No. $10,000 for the Volt's battery has been widely reported in the media, but we shouldn't rely on mass media!
Really, no one knows how much the batteries cost. The $10K figure is purely speculation.
Here's an example, in the CS Monitor ( http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/01/22/worldwide-race-to-make-better-batteries/ ). We see that it doesn't say $10K. Here's what the article says: "the race isn't over making a Chevy Volt battery designed to run 40 miles on a single charge that could (emphasis added) cost as much as $10,000."
That indicates that the reporter doesn't have a firm source for this cost figure.
Elsewhere, the article says: "Still others say that the cost of new battery power for PHEVs may drop faster and already be lower than what has been widely reported at perhaps $500 per kilowatt-hour or even less, says Suba Arunkumar, analyst for market researcher Frost & Sullivan.
"I do expect the price will come down to perhaps as low as $200 per kilowatt-hour when mass production begins in 2010 and 2011," she says."
Tesla's cost is $400/KWH - it's very likely that GM will pay $200-$300 in volume.
The batteries won't be produced in large volumes for several years. They'll use less expensive materials than 1st Gen batteries; the larger format is much less expensive; and they'll have very, very large production volumes relative to most 1st-gen li-ion. Large production volumes reduce costs very quickly.
GM is pricing the Volt high purely to capture the early-adopter premium and the federal rebate - their official justification is that they're pricing in 100% replacement of the battery under warranty, which really isn't credible. We can expect the Volt to cost less than $30K with large volume production.
Is the battery too large?
Yes, they're only using 50% of the battery - a 50% depth of discharge (DOD) is very conservative. That means they have to use a 16 KWH battery to get an effective 8 KWH's. They could be more aggressive (and probably will be in the future), but they're very sensitive to the bad publicity that early battery failures would create.
Could they use a battery that allowed a deeper DOD?
No, there aren't any batteries on the market that are more durable as measured in charge cycles. Tesla's batteries aren't expected to last more than 400 cycles, and the Volt will do 5-10x as many.
In theory, the Volt could have a smaller battery. That would mean a shorter range, which would still accomodate many drivers. That might more perfectly optimize costs, but then it wouldn't feel like a big step forward. It wouldn't feel like a real EV, with generator backup - instead, it would feel like an incremental hybrid. Both GM (for PR) and buyers want a large, step forward, I think.
A plug-in parallel hybrid, like the plug-in Prius, connects to gas engine directly to the wheels, and avoids wasting energy in converting gasoline to electricity. Won't it get better mileage?
No, because there are more variables than RPM. People can get anywhere from 35MPG to 75MPG (or more) depending on how they drive. A big variable is the fact that the Volt can turn the engine off entirely, eliminating the waste that comes from just running when you don't need to.
Even if it were true (and it's not) would it matter? If the Prius can get 60MPG on the highway, properly driven, and the Volt only gets 50MPG, does that matter? A Prius, driven the standard 12k miles, uses 240 gallons/yr. A volt would use 48-60, depending on the MPG: that's only a 12 gallon difference.
February 6, 2009
Is wind/solar intermittency a fatal problem?
No.
There are many solutions to wind & solar intermittency, each of which is very expensive if taken to an extreme, including pumped storage, CAES, or a planet girdling HVDC system. If you combine the best of each, you're likely to get a much lower cost system.
More importantly, Demand Side Management is very, very cheap, and extremely effective. It's overlooked because it's not "incented" by utility rate regulation.
220M plug-in's and EV's could provide all of the demand buffering that wind could every want. Add V2G (see here for a UK-oriented discussion), which is a bit more expensive but very practical, and you get all of the capacity you need for handling system variance on an hourly or daily basis.
All you'd need is to retain large fossil fuel plants for the 5-10% of the time when wind was calm for a week or more.
The obstacles to a renewable grid aren't technical, they're social: up to 20% of the workforce would be made obsolete. They have an enormous incentive to fight change.
Do you have references for this?
Here's a discussion by Amory Lovins's RMI: http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Transportation/RMIPHEV_decouple_AESP.pdf.
On the other hand, it's very easy to analyze - no experts or peer-reviewed papers are needed.
Take 220M vehicles, with 25KWH effective capacity battery (3x that of the Volt), for a total of 5.5 Terawatt hours. Charging them using 220 volt, 30 amp connections will take about 4 hours, but create peak demand of more than the grid's current capacity, so vehicle charging would be spread out over several days, giving lots of leeway for dynamic scheduling.
