Category Archives: Big picture

Journeys

Posted on by

In 2009 2.5 billion journeys were taken in aircraft.

Evened out across the global population, every third person on earth took a flight. In reality it is the wealthiest proportion of the 1 billion people in western economies who took most of the journeys.

The projection is that by 2014 there will be 3.3 billion journeys taken.

This represents a 32% increase in 5 years.

Mobility is an inevitable consequence of affluence. As more and more people have disposable income, many will want to use some of those funds to travel. As economies grow, more business is done and so travel to buy, sell and negotiate also increases.

In the mid 1960’s the first Boeing 737s carried 100 passengers up to 2775 km. This was quite a revolution at the time.

The latest Boeing 737-800s carry twice the number of people over 5,500 km and use 23% less fuel.

Suppose it were possible to replace all the aircraft flying in 2009 with the latest fuel efficient models. It would be possible to absorb almost all of the 5 year increase in passenger volume to 2014 through fuel efficiencies that these more efficient vehicles bring.

Future aircraft construction materials that are lighter and still strong enough will see even greater fuel efficiencies. Aircraft built in the next decade or two might only use a third of the fuel guzzled by the earliest models.

Replace all the 737-800s with aircraft of composite material designs and 13 years of growth in passenger numbers could be accommodated without increasing fuel use above that used in 2009.

But even if all these replacements were possible by the mid-2020s, less than a generation from now, fuel use in air travel would begin to increase over 2009 levels.

In half the time since those first Boeing 737 aircraft began flying all the fuel efficiencies would have been used up by the increased volume of traffic.

Clearly instant replacement with the best technology is impossible.

Some of those fuel hungry early models are still in the air on the more remote routes operated by obscure airlines. And it is these cheaper fare options that will be responsible for much of the growth in passenger numbers. The fuel efficiencies will arrive incrementally.

In the absence of some remarkable technology that can replace jet engines running on aviation fuel, greenhouse gas emissions from or air travel will grow along with the airline industry.

PS

There is talk of a jet-rocket vehicle that would travel in the stratosphere, have no emissions because it flies above the atmosphere on hydrogen fuel and could reduce the travel time from Sydney to London to a few hours. Commercial flights might happen by 2040.

By then there will be close to 10 billion journeys per year.

Washing machines

Posted on by

The number of people with the economic ability to purchase a dishwasher will double to more than 2 billion in the next 30-40 years.

Far more will rise above what Swedish statistician Professor Hans Rosling calls the ‘washing line’; an income of US$40 per day, the threshold necessary to own and run a washing machine.

On the one hand this is a worry.

Energy is needed to manufacture and power all these devices as is a water supply to allow them to function. Policy efforts on climate change notwithstanding, the cheapest power still comes from fossil fuels. It is why China is building coal-fired power stations even as they diversify into alternative fuels because they will need the energy to run all the new white goods.

On the other hand, sales of consumer goods will drive economic growth.

This is good news for those who require GDP growth, the enshrined dogma of political success. Nothing will prevent families from buying a washing machine they can afford it, nor indeed, airplane tickets, dishwashers and cars as their wealth allows.

Couple this inevitable growth in buying power with ever more people and the growth paradigm has never looked better.

Hans Rosling has a very clever way of explaining the population and economic growth combination  using Ikea boxes

 

 

What Rosling explains so simply is that it is the economic transition that is integral to the population one.

Without economic growth it is harder to see population growth slowing and eventually contracting.

Children must consistently outlive their parents for this to happen and that means needs must be met and standards of living must rise.

It seems that we have not fully embraced this reality.

No amount of environmental concern, moral imperative to preserve resources or even fear of environmental collapse is likely to trump the imperative to improve things for our families.

For this is an expression of self-preservation that is hard wired.

Rosling calls himself a ‘possibilist’ because even though the transition will happen, it can be done with a workable number at its conclusion and damage limitation along the way.

Street lights on a desert highway

Posted on by

You would think that lights are unnecessary along remote desert highways. Vehicles have headlights after all, and in the desert there is not much wildlife on the road.

