Peccei and the Executive of the Club of Rome in 1972 (1), we are compelled to seek a “state of equilibrium” with Nature on our planet. This goal will require nothing less than the construction of an entirely new paradigm, effectively a steady state economic and political system, for the continuance of the human enterprise.
Before we can begin to explore the essential elements involved in replacing exponential growth with a steady state economic and political system, we must first gain an understanding of why the existing growth system has been dominant since the beginning of the agricultural revolution, soon followed by the first civilizations, about 10,000 years ago.
Not unlike all other species that have evolved on planet Earth, the human species is driven first and foremost by its several “wants”, with particular reference to food, protection from the elements, security from predators, and growth in population. It is only through success in achieving these “wants” that our species survived and eventually achieved its present level of dominance over all other advanced life forms. But now that humans have achieved a position without equal on planet Earth, the human growth drive now threatens the extinction on a massive scale of not only other biological life but perhaps humans themselves. The question above all questions is: Have humans acquired, at this critical moment in their journey, the maturity and intelligence to replace exponential growth with a new political, economic and cultural global society based upon, and consistent with, ecological imperatives? Or, in the words of a recent study (2), does humanity now possess the wisdom to “move from its often selfish, self-centered adolescence to a more globally responsible adulthood?”
(August 2009)
The Big One: Teaching about Climate Change
Bill Bigelow, Rethinking Schools
I sat on the tall stool, facing the class of 9th graders. I put a cigarette between my lips and flicked on the lighter.
“Anyone mind if I smoke?”
Yes, they did mind: “That’s disgusting.” “It’s against the law to smoke here.” “There’s secondhand smoke and it smells bad.”
I hoped this opening to a unit on climate change would underscore the idea that-even if students don’t have the vocabulary to express it-we are all familiar with the concept of the “commons.” In this classroom, we shared a breathing commons, and I didn’t have to convince students that no one had an individual right to pollute it with cigarette smoke. I hoped the cigarette-in-the-classroom stunt would work as a metaphor: the earth’s atmosphere is just a bigger version of the classroom-a finite “commons” that none of us owns, but that each has a stake in.
… Tim Swinehart, active in our Portland, Ore., Area Rethinking Schools “earth in crisis” curriculum workgroup, had invited me to co-teach a several-week unit on global warming to his 9th-grade global studies students at Lincoln High School. Tim and I teach social studies, not science. We knew that we were ill-equipped to offer the kind of hard scientific instruction that would help students grasp exactly how and why the climate is changing. But just as all of us are responsible for the atmospheric commons, climate change falls into a curricular commons; Tim and I were committed to explore the social impact of global warming as well as some of its social roots. How the six billion metric tons of CO2 we pump annually into the atmosphere affects the earth’s natural systems may be a scientific question. Why we do this, who it affects, and, at least in part, how we can stop it-these are social questions.
We especially wanted students to appreciate the inequality at the heart of climate change: those who have the smallest carbon footprint are the ones most victimized by its consequences. We wanted students to probe beneath the glib “buy green” solutions to global warming. And Tim and I knew that in this unit we would toe a fine line between communicating the vast dangers of global warming and encouraging students to recognize their power to make a difference.
(23 August 2009)
Also at Common Dreams.
