To be sure, there are particular small countries which have made serious spending cuts, in the Baltics most of all. But sometimes one hears it said that an anti-austerity strategy must be EU-wide as a whole, or that austerity is “a failed strategy for the eurozone,” or something similar. So perhaps it is worth looking at some numbers for the larger picture. Here is a graph which puts the matter in some perspective:

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These researchers conclude “Yes” to the captioned query:

Gorka Merinoa, Manuel Barangea, Julia L. Blanchardb, James Harlec, Robert Holmesa, Icarus Allena, Edward H. Allisond, Marie Caroline Badjeckd, Nicholas K. Dulvye, Jason Holtc, Simon Jenningsf, g, Christian Mullonh, Lynda D. Rodwelli

Essential fisheries management changes include switching feed from wild fish meal. Abstract:

Expansion in the world’s human population and economic development will increase future demand for fish products. As global fisheries yield is constrained by ecosystems productivity and management effectiveness, per capita fish consumption can only be maintained or increased if aquaculture makes an increasing contribution to the volume and stability of global fish supplies. Here, we use predictions of changes in global and regional climate (according to IPCC emissions scenario A1B), marine ecosystem and fisheries production estimates from high resolution regional models, human population size estimates from United Nations prospects, fishmeal and oil price estimations, and projections of the technological development in aquaculture feed technology, to investigate the feasibility of sustaining current and increased per capita fish consumption rates in 2050. We conclude that meeting current and larger consumption rates is feasible, despite a growing population and the impacts of climate change on potential fisheries production, but only if fish resources are managed sustainably and the animal feeds industry reduces its reliance on wild fish. Ineffective fisheries management and rising fishmeal prices driven by greater demand could, however, compromise future aquaculture production and the availability of fish products.

The article is unfortunately behind the bloody Elsevier paywall.

An urgent remodelling of the UK’s energy infrastructure is vital if the country wants to decarbonise without “the lights going out” and not be reliant on imported energy supplies, says a new report by the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment (SSEE) at the University of Oxford.

“Towards a low carbon pathway for the UK” emphasises the need to remodel our infrastructure between now and 2025 to redress the balance between energy security and decarbonisation. Following up on last year’s report, “A low carbon nuclear future,” SSEE’s latest research highlights how, with the right strategy, a £100bn world-leading nuclear industry, providing over 75,000 jobs and guaranteeing a consistent, safe energy supply, while still meeting long term carbon emission targets, can be achieved.

Towards a low carbon pathway for the UK report

“Towards a low carbon pathway for the UK” explores two key aspects of the UK’s energy landscape: the future delivery of low carbon energy and the initial moves towards a new build programme, and the more immediate first steps of safely and cost efficiently dealing with the UK’s plutonium inventory.

Professor Sir David King, Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford comments: “If we are to ensure we have a safe, secure and affordable supply of energy as we move through the century we need a coherent strategy that allows the UK to develop a full suite of low carbon energy sources. It is clear from our study that nuclear must play an important part in the energy mix but to do so requires a long term pathway and critical insights.

“The recent announcements on the Franco-British Accord and the desire to create a long-term strategy for nuclear up to and beyond 2050 are welcome, but we need to address the fundamental issue that energy provision is generally a 100 year programme and requires not just a long-term view, but skills and the science base to support it.”

Whilst nuclear new build is essential, with a quarter of the UK’s current generating capacity coming to the end of its life over the next ten years, the report highlights that we must also deal with the legacy issues that have been with us for many years. Failure to do so could have a detrimental effect on the whole nuclear industry in the UK. Furthermore, if we are to retain public support for nuclear as a key part of our future energy mix, then we have to demonstrate that lessons have been learnt and that there is in place a coherent policy framework which will capitalise on the opportunities and benefits on offer.

UK Nuclear Development Timeline 1950 – 2012 & onwards

An enormous challenge in meeting future electricity demand is anticipated with the predicted electrification of transport and heating increasing demand by 100% by 2050. To ensure we can keep the lights on and meet our low carbon energy targets, it will be essential to use greater levels of nuclear power. This will require either much higher uranium reserves than currently identified, or a change of fuel cycle to minimise uranium use.

Using the UK plutonium inventory to manufacture MOX (mixed oxide) fuel is the Government’s ‘minded to’ position. Coupled with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s stance on reprocessing spent fuel from advanced gas-cooled reactors the de facto UK policy on nuclear would, therefore, be the recycling of plutonium and uranium as fuel.

The structure of the UK nuclear industry, however, is currently aligned more towards the ‘no nuclear’ stance of 2003 than the ‘new build’ stance of 2012 and the report points out the clear need for some form of independent body to advise on long-term nuclear strategy and options.

Whilst working for the Maldives government I was always aware of the need to resist the temptation of making sweeping statements about the impacts of climate change and sea-level rise in the service of wider political ends. I saw part of my role as advisor to push back against the simplistic view that given that we know that the planet is warming, and the seas are rising, surely the impacts – in terms of erosion, flooding events and disasters – should increasingly be visible now, right?