If you want, say, 50% of KWH from wind then you need an average of 225 gigawatts from wind. At 30% capacity factor, that's about 750GW of nameplate capacity. An individual wind turbine can hit 100% of capacity, but a windfarm rarely goes above 85%, and a nationwide network would very rarely go above 50%, just based on the laws of large numbers (variance rises more slowly than the mean), and the fact that many windfarms would be negatively correlated to each other (one part of the country is windy, and another is calm).
That means peak wind generation might be 375GW. Night time demand might be 200GW, so we need to soak up 175GW. Our 5.5Twhr plug-in/EV fleet could draw that for 10 hours, using less than 1/3 of it's capacity.
Similar calculations apply for V2G.
Solar appears to have more short-term intermittency, which suggests that PHEV/EV buffering, with it's very fast response time, would be especially valuable for solar.
There are many solutions to wind & solar intermittency, each of which is very expensive if taken to an extreme, including pumped storage, CAES, or a planet girdling HVDC system. If you combine the best of each, you're likely to get a much lower cost system.
More importantly, Demand Side Management is very, very cheap, and extremely effective. It's overlooked because it's not "incented" by utility rate regulation.
220M plug-in's and EV's could provide all of the demand buffering that wind could every want. Add V2G (see here for a UK-oriented discussion), which is a bit more expensive but very practical, and you get all of the capacity you need for handling system variance on an hourly or daily basis.
All you'd need is to retain large fossil fuel plants for the 5-10% of the time when wind was calm for a week or more.
The obstacles to a renewable grid aren't technical, they're social: up to 20% of the workforce would be made obsolete. They have an enormous incentive to fight change.
Do you have references for this?
Here's a discussion by Amory Lovins's RMI: http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Transportation/RMIPHEV_decouple_AESP.pdf.
On the other hand, it's very easy to analyze - no experts or peer-reviewed papers are needed.
Take 220M vehicles, with 25KWH effective capacity battery (3x that of the Volt), for a total of 5.5 Terawatt hours. Charging them using 220 volt, 30 amp connections will take about 4 hours, but create peak demand of more than the grid's current capacity, so vehicle charging would be spread out over several days, giving lots of leeway for dynamic scheduling.
If you want, say, 50% of KWH from wind then you need an average of 225 gigawatts from wind. At 30% capacity factor, that's about 750GW of nameplate capacity. An individual wind turbine can hit 100% of capacity, but a windfarm rarely goes above 85%, and a nationwide network would very rarely go above 50%, just based on the laws of large numbers (variance rises more slowly than the mean), and the fact that many windfarms would be negatively correlated to each other (one part of the country is windy, and another is calm).
That means peak wind generation might be 375GW. Night time demand might be 200GW, so we need to soak up 175GW. Our 5.5Twhr plug-in/EV fleet could draw that for 10 hours, using less than 1/3 of it's capacity.
Similar calculations apply for V2G.
Solar appears to have more short-term intermittency, which suggests that PHEV/EV buffering, with it's very fast response time, would be especially valuable for solar.
February 2, 2009
Do we face "peak water"?
Probably not for households, as long as we have plentiful electricity. It's a very serious problem, especially for farmers, who are accustomed to very cheap water:
"A quick spin through recent headlines reveals just how badly -- and how soon -- we're going to need new supplies of freshwater: Over the past 18 months in the United States alone, the governor of Georgia declared a state of emergency due to water shortages; salmonella contaminated municipal water in Colorado; and eight states ratified the Great Lakes Basin Compact, an agreement designed to ensure that Great Lakes water, nearly 20% of the world's freshwater, won't be shipped beyond those basins -- not even to nearby Minneapolis or Pittsburgh.
Worldwide, the picture is far bleaker. Global water consumption has roughly doubled since World War II, and yet, according to the United Nations, 1.1 billion people still have no access to a clean, reliable supply. Eighty percent of disease and deaths in developing countries -- more than 2.2 million people a year, including 3,900 children each day -- are caused by diseases associated with unsanitary water. The cost of waterborne diseases and associated lost productivity drains 2% of developing countries' GDP each year."
..."In energy-rich, water-desperate countries in the Middle East and Asia, desalination already fills a vital role. Saudi Arabia currently produces about 18% of the world's desal output, and the Middle East is expected to invest $30 billion in the technology by 2015. Places such as Algeria, Dubai, Libya, and Singapore all depend on desal for drinking water. China's desal investments are expected to increase by an order of magnitude, from about $60 million to more than $600 million in the next 10 years. The worldwide market, now about $11 billion, is expected to explode to $126 billion by 2015."
