china and American debt

[BuyerWillEPB]

“Well, I meant when they could make commercial aircraft sufficiently capable that they needed to buy nothing from Boeing, apparently the only hard good the US makes the Chinese need right now.”
————————————————————-

Actually, China is building a section of the new Boeing 787 coming out soon. They make the rudder if I remember right.

Anyway, the entire 787 is a globalized effort. The wings are made in Japan, the fuselage in Italy, the cockpit in Wichita KS, the flaps made by Hawker deHaviland (in England? not sure). Some parts are made here in Chula Vista too, by Goodrich. Then all the pieces are airlifted to Seattle for final assembly.

[BuyerWillEPB]

“Well, I meant when they could make commercial aircraft sufficiently capable that they needed to buy nothing from Boeing, apparently the only hard good the US makes the Chinese need right now.”
————————————————————-

Actually, China is building a section of the new Boeing 787 coming out soon. They make the rudder if I remember right.

Anyway, the entire 787 is a globalized effort. The wings are made in Japan, the fuselage in Italy, the cockpit in Wichita KS, the flaps made by Hawker deHaviland (in England? not sure). Some parts are made here in Chula Vista too, by Goodrich. Then all the pieces are airlifted to Seattle for final assembly.

[heavyd]

DonaldDuckMoore,

The book you heard about on KPBS Wednesday morning is called, “A Year Without Made in China” by a woman named Sara Bongiorni. I mentioned it in this thread back on the 13th, in fact. It’s a good read and thought-provoking.

Turns out the author will be doing a reading / signing up at the BookWorks book store on Via de la Valle in Del Mar next week, right next to the Pannikin.

HeavyD

[heavyd]

DonaldDuckMoore,

The book you heard about on KPBS Wednesday morning is called, “A Year Without Made in China” by a woman named Sara Bongiorni. I mentioned it in this thread back on the 13th, in fact. It’s a good read and thought-provoking.

Turns out the author will be doing a reading / signing up at the BookWorks book store on Via de la Valle in Del Mar next week, right next to the Pannikin.

HeavyD

[Anonymous]

A couple of comments:

I wish that Peak Oil were helpful to slow down global warming.

Unfortunately, the most likely circumstance is an enormous conversion to coal-to-liquid-fuel processing. The need will be tremendous and without electric cars and massive nuclear and wind build everywhere (which isn’t going to happen, sadly), it will be by far the most scalable and profitable process. I figure that wherever the money is, that’s where the business will go. When we are in a peak-oil induced economic downturn, there is little doubt that most of the power will say ‘fuck the environment’. Alaska will drilled like a mad dentist and you’ll see legions of oil platforms lining the coast from Sea of Cortez to the Columbia, but I’m resigned to that. But coal must be halted.

Coal to-liquids (and coal in general) is plain climate catastrophe—much worse than using gas or oil. The real climate killer (c.f. James Hansen) is coal, not oil and gas.

Yes, 5 degrees C (predicted climate delta) in global average really will be catastrtophe and possible civilization-extinction. That magnitude was the difference between now and the Ice Ages, in the other direction.

The point about Peak Oil & China is that now that they make things that other people really want and we don’t, they will be able to out-bid us for the remaining, very valuable and expensive oil. The yuan will get stronger and stronger versus the dollar, and hence they will be able to pay higher and higher oil prices (measured in USD). Because the oil exporters will want stuff that China now makes, and not stuff the USA makes.

[Anonymous]

A couple of comments:

I wish that Peak Oil were helpful to slow down global warming.

Unfortunately, the most likely circumstance is an enormous conversion to coal-to-liquid-fuel processing. The need will be tremendous and without electric cars and massive nuclear and wind build everywhere (which isn’t going to happen, sadly), it will be by far the most scalable and profitable process. I figure that wherever the money is, that’s where the business will go. When we are in a peak-oil induced economic downturn, there is little doubt that most of the power will say ‘fuck the environment’. Alaska will drilled like a mad dentist and you’ll see legions of oil platforms lining the coast from Sea of Cortez to the Columbia, but I’m resigned to that. But coal must be halted.