If being able to see the camel on the road at night prevents even one death, or even an accident, it might justify the expense. But there are surely higher priorities for spending that would save lives.

Not so for the company installing the lights. They say yes please.  And hey, we can even provide solar power systems to tackle the carbon issue. No problem Minister and think of the export earnings.

Unnecessary development is often a problem because it is hard to argue that there is such a thing as unnecessary commerce.

Economic activity must happen, deals struck, money exchanged, and made available through purchases, wages and profits to fuel more activity. It is a relentless system that works so long as we keep making and selling things.

The Australian government has just released new modeling on the impact of a $20 per tCO2e carbon price on economic growth to 2050. Minimal effect it says. This is good news for spruikers of action on climate change. But what about economic growth of around 3% per annum for the next 40 years.

If that growth is generated by building street lights where we don’t need them and selling vast volumes of white goods, cars and miscellaneous consumer items that we probably don’t need, any carbon price will have the effect of a drop in the proverbial ocean on protecting the environment.

Remember that action on climate change is on the agenda because we are concerned about how a warming world will support us all.

The real trick will be to find things that will fuel economic activity with development that we actually need.

Historical science

Posted on by

I have just finished Jared Diamond’s 1997 book Guns, germs and steel. The subtitle, A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years, sums up a fascinating tale of not just our past but of the human condition. It is an extraordinary account of both the quirks of human history and the astonishing speed of our emergence to colonize and appropriate the planet.

You cannot go wrong with Diamond’s books. They are accessible, fluid and delivered, as one reviewer put it, with “a combination of expertise, charm and compassion.” The Third Chimpanzee and Collapse are popular science classics.

Although Diamond is a scientist, more precisely an evolutionary biologist, Guns, germs and steel is about history. A courageous attempt to describe and explain why in amongst all the movements of people some groups won, expanding territory and growing in number, while other groups lost, either by being overrun or exterminated.

Diamond’s science take seems to be fuelled by a sense of compassion. He flatly rejects racist explanations for success in favour of a more cause and effect analysis. The conclusions that technology (guns), the biological consequences of living in sedentary groups close to livestock (germs) and growing sufficient food to stay put long enough to work metal (steel) is convincing as it trots through 400 pages to a simple punch line.

But this is not to spoil the plot. It is the epilogue on history as a science that was the most intriguing.

Diamond leaves the detail of human occupation of every corner of the planet and makes a plea for science as knowledge. Science as a means to understanding that is more than the narrow view of controlled experimentation that is the essence of the scientific method.

His plea for historical science, an approach to history that is scientific in its logic. Only not of experimentation, for that is not possible, but for a sifting of the evidence that will allow for predictions and align cause.

This is curious because the book provides historical observation and interpretation that always suffers for want of attribution. It is odd that in an epilogue is a plea that draws attention to the core weakness in the argument. Observation is evidence but only in rare circumstances does it point to cause.

Cause must be surmised and then believed rather than proven in the way we can prove an experimental result.

Perhaps history is history, a catalogue of events and an interpretation of their meaning. And perhaps science is science only when attribution (a hypothesis) can be tested.

None of this makes Guns, germs and steel a lesser book, for the evidence and conclusions Diamond draws need to be read and heeded by us all.

Spongy attribution may explain why such books have only limited influence.

The hip pocket

Posted on by

A young colleague recently claimed that her generation has great concern about environmental ills. She thought that her y-generation all have deep feelings about the woes of our world. They want something done about it, especially climate change. She claimed that late alphabeters will be angry at any government that promised action on climate change but then reneged as the Australian government has just done.

“Are you sure,” I said, ‘won’t they vote with their hip pockets?”

“No they have all they need,” she said, “I mean we all have food and shelter and with those needs met we want to do the right thing.”

I believed her, at least the intent part. And I am sure it is how she feels herself having moved her own career path away from high finance into an environmental company. Unfortunately I don’t think that we have the freedom from basic needs that our apparent wealth implies.

It may be that most westerners are well fed, sleep in a bed, have a wardrobe, watch TV and take the occasional holiday. And it seems that all primary needs are covered (yes, it is true the TV is now a basic need according to the UK social services) and, therefore, higher values should mature. We should think about values beyond the basic, including care for the environment.