..."What the world really needs is a very low cost to desalinate water. We said 10 cents per meter cubed [an 80% reduction from today's average*]. But you can't think incremental innovation will get us there. You have to think breakthrough. It will take new science, new engineering, breakthrough innovation."
..." ADC has been running a pilot study, funded partly by grants from the state of California that in 2006 produced water for roughly the same price per gallon San Diego residents pay -- and using 1 kilowatt-hour less energy per 1,000 gallons than the State Water Project. The ADC project produced an average household's daily water demands using about as much energy as a PC."
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/132/water-water-everywhere.html?page=0%2C0
* e.g., the Israeli Ashkelon desalination plant in 2009 was selling water at 52 cents a cubic meter (aka metric ton of water), or about .2 cents per gallon
"A quick spin through recent headlines reveals just how badly -- and how soon -- we're going to need new supplies of freshwater: Over the past 18 months in the United States alone, the governor of Georgia declared a state of emergency due to water shortages; salmonella contaminated municipal water in Colorado; and eight states ratified the Great Lakes Basin Compact, an agreement designed to ensure that Great Lakes water, nearly 20% of the world's freshwater, won't be shipped beyond those basins -- not even to nearby Minneapolis or Pittsburgh.
Worldwide, the picture is far bleaker. Global water consumption has roughly doubled since World War II, and yet, according to the United Nations, 1.1 billion people still have no access to a clean, reliable supply. Eighty percent of disease and deaths in developing countries -- more than 2.2 million people a year, including 3,900 children each day -- are caused by diseases associated with unsanitary water. The cost of waterborne diseases and associated lost productivity drains 2% of developing countries' GDP each year."
..."In energy-rich, water-desperate countries in the Middle East and Asia, desalination already fills a vital role. Saudi Arabia currently produces about 18% of the world's desal output, and the Middle East is expected to invest $30 billion in the technology by 2015. Places such as Algeria, Dubai, Libya, and Singapore all depend on desal for drinking water. China's desal investments are expected to increase by an order of magnitude, from about $60 million to more than $600 million in the next 10 years. The worldwide market, now about $11 billion, is expected to explode to $126 billion by 2015."
..."What the world really needs is a very low cost to desalinate water. We said 10 cents per meter cubed [an 80% reduction from today's average*]. But you can't think incremental innovation will get us there. You have to think breakthrough. It will take new science, new engineering, breakthrough innovation."
..." ADC has been running a pilot study, funded partly by grants from the state of California that in 2006 produced water for roughly the same price per gallon San Diego residents pay -- and using 1 kilowatt-hour less energy per 1,000 gallons than the State Water Project. The ADC project produced an average household's daily water demands using about as much energy as a PC."
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/132/water-water-everywhere.html?page=0%2C0
* e.g., the Israeli Ashkelon desalination plant in 2009 was selling water at 52 cents a cubic meter (aka metric ton of water), or about .2 cents per gallon
January 8, 2009
Cement that eats carbon dioxide
Making the 2bn tonnes of cement used globally every year, for concrete and other things, pumps out 5% of the world's CO2 emissions - more than the entire aviation industry.
A new cement has been developed, which consumes rather than produces CO2.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/31/cement-carbon-emissions
**11/19/10 Update
"There’s a story in Technology Review about a Halifax, Nova Scotia-based company called Carbon Sense Solutions that has found a way to make precast concrete products CO2-sucking vacuums. The interesting thing about concrete is that over hundreds of years they absorb CO2, a natural process called carbonation. The amount of absorption partially offsets the CO2 emissions that result from the calcination of limestone during the manufacture of cement, which is a key active ingredient of concrete. One problem, however, is that during the earlier stages of carbonation the outer two or three millimetres of the concrete forms a hardened crust that significantly slows down CO2 absorption. What Carbon Sense claims to have done is packed hundreds of years of carbonation into as little as one hour, using a curing process that consumes dramatically less energy than conventional heat/steam curing (see presentation here). In fact, compared to steam curing, company CEO Robert Niven says his approach — building on 40 years of research at McGill University — uses up to 44 per cent less energy and 39 per cent less water.