Coal to-liquids (and coal in general) is plain climate catastrophe—much worse than using gas or oil. The real climate killer (c.f. James Hansen) is coal, not oil and gas.

Yes, 5 degrees C (predicted climate delta) in global average really will be catastrtophe and possible civilization-extinction. That magnitude was the difference between now and the Ice Ages, in the other direction.

The point about Peak Oil & China is that now that they make things that other people really want and we don’t, they will be able to out-bid us for the remaining, very valuable and expensive oil. The yuan will get stronger and stronger versus the dollar, and hence they will be able to pay higher and higher oil prices (measured in USD). Because the oil exporters will want stuff that China now makes, and not stuff the USA makes.

[Anonymous]

I just find it funny how someone who is so well versed in physical phenomena would take such a Laplacian stance by forecasting events some 18 years into the future. Do you not recall Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle?

Well, technically, what matters is not quantum mechanics (the complementarity is not relevant actually), but Poincare’s chaos even in local deterministic dynamical systems. (see my name).

But it is a myth that in chaotic nonlinear systems that “nothing’ can be predicted. That isn’t so. There are certain facts—specific individual orbits of degrees of freedom—which can indeed be long-term unpredictable from initial conditions, and yet the attractor, the geometrical set of possible patterns, maybe can be predicted over parametric changes. This is the difference between weather and climate and why climate prediction for centuries is not a patently impossible thing to do. Conservation laws and fundamental physics controlling boundary conditions don’t stop working even with chaos.

This is why my ‘social’ predictions are based on only very long-term fundamental external constraints which will happen regardless of the chaotic nature of politics and mankind. Who knows will be elected? Who knows who will be overthrown? Who knows who gets nice in their old age and who turns into a megalomaniac tyrant? I won’t predict tomorrow’s dow either.

Peak Oil and global warming are undoubtably going to happen and make things worse no matter what we or any of the 6 billion people on the planet wish or do about it (but we can change the severity of climate and of peak oil response) And objectively they are starting to bite, both of them, exactly right now. And chaos will be consequence of them, but these processes are NOT chaotic—they are external slow changes in flux.

And, both of them are based on global physical fact. This really does matter.

best blogs on housing & related finance: http://www.piggington.com, http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com

best blog on climate: http://www.realclimate.org

best blog on oil: http://www.theoildrum.com

[Anonymous]

I just find it funny how someone who is so well versed in physical phenomena would take such a Laplacian stance by forecasting events some 18 years into the future. Do you not recall Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle?

Well, technically, what matters is not quantum mechanics (the complementarity is not relevant actually), but Poincare’s chaos even in local deterministic dynamical systems. (see my name).

But it is a myth that in chaotic nonlinear systems that “nothing’ can be predicted. That isn’t so. There are certain facts—specific individual orbits of degrees of freedom—which can indeed be long-term unpredictable from initial conditions, and yet the attractor, the geometrical set of possible patterns, maybe can be predicted over parametric changes. This is the difference between weather and climate and why climate prediction for centuries is not a patently impossible thing to do. Conservation laws and fundamental physics controlling boundary conditions don’t stop working even with chaos.

This is why my ‘social’ predictions are based on only very long-term fundamental external constraints which will happen regardless of the chaotic nature of politics and mankind. Who knows will be elected? Who knows who will be overthrown? Who knows who gets nice in their old age and who turns into a megalomaniac tyrant? I won’t predict tomorrow’s dow either.

Peak Oil and global warming are undoubtably going to happen and make things worse no matter what we or any of the 6 billion people on the planet wish or do about it (but we can change the severity of climate and of peak oil response) And objectively they are starting to bite, both of them, exactly right now. And chaos will be consequence of them, but these processes are NOT chaotic—they are external slow changes in flux.

