"In male-majority US undergraduate classes, men speak for longer, interrupt frequently and are much more assertive. "
There's another explanation for this besides that men are implicitly conspiring to marginalize women's influence. Which is that men, especially in their peak reproductive years, are wired to *compete against other men* to get noticed by women. Men generally need to stand out in some way, hence the sheer volume of male speech in the public sphere. I would think that this competition gets stronger the more a mixed-gender group skews male.
Race blind admissions are “patterns of behavior” that are claimed to disfavor certain minorities in college admissions.
Should we use race-based and similar group characteristics to favor disadvantaged groups?
There’s an underlying assumption that merely because behavior has a negative effect, which everyone seems to be taking for granted (I am skeptical), it should be stamped out, particularly when there is no evidence there is a conscious intention to have that effect.
This doesn't strike me as a phenomenon that "disfavors women." If men speak longer it doesn't imply that women are prohibited from speaking as long as they want or are rendered unable to interrupt as much as men--that's just not how it turned out. At least from this excerpt, there is no evidence that women are unable to or are not permitted to interrupt or speak as long as they want to. It also implies that, to the extent that male-majority classes implicitly discourage women from speaking, the opposite holds true in female-majority classes. As always and everywhere, I could be wrong.
Noah Smith claims “Solar power is taking over from fossil fuel combustion at an accelerating rate” apparently based upon a tweet that purports to show estimated versus actual new solar installations. Not sure how that logic works.
“Global fossil fuel consumption reached a record high, up 1.5% to 505 EJ (driven by coal up 1.6%, oil up 2% to above 100 million barrels for first time, while gas was flat). As a share of the overall mix they were at 81.5%, marginally down from 82% last year.
Emissions from energy increased by 2%, exceeding 40 gigatonnes of CO2 for the first time.
Solar and wind push global renewable electricity generation to another record level
Renewable generation, excluding hydro, was up 13% to a record high of 4,748 TWh
This growth was driven almost entirely by wind and solar, and accounted for 74% of all net additional electricity generated.
As a share of primary energy use, renewables (excluding hydro) were at 8%, or 15% including hydro.
Ongoing Ukraine conflict cements gas rebalancing in Europe
US consumption of fossil fuels fell to 80% of total primary energy consumed.
Growth economies struggle to curb fossil fuel growth, but renewables accelerate in China
In India fossil fuel consumption was up 8%, accounting for almost all demand growth, and stood at 89% share of overall consumption. For the first time, more coal was used in India than Europe and North America combined.
In Africa primary energy consumption fell in 2023 by 0.5%. Fossil fuels accounted for 90% of overall energy consumption, with renewables (excluding hydro) at only 6% of electricity.
China’s full return post-Covid saw fossil fuel use increase to a new high, up 6%, but as a share of primary energy it has been in decline since 2011, down to 81.6% in 2023. China added 55% of all renewable generation additions in 2023, i.e. more than the rest of the world combined. It also overtook Europe on an energy per capita basis for the first time.”
“4,748 TWh of renewable generation — wow, that’s a lot! Or is it? Do you notice how they suddenly switched units from Exajoules to Terawatt hours when they changed from talking about fossil fuels to solar and wind. Does anybody around here know the conversion factor? Yes — it’s 277.778 TWh per EJ. That means that the 4,748 TWh of “almost entirely” solar and wind power generated in 2023 came to all of 17.1 EJ, which is just 2.7% of the 620 EJ of world primary energy consumption. Could you have imagined that it could be so little, after decades of over-the-top promotion and trillions of dollars of subsidies?
And pay attention to that line “wind and solar . . . accounted for 74% of all net additional electricity generated.” Does that somehow sound like a transition is happening? It’s the opposite. If wind and solar were actually taking over, they would have to account for 100% of additional generation, plus large further amounts to replace fossil fuel generators. As long as wind and solar account for less than all of additional generation, then fossil fuels are continuing to increase, and there is no “transition” going on at all.”