Now, it only works with precast concrete products — i.e. prefab tunnels, manholes, septic tanks, walls, blocks and beams. Even concrete wind-turbine towers are precast. This represents between 10 to 15 per cent of the North American concrete market, which is predominantly ready-mix (i.e. construction folks mix it and mould it on site). In some European countries, however, precast is closer to 40 per cent of the market. Given we’re talking about a $125-billion global market annually, even 10 per cent is a market worth pursuing.
Frankly, it sounds too good to be true, given the cement and concrete industry represent more than 5 per cent of global CO2 emissions and something has to be done about it. If all precast operations used Carbon Sense’s process, it would sequester as much as 20 per cent of those emissions in concrete, says Niven."
http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/07/24/concrete-that-sucks-co2-that-is/
And...
Call him cement man.
Back when Stanford Professor Brent Constantz was 27, he created a high-tech cement that revolutionized bone fracture repair in hospitals worldwide. People who might have died from the complications of breaking their hips lived. Fractured wrists became good as new.
Now, 22 years later, he wants to repair the world.
Constantz says he has invented a green cement that could eliminate the huge amounts of carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere by manufacturers of the everyday cement used in concrete for buildings, roadways and bridges.
His vision of eliminating a large source of the world's greenhouse CO2 has gained traction with both investors and environmentalists.
Already, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla is backing Constantz's company, the Calera Corp., which has a pilot factory in Moss Landing (Monterey County) churning out cement in small batches.
http://www.truth-out.org/article/green-cement-may-set-co2-fate-concrete
A new cement has been developed, which consumes rather than produces CO2.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/31/cement-carbon-emissions
**11/19/10 Update
"There’s a story in Technology Review about a Halifax, Nova Scotia-based company called Carbon Sense Solutions that has found a way to make precast concrete products CO2-sucking vacuums. The interesting thing about concrete is that over hundreds of years they absorb CO2, a natural process called carbonation. The amount of absorption partially offsets the CO2 emissions that result from the calcination of limestone during the manufacture of cement, which is a key active ingredient of concrete. One problem, however, is that during the earlier stages of carbonation the outer two or three millimetres of the concrete forms a hardened crust that significantly slows down CO2 absorption. What Carbon Sense claims to have done is packed hundreds of years of carbonation into as little as one hour, using a curing process that consumes dramatically less energy than conventional heat/steam curing (see presentation here). In fact, compared to steam curing, company CEO Robert Niven says his approach — building on 40 years of research at McGill University — uses up to 44 per cent less energy and 39 per cent less water.
Now, it only works with precast concrete products — i.e. prefab tunnels, manholes, septic tanks, walls, blocks and beams. Even concrete wind-turbine towers are precast. This represents between 10 to 15 per cent of the North American concrete market, which is predominantly ready-mix (i.e. construction folks mix it and mould it on site). In some European countries, however, precast is closer to 40 per cent of the market. Given we’re talking about a $125-billion global market annually, even 10 per cent is a market worth pursuing.
Frankly, it sounds too good to be true, given the cement and concrete industry represent more than 5 per cent of global CO2 emissions and something has to be done about it. If all precast operations used Carbon Sense’s process, it would sequester as much as 20 per cent of those emissions in concrete, says Niven."
http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/07/24/concrete-that-sucks-co2-that-is/
And...
Call him cement man.
Back when Stanford Professor Brent Constantz was 27, he created a high-tech cement that revolutionized bone fracture repair in hospitals worldwide. People who might have died from the complications of breaking their hips lived. Fractured wrists became good as new.
Now, 22 years later, he wants to repair the world.
Constantz says he has invented a green cement that could eliminate the huge amounts of carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere by manufacturers of the everyday cement used in concrete for buildings, roadways and bridges.
His vision of eliminating a large source of the world's greenhouse CO2 has gained traction with both investors and environmentalists.
Already, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla is backing Constantz's company, the Calera Corp., which has a pilot factory in Moss Landing (Monterey County) churning out cement in small batches.
http://www.truth-out.org/article/green-cement-may-set-co2-fate-concrete
November 23, 2008
New developments
This blog provides a reference - a FAQ. As I learn things, I add them to the individual articles, whose posting dates don't change as they are updated. People need a way to know what's new, so, they'll be here in this post. It will be at the top unless I add an entirely new post.
-------------------------------------------------
Is solar being slowed down by the current credit crunch?