And, both of them are based on global physical fact. This really does matter.

best blogs on housing & related finance: http://www.piggington.com, http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com

best blog on climate: http://www.realclimate.org

best blog on oil: http://www.theoildrum.com

[bsrsharma]

“Coal to-liquids (and coal in general) is plain climate catastrophe—much worse than using gas or oil. The real climate killer (c.f. James Hansen) is coal, not oil and gas.”

Dr Chaos,

I have this basic Chemistry question: Both Petroleum and Coal are fossil fuels. i.e. there were plants/animals/organisms on earth before it became fuel. From where do you think this Carbon entered the biological cycle? Most likely atmospheric CO2. If Atmospheric CO2 caused life forms to evolve and proliferate, why do you think the same amount of CO2, back in atmosphere can cause global climate catastrophe. Something doesn’t seem to compute stoichiometrically. It may become warmer and unpleasant for certain species, including humans but hard to conclude this may cause extinction.

[bsrsharma]

“Coal to-liquids (and coal in general) is plain climate catastrophe—much worse than using gas or oil. The real climate killer (c.f. James Hansen) is coal, not oil and gas.”

Dr Chaos,

I have this basic Chemistry question: Both Petroleum and Coal are fossil fuels. i.e. there were plants/animals/organisms on earth before it became fuel. From where do you think this Carbon entered the biological cycle? Most likely atmospheric CO2. If Atmospheric CO2 caused life forms to evolve and proliferate, why do you think the same amount of CO2, back in atmosphere can cause global climate catastrophe. Something doesn’t seem to compute stoichiometrically. It may become warmer and unpleasant for certain species, including humans but hard to conclude this may cause extinction.

[Anonymous]

If Atmospheric CO2 caused life forms to evolve and proliferate, why do you think the same amount of CO2, back in atmosphere can cause global climate catastrophe.

Well, given that it will be far beyond a climate ever seen during all of civilization, I think it’s worth worrying about.

Something doesn’t seem to compute stoichiometrically. It may become warmer and unpleasant for certain species, including humans but hard to conclude this may cause extinction.

Indeed, once it was so warm that crocodiles were swimming in the Arctic.

The fossil record also shows mass extinctions corresponding to large shifts in climate. And yes that could have been catastrophic to the animals living at the time if they realized it.

But today, the human population is many orders of magnitude larger than it would be without agricultural development. As an example, compare population density of natural-living non-human hominids in Africa to homo sapiens in Rwanda. And that development—patterns of water, soil nutrients, and which crops grow where has been developed entirely with respect to the climate of the last 10000 years during which civilization arose. That climate has been stable to about 0.5 degrees C.

So the demands on the specific nature of the biosphere and sensitivity of humans to climate is very substantial, more than people realize, because of this.

Going to a circumstance not seen since literally before the evolution of homo sapiens—much less civilization—is not comforting in the slightest.

Sure, there will continue to be multi-cellular life somewhere on the planet. So what?

[Anonymous]

If Atmospheric CO2 caused life forms to evolve and proliferate, why do you think the same amount of CO2, back in atmosphere can cause global climate catastrophe.

Well, given that it will be far beyond a climate ever seen during all of civilization, I think it’s worth worrying about.

Something doesn’t seem to compute stoichiometrically. It may become warmer and unpleasant for certain species, including humans but hard to conclude this may cause extinction.

Indeed, once it was so warm that crocodiles were swimming in the Arctic.

The fossil record also shows mass extinctions corresponding to large shifts in climate. And yes that could have been catastrophic to the animals living at the time if they realized it.

But today, the human population is many orders of magnitude larger than it would be without agricultural development. As an example, compare population density of natural-living non-human hominids in Africa to homo sapiens in Rwanda. And that development—patterns of water, soil nutrients, and which crops grow where has been developed entirely with respect to the climate of the last 10000 years during which civilization arose. That climate has been stable to about 0.5 degrees C.

So the demands on the specific nature of the biosphere and sensitivity of humans to climate is very substantial, more than people realize, because of this.

Going to a circumstance not seen since literally before the evolution of homo sapiens—much less civilization—is not comforting in the slightest.

Sure, there will continue to be multi-cellular life somewhere on the planet. So what?

[Author]

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