What Energy Transition? From 2004 to 2023, Global Spending on Wind + Solar totalted $4.7 Trillion yet Hydrocarbon Use Increased 3.2x Faster
Hydrocarbons Grew Faster than Wind + Solar Again in 2023
What Energy Transition? CO2 Emissions in Six Large Economies 2000 to 2023
Change in CO2 Emissions in The six Larges Economies, 2023
Just Stop Oil? Global Oil Demand is Going One Direction: Up
Just Stop Coal? Coal Use Jumped 1.6% to Set a New Record & India’s Use Exceeded the Combined Consumption of Europe + N. American For First Time
In 2023, us gas-Fired Generation Grew 5x Faster than Wind + Solar
Coal -Fired Generation in India + China Increased Faster Than Solar Production
We can be grateful for all this progress despite the best efforts of the climate divination cabal. The future of humanity, at this point, rests in China and India’s hands and their pragmatic and humane approach to alleviating energy poverty trhough their increasingly important world leadership through BRICS is a welcome alternative to the philosophy of “Starve a Child, Feed a Server Farm” that governs the legacy economies.
“… pointing out social behavior that disfavors one sex is helpful, because we should try to change our behavior.”
We all have discriminatory preferences that affect our behaviour. The idea that this is obviously a problem and so “we should try to change our behavior” is itself the problem. It is at least the start of political correctness, which can lead on to full totalitarian wokeness.
It is always desirable to be open to the possibility that we are mistaken. But when it comes to behaviour that conforms to liberty (by not initiating impositions on other people) then the presumption should be that this is at least acceptable, and probably prudent.
Smith's so wrong on various technical details that his essay is useless.
The major advantage of fossil fuels (with the exception of natural gas which has many of the same problems as electricity) is the combination of energy density combined with ease of storage. You can store coal and oil derivatives like diesel fuel and gasoline for long periods of time with little to no energy loss. Electricity is ephemeral. It must be used or stored immediately upon generation. Most of the work on grid management is the balancing of generation to consumption. Almost all of his claims rely on pie-in-the-sky battery tech that doesn't yet exist. Ask any chef and they will tell you natural gas for cooking is far more controllable than electric resistance coils, and likely far more efficient. Electricity won out for lighting because it's far safer in places full of flammable materials than open flame lighting.
And how long will solar keep expanding if subsidies are cut? I support renewables, but sometimes people get desperate about saying how cheap they're becoming.
"I hope Noah's vision for the future is right." On the transition to green energy (as well as other topics like Ukraine, and pharmaceuticals like the mRNA 'vaccines' and obesity drugs like Ozempic), Noah Smith is the analog of the elites in the media and government who claimed that Biden is 'as sharp as a tack' right up until the debate last Thursday evening. Your decision on whom/what to believe in the latter case didn't work out too well, as we can see from your latest posts on 'the current thing.' With regard to solar, maybe you have noticed that on hot summer days the residual heat in your home triggers the A/C to go on long after the sun has gone down. No problem, Noah's cheerleading implies, the magic battery technology that does not yet exist can be relied on to store the electricity generated from solar earlier in the day when your home is still cool. Common sense should tell you that it is easier to just turn up the gas in local power plant. The more likely outcome is that the relatively clean and reliable gas-powered generating plant will be shut down before the magic battery storage exists, and then you can write another rant on 'the current thing' when you are sweltering in your home because of a power blackout. Cheers!
I am the rare cook who prefers electric. When cooking with gas at other people's houses I am frustrated by the inability to keep things at a very, very low temp.
The worst of all possible worlds are those smooth induction ranges, but they kind of make sense for kitchens that are just for show, I guess.
I hate the usually confusing controls (my mother in law has had hers for years and still gets it wrong sometimes). I hate how long it stays hot. It doesn’t seem safe around - well, not just children. A hot coil is red and when off, it pretty quickly cools. I hate the feel of it under a pot. I hate the way you must clean it, which is sufficiently fussy that either people don’t clean it or if the surface is pristine, they probably grill all their food. And I hate the feeling there is something that expensive and glass in a kitchen because I am *very hard* on a kitchen. It doesn’t seem to me it is made for the everyday hard-using cook juggling three things at once.
But a lot of this is me and I know others love it for sure and that’s why it’s now the default.
It sounds like we are talking about different things:
No idea what "the feel" refers to.
Induction burners cool far faster than reistance.
We've never had any problems keeping our induction cooktop clean. It's no different than a flattop resistance cooktop and WAY easier than open coils or gas.
Cooking with gas takes a continuous amount of experience. I also find it easier to control the electric range but that wasn't always the case- I spent four years in grad school with a gas stove, my first such appliance, and got really good at controlling temps.
Of course, gas grills can't be replaced with electric, in my opinion- not all methods of cooking can be replaced with the electric.