Only slightly. For instance, one of the largest suppliers has cut it's 2009 forecasted growh from 75% to 58%. (posted 12/22/08)
Are-plug-ins-economically-justified?
EV technology, while more than adequate, will continue to improve. Regenerative braking eliminates one source of waste (or finds a new energy source, depending on your perspective) by capturing vehicle kinetic energy: another source is the vertical kinetic energy now lost to shock absorption, which appears to have been solved. (posted 11/23/08)
-------------------------------------------------
Is solar being slowed down by the current credit crunch?
Only slightly. For instance, one of the largest suppliers has cut it's 2009 forecasted growh from 75% to 58%. (posted 12/22/08)
Are-plug-ins-economically-justified?
EV technology, while more than adequate, will continue to improve. Regenerative braking eliminates one source of waste (or finds a new energy source, depending on your perspective) by capturing vehicle kinetic energy: another source is the vertical kinetic energy now lost to shock absorption, which appears to have been solved. (posted 11/23/08)
October 20, 2008
Was Malthus right to forecast starvation?
No. As a practical matter I think we're going to have a hard time juggling all of our resource crunches (especially energy), but I think we should be clear on what the theoretical problems are, and are not.
The most important refutation of Malthus is on the population side: world population as a whole has clearly stopped growing exponentially (or geometrically, if you like), due to the demographic transition (it's roughly arithmetic at the moment). This is a key point: in many ways, growth is generally self-limited, and follows a logistic (or sigmoid curve), generally referred to as an S-curve. For instance, US car sales peaked about 35 years ago, and the US has a clear over-supply of vehicles, due to increasing vehicle longevity.
In fact, in most of the world population growth is on a long-term negative path, due to fertility rates well below replacement, including Western Europe, China, and the US (excluding immigration). Russia, Eastern Europe, Japan and Italy are starting to show absolute declines in population. This is detailed at the UN site below, where we see that the growth rate was as high as 2.19% back in 1963. The total population peak is currently expected to be at about 9 billion around 2075 and population is expected to drop after that.
See especially Figure 3, page 6: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf
Let's explore a couple of key concepts: the difference between arithmetic and exponential growth, and the difference between high fertility and "bottom line" growth.
Consider the following series of numbers: 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. There is growth of 7.7% at the end, but this is arithmetic growth: the change from number to number is constant, not growing with the base. Malthus assumed exponential growth for population, and arithmetic growth for agriculture. The growth rate of the world's population has been falling for 50 years, from 2.2% (in 1963) to 1.1% (in 2012).http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/worldpoptotal.php . We see the current absolute number is about 78M per year, and decreasing: exponential growth for population has ended.
Growth varies enormously by country - in Japan, for instance, absolute growth will be negative next year. Italy and Russia will follow soon after. These alone are sufficient to refute Malthus's general rule in a simple, clear fashion.
For many more countries, the fertility rate is below replacement. If every couple has less than about 2.1 children (the definition of the replacement fertility rate), the population is very young, and the death rate is low, there can be a lot of children and "bottom line" growth in the population, but in the long run the population will stabilize and decline, as every generation is smaller than the one before. So, if we clearly have fertility rates below replacement, we clearly have in the long run stable or declining population growth.
Now, are there still parts of the world growing pretty quickly? Sure, but they're in the minority. Just as importantly, the parts of the world that aren't growing clearly refute Malthus's idea that population always grows until it hits a resource limit - he couldn't conceive of voluntary birth control.
Do we still have huge, basic sustainability problems? Sure, but it's important to know that the broad, simple framework that Malthus proposed is just plain wrong.
This kind of logic also applies to energy. Like population, US car sales, and many other examples, energy markets (at least renewable ones, like those for wind and solar electricity - so no, I'm not talking about oil) will naturally mature and flatten out long before we reach theoretical limits.
For far too long we've been talking about a false dichotomy between "infinite exponential growth" and collapse. In fact, with a little luck, growth in resource consumption will gradually come to a stop, while humanity switches it's desire for improvement to what are generally known as "services": health, education, art, etc.
-------------------------------------
Just for the value of good trivia, let's note that Malthus believed that population growth would continue forever because he believed that contraception was morally wrong, not that it couldn't work.
Further, some argue that Malthus’s argument was principally a class one, designed to rationalize why the poor must remain poor, and why the class relations in nineteenth-century Britain should remain as they were.