A new paper published in the AGU’s house journal Eos Transactions shows why caution is often justified. Here (via a screengrab, as the entire thing is behind a password) is the 1993-2011 sea level trend data from Tarawa atoll, part of Kiribati in the central Pacific:

Whoa! No sea-level rise there, then. And yet of course climate campaigners – and even the Kiribati government – understandably anxious to highlight the future existential threat to the islands, have used storm surges, flooding events and suchlike as evidence of current sea-level rise impacts. Which they are almost certainly not, at least not in Tarawa atoll anyway.

To me the graph is interesting for two reasons. The first is the absence of any trend over the last 20 years towards increased sea levels in that part of the Pacific. This should be expected, because sea level rise as a computed average means that the oceans are rising in more places than they are falling, but they are falling in some places nonetheless. (Just as a few areas of the globe have got colder over recent years.) The second is the sheer up-and-down massive variability in actual sea levels, which is linked to the El Niño cycle. The author (Simon Donner, a geographer from the University of British Columbia, Canada) points out in the Eos paper that the monthly mean sea level dropped by nearly half a metre (45cm) between March 1997 and February 1998 because of switch from El Niño to La Niña conditions, and peaks of 15cm were seen in each of the recent El Niño events – which as the author points out is “equivalent to 50 years of global sea level rise at the rate observed since 2000 of 3 mm per year”.

So the problem with attributing sea-level rise impacts is the same as with attributing heat-waves, droughts, floods or other extreme events to climate change – you have to try to figure out what would have happened absent the global warming trend (in order to distinguish genuine impacts from noise), and also distinguish background changes from more direct anthropogenic interference which might confuse the picture. In a heatwave, for instance, were the extreme temperatures caused by the urban heat island effect in a more built-up area?

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Good work Mark, and thanks for the quotations from the fire walled and overpriced academic journals.

The Royal Society – Britain’s premier scientific institution – has just released a major report called People and the Planet, arguing that per capital resource consumption in the richest parts of the world needs to come down dramatically if the poorest 1.3 billion are to be lifted out of extreme poverty whilst protecting the Earth’s environment from irreparable harm. (Do join Leo Hickman’s debate on the Guardian site here, and my thanks to him for prompting this piece.)

I wouldn’t argue with most of the data underpinning this report, but I do have problems with some of the assumptions. The first is that population growth is necessarily a bad thing, and that there is therefore a pressing need to reduce the rate of growth in developing countries. The report states early on:

“At a time when so many people remain impoverished and natural resources are becoming increasingly scarce, continued population growth is cause for concern.”

What it fails to acknowledge however is that population growth is correlated with economic growth – and therefore if developing countries are to continue to escape from poverty then reducing their rate of population growth should not be the initial priority. In a recent blogpost the World Bank’s Wolfgang Fengler starts by reminding us:

Africa’s population is rising rapidly and will most likely double its population by 2050. Depending on the source of data, Africa will soon pass 1 billion people (and it may already have) and could reach up to 2 billion people by 2050 [ I am using the UN’s 2009 World Population Prospects, which projects Africa to exceed 1.7 billion by 2050 based on sharply declining fertility rates]. This makes it the fastest growing continent and Africa’s rapid growth will also shift the global population balance.

Sounds scary. But what no-one mentions is that in terms of population density Western Europe is far more over-populated than Africa:

If we look at Western Europe – where I come from – there are on average 170 people living on each square km. In Sub-Saharan Africa there are only 70 today. This gap will narrow in the next decades but even by 2050, Western Europe is expected to be more densely populated than Africa.

He then concludes:

…population growth and urbanization go together, and economic development is closely correlated with urbanization. Rich countries are urban countries.  No country has ever reached high income levels with low urbanization. And this is critical for achieving sustained growth because large urban centers allow for innovation and increase economies of scale. Companies can produce goods in larger numbers and more cheaply, serving a larger number of low-income customers.

Population growth may therefore put us on the edge of a “golden age of development” for Africa – hardly the message from the gloomy Royal Society report. As the excellent book Emerging Africa, by Steven Radelet, shows, seventeen sub-Saharan African countries have seen sustained economic growth since 1995, vastly improving their prospects and – I suspect – further reducing fertility rates in the process.

Whilst using a lot of dark language about increasing numbers of humans globally, the report nowhere acknowledges that the current median level of total worldwide fertility has fallen dramatically from 5.6 in the 1970s to only 2.4 today. In other words we are already close to natural replacement levels in terms of total fertility – the reason that the absolute population will continue to grow to 9 billion or more is that more children are living long enough have their own children. To my mind a reduction in infant mortality and an increase in life expectancy are self-evidently good and desirable – and their impact on world population levels should be celebrated, not bemoaned.

(…)

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The same thing happened in music. DRM was the thing that got music publishers interested in digital downloads (like iTunes) and then something we couldn’t have predicted in 2003 happened; DRM was abandoned and nobody really noticed. What is more DRM was abandoned with a coincidental 30% (!) price increase to consumers as compensation for the extra value provided by portability. My feeling (based on no real evidence) is that overall the consumers won out of that deal (they are paying a little more to save on paying lots more later). It will be interesting to see how TOR’s pricing changes as it goes DRM free.