This is one reason I think CCS will play a role. In a sense CCS is a way of "storing" the near zero mc energy produced by solar wind at capacity. We do CCS by day and burn fuels by night.
I don't think Marx's popularity can be reduced to a mere theory about moods.
In fact it we had to attribute his popularity to any one factor I think it'd be most attributable to being the first to address substantive problems about one's personal relationship to work in a market economy.
And with the possible exception of Hannah Arendt few others have attempted to address those problems in an equally thorough manner.
Re: "These appear to be genuine examples of social behavior that disfavors women."
Note: The examples concern US higher education.
Yes, but these examples are at the 2nd decimal, so to speak. At the 1st decimal we find that the female:male sex ratio in undergraduate degree completion is 58:42. See data at the link below:
And at the K-12 level, prevalence of ADHD diagnosis is *much* higher among boys than among girls:
"The ratio of boys to girls diagnosed with ADHD in childhood falls in the range of 2:1 to 10:1., with higher ratios seen in clinical compared to population samples.":
Noah Smith may be enthusiastic about green energy but batteries are a long, long way from replacing combustion in big power applications. Much has been written about this, eg:
I know I'm an idiot, but what do we learn from these types of social science (men vs women) type of studies whose results can be interpreted in any way a clever person chooses? I mean the whys could be almost anything it seems. I know we need to ask questions but these studies feel like a plague that just obscure and overwhelm to the point that their only use is for culture warrior essayists and non-profit fundraisers.
Slightly off topic, but am I the only one who thinks it's weird that a lot of our technology for producing electricity is still fundamentally just a series of various ways to boil water to produce steam to spin a turbine? Steam power is 18th century stuff. Wind turbines are even worse. That's like 15th century technology. I almost want to root for solar power to take over, just because it at least feels modern.
Nuclear power is fundamentally steam-engine technology, but it's at least as modern as solar. Instead of making electricity from the big Sun, we can make little Suns out of rocks!
I am impressed with how he engaged with the ideas of Ricardo, Smith, Malthus, and all the rest, many of whom are equally as guilty of the social science sins of which Marx stands accused. Many other famous figures fail to do so much. When I read anti-Marxist rants, I tend to wonder if the ranter has similarly engaged. Isaiah Berlin's biography seems to strike about the right balance in exposing the monster but in measured manner.
All that is going to happen as the West introduces solar, wind, and battery-stored power to replace fossil fuel and nuclear power is that the West will stop manufacturing goods and growing food as those activities move to the parts of the world not so hell-bent on getting rid of such power sources.
The only way it doesn't lead to the results I predict is if China and India decide to do exactly what we are doing with power generation and I see no evidence that is going to happen.
I accepted your guess at what I meant. It is already happening and has been doing so for the last 50 years- manufacturing moves to where is cheapest to manufacture stuff and energy is a huge part of that change over, and what is our response- to make electricity even more expensive in the U.S. and now threatening to make farming more expensive, too? We are foolishly going to down this road to renewables where it won't make one bit of difference to how much fossil fuels ultimately get burnt- if they aren't burnt here they will be burnt somewhere else less stupid than where we live.
Re: "If central planners do away with the market, then they will not have the information needed to calculate costs and make good decisions. Forced to use guesswork, planners will inevitably misallocate resources.
In a market system, bad decisions result in losses for firms, forcing them to adapt. Without the signals provided by prices, profits, and losses, a central planner's computer will not even be aware of the mistakes that it makes." — Arnold Kling, "Not Even Artificial Intelligence Can Make Central Planning Work", Reason (at embedded link)
Moreover, a central planner (or whoever rules the central planner) would lack *incentive* to make good decisions, even if (per impossible) she had adequate *knowledge*.
The contrary positions to Noah are not really contrary. Much greater, probably almost exclusive use of non-fossil fuels derived energy will be the the way to optimize the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere, but the _current set_ of policies are too costly to achieve that. Only taxation of net CO2 emissions and investment decisions that mimic the effect, regulatory reform and continued R&D can achieve that.
"Batteries are replacing internal combustion engines in cars, also at an accelerating rate."
Noah Smith is factually wrong about that. EV sales have slowed significantly. Suggesting that they will not pick up soon is that, "A survey conducted by McKinsey Center For Future Mobility reported that 46% of U.S. car owners who drive electric vehicles would shift back to an internal combustion engine." The world average, they said, was 29%,
Whether Noah is wrong depends on the time period one looks at. Either way, the correlation you note is not necessarily the causation. Interest rates and other economic factors are also considerations.