His greatest fear was that due to excessive population growth combined with egalitarian notions “the middle classes of society would . . . be blended with the poor.” Indeed, as Malthus acknowledged in An Essay on Population, “The principal argument of this Essay only goes to prove the necessity of a class of proprietors, and a class of labourers.” The workers and the poor through their excessive consumption, abetted by sheer numbers, would eat away the house and home (and the sumptuous dinner tables) of the middle and upper classes.
He made it clear that the real issue was who was to be allowed to join the banquet at the top of society.
Charity simply encouraged early marriage and larger families, he concluded, inspiring an 1834 Poor Law that effectively limited public relief to people toiling in workhouses. Charles Dickens, appalled, rebuffed Malthus with the tale of a flinty miser who had a change of heart. "A Christmas Carol" is still in print.
-------------------------------------
update: here's comments by "relhager":
There are two relevant points: One, as Nick noted above, is that the UN predicts that the human population will never double again, and will start decreasing during this century. That’s critical.
The second is just as important: Malthus was simply wrong. Or at least half wrong. He was right about population growth (up until now, at least) but very wrong about food production. During the twentieth century, global population increased sixfold, and food production increased sevenfold, thanks to advances in genetics (the Green Revolution) and especially chemical fertilizers (see my recent book on the history of the subject, "The Alchemy of Air," as well as Vaclav Smil’s excellent "Enriching the Earth.").
Yes, we will have big issues handling the population high-water mark (+ another 4 billion or more) before we start going down in numbers, especially because of pollution. No, this does not answer questions about energy resources (making chemical fertilizer currently eats up about 1 percent of all the energy used on earth). But if we ate a reduced-meat, high-vegetable diet, we should be able to avoid the mass starvation predicted by Malthus — forever. www.thinhouse.net
The most important refutation of Malthus is on the population side: world population as a whole has clearly stopped growing exponentially (or geometrically, if you like), due to the demographic transition (it's roughly arithmetic at the moment). This is a key point: in many ways, growth is generally self-limited, and follows a logistic (or sigmoid curve), generally referred to as an S-curve. For instance, US car sales peaked about 35 years ago, and the US has a clear over-supply of vehicles, due to increasing vehicle longevity.
In fact, in most of the world population growth is on a long-term negative path, due to fertility rates well below replacement, including Western Europe, China, and the US (excluding immigration). Russia, Eastern Europe, Japan and Italy are starting to show absolute declines in population. This is detailed at the UN site below, where we see that the growth rate was as high as 2.19% back in 1963. The total population peak is currently expected to be at about 9 billion around 2075 and population is expected to drop after that.
See especially Figure 3, page 6: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf
Let's explore a couple of key concepts: the difference between arithmetic and exponential growth, and the difference between high fertility and "bottom line" growth.
Consider the following series of numbers: 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. There is growth of 7.7% at the end, but this is arithmetic growth: the change from number to number is constant, not growing with the base. Malthus assumed exponential growth for population, and arithmetic growth for agriculture. The growth rate of the world's population has been falling for 50 years, from 2.2% (in 1963) to 1.1% (in 2012).http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/worldpoptotal.php . We see the current absolute number is about 78M per year, and decreasing: exponential growth for population has ended.
Growth varies enormously by country - in Japan, for instance, absolute growth will be negative next year. Italy and Russia will follow soon after. These alone are sufficient to refute Malthus's general rule in a simple, clear fashion.
For many more countries, the fertility rate is below replacement. If every couple has less than about 2.1 children (the definition of the replacement fertility rate), the population is very young, and the death rate is low, there can be a lot of children and "bottom line" growth in the population, but in the long run the population will stabilize and decline, as every generation is smaller than the one before. So, if we clearly have fertility rates below replacement, we clearly have in the long run stable or declining population growth.
Now, are there still parts of the world growing pretty quickly? Sure, but they're in the minority. Just as importantly, the parts of the world that aren't growing clearly refute Malthus's idea that population always grows until it hits a resource limit - he couldn't conceive of voluntary birth control.
Do we still have huge, basic sustainability problems? Sure, but it's important to know that the broad, simple framework that Malthus proposed is just plain wrong.
This kind of logic also applies to energy. Like population, US car sales, and many other examples, energy markets (at least renewable ones, like those for wind and solar electricity - so no, I'm not talking about oil) will naturally mature and flatten out long before we reach theoretical limits.
For far too long we've been talking about a false dichotomy between "infinite exponential growth" and collapse. In fact, with a little luck, growth in resource consumption will gradually come to a stop, while humanity switches it's desire for improvement to what are generally known as "services": health, education, art, etc.
