[coyote]

BBC

US growth is, apparently, at 4.3% currently. I noticed that the article generally viewed this as a good thing, which is a common enough response.

According to Dr Albert Bartlett, that makes for a doubling time of just 16.28 years (70/4.3). So if we continue at the current rate, the economy will be twice the size it is now in about 16 years.

Does this mean we're supposed to double our consumption of energy in 16 years too? I know we'll make some gains with energy efficiency as we've done in the past, but still... yikes! Add in the growth from Asia, and who could believe that Middle East oil production will possibly keep up?

I understand the growth model so differently now...

[Starvid]

Economic growth does not have to mean growth in energy use. Sweden use the same amount of energy today as we did in the 1970's, in spite of our economy having multiplied several times, and without having moved the energy intensive jobs abroad.

[marek]

Sweden is a classic example of the confusion between energy efficiency and the thermodynamic properties of the fuel used. If you improve the energy quality (by moving away from coal to oil to electricity), you can get the same exergy services per thermal unit. This means that on a thermal basis, you get more GDP per BTU, however this is because processes using coal can usually be 30% efficient, whereas processes using electricity can be 90% plus efficient. This suggests increasing energy efficiency, but is not a function of technology, but rather a function of the thermodynamic characteristics of the fuel used. Therefore lumping all energy sources by using tons of oil equivalent or BTU's and saying that an economy produces more GDP per BTU means nothing. After you have switched most of your energy demand away from hydrocarbons and into electricity, growing efficiency will be purely technology-dependent and therefore more difficult to achieve.

The declining oil products consumption and increasing electricity production illustrate this.

[jaws]

Economic growth is hard to define. If we were on a fixed-supply money standard, no economic growth would ever register. What is reported as economic growth today is the dollar value increase of production minus the rate of inflation. If you rig the measure of inflation (of which no objective measure exists anyway) you can report any economic growth you want.

[emersonbiggins]

Phunny quotes:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he fact that we added a 10th quarter of above-average growth amidst the hurricane devastation and the highest energy prices ever recorded is awesome," said Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics.

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('coyote', '[')url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4485314.stm]BBC[/url]

US growth is, apparently, at 4.3% currently. I noticed that the article generally viewed this as a good thing, which is a common enough response.