Efficient Outcomes

We live in a world that is flawed by you, and everyone you do and don't know.  Those everyone's are humans; homo sapiens that reside at the top of the food chain but way below the chain of common sense.

Not to beat up on humans, I love being one, but let's take a look at some primary accusations the rest of living organisms might make if they could, well...only find a way to communicate with us.  One perfect example can be found in a book titled Ishmael.  While I don't purport this novel to answer humanities failures, but it does probe into the culture of our behavior. 

We lack the ability to respond to a fundamental reality of finite resources because in an economic system the value of these resources are externalities that hold little meaning in comparison to wealth building in financial terms.  We fail miserably in efficient outcomes.

Why?  A culture of belief that never ending consumption, is the key to our remaining at the top of the evolutionary chain.  This includes development, a term that has evolved from the establishment of civilization. Humans have a tendency to conquer rather than coexist.  As Darwin might say, survival is based on one's ability to thrive over another organism.  Evidence of this can be seen not only in grand edifice as a symbol of human greatness, but in our crowing achievement of eliminating disease.

To be certain, there is no turning back the magnitude of our achievement, though cataclysmic they may be in

scale.  Sure we will see glimpses of a change in the tides but culture is a difficult thing to change.  Not only are we slow to respond, in many cases we are just to late.  It is human culture that  is the greatest contributor to the accelerating background extinction rate, dominating the landscape with estimates from 1000 to 10,000 times normal extinction rates of other living organisms-- that is the impact of a civilized society.  Wikipedia has a very interesting way of stating it, as long as species have been evolving, species have been going extinct; no species is evolving faster than humans.

Shifting from Climate Change to Climate Extremes

 by Scotland Willis

The discussion over climate change, has been a hotly debated issue since it's inception.  Advocates fiercely reacting to opponents of climate related issues with great fervor to emphasize the seriousness of potential threats.  Now is not the time to add to that flame, but rather clarify- and continue to do so.  Choosing a discourse that is based on observations, reasonable extrapolations, and comparative data year over year, is imperative.  Action is a must.

Yes, it is impossible to predict exactly what is going to happen with the weather patterns around the world, many experts believe the extremes will continue to increase aggressively- a likely scenario.  But if speculation, projections and modeling aren't sufficient (a task carried out by experts in the field of science), then why do we depend so heavily on them with regards to economic market conditions?  Such models are known as market predictability models; hundreds of billions of dollars each day depend on such projections and their outcomes.  Why? Simple, they are a good indicator of human behavior with reference to increasing or decreasing the price of various commodities.

 Why then, are such sophisticated systems dismissed in climate modeling?  Asserting that using probabilities and potentialities is not a reliable source, is a poor argument for non-action by policy makers and the general population for that matter.

It is important to be able to translate this into climate extremes and human behavior; market behavior is of course very different- or is it.

If we think of the environment in an inverse sort of way, we can look at it a bit differently.  While we can't change the weather based on how many people are going to buy a share of sunshine or speculate on rain; we do do this in a sense.  People bid on crops and other agribusiness all the time.  The performance of the weather significantly determines whether the price of wheat will go up or down.  Take the fires that destroyed the wheat crops in Russia.  People who speculated that the price of wheat would go down when those crops matured lost their bet in terms of stock futures.  Why? because the unexpected wildfires that destroyed the crops thus increasing the price of wheat.


And there is evidence that governments have been tampering with, artificially experimenting and manipulating the weather patterns over the years.  But the other and more important point is that we (the human species), can intentionally shift the way we impact the environment.  It is true that if agribusiness could make enough millions they would play war games with other countries crops but that is not the topic of discussion here.

The former discussion is solely to raise awareness of potentialities.  What our human impact is doing is having an accelerated impact on weather conditions.  Climate change will always occur, but climate extremes will significantly impact how we live and what quality of life we can expect.  The other point of the discussion above was to look at the comparison of using predictions and forecasting to influence our decisions about legislative policy related to climate change.  A book written about crowdsourcing (link here), provides some insights to predictive modeling as a powerful source to understanding economic market behavior


In 2011, the United States experienced twelve (12) extreme weather events; the record in 2008 was nine such events.  These are generally events that translate into $1 billion in damage or more.  Two good resources to defer to are both the NOAA (link here) and a Public Broadcasting Service program NewsHour (link hour).  From Snowfall records in January of 2011 that paralyzed the midsection of the United States to the hundreds of people who died from record tornadoes that hit the country; more extreme weather patterns are striking with great force and increasing frequency.  The NOAA estimates $52b in total damage for weather related events in 2011.  These unusual weather events are not solely in the U.S.

This past Fall season, my travels took me to Thailand during flooding that struck the far north and continued southward decimating communities.  And early in 2012, Latin America is experiencing recording flooding, wildfires and droughts (Huffington Post).  Along with the extreme hurricane type winds that battered the U.K., these patters emit a warning signs that should have legislators acting on firm policies to protect the native populations.  Planning is the key.  But when project like Rancho Cielo Solar Farm get canceled one must ask why, and not just point to the DOE-- but ask who is pulling the strings?  How do such project like this get usurped politically?  Start by asking what is at stake for the existing industries that have dominion over energy sources.


Real Solutions
Locating energy sources closer to the populations that use them is an important decision to make.  A tremendous amount of energy is lost when electricity from power generating plants are located long distances from the end user.  But no one wants a coal burning plant in their back yard (unless you live in Washington D.C. [ Capital Power Plant], 60,000 tons of carbon dioxide).  Solution, find a different power source.  Granted that in some areas, certain environments are not hospitable to certain power sources.  The efficiency  is simply a poor trade off.  But in many places geothermal, solar and wind are seriously under utilized.

What to Expect
Expect more extreme storms.  The capacity of the atmosphere to retain more energy and moisture means that the release of such energy will be more extreme.  Can we harness more of that extreme energy and find creative ways to stave off or offset the negative impact? Can't answer that one.  But we can trust what is before us and act accordingly.

Extremeness:

• Snow: January record snowfall in Chicago blizzards that pounded 22 states in the midsection of the US;
• Spring: Tornadoes 3 largest twister outbreaks in 6 wks $25b dmage;
• 300 killed in 3 days
•  Tuscaloosa, Alabama leveled due to tornadoes;
• Joplin Missouri: Late May leveled killed over 150 people200 mph winds
• Hurricane Irene; ravaging the East coastline
• Droughts  TX $10b loss crops, livestock, timber, (hottest Summer in TX
• over 6000 1m acres over labor day weekend.
• Kansas 100 days over 100 temp