Certainly, EV sales were increasing rapidly for a while. And lots of people thought electric cars were cool, either as technologies or as "saving the planet". But I gather that EVs have generally lost their coolness, and lots of people now consider them impractical. Car companies are cutting back how many EVs they plan to make. Interest rates aren't any higher than they were a year or two years ago, so I don't think that's a factor.
Of course, things could change in another year, especially if subsidies are increased, or if a lot more charging stations actually get built.
"In male-majority US undergraduate classes, men speak for longer, interrupt frequently and are much more assertive. "
There's another explanation for this besides that men are implicitly conspiring to marginalize women's influence. Which is that men, especially in their peak reproductive years, are wired to *compete against other men* to get noticed by women. Men generally need to stand out in some way, hence the sheer volume of male speech in the public sphere. I would think that this competition gets stronger the more a mixed-gender group skews male.
Does that change the fact that this is, as AK points out, a behavior pattern that disfavors women?
Race blind admissions are “patterns of behavior” that are claimed to disfavor certain minorities in college admissions.
Should we use race-based and similar group characteristics to favor disadvantaged groups?
There’s an underlying assumption that merely because behavior has a negative effect, which everyone seems to be taking for granted (I am skeptical), it should be stamped out, particularly when there is no evidence there is a conscious intention to have that effect.
This doesn't strike me as a phenomenon that "disfavors women." If men speak longer it doesn't imply that women are prohibited from speaking as long as they want or are rendered unable to interrupt as much as men--that's just not how it turned out. At least from this excerpt, there is no evidence that women are unable to or are not permitted to interrupt or speak as long as they want to. It also implies that, to the extent that male-majority classes implicitly discourage women from speaking, the opposite holds true in female-majority classes. As always and everywhere, I could be wrong.
No, and I didn't mean to contradict that point. I think that addressing it requires a deeper understanding of where those instincts come from.
Noah Smith claims “Solar power is taking over from fossil fuel combustion at an accelerating rate” apparently based upon a tweet that purports to show estimated versus actual new solar installations. Not sure how that logic works.
Alternatively, one might consider the recent Energy Institute’s recent annual report (https://www.energyinst.org/exploring-energy/resources/news-centre/media-releases/a-year-of-record-highs-in-an-energy-hungry-world,-reveals-ei-statistical-review ). Although a New Green Deal cheerleader type of propaganda outlet, it does at least purport to provide data on energy. The press release for the annual report states:
“Global fossil fuel consumption reached a record high, up 1.5% to 505 EJ (driven by coal up 1.6%, oil up 2% to above 100 million barrels for first time, while gas was flat). As a share of the overall mix they were at 81.5%, marginally down from 82% last year.
Emissions from energy increased by 2%, exceeding 40 gigatonnes of CO2 for the first time.
Solar and wind push global renewable electricity generation to another record level
Renewable generation, excluding hydro, was up 13% to a record high of 4,748 TWh
This growth was driven almost entirely by wind and solar, and accounted for 74% of all net additional electricity generated.
As a share of primary energy use, renewables (excluding hydro) were at 8%, or 15% including hydro.
Ongoing Ukraine conflict cements gas rebalancing in Europe
US consumption of fossil fuels fell to 80% of total primary energy consumed.
Growth economies struggle to curb fossil fuel growth, but renewables accelerate in China
In India fossil fuel consumption was up 8%, accounting for almost all demand growth, and stood at 89% share of overall consumption. For the first time, more coal was used in India than Europe and North America combined.
In Africa primary energy consumption fell in 2023 by 0.5%. Fossil fuels accounted for 90% of overall energy consumption, with renewables (excluding hydro) at only 6% of electricity.
China’s full return post-Covid saw fossil fuel use increase to a new high, up 6%, but as a share of primary energy it has been in decline since 2011, down to 81.6% in 2023. China added 55% of all renewable generation additions in 2023, i.e. more than the rest of the world combined. It also overtook Europe on an energy per capita basis for the first time.”