-------------------------------------
Just for the value of good trivia, let's note that Malthus believed that population growth would continue forever because he believed that contraception was morally wrong, not that it couldn't work.
Further, some argue that Malthus’s argument was principally a class one, designed to rationalize why the poor must remain poor, and why the class relations in nineteenth-century Britain should remain as they were.
His greatest fear was that due to excessive population growth combined with egalitarian notions “the middle classes of society would . . . be blended with the poor.” Indeed, as Malthus acknowledged in An Essay on Population, “The principal argument of this Essay only goes to prove the necessity of a class of proprietors, and a class of labourers.” The workers and the poor through their excessive consumption, abetted by sheer numbers, would eat away the house and home (and the sumptuous dinner tables) of the middle and upper classes.
He made it clear that the real issue was who was to be allowed to join the banquet at the top of society.
Charity simply encouraged early marriage and larger families, he concluded, inspiring an 1834 Poor Law that effectively limited public relief to people toiling in workhouses. Charles Dickens, appalled, rebuffed Malthus with the tale of a flinty miser who had a change of heart. "A Christmas Carol" is still in print.
-------------------------------------
update: here's comments by "relhager":
There are two relevant points: One, as Nick noted above, is that the UN predicts that the human population will never double again, and will start decreasing during this century. That’s critical.
The second is just as important: Malthus was simply wrong. Or at least half wrong. He was right about population growth (up until now, at least) but very wrong about food production. During the twentieth century, global population increased sixfold, and food production increased sevenfold, thanks to advances in genetics (the Green Revolution) and especially chemical fertilizers (see my recent book on the history of the subject, "The Alchemy of Air," as well as Vaclav Smil’s excellent "Enriching the Earth.").
Yes, we will have big issues handling the population high-water mark (+ another 4 billion or more) before we start going down in numbers, especially because of pollution. No, this does not answer questions about energy resources (making chemical fertilizer currently eats up about 1 percent of all the energy used on earth). But if we ate a reduced-meat, high-vegetable diet, we should be able to avoid the mass starvation predicted by Malthus — forever. www.thinhouse.net
October 3, 2008
Would an energy policy fix our financial crisis?
Yes.
First, the US's basic problem is a chronic trade deficit, which has lately been financed by mortgage borrowing by US households from other countries. This household borrowing reached excessive levels - the current bailout is intended to fix this.
2nd, the bailout is intended to transfer excessive household mortgage debt to the Treasury. This moves debt to where it can be better carried, but raises the risk of a currency/debt crisis in which foreigners decide the US itself isn't creditworthy.
3rd, the only longterm solution is to fix the chronic trade deficit. Such a fix would greatly improve the US's creditworthiness in the eyes of foreign lenders, and simultaneously reduce the need for such borrowing.
4th, the primary source of the US chronic trade deficit is oil imports, and has been since the 70's.
Conclusion: the US urgently, and as it's first national priority, needs an aggressive plan to reduce oil imports in the short-term and long-term. Such a plan should include short-term measures such as carpooling and telecomuting; in the medium term an aggressive increase in automotive CAFE requirements, fuel taxes, fuel substitution (PHEV/ErEV/EV's, CNG, ethanol, CTL with sequestration) and in the long-term domestic drilling.
First, the US's basic problem is a chronic trade deficit, which has lately been financed by mortgage borrowing by US households from other countries. This household borrowing reached excessive levels - the current bailout is intended to fix this.
2nd, the bailout is intended to transfer excessive household mortgage debt to the Treasury. This moves debt to where it can be better carried, but raises the risk of a currency/debt crisis in which foreigners decide the US itself isn't creditworthy.
3rd, the only longterm solution is to fix the chronic trade deficit. Such a fix would greatly improve the US's creditworthiness in the eyes of foreign lenders, and simultaneously reduce the need for such borrowing.
4th, the primary source of the US chronic trade deficit is oil imports, and has been since the 70's.
Conclusion: the US urgently, and as it's first national priority, needs an aggressive plan to reduce oil imports in the short-term and long-term. Such a plan should include short-term measures such as carpooling and telecomuting; in the medium term an aggressive increase in automotive CAFE requirements, fuel taxes, fuel substitution (PHEV/ErEV/EV's, CNG, ethanol, CTL with sequestration) and in the long-term domestic drilling.
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