But this wealth, that supplies all the basics and more, has not given us emotional freedom. We are not free to think of higher things because we are still struggling to keep our wealth coming. We are locked into long hours of work to pay for large mortgages, excess food and more clothes than we could ever wear. And as we are at work we have to pay for someone else to look after the kids, and someone to do the washing, to mow the lawn and so it goes. In the end we have to keep the kids at home until they are middle aged to help us pay for it all.

And what if we just stopped? If we gave it all up in order to be enlightened, then the monetary flows so essential for our economies would stop as well. Our material world would collapse in a heap. And, well, it just can’t happen. Back to work we go, stressed to the max, a hand checking on the hip pocket.

Let us hope that I am just a cynic, a product of a different generation, and that the youngsters really do have a sense of higher value – although anyone who has seen a Lady Gaga music video may have to search hard for higher value.  Let us hope and believe that these youngsters will vote on their beliefs and give with their voice to help change the way we think.

Let us hope that they won’t vote with their hip pockets.

Populate or perish

Posted on by

Runners in City to SurfI heard this populate or perish grab on the radio today as projections for Australia were revised to see 35 million inhabitants by 2050, another 13 million more than today.

Enthusiasts were calling in saying we need more people ‘to defend ourselves” presumably because there is a perception of security in numbers.

Others wanted more people because there was a buzz, “it means growth and make the place more vibrant” and, of course, creates bigger markets for the sale of goods and services.

Then others responded with “what about the crowding, the roads, the planning we don’t have?” and then finally someone said “what about the water?” No worries, we will construct more dams.

These exchanges are fascinating for they expose real truths about the human condition and the shape of our future.

In short we really like having more people, so long as we get what we want… and it’s not too crowded.

Mark

Energy use

Posted on by

My 15th birthday was in 1976. I can’t recall that there was much memorable about it other than I still had hair and had just saved up enough to buy my first album.

In 1976 the households of Australia consumed 2,371 petajoules of energy.
Next year my youngest son turns 15. He is already onto his third iPod and way past his maiden download from iTunes.

He will use a tiny amount of the roughly 6,000 petajoules of domestic energy use – comfortably double the 1976 amount.

When he gets to my age, another 30 years will have passed. Projections have energy consumption by Australian households in 2050 at 17,000 petajoules, another doubling and seven times the 1976 level.

Nothing in the sums or the demand curves suggest that this doubling rate will slow, partly because there will be many more households, enough for the extra 12 million people. So if we want to stay at 2008 levels of energy use, each household in 2050 will need to use 30% less energy than we do now just to accommodate the increase in households.

We can’t do that by changing the light bulbs or even swopping our plasma screens for the new wafer thin stick-on screens that some clever engineer will invent. We will have to live in very different types of house, shower less, wear jumpers in winter and cop the sweat in summer.

Or we could change everything and use even more energy but from clean sources.

I think it will be the latter… and we have yet to fully grasp what that will mean.

M

Science and scientists

Posted on by

Recently I was on a selection panel that awards the prestigious McKell medal in recognition of contributions to natural resource management in Australia.

Nominees for the medal are farmers, senior bureaucrats, consultants or researchers, all of whom went beyond the requirements of their job or business to lead, educate and understand best use of natural resources. We reached a point in the proceedings where the relative merits of the nominees were discussed.

As happens every year, there was considerable debate over merit. It is very difficult to compare the relative contributions of candidates from such diverse career paths. When considering the merits of a senior scientist nominated for his research efforts in conservation, one comment from a panel member, an experienced and pragmatic farmer, caught my attention.

He said he’d rather see a result with his own eyes than research findings that said the same thing.

This was because he felt more inclined to believe an outcome if he actually saw it.

I confess that it took me a while to process my colleagues comment, but I think the implications are profound.

It means that whilst science and scientists are revered, hard evidence is what persuades us when it matters most. And then, if all the evidence must be seen, then not only do we have little faith, but our ability to apply scientific discoveries will be limited.

After much debate the panel recommended the medal be awarded to a farmer.

M