The Manhattan Contrarian (https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-6-25-this-energy-transition-thing-really-is-not-happening ) contradicts Smith and helpfully comments on their findings:
“4,748 TWh of renewable generation — wow, that’s a lot! Or is it? Do you notice how they suddenly switched units from Exajoules to Terawatt hours when they changed from talking about fossil fuels to solar and wind. Does anybody around here know the conversion factor? Yes — it’s 277.778 TWh per EJ. That means that the 4,748 TWh of “almost entirely” solar and wind power generated in 2023 came to all of 17.1 EJ, which is just 2.7% of the 620 EJ of world primary energy consumption. Could you have imagined that it could be so little, after decades of over-the-top promotion and trillions of dollars of subsidies?
And pay attention to that line “wind and solar . . . accounted for 74% of all net additional electricity generated.” Does that somehow sound like a transition is happening? It’s the opposite. If wind and solar were actually taking over, they would have to account for 100% of additional generation, plus large further amounts to replace fossil fuel generators. As long as wind and solar account for less than all of additional generation, then fossil fuels are continuing to increase, and there is no “transition” going on at all.”
The Contrarian also links to Robert Bryce’s substack (https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/these-charts-expose-myth-of-energy-transition ) which graphs a lot of information in easy to understand format. The graph titles tell the story all by themselves:
What Energy Transition? From 2004 to 2023, Global Spending on Wind + Solar totalted $4.7 Trillion yet Hydrocarbon Use Increased 3.2x Faster
Hydrocarbons Grew Faster than Wind + Solar Again in 2023
What Energy Transition? CO2 Emissions in Six Large Economies 2000 to 2023
Change in CO2 Emissions in The six Larges Economies, 2023
Just Stop Oil? Global Oil Demand is Going One Direction: Up
Just Stop Coal? Coal Use Jumped 1.6% to Set a New Record & India’s Use Exceeded the Combined Consumption of Europe + N. American For First Time
In 2023, us gas-Fired Generation Grew 5x Faster than Wind + Solar
Coal -Fired Generation in India + China Increased Faster Than Solar Production
We can be grateful for all this progress despite the best efforts of the climate divination cabal. The future of humanity, at this point, rests in China and India’s hands and their pragmatic and humane approach to alleviating energy poverty trhough their increasingly important world leadership through BRICS is a welcome alternative to the philosophy of “Starve a Child, Feed a Server Farm” that governs the legacy economies.
“… pointing out social behavior that disfavors one sex is helpful, because we should try to change our behavior.”
We all have discriminatory preferences that affect our behaviour. The idea that this is obviously a problem and so “we should try to change our behavior” is itself the problem. It is at least the start of political correctness, which can lead on to full totalitarian wokeness.
https://jclester.substack.com/p/discrimination-a-libertarian-viewpoint?utm_source=publication-search
https://jclester.substack.com/p/woke-a-libertarian-viewpoint?utm_source=publication-search
Rather than the prescriptive "we should try to change our behavior," how about "should we try to change our behavior?"
It is always desirable to be open to the possibility that we are mistaken. But when it comes to behaviour that conforms to liberty (by not initiating impositions on other people) then the presumption should be that this is at least acceptable, and probably prudent.
Smith's so wrong on various technical details that his essay is useless.
The major advantage of fossil fuels (with the exception of natural gas which has many of the same problems as electricity) is the combination of energy density combined with ease of storage. You can store coal and oil derivatives like diesel fuel and gasoline for long periods of time with little to no energy loss. Electricity is ephemeral. It must be used or stored immediately upon generation. Most of the work on grid management is the balancing of generation to consumption. Almost all of his claims rely on pie-in-the-sky battery tech that doesn't yet exist. Ask any chef and they will tell you natural gas for cooking is far more controllable than electric resistance coils, and likely far more efficient. Electricity won out for lighting because it's far safer in places full of flammable materials than open flame lighting.
And how long will solar keep expanding if subsidies are cut? I support renewables, but sometimes people get desperate about saying how cheap they're becoming.
At scale in sunny sw US locales solar is cheap when used at time of generation (no storage).
"I hope Noah's vision for the future is right." On the transition to green energy (as well as other topics like Ukraine, and pharmaceuticals like the mRNA 'vaccines' and obesity drugs like Ozempic), Noah Smith is the analog of the elites in the media and government who claimed that Biden is 'as sharp as a tack' right up until the debate last Thursday evening. Your decision on whom/what to believe in the latter case didn't work out too well, as we can see from your latest posts on 'the current thing.' With regard to solar, maybe you have noticed that on hot summer days the residual heat in your home triggers the A/C to go on long after the sun has gone down. No problem, Noah's cheerleading implies, the magic battery technology that does not yet exist can be relied on to store the electricity generated from solar earlier in the day when your home is still cool. Common sense should tell you that it is easier to just turn up the gas in local power plant. The more likely outcome is that the relatively clean and reliable gas-powered generating plant will be shut down before the magic battery storage exists, and then you can write another rant on 'the current thing' when you are sweltering in your home because of a power blackout. Cheers!