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I wonder when the first multinational company will form its own country to avoid wars, government red tape, and corporate taxes. It feels inevitable. I assume it will involve seasteading.

The current notion of seasteading involves floating cities that are outside the control of existing nations. That concept has its appeal, especially as a way to test new forms of government. But existing corporations already have their own form of government called management, and despite its warts, it generally works.

Imagine, for example, that one of the world’s beloved companies such as Apple or Facebook someday decides to start its own country on the sea. The company’s existing management structure would need to add several functions, such as education, healthcare, and police. The corporate government would look a lot like the Chinese government. In other words, it would be efficient in terms of profit, while giving up freedoms that employees are already accustomed to giving up. For example, company employees don’t have freedom of speech when it comes to criticizing management. Somehow we live with that restriction and it doesn’t seem too onerous.

There would be no taxes for permanent residents of the company country. Public services would be funded from corporate profits. Every paid service in the country, from banking, to insurance, to groceries, would be company-run. The accounting would be transparent and the profits would flow to public services.

The big worry with this model is the “company store” abuse that was common during the early days of the United States. In some cases, an employer would take advantage of its monopoly on goods and services to gouge its employees, turning them into virtual slaves. But I think that risk can be addressed by accounting transparency, and by capping the compensation of top management to a multiple of the average employee pay. It also helps if employees can choose to leave whenever they want. That keeps management in line.

Wages in the company country would be low while still attracting top talent, so long as the cost of living islow, taxes are non-existent, and the lifestyle is awesome. Employees could earn less while saving far more, especially if they own equity in the company.

This prediction assumes that traditional governments continue to bankrupt themselves and strangle their own industries with red tape. That feels like a safe bet. But the main reason a company might want to form its own country is to attract the best minds, and the lowest cost of labor, from all over the world without any immigration issues.

Do company countries seem inevitable or unlikely to you? [From When Companies Become Countries]

You worry that LCOE calculations suggest that nuclear generation currently remains uncompetitive with that from fossil fuels and that, in order for its large scale deployment, it is mandatory to reduce reactor construction costs.

Might I ask your reaction to the very interesting comment by George S upthread to the effect that LCOE calculations for nuclear may be unflatteringly high because they are normally calculated over the loan repayment period rather than the lifetime of the reactor?

I also wonder whether you have read the very recent report from the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment (www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk ), entitled “Towards a low carbon pathway”. You would probably endorse the authors’ support for nuclear and their somewhat scathing (though buried in the body of the report) comments relating to renewables. I suspect you would be less happy with their conclusion (unlike that of MiT authors) that rapid nuclear expansion on a global scale would only be economically possible if a switch from once through to closed fuel cycle reactors were to take place in the near future. (I appreciate that Australia is an exception because of its massive uranium reserves).

Finally, an expansion of nuclear power involving once through reactors will result in greatly more SNF which will have to be disposed of.. While this is not be a problem from a technical perspective, it most certainly is from a political one. Political problems are often much costlier to fix than technical ones. It is for this reason, for example, that South Korea wishes to move quickly to fast reactor technology and pyroprocessing.

Given the above conclusions, there may be as many merits in arguing the case that Australia would do well to by-pass Gen 3 technology and move directly to Gen 4 as there are in the ones you deploy.

[From Comment on IFR FaD 12 – lessons learned from fast reactor capital costs by Douglas Wise]

There is a promising new science-based blog titled “things worse than nuclear power“, which is “the take from a couple of MIT engineers”. The first few posts show promise, such as this one explaining the illogic of the LNT hypothesis in terms of the deadly aspirin tablet:

In small doses, aspirin and other NSAIDs are helpful painkillers. In fact, small doses of aspirin therapy prevents lethal heart attacks and strokes and saves thousands, possibly millions of lives annually.

If aspirin were evaluated like radiation exposure, the estimated number of deaths due to taking the recommended dose, which is 1/10 the lethal dose*, would be 1 in 10 people.
If 1 in 10 people taking aspirin died, this would be up to hundreds of millions of people annually worldwide, which is clearly not the case. Aspirin is the most widely taken painkiller worldwide, and has been for hundreds of years.

Can you imagine if every product were regulated like radiation exposure? There simply would not be any pharmaceuticals, and millions of lives would be lost or have a lower quality of life.

(…)

Read the whole thing, and be sure to add this new education effort to your RSS feeds.

The below chart from Rutgers University Professor Clinton Andrews sums it up. Clearly, the more land used, the more disruptive to ecosystems an energy source is, to the point that electricity from biomass would eclipse all current human use of land and use 60% of the earth’s total land area in order to produce 100% of global demand. Wind land use to produce 100% of global demand would be par with all worldwide land area currently used for crops.

Percent of Earth’s land area taken for energy production for different energy sources. Taken from: Alternative Energy and Land Use paper from Clinton Andrews et al. Land intensiveness data from McDonald et al (2009), land area data from Melillo et al (2009), global energy demand data from EIA.