In most situations gas may be preferable to electric resistance but I'd argue that in most situations induction is preferable to gas.
I am the rare cook who prefers electric. When cooking with gas at other people's houses I am frustrated by the inability to keep things at a very, very low temp.
The worst of all possible worlds are those smooth induction ranges, but they kind of make sense for kitchens that are just for show, I guess.
I'm baffled by your induction comment. It allows far more control than resistance coils.
I hate the usually confusing controls (my mother in law has had hers for years and still gets it wrong sometimes). I hate how long it stays hot. It doesn’t seem safe around - well, not just children. A hot coil is red and when off, it pretty quickly cools. I hate the feel of it under a pot. I hate the way you must clean it, which is sufficiently fussy that either people don’t clean it or if the surface is pristine, they probably grill all their food. And I hate the feeling there is something that expensive and glass in a kitchen because I am *very hard* on a kitchen. It doesn’t seem to me it is made for the everyday hard-using cook juggling three things at once.
But a lot of this is me and I know others love it for sure and that’s why it’s now the default.
It sounds like we are talking about different things:
No idea what "the feel" refers to.
Induction burners cool far faster than reistance.
We've never had any problems keeping our induction cooktop clean. It's no different than a flattop resistance cooktop and WAY easier than open coils or gas.
I bet I used the wrong term.
Cooking with gas takes a continuous amount of experience. I also find it easier to control the electric range but that wasn't always the case- I spent four years in grad school with a gas stove, my first such appliance, and got really good at controlling temps.
Of course, gas grills can't be replaced with electric, in my opinion- not all methods of cooking can be replaced with the electric.
Also, "now we're cooking with electricity!" doesn't sound as cool.
This is one reason I think CCS will play a role. In a sense CCS is a way of "storing" the near zero mc energy produced by solar wind at capacity. We do CCS by day and burn fuels by night.
I don't think Marx's popularity can be reduced to a mere theory about moods.
In fact it we had to attribute his popularity to any one factor I think it'd be most attributable to being the first to address substantive problems about one's personal relationship to work in a market economy.
And with the possible exception of Hannah Arendt few others have attempted to address those problems in an equally thorough manner.
Re: "These appear to be genuine examples of social behavior that disfavors women."
Note: The examples concern US higher education.
Yes, but these examples are at the 2nd decimal, so to speak. At the 1st decimal we find that the female:male sex ratio in undergraduate degree completion is 58:42. See data at the link below:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_318.10.asp
And at the K-12 level, prevalence of ADHD diagnosis is *much* higher among boys than among girls:
"The ratio of boys to girls diagnosed with ADHD in childhood falls in the range of 2:1 to 10:1., with higher ratios seen in clinical compared to population samples.":
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6401208/
(My intuition is that high ADHD prevalence indicates that the education system itself is ill.)
At the risk of whataboutism: Formal education overall nowadays is more uphill for males, no?
Noah Smith may be enthusiastic about green energy but batteries are a long, long way from replacing combustion in big power applications. Much has been written about this, eg:
https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/these-charts-expose-myth-of-energy-transition
The Manhattan Contrarian usually brings a lot of data to the discussion as well.
I know I'm an idiot, but what do we learn from these types of social science (men vs women) type of studies whose results can be interpreted in any way a clever person chooses? I mean the whys could be almost anything it seems. I know we need to ask questions but these studies feel like a plague that just obscure and overwhelm to the point that their only use is for culture warrior essayists and non-profit fundraisers.
"I would say that pointing out social behavior that disfavors one sex is helpful, because we should try to change our behavior."
I would argue there are differences besides social disfavor. I would not start with the assumption that these results are due to social disfavor.
Slightly off topic, but am I the only one who thinks it's weird that a lot of our technology for producing electricity is still fundamentally just a series of various ways to boil water to produce steam to spin a turbine? Steam power is 18th century stuff. Wind turbines are even worse. That's like 15th century technology. I almost want to root for solar power to take over, just because it at least feels modern.
Nuclear power is fundamentally steam-engine technology, but it's at least as modern as solar. Instead of making electricity from the big Sun, we can make little Suns out of rocks!
Out on the electric grid, large scale storage using batteries is prohibitively expensive:
https://meredithangwin.substack.com/cp/144305589
"Battery Storage is 141 Times More Expensive Than Liquefied Natural Gas Storage"
The uses to which Marx has been put are largely repugnant. But I still have to confess when I page through something like his book on surplus value (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ )
I am impressed with how he engaged with the ideas of Ricardo, Smith, Malthus, and all the rest, many of whom are equally as guilty of the social science sins of which Marx stands accused. Many other famous figures fail to do so much. When I read anti-Marxist rants, I tend to wonder if the ranter has similarly engaged. Isaiah Berlin's biography seems to strike about the right balance in exposing the monster but in measured manner.
All that is going to happen as the West introduces solar, wind, and battery-stored power to replace fossil fuel and nuclear power is that the West will stop manufacturing goods and growing food as those activities move to the parts of the world not so hell-bent on getting rid of such power sources.
Noah Smith is one of the bigger fools out there.
I fail to see the cause and effect.
That isn't surprising to me, Stu.
You might think power will become too unreliable or too expensive but even if both increased that doesn't necessarily lead to the results you predict.
The only way it doesn't lead to the results I predict is if China and India decide to do exactly what we are doing with power generation and I see no evidence that is going to happen.
Fine. You don't have to state a reason and I don't have to take you seriously.
I accepted your guess at what I meant. It is already happening and has been doing so for the last 50 years- manufacturing moves to where is cheapest to manufacture stuff and energy is a huge part of that change over, and what is our response- to make electricity even more expensive in the U.S. and now threatening to make farming more expensive, too? We are foolishly going to down this road to renewables where it won't make one bit of difference to how much fossil fuels ultimately get burnt- if they aren't burnt here they will be burnt somewhere else less stupid than where we live.
Re: "If central planners do away with the market, then they will not have the information needed to calculate costs and make good decisions. Forced to use guesswork, planners will inevitably misallocate resources.
In a market system, bad decisions result in losses for firms, forcing them to adapt. Without the signals provided by prices, profits, and losses, a central planner's computer will not even be aware of the mistakes that it makes." — Arnold Kling, "Not Even Artificial Intelligence Can Make Central Planning Work", Reason (at embedded link)
Moreover, a central planner (or whoever rules the central planner) would lack *incentive* to make good decisions, even if (per impossible) she had adequate *knowledge*.
The contrary positions to Noah are not really contrary. Much greater, probably almost exclusive use of non-fossil fuels derived energy will be the the way to optimize the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere, but the _current set_ of policies are too costly to achieve that. Only taxation of net CO2 emissions and investment decisions that mimic the effect, regulatory reform and continued R&D can achieve that.
"..will be the the way to optimize the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere"
What is the optimal CO2 concentration is the first question that needs to be answered, Thomas. Care to take a stab?
As close to pre-industrial levels as we can get at reasonable cost. We can let the folks in 2050-2100 (I;m outta here!) figure out the details.
Which pre-industrial level, Thomas? The range of CO2 levels before industry developed is a wide, wide range of concentrations.
Any one you wish. :)
Then I choose 2000 ppm.
Ok say 1900. Is that OK?
"Batteries are replacing internal combustion engines in cars, also at an accelerating rate."
Noah Smith is factually wrong about that. EV sales have slowed significantly. Suggesting that they will not pick up soon is that, "A survey conducted by McKinsey Center For Future Mobility reported that 46% of U.S. car owners who drive electric vehicles would shift back to an internal combustion engine." The world average, they said, was 29%,
https://www.newsnationnow.com/automotive/half-us-ev-owners-switch-back-normal-cars-study/
Whether Noah is wrong depends on the time period one looks at. Either way, the correlation you note is not necessarily the causation. Interest rates and other economic factors are also considerations.
Certainly, EV sales were increasing rapidly for a while. And lots of people thought electric cars were cool, either as technologies or as "saving the planet". But I gather that EVs have generally lost their coolness, and lots of people now consider them impractical. Car companies are cutting back how many EVs they plan to make. Interest rates aren't any higher than they were a year or two years ago, so I don't think that's a factor.
Of course, things could change in another year, especially if subsidies are increased, or if a lot more charging stations actually get built.